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Messages - StockGuy

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1
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Giving myself the gift of no more iStock
« on: January 12, 2017, 14:25 »
closed my account last week after they begged me to stay, screw them, it's truly over for them as the outrage over the last scam they pulled is boiling over now.

2
Shutterstock.com / Re: down the toilet
« on: January 12, 2017, 12:57 »
it's over, stock media is dead, everyone pack up your bags and go home.

3
Adobe Stock / Re: Adobe Stock Contributor Portal update
« on: December 30, 2016, 16:09 »
hmm, yes a disconnect indeed. Are you talking stills? I only do video and the interface on fotolia is a manual cut and paste into html forms...there isn't even an 'import csv' to mass import data...is there something I'm missing?

4
Adobe Stock / Re: Adobe Stock Contributor Portal update
« on: December 29, 2016, 13:10 »
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Good luck, you are on both already, it's just a matter of syncing your accounts so you can edit and work the new system at AS.

So what is the metadata ingestion tool like at AS? As FT is manual and adds unnecessary labor costs to the marketplace that technology could easily fix. On AS can you mass submit like on p5 or VB?

5
Adobe Stock / Re: Adobe Stock Contributor Portal update
« on: December 27, 2016, 11:41 »
Any change to your metadata ingesting system? Your manual cut and paste interface in Fotolia cuts deep into our profits, please change to be more like VB or P5.

6
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However, they have to pay someone to make that subjective decision. Which probably means they can't afford to.

Ya'll are old school...a person to make a decision?  Are you living in the 1990s? Software can do much of the gruntwork and then there is international low cost labor to do the rest. 

Put it this way, if reviewing videos is your bottleneck and costing you too much then you are simply doing it wrong...and need to take better advantage of modern automation trends.

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Yeah they could easily reject 90% for some random reason  and nobody would be any the wiser ;-). I'm sure that never happens when an agency has a big queue

Yes, you get it...thank you! Instead...Dissolve decides to create this counterproductive confrontation with the artist...it's just so amateur and telling of the business acumen of the leadership.

7
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I don't see how limits are "insulting".  They may be frustrating.  You may have to edit your submissions tighter.  But I don't see that as "insulting".

Rly? They take 70% of sales, shut down uploading/submittal for weeks, and then say they only want your 'best'...imposing insane limits on even the pros...even if 1 out of 100 find this insulting then you did it wrong.  My point is that they didn't have to go down this path, in fact in today's world it makes ZERO sense to put limits on the artists (and even remotely risking insulting them) then to just use technology to accomplish your goals.

8
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But upload limits are not a serious issue or anything that would put me off. It seems like a useful measure to handle an exploding queue.

I completely disagree, why even remotely piss off artists when you don't have to. Too many uploads is an amazing problem to have...all they need to do is apply some technology to weed out the bad videos as bandwidth/storage is incredibly cheap.  Only a fool would limit the flow of inbound videos by insulting artists to only submit the "best"...as if they are not already submitting the "best"...besides pros in the space know that random oddball (not the 'best') videos get licensed all the time...Dissolve has gone mad if they think artists will jump through their hoops!

9
This is a case study of the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you should do in business. This was a great opportunity to invest in technology and pump up and empower the artists to really get behind your company. Instead you decided to penalize and wag a finger at them telling artists "your not doing it right/we know what's best".

This problem could have easily been solved by using technology or other solutions that didn't discourage and beat up on the artist...there is absolutely no reason why they should point the finger at the artist and say that it is "their fault" that review times suck.

The ugly reality is that Dissolves sales have been down and so they are taking their frustration out on the artist. Good luck with that, mass exodus will now take place as nothing about their company makes sense anymore.

RIP Dissolve 2016, it was a good run!

10
Email just received from TPTB over at Dissolve below...

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Wed like to inform you of a change to your Dissolve account, which is effective immediately.

You may have noticed that review times for your submissions have increased and its taking longer for content to go live. This is due to substantial growth in the number of contributors and the amount of content submitted to Dissolve. While its great were receiving so much content, we want to maintain reasonable submission review times. Like you, we want your best work available to Dissolve customers quickly. The sooner your content is live on the site, the sooner it can perform.

To achieve this, as of today, your account is assigned a maximum number of files that may be submitted within a calendar month. This upload level is determined by a number of factors, including collection performance and quality of content and metadata.

The levels are:
Bronze up to 25 files per month
Silver up to 125 files per month
Gold up to 250 files per month
Platinum up to 1,000 files per month
Unlimited unlimited files

Your current upload level is: Unlimited

The key to success is to send us your best. Be selective about each submission by choosing content you believe has the greatest potential. All content should be free of logos and branding and include model and property releases when necessary.

Unused uploads expire at the end of each calendar month and do not carry over, so be sure to make the most of your limit. On the first day of each month, your total uploads will refresh to your monthly maximum. You can always find your limit and your current usage on the contributor upload site.

Contributors may move to a higher upload level depending on their collections performance, which we review on an ongoing basis. Well notify you if your level changes.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected].

Regards,

The Dissolve contributor team

This is a case study of the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you should do in business. This was a great opportunity to invest in technology and pump up and empower the artists to really get behind your company. Instead you decided to penalize and wag a finger at them telling artists "your not doing it right/we know what's best".

This problem could have easily been solved by using technology or other solutions that didn't discourage and beat up on the artist...there is absolutely no reason why they should point the finger at the artist and say that it is "their fault" that review times suck. 

The ugly reality is that Dissolves sales have been down and so they are taking their frustration out on the artist. Good luck with that, mass exodus will now take place as nothing about their company makes sense anymore.

RIP Dissolve 2016, it was a good run!

11
iStock just sent me an email saying that they are refunding two buyers purchases that was made on Oct 18th 2015...a whole 190 days after the purchase...what? So let me get this straight, they take ~85% of the revenue AND can refund a purchase of over 6 months after it happened?  Folks we need to revolt and refuse to do business with them...better yet we need to buy up tons of media, use heck out of it and then 6 months later ask for a refund...Join me with being done with istock forever and spreading the word about their awful practices far and wide.  Bye Bye istock, your greed and shady practices finally broke the camel's back.

12
@BlackJack yes I can't see how these aren't the future. Marketplaces will figure out what the best selling clips are and will buy/build/clone them and lock in buyers to a subscription model. This way they can make better revenue projections based on subscriber numbers to investors.  Plus, as a subscriber you are less likely to switch and will feel compelled to just use 1 marketplace...it's genius for the marketplaces, but it reduces the value of contributors and each clip.  All contributors are being systematically cut out of the profits...welcome to modern business consolidation as usual ;)

13
General Stock Discussion / Re: New Pond5 and Membership Program
« on: February 25, 2016, 13:04 »
@Justanotherphotographer  I will never understand why everyone just goes along with they changes that give more power to the marketplaces and diminishes contributors power and earnings...can't anyone see where this is headed in 3-5 years...marketplaces will cut contributors out of the deal every step along the way by buying/building their own content and promoting it hard...this is just another step to do that. 

14
@Sean Locke Photography I noticed after I posted and stop attacking the poster and add to the conversation if your going to post in this thread.

15
@Copidosoma okay help me understand how this is good for contributors? The bottom line is that prices for content are coming down...ie 5 downloads for $49 = $10 downloads...

To prove my point about how they will push these membership videos over others...

https://www.pond5.com/stock-video-footage/1/.html#1/2063/membership:1

....look at the order of the checkboxes for filters and which videos come up 1st.

16
@Justanotherphotographer your missing the point...the payment models might be different but the product from a buyer standpoint is virtually the same. There is no doubt that p5 created this model to compete against VB...so regardless of how exactly they are paying on content doesn't matter.  As they ran the numbers and saw that a popular clip was downloaded x amount of times per month and so they can offer a monthly payment, it's just like insurance actuary math to figure out how much an asset is worth.  At the end of the day, help me understand how this is good for contributors?

17
Yes I saw that post but folks don't seem to get what is happening here...P5 just played everyone...they stalled for months about approvals only to be creating this VB clone product that vastly negatively impacts contributors.  Anyone that is their 'Ambassador' program should really feel duped.

18
General Stock Discussion / Re: New Pond5 and Membership Program
« on: February 25, 2016, 12:31 »
Pond5 took all the site analytics data to figure out what was selling and bought up and made deals with content creators to get this 200k library to offer a cheaper and bigger alternative to videoblocks offering.  This will destroy contributor revenue.  They will promote videos from this 200k collection videos. For example, their search algorithm will rank the 200k collection videos ahead of contributor videos.  This is the beginning of the end to video contributors.

19
POND5 just launched a membership program which looks like videoblock's model with 200,000 videos available at $49 per month.  This P5 product has almost 2x the videos and is 1/2 the price of videoblocks...no doubt the plan is to compete directly with VB in a race to the bottom for cheaper and cheaper content.

Here are the details: https://www.pond5.com/membership

So now we have a situation where POND5 will promote the 200k video ahead of any contributor videos and will force down video prices to take market share from videoblocks by copying their business model.

After stalling for months without getting videos approved, P5 pulls this shady move and kicks all contributors in the face competing on price to further collapse any contributor revenue and take 100% of the revenue with their own 200k collection.  Sneaky little guys used their analytics data on what was selling and bought up 200k videos to fill those niches to now get 100% of the profit and cut out contributors.  Thoughts on how this analysis is wrong?

20
Rly? 'Baaaa' is your answer... <sarc> thanks for your wisdom and adding so much to the conversation </sarc> Please don't reply to this thread anymore as the adults are having a serious discussion.

@anathaya hmm, okay let's say it does come out that a major marketplace has under reported...surely you don't expect to get compensation back, do you? Most likely the money is gone/business is closed/(pick your reason why us contributors are left holding the bag). 

21
Ah okay, I understand the truth now that us contributors are just pawns and preyed on by big companies as the answer of 'Chill' does nothing to address this massive issue and instead is the standard 'ad hominem attack' (attack the person not the issue) used most likely from a stock marketplace employee or shill. 

@TheDrift, audited by whom exactly?  Wouldn't the marketplace be paying some auditor to support their narrative and story?  ...and if the auditor did find an issue we would never hear about it.

Folks, wake up and demand more accountability and transparency in these marketplaces...we need a better system instead of just trusting that there are no bad actors or hackers screwing us out of our royalties!

22
Just because a company is big and 'has too much to lose' doesn't mean they aren't doing it...no one believed that Enron & WorldCom & Bernie Madoff (insert your favorite fraudster) would commit massive fraud because they were 'too big'...but they did it and got away with it for years before anyone figured it out.  The 'too much to lose' argument is extremely weak, it might actually be easier for a big company to pull this off because their systems are more complex and the codebase is very large to know exactly how all of it works. 

Oh and 'oversight'? There is no independent 3rd party that reviews these sites.  It's the fox watching the henhouse, any promises from the marketplaces themselves can't be trusted, they are not in business to call themselves out.

23
huh? It could easily happen in any company in a ton of different ways...a rogue programmer, a colluding group of programmers, a contractor hired by the CIO to 'review code', the CEO himself changing payouts just before they go out, a hacked site where a rogue contributor is stealing all the credits, an entire company of bad actors, etc, etc, etc... all that is needed is a script run against the database to change it...since there is no buyer visibility for contributors, you will never know...am I missing something?

24
I see one MASSIVE issue that I can't find anyone talking about.  Bluntly, what is stopping any stock marketplace from under-reporting contributors sales? It would be extremely easy for any stock marketplace to only partially report sales.  I see nothing that is stopping them and there is no way that a marketplace can prove that they are in fact reporting 100% sales. Can anyone help me understand this problem?

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