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Messages - nuno

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1
As far as I can see, even at the paid levels 500px has no built-in support for selling 'art prints' - by which I mean a buyer can't order a paper print from the site or from some 'partner' site via a convenient link.  Is that correct?

If that is the case, would I be allowed to display a link to some other site where prints are available? 

That's correct. We no longer offer print sales through 500px directly. There is no problem linking to an art print site for your work.

2
Completely understand that. What I've done, personally, is just create sets and upload the whole series in to that set. Then I move maybe 1 or 2 photos in to my "Public Profile". The photos are still searchable but not visible on my profile page unless you visit my sets.

Good to know, but don't forget to say that an "upgrade" and a minimum $25/year subscription is needed in order to create sets.

True. We have discounts and promos all the time. Heck, if anyone here wants 6 free months of Plus email me at [email protected] and mention this forum.  I'll have to limit this to the first 10 people so I don't get in too much trouble, but I'd like to remove any obstacles for people who just want to give 500px a try.

3
Completely understand that. What I've done, personally, is just create sets and upload the whole series in to that set. Then I move maybe 1 or 2 photos in to my "Public Profile". The photos are still searchable but not visible on my profile page unless you visit my sets.

We recently changed the way "Fresh" works too in that we only show 3 of your latest uploads so we don't flood the entire page with all your uploads. We also only show a few uploads on the "Flow" page for your followers.

We're adapting and trying to find a good half point that still keeps 500px a photography community while having commercially viable imagery.

4
Nuno, maybe you can answer this question:
Are the pulse, the number of likes, favorites of the images etc. are taken into account in the search ranking for the market? It was cleary the case at the beginning (it was a marketing argument) but it less obvious today.
I like the fact that the community side matters for the market side, it is a specificity of 500px. Most pro microstocker will not share my opinion I think. I guess it is a question of position for 500px.

Nuno, could you please answer the question above?

I hope that likes and favorites don't play a part in the marketplace search results because I've found it to be a very fickle thing. I can upload an image and get no "likes" or "favorites" then delete the image and upload it again a couple hours later and get a bunch of "likes" within a few minutes. With likes/favorites timing is everything and I'd hate to think some of my best images fall through the cracks in the marketplace because I'd uploaded them at the wrong time.

Thanks!

It does play some part in it, but so do curations, relevancy, exact matching, etc.. We also have some other secret formulas but I will say that the community affection does play a part but it's only a part and not the entire formula. 

5
Personally I have some photos at 500px and some with other agencies. I've just figured out where each type of photo sells the best.


Nuno, can you give us an insiders view of what type of image sells best on 500px?

Is it "authentic stock" or "fine art"?
Are isolations a no-go?
Since you do have an app: Do mobile images sell?


To be honest, we're selling a lot of different genres except for the isolated on white stuff or the stuff that buyers know they can get at much cheaper prices elsewhere. What's "hot" lately is a lot of travel imagery and candid lifestyle type images.  Every week we send out a newsletter with some samples of the week's top sellers. This short list is actually a thought-out indication of the style and subject matter that sold that week. We also list the top searches and you'll see some trends there week after week.

We have sold mobile photos but they tend to be the ones that you wouldn't know were shot with a mobile until you saw it full-res or someone told you. Phones now are getting pretty great resolutions so it's almost a non-issue and some great "in the moment" type shots are captured with phones. Buyers say that that's the kind of stuff they want and my theory is that it's more about the content and "user generated" feel then the medium used to capture it. I really want to avoid using the word authentic here.  The mobile app, if I can sell it a bit here, is actually pretty cool in the sense that we provide access to your Lightroom Cloud library so you can upload from Creative Cloud right to 500px (with embedded keywords and all). It's no secret that a lot of the top instagrammers are shooting with mirrorless or dslr and not solely their phones (yes, generalization).

It sounds really complicated.

I'd say that's an understatement.  Just for starters - is there a single, clear, comprehensive document on the site, explaining all this and giving the big picture?


We try in product. Especially from the buyer's perspective - lots of dialogs and email exchanges as we walk them through the process. Agree that overall we should improve our contributor documentation beyond in-product and we have just launched the http://licensing.500px.com pages which are a start - but yes, we can do better and we are looking forward to it.

It sounds really complicated.

It actually sounds like 500px might be an opportunity for me, but anytime there's 'curation' there's inevitably a certain style and look that's desired.  The problem for a lot of us is that getting anything up there takes a serious amount of time and effort vs. a completely unknown probability of being 'curated' let alone making a sale, and we've all been down that road before.  Is there an audition process i.e. submitting a portfolio link to at least get a reaction?


We have this article here: https://iso.500px.com/introducing-the-next-evolution-of-the-500px-marketplace/
It is quite subjective and an organic process. We need humans to make these determinations so setting some kind of formula will always disappoint and since it's humans there may be calls we don't all agree with but are open to changing as market trends and context evolve. My job as Director of Content is try to keep some kind of consistency and make sure that the volume of sales is increasing for everyone participating. Sometimes it just makes sense to have your content in a lower priced collection in order to get the volume or that type of buyer. I have photos in both collections myself. The curations are somewhat anonymous in the sense that the editors do not know the photographer's name when they are reviewing the content.

If you'd like to submit a portfolio for me to review, I'd be open to it but please give me some time to get to it. I've found this community and even our groups are great places for peer review and dialog. My opinion may be no better than some of the pros on this site but like them I'd be into checking out some nice photos.

6
Totally understand. I hope we can make something work too :) I'm a fan of your work.

7
Buyers are always looking for an alternative and we've been fielding licensing requests since 500px first launched 6 years ago so we've now productized it and have seen some great traction (really happy a few photographers here are feeling that too). 500px is a community and it's one of the selling points to buyers. If they're looking for millions of $1 photos we're not a good fit for them. Because of the massive community and the effort on growing that, our organic reach and exposure is actually significantly larger than some of our stock photo competitors. So it's a value we can't ignore.

So not microstock by any means. What this means as a producer is a lower volume of sales but at a much higher royalty/price point so you don't need to sell as much. We're definitely carving out some niches and I've always maintained that there's a market for everything. Personally I have some photos at 500px and some with other agencies. I've just figured out where each type of photo sells the best. It's not about exclusivity but picking the best vendor for each type of product I have on offer.

8
The process is a bit confusing admittedly especially coming from a traditional stock photo agency perspective.

All photos are reviewed by a human for quality, legal and aesthetic issues. During that review the editor is able to "curate" the photo into the Prime Collection.

Prior to that happening, since we're a photo community site first, the photo is visible and searchable on the site immediately on upload with a "Request for License" button and the photo is listed as "Core Collection" pricing simply because we don't want to bait and switch a buyer with a higher price or downgrade the price on a photo after it's been reviewed - we'd rather raise prices upon review. As soon as we receive that request (we hold the buyers money in escrow to make sure it's a legit sale) we quickly review the photo (usually within an hour or two) and make the photo available to the buyer if everything is legit (quality, releases etc.) . If the photo is curated up the original buyer pays the Core price but subsequent buyers find the photo in the Prime Collection.

The same process happens for photos that aren't submitted to the marketplace (and where the photographer has enabled "requests" for their work - you can disable this). However, these are often longer turnarounds since we need to get the photographer's permission to license the photo and ask for releases, non-watermarked versions, etc.

Again, admittedly complex compared to traditional stock photo agencies, however, buyers can filter for "immediately available photos" but quite a few have liked being able to request photos that no other buyer has had an opportunity to purchase (especially if marked exclusive to 500px) so we'll work on developing this process so it's smoother and faster for everyone.

ETA: And yes, we'll only notify you via email if we need you to fix something upon review or if we're unable to license the photo. For editorial photos we ask for no filtering or post-processing with the exception of black and white and contrast/exposure adjustments which is pretty standard for news/journalism purposes.

9
All the current partners are listed here:

https://licensing.500px.com/distribution/

10
To clarify:
There's a minimum price agreement with each of the distributors that factors in the distributor's share so our photographers will continue to see comparable payouts to what they've come to expect from 500px even after the distributor's share. There is no maximum price guarantee and early reports are indicating some great royalties for our contributors.

There is no villainous intent. Quite a few of us have worked or been photographers in the business for a while which is why when we started looking at these partnerships they were for very strategic reasons with very specific requirements. As mentioned, it's an opportunity for us to work with sales and marketing teams all over the world who know their regions better than we ever will and expand our photographers reach by working with a single agency.

11
General Stock Discussion / Re: Here we go: 500px eroding prices
« on: August 26, 2015, 03:07 »
Let me just correct some misinformation:

The price difference between the two categories doesn't seem that great until you get to the largest size, but it does seem to make some midstock and some premium which isn't a bad idea - however, closing the collections based on "likes" by photographers active on the site doesn't seem like a great way to curate a collection IMHO.

The collections aren't curated by likes, there are actual editors (humans) who review photos and handpick photos for the Prime Collection.

I felt 500px had a lot of potential but only have a handful of photos on there since they seem to want us to buy into the system and I don't think the sales level justifies paying them to license my work, and honestly I was concerned I'd spend time uploading and find they had changed it to pay to play

You never have had to have a paid membership to contribute to the marketplace. If the concern was the limited number of uploads you get after your first 3 months (free premium membership) I'll gladly upgrade your account if you're interested in contributing to the marketplace and need to get your first batch up.

I feel like their commitment to protecting my work just isn't there. I really want them to succeed because I like their prices and it seems like in many ways they are really committed to photographers but their lax attitude toward image protection leaves me leery. I feel torn because I want to support a place that is working toward fair prices for photographers.

Watermarks are a small enforcement measure which is gradually becoming obsolete - but we will address ours and are currently in testing of new watermarks to ease concerns. The reality is watermarks are not the end-all solution - after a photo is licensed, your work is out there unwatermarked - possibly in higher resolutions with minimal protections. Try searching torrents by stock photo agency name. Not sure the savvy internet thief is wasting their time right-clicking on stock site photo pages but rather using Google Image search or just finding torrents of collections. /rant

We have a very active license compliance service that scours the internet and fines infringers on content marked as exclusive to 500px (money we pay back to our contributors - not sure how many other agencies do that). We're also very active with DMCAs and have some rudimentary technology to prevent easy "right-clicking" of unwatermarked images. TLDR; Watermarking is not the only way we're protecting our contributor's work, but it is something we're looking to improve.

12
General Stock Discussion / Re: Here we go: 500px eroding prices
« on: August 19, 2015, 08:48 »
I think the biggest issue is all about watermark  for me!!!
Joining. Still don't want to upload more images there just because of this problem.

It's still high on our list of things to do. While we focus on trying to get our contributors more sales by building features infront and behind the scenes, we're also working on things that our photographers are asking for. It's a balancing act no doubt wehn you have limited developer resources (we're hiring btw). Having said that, there is currently work being done on watermarking including reaching out to photographers on 500px and even in communities like this one to figure out what our next iterations will be.

13
General Stock Discussion / Re: Here we go: 500px eroding prices
« on: August 19, 2015, 08:45 »
Nuno, the curation seems a bit off.

Not the image quality which is very good but the collections themselves.

US Favourites has locations from all over the world, this image is also in UK Favourites.

https://prime.500px.com/photos/30725501/one-day-in-bagan-by-puchong-pannoi

Those galleries were based on "favorites" data from our community. So it is totally possible that people in both the UK and the US favorited the same photo.

14
General Stock Discussion / Re: Here we go: 500px eroding prices
« on: August 18, 2015, 15:26 »
EDIT: Something else: While checking my port to see which image went in which collection, I realized that several of my images are listed as exclusive even though I never marked a single image as such. Has anybody else noticed that problem?

Hey Marc, send us an email to [email protected] and we can fix that for you (or you can bulk edit using the photo organizer). By default the checkbox is unchecked so not sure what happened here and if we can figure out what happened I'd love to address it.

15
General Stock Discussion / Re: 500px - I'm confused
« on: July 23, 2015, 15:42 »
You do not need to be an active participant in the community to license photos and there's no bias for people who are commenting or liking / faving more than others. However, photos that are popular in our community will of course, organically, have higher visibility and SEO traffic. 

500px is primarily a photo community site. We didn't want to create a new company or abandon what we had already bulit. We're the same company, doing the same community site stuff we did before (and always will do) but now with a licensing platform tied to it due mostly in part by the demand of buyers in our community who wanted to legitimately license content. It's not for everyone and as a photographer, there are a few platforms I don't have the time for or don't want to participate in too. I think that's completely normal. 

The comments regarding the watermark are being heard loud and clear and we'll continue to work on it for sure. As I mentioned before, on this forum everyone wants watermarks, on other forums and channels people hate watermarks on 500px photos. We're trying to find a balance and it's not perfect and maybe never will be.. but we'll continue to work on it.

16
General Stock Discussion / Re: 500px - I'm confused
« on: July 23, 2015, 14:28 »
Oh.

Can i adjust the size and the placement of the watermark?

Not yet but it's something we'd like to do soon. We're hearing this feedback and evolving while trying to balance the community versus marketplace requirements.

17
General Stock Discussion / Re: 500px - I'm confused
« on: July 23, 2015, 13:46 »
Checkbox for watermarking, this is very good news. Do i still have to upload two sizes or will the full size be downsampled for the community section?

I'd really like to try it and i am a big community addict.

Yup, just need to upload the one size now and we downsample and if you want, watermark it.  We listened to the feedback here and pushed to get this feature out.  Would be great to have you participate in our community  8)

18
General Stock Discussion / Re: 500px - I'm confused
« on: July 23, 2015, 12:44 »
As a matter of curiosity, why do you have to force everyone into a photo-sharing community? I did that with Flickr for several years but I'm done with it. I'm interested in your photo-marketing site and I'd prefer to concentrate on that and not be bothered with the other.

Umm.. we kinda are a photo sharing community with the side benefiting of offering a licensing platform. There's a place for everyone and everything and totally cool if you're not interested in the community aspect. It does offer significant value though such as increased visibility. As a photo community / sharing site we have a very wide audience of all kinds of photo lovers and some of them are photo buyers who are looking for new and fresh photos all the time. It's worked out quite well and the demand from these buying "viewers" is what prompted 500px to launch the marketplace in the first place.

19
General Stock Discussion / Re: 500px - I'm confused
« on: July 23, 2015, 12:40 »

I'm still confused about the watermark situation. From previous reading on these and other forums, I was under the impression that the images on prime.500px are drawn from what the photographer posts on 500px and the watermarks are added in prime, leaving the original images on 500px unwatermarked. There was some discussion about the fact that if you wanted the 500px images watermarked, you had to upload them with your own watermarks and your post above seems to confirm this. But doesn't that mean the watermarks would be embedded in the images for sale on prime? And wouldn't the prime photos be double-watermarked?

Some people suggested uploading two sets of images to 500px -- low-res watermarked images for viewing on 500px and high-res unwatermarked images to be mirrored on prime. This would require a lot of extra work and unless the high-res images can be hidden on 500px (i.e. only visible as watermarked images on prime), it would be pointless.

I'd appreciate it if you could clarify these issues for me. I very much agree with others who've said the simplest solution would be for you to automatically watermark all the images from the get-go. Agreed, they're not bullet-proof protection against theft but that's no reason not to provide as much protection as possible.

Also, I'd like to know whether you offer image exclusivity or artist exclusivity. I'd be interested in the former, but not the latter.

What we've done recently is enabled a checkbox in the upload / photo manager interface to allow you to specify if you want the 500px watermark on your photos. We take the original and apply the watermark on the Prime site automatically and depending on your preference watermark on the 500px site. It won't double watermark and simply applies two different watermarks to two different versions. If you upload a watermarked photo (where you've added the watermark yourself) AND you select the option to watermark, then yes your photo will be double watermarked and ultimately rejected in the marketplace since we need unwatermarked versions.

We offer image exclusivity, and do not insist on artist exclusivity.

20
General Stock Discussion / Re: 500px - I'm confused
« on: July 23, 2015, 12:36 »
Regarding feedback:
With all due respect, the lack of an automatic watermark option across all display platforms is simply lame.

There's a checkbox that you can apply to all your photos at once (bulk editing yay!) and we do automatically watermark on the prime platform. We're considering remembering the state of the checkbox for all your uploads but are leaving it up to the photographer to decide their preference - we're not just a stock photo site and quite a few photographers do not want any watermarks on their work.

21
General Stock Discussion / Re: 500px - I'm confused
« on: July 23, 2015, 11:24 »
Hi PZF,

I'll try to clear up some confusion here, but always feel free to email [email protected] directly.

As with any stock photo site, we need you to upload the high-res versions of your photos. We display thumbnails and watermarked versions on the photo page on prime.500px.com. Since 500px is ALSO a photo community your photos also live there on your 500px profile page and photo pages.  You can choose to watermark those photos as well (or not depending your preference on how you want your photos displayed). Diddly watermarks? Perhaps subjective, but we're open to hearing feedback and honestly we're continuing the evolve.  We're trying to find a balance between being a great photo site that shows off amazing photos without distraction and protecting our contributor's work. We have some mechanisms in place including a very active License Enforcement Service for our exclusive photos (photos that have never been licensed now or previous on other platforms) that pays back the contributor when we collect fines as well as some standard protections, but the internet is what is and as you know watermarks alone will not solve internet image theft.

We only license Royalty-free. We are not supporting Rights managed at this time.

To help you mull:
500px offers one of the highest royalty rates in the industry (70%)
We work with all the major advertising agencies and quite a few big name brands
Are a pretty awesome photo site for sharing, socializing and getting inspiration
You don't have be exclusive with us to try it out
Prices on photos are above microstock prices so you don't need to rely on high volumes of sales

I've mentioned it before in these forums and publicly, but not every site is for everyone. You try each out, see where their strengths are and see if your content does well with their consumers (or what their buyers have come to expect from that platform). Try us out, see if we're a good fit.


22
Has anyone had upload problems with their system not reading metadata? I have unlimited uploads and can only upload about 10-20 at a time for their system to pull in the metadata.  I've had to go in two times and delete each image manually then scale back my uploads to get their system to read the metadata.  They have a glitch and need to acknowledge it.  When I upload, say, 50 images all 50 have pulled in one keyword and no title.  The title ends up pulling in the image file name, not the title in the metadata. They suggested I use the Mac uploader so I did. Same issue, so I have concluded that their system has some technical hiccups. Now I have to manually go in and delete hundreds of images manually and reup them 10 at a time. That won't take long, maybe a few months with all the spare time I have (my attempt at humor).

Had similar problems uploading with metadata fallout. I went along the same path with 10-20 images a batch. I noticed the success/failure of uploads timed with the busy periods, so would guess its to do with overloads. I ended up removing my folio as i found all my non-micro images that scattered all over the web. Would be cautious with these guys as they never paid out my account ($170 odd) for a sale in late September.

Hearing about the the uploader bug is a bit of a concern so I'll be looking into it. We have some plans on updating that portion of the site very soon as well as addressing some watermarking concerns.

What worries me a bit more is that you never got paid out? Can you email us at [email protected] and mention this forum. I'd like to get to the bottom of it right away.

23
You can upload a low-res watermarked version to 500px and then a high-res unwatermarked version to the store for licensing on Prime. So if you're concerned about what shows on 500px that's the best way to do it. On Prime we use the high-res version and downsize it and apply a 500px Prime watermark to that.

24
From Exclusive -> Non-Exclusive, this makes sense. We just prevented the checkbox for going the other way around since it didn't make sense based on our definition of Exclusivity and needed to have some communication with the contributor beforehand. I'll see if we can put some logic in the form to allow you to do this. Great suggestion.

25
If someone requests to license the file, our editors review the file within hours (often faster) and if it's good to go (releases, quality, etc.) we'll complete the sale right away. Otherwise we're looking at about a 2 week backlog of photos in our queue and now that our team here has ramped up, we're able to review files much faster so that wait time is steadily decreasing.

If you're concerned about the unwatermarked previews on 500px (photos on 500px Prime are watermarked) you can upload a low-res watermarked version of your photo to 500px and then a full-res unwatermarked version to your store (Prime).  There are some details on that in our "How to Submit Guide" here: http://bit.ly/Submit2Prime

We're looking at ways to implement automatic watermarking on 500px as well, but not sure on those timelines. In the meantime, there is the above work around which allows you to create your own watermarks as well for the social community side of 500px.

Not sure what you mean by 9 by 6?

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