Hi folks,

I wanted to pop in and hopefully clear up some confusion, as it sounds like there is a lot of unintentional misinformation in this thread. Big thanks to the contributors who emailed the link to ask for clarification.

Below is an update I posted on our forums, to address some of the misunderstandings:

(Re: confusion on 4K commission & price)
Certainly happy to clarify that is not the case. If you check out the Payout Schedule linked in the email, you�ll see the commission for 4k clips is $50 � regardless of if they were purchased with credits or not. That is how much you receive. The retail pricing is not finalized yet, but will likely be $100-$150. For clips larger than 4k you receive a $75 commission, again regardless of if they were purchased by credits or not, and they will likely retail for $150-250. I�m giving a retail price range since they are new products and we�ll be testing to find the optimum price point.


Regarding the FreeArt offer, I should clarify a few things:

Firstly, everyone should keep in mind that these are referring exclusively to physical prints in which there is labor and very real production costs. Of course coming from the microstock world we�re not used to thinking in that way, since digital downloads are delivered automatically with very little per-transaction costs. But of course when we�re talking about a physical metal print (for example), there are very significant production costs for that order.

So I definitely understand how someone might be surprised by a 10% commission for the non-paper prints, but do keep in mind that this is reflective of the fact that they are extremely expensive items to produce, and unlike digital downloads a significant chunk of the sale price is taken up by the physical costs.

Regarding FreeArt specifically, I should clarify that despite its marking-oriented name, the end goal is to drive sales of higher priced products and sizes, for which everyone makes far more money. It should probably go without saying that a business won�t last if it only produces free physical prints. Anyone who is familiar with VistaPrint will appreciate how wildly successful a business can be by offering a �free� price tier to attract customers, who then upgrade to paid tiers.

Regarding the $0.25 minimum commission, while this of course is not a big amount of money, it�s also very much in line with what people sell their high resolution digital images for every day in the microstock industry. Both through us and up to the largest agency. And while in those cases your images can be used for marketing campaigns and printed up to 500k times, for the print offering we�re talking about a single 8x10� printed photo. And of course for which there are of course physical costs to make, yet the image itself is sold for nothing.

The business model is doing something innovative, by focusing on physical prints and products, which is largely a new area for microstock contributors and represents a new revenue stream. The business is also trying a unique approach for marketing itself, which is needed in this day of age � and if it works out and takes off, would be very lucrative for CanStockPhoto contributors. So we are genuinely excited and hope it does well. I think the vast majority of contributors feel the same way too.

With that said, if you don�t want your images to be part of FreeArt, then no problem, you can opt-out from FreeArt by submitting a ticket. But do just keep in mind that you�ll be opting out of the entire site, and will forgo any of the high commission print offerings. I hope people will give it some time before opting to do that, but it�s of course totally your decision.

Regards,
Duncan

Lee Torrens posted his own independent summary here, which echoes much of the above.

Also, on a serious note, someone here incorrectly stated that FreeArt is associated with someone who the author states is known for ripping off artist's work. This is absolutely not true. FreeArt has no affiliation whatsoever with this individual, and is no-way connected. The commenter here references a WHOIS showing this, but must have accidentally looked up the wrong domain name, as WHOIS search for freeart.com clearly shows that is not the case. In fact, a keen observer will notice that FreeArt is run by the same people that run Fotosearch - which many contributors know is a highly creditable and agency that has been operating for almost 20 years.

I would hope and expect that people would be outraged if we partnered with someone that has a history of stealing artist's images - but thankfully that is not the case here. We take that very seriously, as I know you all rightfully expect us to.

Regards,
Duncan

Hi All,

Sorry, we had a technical problem on the upload end - as you all noticed! FTP was fine, but the web-app wasn't behaving.

I'd recommend you try re-uploading if you had trouble uploading earlier. They should work properly now.

Thanks, and sorry for the trouble!

Duncan

     Waiting  for   review  --  one  month  and  counting.

The current wait time is about 3 days - 1 month is way too long to be normal, and indicates there is a different problem. If there are releases attached, check your "Release Manager" section for errors. Otherwise open a support ticket with an image number so we can tell you what the issue is.

Still not working...using the site uploader in IE9

It's working for some users but not for others (there are still uploads coming in) - should have it sorted out for everyone very shortly, thanks for your patience.

What's wrong with these sites?  They are going to pits.

We have an excellent track record for stability, but sometimes things are beyond our control.

I'm very flattered by the warm personal regards by many of you. Thanks!

In 2003 I was a photographer on a certain microstock agency, who I felt treated us photographers poorly and with shockingly little respect. It ate away at me until the following year when I quit and started my own agency, with the sole focus of treating photographers fairly and with respect. I set commissions at 2x that of the other agency, and aimed to run CanStock as the first "fair trade" stock agency. The goal was never to make millions, or even personal gain, but much rather doing what I thought was right.

Now over 8 years later, I think it's clear these principals still drive us today. I'm still regularly shocked to read experiences people here have in dealing with other agencies - and personally make sure we don't fall into the same grouping.

There has been lots written about the backgrounds of some of our competitors, and it would be easy to see that their focus always has been and always will be bottom line profits. While we're not a non-profit, I think it's important to remember that we're started by photographers, run by photographers, and treat our contributors how we would want to be treated.

I hope people see that this is not just marketing spin, but is how and why we were started. Which is something we are very proud of.

Cheers,
Duncan

Duncan, my friend, are You on holliday?

Nope, no holiday for me I'm afraid! I still check MSG whenever I can.

While everyone's mileage will vary, we are continuing to set monthly sales records nearly every month in a row - which is especially nice to be doing through the traditionally slow summer months. I'm surprised to see our ranking on the right, which never seems to reflect our actual performance, but it's good to hear some people here have been noting our steady progress.

Cheers,
Duncan

As a microstock agency based out of Halifax, I thought I should pop in and extend a very warm welcome as well!

haha sorry Lisa, I have no idea why it was set so small. There really wasn't an obvious reason for that.

If something is bugging you or can use improvement, we're always happy to hear!

Our search engine does not use tagged categories for ranking, so leaving them blank won't impact your search ranking in any way.

With that said, there is still a benefit if you have the time, as it can help in Google ranking, etc. It won't make or break these rankings either, but every bit helps.

But as Lisa mentioned, tagging images to series definitely does help, as it directly controls how your images are cross-promoted. People who tag their images into series statistically sell more images on average.

I admire your dedication to Canstock. Oneday Canstock will be massive, they'll buy out Getty just so that they can play golf through their office windows. By this time Duncan would have appointed you second in command due to your relentless dedication and hard work for the company, and you'll be laughing at little peons like me still uploading everywhere

When that happens, I'll make sure you're invited to tee off a few balls!

If anyone has a specific question (since this is addressed to me) instead of posting as a thread on here and the CanStockPhoto forum, we're happy to answer directly through a support ticket - to avoid causing any undue confusion and misinformation.

I answered this directly on the CanStockPhoto discussion forum here, for anyone who is interested.

Regarding adding keywords, we have certain suggested keywords that are displayed with all our images so that they can be found better in web searches. This does not affect your CanStockPhoto search results, and helps drive more sales to your images. We know what we're doing here, and I can't imagine anyone will find a problem in helping drive you more sales.

Regarding removing of keywords - we do not make a habit of ever removing keywords. Generally if a keyword is removed, it's the inspectors doing it as a favor instead of rejecting the images.  In the CanStockPhoto forum you included one of your images as an example. I'll re-post what I said there, for everyone's benefit given this is publicly posted here as well:

-----
shed; storage shed; building; door; one door; handle; roof; door handle; siding; shingles; light; pole; lightpole; electrical; constructed; industrial; room for your text; copy space; wood; gray; green; brown; tan; rocks; grass; gold; wood pole; conduit; wooden; stained

This is actually a perfect example of containing keywords which are not relevant.


There should be little doubt that no buyer searching "electrical" will be expecting to find this image. This hurts legitimately related electrical images, and looks poor to anyone doing an "electrical" search. The same goes for someone searching "door handle", "gold", "light", or several of the other keywords included in the image.

Again, keywords should describe what is only physically and prominently visible in the image. None of the above keywords describe anything that is prominent in the image.

Furthermore, you included "copy space" and "room for your text" - but in fact there is no copy space available in the image, as it's tightly cropped around the shed. Copy space means there is room to add text that does not interfere with the main subject of the image. If you had an area of blue sky visible above the roof, then "copy space" would be appropriate, as a buyer could add text to the image without covering the main (and only) focus of the image, the shed.

Including vaguely related keywords will only hurt your images overall ranking, it's sales, and the results of many other legitimate searches. We generally recommend 5 to 15 focused keywords per image.

Duncan

We don't publish/share member's names even on our own site, as per our privacy policy.

Cheers,
Duncan