Quote from: gostwyck on August 26, 2010, 17:08

Quote from: sjlocke on August 26, 2010, 16:45
Sounds like little Miss Sunnymars has taken their toys and gone home.

No point in acknowledging (let alone feeding) the trolls. The Ignore button was invented for such cases.

gostwyck must be pissed off because his post where he agreeing with me in the other thread, was the only post i didn't acknowledge.  you must have felt completely insignificant, awwww

till next time dorks.

Quote from: sjlocke on August 26, 2010, 16:45

Quote from: youralleffingnuts on August 26, 2010, 16:32
LOL, I've come to the conclusion that about 80% of the people here lack basic communication skills and are completely effing useless.  It's a good thing you all can bloody operate a camera, I tell you!

Sounds like little Miss Sunnymars has taken their toys and gone home.

She'll be back toots 

LOL, I've come to the conclusion that about 80% of the people here lack basic communication skills and are completely effing useless.  It's a good thing you all can bloody operate a camera, I tell you!

BEST!

Lagereek, my post was obviously directed at the OP, not you.

urgh, BEST!

Quote from: lagereek on August 26, 2010, 15:52

Quote from: sunnymars on August 26, 2010, 13:16
I don't like IS, I think they're nuts!  What I don't understand however is why independents kick and scream over agencies favouring exclusives.  Isn't that the perk of being exclusive?  If an agency looks after an independent the same way it does an exclusive how would that be fair to exclusives when they cannot sell their images elsewhere?  If exclusives were so much better off than independents everyone would become exclusive.

So your images didn't appear in some lightbox because you're not an exclusive member, big deal!  Must you whine about everything?

Jesus!

Lightbox??  I dont care about some bloody lightbox !  Ive never even mentioned the word lightbox, besides 90% of all the AD-agency creatives I know in Europe dont even know what . a lightbox is all about.
You seem to know though.

best.

They care which agency as long they can find a quality image they want at the right price.  No one was referring to an agent earlier, well at least I wasn't.  Buyers don't care which artist/photographer the images comes from as long as it's what they're looking for.  They're in a hurry so they're not going to click on an image, then click the contributor's port and let their bio content be the deciding factor on whether they purchase it or not. 

Quote from: christophertvarne on August 26, 2010, 11:20
Not necessarily. We have clients that go to our competitors' websites, download the low-res/thumbnail and ask if we have the same images. Why would they do that if they don't care about where they license the images? Why would they go through the trouble of involving a second agency when they know for a fact that they can buy the same image from the first agency? It sure seems to me that clients do care where they license images.

Quote from: lagereek on August 26, 2010, 07:11
Theres one truth in all this verbal beefing though which needs to be taken seriously. Picture buyers, designers, Ad-people, etc,  they really dont give a crap where or from whom they buy as long as they get their stuff.

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on August 26, 2010, 14:33
Sunnymars, it may come as a shock to you but you are not the only person on the board and my question was addressed to someone else. The someone who I quoted. Someone who apparently is part of an agency and was able to say what actually goes on. So I was looking for actual information, not your idle speculations.

Thank you.

Baldrick's, sorry I meant to quote the post above you since I was the one who first said that buyer's don't give a * who they buy from.

I too was looking for feedback from the same person.  I too did not care for YOUR idle speculations.


Thank you.

Getty doesn't take 80%.  If I don't like an agent, I don't join them and whinge about them.  You want a voice? have the guts to speak up and leave.  You people don't leave because it's worth you staying... well it was but the bubble's burst.

As for the sites that pay me a better commission, every time a get a decent payment I say "woooohooo" under my breath.  Every time I sell a subscription I say "urgh!" under my breath.  I don't go to a forum and write post after post whinging about it. 

As for IS and lisa, come off it, she's got 200,000 downloads from them and she's whinging?  They've obviously looked after her all these years.  She would have been snapping wedding pics (which she hates) if it wasn't for them.  As for her voice, I find it irritating as I'm sure many others do as well including the micros.  I definitely don't want some constant whinger representing me. 

Quote from: Eireann on August 26, 2010, 14:21
Sunnymars,
All right then.
You go ahead and thank Getty for taking 80 per cent of your earnings. Nobody's stopping you.
I wonder what are you going to do with the other sites? The sites that pay you a better commission?
Send them flowers every weekend? Write poems?

Lisa is someone who's willing and capable of changing things for the better. Not many people have the guts to do it.
You should support her voice, it's in your own interest.

.

Quote from: lisafx on August 23, 2010, 23:13


As for starting my own site to drive traffic to my micro portfolio.... here's a thought - I pay Istock 80% of what my images make on their site.  It's not too much to ask that they 1) give everyone a fair shot at inclusion in sitewide lightboxes; or 2) don't claim that those lightboxes are the best of the collection when clearly they aren't; or 3) let their search engine be the arbiter of what gets put in front of buyers; or 4) Make it clear to buyers that the intended purpose of those lightboxes is to highlight Vetta, E+, and/or exclusive content.     

Here's another thought....  instead of bitching about the 80% you pay istock, why not thank them for paying you 20% and earning a living doing something you love instead of having to do weddings which you said you hate.  You take the photo, you upload it, keyword it, you don't advertise or promote it in any way.  You let IS do the rest of the work for you for the rest of your life.  That's worth 80% isn't it? 

I don't like IS, I think they're nuts!  What I don't understand however is why independents kick and scream over agencies favouring exclusives.  Isn't that the perk of being exclusive?  If an agency looks after an independent the same way it does an exclusive how would that be fair to exclusives when they cannot sell their images elsewhere?  If exclusives were so much better off than independents everyone would become exclusive.

So your images didn't appear in some lightbox because you're not an exclusive member, big deal!  Must you whine about everything?

Jesus!

Exactly right and if anyone doesn't believe that, they should go do some occasional design work for a few months.  I did and still am doing it from time to time.  I've picked up a few tips from it:

1.  I now understand the micro industry from top to bottom.

2.  I got into the designer's head.  Designers look for the cheapest, most original and current work and don't even give a thought about the artist or their reputation.  Also a lot of designers do their own work.

3.  I familiarised myself with current trends.

4.  I learnt that microstock is a little frowned upon lately and has a stigma attached to it.  A lot of clients go so far as to say in their brief "No microstock or clipart please!".

5.  I've made $3.5K's from it so far from various avenues.

6.  It makes me think outside the square and helps me come up with original work and work that I wouldn't do otherwise.

7.  Some of my leftovers go to microstock and/or PODs.

Thanks for the Economics 101 lesson.  I'm a Management Accountant/CPA

Quote from: michaeldb on August 26, 2010, 03:22

Quote from: sunnymars on August 26, 2010, 00:57
Do you really think their first point of contact will be some website with a group of desperate photographers listing a handful of their best photography.  Designers don't give a * who they buy from.

Take out the acrimony and this is a valid criticism. Our images are now a commodity. Just about the only way to compete when selling a commodity is to lower prices. So we have the fears of a 'race to the bottom' and .01 images, and these fears are well founded. Commodity sellers have to compete by lowering prices, it's Economics 101.

The alternative to selling images as a commodity is a 'franchise' or a brand. If "Designers don't give a * who they buy from" it is hard to establish any kind of franchise, but not necessarily impossible.

This thread is about the possibility of establishing a franchise or franchises for some imagists by competing with search, by using some kind of lightbox publishing idea. As christophertvarne and FD pointed out, buyers really do use lightboxes, of at least two different kinds. And Alias suggested ways to use social media and recommendations (with google SEO coming along as a result) to make the lightboxes highly visible.

Can somebody use lightboxes to put his or her images ahead of the pack, create a franchise in a sea of commodity-images? If so I am interested in participating. The real question is can it be done? If so, how?

lol what are you, 12?

Should I be as pathetic as you and count all your posts in EVERY forum you type on?  There's over 3000 in just here.  I really can't be arsed tallying it all up.  I only type on DT, the occassional one at FT when something is really wrong and lately in here.  It doesn't really matter if I waste time on a forum anyway.  Microstock is a hobby, not my occupation. 

Quote from: FD-regular on August 26, 2010, 02:08

Quote from: sunnymars on August 26, 2010, 01:42Figure out what drives the search engines at each agent, it's not that hard.

It's great that you found out the well-kept secrets of the best match at iStock. Without any doubt, your large and successful portfolio on iStock was a great help in finding that grale.   
I think I'll turn my noise reduction engine on again here, and reduce this thread from 3 to 1.5 pages without loss of signal.

What's iStock have to do with me?  I'm not with iStock because iStock is the most idiotic microstock agent out there.  They've gone from the best to the worst making stupid decisions that will lead to their collapse.  Their reviewers aren't all there, managment has increased their pricing in the worst possible time in economic history.  At this rate, I doubt iStock will be around much longer.  This is the reason why you're all panicking.  Your biggest earner is about to fall and it should.

Quote from: FD-regular on August 26, 2010, 02:14

Quote from: sunnymars on August 26, 2010, 02:03lol It makes no difference to me if I have credibility at microstockgroup.com or anywhere relating to microstock.  I'm not after credibility.

Oh my, do we have a little attitude problem here? Just some good advice. Try to do some work instead of infesting forums here and at DT (where I sadly can't block you) with incomprehensible BS. Sweet dreams, and PLOINK.  

lol I couldn't care less if someone who thinks he's an IT expert who talks * all day in a forum ignores me.  I'd love it if you can find incomprehensibe BS on DT from me.  It's full of it from YOU though.

Again, do your own homework.  Hint look for the "it's my business" post.

Why would you think I have a personal issue with you?  You're the OP who started this thread.  I replied to post, someone mentioned you and I responded to that post.  

And do you really think I take you seriously?  You've been at this game for years and you haven't even got yourself a website or at least a blog yet because you prefer to waste your time on here.  If you lose revenue, you can blame yourself for sheer laziness.  Your OP is ridiculous.  You expect people with the skills, the drive and the enthusiam that you lack to step up and help you out promoting your work?   10 years ago it would have been a lot more complicated setting up webstie, but today, anyone can do it.

Quote from: lisafx on August 26, 2010, 02:07

Quote from: sunnymars on August 26, 2010, 02:03

You typically got offended earlier when I mentioned branching out in other areas other than 'people'.  I was talking about your subject matter.  I didn't mean do weddings.  I was talking about creating images that you can sell as microstock and otherways but instead of considering the advice of a 'newbie' you went with the "who the fk are you to tell me what to do" when all I was trying to do was help you.

Sorry, can you tell me where I said the above?  This sounds like you have some sort of personal issue with me.  Since I don't know you at all I can't begin to imagine what triggered that.  Feel free to post whatever opinions you want, but don't expect me to take them seriously.  

lol It makes no difference to me if I have credibility at microstockgroup.com or anywhere relating to microstock.  I'm not after credibility.  

You can toss my opinion or advice out the window, it doesn't matter at all to me.  But really, I'm not and no-one else here is going to worry about your starving family when microstock volumes go through the roof and you've wasted a good portion of your microstock life on a public forum typing useless post after post instead of working out a way to maximise your profits, your position as well as creating images that aren't limited to microstock.

You typically got offended earlier when I mentioned branching out in other areas other than 'people'.  I was talking about your subject matter.  I didn't mean do weddings.  I was talking about creating images that you can sell as microstock and otherways but instead of considering the advice of a 'newbie' you went with the "who the fk are you to tell me what to do" when all I was trying to do was help you.

lol I'm not stupid enough to just blab it out on a public forum but yes, absolutely work the system.  I wasn't talking about playing games or doing anything illegitimately.  Certainly not spamming or using inappropriate keywords.  Figure out what drives the search engines at each agent, it's not that hard.  Choose one of your quality images that's on page 10 and pick out a quality image that's on page 1, go their portfolio and try to work out why yours is placed on 10.  

Competition seems to scare everyone away but it drives me.  If it wasn't so competitive I wouldn't be in it at all.  The money's not driving me either.  I want my image to be better than anyone elses and I want it on page one.  I'm far from it but that's what is driving me.

Quote from: lisafx on August 26, 2010, 01:25

Quote from: sunnymars on August 26, 2010, 00:57
 Focus on the search results of each image and figure out a way to move them to the first 5 pages quicker.  If you're old timers at this and you've haven't worked it out yet, what . have you been wasting your time on?

Seriously?!!  "Figure out a way to move (our images) to the first 5 pages quicker"?!!  So, like, game the system?  It's been tried a bunch of times in the past but ended up with account closures for the gamers.  AFAIK the search engines are pretty gameproof at this point.  

Eventually if you build a portfolio of quality images and a good sales history you may be toward the front of many searches, but it really is dependent on the whims of the sites and their programmers.  Beyond producing the best images we can in whatever our areas of specialty are and using as many accurate keywords as possible (without spamming!) there really isn't much else one can do to ensure search position.  

Would love to hear more about how you managed to get all your 59 files on DT placed advantageously enough to pull in the 72 sales you have had since you started in April 2010.  Perhaps yours is just the fresh perspective and insight we "old timers" have been waiting for to show us the way.

The only thing this website will do is reduce your RPD even further.  What you're all failing to consider is the typical behaviour of a designer.  Do you really think their first point of contact will be some website with a group of desperate photographers listing a handful of their best photography.  Designers don't give a * who they buy from.  They're after the best, the most current and the most original content.  They're not going to browse through an individual's portfolio first and risk downloading something better than your shots.  They're going to do what they've always been doing and search for images on microstock sites where there are millions of photos from ALL photographers.  If you want to stand out in a crowd of millions, make your images individually better than anyone else's.  Focus on the search results of each image and figure out a way to move them to the first 5 pages quicker.  If you're old timers at this and you've haven't worked it out yet, what . have you been wasting your time on?

@ lagereek

You've missed the point.  In their minds they are.  They've joined microstock agencies as photographers.  Microstock agencies refer to them as photographers so in actual fact they ARE now photographers.  It's irrelevant if their photographs are crap. Their photos are still good enough for cheap microstock.  Their images are still saturating the market and it takes longer to find the quality shots. Furthermore these amateurs start playing amongst the big guns and start paying attention picking up tips and gaining more and knowledge. While the hot shots lose enthusiasm over their ever-decreasing revenue, the new ones start earning more and more each month and are full of enthusiasm to improve the quality of their work and the quantity of their portfolios.  In the end they are photographers and a lot move up the ranks.  

Well the microstock industry is well oversaturated and it's going to get a lot worse.  Everyone keeps whining about it while at the same time they sit there typing on forums and posting their referral links getting more and more people to join.  The agencies benefit but you're all doing yourselves in and you had to have known this was going to happen.  Eventually it will be a struggle to make a living out of microstock and unless you look at alternative ways to earn, you're going to wake up one day and kick yourselves over not having something to fall back on.

The big earners had it cushy for years but I'm afraid it's time people... something's going to give, the bubble's going to burst.  You can all sit there fighting the odds trying to come up with ways to promote your ports but if everyone is still inviting new members to sign up for a few extra bucks, then you're fighting a losing battle.  The growth rate of your individual ports is nowhere near the growth rate of the microstock agencies.  We're living in a digital world where everyone with a digital camera thinks he's a photographer.  You know what?  they are photographers!... you told them so when you referred them! 

Every year it's going to get worse until eventually no one will be making a living out of microstock.  This will become a hobby.  A little side earner.  It's just the way it is.

I don't blame Lisa for trying to implement it.  It would be frustrating relying on the performance of micro agents especially if you rely on micro earnings to feed your family.  I think the best thing for her or anyone in her situation is to spend less time in here and more time learning ways to promote their own work including developing their own website.  Also Lisa's an excellent photographer and 'people' are her niche.  This is good but it puts a limit to what she can do with her work.  If I were her I would rethink this niche.  She's got enough 'people' shots that can sit there earning while she branches out in other forms of photography and sells those images other ways.  This way if microstock goes down the gurgler, she'll have a backup.

The other idea (alias's) is a good one but I can't see it working by coming into a forum and asking "who wants in?"   I can see it working if a few internet computer geeks/photographers team up together but I cannot see how these people with these skills will be willing to support other competitors who can't provide anything other than a small amount of money.  

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on August 25, 2010, 07:29

Quote from: sunnymars on August 25, 2010, 02:04
lol it all sounds good on paper but it hasn't been implemented before because it won't work.  Setting up a website, maintaining it and promoting it poperly takes time and money and who's going to be the sucker that gets bogged down with the big tasks while others just sit back and go along for the ride?  

The smartest idea was the one from djpadavona.

You're probably right. Djpadavona's idea is very good indeed. In fact, it could become almost compulsory to participate in a box like that. There could be one made for each cannister level (or, at least, one for diamond, one for gold - I don't know if Sean and Lisa's crowd need a separate one or might be better off in the larger diamond collection). Black diamonds could be invited to contribute 100 images, diamonds 10, gold 5, silver 2  .... something like that. Not sure about bronze, there are so many of them it could make maintenance utterly impossible.

Even that would probably be far too much work for one person - it would need iStock to allow multiple users to maintain the box, so there would also need to be a shared mailbox to send requests to. But iStock might see it as a direct threat to its efforts to push its Vetta and Exclusive+ collections, so it might not like it.

It also only (hopefully) attracts buyers to one agency, some of us would want a wider reach.

If the other idea could ever be got off the ground, the participants would have to pay an image-hosting fee to cover setting-up and maintenance costs. That would, at least, restrict the potential membership to serious contributors. It would also mean that we would need a high degree of confidence in the ability of such a site to drive business to our portfolios. I would be willing to put in say 50c per file for hosting IF the marketing strategy was really convincing and there were enough other potential contributors to create a credible resource for buyers.

Once money is involved, I doubt if the enthusiasm for this will survive.  And it does come down to Lisa's original point that we pay most of our earnings to our agencies precisely to do the marketing and administration for us. That is what they are there for, nothing else. Lisa must have paid over a million dollars (literally) in commission to agencies to market her works, so she has the right to expect that they do an exceptional job for her.

lol it all sounds good on paper but it hasn't been implemented before because it won't work.  Setting up a website, maintaining it and promoting it poperly takes time and money and who's going to be the sucker that gets bogged down with the big tasks while others just sit back and go along for the ride? 

The smartest idea was the one from djpadavona.

Posting once a day to drive traffic to a blog is fine.  I was really talking more about automated tweets that tweet each time you upload a new product. Whether you use a feed or click on a 'twitter this' link yourself.

Also, you're sjlocke.  I don't think your views to downloads ratio is going to have that much effect on your search ranking on IS.  I don't really know how IS is set up but I do know that on a site like DT, if your views to download ratio is too high, it's going to push back your item on search results.  I experimented when I first started and a lot of the items with high views due to twitter, haven't been sold on DT because they're simply not found in search results on the actual site.  I'm talking of popular images that do well elsewhere.  As I mentioned earlier, for microstock, you're not going to get as many buyers searching for images on google than you would from buyers searching images directly on a microstock agent. 

...so your tweets might be directing traffic to your blog but are they converting to sales?  Microstock is very specific.  It's not like a zazzle t-shirt where it's easy to get interest from anyone who may end up buying it.  No average person who's not a designer is going to read a random microstock tweet and think to themselves "oh, an image of a office lady working on her laptop, I could use one of those!"

Quote from: sjlocke on August 24, 2010, 02:21

Quote from: sunnymars on August 24, 2010, 02:15
As I said early, I don't promote my microstock on twitter at all.  Twitter is useless for that but definitely use it for zazzle.

Huh.  I wonder how I start getting blog views immediately after bit.ly->twitter ing about a new post.

Mostly, I think twitter is useless.  I post maybe once a day.  But I get several new people following me each day, so I must be posting something they want to see.

Using lists are useful for yourself but again, if you're going to have any automated tweets you're probably still going to put off a number of people who read it.  This is why it's better to create different accounts for different products and purposes.  I don't want my followers who read about my artwork (paintings) to be twittered about the latest mug I've created on zazzle.  That would look unprofessional and would annoy them.

Quote from: click_click on August 24, 2010, 01:51

Quote from: christophertvarne on August 24, 2010, 01:37
...click_click, when you're following more than 100 people on Twitter, you should create different lists of people you are genuinely interested in reading tweets from. For example, I have lists of people that are photographers, creatives (designers, artists etc.) and so on. We have about 780 followers in total; there's no away I could reasonably be able to keep track of that many followers in a meaningful way. You really need to cut down that number to have time to do other things. Otherwise you would have to spend hours per day reading tweets!

Thanks for that information. That was what I was looking for.

I wonder how individuals do it that have 10,000 or more follower. That's just crazy.

It really depends how you're set up.  Do you have a website? Blog?

I absolutely have more than one account.  I have a personal one, where friends convinced me to open up.  I don't even look at it because I find twitter a tad idiotic for personal use.  I have one for my artwork (paintings and prints) that drives traffic to my site and blog.  I don't do any spammy type automated tweeting on that one.  They're all meaningful, thoughtful posts, not just a title and link.  Then I have my sunnymars one that I use for my PODs like zazzle.  That one is spammy and it probably pisses off anyone that reads it (I doubt anyone does) but I only use that to index my products quicker.  It must be working because I've made more money from zazzle in one month than from all the microstock agents combined in four months.

As I said early, I don't promote my microstock on twitter at all.  Twitter is useless for that but definitely use it for zazzle.

Quote from: click_click on August 23, 2010, 19:29

Quote from: FD-regular on August 23, 2010, 19:20

Quote from: click_click on August 23, 2010, 18:48Will do. Makes sense and I hope I'll also get lots of followers that I can spam my stuff to  

Don't do that. I just unhallowed lingerer because he uses that idiot Shutterstock Twitter plug in. Hi, I just sold 4 images today on SS, Hi, I just got 5 new images approved on SS... Greer. Every onto weeks a tweet about something important is enough. No need to promote your stuff with other contributors since they aren't your market.

See, this is one of the problems. Some people are working in the same industry and others may be your clients.

You can't make both happy. Do I have to set up several accounts with Twitter then?