|
MicrostockGroup Sponsors
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.
Topics - Jo Ann Snover
76
« on: July 20, 2017, 17:15 »
I didn't see this when it was first published July 5th. Couple of things the author missed or was confused about (for example, doesn't understand that Adobe bought Fotolia and that all work submitted to Adobe is sold both places) but it's a interesting perspective. https://petapixel.com/2017/07/05/want-sell-stock-photos-heres-comparison-major-services/His comments on how terrible Getty and iStock's contributor interface and customer service are delightful  For example: "With a poor site, youd think maybe they have good customer service for their contributors. Well, unfortunately youd be wrong there too. Every ticket Ive submitted has taken months literally months to get resolved. After a poor site design and no customer service it makes it seem like all that money they make, just goes right into their pocket and they dont invest in the company itself." Here's his very small SS portfolio https://www.shutterstock.com/g/michaelgodek
77
« on: July 14, 2017, 11:54 »
https://www.shutterstock.com/contributorsupport/articles/kbat02/000012560Received email with a link to this blog post this morning. I looked at the preview of the image they used in the article and it doesn't appear to have the new features - the contributor name included in the watermark. Two images I had approved late last night didn't have the new watermark (that I could see) so they appear not to be including it in new approvals yet I have posted in the thread on the Shutterstock forum asking for two examples of the new preview watermark - one over white and one with a darker all-over image - so we can check it out. Sounds like a great idea, but given the history with their preview "improvements" I want to see an example. Anyone else see the new individualized preview watermark? Edited to add that a reply in the SS forum from another contributor pointed out that the reduced preview image in the article does have the new watermarking even though the live preview doesn't. I zoomed my browser to 250% and I could then see the contributor name in the watermark. It appears the watermark hasn't changed much beyond inserting "by contributor name" along one of the diagonal lines. Still need to see some 1500 pixel examples though.
78
« on: May 05, 2017, 20:27 »
I missed these stock industry happenings from the last couple of months - 123rf bought the Creative Market clone The Hungry JPEG and Autodesk's Pixlr. They also obtained VC funding and did a deal with Tencent https://www.123rf.com/pressroom/press-20170308.phphttps://e27.co/malaysian-stock-photo-startup-123rf-acquires-thehungry-jpeg-grow-design-resources-globally-20170309/http://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/malaysia-inmagine-acquires-online-design-marketplace-thehungryjpeg-67053/http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/04/26/pixlr-popular-photo-editor-autodesk-sold-123rf/https://www.123rf.com/pressroom/press-20170424.phpThe phrase "creative ecosystem" keeps cropping up in press releases and the articles covering this. There was also mention in the e27 article that 123rf had received venture capital this year from InnoVen Capital, IndiaA year ago (Feb 2016) there was an article that Andy Sitt was considering an IPO within 12-18 months. The article DealStreet Asia article from March about the Hungry JPEG acquisition says the 123rf IPO will be in Australia: "The acquisition that was announced on Wednesday may pave the way for a listing that Inmagines 123RF has been targeting in Australia, for a while now . 'We will be announcing some acquisitions soon. We need some time to reconcile the business and then head for a bigger IPO,' the firms co-founder Andy Sitt had told this portal recently." This DealStreet Asia article says the IPO will be delayed to the end of 2017 but may be in Tokyo or even the US. It also says the venture capital is to fund their planned acquisitions. The report on the Android Police says the web version of Pixlr relies on Flash, suggesting it's in need of some updating - so if Sitt is thinking of going after Canva's type of setup, getting rid of obsolete stuff like Flash will be a must. It seemed to me that Shutterstock's Editor was an answer to Canva; SS is now talking about being a platform, 123rf about being a "... holistic creative ecosystem that makes great design accessible to all..." and of course Adobe is integrating everything with everything via a plethora of apps and services. Not sure where this deal fits, but 123rf is also a Smart Performance Advertising Official Global Reseller for Tencent as of March 2017I was also curious about a comment in the DealStreet Asia article about producing wholly owned content: "Inmagine groups in-house production team of over 200 employees will work directly on content to be marketed on THJ with the goal of expanding its library even further." There's a lot more flexibility for giveaways and low prices when you don't have to pay royalties. So 123rf has designs.net, Stock Unlimited (now $139 for 3 years unlimited content!) Craft Bundles (this includes freebies) as well as Inmagine and 123rf. They say in the articles that Sitt claims to be the 4th largest stock agency - I assume after Getty, Shutterstock and Adobe Stock. There's certainly a flurry of activity, but perhaps this is about getting bought out rather than actually trying to compete with the larger agencies? I don't know how Stock Unlimited is doing - wasn't that going to be the Netflix of stock agencies? - but the ever-cheaper prices suggest not well. It doesn't appear that overall, sales at 123rf are up for contributors - more tales of sales drop-off than of growth. You have to acknowledge that Andy Sitt has managed to keep his business going for a long time in a tough market, but I don't see a clear path to greater success by adding more moving parts and shiny objects when you can't compete effectively on the basics. Not sure what any of this adds up to, but as I'd happened upon the information, I thought I'd share Edited to note that as of Nov 7, Stock Unlimited is now offering 3 years unlimited for $89 - see a new thread about video content to license for free (CC0) with "donations" as their latest scammy addition to the scammy stable
79
« on: May 04, 2017, 10:31 »
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4068496-shutterstock-sstk-q1-2017-results-earnings-call-transcriptCouple of commentaries https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/05/03/tepid-results-reveal-shutterstocks-vulnerabilities.aspxhttp://www.markets.co/jefferies-sticks-to-its-hold-rating-for-shutterstock/72175/http://www.capitalcube.com/blog/index.php/shutterstock-inc-breached-its-50-day-moving-average-in-a-bearish-manner-sstk-us-may-4-2017/Couple of things caught my eye - in spite of the brain numbing sea of corporate-speak. Enterprise business is now 32% of revenue (up from 29%). Revenue per download increased 5%, but it was "...primarily driven by continued growth in our enterprise and motion businesses which operate at higher price points than our traditional e-commerce images offering" Download growth was 6%. I wonder if you were to look at the revenue per download in the e-commerce section if it's falling as a result of the new lower price packages. They don't break that information out. Customer base expanded 13% but the download growth was 6%? They said "We saw a 6% increase in paid downloads driven by growth in new customers as well as increased activity across our existing user base." Something must have been going down - customers leaving? large customers leaving and being replaced by smaller ones? - to make those numbers make sense, no? Am I missing something? 64% of revenue is from outside the United States, of which half is Europe. In response to a question about whether they can return to higher growth in the e-commerce business, Jon had this rather rambling almost-answer: "I think that the core part of our business can grow again. And we're focused every day on coming into this office and working together to do that. Part of the reorganization we went through where we organized the company into GM verticals is really going to help us do this. We were on a new tech stack. We have a lot of great ideas. We know the market is really large, that we sell to businesses. Businesses use our images every day to sell their product or service. We have 1.7 million of those customers today and we know there's tens of millions of more customers out there that need these assets to sell their products, sell their services, so." Glad they have great ideas. Hope some of them are greater than spiffying up the payment history page... In answering a question about the makeup of the growth in the enterprise business, they appeared to indicate that to date most of that business was images: "So the split between expansion within existing customers and new is about 50/50 and so we're seeing continued retention and spend from our existing customers as well as the attraction and spend from new enterprise customers. That's primarily in the image business. We see opportunities in video, editorial and music both domestically as well as outside the U.S." Answering a question about whether the new tech platform was helping accelerate growth, I think this word salad is a "yes", although timing isn't clear. I love reaccelerating growth "That will enable us to move faster, cross-sell between products, understand who customers are between all of our products, and our customers and allow us to do things like focus on reaccelerating growth in the core, for instance." Later in the transcript, Deutsche Bank had a crack at the same topic, but didn't get a clear answer; just lots of stuff about all the different types of customers SS serves. There was a question about whether they'd seen some of the higher priced packages getting "traction" - as they'd blamed lower priced packages for lower growth previously. The long answer seems to say that they don't want to be the low price answer, but the fair value one, and they have lots of sizes of customers. Why the questioner just said "thanks" as opposed to following up, who knows: "Yes. So I'll just refer back to the last answer I gave in terms of what we're seeing is that we recognize that there are everything from project oriented users, there are small and medium sized businesses that utilize images and other assets, music video and so on, on a more regular basis. There are freelancers and then there are, if you would, large enterprises that are utilizing huge numbers of assets over -- on a daily basis. And what we're doing is we're making sure that from our small and medium sized business products, our enterprise products, our team subscriptions as well as our individual users that we are providing them with the pricing and packaging that meets their needs on a fair value basis. And so we're not ever trying to be the lowest priced. We're trying to be the best value for the work and the projects that they're doing. And when we do that, we see high long-term values consistent with our return on investments that we've had history." Asked about things that were working - or being tried - other than changing pricing, Jon had this to say: "I mean if you look at our pages they change all the time. We're constantly updating them. If you look at the even the responsiveness of our core site, speed is way up. The site will feel snappier from page to page. That is our new platform at work. And we plan to get better and better, add things like site speed globally as we start to move that code to the edge in a more cloud based environment.' Moving code to the edge in a more cloud based environment??? Is that what passes for technical conversation in the Empire State building? Perhaps someone is seeing a snappier site, but it certainly doesn't feel that way from the contributor side.
80
« on: April 08, 2017, 19:48 »
There is a link on the contributor home page to a forum topic on changes we'll see soon in the payment history page: "As you know, we are investing heavily in upgrading the technology that powers Shutterstocks infrastructure, website, and mobile apps. As part of these ongoing system upgrades, you will begin to see changes to the Payment History page in the coming days. Youll see improvements to the design, and new options for customization have been added.
Were looking forward to sharing more improvements with you in the coming months.
Thanks for your continued contributions to Shutterstock."I have no idea why they want to "improve" this page - and from the comments so far in the forum, I'm not the only one wondering why they're wasting time on such a low-use area. I posted my thoughts (for what good that will do) suggesting they should ask us what improvements we want versus just making them and assuming they'll delight us https://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/topic/90730-coming-soon-refreshed-payment-history-page/?p=1606025
81
« on: March 02, 2017, 11:36 »
Not sure when they'll actually pull the portfolio, but yesterday I asked 123rf to close my account.
I've been with them since 2005 (with a gap 2008-11 when I was exclusive at iStock) and in spite of my distaste for their new royalty scheme (rolling 12 months credits total versus flat 50%), I figured I'd stay - to see if the promised huge growth in volume would occur. It didn't, and I've uploaded in batches up until last fall. Comparing sales of new files with how those fared at SS gave me a clue that uploading new work to 123rf wasn't going to make a difference - SS was selling them well. As an example, one remodeling image that sold 77 times so far on SS has sold twice at 123rf.
123rf sales have continued to drop (with a surprising upward blip in December to something like "normal") and on March 1st, the decline was such that I dipped to level 3 in the royalty tiers.
I thought a bit about what to do and decided that I saw no reason that their failure to sell my portfolio should net them more money out of every sale. Seemed like a perverse incentive scheme I wanted no part of.
As I just (mid-December) re-joined Fotolia, I know what an agency with the ability to sell can do with the same files 123rf can't sell - about 10x what 123rf can manage.
I realize that no one who shops at 123rf will care about one contributor leaving, but I care about supporting bad business models - as in, I don't want to do that.
I'm still with Dreamstime, even though they're in a terrible free-fall as well, because they're not cutting my royalty rates as a result of their failures (my money totals are down as a result of volume decline, of course).
The old Ann Landers question "Are you better off with him or without him?" - I'm done.
83
« on: August 04, 2016, 21:33 »
84
« on: July 20, 2016, 14:59 »
Shutterstock updated its mobile contributor apps yesterday and added a new keywording feature http://www.shutterstock.com/blog/shutterstocks-autotagging-feature-for-mobile-makes-tagging-a-breezeI don't upload iPhone photos, but I was curious about the keywording help - pretty doubtful that it could really do a good job, but wanted to see. So I did an experiment this morning uploading an iPhone photo of bear poop in my driveway to see how the upload process went. The photo was in focus, taken in flat, bright overcast light, but was pretty unremarkable. The keywords SS's app came up with looked as if they came from an auto-spam generator! Beautiful? Sea? Red? Travel? I entered 15 or so keywords, submitted it and within 4 minutes, I had both the "thank you for your submission" and rejection e-mails (lighting and composition). I did attach a model release for my foot - there to provide scale - so it wasn't rejected for that  So SS has only the 7 current images of bear scat/poop/feces - there may not be much of a market for the subject matter I'm not bothered by the rejection but (a) this was clearly fully automated - no human looked at this picture and (b) if you aren't a native English speaker, relying on this keywording tool is risky. It clearly doesn't understand what it's looking at I did think about uploading a flower picture - like the blog example - but couldn't imagine they'd actually approve a cell phone flower (or food) picture just because of the subject matter. YMMV
85
« on: July 14, 2016, 10:43 »
I received e-mail from Getty this morning and over the next month or two they'll be removing the ability to edit keywords, titles or descriptions after acceptance. Perhaps more importantly, you won't be able to delete your own work any more - you'll have to contact support.
"Please note that we will only consider deactivating files for legal or similar justifiable reasons as it provides a negative experience for customers when files are suddenly unavailable for license. "
I've always considered the inability to delete my own files a pretty big red flag for any agency (after some bad experiences with now-defunct startups). I can live with Alamy's 6 month wait given their business model (and you don't have to justify anything, just wait).
Seems to me that Getty wants to sell at micro prices for rock bottom royalties but have all the red tape and restrictions of the higher priced macro business.
Contributor e-mails are now coming from e(dot)gettyimages(dot)com so if any of you use whitelists, you'll want to add that (an earlier piece of mail from them was ID'd as spam as I only had gettyimages(dot)com on the whitelist.
86
« on: April 27, 2016, 12:07 »
I missed this from last week: http://investor.shutterstock.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=251362&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2158740They did put it into their blog - I wish they'd link to things like this from the contributor home page as well http://www.shutterstock.com/blog/shutterstock-pr-newswire-partner-bring-companies-easy-access-photosIt's great that they're forming new partnerships and excellent that they'll be suggesting images based on keywords in the press release. What I wonder as a contributor is how we get compensated for the many times those press releases appear all over the place - I assume now with our photos in the redistributed release. I know this isn't the first time this sort of thing has come up - syndicated articles with stock photos in them generally only net us one license, I think (I vaguely remember some discussion about this at iStock 5 or more years ago). Shouldn't we receive a larger royalty or some type of extended license when an image is going to be used by multiple publications as they "reprint" online the press release with one or more images? From the press release: "Shutterstock images are available for use at no cost to PR Newswire members with the purchase of any current photo distribution option." So I assume the PR Newswire member pays extra for this photo distribution option, but what about compensation to the contributor? Has anyone seen anything about the contributor end of this?
88
« on: April 15, 2016, 09:27 »
I went to PayPal this morning as 123rf and Pond5 had paid me and found that there was an unresolved "issue". PayPal has placed a temporary hold - " Inquiry by PayPal Temporary Hold". I clicked the Resolve button and most of the questions were about the shipping address I had sent the goods to as they thought the payment had come from someone other than Pond5 GmbH: "You have received a payment that we believe may not have been authorized by the PayPal account holder. Here are the details of the transaction we are investigating:" They recommend that I don't ship the item At the end of the resolution process I get to provide details about the transaction and I explained that Pond5 was a stock agency and they were paying me (as they have before) for licenses of my work. No physical goods involved and I couldn't understand why PayPal was so far off the mark in what was going on with this business. Surely there have been enough PayPal payments to contributors that they understand what's going on. "This payment will remain on hold and unavailable to you until we complete our investigation. We will email you when we complete our investigation." So PayPal is demented and I don't get paid - lovely. It's a small amount (I don't sell much at Pond5) so it doesn't matter, but I wondered if this had happened to others or if it was just me
90
« on: February 09, 2016, 20:47 »
92
« on: January 28, 2016, 12:41 »
The other thread on SS's royalty cut has gotten buried in a pile of off topic p*ssing contests, so I thought I'd start something on what action we can take if we don't like SS's recent cash grab. This morning I opted out of ELs Go to the contributor (submit...) home page and Account Settings is under your name - top right, between the earnings menu and the language drop down. I get a few ELs every month, so this will cost me, but after getting my first EL at the "improved" rates earlier in the week - and losing $7.61 on the deal - I'm frustrated enough to take the risk. Opting out of ELs doesn't do anything to change SOD options, so the larger corporations who've done a custom deal keep on as before. Some people have said that they get so few ELs after the standard license print run was raised to 500K that it doesn't matter about the cut. I'd argue that if you aren't getting a lot of ELs, it makes it even easier to opt out as you won't have to spend much to send a message to SS that they can't cut royalties to contributors without consequences. The argument that they're making this change to increase EL volumes fails on two levels: 1. They're just cutting contributor royalties (most severely for the lower-tier contributors; this is where they hope that higher tier contributors will quietly accept the change as they don't lose all that much). Buyers are still paying the same prices 2. Even if they do cut prices, you don't buy more ELs because they got cheap. If you're not doing a long print run or selling mugs/T shirts/prints etc, then you don't buy an EL regardless of the price. If they think they're losing business to a rival site when an EL is needed, then this is just a price war and contributors can't possibly win if sites start cutting prices to try and swipe business from a competitor It's important to remember that high price extended/enhanced licenses are just gravy to stock agencies. They need to be compensated for their costs to host the site, inspect the incoming work, market the agency to buyers, process payments, etc. But to take the same percentage from the extra license terms as they do from the base license is disgraceful - the agency should pay a higher percentage as they have no additional costs associated with it (I think iStock used to when they started ELs; Stocksy pays 75% on ELs versus 50% on regular license sales) I realize that SS is now focused on keeping Wall St analysts happy - they want to see profit growth and increasing their take on what the buyer pays is one way for them to do that - but they can't just forget about contributors. They can boost the collection numbers with vast wastelands of marijuana pictures or near-duplicate icons but I doubt those matter much to buyers in the long run. Paul Brennan should get a KK Thompson (money isn't what makes you happy) hall of fame award for this: "We are your partners and our job is to work tirelessly to serve you and grow our marketplace together." If SS really wants to serve contributors, how about adding 10% to the tier percentages for EL sales? 30% to 40% for ELs versus 20% to 30% for all other non-sub sales.
93
« on: January 22, 2016, 20:52 »
The press release was issued yesterday. SS has partnered with Optimizely and Sprinklrhttp://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/shutterstock-expands-successful-api-program-with-new-technology-partners-300207701.htmlShutterstock's developer page on this program lists Facebook (old news) plus others such as Percolate and NewsCred. NewsCred and the new partner Sprinklr seem to be doing something similar. The NewsCred Image Editor may have something to do with the SS image editor development? Another article on what NewsCred does. Here's SS's post about the Percolate partnershipThe interesting thing is that this appears to be a different route to integrating into customer's workflow. Adobe is plugging stock into their creative tools. SS is plugging it into online platforms and apps where the ads (or other content) are created or tested. Perhaps SS's bet is that more and more use of imagery and video will be by people using web tools to do their marketing or customer engagement activities. I would assume Photoshop and Illustrator aren't much in evidence in these environments. From SS's developer page: "WHY CONSIDER A PRODUCT INTEGRATION? Create a seamless workflow for users to find images or video while staying on your platform" It'd be interesting to know how contributors are compensated for images used in A/B testing or any of the above sites' activities, but I assume it fits into one of the existing packages. But the more interesting thing (I think) will be to watch how (if) this list of partners grows and what (if anything) that means for the other big players.
94
« on: January 21, 2016, 14:34 »
https://creativemarket.com/blog/2016/01/21/licenses-update-final-changes-and-timelineThere has been a lot of discussion about the license changes since late last year when they first proposed standardizing Extended Licenses. The new version of things has already received a lot of comments (and I participated in their contributor forum to give my feedback) but if anyone here sells there, you should read this blog post about the changes to come in February so you can decide what to to. I think I will have to close my store there as I cannot price a standard license to cover both more typical uses and selling up to 500 products. That would normally require an EL at most stock agencies, but Creative Market will allow that with a standard license. I can see why buyers will like this, but essentially because they'd be getting raw materials essentially for free and who wouldn't go for that. Long term I think it means they get a restricted choice of things to buy, or they go buy at another agency and then violate the license terms and hope they don't get caught. It's all a shame as I liked the ability to sell PSDs and PNGs and all sorts of variations there that agencies don't permit, but I guess that's something I'll have to try and find a new home for Just to keep the important links in one place, there's also some discussion at the end of an earlier thread (and the CM forums are rather unwieldy to navigate, so the link starts on the page where today's discussion picked up). https://creativemarket.com/discussions/19042-New-licenses-are-here!-Post-all-your-questions-here-please-)?page=16
95
« on: January 21, 2016, 11:31 »
I don't know how long this feature has been there, but I just noticed that iStock no longer has the zoom in and scroll around previews. They've gone to enlarged watermarked previews similar to DT, SS and 123rf. iStock's are 1235 on the long edge and don't have any visible iD info (such as image number and the site). They also don't seem to have learned from SS's mistakes about including something other than white in the watermark. Strangely, iStock vectors have a different watermark from photos. Here are links to the previews for iStock, SS and DT for the same photo as a comparison http://i.istockimg.com/image-zoom/22795801/3/380/253/stock-photo-22795801-senior-couple-with-camera-on-beach.jpghttp://image.shutterstock.com/z/stock-photo-senior-couple-with-camera-on-beach-121062712.jpghttp://www.dreamstime.com/comp.php?imageid=27959586&type=1Here's an iStock vector watermark http://i.istockimg.com/image-zoom/64184947/3/380/380/stock-illustration-64184947-elderly-couple-at-the-beach.jpgIn terms of size, SS is still the largest at 1500 px on the long edge, then DT and 123rf at 1300 and IS at 1235. AdobeStock brings up the rear at 1,000 px Perhaps people want to look at their images to see how well the watermark protects them. Not clear if there'd be any response if improvements were asked for, but it's worth a shot for those who have a large portfolio there. After someone told me the previews had been around a while, I realized that in Classic View (which I almost always use) you have the zoom-and-scroll, but in the new view, it's the large watermarked preview. Didn't someone say classic is going away?
96
« on: January 07, 2016, 11:55 »
I have a small number of photos at Pond5 (don't have more because the sales are so low and their upload process so cumbersome) but I found out today, totally by chance, that if I don't upload an ID my work can't be sold there. I don't remember getting any e-mail from Pond5 about this, but thought I should post here in case anyone else (like me) didn't upload an ID when originally creating my account and didn't know about this new requirement. I received e-mail today asking me to fill out a survey telling them what they could improve. At the end, it asked me for my Pond5 user name and account e-mail address. I logged in (which I haven't done for over 6 months) to find out because I had no clue. The upload page had the following alert: "Welcome! To protect you and your work, we ask all contributing artists to confirm their identity. Your files will not be able to be sold until a valid photo of your ID is uploaded. The accepted types of identification are a passport, drivers license, or other government-issued ID." There was a note somewhere else on the page that they were urging contributors to complete this step by Jan 1 2016... I made a JPEG of my driver's license with all the ID numbers pixelated and uploaded it. The response message was: "Please wait about 7 days for the ID review process to complete. Meanwhile, feel free to upload and prepare your content for the curatorial process. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us." Sales are so slow there (for photos) that it doesn't matter, but if I had a large portfolio which suddenly wasn't for sale because of a new ID requirement they never told me about, I'd be pretty ticked. Shame I can't go back to the survey and add mishandling this requirement to my list of how they could improve
97
« on: December 09, 2015, 00:40 »
I couldn't quite believe the numbers, but SS says they have 69 million images and added 723,000 this week alone.
Their rate of additions has risen considerably in the last 6 months, and in 5 years, SS is adding 10 times the images per week that they were in December 2010
Dec 2015
69,500,356 royalty-free stock images / 723,027 new stock images added this week
Nov 2015
66,810,021 images / 541,431 added this week
Oct 2015
64,309,494 images / 584,033 added this week
Sept 2015
62,729,120 images / 572,393 added this week
Aug 2015
60,106,448 images / 475,892 added this week
Jul 2015
57,612,942 images / 408,490 added this week
Jun 2015
55,612,068 images / 277,017 added this week
Dec 2014
45,829,180 images / 299,682 added this week
Dec 2013
31,515,979 images / 200,883 added this week
Dec 2012
22,886,384 images / 72,658 added this week
Dec 2011
17,171,871 images / 90,921 added this week
Dec 2010
13,629,356 images / 74,474 added this week
98
« on: December 05, 2015, 13:42 »
I don't remember seeing this before, but Shutterstock has a new feature allowing a buyer to pick certain pre-set sizes (Facebook header, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.) and Filters - named after cities but a small-ish simple-ish set of tonal variations.
Underneath the small/medium/large radio buttons is a new one "Custom Size" and selecting that enables an Edit Image button (versus Download).
I think after you pick a set of choices you get both the edited version and the original when you download.
Possibly this might help buyers who need something quick for a Twitter post or email header (two of the choices). It's marked as Beta so I guess they're trying it out - nice to see improvements for buyers (I'm assuming they must have had feedback suggesting this would be appreciated).
100
« on: November 10, 2015, 00:04 »
I don't really understand the nature of the financial deals described, but Getty has apparently borrowed $100m (minus a $5m "discount" and a $2.5m "fee"!!) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-03/carlyle-s-getty-images-said-to-reach-creditor-deal-for-new-debthttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-05/distressed-debt-lenders-aid-getty-images-in-shutterstock-battleThere is an article from September with some more background, written while they were looking around for the ways to borrow the money: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-10/goldman-said-among-firms-pushing-carlyle-s-getty-for-debt-swap"Getty, which is controlled by Carlyle, is seeking to raise between $50 million and $100 million of new debt as it attempts to bulk up its flagging stock-photo business, people with knowledge said earlier this week." I don't know what they mean by "bulk up" - improve sites and software? advertise? acquire new collections? There is this quote, which also is a bit short on specifics: "Getty will use the cash in part to increase its marketing efforts and develop a consumer-facing business,..." I guess the 10.5% interest Getty will pay reflects the perception of risk involved in lending a company already $2.46 billion in debt. Moody's downgraded their debt rating to Caa1. This Barrons article refers to the deal as a "limited default" http://blogs.barrons.com/incomeinvesting/2015/11/05/getty-images-distressed-debt-exchange-called-limited-default/I can't see any way this can be good for contributors, but thought it was worth noting for those still significantly dependent on iStock income.
|
Sponsors
Microstock Poll Results
Sponsors
|
Show Posts
