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Messages - jorgophotography

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1
A mass exodus of CEOs in 2019 and 2020 seems to be a growing trend:
https://www.ccn.com/ceos-quitting-in-record-numbers-could-signal-total-stock-market-collapse/

Are they getting out while the goings good?
Would be interested to know if JO also had a departure from his SSTK holdings?


2
Off Topic / Re: Trump in Putin's pocket
« on: July 17, 2018, 21:38 »
While Im not a proponent of partisan politics, and by no means a supporter of the Trump - Republicans (or the Dems for that fact). What the media fails to talk about, is the US interventionism into other foreign nations elections via overt and covert means. If you're calling out Russia on electoral manipulation, you must also call out the US meddling. You want to know how foreign policy really operates in the US? Look up the book Confessions of an economic hitman by John Perkins, heres a quick interview with the man himself ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWuAct1BxHU&t

You can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. It's okay to be furious about the US's history of backing or even orchestrating coups around the world, often to put fascists in power, to further US economic or political interests and also be furious as an American to see your country attacked. Until recently it was okay to criticise your government and hold them to account for their wrongs, at least in the US.

Haha, no worries, i'll step out of your echo chamber so i don't disrupt your predisposed thesis. I can only hope one day everyone can come together and stop feeding this media propagated left/right paradigm split which is just a hierarchical ploy to divide and conquer.

3
Off Topic / Re: Trump in Putin's pocket
« on: July 16, 2018, 23:47 »
While Im not a proponent of partisan politics, and by no means a supporter of the Trump - Republicans (or the Dems for that fact). What the media fails to talk about, is the US interventionism into other foreign nations elections via overt and covert means. If you're calling out Russia on electoral manipulation, you must also call out the US meddling. You want to know how foreign policy really operates in the US? Look up the book Confessions of an economic hitman by John Perkins, heres a quick interview with the man himself ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWuAct1BxHU&t

4
Hey Melissa, i'm quite certain you should be able to use creative commons images for this purpose.
I wont link any 'free' sites as i don't want to advertise them.

Zazzle is filled with CC content.

If anyone knows different, let us know.

5
Its no doubt blockchain is complex and not user friendly at its current position; I do believe this will change overtime, just like the days of early internet. The benefits blockchain can bring does outweigh its drawbacks (IMO). Ive thrown together a list of benefits I can see blockchain bringing stock photography. Obviously my opinion and others may see negatives where I see positives ;)

Community governance
Also known as DAO enables token holders to have a say in the business model, mechanics and project direction through community voting.
[4.1  DAO Proposal and Voting]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C4UPA9-9o2cOLJOEYMIVwN_Fi3Ebtn2YcRua58hQ7_0/edit#heading=h.e9x558a4uqw8

Decentralised payments and cashouts
Bypassing institutions such as paypal who have at times blocked users accounts, while giving contributors the ability to cashout through a variety of crypto exchanges. As merchant services in crypto begin to expand you will soon be able to buy goods, services and even pay bills without the need to exchange crypto to fiat

Copyright registrations and time-stamping
To help mitigating image theft a large chunk of the current Blockchain stock projects are building in copyright protocols on the blockchain. Where an image is time-stamped with authors details upon upload, removing the process of copyright registration through 3rd parties.
Each ownership declaration will be registered on the blockchain
[Pg 12 - Copyrights claims & disputes]
https://www.wemark.com/whitepaper.pdf

In-house image tracking
Some of the blockchain stock photo outlets are building in image tracking with copyright infringement takedowns /or payment requests. This will be built directly into some of the contributor access portals.
https://medium.com/photochain/photochain-and-copytrack-announce-key-copyright-partnership-2fd05a4923fa

Trustless transactions
Building the image sales data onto the blockchain will eliminate underhanded sales seen in the past by agencies doing dodgy deals, all image sales will be immutable and viewable by the contributor with the amount exchanged during point-of-sale.

Brand awareness
A lot of the blockchain projects in ICO gain quite a considerable following from investors /bounty hunters and contributors. During this process, countless articles, videos and social media posts circulate about the project helping upstart the brand awareness of a project. Having investors also holding a vested stake of the project, will also bring further brand awareness beyond ICO.

Decentralised funding
Historically stock photo start-ups havent had the funding to compete with the big boys, ICOs could break this trend with some of the most successful tokensales hitting into the $100s of millions. This of course all depends on the success of the project during crowdsale.
https://www.coinist.io/biggest-icos-chart/

The long term marketing sustainability is a note of concern for me, I hope the projects can allocate enough of the day-to-day revenue  towards bypassing sales stagnation.

6
Here's a couple more for the blockchain list:

https://bitimage.io/
http://creativechain.org/ 
https://selfllery.com/ 
https://www.pibble.io/ 
https://wirestock.org/

I think the gamechanger in the blockchain / stock crossover is the initial funding through ICOs.
Historically, startup stock agencies just can't compete with the established brands, based on marketing budget (IMO), blockchain has the power to change this.

If you did though the whitepapers, many of these projects have dedicated a solid % to the marketing plan, so if they do well during ICO, it could bring some solid brand awareness to the project.

Wrote in detail about this here:
https://medium.com/@CryptoBlockBits/stock-photography-the-blockchain-revolution-7d5e0a7f42d9

Also did a writeup about the wemark project here:
https://medium.com/@CryptoBlockBits/stock-photography-is-broken-could-wemark-com-be-the-fix-fcdfef03c946

7
Hi Mike, What differentiates you from the current influx of blockchain stock projects like; https://www.wemark.com/ https://bitimage.io/ https://photochain.io/ https://kodakcoin.com/ http://creativechain.org/ https://selfllery.com/ https://www.pibble.io/

While i do believe there will be a disruptive breakthrough in the blockchain stock photo market. The question for me is, which one is going to offer me a return on my time uploading.

Photochain (although a noble project IMO) seems to be struggling to gain investments in its ICO. Although i suspect this to be due to the lack of incentives to investors (token only holds purchasing utility). How will you capture the interest of investors to garner enough funds for dev & mass marketing?


While our vision is to decentralize the stock image market and allow content creators to sell their content directly to buyers, we put tremendous focus on having a great product and providing outstanding user experience. We acknowledge the overall difficulty and challenges associated with actual usage of cryptocurrencies and blockchain based products. That is why it has been our goal to build a product where content buyer would enjoy shopping on not only because it is cheaper or more flexible but also because it provides seamless user experience just like on conventional websites. We are planning to achieve this by minimizing the requirements to interact with tokens for users who have not been exposed to crypto wallets and cryptocurrencies in general. We believe that you should not have to go to a cryptocurrency exchange if you just need to buy an image for your blog. The same approach will be used for content creators as mentioned in the above comment.

The other thing that differentiates us is the fact that we want to start with the community of stock photographers first. That is why we try to actively engage with you in this forum and other channels to have your inputs as we are building WireStock. In fact, your feedback so far has been superuseful and we hope to continue this discussion here. For example, we consid having a feature to allow buyers to request custom jobs or modifications from content creators. Would be awesome to hear your thoughts on this.

As the majority of the founding team members are from tech startup space and have experience raising funds for other startups, we are confident that we will be able to raise funds for WireStock. However, we try to talk to investors who are familiar with this space and understand the value of a decentralized marketplace for stock content. We try to stay away from typical speculative ICO investors and are looking for long term commitments.


Cheers Mike, appreciate the response.
The industry is in dire need of change.
I will be following your project closely.
Have a good one mate.

8
Hi Mike, What differentiates you from the current influx of blockchain stock projects like; https://www.wemark.com/ https://bitimage.io/ https://photochain.io/ https://kodakcoin.com/ http://creativechain.org/ https://selfllery.com/ https://www.pibble.io/

While i do believe there will be a disruptive breakthrough in the blockchain stock photo market. The question for me is, which one is going to offer me a return on my time uploading.

Photochain (although a noble project IMO) seems to be struggling to gain investments in its ICO. Although i suspect this to be due to the lack of incentives to investors (token only holds purchasing utility). How will you capture the interest of investors to garner enough funds for dev & mass marketing?

9
Spend my time working on RM while preparing for the oncoming blockchain stock disruption - creativechain.org | photochain.io | stockblock.io | kodakcoin.com | tge.selfllery.com
An article i wrote on this topic ;)
https://medium.com/@CryptoBlockBits/stock-photography-the-blockchain-revolution-7d5e0a7f42d9

10
I make double on FAA in comparison to Shutterstock per month, admittedly i don't submit anything to SS (or micro) these days. Spend my time working on RM while preparing for the oncoming blockchain stock disruption - creativechain.org | photochain.io | stockblock.io | kodakcoin.com | tge.selfllery.com

You win the "Shoehorn of the Day" award.

My SS earnings are very low, so will have to abdicate that shoehorn your way ;)

11
I make double on FAA in comparison to Shutterstock per month, admittedly i don't submit anything to SS (or micro) these days. Spend my time working on RM while preparing for the oncoming blockchain stock disruption - creativechain.org | photochain.io | stockblock.io | kodakcoin.com | tge.selfllery.com

12
General Stock Discussion / Re: ImageBrief "premium" membership
« on: October 31, 2015, 03:08 »
I havent signed up to Premium (as of yet). My RM folio is still too small to get my monies worth. In saying that i did get a sale recently from the new reverse search, so getting work uploaded to your profile can pay off.

13
General Stock Discussion / Re: Your hopes for 2015
« on: December 24, 2014, 07:24 »
1. I hope more sites will shift to a Stocksy pricing bracket
2. For 50/50 commission split on top tier sites (dreaming... i know :P)
3. We can pull our fingers out a create an exclusive co-op that will reign at pole position

14

What worries me a bit more is that you never got paid out? Can you email us at [email protected] and mention this forum. I'd like to get to the bottom of it right away.

Sure thing Nuno, email now sent. Appreciate you would look into this.

15

You have some beautiful work. I'd be concerned, too, about finding my work all over the place.

Cheers Mantis

16
Has anyone had upload problems with their system not reading metadata? I have unlimited uploads and can only upload about 10-20 at a time for their system to pull in the metadata.  I've had to go in two times and delete each image manually then scale back my uploads to get their system to read the metadata.  They have a glitch and need to acknowledge it.  When I upload, say, 50 images all 50 have pulled in one keyword and no title.  The title ends up pulling in the image file name, not the title in the metadata. They suggested I use the Mac uploader so I did. Same issue, so I have concluded that their system has some technical hiccups. Now I have to manually go in and delete hundreds of images manually and reup them 10 at a time. That won't take long, maybe a few months with all the spare time I have (my attempt at humor).

Had similar problems uploading with metadata fallout. I went along the same path with 10-20 images a batch. I noticed the success/failure of uploads timed with the busy periods, so would guess its to do with overloads. I ended up removing my folio as i found all my non-micro images that scattered all over the web. Would be cautious with these guys as they never paid out my account ($170 odd) for a sale in late September. Edit: Payment has been gratefully received.

17
Nice work and website. Which Photodeck template do you use?


Cheers Dook, I ran with Design template #8
http://www.photodeck.com/featured-websites/

18
Similarly to Paulie, after a little research I was toying between Photoshelter - Photodeck, Graphic Paper Press Ktools and CMS account.

I ended up running with Graphic Paper Press's Stock Photography Theme (due to price) and chose Photodeck over Photoshelter because of the option of payment via paypal.

If I were to be honest, I would say hold off on the Graphic Paper Press site. The site appearance looks good to its credit but is very buggy at this stage, the upload (processing of images) is slow and frequently drops images and the keyword search functionality is limited.  I contacted the tech support on a site glitch issue that (uncannily) struck exactly when i hit the 4000 image mark and they brushed me off to my hosting provider (who stated it was a template .php script error lol). I ended up canning the project (for the time being), might have another go when I have a little more time in the future. Hopefully by then the bugs will be fixed.

On the other hand, can't speak praises any higher for the Photodeck site and the backend upload/categorise. The people behind Photodeck are truly awesome.

19
Bitterly disappointing Alex. Do you believe this setup (with lack of communication) to be ethical? Its all these silent deals that is making microstock a joke to work in, and ive already started the transition out. I just removed my RM folio from inmagine. My micro images will be removed from 123RF in the coming months. For me personally it all boils down to fairness and trust, both of which are clearly redundant here.

20
Adobe Stock / Re: Fotolia D-Day (Deactivation Day) - May,1
« on: May 14, 2014, 00:39 »
SHAME ON YOU, MICROSTOCK GROUP!!!!  If you haven't noticed, you have lost a more than nine-year member in good standing from this forum.  Thanks to the number of negative [-1] ratings on LisaFX's posts, her posts have been taken down.[/b] [/color]

I have a lot of respect for Lisa, i've been watching her posts for a long time and think she is one of the most honest and open personalities on this forum. I do occasionally vote down posts when in disagreement with the statements being made. This is not a personal attack, but more a difference on opinion.

I do believe that the DPC model is at odds with on-demands sales and refuse to participate in this drive to devalue microstock.
Although i wont force my view down other microstockers throats, i do hope some of the people who have kept their image active on DPC, take some time to think through the long term implications of this decision.

Whatever decision you make Lisa, we hope to see you back here soon.

21
General Macrostock / Re: RM - which agency?
« on: April 30, 2014, 00:51 »
I've been chipping away at RM for six months through 5 outlets:

inmagine.com
agefotostock.com
alamy.com
coverpicture.com
imagebrief.com

No sales to date ::) though my port can't give a good indication of revenue just yet as its relatively small (400 images) and would also be considered LCV.

Im going to continue to hammer on though, i would rather support these fair trade agencies than the greedy giants.

22
Diversification is the key, if you have a folio divided across many markets you will have greater power to pull your port and fight on. I suggest to anyone with serious concerns about this happening in the future to look at the broadening your scope of distribution across RM markets, PODs, Self hosting, Lower tier Micros (w fair comissions) and all other markets. Being prepared for a situation like this requires forward planning and not waiting for disaster to strike.

23
Image Sleuth / Re: What Constitutes Evidence?
« on: January 25, 2014, 05:31 »
When i'm asked for evidence, i usually provide a direct link to the image on sale in stock.
This should be suffice evidence should your stock username share a similar correlation to your name/email addy

24
GLStock / Re: Sudden rise of sales
« on: January 18, 2014, 10:45 »
Picking up here, 10 sales Dec /  12 sales Jan.
Go GL!  8)

25
Shutterstock.com / Re: OFFSET opened doors
« on: October 06, 2013, 02:05 »
...The content being gathered for Offset can easily be created by the extraordinary talents available on Shutterstock. I do hope you guys can take a step back, see the bigger picture and reward the people who deserve to be rewarded...

I have to disagree. It wouldn't make sense to come up with this new collection and bill it as something different than Shutterstock and then populate the collection with content from some of the same people who supply content to Shutterstock. Previous history with Shutterstock should have no bearing on whether someone is selected to work with Offset, regardless of whether or not they have the capability to create the kind of work required by Offset.

The approvals and rejections of microstock shaped the look and feel of the content created. Macro will do the same.

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