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Messages - Black Sheep
1
« on: June 08, 2011, 10:05 »
Well, who is this Ed Stock, and does he get to keep the royalties? 
but to me the big question is : is editorial selling well on IS ? for instance travel editorial, street shots, photos of villages, suburbs, people in rags, portraits, etc ? i've plenty of editorial that never sold in RM, so i don't see istock move as a bad move if they can make a business out of it, i never tried dreamstime or SS editorial because i always felt it's a waste of time, if IS manages to make ED a viable income i'm all for it but what if the average ED image only sells once or twice ?
2
« on: June 08, 2011, 06:01 »
Thank God we never ended up with Hitler's vision of a united, German-led Europe!
Yes. Now instead we live in a united, German-led European Union 
exactly, and the german banks are already waiting to eat greece's corpse or being repaid with a few aegean islands, the privatization of the whole greek economy, greek pensions, and much more, hopefully greece will declare default, leave the EU, and do like argentina.
3
« on: June 08, 2011, 05:59 »
Which just goes to show that we are all taught our own versions of history.
Thank God we never ended up with Hitler's vision of a united, German-led Europe!
there are plenty of decent books on WWII but will you ever read them ? and how a german led europe would so much worse than the EU puppet government in brussels and the NATO occupation since 1945 ? i mean i'm not a nazi but what's the difference between yanks bombing the whole north africa and germany invading poland ? it's not a problem of being teached history by the victors or by the losers, but the reality that nowadays america is animperialist warmongering colonial power, no matter if they elect bush or obama or whoever is next on the list.
4
« on: June 08, 2011, 03:35 »
while Jew-baiting and gay-baiting are absolutely off limits.
maybe in american forums, not in the rest of the world.
5
« on: June 08, 2011, 03:00 »
ohh gimme a break, please.
saving me from what ? america, UK, and russia were allied during WWII ... wake up ....
Thought so, exactly the kind of answer we all expected.
well you must understand some euro countries were allied to germany and had simply nothing to be saved for ... quite the opposite, the allieds almost bombed my grandfather's home missing it by a few meters. the Marshall Plan .. imposing enormous debts on the whole western europe, we're still repaying them in 2011 (!) ... the liberated europe run by puppet american government as in today's afghanistan ... such a step forward eh ? hundreds of US/NATO bases in our territory .. and the list goes on .. not that i have any will to rant about this on a microstock forum by the way.
6
« on: June 08, 2011, 02:08 »
Makes me LAUGH!!!
In just about 20 posts Ive said this all along, the aim is to ultimatly push out IS and into TS, its BLOODY obvious. I said it as long back as 2 years ago, long before this happend.
Next move, the agency photographers and all their RM stuff, etc.
Sigh! but then comes some wiseguys here and says Oh no, they cant do that? but they can, they will and they did.
This is just for starters, wait and see what will happen when dinner is served.
well you micro guys are responsible for all this, don't blame getty too much, i would do the same in their pants frankly speaking.
7
« on: June 08, 2011, 02:05 »
ohh gimme a break, please.
saving me from what ? america, UK, and russia were allied during WWII ... wake up ....
8
« on: June 08, 2011, 02:00 »
it's the obvious conclusion of digital photography, internet uploads, adsl, and oversupply combined, we all knew we would have reached the rock bottom before or later.
9
« on: June 07, 2011, 23:23 »
my analysis is that SS will be market leader in no more than 2 years.
10
« on: June 07, 2011, 23:21 »
businesswise it's a good but risky move for getty, we'll see how it develops.
unsurprisingly anyways, getty is owned and run by rich bankers, they couldn't give a s-hit about photography and photographers.
they're destroying the stock market and very few of us will survive on stock alone in the next 5 or 10 yrs.
11
« on: June 07, 2011, 20:34 »
americans abroad are funny and sometimes interesting, i would not generalize, the problem for me is when talking about politics with them, it's not an issue of leftists vs republicans, but the fact most of the yanks fully support unconditionally the neo colonialist wars america is waging in north africa and middle east, not to mention the bombing of serbia in 1999, the awful creation of Kosovo, Taiwan, and all the "color revolutions" in eastern europe.
and being answered that this is ok because they're "mickey mouse" countries can only make my blood boil.
the world would be a much better place WITHOUT america's "humanitarian interventions" (hahaha!), and as a matter of fact the smartest people i've met so far are the russians, hope one day they take over all of europe and liberate us for real from being a NATO colony.
12
« on: June 07, 2011, 20:22 »
I've spent 30 years in software development. I've seen it all.
i agree .. and why they just don't use the same CMS as Gettyimages.com ? from my experience the search is the most unfruitful scenario to develop, unlike google which is based on the "page rank" (reciprocal links etc in a nutshell) how can you page-rank images which aren't linked or whatever else ? all the algorithm can do is play with pageviews, clicks, zooms, age, filename, keywords, etc but try that with 10s of millions of images ... the backend of IS is also absolutely awful and illogical .. why not a single sidebar on the left with all the functions ? why i need 3-4 clicks to see the stats i need or click on a top menu ?
13
« on: June 07, 2011, 10:26 »
good apples and bad apples, no problem wit hit, what i really can't stand is their absurd in-your-face nationalism, jesus i haven't seen such things even when traveling in communist and socialist countries, my impression is their nationalism is fostered a lot by the government itself as it's the only real value after money that keep them all united under the same flag.
There are a lot of Americans who embarrassed by that, actually, present company included.
mah ! it's so blatant it looks like the whole country belongs to the "cult of america", a giant matrix where everyone think to be living in the best possible world and bla bla bla .. freedom democracy .. bla bla bla ... bomb this and bomb that ... yadda yadda ... in europe we've seen all this since 3000 yrs already, it's really no big deal, each of our city testify our history and we're daily reminded that power never lasts long in the same hands, every empire rise and fall and america will follow soon but it will be the american people to pay the highest price for their corrupt elite. talking about yanks and politics, well often i had great discussions with them but sometimes woah i had to stop and go away some guys are really rednecks and plain crazy, it's scary to know they probably own many guns at home ... what can you tell to somebody who's been teached since early age that america is nr.1, that america is the best, that america is Rome reincarnated and a s-hitload of other bulls-hits they heard on Fox news or cnn... sort of talking with spoiled kids and don't let me start at yanks dealing with maps and geography hmmm ...
14
« on: June 07, 2011, 10:11 »
well ... i can tell you why istock's search sucks big time.
imagine they have 10 million images online, each with dozens if not hundreds of fields (name, date, filename, keywords, etc) and you must run hundreds of SQL queries per minute ... in PHP they would also probably use the function "LIKE" of SQL which takes another huge toll on the CPU ... you would need almost a data center just for the search.
caching : you can not cache anything for logged users so everything must be computed in real time and this means a cluster of expensive servers, a skilled IT manager, network engineers, technicians, etc
the site : what CMS will you use for your project ? last time i checked the commercial ones used by many stock agenies were pretty expensive, requiring also onsite installation, onsite training of your workforce, etc etc or do you think you can run your business on an open source php cms ?
bandwidth : you will need quite a lot of it, terabytes per hours if you have thousands of users logged in and this costs a LOT, see the prices for some space in any data center near you...
sales : this is the core point, and the very reason getty rules the market.
how do you think you can screw all the competitors who already doing microstock since 10 yrs ?
how many millions can you invest in advertising ? photo fairs, public events, onsite salesmen knocking the door of the major design firms .. ? how many cars can you buy for your salesforce, their lunch and dinner, their laptops, mobile phones, a skilled sales manager... ?
look at Fotomoto for instance, it's a good idea, maybe it will work or maybe not, and what the VCs gave them ? only 1.2 million $ ... that means it's barely enough to rent an office and hire a team of 10 guys for a couple years, no salesforce, 100% online.
for a project like yours you more, a LOT more .. but what do you offer apart a fair price for both buyers and photographers ? the VCs don't give a s-hit about it, by opposite if they even fund you they will order you to squeeze as much as you can from the contributors, that's the way they do business, always been always will.
good luck.
15
« on: June 07, 2011, 08:59 »
yeah, yanks often take themselves way too seriously but i can understand them after all, america as a whole is a giant social experiment, nobody clearly knows where it's heading with its social and scholar and economic system, the "american man" as we know it might pretty well be replaced by a more sober person when the s-hit will hit the fan over there.
good apples and bad apples, no problem wit hit, what i really can't stand is their absurd in-your-face nationalism, jesus i haven't seen such things even when traveling in communist and socialist countries, my impression is their nationalism is fostered a lot by the government itself as it's the only real value after money that keep them all united under the same flag.
16
« on: June 07, 2011, 08:34 »
but how much are those sales ? last one i had was for a distributor in russia, a whopping RM licence of 35$ that means a net profit of barely 10 euro for me.
of course there's the odd 500$ sale but it's no more the norm at alamy at least.
17
« on: June 07, 2011, 06:38 »
Getty RM is still somewhat ok but what about the rest ? read this from the Alamy forum for instance ... http://www.alamy.com/forums/default.aspx?g=posts&t=10592there's one guy in that discussion, i won't mention his name, he's got 10.000+ images and earned less than 1000$ last month and it's gross earning, so the net might be around 5-600$. ok that's an extreme but the average 1 sale every 1000 images is going down to 1 sale every 1500 or 2000 ... one of their biggest stockers with 70.000+ photos on sale makes around 6-7000$ per month gross. in comparison a friend of mine has a portfolio of 5000 images on IS, he's exclusive and makes 2-3000 euro/month NET, that's almost 4000$. now make your math, ok alamy is not representative but i can tell it's much better than AGE, LPI, and other specialist agencies. what if getty sink suddenly in a couple years ? if it was for me microstock should die tomorrow but now it's too late, as much as i hate the idea of selling for volume and as alow as 1$ per photo thsi is where the industry is heading fast, RM or RF no matter.
18
« on: June 07, 2011, 04:31 »
^^^I can't remember how many billions this industry is worth each year. I'm sure someone will be come up with a better way for us to sell and buy images for a slice of that money. I didn't say they would do all this for free, I just think the amount we pay the current sites is far too high and one day that's going to change.
it's not gonna happen. think for instance .. woudn't it be logic that someone starts a business providing uploading, editing,and keywording for stock shooters ? well, many tried and fail so far, it seems there's just no money on it even running this biz in india or bangladesh.
19
« on: June 07, 2011, 04:12 »
Paris, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Praha, Budapest, Belgrade, Athens, Moscow, Madrid, Barcelona, Venice, Rome, Florence ... and this just to make a few names ... what . you have in the U$A ... Boston, Houston, Miami, LA, NY, Seattle, Chicago ... hmmm packing them up together they aren't worth of Peru or Uruguay alone...
20
« on: June 07, 2011, 04:09 »
^^^Do you know anyone that makes more from their own site than they do from the top microstock sites? If we all get our own site, are buyers going to sign up and look through thousands of different sites?
NO, unless you sell some hard to find or unique photos and you also contact buyers willing to pay for it.
21
« on: June 07, 2011, 04:06 »
yanks seem to top the list of most hated country, thought, especially in europe.
Meh. You're just jealous.
And even more especially in the whole muslim world. And Vietnam, Korea (at least North) and in most countirs of Latin America. I really wouldn't want to be an american tourist. I mean where can you go and not be hated? Or even in great danger. I wouldn't want to be Canadian as well. You're too easily mistaken for an American
i travel a lot and most of the yanks i meet when dealing with the locals claim to be canadians... the only good yanks i know are american expats living and working in europe.
22
« on: June 07, 2011, 04:04 »
Meh. You're just jealous.
hahaha come to old europe and open your mind, see where you come from and touch the real deal instead of living in a cheap imitation. you're a rebel colony, a spoiled kid.
23
« on: June 07, 2011, 04:00 »
Lobo ?? his actions and reactions, is that of someone who wants to keep his job, if he allowed all negative postings on the IS forum, boy! there would be no end to it.
yes I agree with Luis, the best thing is to forget this IS business, its been dominating every micro forum to the point where it becomes ridiclulous and frankly its not worth it, its all negatives anyway. When you go into the IS forum and you see how they manipulate these poor neewbies, etc, its just sad.
I know this much and from experience. Just wait and see when the entire RM brigade comes into micro!!! believe me, there will be many a big-mouthed IS-exclusive who wont be so cocky and happy go lucky.
Then they will come over here, seeking refuge and understanding.
the RM brigade is already switching to micro, or doing it 50/50 like me, but not for the reasons you may think. the reality of RM is that prices are falling and if 2 yrs ago it was ok to get 100 or 200$ for an editorial photo nowadays it's not unusual to get 50$ and as low as 5$, and yes this even with Getty RM, Alamy, and Corbis. yes, 5$ for a web-sized RM image, we've come to this.
24
« on: June 06, 2011, 21:02 »
"being funny" ? in most of the cases they're just plain racist and haters.
it's an open secret that in the end western people all hate each other for good or for silly reasons.
yanks seem to top the list of most hated country, thought, especially in europe.
most friendly, i would say the aussies and the canadians.
but hey i understand it's not easy to get along with us europeans, we love our small "mickey mouse" countries, they're full of personalities, thousands of years of history, if the yanks don't understand it's their problem, not ours.
25
« on: June 06, 2011, 20:58 »
well that's exactly what the british medias are doing since the last century : bashing foreign countries in any way so the message that comes out is that britain is not so bad in the end, typical psy-op ... now they target muslims and middle east in particular, tomorrow it will china and who knows.
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