MicrostockGroup Sponsors


Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - jatrax

Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 7
76
Adobe Stock / Fotolia commission increase
« on: May 22, 2014, 10:02 »
Is anyone actually getting the announced commission increase at Fotolia?  I got the email and got increased commissions (.38 on a subscription M and .44 on a subscription XL) on one day.  Then all subscriptions went back to .27 regardless of size.

I emailed Fotolia support on the 16th but have not had any response from them.  Just curious if the commission increase has actually occurred or if there is a date they said it would start.

77
Adobe Stock / Re: Fotolia rank reset and DPC
« on: May 18, 2014, 18:34 »
All SS would have to do Legally, is offer a Exclusive Option with a few cents more. I would accept. Time is money and If I stopped taking all the time it took to upload to 9 agencies. I would win based on that alone. Im sure that would kill FT.

I think I would jump on this as well.  Time is indeed the key.  Just looked at my stats so far this year and SS is 65% of total sales.  Alamy is another 9% but that is with a different portfolio.  Without Alamy sales included and only looking at the microstock portfolio SS is 71% approximately.  So I could drop 8 agencies and sales would decline less than 30%.  Maybe not even that much if you assume buyers would look elsewhere for my amazing irreplaceable images.  :) Which I doubt, but we can dream.

The question is: do you trust SS enough to be your only agency?  And if they were the only microstock agency left standing would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

78
Probably not especially since the thread is 18 months old.

79
Alamy.com / Re: Alamy 6th? Surely this is a joke..
« on: May 02, 2014, 00:20 »
Alamy is #2 or 3 depending on the month.  But I have a completely different portfolio there.  I tried uploading my rf portfolio there and it just did not sell.  Took the time to study what they were selling and it made a big difference.  The rf stuff is still there but no sales.  The RM portfolio does OK and is growing.

80
Alamy.com / Re: Change RM to RF on Alamy
« on: April 19, 2014, 15:30 »
Did that by accident on a whole batch once.  Contacted member services and they fixed it right up. Be prepared to give them the image ids.

81
Pond5 / Re: Video Upload fubar
« on: March 19, 2014, 17:17 »
the errors do not refer to connection probs!
and if it was a connection prob the files would not be at SS or DP .
We upoad over night by FTP with multiple open channels  -so if it was a conection prob it would have affected all transfers
Not really, just because one ftp connection works does not mean another one will.  Doesn`t take much to muck up files so they do not process.

But if you would rather believe P5 is at fault that`s OK with me.  Or maybe they just selected you to mess with because it is an evil conspiracy.

82
Shutterstock.com / Re: SS SOD sales
« on: March 19, 2014, 17:08 »
Had a very nice group of SOD sales in February.  Almost none except two .36 ones so far in March.  I expect it is the same as all sales, a certain amount of randomness.

83
Pond5 / Re: Video Upload fubar
« on: March 19, 2014, 13:29 »
No problems here either.  Maybe you had a bad connection.

84
Photography Equipment / Re: Raising your Standards
« on: March 18, 2014, 16:17 »
The same sensor will apparently be used in the new model 645D from Pentax.  Better ergonomics and dramatically lower pice point, estimated $10k.  But it won`t have that Hassie sticker on it.:-)

85
;D ;D ;D

what fruit are we as contributors? little fish? ;D
Crabapples?

86
General Stock Discussion / Re: A monthly sum, please
« on: March 02, 2014, 12:15 »
Oh, OK now I see.  Well you can add Canstock to that list if you want.  But as noted above I doubt anyone is listening.

87
General Stock Discussion / Re: A monthly sum, please
« on: March 01, 2014, 13:59 »
Maybe I`m dense but I honestly thought you were asking contributors what their average monthly income from those sites was.  Now I am not sure what you mean.  Please clarify?

88
Pond5 / Re: Review time for photos?
« on: February 28, 2014, 16:50 »
I don`t if anyone noticed, or cares, but this thread is 17 months old.  I guess it should an historical view anyway lol

89
A wonderful idea, sadly impractical.

Will this be an all volunteer organization?  If so the only things done will be by people taking time from their work.  That gets old fast.

If you will have paid staff then you need an association executive.  Average salary 100k.  Add in office rent, staff, utilities, website, expenses, travel and you are at 200k with nothing done except having an association.  Now you need budget for all the things you want to do.  And some means to decide what it is you want to do with the money.

I have worked with a number of trade associations and been on the board of two.  In all cases it seems most of staff efforts are directed toward generating enough member dues to fund the organization.  Many if not most are shrinking or closing their doors.

If you have a plan that gets 10,000 microstockers to pony up $50 annually count me in because you must be a genius.

90
Adobe Stock / Re: Open letter to Fotolia: What's going on here?
« on: February 20, 2014, 19:08 »
Keep in mind that 1099's are for earnings, not necessarily payments.  If you earned $12.50 last year you should get a 1099 saying so. 

I report to IRS what I earned in any year, whether it has been paid out or not.  Since not all agencies send 1099s I have used this method and it works because my earnings are always more than the 1099s I actually receive.

1099s will not always match either earnings or payments.  SS for instance uses the date of payment (often the 15th) as the month in which something was earned.  So for 2013 they reported my December 2012 earnings but not my December 2013 since those were both paid in January of the following year.  In SS case earnings in any month = payments because I make payout each month but at other agencies this is not so and then earnings might take months or years before turning into payments.

Note that this is how I do it, it is also completely valid to work on a cash basis and only declare what money you actually received.  As long as you are consistent IRS does not care.  YMMV.

91
I'll pass on some advice I was given when I started:
1) Get accepted at SS, that's the majority of earnings unless you go exclusive at Istock
2) Don't bother submitting old pictures off your hard drive.  Unless you want to do it as a learning experience it is a waste of time.  The quality, subjects and composition will not be suitable for stock.
3) Get a copy of Lightroom and spend time learning it and developing a fast efficient workflow.  This is a numbers game and no longer can you afford more than a few minutes on any particular image.  The return is not there.
4) Become a master at key wording.  Your image may get accepted but it will not sell without good key words.
5) Unless you go macro-stock with travel and such, stock photos are boring and require a certain 'look' that can be used in different ways by the buyers.  Different sites have different 'looks' they like, you need to learn what works well at which site.
6) If you are serious submit your images to the critique forum over at SS, they will rip them apart and make you cry.  Get over it, and shoot something they grudgingly admit might possibly be good enough.  When you can do that submit 10 to SS and you will get accepted.
7) To make money at this you need to be able to get accepted several hundred top quality, well composed, interesting, and salable images every month.  Month after month.  $1 per image per year is a number often mentioned and I suspect it is fairly accurate.  But only as an average.  Better images higher return, poorer images lower return.  But better means more salable not just better image quality.  Best image in the world of an apple on white just is not going to matter because it has been done so often that it is hard for yours to get found.

No offense meant but if you have been rejected 5 times at SS you really need to step up your game.  Lots of other sites will accept your images but getting accepted is not the same as selling.  This is tough business which requires talent and very hard work.  Days of taking old images off your computer and making money are long, long gone.

Best advice I can give, if you really want this?  Put images on SS critique forum and learn from getting ripped apart.

92
General Photography Discussion / Re: What equipment lasts??
« on: January 26, 2014, 10:58 »
Tripod and head should last a lifetime if you buy quality up front.

Lenses, again quality lasts though coatings and optics improve.  I have some manual glass from `60s and `70s that still gets use.  Modern zooms are better but old primes still hold their own.

Camera bodies change as sensors improve lately but that seems to have slowed down now.  Maybe a camera body cycle will stretch out to something similar to film bodies now.

93
General Stock Discussion / Re: Concerning watermarks
« on: January 21, 2014, 01:31 »
I think of watermarks like private property signs.  It won`t really stop anyone who is determined but it is a notice to the honest folks.  And at least the crooks cannot use the excuse they did not know.  And who knows, maybe it caused them to waste 5 minutes of their time removing it.

But the OP`s question was whether images being uploaded to an agency should be watermarked.  And the answer is no, the agency needs a clean copy to deliver to customers and they will add their own watermarks on the gallery images.

94
Computer Hardware / Re: Which PC or MAC would you buy "now"?
« on: January 12, 2014, 01:44 »
Just in case you are not leaning toward the Mac side, most any current PC would work.  Buying a particular brand is far less important than knowing what is under the hood.  I know everyone loves their macs but if I can't open it up and take it apart I'm not interested.  But that's just me, if you don't care then either works just fine.

Fast cpu, either i5 or i7 with lots of RAM, minimum of 8GB.  I use 16GB.  Fast hard disk for the boot drive or preferably an SSD at least 256GB if you can afford it.  SSD prices are dropping fast and nothing else you can add will make as much difference in the computer's speed.  You really have to see it to believe it.  Add a big (2tb at least) drive for file storage and a couple of external drives for backup / off site storage.

Graphics card will depend on whether you use Lightroom or Photoshop, LR does not currently use the GPU so most anything will work.  PS does, so check to make sure your card supports it, or the other way round.

Make sure you get a card reader that supports the card you camera uses.  USB 3.0 ports should be standard now but you should check to make sure.

And the item generally considered last but arguably the most important: the monitor.  I just got a Dell U2713 and am stunned at the improvement over my previous one.  You should not consider anything but an IPS screen, older and cheaper TN based screens just don't cut it for image processing.  If you are using a wide gamut workflow, then of course your monitor needs to support that.  But if you are using wide gamut then you probably already know all this.

95
Selling Stock Direct / Re: alamy and microstock
« on: January 09, 2014, 02:21 »
While the largest portion of my portfolio is on microstock, my relatively small RM portfolio on Alamy does well.  Three sales so far this month that will net me about the same as the whole month on SS.

It is not for everyone and the market is very different, typical micro stuff does not sell well there.

96
Newbie Discussion / Re: Which Microstock?
« on: January 07, 2014, 00:44 »
I would recommend a slightly slower approach.  Start with Can stock to learn how to shoot, keyword, process and upload.  Work on getting your workflow steps down to an efficient process.

When you are able to get 100% acceptance at Canstock, not hard really, then take your skills to 123rf, dreams time and Shutter stock.  IMHO, you are just looking at frustration at SS unless you can get 100% at CS.  SS is much harder and will not take many that CS does but you will have better skills and a small portfolio to work with.

97
Newbie Discussion / Re: SS very strange review process
« on: January 07, 2014, 00:34 »
Sue, you keep asking questions and getting good advice that you then choose to ignore or argue with.  Having your images rejected is always a blow to anyone's ego but it has nothing to do with shutterstock not wanting new contributors.

They accepted you, now it is up to you to deliver images that meet their standards.  Your images go through the same review process that everyone else's does and getting 90% acceptance is not hard, I can do it and I am not a very good photographer.

But you have to deliver what they want, not what you think is good.  If you want to sell on SS then follow the advice already given here or put some of your photos up for critique on the SS forum.  People will tell you what you need to do to be successful, spending their own time to help you.  The ms community is amazingly helpful that way.

Blaming your failure on the review process is not helping you gain the skills you need to succeed.  Everyone here was a newbie at some point and we all learned the hard way that you either provide what the agency wants or don't get accepted.

98
Shutterstock.com / Re: Success at last
« on: January 03, 2014, 21:03 »
Congratulations with that.

Just remember, IS has different standards then SS. And SS is picky on lighting, and wants to see saturated colors. If you want to built a portfolio and get sales, its good to learn what each agency wants to see. Hard shadows (uneven lighting) for example wont work on SS.

Good luck.
Well said.  People complain about SS reviewing being inconsistent, but they are very consistent about shadows.  Put a shadow in an image and it's going to get rejected. :)

99
Off Topic / Re: Dust magnets
« on: January 03, 2014, 21:00 »
The newer Pentax system is amazing.  My old k-x always had dust but my k-5 has over 35,000 actuations and never been cleaned, k-5IIs is over 10,000 and no dust.  And I change lenses a lot.

Just went over a batch of 48 for Alamy looking for dust spots and found: zero.

100
Alamy.com / Re: Review time
« on: January 03, 2014, 20:57 »
"We're taking some time out to recharge our batteries over the holidays, so QC will take longer than usual between 21st December and 9th January.
Turnaround time will be back to normal by Monday 13th January."


http://www.alamy.com/Blog/contributor/archive/2013/12/12/5570.aspx

Note to self: read Alamy blog before asking stupid questions...............

Thanks ShadySue and Ron.  I'll go back to uploading now.

Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 7

Sponsors

Mega Bundle of 5,900+ Professional Lightroom Presets

Microstock Poll Results

Sponsors