Quote from: drugal on June 18, 2012, 14:08

Quote from: louoates on June 18, 2012, 12:54

Disclaimer: My apologies for this post. I am violating my own vow not to spend any more brain time on Yotola. A smart admin would delete this opinion.

I'm thinking that there is a huge group out there of wanna-be photographers who are unable to get accepted by the major or even minor stock sites. They've heard stories of vast riches being denied them even though in their mind they've been rejected unfairly. Yotola to the rescue! Yotola feels your pain. Yotola will give you your chance to shine. Yotola will never reject you. Yotola confirms that your hand-shaking, sunset,  and flower pictures will yield big dividends and that the other stock sites are ignorant and will rue the day they rejected you. How much will Yotola pay you? [SLAP UPSIDE THE HEAD!] You'll take whatever Yotola will pay you!

Yotola is communicating that the traditional micro stock sites ignore or avoid images that Yotola will prove to be successful sellers. Sweet music to those wounded by rejection. Yotola will provide proof in dollars that your resentments are well-founded.

My conclusion is that many in the rejected crowd will respond to Yotola's strategy. Enough to make a profit for Yotola? I would think not, unless they can also tap into the vast Facebook photographer market where the remainder of the clueless reside.

"hey I'v got these shots laying around doin' nothin'... even if they just make pennies it's more than nothin'... lets go upload!" sounds familiar? thats how microstock was born, so... who's crying 'scam!' now? duh. : )

The difference is that microstock delivers. Even a lot. And this new thing is arriving late and in bad shape.

sophisticated scam

Now either it's some sophisticated hack that FT hasn't discovered or contributor has a direct line to the top of almost every search. This example, combined with the massive over-exposure of some contributors on the first pages of search make me wonder if there isn't some sort of exclusive club in operation here. Still you can lead the horse to the water but you can't make it drink. Poor shots will not be bought and will gradually disappear from the first search pages but it does seem that some contributors there are getting a disproportionate opportunity to get their stuff in front of buyers compared to others.
 

Quote from: drugal on June 15, 2012, 15:55

You don't seem to understand (and I don't understand why this is so hard) that any kind of advertising is branding, even your local plumber's.

Um, no.  I've worked in advertising for many years, and regularly discuss with clients whether a given campaign will be branding or direct response.  These are the two primarily types of advertising -- institutional/branding and direct response/product advertising.  They really are distinctly different, with different primary objectives and different tones and messaging.  Branding ads aim to give you warm fuzzies about the company and keep them top of mind, or associate them with something positive.  Direct response or product advertising focuses on a specific product and wants you to take action in a specific way.  A simple Google search on the topic could help clear this up further and give you some good examples of both types, but I'll offer a few...

Think of the Chrysler ad during the Superbowl starring Clint Eastwood.  It barely featured the products, instead focusing on concepts and values Chrysler wanted you to associate with it.  That's institutional/branding advertising.  Then think of local ads for the Chrysler dealership in your town yelling about a cheap lease price on a new Chrysler 200 and urging you to come in for a test drive.  That's direct response/product advertising.  

Of course, these are black and white examples, and sometimes ads will be grey... trying to cover all the bases (perhaps like your local plumber -- though I'd argue that if he's urging you to call him to fix a leaky sink that's call to action rather than branding)... but people in advertising can typically spot the differences a mile away.

Quote from: drugal on June 15, 2012, 09:10

The first priority is to stand out, to be very-very-very easily recognized and told apart form the competition, at a glance. That's what branding is all about, this is the most basic principal of identity and ad design. I worked for years and years as an art director, and this was The Code to live by and it's perfectly logical too. We always avoided commonly used shots as far as possible. You get the same smiling blonde pop up on different brand ads, it's enough to confuse would-be-costumers on who's who, and the client might even deny paying for the work, saying it's useless coz everbody thinks the ad he paid for is from the 'other guy'. Very embarrassing.

This is a fairly narrow view of how buyers are using microstock.  In fact, I'd say any company or agency turning to microstock for branding is foolish, for exactly the reasons you point out.  Even if you bought a new image and used it to brand your company or client, that image could soon be bought by hundreds or thousands of others.  Truly professional agencies and clients instead turn to RM or shoot their own stuff for all the reasons you describe.

The people buying my stuff are not big companies using it for branding.  They're small businesses, consultants, bloggers, publishers, etc., using my images to help them make important points, to give them an extra punch.    They appear in sales presentations, brochures, web and print articles, etc.    I believe this is the type of use that makes up the bulk of microstock usage for all of us.  And I'll make the point again... these folks care first about an image with "punch"... something that effectively drives the point home... by and large they're not concerned about whether the image has been used before.

The proof is in my overall sales.  They've been rising steadily everywhere for the past four years, even at DT and FT up until the last few months when they implemented best match changes.   The market was not asking for these changes, at least according to my data.

Quote from: lisafx on June 13, 2012, 11:52

Quote from: luissantos84 on June 13, 2012, 09:47

sorry pixeled but where is the negativity here?

Agreed.  Most of the posts I read (and posted) were supportive and encouraging. 

Rather odd to resurrect a thread from over a month ago just to make an inaccurate complaint about its content. 

Even odder that it has taken Pixeled nearly 3 years, since registering at MSG, to be inspired enough to contribute. I'm sitting on my hands awaiting the next pearl of wisdom which hopefully should arrive in early 2015.

I wouldn't worry about it too much a 1 credit XS for 9 cents comes out to a 23 credit XXXL for $2.07, aren't you selling those same XXXL files at SS for at most 38 cents or about 1.5 cents per credit?  Just a little different perspective.

"A clicked on urbancow, and looking at the pics, zooming in on some I could only say "how on earth do you get thru with junk like that? I bet my azz the guy is an inspector"."

Hey dribble, 'urbancow' has been around since the early days of the site.  Perhaps you were looking at very old contributions and couldn't figure that out?

Quote from: drugal on June 09, 2012, 05:50

Quote from: gostwyck on June 09, 2012, 04:23

Quote from: aeonf on June 08, 2012, 18:25

^^ Which means the vast majority have never and will never reach pay-out !
IS is making millions out of interest alone...

No, we've been through this many times before. The cost of administrating non-performing contributors...

... is next to nothing. the net is going towards a pricepoint of zero for storage space f.e. ... you get more storage with a free mailbox, than what expensive comps had 15 years ago.

The cost is not storage. It's the up-front administration costs of approving/rejecting tens of thousands of contributor applications, reviewing possibly millions of crappy images the vast majority of which will not be stock oriented or ever sell and also dealing with all the inane emails to CR that probably result.

I don't make $1 on a lot of my images...I make more than that. I have a small portfolio, but someone with 6000 images x $5, $10 or $15, well, that's not pennies. Multiply that by the number of contributors this is affecting. That's not nothing.

You can belittle the contributors who only have 100 images in their portfolio, who might just make cents on their images, but just remember, they are part of a multi-million dollar microstock industry. The copyright infringement problem affects a good majority of those contributors. That's not nothing. 

There are always going to be people who blow this off because they think contributors are powerless. Those people have the right to give up, sit around, and do nothing. But you shouldn't belittle people who think they should try to do something. Chances are, whatever headway they make, will benefit you. Make sure you tell them thanks when the time comes.