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Messages - pangamedia

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1
Adobe Stock / Re: Distant cars in commercial image?
« on: September 13, 2023, 19:08 »
Unless you remove all things you brought up yourself it is editorial.. Does not matter if it is "distant" or not

Distance can make a difference - at least with buildings. It's well known that stock agencies can accept city images as commercial if the buildings are part of a wider view (if everything appears distant.) Though I wasn't sure if the same applies to cars. Of course it also depends on the stock agency's discretion.

In the past, Ive had two city images accepted as commercial. All the buildings appeared distant in those particular images and there were no cars visible. One of those photos has sold 12 times on AS.

Being sold is not an argument, having city images accepted neither. It is not the agencies problem but your problem if something goes wrong so they happily accept and sell your images. (Yes they do control your images put they did not put all there energy and time into it to do so.)

1) It is possible that a car expert may be able to identify some of the brands or models of the cars without zooming in though some people may struggle to do this.
 --> without zooming in you can identify the brands of the cars, that might be a problem (with zooming in probably some trademarks visible on the cars)

2) There is also a brand name visible on a supermarket in the photo but it is barely visible due to the distance. I'm planning to clone the brand name out but that is probably overkill. You would be able to identify the brand name if you zoomed in to the photo.
 --> No it's not overkill, it's what you should do if you do not want to sell it editorial. E.g. in commercial photos no logo and trademarks can be visible. Does not matter if you have to zoom in or not.

3) I know in the past, stock agencies would normally accept photographs of cities etc for commercial usage if it was a wide shot (showing a city skyline etc and everything is distant.) However, these current warnings about logos etc on the AS submit page has made me extra cautious and I don't want to take any chances.
 --> Yes in photos where the city is in the background, e.g. landscape photos you normally cannot see any logos etc. We haven't seen the photo but from the description it sounds to me that the buildings are not at an huge distance from your camera so trademarks are visible in your photo

4) I could also add that there are some old historical B&W photographs displayed on the wall of the supermarket that are possibly in the public domain.
 --> possibly does not sound very convincing to me. Although I don't know anything about those photos. Brands are being shown in the photos, photo's also have copyright so I would say just clone them out to be sure instead of relying on an assumption that those images are possible in the public domain.




2
Adobe Stock / Re: Distant cars in commercial image?
« on: September 13, 2023, 15:05 »
Unless you remove all things you brought up yourself it is editorial.. Does not matter if it is "distant" or not

3
General Stock Discussion / Re: Image search ranking
« on: July 03, 2023, 13:15 »
We are somewhat at the mercy of the search results. Sure, we can make more and better (we hope) images, but unless there is no competition, where we end up on the search makes a huge difference in how much we make. Interesting that an image with no sales would jump up so much in the search, but the search is a mysterious thing, and probably no longer the same for every searcher.

I would say that we are completely at the mercy of search results, which makes the metadata so important (although boring). I noticed that the search depends on country (for one, top pages are different in different countries). I do not know how far they go though: would they adjust it per user? Something that isn't impossible those days..

A long time ago I kept a vague eye on my most popular seller on SS. It generally was on the top line or at least the top 2 or 3 lines on a one word photo search with many thousands of results.  (there are over 500,000 for it now). It pretty much held this position for a few years and then one day I checked and couldn't find it - searching out about 20 pages, although I could have missed it. Eventually I found it again about 5 pages in, but sales went from about 1 to 1.5 per day to maybe monthly.

Back on iS a long time ago it seemed that any time an image started to gain traction they would change the search and sales would stop.

Those large jumps are interesting and worrisome for me. It means that best sellers can stop being best-sellers from one day to another and hence your revenue as well. Exactly, what you describe above. Which is not a sustainable income: some portfolios are too much at the mercy of the agencies this way.



4
General Stock Discussion / Image search ranking
« on: June 27, 2023, 15:18 »
Hi,

I've been following the ranking of a few of my images with specific search terms for 6 months. Which you can find in my blog. There is no analyses involved, just displaying the ranking over this time period. Nice to see is how an image occasionally jumps up and down large amounts in ranking from one day to another. Sadly, we cannot know why as we do not know the ranking algorithms of our beloved microstock agencies.

The images are on my blog: https://pangamediaanalytics.com/blog/search-ranking-of-assets/

5
Adobe Stock / Re: Adobe sales
« on: May 25, 2023, 18:57 »

In May 2022, subscriptions were just over twice the number of custom downloads; subs RPD was 74 and custom RPD 87. In May 2023, custom were just about equal with subscriptions (6 more custom); subs RPD was 66 and custom RPD 63 If you go back to May 2021, subs were 7x custom and the overall RPD was 80



Your stats made me curious so I've been looking at mine as well (Read the full article with images here: https://pangamediaanalytics.com/blog/adobestock-highest-earning-microstock-agency/).

My RPD is very close to yours (slightly higher) for both subs and custom. Rate 'subs' versus 'custom' downloads shows the same trend over the years 2023-2021 (I've included images in my article).


Looking at the year to date, the RPD is 70 - in 2020, the overall RPD was 95. I guess the question is whether the volume of downloads can rise enough to offset the reduced royalties, assuming these trends continue.

For photos I think it is clear that the volume of downloads has risen enough to offset the reduced royalties (at least in my portfolio/earnings). Especially as the reduce in royalty is minimal for photos? It will become problematic however if those 'custom' downloads become subscriptions which will be another (larger) reduce in royalties. Something I think might happen somewhere in the future.
Note: I also looked at my portfolio size and from which upload year most of my earnings are (which is <2023).

For videos, my downloads are increasing atm and a similar trend hopefully happens as with photos (but with a lag of half a year?). However, unlikely Adobestock will beat other agencies in the near future with video sales, at least if I look at my portfolio.


6

There is no public api for it


There is no public api for it, you have to make it all yourself from scratch. If it is just a hobby project I would not recommend it as it takes a lot of time to properly make such an application (and requires constant updates to keep up with changes). Which is the reason there are very few of those applications available (3 different ones if I'm right).


Your site looks nice (and also in Dutch)!

Thanks!

7
My application does it as well: https://pangamediaanalytics.com

8
Hi,

I made an application as well which you can find here: https://pangamedia.com/panga-media-analytics/

Cheers

9
sorry - i thought it was clear from 'modest proposal' that i was not serious!

No worries, also my bad.. sometimes it's hard to guess intentions by just reading

The topic is as old as microstock itself.

As old as microstock itself, but it stays interesting  :D 
One contributor makes $3,000 a month and the other makes $500. Maybe one just has significantly more images. Or significantly better images. Then the difference is quickly understandable.

The RPI and RPD actually start to matter when one contributor has to work 240 hours a month to do it and the other 10. Maybe because one is doing it as a full time job and the other is just doing it on the side.

Comparing the RPI, RPD and (portfolio size) you could see this quickly  ;)

And yeah, whether your RPD and RPI is acceptable is absolutely subjective and depends on the personal life situation.



10
A Modest Proposal: we should encourage the use of RPD & RPI since those focusing on useless stats become less competitive wrt the rest of us or are making the wrong strategic decisions! evolution in action!

Just trying to have a nice discussion about how to use them here mate, nothing else :)

11
I use RPI at each agency as a guide to where I should focus future uploads, since it takes portfolio size out of the comparison.  RPD is useless without total DLs and then you are just looking at total revenue.  Alamy has my highest RPD by far but DLs are so few that it isn't in the top five for total revenue.  Plus we can't even calculate RPD for some of them (like Canva) since they don't bother to tell us the total DLs.  The agency with the highest RPI is the one that is yielding the most per accepted image so should focus on getting more into that one to increase revenue in the future.

That's also a good point of view indeed. Although, I would like to add that RPD is useless for you because you are not interested in how much you get per download but rather the end picture. Something you are free to do but others in this industry choose to pay attention to because for one if too many start uploading to Canva might be leading to lower royalties at SH/AD etc. A discussion that can be read on this forum on several occasions. (https://www.microstockgroup.com/canva/canva-now-pays-0-6-cent-pr-license!/msg0/?topicseen#new / https://www.microstockgroup.com/general-big-6/my-first-month-with-freepik-!/msg583673/#msg583673 / https://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/filmsupply-artgridalternative-video-platforms/msg578268/#msg578268). At the start I did not care about RPD either, however nowadays I do not upload my assets to agencies with unlimited subscriptions (anymore). Only time will tell us what would have been the better strategy  ;)

After my first few years (and maybe even then) I think the changes at the sites make a bigger difference than any changes I made other than the number of images I uploaded and even that is small potatoes compared to a site taking 20 or more percent of every sale. In general RPI and RPD has been on a downward trend for a long time. Actual income seems to have leveled off at a much lower level, but it is still dropping if you take inflation into account and the sites probably are about to announce some more exciting news.

Yeah, income from stock has been reduced drastically. Sites are announcing 'excting news' a tad too much and there is a lot more competition than in the early days (From what I heard because I'm not that long active in the microstock industry). But there are still people earning decent money from microstock (inclusive me), so it is not all bad and worse.

Hmmm, i think some kind of long tail strategy works with low RPI.


That would be the same actually as your your RPI does not differentiate between a few high sales and a large volume of small sales. I you would look at amount of sales a long tail strategy would work out fine yeah.


With 100 images, RPI is easy, at 1,000 you get a different view. When the total reaches 2,000 change is less noticeable and just for a number at 5,000 there's so much variety, age, styles, types, subjects, and diversity, that RPI means nothing. Plus if you wanted to make the numbers more positive and feel better about your work, you can just delete 1,000 unsold images and suddenly the RPI goes up.

That's an interesting one yeah. Rather than looking at total RPI you could split your portfolio up and look at the RPI per theme (chrismas/halloween/etc) or just grab the last 2000 assets of your portfolio and look at the RPI of those assets in stead of all. But I think that is necessary only for very large portfolios (mine is 6000 assets and I can still see notable changes in my RPI/RPD).
In my opinion you go wrong here though: "there's so much variety, age, styles, types, subjects, and diversity that RPI means nothing.' This variety might be an important factor to your RPI, if you change style suddenly people might not like your assets not as much anymore. Or if you stop putting more variety in your portfolio (duplicate older themes) your assets might not be downloaded as much anymore (since they are duplicates)

Just for a personal measure, I have 5X more images on SS than AS and I make more from AS. Let me add, it's an unfair comparison, because most of the images that make me, most of the money on AS are not acceptable for SS. And 90% of the images than make up the 5 times more images on SS, aren't on AS, but they are a majority of my SS earnings.

Why are those images not accepted at both agencies? Are they editorial?

RPD is at least closer, but because of the mix of ways our images are licensed, it's a mess. Unless of course someone has found a way to make good sales numbers, for a fair payback, and eliminated, Connect sales, Subscriptions, special contracts, novel use and whatever name the agencies toss out for heavily discounted uses. If you take out the minimal licenses and then drop the ELs, you might as well remove the occasional OD and Singles, because those are a small percentage of the normal and usual licenses.

In which case, the real RPD is what we get, from the standard license, most of the time and it's a nice easy number to determine. Not worth all the math?  :)

It's not too much math in my opinion (especially as my computer does it without any effort of myself)  ;). I would not take out any of that because they determine the average RPD (although I did not implement connect sales). My SH RPD ranges from 0.3 to 2 dollars. That's better than the standard license of 10 cents which is sadly all too common.


12
both are essentially useless since the size of portfolio has massive effect on RPI, while actual income doesnt depend on size.

You are right that Porfolio Size is important, something I did write in my article but forgot to mention in this 'quick' summary. However, in the same sentence you are talking about actual income: while looking at RPI and RPD you do not have a need for your actual income. If that is what you want to now you simply look at how much you earned.

same for RPD - a few EL can drastically change RPD . i do calc RPD but dont use it to make any decisions.

Yes, a few EL can drastically change RPD, hence the third point of my drawbacks. " - Depending on how much you sell, you should not look at to small time spans (100 downloads a month is sufficient for a monthly time span)"  Note: 100 downloads is still at the low side. Another option would be to simply remove this large EL. (While calculating your statistics you can remove outliers if you have a well reasoned reason)

my SS RPD is always 20-30% lower than AS but my earning from SS are 2-3 times less - so what use is RPD?

1. It's telling you that AS royalties are better, so in that point of view AS is worth your attention as they give higher royalties
2. It might tell you that SH has more customers or that your sell 2-3 times less than on Shutterstock. It could also be that you simply have much less images on Adobestock.
Now the important part here is that you try to figure out what is the case. If your images at AS sell 2-3 times less than on Shutterstock, why is that? Note: I sell roughly the same amount of images on AS and SH every month with an almost identical portfolio so in my point of view AS does not have much less customers than SH. And from what I'm reading on this forum, AS is winning terrain on SH for a lot of people.

and a 3-4 mo running average makes more sense since can be big differences from month to month

Completely right: I wrote this in my article as well indeed. Also, you should not fixate yourself for a long time on those statistics as they are only a feedback.


I would like to come back on your statement "both are essentially useless'. I wrote the following:
"I use those stats mainly as a feedback to see whether I am still improving and how I'm improving. Thereby my aim is to keep my RPI the same or improve it. When the RPI is stagnating or decreasing, I can easily spot why (decreasing effort/ quality of my images) and try to improve it once more"

Much more important for me is too see how I'm doing at a particular agency. Hence, I usually do not compare those stats between agencies but rather look at them per agency. Especially when I change something in my workflow I like to see an improvement in my RPI as a positive feedback. So it could be a very useful feedback to yourself if used right.

13
I wrote an article about Revenue Per Download (RPD) and Revenue Per Image (RPI). You can read the full article here: https://pangamedia.com/microstock-general/rpi-rpd-the-golden-microstock-statistics/
For those that don't want to read the whole article, here is a quick summary:

I use those stats mainly as a feedback to see whether I am still improving and how I'm improving. Thereby my aim is to keep my RPI the same or improve it. When the RPI is stagnating or decreasing, I can easily spot why (decreasing effort/ quality of my images) and try to improve it once more. Another simple use is of course to look at your RPD per agency and see if it is worth your energy.

Drawbacks are the following:

 - Never look at one of the two separate, moreover you should also know your portfolio size to be able to draw any conclusion.
 - Conclusion really means indication, as there are more factors that have not been taken into account
 - Depending on how much you sell, you should not look at to small time spans (100 downloads a month is sufficient for a monthly time span)


I know at least some people on this forum are using those stats, what do you use them for? Did I miss out on some important features?


14

Pete, the problem with irrelevant keywords is that you can't tell beforehand for sure if they are irrelevant to the buyer.

My best selling wheat grain field was allways found by keywords "Celiac disease"  ;)

"Celiac disease" is not an irrelevant keyword in your case as it relates (indirectly) to what is in your photo.

That all goes back to, if I'm looking at an image, what words would I use to describe it and what's actually in the image? I say those are good keywords. All the similar, related and different definitions are a waste of time, because almost no one, uses those words to find an image. I'm not buying into the what if someone uses that word, because 98% of the time, no one does and no one will, so why is it worth the time and effort to add something that's ineffective and unnecessary?

I find that similar, related and different definitions are not a waste of time. Try three related, similar words or different definitions and you will find the search engine of Shutterstock gives you different amount of assets. Missing out on one of those will reduce the visibility of your assets. Time will tell you if it was really an useful addition as Shutterstock shows you 'downloads per keyword' from which you can get an indication. So, making photos of the same topic over a larger period of time makes it easier to get a set of 'useful' keywords for that topic.

Then, even if a similar keyword only get 5 downloads (the 2% you are talking about) it might still be worth it as those 5 downloads give your image a higher ranking among the other keywords. IF image ranking work this way at least (which could be possible). We don't know, so it is very hard to say if 5 downloads for a particular keyword would be worth it already.. Personally I would say it is worth it as taking the picture is often the hardest part. Sadly, with the information we have it comes down to making predictions of what could be happing pretty quick. And often it is better to be safe to sorry and put in the extra time and effort while keywording.

Although Igetty is a pain in the ass with keywording as you have to go over all the keywords once more, the good thing is that they indeed get rid of similar, related and different definitions of the same. Which often reduces my keywords substantially..






15
Hi,

It is accurate. To give stats: my shutterstock portfolio size has been calculated 100% accurately whereas my earnings are displayed with 99.96% accuracy. It has it's own difficulties, for one changing dashboard etc. makes it harder. Both Dreamstime and Adobestock are integrated in the software ;)

Cheers,



16
if not already there, many post graphs without actual $ figures to show trends

also- where does buyer metadata come from? - the where used data could be very useful

Hi,

I'm not 100% sure if I understand the first question. Graphs contain all necessary information (earnings in dollars, downloads in numbers, RPI in dollars, RPD in dollars, Portfolio size over time in numbers etc.).

Buyer metadata (country, licensed size and product type) comes from the agency and is only present if given by the agency. For one, Shutterstock only tells you whether it has been bought with an subscription/cart sale etc. whereas Adobestock also tells you the bought size (hd, 4k). So although your video is of 4k quality, it might have been sold as HD only. (Might be useful when deciding buying new equipment ;))

Cheers,







17
How much are you paying for a beta tester?

I'm giving free access to the software afterwards, no additional pay. Note: I've tested the software already with my own portfolios, it's working fine I just want an additional random person having to use it. I am not asking for an official beta-tester neither for your resume. So, in my opinion a free version of the software is sufficient without additional pay.

OpenOffice and Scalc.. I use it for my microstock revenues since early 2007. Totally Free and constantly, personnaly, updatable. Nothing simplier and less time (or money...) consuming could exist.
I work with 3x the numbers of agencies you propose.

Except newbies, who are those who could be interested by getting boring notifications of new earnings ? "Fantastic!!! you just sold an image for 0.000002$, congratulations!!!!"  ;D ;D
Plus, I like to keep my numbers by myself  ;)
I collect the numbers monthly, and I don't need more regular analysis, except the ones I can do eventually. I think that nothing in what you propose could increase sales numbers.



Hi,

Indeed, I have also been using excel to track my earnings. However, with my software you can do much more than make a simple overview of your earnings among agencies. Moreover, it does save time because doing all manually in the end takes time.

The 'boring notifications" is only one feature out of many (although $0.00002 is a bit exaggerated). Sidenote: I did put an option in there that you receive only a notification if you earn more than 10, 50 or 100 dollars so you only get a notification of nice 'suprise' earnings as I also did not want those small earnings notifications.

The software does not share your earnings and they are stored on your computer locally. So you keep all your information private unless you want to share print-screens of your graphs etc. Furthermore, with a press on a button you can delete all your information at once with the software if desired.

I'm happy to hear you got yourself a good system collecting your numbers manually and don't need more regular analysis. I myself did need more information, which is the very reason I developed this software.


pangamedia don't waste u're time, there is nothing left to analyze... everything is at such a low level that a personal analysis would take a few minutes, we don't need a tool. Sorry :(

For me there was and there is ;) Maybe the golden times for microstock are over (from what I hear..) but not everything is bad. At least not for me..

18
Microstock Services / new analytics tool - looking for beta tester
« on: November 28, 2022, 11:28 »
Hi all,

I've been working on a new application that analyses our earnings across several agencies which I plan to sell through a subscription services. However, I would like to have one or two beta-testers so I'm 100% sure that the application works.
The ideal beta-tester should be able to speak Dutch, English or Spanish (I prefer English or Dutch). Furthermore, I am looking for someone with a largish portfolio (and regular sales). I would like you to try out the application and give me feedback on any error that occurs. It would be highly appreciated if we can have an online meeting (zoom/skype etc.) at some point. Another plus would be if you are willing to help me out with testing large updates in the future as well.

What's in it for you? If you are willing to test future updates as well you can use the application freely afterwards. If you do not want to commit to testing possible future updates, I will give you free use of the application for a year.

The application has the following functions:

 - It can check your earnings at regular intervals
 - It gives a notification (if desired) of new earnings
 - Gives an overview of earnings/download per required timespan (alltime-yearly-monthly)
       - overview can be set per agency/mediatype (photo or video)/ licensetype (commercial or editorial)
 - Shows the RPD/RPI and portfolio size per agency over time (alltime-yearly)
 - Generate downloadable tax forms with an overview of your earnings per timespan.
 - Breakdown of buyers metadata (See how it is licensed, what size and where)
 - Breakdown of sold assets metadata (See which duration, codec, image size etc)
 - Keyword overview (see what keyword has sold when and how many times)
 - Image tracker (see what place an image ranks in the search of Shutterstock and Adobestock), track your most popular 
    assets over time so you now when earnings of those image might start to decline.

At the moment I've included the following agencies:
Adobestock, Bigstock, Dreamstime, Depositphotos, Igetty, Shutterstock, Pond5 and Videohive

Please reach out in a message of in private if you are interested!

Cheers,

Jarno

19
In the netherlands you can deduct cost below 450 euros at once, any amount higher has to be deducted over several years. If you earn less than 1000 euros (per month if I'm right) I recommend not starting your own business as your earnings are being seen as side earnings from a hobby. (But in this case you cannot deduct any equipment cost).

Talk to a local tax advisor.

Of course you must declare your tax income. But how to declare it, can you deduct any expenses etcfor that you need a local specialist.

Every country has other laws.

For any other advice, I agree with cobalt and it's better to find a local tax specialist. If you find a good one, please send me his/her contact details as well  ;D




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