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Messages - pancaketom
Pages: 1 ... 74 75 76 77 78 [79] 80 81 82 83 84 ... 88
1951
« on: March 28, 2011, 14:24 »
I got a .10 royalty before they cut the %, so I guess that could get rounded down to .07
That is pretty sad.
1952
« on: March 28, 2011, 13:49 »
Maybe DT should go through the free bin and delete anything they think is similar to images on sale. I bet that would clear out 99% of them.
In any case I am set to disable, if someone wants those images they can buy them elsewhere.
1953
« on: March 18, 2011, 08:14 »
They could also really push agency or other content not from MSG members, which would tend to hurt all of us, but possibly help their "sustainability"
1954
« on: March 18, 2011, 00:33 »
Its too early to tell as IS has been so sporadic and random for the last few months for me.
1955
« on: February 25, 2011, 19:39 »
I got that notice w/ PS too, but it didn't seem to stop me from editing the bill. Maybe it would have stopped me from printing it? In any case, don't copy money, print it out, and try to pass it. Don't sell flat scans or images of bills, and you should be fine.
1956
« on: February 25, 2011, 17:19 »
I've done this experiment a few times while traveling. In general I'd say that there are so many other variables that mask the results. I think maybe SS does go down a bit, but otherwise I haven't seen much differences. Certainly the best match changes at IS make a much bigger difference.
1957
« on: February 25, 2011, 17:14 »
I have a feeling that if you took your best seller and posted it in the critique forums saying it just got rejected and how could they do that etc. etc. at least some of the people would defend the reviewers and point out all the problems with your best seller image. They might even be right, for the most part the technical requirements are not as critical as the others as far as getting sales. That doesn't mean that the technical requirements don't matter, but especially for small size images and web use it is not as critical as the microstocks would make you think.
Getting rejections is part of this business. Sometimes they are right, sometimes they aren't. Sometimes it happens with an image you have high hopes for. Tweak it and resubmit it or don't bother. It can be frustrating and demotivating, but if you can't handle that occasionally happening this isn't the business for you.
One of the best things about being at a number of sites is usually by the time the image gets rejected it has already been accepted elsewhere and perhaps even had sales.
1958
« on: February 18, 2011, 21:40 »
IS standards tend to be somewhat contrary to the others. I often found IS would take the images the others would reject and vice versa. They tend to prefer less processing (although the ones with lots of processing that get through often sell well). All the sites tend to vary by the reviewer - one batch gets more rejects for one reason, a later batch of images from the same shoot gets all accepted while another might get lots of rejects for a completely different reason.
In any case that is what my experience was, your mileage may vary.
1959
« on: February 18, 2011, 15:11 »
Certainly some shallow DOF images work well, maybe it is just that I am a bit of an odd duck and I often want to look at something other than the tiny bit in focus and get frustrated. I do find it useful to think about why someone chose the DOF they did and the specific focus point. It is a quite powerful tool to direct the viewers attention. Stepping back and looking at the image as a whole is also a good exercise.
W/ macros you are almost forced to use a shallow DOF anyway unless you want to do focus stacking, so you might as well use it. I do wish the stocks took more shallow DOF images for macros.
I do quite like cilantro, although I can taste the soapy flavor too.
1960
« on: February 18, 2011, 13:47 »
Some of those pics, made me blink a few times like I had some crud in my eye messing up the focus, or maybe my glasses were smudged... to me that is taking the reverse tilt-shift / shallow DOF too far (unless you are trying to sell optical services). In some others it worked well for me. In general I am not super happy with really shallow depth of field images (for example when the nose, eyelashes, and anything behind the edge of the eyes is out of focus in a portrait). I realize that is just my personal taste though and every once in a while a shallow DOF image grabs me though, so it isn't always bad.
Maybe the only thing that annoys me more than the reverse tilt shift shallow depth of field slice is when it is done in PS so it is some weird stripe across the image in focus that has nothing to do with the distance from the lens.
On the flip side I like harsh shadows and dark images, so I haven't completely gone for the microstock kool-aid.
1961
« on: February 17, 2011, 13:13 »
If I had the power (and I most definitely do not), I'd have stopped IS sales cold in the water the day they announced the commissions cuts and kept them that way 'til they rescinded (hopefully within a few days). Of course I don't have that power. If I did you can bet FT wouldn't have done it a few months later though.
Now If I was telling buyers to go get their stuff for free from Flickr because I was mad at IS, that would be for revenge and make no sense. Sending buyers somewhere that offer a better return to the artists makes a lot of sense for those artists. Of course you want to send them somewhere that has a decent site and reasonable search and isn't likely to go bust in the next month etc. etc. too. I somewhat doubt that anything we do will have much impact, but it seems nuts to do the marketing for a sites that take a huge percentage of each sale for marketing (or something), especially if the impact of most of that marketing is to take sales away from sites that pay us better returns.
1962
« on: February 16, 2011, 13:59 »
Once you get caught up with the uploading, I think you will find that the $$ made from the other sites makes up for your exclusive droppage (is that a word?  )
That is the million-dollar question. If I didn't have to account for Vetta, Agency, and E+, it might be easier to quantify. But when one Vetta sale nets more than 50-100 shutterstock sales, it's hard to justify. Even one small E+ sale can account for 20+ SS sales. I go back and forth between desiring the "security" of having my eggs spread into multiple baskets, but ultimately, the high returns of being exclusive on iStock have outweighed the benefits of diversifying. I understand it is different for everyone though. Just expressing my thought process on the matter.
I am guessing that if you have a good number of vetta and E+ at IS and they sell, then exclusive is your best option. If you can't crack those clubs or the images you do get in just don't see many sales then being all over is probably a better option. That is just my guess though.
1963
« on: February 16, 2011, 13:55 »
I made more there in 2008 (and I uploaded more that year). I was barely down in 2009 (at a higher return but less downloads) and up (above 2008 levels for $ but not DL) in 2010. I almost doubled my port in 2008, and increased it by 70% over the next 2 years. The DL #s and $ in general have picked up lately but I have been uploading fairly regularly too. No ELs lately either. New images definitely don't get the downloads they used to though. I don't know how that will play out over the long run. I am guessing that for the people with fairly big old ports this is better and for the people trying to start out now it is worse.
My all time best seller got onto the newest first page just before they had a computer glitch so it stayed there for a week or so before they got the indexing fixed. That was enough to put it on the best match first page where it has been ever since (It is a good image too, but had I uploaded it a few days later it probably would have just been buried forever).
1964
« on: February 15, 2011, 12:05 »
As I understand it, you shouldn't have to pay any more taxes no matter what (unless you haven't been paying taxes on this income before). The whole idea is to catch people who make serious money through paypal but don't pay any taxes on it.
Still, it is more likely to raise an audit flag and be an accounting mess and if you are close to the threshold it might be worth juggling things a bit to avoid it.
1965
« on: February 14, 2011, 13:49 »
pissing matches aside, I see 2 separate questions here.
1. can we do anything to change the traffic IS and Fot get. (if so, what)
2. should we (obviously for exclusives, no).
as for 1, I am not sure anything we actually do will make any noticeable difference, but if we could, then I think we should - I'm willing to give it a try.
as for 2, I think we should. If nothing else it will make the greedy bean counters over there think a little longer about it when they plan to screw us again. Besides I'd much rather make $5 off of a 10$ sale than 3 something from a $20 sale.
Unfortunately we all are on the losing side of the supply/demand curve.
1966
« on: February 14, 2011, 12:21 »
Nice. I like being able to sort by upload date. I would like to be able to click on an image in my portfolio and go it's page here though. I would also like to see the 0 sellers in here too although that might be a bit depressing.
1967
« on: February 14, 2011, 11:56 »
Wouldn't you agree that hard work trumps talent?
Not a chance. True talent always beats hard work (e.g. you can work at your running as hard as you like but you're not going to beat Bolt).
I'm guessing Bolt puts in more work than most too.
1968
« on: February 12, 2011, 21:07 »
Ok. Maybe I gave bad samples. I agree.
What about this two.
Accepted 
Refused 
Are these two pictures similar? Well I can't find any other photo within my port
tagged with pollution apart from monitors.
Still, the second one was refused.That is what I was talking about.
The point is:
In most of the cases when iStock reject there must be reason Dreamstime reject without reason.
Anyway thank you all for your replies and your opinions.
would you prefer "artifacts" as the rejection reason? Actually I quite agree with you that they reject too many similars of some stuff that isn't similar at all. Above a few - I agree w/ the reviewer - too much white space on the side of the apple
1969
« on: February 12, 2011, 21:04 »
after one sale he would be up to 19%
But only for a year?
Artist "I sold a print for one million dollars, I should get 20 percent now" IS "yeah, that million dollar sale is nice and all, but what have you done for me lately? besides, money isn't what is going to make you happy"
1970
« on: February 12, 2011, 19:53 »
Sure Veer had some issues with the DFC - it took longer than they said it would for reviews - it took 2 extra months for me to get paid because I was late in getting all the images reviewed and then there was a paypal issue. Still, they fixed it and I did get paid. I am satisfied w/ the acceptance ratio - it was similar to other sites. Sure I'd love to see sales go up more, and I have a few messed up keywords I'd have fixed if I could, but all in all I have no major complaints, and the DFC gives them a pretty big cushion in my mind to get their sales up to full speed.
1971
« on: February 11, 2011, 19:29 »
I had one like that rejected for limited commercial value
1972
« on: February 10, 2011, 18:05 »
A lot of the sites are trying to improve things with various tweaks, but they are mostly all hampered by the weak link - the keywords, this is especially bad at the sites that split apart multiple work keywords. The problem for contributors is different for buyers, because if there are 100 images (or 1000s) that would work for the buyer, any of them would be fine, but the contributor wants the buyer to at least see their specific image. Looking at the search terms that DT provides most of the searches are one or 2 words, but if a buyer wants to drill down to more specific images they need to have more specific searches.
Still, for example in SS you can choose various properties that are linked to model releases.
IS could have locked things up with their CV, but in my opinion the way they implemented it both encouraged spam and makes things that aren't in the CV but are similar just not work at all. They could still come up with something that works well, but I haven't seen much encouragement there lately. The few times I tried their search it just didn't work at all, so who knows what is happening with it.
1973
« on: February 08, 2011, 20:49 »
I think they also set targets a bit high because if they had to raise them that would have brought an even bigger s@#$storm and if too many people made them that would have been "unsustainable". Still, with all the site problems I think people aren't getting what they were expecting.
1974
« on: February 05, 2011, 19:25 »
350 $ per month at all the sites once all the images are up with the vast bulk coming from SS at first. If you do 200 new images per month, this will rise rapidly. (DT will drop to about 50/mo)
I just pulled these #s out of the air, but it is vaguely based on the ratio I get between DT and the others. Please tell us how it works out.
1975
« on: February 05, 2011, 13:36 »
it seems to be working now. Thanks for the replies.
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