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Messages - steheap
Pages: 1 2 [3] 4 5 6 7 8 ... 62
51
« on: November 04, 2020, 11:24 »
I thought this site had closed?
52
« on: November 03, 2020, 09:04 »
Strictly speaking, you are not allowed to use other people's work in your stock images and so using a sky from Photoshop or Luminar (unless it is one of your own sky pictures) is not allowed. It would be interesting to hear Matt from Adobe Stock's view on this? Although I don't know how to bring it to his attention!
Steve
53
« on: November 02, 2020, 17:16 »
I do wonder how much more you would be making now if things hadn't changed so much - or even if the agencies didn't get so greedy. I used to maintain a complicated graph showing the historic growth since 2010. Just for you, I updated it to bring it up to late 2020. Drawing a line from the trend before 2014 would take me somewhere around a regular and solid $6000 a month I would guess. Still, things are what they are and I just keep focused on the job in hand. Steve
54
« on: November 02, 2020, 09:23 »
Consistency, long term goal and not listening to the noise. It is stock market investing rule. The same rule applies here. I read about microstock apocalypse since 2011. or 2012. And listening to these "noise" I almost quit few times. Which would be a big mistake. If you are familiar with stock market investing in value stocks, Warren Buffet etc, you know what I mean. There is a stock market crash every few days. You have to sail through these ups and downs, which is much easier if you believe in what you do. All this is certainly true - I do read the MSG posts (not all of them!), but I rarely get involved in the arguments. I think about what people are saying and try to take that into account, but I have always just kept my head down and focused on what I think are going to become important topics in the news and particularly in comment articles. News articles often use real editorial shots to illustrate them, but the comment ones often just want something that is less "real time" to give the article a longer shelf life and so want a more conceptual header image. I try to think of (and create) those and I steadily try to improve my quality and not necessarily upload the first thing I think of. It is surprising how much better you get after a few iterations. Then upload those. Steve
55
« on: November 01, 2020, 17:43 »
Steve how in the world do you this every month? Make money. I guess I am reasonably good at what I do... 
57
« on: October 27, 2020, 08:42 »
I built one in the spring that is pretty close to your specs: https://backyardsilver.com/building-a-new-photo-and-video-pc/Although it isn't clear in the article, I did put my programs on the C drive and put the scratch file area on a second M.2 SSD I have my Lightroom catalog on the C drive - not sure that is the best place Steve
58
« on: October 25, 2020, 09:28 »
It has been quiet for me in the past week or so. The high bar is $10 so not a big earner...
59
« on: October 23, 2020, 13:32 »
Use Microstockr Pro... It will show you all your best sellers across all agencies or just at each agency separately
Steve
60
« on: October 05, 2020, 09:24 »
I wrote about my backup plan earlier in the year: https://backyardsilver.com/backup-plan-for-stock-photographers/Since then I have modified it by replacing the USB connected backup drive with a proper NAS in the basement which has an updated version (with older versions) of all my files and I plug a USB drive into that from time to time to take a copy of it in case some encryption malware gets into my system. It can't jump to an disconnected drive. I also have an Amazon prime membership and that gives me unlimited backup for Jpegs and so all my stock images (the jpegs with metadata included) gets uploaded to Amazon prime photo cloud storage as they are created. Steve
62
« on: September 28, 2020, 13:26 »
Apart from Alamy, I'm not aware that a "spam" keyword does anything to your ranking for an image.
63
« on: September 27, 2020, 14:33 »
You want opinions on FAA, you've come to the right place, I have them. Have you ever experimented with pricing - ie bring your margins low for a period to see if sales increase? I think if you have a sale it makes it a bit more likely for that file to appear higher in their own searches so getting some low margin sales might help when you put your prices up again Steve
64
« on: September 27, 2020, 09:19 »
The Paypal threshold totals are for the calendar year - so it is $20,000 AND 200 activities in that year. It resets in January, I believe.
Steve
65
« on: September 26, 2020, 09:16 »
One point to bear in mind with this strategy, Martha. Paypal has a threshold above which they send a tax form which complicates how you need to do your taxes in the USA. I think it is $20,000 and 200 transactions. So if you earn that much and make multiple requests for payout, you are likely to hit the 200 transactions threshold. With the bigger safer agencies I let my earnings collect over a few months before I request payout.
Steve
67
« on: August 26, 2020, 08:27 »
Whosvegas - one thing I talk about a lot on my blog - you need to be able to explain the use case (at least to yourself) when taking and uploading images. Unless you can explain how someone would pay for and use your image, then it isn't really worth uploading. I think a number of your images suffer from a distinct lack of "use case".
Steve
68
« on: July 31, 2020, 08:56 »
Hi Steve and Noodle,
Whats the point of paying and uploading, spending time just for likes?
Just to be in community? OK! But I thought SS was notorious for 10c. but 4c.? Can't believe it :-( I don't pay, and don't upload. I just added these images during a free 30 day trial. Steve
69
« on: July 29, 2020, 09:44 »
I've got 2400 images uploaded during a free month trial of the Pro membership. I have sold one image in 2020 - and received $0.42 from Getty. Although when researching this answer, I noticed that I had 485 images accepted for licensing and 1915 declined - mainly due to low commercial value. One of those was my best selling coronavirus shot that has made $950 on other sites in the past 4 months or so. So my advice would be - don't waste your time.
Steve
70
« on: July 28, 2020, 09:39 »
Yes, although each time you get a sale, you tend to get a swarm of (It's exceptional, I Love it) so I think that probably helps with pushing that image higher. They sell a lot of images of old world war 2 fighter planes in the skies. Probably people like those on their wall.
I don't ever go to the site except to look at my occasional sales so it isn't necessary to spend a lot of time liking other images. Although you perhaps need to do that to get started these days?
steve
71
« on: July 28, 2020, 09:24 »
This is what they said about the change to contributor payouts: Cost of Revenue. Cost of revenue decreased by $4.7 million, or 7% to $63.8 million in the three months ended June 30, 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, due to lower royalty expense, content procurement costs and depreciation and amortization expense, partially offset by higher costs associated with website hosting, hardware and software licenses as well as increased credit card fees. The reduction in royalty expenses was driven by the 6% decline in paid downloads due to the impact of COVID-19 as well as a change in the way we remunerate contributors. We expect that our cost of revenue will fluctuate in line with changes in revenue and paid downloads. So even though this only impacted one month of the quarter, they did show a significant drop in the cost of their revenue. I believe the annual report will spell out the components of the cost of revenue more clearly and you will be able to see how payments to contributors have changed. So I think it is clear they are paying out less and they have also tied that cost more clearly to revenue than it was with the old scheme. They are not going to go back on this, in my view. Steve
72
« on: July 28, 2020, 09:15 »
All of my sales (about 11 so far) have all been of the UK. 9 of them are the same photo of the beach (which I think shows that once you have sold an image it tends to rank higher) and a glance at the new sold images across the site seems to show a preponderance of UK locations:
Steve
73
« on: July 27, 2020, 14:48 »
Thanks Oscar!
Steve
74
« on: July 27, 2020, 09:11 »
I had 2 years with no sales, but then have sold 4 prints in the past 2 months. it always tends to be the same print (of a beach sunset in England) and I think their sales are often very UK based (ie places in the UK)
Steve
75
« on: July 16, 2020, 08:42 »
And, of course, you can always read two of the honest books on how to get started in stock photography! You might find a link somewhere here.... Steve
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