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Messages - sharpshot
Pages: 1 ... 4 5 6 7 8 [9] 10 11 12 13 14 ... 263
201
« on: July 26, 2017, 02:36 »
The agencies obviously aren't that bothered by this because I'm sure it would be possible to prevent it happening if they really wanted to. If they do take all the money when they close an account like this, they're making more than they would if they had to pay the copyright holder. It's hard to think of any other reason why they don't do more to stop people selling stolen images on their sites?
202
« on: July 25, 2017, 11:09 »
So DREAMSTIME got back to me and said that he is "LICENSED TO RESELL IT" and NOT in violation of copyright. what? I fired back a nasty response and we shall see. But according to DREAMSTIME, this is allowed.
If that's true, we need to know what site he got the license from, so we can remove our images.
203
« on: July 25, 2017, 03:05 »
And they don't care where the money comes from. The contributor or a thief, makes no difference to them.
In the end the company always win and the artist loses... 
I just don't see how it's legal to make money from stolen goods? The buyer has purchased a license but is that legal because the image was stolen? The site has taken all of the money from the buyer and the original copyright holder receives no compensation. Do any of the sites inform the copyright holder about stolen images? Isn't this going to end in tears for the sites one day? When none of us can make money selling image licences, it will probably be more lucrative to try and get money back from lost earnings from these stolen images. When our images have been stolen and sold on the same sites that could probably easily prevent this happening, I think they are taking a big risk.
204
« on: July 24, 2017, 16:56 »
I just don't get why the sites can't use something to detect these portfolios. Is it really that difficult? I doubt they inform buyers what's happened, because then they would have a reason to prevent it happening. I presume they take all the money, so it could be financially beneficial for them?
205
« on: July 23, 2017, 02:36 »
I like buying a cheap body because I don't think it matters much. The money I save goes on lenses. I do like having different sensor sizes, from full frame to my phone. They all have their uses. I have spent more on camera bodies in the past but it seemed like wasted money.
206
« on: July 23, 2017, 02:07 »
This is finally motivating me to work on other ways to sell my photos. Would be great to ditch microstock one day, it was fun a decade ago but none of the sites have made it possible for me to have a sustainable income. So there's no choice other than delving in to other options.
207
« on: July 20, 2017, 08:55 »
If you're out shooting nature, or someone hiking or something, I imagine the photographer has to hide behind a tree to not be in the shot. Really anywhere, you'd have to start it and hide, right?
There's usually somewhere to hide or I can cut myself out when editing. Just take two photos and move to a different place and it's easy.
208
« on: July 18, 2017, 06:21 »
I hated Elements. I do no like LR and ye it mostly for watermarking.
I was forced into the subscription when I sent my computer into HP for warranty repair and they removed all software in process of repair. Suddenly my license number did not work when I reinstalled it from my CD. I am so mad at HP-- that free warranty repair cost me a fortune.
I think I would try another program if they keep raising price.
It seems to me that PS puts a lot of noise into images when one uses the slightest changes in much of anything.
For that PS license, I have heard that in order for it to work again you have to deactivate and then reactivate the license.
Here's a thread with some info regarding a similar issue. Hope it helps. 
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1315428
I had a similar situation and I just called Adobe and they deactivated my old version, enabling me to use the license number.
209
« on: July 17, 2017, 17:30 »
At the beginning, they were trying to get their rental program off the ground by forcing people. Now the program has lots of subscribers, perhaps they will be concerned about the money they're leaving on the table by not selling licenses - or about putting Affinity Photo out of business.
I sure hope they don't try to go after AP. I really detested PSE when I was using it and I wouldn't go back to it even as a stand-alone program, much less a subscription. AP is much, much better.
I'll admit I do my work in Elements and am largely satisfied. It doesn't have CMYK or the basic vector tools full Photoshop has, but for regular photos it competes above its paygrade, at least for me. One thing that is a challenge is using both Elements and full Photoshop. For some strange reason some of the keyboard shortcuts and menus are in different places...
I did use Elements for many years and it was sufficient for the level of processing I do. But I was afraid it would eventually be moved to subscription too and I didn't want to go there. I wasn't sure I'd have a choice but when I saw what AP could do, it wasn't hard to make the switch.
From reading the Affinity forums, it seems a lot of people were motivated by a desire to get away from the PS subscription model. I haven't paid any attention to what's been happening with Elements for more than a year now, but I was under the impression that it has already been migrated to subscription.
Elements isn't subscription and I would be surprised if it ever was because it's for people who don't want to spend much. Adobe probably use Elements to draw people in to the full version.
210
« on: July 17, 2017, 11:17 »
That is interesting. I didn't even know that matters. I looked it up and it's 3:2. I had written to Fotolia and they replied that I should take images with 16:9 aspect ratio. I was astonished about that. I don't mind doing that for landscape images but I never got the idea to do my table top images in 16:9.
16:9 is used for video, so perhaps they thought you were asking about that? I use the full sensor or square format for stills.
211
« on: July 16, 2017, 13:13 »
Their business model of unlimited streams is unique, although it seems to only further screws contributors. However, I'll keep an eye out for where their business goes soon and whether they'll do enough to attract quality contributors and keep them there.
Does anybody believe there's any "Low earners" which are up and coming...perhaps some of the mobile phone/cell phone friendly sites like Stockimo, Foap and EyeEm? I've never submitted any mobile phone pics but heard that there's some people making good money with it as it provides a more personal and authentic feel that some buyers like, apparently.
What I found strange was that there were no sales from their unlimited streaming when I opted in. Perhaps my images were being used but the amount made was too small to register? I opted out of unlimited streaming because it was obvious that I wasn't going to make money from it. After selling nothing for a year, I dumped them. One of the few low earners that I have left, they really can't have many buyers if sites like FeaturePics sell more than they do. They were a decent site but that was many years ago and now I wouldn't trust them.
212
« on: July 16, 2017, 11:12 »
There's so many cheap or free alternatives to photoshop, I have no idea why people pay so much for it? I can understand the high earners and those that are professional photoshop users but it seems unnecessary for most people that do microstock. If people don't want to learn new software, Photoshop elements and a few plugins should be good enough.
213
« on: July 14, 2017, 15:57 »
Some months I make more money from the low earners than the top tier. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing
214
« on: July 13, 2017, 03:11 »
My earnings with FT peaked in 2009. Since 2012, I have been getting less than 30% of that. Adobe seem to of made absolutely no difference to me.
215
« on: July 13, 2017, 03:05 »
you're talking like you're a bigtime expert to all those contributors reporting a shortfall of 50% like you were with sh*tterstock longer than them . like as though they are green behind their ears and not know how to keyword properly. they were making lots of money for many years and then suddenly they forgot how to keyboard properly, except for you LOL
In the beginning, you don't need to keyword properly. All you had to do was upload, put in some basic keywords and everything sells like hotcakes without much competition. It's no different than websites in the early days of the internet that doesn't require meticulous SEO like today. With so much competition today, mediocre keywording just doesn't cut it anymore.
I've looked at a lot of portfolios and majority of contributors don't know how to keyword properly. Most contributors rely on single keywords instead of longtail keywording techniques. Some use too few keywords. Many contributors treat keywording as a chore, so they put very little effort into it. So yes, you can still be inexperienced despite being in the game for a long time.
It doesn't matter to me if some people think I'm some pretend expert. Results are the only thing that matters to me. I had 3 large SODs a few days ago, all from the same set. If the buyer didn't find one of my images, he wouldn't have bought all 3. Those sales could have gone to someone else. I see keywording as being in the right place at the right time.
Good keywording is important but if the "Buyer searched for" info with DT is accurate, I don't think it needs to be as sophisticated as you think.
216
« on: July 12, 2017, 05:34 »
I would stick with the $1500 for 2 years, then hopefully they will keep wanting another 2 years. Asking for more is a risk and it already seems like a good deal to me.
217
« on: July 12, 2017, 02:17 »
It's the 15% they pay you, low sales volume, almost no QC, tedious time consuming upload procedure and many other problems that should put you off
218
« on: July 12, 2017, 02:11 »
My new images aren't selling at all. All my sales are from really old images and often ones that would of probably been rejected for LCV at one point. I might as well hold off on new uploads for now.
219
« on: July 10, 2017, 13:24 »
Great stuff! I need to improve a lot, that's a given.
Any free software anybody would recommend to start off with to post-process the video...then perhaps something that's inexpensive (I'm on PC btw)? Also need some ND filters...I have one for my 10-20mm but need one for my 24-70mm.
I use virtualdub for a lot of my timelapse workflow http://www.virtualdub.org/
220
« on: July 09, 2017, 11:32 »
All n' all iStock still is 20% of my income right after SS 33%...
Somehow they manage to do that while agencies with acceptable commission rate like Adobe/Fotolia comes after them and agencies with a fixed 50% commissions like GL do not even appear in my Excell graph...
It's time to accept the market we are in and make the most of it, or leave altogether and make a living in a more "fair" market... Good Lack!
If we all accepted what istock have done, your earnings wouldn't be worth putting in Excell. Leaving istock was the right decision for me, I just wish I hadn't waited so long.
221
« on: July 08, 2017, 10:03 »
Some money is better than no money. :-(
Not if you're cannabalizing earnings with the same images elsewhere.
The trouble is, if you remove your image to prevent cannibalisation, there is very little chance that your picture elsewhere will pick up the sale you lost on iS. That sale will go to somebody else - probably on iS, but maybe elsewhere.
Even in the unusual case of your image being truly unique, the odds are probably still against it being found amidst a gazillion files on some other site, amid scores of different sites. And how many pictures are so unique as to not easily be substituted by something else?
It seems a lot of images are found by buyers using a google search, then they might stick with the site where they found what they wanted. Now I have zero images with istock, they're more likely to find them on the other sites I also think the only logical reason for sites to have no QC now is because they do better with google if they have more content, so that's another reason why I didn't leave any with istock. I'm not bothered about the small loss of earnings with istock, I'm sure sticking with them would of lost me more money in the long term.
222
« on: July 08, 2017, 03:22 »
I believe it is called "opportunity cost" in economics... It is actually costing you money to upload there.
If you could predict that an individual image would only earn you 0.0000000001 cents over your lifetime, you wouldn't bother uploading it.
Unfortunately you don't know in advance which pix will sell and which won't.
So if you stop uploading because there's a chance you might lose money on any individual image, you will refrain from uploading other images that may make good money unexpectedly.
That's why we need to make a reasonable amount of money from the images that do sell. A thousand of those $0.00077 will make only $0.77. If your best selling images are making less than $1, there's really no point in doing this. It's fine to think that those $0.00077 are rare now but if people just accept this and the other sites start using the same model, we could all be seeing a lot of those earnings in the future. When microstock started, a lot of people selling for much higher prices were angry with us accepting such low prices but it was still possible to make good money with high volume of sales. Now we have the threat of a model that only works with millions of downloads and only the sites will make money from that.
223
« on: July 08, 2017, 02:55 »
The worst thing is that several of the sites act like a reasonable agency but we the suppliers ruin the market by supplying other sites that obviously exploit us. I would have no problem only supplying sites that pay us 50% but unfortunately, thousands of contributors are willing to accept 15% to 19%.
50% has always seemed reasonable to me and some sites have thrived with that rate but how much better would they do if more of us took action and only supplied them? I'm in if everyone else is but I know, having been a member of this forum for over a decade, there's no chance of that happening. Some people here complain constantly while supplying istock for less than 20%.
224
« on: July 01, 2017, 09:43 »
If you like other peoples images, some of them will like yours but that doesn't mean you will sell them.
225
« on: July 01, 2017, 09:41 »
SS was well down on June 2016, mostly due to a lack of big SOD sales. I will try and upload more but it's hard to get motivated. Selling prints is looking like a better option.
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