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Messages - cthoman
Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 7 8 9 ... 145
76
« on: November 01, 2018, 07:41 »
My advice now for new companies is to salary artists. Put their money into artists that they can sell. If they have a plan to make $100k off an artist that they pay $50k (or whatever the numbers), then they have a plan for the future. Otherwise, it doesn't seem like most new companies are going to have an impact anymore or be able to lure pessimistic artists.
The way I'd work it is to pay the contributor up front then use their earnings over time to pay back the advance. Not going to happen though. Unless someone comes up with a stunningly innovative site I can't see why anyone would contribute to a new site.
I got an upfront offer once. In hindsight, I should have taken it, but the market was still on the upswing then. I guess I just see the salary thing as one of the last frontiers. You see these existing agencies trying to discover and experiment with new revenue streams, but there are only so many directions they can go without having artists on staff.
77
« on: October 31, 2018, 22:12 »
My advice now for new companies is to salary artists. Put their money into artists that they can sell. If they have a plan to make $100k off an artist that they pay $50k (or whatever the numbers), then they have a plan for the future. Otherwise, it doesn't seem like most new companies are going to have an impact anymore or be able to lure pessimistic artists.
78
« on: October 30, 2018, 18:27 »
I've posted this before, but if you are on a Mac you can make a script: set startFolder to quoted form of POSIX path of ((path to desktop) & "zip folder" as string)
set jpegList to paragraphs of (do shell script "find " & startFolder & " -type f -iname '*.jpg'")
repeat with aFile in jpegList
set fileName to name of (info for POSIX file aFile)
set baseName to text 1 through -5 of fileName
set epsName to quoted form of (baseName & ".eps")
set jpegName to quoted form of (baseName & ".jpg")
set zipName to quoted form of (baseName & ".zip")
do shell script "cd " & startFolder & ";zip" & space & zipName & space & epsName & space & jpegName
end repeat You have to make a folder on your desktop called "zip folder", although can change the script if you want to call it something else. Throw all your jpegs and eps files you want to zip in there, run the script and it will spit out a combined zip file.
79
« on: October 30, 2018, 11:40 »
So...I guess youre requiring either zipped folders or huge art boards if you use the drag and drop option. Is that correct?
Does it work if you zip them?
80
« on: October 30, 2018, 11:39 »
Doesn't seem like they are sweating anything... which might not be good news for those of us that would like a little change for the better. Also, did they say they bought a catalog of 1930's British society images? That sounds useful. 
81
« on: October 30, 2018, 10:28 »
Weird? I just uploaded one (EPS 8, letter sized artboard, and zipped together with the jpeg). It went to review like normal.
82
« on: October 30, 2018, 10:05 »
Does it get rejected after review or not even go to review?
83
« on: October 30, 2018, 09:06 »
I haven't uploaded in a month or so, so I don't know if it has changed. Most of mine are usually just letter size (8.5" x 11"). They do like larger jpeg files. I think between 15 MP and 40 MP.
84
« on: October 28, 2018, 11:19 »
I'm not going to pass any judgement because that's not my job. That said, it's nice to see the Shutterstock still investigates and acts on things that may be suspicious.
85
« on: October 23, 2018, 08:55 »
yay - you got credited. since money isn't what makes you happy that should be enough.
After all those surveys, did they ever figure out that money really does make us happy and always did?
86
« on: October 21, 2018, 21:47 »
I find it amazing that even after you've been approved and have been given questions to answer you still don't know how much you'll be paid. How is that even legal?
I think because there are virtually no laws in the US that regulate the Gig economy and all the corporate participants are fighting tooth and nail to avoid having to deal with anything that brings in rules that govern employer/employee relationships or permits class action lawsuits.
If you have a contract and don't get paid you can sue the person who didn't pay you. If the amount of money is small, unless you can get class action status, it isn't worth the costs of a lawsuit. Uber drivers have been struggling with this. When the FTC took Uber on, there was some (small) positive result
Perhaps SS is working on AI that will generate endless portfolios of pot photos and abstract vector backgrounds and then it won't need contributor support at all...
I do wonder about the evolution of crowd sourcing, micro jobs or whatever all this is. It's a wild west right now that not many in the government are really talking about or probably don't even understand. It will be interesting to see when the first real story hits that changes that and how far they go down the rabbit hole.
87
« on: October 21, 2018, 19:38 »
I went through the process because I was curious. After approved, I read through the questions that were on there a couple times. It's mostly just customer service type questions at Directly. Nothing real nefarious. Pretty much the same kind of stuff you might answer for free in the forums (Upload problems, site outages, nuts and bolts stuff). I can't say it really interested me all that much to participate. That and I'm not necessarily overly plugged into any of these sites anymore that I know what is going on with there formats, systems or contracts day to day.
So did you get any idea of what they were paying for the advice (although reading the answers to Brasilnut's query, I think the "experts" should have cash deducted from their contributor accounts for giving 100% useless answers)?
That I didn't quite understand. I didn't see any flat rates. That and it was sort of a first come first served kind of system. You go through the recent queries and answer them if you want. You could also piggy-back on other answers if you felt you had something to add. I think it mentioned something about splitting commissions in those cases. Seemed like it could become a feeding frenzy though with splitting a penny or whatever the commission is a million ways. Sounded too familiar to me to be excited about. That and I felt like I'd be giving half-informed answers too often.
88
« on: October 21, 2018, 17:03 »
I went through the process because I was curious. After approved, I read through the questions that were on there a couple times. It's mostly just customer service type questions at Directly. Nothing real nefarious. Pretty much the same kind of stuff you might answer for free in the forums (Upload problems, site outages, nuts and bolts stuff). I can't say it really interested me all that much to participate. That and I'm not necessarily overly plugged into any of these sites anymore that I know what is going on with there formats, systems or contracts day to day.
89
« on: October 07, 2018, 21:49 »
I always assumed there was a certain amount of ceiling to everybody's portfolio. You can definitely improve and make more in the business, but some of how you start will be what you can expect though out (sort of a baseline).
90
« on: September 19, 2018, 12:15 »
Lol. Yeah.
I think I get where they are coming from though. Probably when they started they did hustle a bit, maybe it was easier then too, and they were making say $5-$10k/month - and got 'used' to the income... Now that there is so much more competition,etc rather than update their skills/adapt (which seems to be a necessity), they are upset about 'income lost'. (I totally get it, I think I've been like that before too. Had some nice income from other stuff, and when it decreased, wasn't too happy about that).
But it seems basically - while you might be able to take a bit of a break and still make income (as opposed to a job where if you stop working, you don't get paid) - you still have to keep learning/adapting/creating/etc to help nuture your future income.
I tired the working harder, improving and diversifying thing. I ended up with less money in my pocket not more. The realities of the market are what they are. You can out hustle them for a while, but they'll catch you.
91
« on: September 19, 2018, 09:58 »
I think a business model of lawsuits would probably work or maybe a public service campaign of just say no to microstock to get your competition to leave. Other than that, it is probably just more sand on the beach.
92
« on: September 18, 2018, 11:36 »
I took one look at their upload interface and said nope.
inteface has changed (very easy), but now they've blocked 'new' people from uploading...
Looks exactly the same to me. Make 3 different formats and tediously go through each file and check and fill out a bunch of boxes. Maybe that is just Graphic River though and the other sites have changed.
93
« on: September 18, 2018, 08:31 »
I took one look at their upload interface and said nope.
94
« on: September 07, 2018, 14:37 »
Nobody gets any special treatment anymore. You get what is in the tagged file. It's bad enough I have to make a zillion different zipped, eps, jpeg formats and combinations.
95
« on: September 06, 2018, 11:19 »
I got one of these today. All I have to do is buy a camera and learn how to be a photographer in less than a day, then apparently the cash will be rolling in. They might want to work on making these more targeted.
96
« on: August 22, 2018, 17:11 »
Cool. Thanks for the heads up.
97
« on: August 17, 2018, 18:10 »
Got mine today. Still some mixed feelings about getting left out of the loop as an illustrator. I may end up just giving it away. Not sure.
98
« on: August 06, 2018, 22:02 »
If you don't hear from somebody, that probably means they found something better. If you do, then they are still looking or waiting for the end. A lot of us have realized that any semblance of a reasonable income is probably off the table. I do still enjoy doing the work, so I suppose I can try to prolong a little bit of money out of it all. It really is kind of deciding what to work on next or just ripping the band-aid off.
99
« on: August 05, 2018, 17:27 »
Agree with the fact that he got his production ramped up at the right time. One of those things when you just hit the window at exactly the right time with a large quantity of exactly what people wanted.
100
« on: August 02, 2018, 11:54 »
Interesting to see them branch out. I wonder if there is some preparation just in case the bottom falls out of the more traditional micro. The market still seems strong, but weak for contributors which makes it seem like somebody could step in and shake things up.
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