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Topics - stockman11

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Can this industry remain to be a sustainable source of income for us in the following decades? And what are the alternatives if not?


I guess the key questions regarding this subject are:

1. How good will AI image and video generators become over time - will the people rather browse and buy finished content done by "professionals" or they will just type the sentence or keywords and click "generate"?

2. How much the genuine human content will be in demand?

3. Will the race to the bottom ever end, or everything will sooner or later become free? (which would probably mean "game over" for the most of us)

2
Shutterstock.com / Shutterstock is an embarassment
« on: June 23, 2023, 16:26 »
My SS earnings used to be 15x higher than now, and they just keep nosediving from month to month. Once a good earner, now abomination. Seems like it will join mid-tier agencies soon. Inexcusable.

During this same time, my Adobe Stock earnings has been growing, and Istock has been consistent.

I'm considering to start treating SS like the other mid-tier agencies and completely stop uploading there.

3
It can be said that earnings on Adobe Stock are maybe increasing. But the other stock sites in general, especially Shutterstock, are declining for a while now. So the total contributor earnings are pretty much going down.

Can this negative trend for a contributor be changed anytime soon? Are there any optimists?

4
Canva / Canva earnings are continuing to go down
« on: October 13, 2022, 05:09 »
I thought Canva is a growing agency and earnings will only continue to go up. But instead of that, this whole year earnings are only continuing to go down. Every month there is less and less, and this is a serious problem. I already saw on this forum that this is happening with some other contributors as well, so I'm not the only one.

Does anybody have a clue why is this happening?

5
More and more sites are implementing new subscription systems, especially Envato, Canva, Istock/Getty, in which RPD goes down drastically and sales volume goes up. Can we call this "nanostock"? And what do you think the future of nanostock or however-you-call-it is - is it necessarily bad or it can successfully replace microstock similarly like microstock replaced macrostock with lesser RPD but higher and steady earnings for most, despite some people being strongly against it when it was arriving?

I think it's not about RPD being as high as possible, I think it's about total earnings being as high as possible, and to achieve that we need optimal model and optimal prices. The question is where are that optimal prices and with what model? Is this new "nanostock" trend closer to optimal, or is it bellow optimal?

I'm not talking here about percentages which stock agencies get, that's the other subject. I'm talking purely about the trend of lower RPD and higher sales volume.

6
1. for me and for a lot of people sales are going more and more down. Used to be so alive and undisputed #1, but not even close anymore

2. reviewing is the absolute disaster

3. submitting vectors is a joke


Will SS continue this path and eventually become dead / dying agency, or will they change their current ways and become the #1 earner again?

7
Shutterstock.com / Anyone still submit vectors to SS?
« on: April 24, 2020, 15:35 »
What is your eps file size (do you reduce it and how)?

How do you submit artboards (saving with the "use artboards" option checked is forbidden now)?

Is SS worth all this hassle when it comes to vectors?

8
General Stock Discussion / Secrets of successful marketing?
« on: December 15, 2019, 08:12 »
This subject relates not only to selling stock direct or making a new successful stock site, but also to succeeding with any king of content - site, blog, forum, video, etc, with which people can try to make money on the internet.

1st basic generic crap I see on the internet is "content is the king - just have the good content and the money will come (automatically)". Wrong. Even the best content in 99% will not do anything alone because it will mainly stay invisible. So how to make your content visible and how to attract people / buyers to it?

2nd generic crap I see repeating all over the internet is "share your content and write about it on the social media, that is so awesome strategy and it so works". Wrong again. People on the social media couldn't care less about what you are doing (unless maybe if we talk about the closest circle of people). People are inert. People don't want to spend time, energy or money on something which is not already established. So how in this circumstances to get people really interested and invested in your non-established name and content? How to become established?

little more "advanced" and insightful, but still crap advice I see on the internet is to invest into paid ads on google and facebook. Still wrong. Many people who tried this reported that it doesn't work, and why would be when vast majority of people don't like seeing ads, some of us use ad-blockers, and there is still a story about really reaching out to people and gaining their trust - seeing your spamming ad obviously won't achieve this.


We all (should) know that the difference between successful and the rest on the internet is proper marketing. It's also familiar that successful people usually don't share their secrets. But 1. someone at least moderately successful will maybe decide to share something useful, and 2. the rest of us together can try to figure at least something out.

So the question is - what are the real working secrets of marketing your content? Instead of wasting our time on usual generic crap advices, what are we really supposed to do in order to succeed?

9
Shutterstock.com / Shutterstock reviewers are idiots
« on: October 14, 2019, 09:57 »
Pard my French, but I just have to let it out.

They reject left and right even images with good selling potential for being "similar", and when something gets rejected, there is no use to resubmit because 100% of rejected images just keep getting rejected for the same reason.

I don't think this is that much due to SS's policy itself, I think it's more about incompetent reviewers. They are not just incompetent, they are f*cking idiots.

I feel better now, but these idiots will remain being idiots and they'll just keep rejecting left and right without using their brain even a little.

10
Shutterstock.com / I'm having horible month on SS
« on: August 20, 2019, 04:34 »
SS is pretty much every month my best earner by far. Every August on SS was pretty solid for me.

This month so far SS is barely my 2nd earner, probably 3rd (depending on how is my August on IS).

I guess this month is my turn to get bamboozled by SS's algorithm.

11
Instead of giving us limited options and forcing us to select thumbnail manually on each site, or not giving us an option at all, every agency should recognize the poster time / frame and set it as the thumbnail on their sites automatically. This would make it easier for both sides and it would potentially increase sales (we all know how much the adequate thumbnail means for a video).

For anybody who doesn't know, you can set the poster frame / time in After Effects (composition > set poster time) and in Quicktime pro (view > set poster frame).

12
Dear contributors,

We have some exiting news to share with you.

We launched ExcitingStock.com with our cutting edge subscription model prices and license which enables buyers to resell your work, and we launched it together with our strictly curated collection of premium work at WeLearnedFromTheBest.com (are you good enough to be accepted?).

This is a new opportunity to increase your earnings! Your work will be competing with work from numerous of partner sites! Your royalties will be 1% of each subscription sale, and most of the money will be invested into marketing which will get you even more sales! (we promise). Isn't that exciting!? Stats will get reported on 25th of the each following month. And if you are good enough to be accepted to our premium collection, your work will be a part of our unlimited downloads for $1.99 program and you will have to group your work into collections and do appropriate descriptions, instructions and promo videos to maximize sales. All the stats for individual files will be hidden for the greater good. This is simply the next level earning machine. And yes, this program includes videos too!

We take a great care of contributors and their families, and we listen to their suggestions and feedback closely! (we promise we won't do anything stupid)

Do you have what it takes to be a part of Exciting Stock? Join us now and look your earnings go sky high!

13
Is there any video cutter / splitter which can open HD and 4k MOV photojpeg files, which can save parts of the video without re-encoding, and which is frame accurate?

Smart Cutter doesn't work with these files.

14
This is maybe a noob question, but I want to be 100% sure.

I've seen some stock videos which look like they are using the real photos of nebulas or galaxies (not impossible these images are top quality illustrations, but I would say some of them are definitely photos). I know there is at least one site with the space photos available for commercial use, which should technically be safe to use, but on the other hand I thought that our motion graphics have to be 100% ours.

So can we safely use the space photos for our motion graphics or is it better to stay on the safe side and do everything from scratch?

15
How good is Adobe's exporting to jpg?

Is it OK to upload standalone vector file, or their exporting is bad and we are better off with uploading eps + jpg?

16
Dreamstime.com / Dreamstime's submission process
« on: February 23, 2019, 06:50 »
It's unacceptable that we need to go trough files 1 by 1 and submit them this way. I don't care about the "advanced" feature like "populate fields", it's unacceptable and laughable. It absolutely sucks.

I'm thinking about to stop uploading to Dreamstime, since the earnings are not so rewarding anyway. And even if they are, making the submission process faster and easier is just a normal thing to do and it's absolutely a must.

17
Canva / How long is going to take for Canva to complete redesign?
« on: February 21, 2019, 06:37 »
Not that it's important at all comparing to the earnings, but I miss seeing the sales - the thumbnails of the sold files. Currently there is no adequate greasemonkey script for that since the works on the redesign started.

So when will Canva finish the redesign?

18
Adobe Stock / Better contributor site - Adobe Stock vs Fotolia?
« on: January 24, 2019, 20:36 »
I think it's Fotolia, and I think it sucks that Fotolia is going to be terminated.

If more people think so, maybe they'll change their mind or maybe they'll make Adobe Stock better.

19
Canva / How are the earnings going?
« on: January 18, 2019, 15:32 »
For the 1st time on this site I see that my earnings declined - they are gradually going down during the last few months. And January doesn't looking great so far either. Hopefully it's just temporary.

20
This is about using mobile phones for microstock instead of DSLRs, and submitting pics and videos taken by phone to all the main stock sites, not just to the sites specialized for mobile photography. So I wasn't sure where to post this - if GSD isn't considered good, somebody put this topic where it belongs the most.

Of course, DSLR is always going to provide higher quality and more possibilities than the best mobile phone camera because of more glass and larger sensor. But are the mobile phones of today good enough for microstock? If yes, then why don't invest in Google Pixel 2 or 3 (or whatever phone is the best or good enough for microstock) instead of investing in more expensive equipment, especially if you take into account that higher res and quality maybe doesn't sell more? It's also easier and more practical to take the phone with you wherever you go, plus it has a nice big screen.

Did anyone used Google Pixel or other phone successfully for producing images and videos which are accepted everywhere and which sell? And how are the sales comparing to the content produced with DSLRs?

21
It's laughable that we have to wait 20th of the month. I mean we do live in the 2nd decade of the 21st century, and the 3rd one is getting nearer.

22
More often then not, whenever some agency presents the "exciting news" it's actually bad for contributors, but they still tend to label it "exciting" like we are all a bunch of morons. What are the worst "exciting news" ever on any agency?

And were there ever some "exciting news" which are actually good for contributors?

23
Canva / Thumbnails on the sales page
« on: March 10, 2018, 04:16 »
Hopefully people from Canva still follow this forum.

So, people from Canva, I know that getting buyers / customers and making them happy is your priority, and you do that very well, but you should consider implementing something minor for the contributors as well. You should put the thumbnails on the sales page instead of the textual links so that we, especially we with many sales, can track and see what sells and what sells the best.

This can influence our decision what to upload further and this can get us more sales in the future. Even without that, I think this feature is not much to ask, it should be easy to implement it, and easy tracking of your sales is only normal. Right now it's too time consuming and difficult.

thanks for reading, and hopefully you will implement this.

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