You're right, you have a choice.

"Yes, you must pay taxes on any income generated from your hobby, even if it�s just a few dollars. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) considers any income earned from a hobby as taxable income. Therefore, you�ll need to report it on your tax return and pay taxes on it. However, there�s a key difference: taxpayers with hobby income (not considered business income) can avoid self-employment taxes. If you incurred any hobby-related expenses, you might be able to deduct them as well. "

If someone wants to avoid self-employment taxes, they can just declare just income. If you want to deduct expenses, which I believe would be to my benefit, so I do, then you file a Schedule C. But income is income, no matter what, if you are a US resident, and you must pay income taxes.

What would I even deduct? I'm not sure what your circumstances are, but for me as someone who's not actively engaging in asset production, I have no idea what I could even deduct. I sold my dSLR in 2020 or 2021 and haven't looked back. My laptop is worth around 1k, and I have no expenses except for a microstock stats service to sometimes check which types of assets are selling.

So, for me, since I don't deduct anything, I use Sch E. Nobody is talking about "not paying income taxes" at all, I don't know why you felt the need to mention that.

Quote from: spike on April 06, 2024, 12:42

Depends. True if it's active and makes the majority of your income. If it's passive, then it's Schedule E, no self employment tax.

that's new info you didnt bother to tell us earlier

Literally does not matter. I said "If it's passive, then it's Schedule E, no self employment tax."

And that seems to be true. Where I created the assets should not play a role, I could have created them in the US, and if I stopped, then it would be Sch E.

Quote from: spike on March 29, 2024, 23:02

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on March 24, 2024, 15:53

No, it is income and not what is considered �royalties�.  You will need to pay self employment tax.

Depends. True if it's active and makes the majority of your income. If it's passive, then it's Schedule E, no self employment tax.

At least that's what my CPA said.

Incorrect.

� Even though an individual is retired and not currently involved in his or her creative pursuit of income, any royalties received are business income if the individual was engaged in the business at the time the material generating the royalties was produced.�

https://www.thetaxadviser.com/issues/2013/dec/kelley-dec2013.html

Does it get tiresome to be a contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, even when you contradict yourself:

"Royalty" income is for when you are no longer actively participating in the production.  If I stopped creating content as my "job" and then just sat back, it becomes "royalty" income.

No.  All the links and reading say that if you�re not actively participating in production, then it becomes �royalties� for the purposes of taxes.

So, you initially agree that it's actual royalties, Sch E, when you're not actively participating in production.

And now you say that despite not actively participating, it's Sch C

Can you make up your mind?

No, it is income and not what is considered �royalties�.  You will need to pay self employment tax.

Depends. True if it's active and makes the majority of your income. If it's passive, then it's Schedule E, no self employment tax.

At least that's what my CPA said.

Thank you for the all apps plan, much appreciated.

I got the link today, but the form won't download.

Same

Using irrelevant keywords or titles is listed in Adobe's account and submission guidelines as being a prohibited activity that could lead to warnings, account suspension, and/or account termination.
https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/submission-guidelines.html

Then he should likely be reported, a lot of the titles are not relevant and the keywords are not much better either

why do people say this stuff. There is a fresh content tab and filters. It isnt some magical luck of the draw thing.

Actually it is. Will your asset get picked up or not mostly depends on luck, especially lately.

Source: stock contributor since 2009, I spread out assets from my shoots over numerous batches over weeks, and sometimes an asset gets picked up by the search, gets a few initial downloads in the first day, and the propels it further in the search rankings. If you don't get any views/downloads in the first few days of assets being online, it's much less likely it will be picked up. And no, the asset that gets picked up is in no way shape or form superior to the ones that don't get picked up. So yeah it's luck.

Quote from: spike on November 30, 2023, 17:54

... and the real Adobe where there are hunderds of contributors from certain geographic regions who spam the system, and the reviewers are not doing a great job at catching them...

Reviewers are maybe from the same geographic regions 

That has been my suspicion for a long time, but since it's speculation I didn't want to share it as it detracts from the issue
(although it certainly explains it)

Going on 5 weeks now. Is this the new normal?  Not seeing the upside

They're already accepting ~200k images per day. Are you sure you want the review process to be faster?

How do you think your image will be found when it's fighting against 100s of millions of old assets in the collection, and 200k that were approved on the same day as yours?

The issue is too low of a rejection rate, not review times.

One final point I would like to make regarding similars. In a hypothetical world where there is no moderation and everything you submit is automatically approved....If you submit 100 images of Autumn leaves, they will not all surface in search results. Only a small number of these files will be discoverable except by customers willing to dig very deep into the search results. Only 10,000 results are displayed at a time for any search query. As noted previously, there are millions of files online with the keyword "Autumn Leaves". The basic math indicates the vast majority will not surface in general searches. You are better off carefully curating your collection and choosing only the very best of each batch to submit.

Thanks for the debate,

Mat Hayward

Translated from corporate speak to facts: "We are aware that our review standards are nowhere near to perfect, but even when they're not, most of the images submitted will never see the light of day because they'll be buried in search results so it won't affect your "WOW" image".

So it's not only an admission of suboptimal reviewing, it's also being wasteful with server space and providing a worse experience for the customer

I mean, I don't care, it's just funny. I've come to terms that there are 2 Adobes, the 1 with the idealized criteria of how things should look, what should pass review and what should get you banned... and the real Adobe where there are hunderds of contributors from certain geographic regions who spam the system, and the reviewers are not doing a great job at catching them.

I submit to the real Adobe.

I was * along nicely on Adobestock selling  few a day here and there and generally doing better week on week and then yesterday it just.....stopped.

Has that ever happened to you? Only thing I have done differently is upload more images (I currently have over 300 sitting for approval) that couldn't affect it, could it?

Wouldn't be strange other than the fact the sales were rolling along nicely and now tumbleweed

Yes. I use microstockr to check my sales according to sets/images etc.

Some images have a streak of selling 3-10 times per day, for a month. Then the next month, they get downloaded 2 times in total. So it's super obvious.

I agree 100%,but that's another question,those who create multiple accounts to circumvent the rules pay the consequences,you can be sure of that,the fact is that sometimes it takes a while to catch them.

I firmly believe that to reduce AI content spam,and don't create this crazy rush of 100 contents in 2 hours,favor review,favor real content,lighten the load,increase the quality produced... for many reasons I firmly believe that Adobe should place a limit and announce it officially.

let this limit be 1000 per month or whatever they want,but there must be an officially communicated limit, so that people get their act together, and try to create more original and quality things instead of starting an "assembly line"

I'm sure Adobe has already thought about it.

Mat,if you read me,try to raise this issue with the team if is possible and if you can.

See if it's possible to have an officially announced limit of AI content per month or per year per account,I think 1000/1500 per month is more than enough,otherwise we'll all go crazy here,including you!

Limits on new accounts are ok, limits on legacy accounts from contributors who know what they're doing - nah

Why implement this limit only on genAI? You can take your smartphone, take literally 10,000 photos in an hour, and send them all for review. That's a lot more than you can create with AI. Yet, nobody is advocating for upload limits for traditional photos.

It's the job of the reviewer to reject all images that don't satisfy criteria. You can't expect the contributors to "self censor" when it's not in their best interest. If they have a 1% more chance of selling by uploading an extra 10 images, they will do it. If someone can generate 10,000 good images per month - this means, good subject, inpainted faces and hands, upscaled with SD ultimate upscale - then great, let them! The issue doesn't come from those contributors. It comes from those who buy a Midjourney subscription, generate 1000 images, upload them all after upscaling in Topaz, and they pass review. The underlined part is the issue. Adobe doesn't have enough skilled reviewers to distinguish between good and bad upscales. They talk a lot about "educating contributors" but they should educate their reviewers.

If it were up to me, I'd delete over 90% of their current genAI collection - it's crap, mostly midjourney output upscaled in Topaz or something similar, no realistic skin textures, and it all looks samey.

There are a few contributors (and I count myself among them not because of an inflated ego but because of the skills I needed to learn to get where I am) who submit proper content, proper technically, proper theme, proper upscale and inpaint. With consumer hardware, it would be very hard to reach 10k images per month like that. Not impossible, but hard, and your machine would need to be generating and upscaling almost 24/7.

Once Adobe recognizes that it's not those contributors who are the problems, but the mass from a certain low-COL geographic region (no racism, just go on youtube and search for adobe stock ai earnings and see who's uploading) who spam their system with their crappy midjourney upscales, and the reviewers who, for whatever reason, allow this type of content in the adobe stock library.

Me personally - I am waiting for an AI-only "high end" stock agency, where such stuff will not be allowed. I've given up hope that Adobe will ever clean shop.