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Topics - fieldsphotos

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1
Adobe Stock / Positive adjustment to your Fotolia account
« on: May 09, 2017, 09:19 »
Got this today:

Dear contributor,

We'd like to inform you that we added credits to your account today after discovering a technical issue that made it necessary to make a positive adjustment to your account.  The underlying issue was limited in nature and has been fully resolved. 

We take our commitments to our contributors very seriously. We sincerely apologize, appreciate your partnership, and look forward to seeing new content contributions from you. If you have any questions, please dont hesitate to  contact our Support team
.


Anyone else, or was it just my account?  I have zero idea how much was involved since I don't check my balances that often.

2
http://app.engage.gettyimages.com/e/es?s=1591793372&e=388535&elq=cd125ddc08344981b0aaa1a66378b2a6&elqaid=7512&elqat=1&elqTrackId=c081583c3958443ba1ff3bec826dbb26

Got this in my e-mail this morning.   A bit rich coming from the same company that sold our images to Google Drive for pennies to be used as clip art a few years ago.    But whatever.   

3
http://forum.zazzle.com/news/improvements_to_marketplace_search_on_zazzle

Looks like they are trying to clean up the marketplace.   If your item has had sales, it will remain in the marketplace.    For items without sales, if the item also hasn't had any views in the last 6 months, it will be removed from the marketplace search.  It will still reside in your store (they won't be deleted) however any traffic will now have to be driven to it by you.   

Views of your own product do count towards the overall views, so I suppose if you like to design your Christmas stuff in the spring, then you could manually keep them in the marketplace yourself for the Christmas season.   

Also, updating the keywords, or title descriptions will also reset the clock on unsold items. 

Thought I would let you guys know, since I know there are some Zazzlers here who may not follow the Zazzle forums.  This is supposed to be implemented next week. 

I don't do a lot of seasonal stuff, so I have mixed feelings about this.  Maybe my new designs will have less competition, but I do have several pages of unviewed products that will disappear from the marketplace. 

4
Just got this in my e-mail.   I haven't been following the latest iStock happenings, so this was news to me. 
      
   
        
Moving iStock Forward - September 2, 2014

Since our launch over a decade ago, many millions of customers have made the choice to use iStock for their projects based on iStocks unique blend of high-quality content, affordable pricing and simplicity. To further benefit customers, we have introduced many innovations over the years. These include introducing premium collections, being the first to offer new content types such as video and music and leading the industry through innovations in search and user experience. These developments created tremendous value for our customers and contributor community and led to iStock being the leading player in the microstock space, which, as you know, was invented by iStock.

As we look forward and plan for the next stage of iStocks growth and market leadership, we are energized by a world that is increasingly visual - more customers need more content, for more projects, distributed in more ways and in more formats and on more platforms. This sets a great foundation for continued iStock growth. It also means we must adapt iStock to service these new customers, to meet the increased demand from existing customers and support the realities of new higher resolution project requirements.

The introduction of the new iStock subscription offerings in April of this year, and the corresponding support from the Getty Images sales team was a very successful step in this direction. New iStock subscriptions offer high-volume customers the ability to expand their iStock usage and to access the highest resolution file in support of their projects. The customer reception has been overwhelmingly positive and has exceeded our expectations. In only a few months, these subscriptions now represent a meaningful percentage of total iStock sales and materially increased spend-per-customer. The results also demonstrate the power of unique and exclusive content; over three quarters of all subscription sales are generated from iStock Signature offerings. The reception of our iStock subscription offerings has validated the power of something that we have long understood - customers value quality!

We are offering just one payment method: Credits

Credit pack size and pricing will be simple and clearly aligned to the number and types of files customers can download.
Credits will be revalued, making it easy for customers to see exactly how much they are paying for an image.
The value of a credit will change: 5 credits today will be equal to 1 credit after we launch. The conversion ratio for existing credit balances ensures customers receive the same or better underlying value with their new credits. Example: balance of 50 credits converts to 10 credits in the new system.
After the conversion, customer usage of the newly valued credits will be reflected in Redeemed Credits totals at 5x the number used by the customer (i.e., their historic value).
Since we will re-calculate the new credit value to the equivalent old credit value for contributor Redeemed Credits, there will be no change in redeemed credits targets or reporting.
Our collection will be divided into two quality tiers;

Signature (premium) and Essentials (standard), consistent with our subscription offerings
We will maintain a consistent 3:1 price premium for Signature to Essentials for single image purchases.
Weve unified price points across photos, vectors and audio
1 new credit=1 Essentials image, vector or audio file
3 new credits=1 Signature image, vector or audio file
6 new credits=1 Essentials video file
18 new credits=1 Signature video file
No More Pricing by File Size

Customers will pay one price per file. They can then choose to download whichever file size best fits their project.
Simplification to two collections, two file types means:

Vetta and Signature+ will move to Signature, our premium collection for single image sales and subscription.
Main will become Essentials, our standard collection for both single image sales and subscription.
Detail by File Type:

Photos
Vetta and Signature+ move to Signature and will be included in the Signature Subscription offering.
The nomination processes will stay in place.
Accepted nominations and former Signature+ and Vetta images will retain Signature+ status and retain search prominence.
Signature+ (including x-Vetta) subscription downloads will pay at the Signature+ subscription rate.
Vetta royalty rates will no longer apply; all files will pay at standard royalty rates.
Former Vetta imagery will continue to mirror in the Vetta collection on Getty Images.
Existing and new Signature+ will be mirrored in the E+ collection on Getty images.

Videos
Vetta will be moved into the Signature collection.
Vetta royalty rates will no longer apply; all files will pay at standard royalty rates.
Former Vetta video clips will continue to mirror in the Vetta Video collection on Getty Images.
Exclusive video will continue to be mirrored on Getty Images in the renamed; Creatas Video collection on Getty Images (previously iStock Footage).

Vectors
Vetta will be moved into the Signature collection.
Vetta royalty rates will no longer apply, all files will pay at standard royalty rates.
All existing and new exclusive vectors, including former Vetta, will continue to be mirrored on Getty images in the renamed; Digital Vision Vectors collection (previously iStock Vectors).

Audio
Exclusive audio tracks will remain in the Signature collection.
Exclusive sound effects and basic complexity loops will move to the Essentials Collection to remain competitively priced in the market.
All non-exclusive audio files will remain in the Essentials collection.
In total, these changes dramatically improve the simplicity of the iStock site, search and messaging. At the same time, they significantly improve customer value and transparency while maintaining iStocks unique value of exclusive content across all file types. When combined with your great content, cross-merchandising from Getty Images and support from Getty Images global sales team, we are confident these changes will continue to set iStock apart from its competition for the years to come.

Weve prepared a discussion thread in the iStock forums, but we would also like you to take a look at a statement from Brad Ralph(braddy - Senior Director, Content Development and co-founder of iStock).

    
    
    Contact Info | Privacy Policy
 
    Copyright 2014 iStockphoto LP. All rights reserved. iStockphoto, iStock, iStockaudio, iStockvideo, iStockalypse, Vetta and CopySpace are trademarks of iStockphoto LP. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.
 

5
Not really sure where to put this question.   I have been thinking about attempting to get accepted at one of the newer places like Offset or Stocksy.   For anyone who is a contributer there, do landscapes do well?   

Browsing through the collection, Stocksy's landscapes are few and are the complete opposite of what I shoot.   So I am guessing I won't be a good fit there.    However, Offset's are a bit closer to my style, especially when I search on keywords for places I have shot (Death Valley, Yosemite, etc).

I guess the reason I am looking into this now, is I just got back from a trip with a new batch of Yosemite images and I am wondering about starting to put my landscapes elsewhere other than just the micros.   They sell well in microstock, but I wonder if I could do better with them at a different place.   (I have a few things at Alamy, but I don't seem to get any traction there - their collection is too giant I think).   

Of course this assumes I could even get accepted at either of these places.  ;) I applied at Stocksy when they first fired up and was rejected, but that was before anyone really knew anything about them.   

Here are a few of the latest Yosemite batch I am working on just as an example of my landscapes (the ones with people aren't for stock, obviously):  https://www.flickr.com/photos/fieldsphotos/sets/72157644428448711/show/   

Opinions welcome.  And if anyone knows some niche landscape places that do well, let me know.

6
And not for the better.   They are removing the volume bonus program for sellers and moving it to affiliates only.   Also, they are now encouraging folks to lower their royalty rates to the new lower limit of 5%. 
 
http://forum.zazzle.com/news/important_news

The news not mentioned in this announcement but was announced in the Town Hall forum "meeting" was that any royalties set at 15% or greater will now be subject to their 5% transaction fee.   The transaction fee comes out of the royalty you made.   So if your royalty rate is set at 15% and you sell a shirt for $20, your royalty would have been $3.00.  They will then take the 5% transaction fee out of that and you will get $2.85 instead.  (assuming my math is correct). 
   
Town Hall discussion:  http://forum.zazzle.com/townhall/town_hall_iv

The volume bonus thing won't affect me too much, since my port is still small there, but it was a nice incentive for growing my port there that is now gone.   Some more established sellers were making 30% of their income from the volume bonus amounts, so it will be a kick in the teeth for them. 

The new lower limit on royalties just doesn't bode well for the future IMHO.   I fully expect we will see the new royalty "cutoff" for promoting etc lower to 10% in the near future (down from the 15% it is now). 

7
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/05/06/adobe-launches-new-creative-cloud-only-apps-and-services-photoshop-cc-indesign-cc-illustrator-cc-dreamweaver-cc-and-more/


Man, I don't like having to pay a subscription for software - I was on the "every other verision" with my Photoshop purchases.   I currently have PS 5 and was waiting until PS 7 for a possible upgrade.   

I may think about changing my workflow.  Lightroom has become almost all of my workflow - as soon as they add perspective corrections to it, I might not need Photoshop for much anymore.     

I also have a purchased copy of Illustrator, which I guess is going to be doing the same thing.  Guess that is the last Illustrator copy I will buy for a loooong time, as I am not enough of a vector artist to justify the subscription price.

8
Dreamstime.com / Newbie with First Sale!
« on: October 04, 2007, 11:44 »
Yay!  I got my very first sale off of Dreamstime yesterday! 

I am new to the forum and thought I would jump in and say "hi" with my (admittedly tiny) bit of good news.   This is actually my very first photo sale period.  I am just getting started with microstock; I am currently accepted with istock and dreamstime.  I am about to throw my hat in with shutterstock once I get my 10 ready and vetted in the critique forum.

Just hoping to work up to the level of some of the great folks here!

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