pancakes

MicrostockGroup Sponsors


Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Roscoe

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 ... 18
1
Shutterstock.com / Re: Contributor Fund Entry
« on: Today at 03:30 »
Received $60.97 for the Contributor fund today.

I'm not complaining about the extra money, but my choice actually looked like this since about a year now  ::):

If the system works as I understand how it should work... you should have gotten nothing?
So this means either the checkbox is doing nothing, and your content is used for AI training, or they have a serious issue in contributor fund distribution.
Or maybe the checkbox only works for content uploaded after you changed the setting. (because before there was no choice)

None of the above is good, there should be transparancy.

First of all, I'm glad that I don't have to live off this crap  ;)

Yes, it's not just maximum instraparent.
But Shutterstock has probably decided to stop communicating with us altogether. As you can see from the new review times of 7 - 10 days. No Explanation.

I would also assume that the images will continue to be used before the checkbox is clicked.
At least that corresponds to the amount I have already received last year.

I rejected the "data licensing" primarily because rejected images were included in the "data catalog" and could therefore no longer be resubmitted (because they had already been accepted) and were therefore completely lost for sale on Shutterstock.

But that didn't change anything. Rejected images are now labeled as "Eligible for data licensing" and cannot be resubmitted either because they have supposedly already been accepted.

I hope that I have been able to make this more or less clear.

I get the point of wanting to be able to resubmit for the commercial catalog. Apparently, that's not how it works anymore nowadays.

From their website:
For those opted out of data licensing, the Data Catalog will not be visible, however any content that is not acceptable for the creative Marketplace but is acceptable for data licensing will be marked as such in the Review tab. Shutterstock will retain these review results and this content can be published for data licensing in the event that the contributor elects to opt in to future data deals.

They seem to have some kind of shadow data licensing library for those who opted out.

The way they describe how it works is very vague and not transparent. Or I'm too dumb to understand.

Can I opt out of data licensing and having my content included in future datasets?
Yes, in February 2023 we have added an option in the contributor account settings that allows you to opt out of having your content included in future datasets.

The devil is in the details. "Future datasets". So one could understand that your content was in previous datasets, and if they are somehow still being used or sold, you probably also get compensated.

Further reading:

How are my individual earnings calculated?
Contributors will receive a share of the entire contract value paid by customers licensing datasets. The share individual contributors receive will be proportionate to the volume of their content and metadata that is included in the purchased datasets. Although inclusion in datasets is not reflected as other individual downloads in the Earnings Summary, like earnings from other eCommerce products, Shutterstock maintains an internal database of all assets used in all datasets that have been created since the launch of this product, so we can compensate our contributors accordingly.

Contributors whose content was used to train either model will be compensated for the role their IP played in the development of the original models, as well as through royalty payments tied to future generative licensing activity. If your content was used in both, you will receive a payment that compensates you for the inclusion of your content in both datasets, and you will have access to more future revenue opportunities because you will be eligible for compensation from our Contributor Fund for future licensing events of Generative content development from both of these models.

Why cant I see the earnings and specific downloads from datasets in my Earnings Summary?
Due to their highly customized nature and scope of use, datasets are not a product that can be purchased directly on our website. Since datasets are manually curated, the individual assets that are included in this product are not reflected in your contributor account download history and Earnings Summary.


A lot of words to say: we sell something, we earn something and give you something, depending on variables.

How it all sounds to me (but I'm not sure) is that your content was sold into datasets before you could opt-out, and those contracts are still running, so you are also still getting paid by the contributor fund. But that's freewheeling from my side, agencies are not transparent in how they deal with selling datasets and compensate contributors.

2
Shutterstock.com / Re: Contributor Fund Entry
« on: Yesterday at 16:48 »
Received $60.97 for the Contributor fund today.

I'm not complaining about the extra money, but my choice actually looked like this since about a year now  ::):

If the system works as I understand how it should work... you should have gotten nothing?
So this means either the checkbox is doing nothing, and your content is used for AI training, or they have a serious issue in contributor fund distribution.
Or maybe the checkbox only works for content uploaded after you changed the setting. (because before there was no choice)

None of the above is good, there should be transparancy.

3
Shutterstock.com / Re: Contributor Fund Entry
« on: Yesterday at 16:44 »
Fairly high amount compared to what I got last time. Makes this month rather decent in terms of earnings.

Not sure about conclusions though. Does it mean the use of AI is on the rise?
Could explain my sharp decline in sales volume on Shutterstock lately (I know personal and anecdotal experience)

4
Nobody can check the sales system.

Yeah that's the thing. How do we know, how can anybody check that without direct involvement?
We don't, and we can't.

Not even speaking of something intentional. But on a technical level. Consider a database with hundreds of millions of records. All the programming and scripts that involve connecting all the commission variants from different kinds of subscriptions, direct sales, credit packs, premium access, Getty library, iStock library, Thinkstock library or any other weird thing they set up in the past.... Consider all those API's from partners or customers with direct access. There's a lot of it than can go technically wrong, from database corruptions over api's not working to misprogramming that nobody ever discovers and when they do can take weeks or months to fix... Consider all the internal teams and divisions having access and manipulation rights on the database intervening to their own needs creating side-effects for others... The way Getty or any other big agencies operates their data must be very complex.

I'm not very technically involved, but from my work experience from more service managing related positions I can assure you that data or transactions in likewise constructions gets lost. And very often, when discovered, the consideration is made: what costs more? Accepting the data-loss, or trying to fix the issue and also restore data loss or perform corrections, wherever possible. There are cases where data loss is accepted as a more cost-efficient way to deal with the issue. There are a lot of cases too where the issue does gets fixed, but it can takes months to do that due to the complexity of the issue, and the complexity of the company itself (often dealing with off-shore programmers who might be competent people on a technical level, but have no clue at all about the system that they are trying to fix, they just write code)

I'm pretty sure that in this whole mess, a unreported sales happen. And they can percentage-wise be considered as the exception, we're still talking about quite the volume.


5
I don't like complaining, but good riddance, has February been a bad month.
Even without the negative earnings it would have been on the low side.

Adobe Stock aside, all agencies have performing below average for me in 2024, despite regular uploads.

6
Shutterstock.com / Re: Anybody getting reviews?
« on: March 21, 2024, 08:44 »
No reviews here too. Slow sales here too. Shutterstock seems to be sinking into irrelevance.

7
Shutterstock.com / Re: Yay my photo is used as a book cover
« on: March 18, 2024, 08:44 »
A STANDARD IMAGE LICENSE grants you the right to use Images:

Printed in physical form as part of product packaging and labeling, letterhead and business cards, point of sale advertising, CD and DVD cover art, or in the advertising and copy of tangible media, including magazines, newspapers, and books provided no Image is reproduced more than 500,000 times in the aggregate

https://www.shutterstock.com/license

Alright, stupid question, but nevertheless, here I go.: what is considered as reproduction of an image. Less than 500.000 prints seems plausible. But what about views on webshops like Amazon? Every time someone sees your image (web page gets loaded) it's a reproduction? Every time a webshop adds the book it's a reproduction? More or less the same question for newspapers or magazines. Everytime someone reads the online article it's a "reproduction"?

8
Shutterstock.com / Re: nothing for contributer fund?
« on: March 08, 2024, 14:38 »
I did get a small contributor fund fee last month if I recall correctly. Might also be January, don't remember exactly.

Reply to @Stockmaan: Yes, Shutterstock took a nosedive. Up to a point where I start to wonder: do they have an issue with reporting sales? For the very first time in years, I got a day without any download. That never happened in years. At least, not on weekdays. Weekends or holidays on exception, but even on bad weekdays I got a handful of downloads. 

9
Dreamstime.com / Re: $100 payout minimum sucks!!!
« on: March 08, 2024, 14:25 »
It sucks on Dreamstime they have $100 payout minimum.  I'm at $91 now, but what if they go out of business?  They may just get away with not paying any contributors below $100 sales balance in a broad daylight.  Sales revenue is rightfully ours.  Any amount should be claimed by us.  It would be a flat-out theft of our money if that happens.
Probably they will do as CanStock did!

So far, Dreamstime always has been one of the more respectable agencies. At least, that's how I experience them.

Yes, the $100 payout limit is very high compared to other agencies, but on the other hand, I'm not worried too much about not getting paid.

Either they pull the plug and cease operations, like canstock did. Clean closure, everyone gets paid.

Or, in case of bankruptcy, there's always a fair chance that another company takes over and eventually pays the contributors. It's not a tiny nitwit agency, they do have quite a big and diverse library and still a fair customer base. Same happened with EyeEm by the way. A lot of struggles and a lot of uncertainty, but in the end, we all got our coffee money and some of us even more. Speaking of coffee money: most you can lose (or not being paid) is $ 99.99. And that's not the end of the world.

I hope none of that happens, and Dreamstime stays around. 

10
Off Topic / Re: This should settle some different opinions
« on: February 23, 2024, 16:42 »
I won't be surprised if Trump wins. Democrats are the same as Russians with the same low level of propaganda. I think US citizens have long understood this.

You don't even realize e how effective russian propaganda is.
They even convinced you that trump is your saviour.

So sad!
However I don't mind off-topic discussions, this thread has gone way out of line, and it makes no sense anymore.

"OK Sergey" is the only possible reply to him.

You have to realize he's most probably just one of those many Russian trolls wandering online forums (social media and Reddit is full of them) wanting to undermine anything that's pro democracy or not in line with Russian propaganda.

This thread, despite so many people giving valuable information, willing to have fair discussions or debates, should be closed (sorry Pete! I know you had the right intentions here!)

11
Some will say that it's the same thing as in Leonardo's time, only a brush and a canvas was needed...  ;D

Which is kinda true? Very talented painters, with a unique style, idea and persona will still make their money with painting.
But of course, that takes way more than just a brush and a canvas.

Just like it takes more than only a digital camera and a memory card ;-)

12
Appreciate it is in grey zone but just because agencies adjust their terms of service if AI can't be copyrighted (ok debatable) why would people pay for AI images on the agencies they could just download and use for free.

They pay for the same reason they dont just steal content from the internet or download a file with a commercial cc license from flickr: quality control of the file by Adobe and legal reassurance.

The majority of content used on the planet is stolen, not paid.

Then there are agencies with tons of free content.

And then there is the cheapest option: take your own picture with your mobile phone.

And now there is ai.

The most important thing we sell is TIME, not content.

The customer can browse the edited collections of agencies and save tons of time.

High end customers can also ask for personal curations from the agency editors to save even more time. Personal service that is still cheaper than making your team search.

Content can be sourced from many places, often even for free, but a if you compare browsing Adobe to sifting through Billions? of free images on flickrit is not comparable at all.

The marketing team employees are expensive, stock agencies are a very, very cheap resource compared to other options.

So, if Unspalsh didnt destroy all the agencies and the billions of free flickr files dont stop the downloads, why would ai?

I agree with all of this, but some nuances.

imho free libraries like Unsplash, Flickr, or others do take away volume from paid downloads. I see a lot of content in magazines or newspapers that is licensed via one of those channels. That would have been a paid license otherwise. We don't know how big that impact is, but I think it's fair to assume that free libraries do have an impact on our download volumes.

AI is slightly different, because it's provided by the same agencies as the ones who offer non-ai content, and paid downloads, but it has an impact on the downloads for those who stick with uploading non-ai content.

And I think that's OP's point. Are we doomed? Those who adapt probably not. Many who don't adapt probably yes, or at least severely impacted, and a minority probably also no because for other reasons.

Anecdotal example. I recently came across a wedding photographer who still shoots weddings on film. Analog. He charges a few $1000's, way more than others who shoot digital, and his business is thriving. He didn't adapt and is doing well because he's very good, and he's selling his niche as an asset, a scarcity, or even a gimmick. Who knows. It works. Needlessly to say: he's the rare exception. Many others unwilling to adapt went out of business.

13

You demonstrated things perfectly. The fact remains that this technological turning point that we are experiencing is truly unprecedented, difficult to copy/paste from the past. But there are also other image industrial powers outside of AI. And they may want to fight on the legal level.

Hmm not sure? Look what the internet did to everyone's lives. Look at how social media impacted our society and politics. What companies like Uber or Airbnb did to regular taxi drivers or hotel owners. And whether it's social media, or crowd-sourced service companies... all of these developments had their times of operating in legal gray zones, and most of the successful companies in these areas blatantly crossed lines. Worst case they just came away with it because they could blame someone else, or best case they had to pay a fine, which they (years later) happily did because they already made a ton of money while operating in legal gray zones.

You are right that AI is another technological development or causing a turning point, and difficult to predict how huge the impact will be, but it's not really different than other developments. It destroys previously established and seemingly robust companies, and creates new ones that might become even bigger. It takes away jobs from some people, and creates new opportunities for others. Only thing that's different is the speed, but also here: technology has always developed with increasing speed, as one tech helps out another one. We just came to a point where democratic policymaking is unable to keep up with the development, complexity and impact of new technology.

14
Since people who upload AI-generated images don't own any copyright, why can these people sell these images and get royalties???
Isn't it written in the terms of use for stock sites that you must own the copyright???

Come on, big clean... GOOO!!!

That also my feeling, AI is theoretically still operating in a legal gray zone?

The reality however, is that a lot of tech companies are thriving on AI (looking at you NVIDIA) and it is already implemented and being used my others. Policymakers will create legal boundaries in favor of the industries, who already matured and implemented a technology which is used on a large scale by customers. They are not going to torpedo a whole industry to let them start from scratch, doing it the fair way. They are not going to shut down applications on customers side, even if it was developed in a legal gray zone.

Agencies too will not just slaughter one of their cash cows by deleting AI content.
They will adjust their TOS, and they will lobby policymakers in their favor if they can't adjust the TOS because of legal boundaries.

The genie is out of the bottle, and it won't get back in.

15
The easiest tool for copying is not ai but a normal camera.

In fact it is usually a lot faster to copy a bestselling image by just taking a similar picture.

Also customers and clients, if they really want to save money, they can just take pictures with their iphones. Including things like wood backgrounds, green grass and sky etc...a lot of the content that is ultrageneric is very, very easy to take yourself.

And yet here we are.

And if it is true that Shutterstock is getting 50% less content even if they don't take any ai but on Adobe sales are increasing although or probably because they have an additional ai collection, then ai content is our friend that brings more subscribers to the agency that pays us more and treats us well.

The easiest way to deal with ai worries is to just try it yourself. Even just for fun, you don't have to sell it.

It becomes easier to understand that it is just a tool, like Photoshop is a tool.

I'm not an experienced AI prompter, but I wonder whether that's really the case. I can imagine a lot of situations where AI prompting seems to be faster and cheaper than actually producing the image. Finding (and if needed, renting) a location, finding (and if needed hiring) the right models, propping a set, hiring a photographer (or investing your own time) and do post-production seems to be way more time-consuming and costly than paying a competent AI prompter to generate the AI image. Thinking of generic business settings here for example, or generic lifestyle situations. 

I agree that it's just an additional tool, and that there's no other way than embrace it. It won't go away, it's here to stay and to play a dominant role in certain market segments. But it also opens up the market to to a lot more people than only photo/videographers. I'm convinced that having photography skills can also improve your AI prompting quality, but it's no hard requirement. So this definitely brings in more competition (yes, just like what smartphones did to DSLR's and what DSLR's did to SLR's...) resulting in lower individual sales volumes for those who are competing in those very saturated segments.

imho it all comes down to a very simple logic. The market might still be growing, the supply, driven by technology, is even growing stronger, and some segments are becoming even more saturated than they already are. This causes lower individual sales volumes, lower value for individual content. This is what we are seeing for quite some years now, and if you ask me AI will speed up that process.

Maybe even up to a point where buyer experience is disturbed, because they will get the feeling to be looking for a needle in a haystack, but that's a different discussion :-).

16
It strongly depends on the content in your portfolio I would say. If you used to be strong on topics that can be generated by AI, then it's only logical that your sales decline due to increased competition from AI. the amount that gets uploaded every day is massive. And customers can create their own AI content if they have the knowledge to do so, they don't even need a stock library anymore.

Abstract backgrounds or generic images with a broad field of application (thinking generic food, ingredients, generic people doing generic things, standard landscapes for a background, ...) are subject to severely increased competition I would say. All of my images in this area which did well in the past are struggling nowadays.

More specific content is, for the time being, on the safer side, as AI struggles to generate this or simply cannot do that. Thinking specific or lesser popular locations, editorials, events, certain products, newer developments or hypes... but all of that is often a niche market, and that's generally not where the big money is.

Authenticity is something else many agencies claim to take seriously, and I personally believe it holds a lot of value. On the other side: Still seeing a lot of overly perfect people on ads, fake smiles, overly dramatic landscapes and sunsets on travel location ads... so the question is how much buyes (and in the end, all of us as a customer) is willing to buy the authenticity claim.


17
Anyhow, I learnt that having different images from the same subject can be useful, but only if the image is... well a different take on the same subject. So to me it also makes sense then to have the differences reflected in the title and keywords.

Not sure it's really crucial, because buyers will see the related images in the section 'more from this contributor'.


18
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock steals sales. Control purchase
« on: February 11, 2024, 15:54 »
It's an interesting experiment, and I understand that the contributors want to stay anonymous, because buying your own images is against the TOS. But on the other hand, this leaves very little room for verification. Anyone can claim anything. Always be careful with 3rd party information like "heard it from a friend who has been told by a friend that another friend..." Information can get thickened or altered per hop :-).

Not saying it isn't true, but always be careful with jumping into conclusions. We don't know what happened afterwards, there might be a delay in reporting, and maybe the rest of the sales were reported later, after the story started to get around. Or the system flagged some sales as fraudulent, because, well, they were buying their own images, and however not directly, it still might have triggered some red flags in the system.

That said. I wouldn't be too surprised either if it's true. There's also no way to know what has been sold to whom and how it is used. We just have to... trust the agencies. And in all fairness, that's a bit of a stretch for me. They might not hold back on reporting deliberately, but technical issues do occur, and what happens in case of database corruptions, interfacing issues, or anything else technical. I can imagine that in such case some sales went into the nirvana and never got reported.

I don't have a personal experience with this. I use google alerts to see if one of my images pops up on the internet (if I'm credited) and in such cases there was always a matching sale reported at the agency. I know this covers only the tip of the iceberg, and impossible to track for images that sell daily or very regularly, but at least, it's that. Until now I could not catch one of the agencies on not reporting a sale.



19
DepositPhotos / Re: Are they next?
« on: February 03, 2024, 12:11 »
It would really help if those small fish agencies would lower their payout threshold. It's 100$ at Dreamstime, it's 50$ for 123RF and DepositPhoto's.

I totally agree but in my particular case, DP reaches payout now before the SS. They are also a great starting point when submitting to multiple agencies.
I guess it shows how different portfolio's perform at different agencies.
I have have monthly payout at Shutterstock (25$) but it takes multiple months or even more than a year to reach payout at DP (50$).
Roughly the same portfolio's on both sites.

20
DepositPhotos / Re: Are they next?
« on: February 03, 2024, 10:25 »
It would really help if those small fish agencies would lower their payout threshold. It's 100$ at Dreamstime, it's 50$ for 123RF and DepositPhoto's.
Makes no sense. Even Shutterstock and Adobe have a rather low payout threshold of 25$. 100$ at iStock/Getty too, but with them it's easy to reach.
Decreasing royalties and sales volumes should be in line with payout thresholds. 

21
A little bit more nuanced here: I had a rather decent month in sales volume at Shutterstock, considered January is never a good month.
But earnings are really low, RPD of 0,27. I can't recall seeing such a density of sales in the 10 - 20 cent range.
Level reset and climbing up is one thing, but there's something else too. Almost every S&O sale is the bare minimum of 10 cents.

To compensate, I had a very decent month at Adobe Stock. Ratio Shutterstock vs. Adobe is 1:2 with only half the portfolio size at Adobe.
There were times it was the other way around, and no matter what, Shutterstock came out first, leading with quite a big margin.

EU-based here.

22
General Stock Discussion / Re: EyeEm - More than a warning!
« on: February 01, 2024, 02:19 »
Just wondering: anyone who stayed got any sales since the acquisition by Freepik?

They paid out remaining balances after bankruptcy, and from what I read the EyeEm portfolio's would be included in the paid section of Freepik, but I didn't get any sales reported.
I uploaded a few shots to see whether they would still be moderated, and got accepted for partner collection. Not sure what it means, because from what I understood partner collections were deleted.

So things seem to be operational there at EyeEm, but no sales, or worse, no reporting.

23
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock "Contributor Fund"
« on: January 25, 2024, 09:44 »
Almost missed it, but I saw a small fee from the contributor fund yesterday. Not even half of what we got in 2023.

24
Rounded numbers:

1. Adobe Stock (31%)
2. Shutterstock (29%)
3. iStock/Getty (17%)
4. Wirestock (11%)
5. EyeEm (2%)
6. Dreamstime (2%)
7. DepositPhoto's (2%)
8. P5 (1%)
9. PantherMedia (1%)
10. Zoonar (1%)
11. MotionArray (1%)
12. Alamy (0,5%)
12. Some other breadcrumbs

Regarding Wirestock: I have some images there that I distributed over all agencies, but most are not distributed to the agencies I maintain a personal account on. Adobe is my lead seller there too, despite having most images on my personal account with Adobe. Every now and then a nice surprise there from partners I don't maintain a personal account (Envato for instance) but most of the time I regret having hem distributing my content to main agencies. I don't upload there anymore, so it's all about milking a historical portfolio.

EyeEm is bankruptcy payout. Haven't sold anything since they were acquired by Freepik.
So the number would be higher if they would still be in business as they were before.

Also important to mention is that I don't maintain equal porfolio's. Smaller ports on EyeEm, MotionArray, Panther, Zoonar and Alamy.
Biggest portfolio is iStock/Getty (they take everything except illustrative editorial).
Adobe has the smallest portfolio of the big three, as they don't take a lot of my editorial content. (yet they are my best-earner)

And. Am I a fool maintaining my portfolio's on smaller earners?
Yeah. Probably. On the other hand, it's mostly automated uploads, so very little effort.



Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 ... 18

Sponsors

Mega Bundle of 5,900+ Professional Lightroom Presets

Microstock Poll Results

Sponsors