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Messages - stockmn
151
« on: July 26, 2014, 10:55 »
Can help myself again, sorry...
"I can't promise but if you expand you portfolio and your sales grow, you will be moved to the next level with higher commissions"
I can't promise but if you mark up my prices and my sales grow, you will have chance to sell (more of) my work with this higher commissions
Or don't bother.
That's about the size of it. I've stopped uploading to DP over this cr*p. The agencies just push and push. When they push too far they back off and give in just a tiny little bit to get us back to business as usual. Then they they slowly start pushing again.
152
« on: July 02, 2014, 18:42 »
What I found was virtually my entire collection of footage (2,000+) clips for sale on Dissolve for $5 each! Another agency, without my knowledge, had made a lousy deal with Dissolve (sound familiar?).
Granted the lousy deal was the other agencies fault but Dissolve selling my HD clips or anyone else's for $5 was selling the entire stock footage marketplace down a hole!! The other agency responded by raising the prices on my clips at Dissolve to $150 each to accommodate for the lousy royalty percent of a percent deal.
I have not encountered video sites redistributing my clips at partner sites. I opt out of (photo) partner sites every time I can. Can you tell us what site placed your clips without your knowledge? I'd like to make sure I'm not falling into a similar trap.
Thanks
The agency in question was T3Media (not a microstock company). In the micro world, thus far, I have only found one company (ClipDealer) who distributed my clips to another site (Deposit Photos) without my knowledge. Because of this I stopped contributing new material to ClipDealer.
153
« on: July 02, 2014, 15:23 »
Unfortunately, my personal experience with Dissolve was anything but positive and professional. When I first heard of Dissolve many months ago I went to check it out. What I found was virtually my entire collection of footage (2,000+) clips for sale on Dissolve for $5 each! Another agency, without my knowledge, had made a lousy deal with Dissolve (sound familiar?).
Granted the lousy deal was the other agencies fault but Dissolve selling my HD clips or anyone else's for $5 was selling the entire stock footage marketplace down a hole!! The other agency responded by raising the prices on my clips at Dissolve to $150 each to accommodate for the lousy royalty percent of a percent deal.
Once I had been notified that the prices had been changed I went back to look again. The prices had indeed been changed but I then found that Dissolve had made one of my clips a free clip of the month. Other agencies do this, of course, but they have the decency to ask first and allow the contributor to choose the clip!
Needless to say I had the other agency remove all of my footage from Dissolve and I was told that I would receive some sort of compensation for the two weeks they had been giving my clip away. I would have been truly surprised if that had come to pass but of course it didn't.
Again, I realize that the other agency was the real dirty dealer here but Dissolves unique selling point of offering HD footage for $5 was/is detrimental to the footage marketplace. It looks from what I can tell like they may have abandoned the $5 clip pricing but if theyve done it once it shows their shady side and they may do it again. All that aside, at this point I would not be inclined to join a startup agency for a crummy 30% royalty rate.
154
« on: October 09, 2013, 15:32 »
Ironically, when you look at Getty now it's filling with endless amounts of Flickr junk.
Getty blocked most of their photographers from submitting to anything but Photographers Choice years ago and have been adding an endless supply of Flickr cr*p daily for the last few years. How is that a good business plan? Probably because they pay the Flickr photographers less.
I think PC pays the same as Flickr doesn't it? 20% for RF.
Yes, RF that's true. I was thinking more of RM which pays 40% in home territory and 30% rest of world as opposed to the 30% flat rate that I believe Flickr photographers get.
155
« on: October 09, 2013, 14:09 »
Ironically, when you look at Getty now it's filling with endless amounts of Flickr junk.
Getty blocked most of their photographers from submitting to anything but Photographers Choice years ago and have been adding an endless supply of Flickr cr*p daily for the last few years. How is that a good business plan? Probably because they pay the Flickr photographers less.
156
« on: May 19, 2013, 21:51 »
We'll I've had a couple thousand clips up since video went live on Alamy and I've had just one sale. It was for less than the lowest amount listed in their online calculator. Keep hoping things might change for the better.
157
« on: April 22, 2013, 20:35 »
I was surprised to get this email from ClipCanvas as my sales with them have been growing significantly over the last year and have become a solid monthly earner. They have always seemed to be a great group of people and I have liked working with them. While I appreciate their honesty, a reduction in contributor royalties is a slippery slope and does not bode well for their long term survival. If an agency needs to cut royalties in order to survive then maybe they shouldn't survive.
158
« on: March 25, 2013, 16:59 »
Love the photography up at Stocksy! Having said that, it's not imagery that I think will sell at a high volume. Which, of course, is fine but if that's the case the prices are kinda low. Speaking of pricing, it seems to be at a mid-stock level. What agency that has entered the market with mid-stock pricing has ever succeeded? There may be one but I can't think of it.
It'll be interesting to see where Stocksy goes from here. I wish them the best!
Edited to add: Forget what I said about mid-stock pricing. I hadn't yet seen the extended pricing options. Definitely not mid-stock.
159
« on: March 21, 2013, 23:17 »
Sounds like this is in preparation to moving more content over to Getty. Independent video at a 15% royalty rate anyone?
160
« on: March 05, 2013, 17:13 »
I've had a photoshelter account for years and as others have said it is quite easy to set-up and manage. Their taking a % of sales is a bit of a sticking point with me as they don't bring me any sales. So in addition to what I pay monthly/annually I have to pay them a % of the sales that I bring in myself.
In addition, after all of these years, they still don't offer the ability to host and license a video collection.
161
« on: March 03, 2013, 19:21 »
Signed it!
162
« on: March 03, 2013, 16:55 »
A bit off topic but I just searched Pinterest with my name and a bunch of my images came up from Fine Art America. A few had FAA watermarks but MANY large images did not. The image without watermarks say they were pinned from FAA. Not sure how these full page images of mine without watermarks came from FAA. Maybe when you pin something from FAA there are times where a watermark is not applied?
As of right now I'm thinking that the chance for an occasional sale at FAA is not worth my work being made available like this.
163
« on: February 19, 2013, 00:36 »
Thanks everyone for the info and telling it like it is! I've read in the archives here about the inability to update while keeping any customization intact. I've looked at several sites built with the most recent version of Ktools and it seems as if the underscore vs dash in the url's may have been addressed as I haven't seen anything but dashes in sites made with the newest version.
I'm liking what I'm seeing with Ktools but can see that I would need to work with any limitations encountered (ie. keeping the customizations to a minimum if I want to upgrade easily in the future). To be honest my number one reason for considering a Ktools site is the ability to license footage. It isn't easy to find a competing product that will handle video let alone the workflow to make it happen. I've been following the couple other projects that are in the works on this forum but so far it sounds like licensing video is not a major objective.
If there are any other considerations or downsides that I may have missed please feel free to chime in!
164
« on: February 18, 2013, 21:00 »
Understandable, but sad. I'm certainly going to keep my eyes on solutions other than KTools as I can't find much good to say about it given your experiences with it. Perhaps Michael Jay will start selling his web site in addition to selling Stock?
I didn't want to hijack the thread that the above quote from jsnover came from so I started a new topic. I've been considering a Ktools site. Based on experiences, what are the downsides that I should be aware of? The software seems pretty well put together but I'm no expert in selling direct. So is it the Ktools software itself that is frustrating or do the frustrations have more to do with trying to get customers to a small site in a "one stop shopping" kind of world?
165
« on: February 15, 2013, 13:15 »
Curious.....absolutely! Heard anything?.....Nope. Facebook group....Nope. Obviously, I realize this will take a bit to get Stocksy off the ground sales wise but I would like to know more of the details as it may (or may not) affect some of my business decisions and planning going forward depending on whether I want to be part of this or not. Come on Stocksy, spill the beans! 
166
« on: February 14, 2013, 02:23 »
if it helps at all stockmn, I have played with the Sell Media plugin a bit and the first thing I noticed was it REALLY depends on what theme you have running. On one theme it had major conflict issues, that even managed to extend into the Dashboard/Admin area! On others, not so bad, just some display issues that CSS would probably fix.
My project is on hold until Kona's theme, the other software being written by elvinstar is finished, and then Sell Media will be a little older and well tested too. Then have 3 possible solutions to consider before moving forward.
Thanks Microstock Man that helps make a bit more sense of the Sell-Media plugin and confirms what I've experienced with it so far. With my current WP theme everything thing I've uploaded is badly formatted and/or doesn't work (like watermarks). I've wondered if a different theme would work better.
167
« on: February 11, 2013, 22:48 »
Sell Media does not have the watermark feature in the free version, but there are other watermark plugins created by other developers.
I've tried this as well, it's not easy, one has to take a lot of time to make it work. But I have to pass on this one.
There's a MSG member KonaHawaii, who's working on a WP theme for microstock selling. Check the topic out at the General Discussion.
Thank you Jeffrey, I appreciate your post. I'm aware of the wordpress solution that is being worked on by KonaHawaii. I'll be keeping my eye on that as well. The difficult part for me, as I've come to find, is that I'm looking for a solution for both stills and video. Sell-Media is supposed to be designed for both but so far I'm having trouble implementing it.
168
« on: February 11, 2013, 17:26 »
Anything new on the Sell-Media plugin? Love the idea but not having much success getting it to work properly. I've added the watermark plugin but when I activate it the image the watermark is supposed to be protecting disappears from view. They've added some sort of support for multiple sizes but again I can't figure it out. I've built several wordpress sites in the past so it's not that I'm just clueless
169
« on: February 10, 2013, 20:50 »
This project sounds great and could be just what we've all been looking for! I'd like to know, however, if it is just being designed for images or will it support video as well? Video is my primary interest.
170
« on: December 17, 2012, 02:24 »
123rf please go ahead and add a "Delete Entire Portfolio" button.
Your prices are too low, your discounts are too high and your overall sales aren't high enough to pull a stunt like this and get away with it.
So instead of uploading a couple thousand videos I'm just gonna hit that delete button instead.
171
« on: December 05, 2012, 20:22 »
Jeez dude, why the hostility? Your questions below have been addressed already in this and other PE threads. If you don't like it, don't participate....it's just that simple. Huh, and here's another thought I just had. For all we know, this 'may' even be a scam. For all we know, there may never be any intention to go live but to collect money with the promise of doing so. For all we know, the site doesn't even work. For all we know PE could be set up to appear to be a search engine but it isn't. If it's a search engine, why is only 'picking' up corbis and deposit photos? Where's the rest of them? We don't know anything about Justin, PE or their other sites that they're supposedly connected with.
For all we know, the 90 day free trial period 'may' also be a scam. If anyone signed up, I suggest you log into your PayPal account, go to Profile, click on My Money and then look to see if there are any automated payments set up to pay PE the full amount annually after the 90 day free period. I've been caught out with hosting companies doing dodgy things like that. Please go and check. If there's something there, block it. Also read any fine print very carefully.
172
« on: December 04, 2012, 14:35 »
With nearly 4K files on line I must say I find PE a bit late in the day to emerge. A couple of years back it would probably been Ok but now micro seems to be like flogging a dead horse. With the exeptions of SS, DT and IS, it just doesnt produce anymore. As many have said previously, micro is probably back in the hands of the amateurs, where it all started.
The missed point here I think is that PE isn't designed to be a "Microstock" site. While micro pricing is accommodated so is traditional RM and RF pricing. I think in the short term, at least, it will appeal more to professional picture buyers rather than the masses.
173
« on: December 01, 2012, 19:29 »
Where did you see clips being sold on their site? The search option for videos isn't showing on my end.
Correct. Videos are not an option to be searched directly. I simple searched for "footage" with all files selected and some videos come up. The full HD pricing shows as $35. This may or may not be what they are actually charging for footage. If it is then it is a non-starter for me.
174
« on: November 30, 2012, 18:33 »
Still not seeing video live at DP, hopefully they are re-thinking their commissions
] Hopefully they are re-thinking their pricing too. I looked at a clip or two on their website and they were charging $35 for a full HD clip!
175
« on: November 24, 2012, 15:52 »
Isnt paying 500 dollar for a service to get 100% of the sales price, the same as submitting to an agency and get a % commission?
No it isn't the same:
At Picture Engine you pay $500 for a 100% commission but this might stilll result in 0 sales due to being new in the industry.
But uploading a good portfolio to SS could easily pay you$2000-$5000 a month even after with a %35 commission...
No doubt it's a risk and I agree they are starting off with prices too high for having no track record. They're pricing too many people out from the get go and if prices are raised once the sites out of beta they'll price out even more. It's a great idea and a model that could really help image creators create a stable sales environment for themselves. I'm willing to take a risk but at this price if I haven't made enough to cover a renewal by the end of the 1yr there won't be one from me. The big unknown for me is that I don't know where they are getting their customers from or how they intend to get them.
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