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Messages - pancaketom
Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 ... 88
1
« on: April 16, 2024, 12:14 »
And with &order=nb_downloads you can also see how many times your free images have been downloaded.
? am I missing something? That shows all downloads. &order=nb_downloads
Yes, all downloads, paid and free
I was under the impression that the actual number of free downloads is not given - the number listed is for paid downloads when the media was not in the free section. I think that is what Mat said anyway - and seems to match what I can see in my port.
2
« on: April 13, 2024, 14:33 »
I would say time is the biggest factor against making a lot of money at microstock. I have no idea of the actual half life of images, but in general with the same port you will make less money every year from a combination of more competition (both from other artists and thieves and now AI) plus the sites taking a bigger cut either by changing the terms, selling their own material, or through backdoor accounting shenanigans or just lower costs - although inflation seems to make everything more expensive, it doesn't seem to be the case for microstock which keeps getting cheaper either in terms of actual cost or better license deals or more subs for the same amount or all you can eat buffets.
So, if you want to make $ at this you are more likely to do that by working now rather than waiting a while when looking back these will be the good old days. It is sort of like planting a tree, the best time to do it is 10 years ago (or for microstock 15 years ago), but the next best time is now.
3
« on: April 10, 2024, 13:59 »
Applies went down 2% and exports up 4%, income was actually up a little (~7%) as opposed to the previous months where everything was up except for income.
I do not understand how Canva accounting works.
4
« on: April 08, 2024, 14:34 »
I got a big for bigstock adjustment Apr 5 also. I opted out as soon as I was able to last year. I checked again and they opted me back in. So much for transparency and all that. I opted back out again. I wonder how long that will last.
Where is the Big Stock opt out anyway? I cant find it.
it is hiding under "my account" - "edit profile"
5
« on: April 06, 2024, 15:25 »
I got a big for bigstock adjustment Apr 5 also. I opted out as soon as I was able to last year. I checked again and they opted me back in. So much for transparency and all that. I opted back out again. I wonder how long that will last.
6
« on: April 04, 2024, 19:09 »
7
« on: April 02, 2024, 00:52 »
So many pages have been made less useful so they look good on a phone or just look good instead of being good. I don't like it, but I am obviously not their target market.
8
« on: April 01, 2024, 11:48 »
Brutal, how is this even possible? 3 to 4 cents comissions?
What the heck?
I wouldn't be surprised if all agencies are ripping off their contributors since they all have become to greedy.
Didn't we also have the thread about Shutterstock, where even sales were not passed on to the contributors?
IStock states that they pay out almost 2 million a week.
Presumably that's a similar number of sales. So mistakes can happen ...
You probably don't even notice smaller ones and they are simply covered up.
Nobody can check the sales system.
3 or 4 cents has been going on for some time at IS. Check their forum, I think some people have been as low as 2 and that's not Connect, that's a iStock or Getty download.
All agencies have their best self interest to pay us what we are due and not cheat. If someone ever found out there were unpaid downloads, that were paid for and licensed, there would be one heck of a lawsuit, which could destroy the business.
Didn't we also have the thread about Shutterstock, where even sales were not passed on to the contributors? Alleged, claimed, unsupported, unless you believe everything you read on an Internet Forum, without any proof?
Correct, nobody can check the sales system. We can't anywhere or for many other business in life. There has to be some trust? If anyone works on a commission basis, they have to believe that the company they work for, is going to be honest and report everything. Otherwise, why start?
I noticed that, as usual, the people who claim SS is a bunch of crooks and insulting us with 10, don't have an answer to why they are not just as insulted or worse for 3 downloads and connect sales, from iStock? But people flocked away from SS in protest, and formed a coalition, tried a boycott, and two years later can't stop writing hate messages... still work for IS? 
As a note: I still work for both. Yes, I'm insulted, but I'll take the money. 
IS drew first blood - and I removed most of my content there, and if everyone had done that I am pretty sure SS would not have done what they did, but they did. The SS pulled their money grab. So I turned off my port. If everyone had done that, they would be gone or backtrack, but they didn't and they didn't. Tragedy of the commons. I am glad I am not relying on this for my food or shelter, although it managed to be over 50% of my income for a brief while.
9
« on: March 31, 2024, 17:47 »
I had a horrible week - like an xmas-new years week. 11 dl position 25900 (I'm usually around 15000) just under 3300 mostly LCV images.
11
« on: March 28, 2024, 13:36 »
My understanding is that it is worth it if you can drive traffic to your content on FAA. I just uploaded the 25 or whatever it is free images and have only had one sale in ~10 - 15 years. I think if you can't direct traffic there or have in demand content it is probably not worth the effort and cost.
Others may have a different take.
12
« on: March 25, 2024, 11:21 »
Surprise - big customers get to use our files for free for some uses (planning, mock ups, etc. ) with no watermarks so if they accidentally just go live with it nobody really notices.
The question I have for the people that got heaps of refunds, were your earnings for November oddly high (by about the same amount as the refunds)?
Pretty shoddy on the part of Getty all around.
13
« on: March 23, 2024, 16:01 »
More likely it was brought to the attention of Alamy in some fashion and then they had to pay for their previous illegal use.
For example someone was selling calendars and another user noticed their image in use and told Alamy, and then Alamy saw all 12 months were from Alamy, including one of your images and forced them to pay.
14
« on: March 20, 2024, 15:04 »
Small consolation that Getty eats 85% of the refunds.
15
« on: March 19, 2024, 23:51 »
It looked like the last 2 payments from Canva (that went to Paypal) were processed through Trolley, so maybe we don't have to do anything? I looked on the Trolley page and it didn't seem to have anything appropriate to get paid. If it does need to be done by March 31, they sure haven't provided much guidance.
16
« on: March 16, 2024, 13:16 »
$$$$ sale, 2 years ago
Wouldn't you like to find that one in use? Seems like an installation on a business/commercial property or public site.
Thought crossed my mind more than once. It says in usage field "Indoor, Wall Decor". But old Canon 6D image was taken with is just 20 Megapixel, can't make very large print out of it. So it's bit of mystery. Perhaps it has some sentimental factor because of that "Trail adopted by John Tomlinson" table, which is not there anymore.
I fully expected it was a mistake and there would be a refund. But it cleared within a month. Interesting enough, photo was simple point and shoot, taken for documentation of my hiking exploits. At the end I didn't even use it for hiking page
https://autumnsky.zenfolio.com/usa/san-diego/iron-mountain
Used different shot I thought was better (1st in gallery) which was uploaded for stock too, never got even 10 Shutterstock cents. So you never really know much in this business
I think I took almost that exact photo when I was there - not as good a sky though. I don't think I even bothered to upload it. This can be a pretty random business.
17
« on: March 15, 2024, 12:43 »
At the moment I keep bouncing between 3100 and 5200. 4000 files.
Hope to move further up again soon, this is frustrating. But for a port this size it is probably ok.
I hate to ask, because someone will think the rank numbers actually matter.
But, why do you hope to move further up? Rank means nothing, except for your own personal information, how you are doing, compared to others. If you are making money, and happy with what you do and earn, it doesn't matter what some irrelevant number says.
My rank goes up during the holiday season, down in January, back up in April. My earnings, as in money that goes into the bank, is all that counts.
Rank is apparently, number of downloads, not earnings.
yes rank is number of downloads,the most important thing,not earnings.
in my opinion the most important thing is the number of sales,earnings can go up or down,but the number of downloads cannot go down,that is the most important number,then comes the money. 
by the way,my best rank ever is 3210.
If you don't think sales can go down in this business, you are either really good, really fortunate, or haven't been at this long.
18
« on: March 13, 2024, 17:41 »
applies up 13%, exports up 12%, earnings down about 1%
So basically, our art gets used more and more - presumably benefiting Canva in some manner like more income or more market share or something, and we get paid less.
I still don't really know what applies or exports are. If I was getting even the lowly .10 from SS for these uses I would be making a whole lot more.
19
« on: March 08, 2024, 21:15 »
remember the ranking has nothing to do with $, only download numbers, and it seems to be compared to everyone else, so you need a lot less downloads in a low week - say xmas to new year - than you would on a good week to get the same rank.
20
« on: March 07, 2024, 19:21 »
Fun fact - shooting the things that AI does poorly helps train the AI to do it better. eg hands, bananas, etc.
21
« on: March 04, 2024, 11:30 »
various sites have tried different schemes to charge more for some images than others. As I recall they were based on the number of sales (DT) if you were exclusive to that company (IS) price selected by the photographer (P5) or the size of the image (more than one site). In most if not all cases they dropped the schemes because the buyers didn't like it. AI would be another way to differentiate, but especially as it gets harder to tell AI images from non AI images that would get harder to justify.
I do think that there is room for a site that takes Jo Ann's idea - "real photos of real people doing real things in real places"
22
« on: March 04, 2024, 11:09 »
since the rankings are based on download numbers it makes sense that there will be a lot of people sharing ranks, especially at the middle of the bell curve for download numbers. There probably aren't that many people getting over a few 100 images a week (see previous post for how many), but in there are probably a lot of people getting the exact same number of downloads in the 10-50 range.
23
« on: February 29, 2024, 22:58 »
Re: culled previously approved images, if you go to creator hub > my items and select rejected from the pull down menu middle top (defalt is "all status"), you can see which files have been deactivated. No reason is provided but at least you can see which files were retroactively "rejected" as they show up under this filter.
I'm not sure I'm looking in the right place because Canva has one of the least intuitive sites and you can't even just go to a url to find something because of all the check boxes but it appears what you describe just shows the rejected images, which include about the last few hundred I submitted before I gave up on their blanket no reason rejections. I searched on rejected this year and the image reported as a violation a few days ago was not listed, so it still doesn't seem that there is a way to tell what has been post-accepted rejected unless you keep track of and look through every image or they send you an e-mail. I guess it is good to know the threatening language was applied to all removals and it is nice to know what is removed rather than just seeing the total number of assets in the port dropping. Danny, if you are going to remove a category of images from your database in your audits - for example 100 dollar bills, maybe you should flag all 1.8 million of them and then remove them all at once instead of slowly and apparently randomly picking your way through the database.
24
« on: February 29, 2024, 22:41 »
I live in California and make nowhere near those numbers (not in the most expensive area, but houses aren't cheap here either). fortunately I own mine and have years of experience living very cheaply - at either end of the income spectrum there lies a leisure class.
25
« on: February 28, 2024, 15:14 »
I got one today for an image of US money (100$ bills). None of my images show complete bills that could be used for counterfeit, but whatever. They have been deleting images without notice for years, so for some reason they gave notice for this one.
edited to add - I decided to do a search for "100 dollar us bill" and it returned 1843146 photos, including what looks like straight scans of bills - which probably is illegal - so they have a bit more deleting to do.
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