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Messages - cobalt

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1
That is just the holiday/spring break

You will move back up when they are back at work, I will fall down because the holiday is over.

But again, it shows how dynamic the system is.

There are people with 60 000 fies who have never seen anything near your current rank. You are doing exceptionally well.

2
Those are both lovely images and very good sales. Congratulations!

Not everyone wants to rebuild a full time stock income. In a different life I would probably enjoy the journey a lot more if I was doing stock more as a hobby.

I am sharing my results because I know many people are considering doing stock again more seriously and wondering if it is still possible to rise in ranks with the current flood of incoming content.

So I think it is encouraging that the Adobe system is very dynamic. Frustrating when it all drops back down of course, but once I have a port with 12k files it will be more stable.


3
my last rise before the steep fall, next week I will be back down to 4200

pos 2340, 4280 files

but I like that the adobe system is so dynamic. if you have what clients want there is no barrier to moving up.


4
Canva / Re: Canva acquired Affinity
« on: March 27, 2024, 16:01 »
That is great news and confirmation, thank you for letting us know.

5
Currently pos 2780

Thank you for explaining how unpublishing works. Now I do it every day.

Will probably also downgrade midjourney to the 30 dollar plan next month and then toggle between intensive use months and relaxed use months.

I still find it very difficult to get what I want from any of the ais I am using. Which perhaps is a good thing, if I struggle so will many customers.

6
Alamy.com / Re: Alamy Accept Ai Images?
« on: March 26, 2024, 14:38 »
they don't take ai

7
I agree. I just think for people content midjourney has the best.

But doing it for one month, unpublish everything after prompting, should e enough. then a one or two month break.

will try to get better with firefly. at least then we are supporting our own files.

8
thank you both, really very useful info!!!

will certainly always unpublish and drop my costs by doing a monthly switch in plans.

I am now mostly using the archive page instead of discord.

9
Pond5 / Re: Pond5 sales picking up in March 2024
« on: March 23, 2024, 12:12 »
you think my income in 2023 is bad? 550 usd for 450 files?

well, everybody has different expectations.

obviously also depends on the content you send. if the content sells rarely in the normal p5 port, it will probably not sell better with bb.

10
Pond5 / Re: Pond5 sales picking up in March 2024
« on: March 23, 2024, 11:53 »
They are very different to wirestock. I stopped supplying wirestock, I still supply BB.

But everybody has to find their own way.

I also know people who are very happy with wirestock.

11
that is quite sneaky, thank you for pointing this out.

you think you are safe in stealth mode, then you still need to unpublish manually every single file.

I think I might start deleting completely

Can we delete completely??

eta: cannot find a delete button...

next question: do the files stay unpublished if I downgrade?

that would open the option of doing one month hardcore midjourney in stealth mode, next month downgrade to 10 dollars, then again one month in stealth mode etc...

12
Pond5 / Re: Pond5 sales picking up in March 2024
« on: March 23, 2024, 11:16 »
BB - blackboxglobal

they are a distribution agency, the content has to be exclusive. they take 15% which I find very reasonable.

they also have built in tools for sharing. if you are working with a team  - actor, director, post processing, camera, location owner...you can allocate a percentage of the sale for every clip. This way they all get paid automatically.

you can also sign up your local animal shelter or ngo and allocate them a fixed percentage if you want to.

you can also find someone to do postprocessing and metadata from the bb community and just focus on filming and let them do the rest.

they have a really active fb community and many people post very good results.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1839898412956926

and here is their website

https://www.blackbox.global

i like them, i think it is a good add on to sending my content everyhwere myself.




13
I am trying!! But I rarely upload more than 20 files a day. Maybe it will get better with midjourney, we will see.

Also started again with regular photos/videos.

I must diversify and also send content to other agencies. You never know what happens, perhaps ai will die next year if so many people are pushing content in.

Especially editorial should keep its value or might even go up in value.

Firefly is better in my opinion,Midjourney is better for some things,but the way it works with Discord is too annoying,not only do you have to use stealth mode,but then you would have to operate in a private server,with which you only have the Midjourney BOT,and you have to adjust the settings so that no one can access your server,and then all this is not enough,you also have to unpublish the images in the Midjourney feed,not just in Discord.

so while you do all this your images will still be seen by other users in the Midjourney feed not in the Discord feed.

before I started operating in this way,I discovered that someone was copying all my prompts,in Discord there are people who do just this,they follow the feeds and copy and paste the prompts...very annoying!

Could you please clarify? As far as I know - all images are stealth... what "midjourney" feed are you referring to?

Thanks!

stealth mode is not enough,is enough just for Discord feed,go to the Midjourney site,where you manage your subscription,there you have all your images that you can download in compressed folders,then select all the images and then select "unpublish"

thank you, will try to figure it out.

I think I might just totally delete files, once I have them all secured.

14
because as soon as you downgrade your content is visible again.

Where did you get that info?

read it somewhere in one of the ai groups.

if you are unsure, ask them directly.

the stealth option is missing from the cheaper plans. this should mean it all goes public again.

but it would make sense, to keep us in the higher plan.

eta: perhaps we can delete content?

If we really want to downgrade, make sure every file with prompt is secured, then delete it completely??

15
Pond5 / Re: Pond5 sales picking up in March 2024
« on: March 23, 2024, 10:09 »
I'm seeing my Pond5 sales picking up really well this month. Anyone else having similar results?

Really good to see this with various problems and slowing sales on some other agencies in recent months. Hopefully will see continued sustainable lift in sales on Pond5.

Not really, unfortunately for me.  What's your pricing for HD and 4k?  I'm $74/HD and $149/4k now.

I have a wild mix of prices.

Nice editorial and shots with people where I paid the actors/models, between 129-180 for 4k.

Ducks in the park and test shots usually 50-69 for 4k, simple food shots and other stuff somewhere in between.

I also keep changing my prices every month, some go up, some go down.

And if the content has no sales for 3 years or more, I offer it cheaper. Including people stock, if it doesn't sell, the content is not interesting enough.

I still only have 1100 clips, so that port really needs to grow.

I only have one file in my exclusive port, not sure if it is worth expanding that.

Then there are around 500 files exclusive with bb and they are usually offered for 179 on pond5, but also go to many other places that have subs. I sill get higher sales which must be mostly from p5. 

Overall I have been slowly increasing my prices for editorial and that seems to be ok.

I have also had sales that are higher than what I priced them, I suppose those are enterprise deals.

We have some model shootings planned this year, those should be between 139- 180. Usually I will offer some "teaser" clips cheaper from the series and the rest higher.

It will be a few years before we have high quality ai people.

Work in progress, video is not my main genre. But again for such a small port, I think the sales are ok. This month it was 4 sales and 113 dollars on p5. Also had some video sales on Adobe and of course every month sales on BB.


I like the sales on BB. I had around 450 files in 2023 and these are the results.

Obviously I need a lot more files for both pond5 and BB to really make it work.



16
All images you prompt are visible to anyone else, to download, to use the prompt etc....it is one of the reasons why so much midjourney content is near identical. people do a search, find the image presented on adobe with high downloads and just reuse the prompt.

from 60 dollars a month onwards, you can enable a "stealth" mode, then your images and your prompting remains private.

however, it probably means you have to keep paying that forever, because as soon as you downgrade your content is visible again.

so i am not sure this is a good longterm solution.

firefly and stable are private.

 

17
I am trying!! But I rarely upload more than 20 files a day. Maybe it will get better with midjourney, we will see.

Also started again with regular photos/videos.

I must diversify and also send content to other agencies. You never know what happens, perhaps ai will die next year if so many people are pushing content in.

Especially editorial should keep its value or might even go up in value.

18
pos 2940

probably not bad for a 4200 file port, but I was hoping for much better spring sales.

need many more files. now upped my midjourney contract to 60 dollars to enable stealth mode. and hopefully that will push me to do more with midjourney to get better at using it. i still don't feel really comfortable but it does make much better people than stable.

also trying to do more with firefly.

now have prompting costs around 100 dollars a month. but longterm it should be worth it.


19
Those are useful, will share them. Thank you.

20
14 dollars after all the washington refunds. haven't seen sales like this since 2005.

Not motivating.

21
Nice jump in earnings and downloads.

22
I dropped in rank, but my sales volume is going up.

So sales are probably increasing, spring break is over.


23
All the time. Mostly for daily life editorial but also for a lot of simple clips done outdoors, working in the garden, picking berries from a bush, knitting etc...it sells just as well as content done with. more expensive camera.

The clip just has to be useful.

24
iStockPhoto.com / Re: monthly report
« on: March 20, 2024, 01:43 »
A lot of sales come from content distribution partners. So they collect it all into one report, which is fine.


25
Down to pos 3210, Adobe me and easter dont get along :(

need to add more variety and non seasonal content

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