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Messages - Christos Georghiou
1
« on: November 12, 2014, 10:46 »
and someone has just said that the owner of CM has told customers that when they buy a licence "you are free to do whatever you want with your goods, you own them" even though the license terms say something completely different, like you can only use them in a single project where it doesn't contribute to the core value and the like.
3
« on: July 01, 2014, 05:34 »
Are there any plans to import data from accompanying jpegs for eps vector files? I would like to sell my vectors on PM but the upload process is different from all the other sites.
4
« on: May 27, 2014, 02:36 »
If you are in the UK, and the infringer is too, there's a new(ish) small claims track for perusing them http://www.own-it.org/news/the-pcc-small-claims-track-what-does-this-mean-for-smes I have thought about it for people using my work to sell decals, wedding favors and the like on ebay. If the claim is for 600+ you can escalate it to the high court and get the sheriffs to go round and collect the funds for you. There was someone on "The sheriff's are Coming" (a TV show over here) who's case was exactly that, a guy selling mugs on amazon and ebay with his intellectual property on it. For a blogger I would email asking them to take it down in a certain amount of time. When time's up give them a warning and a last chance, then go after their advertisers and Google. Advertisers usually have a means for sending a DMCA notice for sites displaying their ads. Even the threat of this has always worked for me. Most blogs are commercial enterprises.
5
« on: May 13, 2014, 03:14 »
I don't work at reduced rates but I do quite a lot of work for free for non profits, or donate licenses. That way I feel less like I am devaluing my work, more like I am making a charitable donation.
I never give away work for commercial use, it never pays off. A company that can secure your work for free on the promise of future work wont come back to you again, they will find the next sucker for the next project and so on.
It could be worse though, people could be taking work without even asking. Here are redacted versions of two emails, both received in April. Both only sent because the clients did an extraordinary amount of due diligence and were very honest, which makes me wonder how many times this happens without us finding out:
[your illustration] would be great for my logo. So great, in fact, that a graphic designer I was working with had the nerve to take this image and lay my company name on top! I would NEVER take someones work like that and not pay them...
....my company [XXX] has hired [a design studio] to do a logo design for our company for $100 us dollars. We asked them for a design that we can trademark, reproduce and sell but one of the logos they sent us back that we want to finalize after some searching we found that you are the original artist of the image......
6
« on: April 28, 2014, 10:28 »
....It's not for high volume buyers.....
I was also offered "preferred admission" via email, I have only purchased one image from Fotolia I think. The email was from their Wilogo site, I opened an account with them a couple of years ago and never used it.
7
« on: April 28, 2014, 09:53 »
....In the meantime if you do not want your images sold through Dollar Photo Club send your request via a Fotolia customer support ticket and you will be manually removed.....
-Mat Hayward
Mat, could you please clarify the opt out that is being offered? Can we have our whole portfolio manually removed by contacting customer support as you stated in this post or just stop new uploads appearing on the site, as the replies to individual contributors seem to imply? We need to know what options are open to us before we can make a decision. Do we have to delete our whole portfolio from Fotolia if we want to opt out of DPC or not?
8
« on: April 24, 2014, 06:41 »
^^ RPD is only going to get worse once you factor in subs.
As when they announced TS, they're claiming it's a different market, but just like then they're trying to switch their existing buyers via a naff chrome yellow band.
Agreed, I was comparing to other sites that sell a lot of subs, like SS, DP and FL
9
« on: April 24, 2014, 05:37 »
My problem is that while IS had a higher RPD any sales they made were a positive, even if the volume was low it was still worth uploading.
Once their RPD goes below the other major sites you start to risk cannibalizing your sales at better paying sites like SS. I think one of the main things keeping people on IS is the high RPD for this reason.
10
« on: April 23, 2014, 06:43 »
March was my first month when royalty per download on IS plus PP has been lower than all the other major sites. It has been heading that way for a while, with decreasing sales on the main IS site and increasing sales on (the very poorly paying) Thinkstock.
This makes IS my poorest paying site per download out of the top 5 plus DP (I use Microstock Analytics and these are the 6 sites it covers). IStock needs to rethink payment levels on TS to at least bring them more in line with the other sub sites.
Has anyone else crossed this line yet?
11
« on: March 14, 2014, 10:02 »
Thanks tickstock, guess I have some research to do before I shoot off any emails. And thanks sue for the explanation, I guess they could have just been normal sub-sales misreported as ELs, it would be great if someone from IStock gets back to someone who's emailed with an official response ETA is there a link somewhere to pricing for extended licenses on Thinkstock? I found this: http://www.thinkstockphotos.co.uk/legal/license-informationand http://www.thinkstockphotos.co.uk/subscribeBut can't find the actual pricing, can subscribers upgrade licenses to ELs for specific images?
12
« on: March 14, 2014, 09:51 »
I am talking about the spreadsheet they sent out with regards to recouping the overpayment.
13 of the 500+ sales being clawed back are ELs for between $24.02 and $39.84.
They don't appear suspicious in terms of spacing and some are labelled RFIMGPCKEXT25 down to RFIMGPCKEXT1 (I guess Royalty Free Image Pack Extended License followed by the number of images in the pack?) .
Is there a way to check if I had any other partner program extended licenses sold in September/ October so I can see if they do normally pay a decent commission on them? The orange bars on the stats tables are for ELs sold on IStock right, not in the PP? I am getting very confused.....
13
« on: March 14, 2014, 09:03 »
That is what I would like cleared up. The alternative is that ELs have always been paid at 28c, and the error was paying the higher rate, not in the type of licence. I would like to know definitively, have they made a statement about this?
14
« on: March 14, 2014, 08:53 »
I have 13 of these extended license sales paying me around 1% or considerably less. I will also be emailing support.
15
« on: March 04, 2014, 10:40 »
Agreed, the fees have to be paid, I was just trying to minimize the expense.
The percentage fee works out to about 2.8% I think (0.0167 as a percentage of 0.6).
You could be right, probably any potential saving by switching payment method isn't worth the effort of calculating (although over the year maybe?). I could just be trying to distract myself from the latest news from IS!
16
« on: March 04, 2014, 10:05 »
What with the terrible dollar vs pound rate at the moment I am wondering if I'm getting the best deal when it come to exchange rates.
I think the best way of getting the facts could be to a little community project to study the different rates out there.
I'll start, here's my last cash-out of paypal. US$ to GBP, I am sure lots of people will be interested in US$ to Euro too.
It would be great if everyone who has a minute could report on the rates they are getting through the different payment platforms at specific times and dates, then we can put a graph together. If you can adjust times to GMT that will make it easier to compare.
PAYPAL
4 Mar 2014 09:30 GMT
1 US Dollar = 0.5833 British Pounds
No other fees
17
« on: January 10, 2014, 06:13 »
As long as key microsite players like SS use price undercutting as a long term growth strategy to capture market share, sites like IS are under pressure to cut or keep image pricing ultra low and that does not beget healthy royalties.
Snip
Jonathan Oringer - Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board
It still multiples. So it's order of magnitude whether it's if you look at us compared to other stock marketplaces like an iStock or others, it's two or three or four times more expensive to not use Shutterstock. If you look at the higher end sort of more traditional marketed might be 6 or 8 or 10 times more expensive.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1841072-shutterstocks-management-presents-at-the-goldman-sachs-us-emerging-smid-cap-growth-conference-transcript?page=2&p=qanda&l=last
No one's hands are clean in the race for the bottom. Contributors aren't stupid. If you sell licenses for $15 and only pay the contributor 15%, the contributor knows they are better off selling at another agency for $5 and taking 50%, as they get more sales and more money per sale (demand curves and all that), and so the cycle goes.
18
« on: December 29, 2013, 09:24 »
I can't work it out, something must be wrong. Have they just decided to pay a flat 20 something cents for 360 sales too or something? either that or there's some kind of calculation error?
DLs similar to October, money 3x less !?
I'm still hoping that there's a lot more larger sales to appear later.
19
« on: November 03, 2013, 07:47 »
Just a heads up, the first link seems a bit dodgy, tries to download some kind of program supposed to be a Java update. Maybe their site got hacked by someone who didn't like what they had to say?
ETA just tried again and didn't get the dodgy message this time, so not sure what's going on?
20
« on: September 23, 2013, 08:59 »
I also made a positive comment on this new product before I understood it to be $9.90 a month for "unlimited images for web use"
I will still say creative thinking... But I do see for this to work you would need HUGE # of subscribers streaming LOW #s of images for any real $$
I agree that it it could be a good idea if all agencies treated web usage like this. Then you can know when someone is using the image legally and you know all versions of your file not legitimately linked through your agencies is stolen and take appropriate action. The problem is the the price which is ridiculous. There is no reason why someone should be paying less for the "streaming" of the image. If anything they should be paying more because they are getting the image hosted for them. It is a terrible model for the contributor. We would only have to lose one or two standard sales from existing customers converting to the new "streaming" model to make it a loss for us.
21
« on: September 21, 2013, 01:57 »
How do I opt out of "YAY Streaming"? do I just have to untick "YAY Subs" on the API list or is there a separate tickbox somewhere?
22
« on: September 13, 2013, 03:05 »
....Fontsquirrel.com has lots of fonts which are free to use in your commercial images. So does dafont.com.....
I would steer clear of DaFont.com, Fontsquirrel seems to be more curated so I trust the license terms there more, the fonts seem more likely to be "legitimately" free for use.
23
« on: August 30, 2013, 03:16 »
They have made some bad decisions in the last year or so. Sales there are very inconsistent for me too and generally on the slide. . They are less contributor focused now, I think they gave up caring after the Alamy problems and now wont let us opt out of partner sites. When will sites learn that crowd sourcing content means they need to keep contributors happy to be successful?
Really strange rejections there and I also have found the site doesn't always work very well, technical issues when I try to view my portfolio there sometimes.
All in all not looking good for the future. Shame, they used to be very good, especially with contributor relations.
24
« on: August 27, 2013, 02:02 »
Looks fantastic! Great to see that you will finally be getting a bit of payback for the months of hard work too. Can't wait to check out the new features and get some collections together.
25
« on: August 26, 2013, 06:34 »
They want data embedded in the eps file not in a jpeg uploaded with it, it isn't worth the time to get this done just for Panthermedia. I will wait until they decide to come into line with what the rest of the sites are doing.
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