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Messages - BaldricksTrousers
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 [7] 8 9 10 11 12 ... 206
151
« on: February 22, 2018, 15:21 »
It's there, all right, and one day it will probably erupt (though sometimes volcanoes go inactive) but that may be tens of or hundreds of thousands of years in the future so its not something to worry about overmuch. In any case, the experts there say there would be a lengthy warning period before it went off -- not that being forewarned would be much help.
152
« on: February 22, 2018, 09:16 »
Sorry, no time to post, I am off to looting stores.
Pick me up a Nikon D850 and D5, a Gitzo carbon finer tripod, and a Nikon 400 prime please. Oh, and a few XQD cards:)
No problem, I'll put them in the back of my brand new Aston Martin. 
You'd do better with a donkey. They don't stop working when the petrol runs out.
153
« on: February 22, 2018, 09:08 »
Sorry, no time to post, I am off to looting stores.
Pick me up a Nikon D850 and D5, a Gitzo carbon finer tripod, and a Nikon 400 prime please. Oh, and a few XQD cards:)
You'd be better off with film, you'll find the electricity supply stops working.
154
« on: February 22, 2018, 09:07 »
Best to rely on the official source: https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/yellowstone/
YELLOWSTONE VOLCANO (VNUM #325010)
4425'48" N 11040'12" W, Summit Elevation 9203 ft (2805 m)
Current Volcano Alert Level: NORMAL
Current Aviation Color Code: GREEN
Although, of course, the fake news brigade will insist the scientists are lying as part of a conspiracy.
Incidentally, the hoax warning dates back to last July, which just goes to show that old hoaxes never die, they scarcely even fade away.
There was some news 6-8 months ago that there was some kind of seismic activity there. Then, the story came out about the geological make up of Yellowstone (i.e. big volcano). Everyone ran with that and it has festered into doom and gloom ever since, when in fact it's same ol same ol. So you are correct.
I did see a documentary a while ago that said an eruption was "overdue" and the results could be pretty serious.
The Discovery Channel and the British tabloids love running end-of-the-world stories. Asteroid impact..... Yellowstone and various other "Supervolcanoes" (they've just produced one off Japan), plagues, earthquakes, ice ages, deadly solar flares, geomagnetic reversals .... The one thing the British tabloids don't produce as an end-of-the-world story is global warming, which really is going to screw us or our children or grandchildren (depending how old you are ... by 2100 things will be in a real mess, but I won't be around to see it).
155
« on: February 22, 2018, 08:21 »
The world is coming to an end, and your reaction is to post here? Get your priorities in order!
Not much point in having priorities at a time like that.
156
« on: February 22, 2018, 00:21 »
Best to rely on the official source: https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/yellowstone/YELLOWSTONE VOLCANO (VNUM #325010) 4425'48" N 11040'12" W, Summit Elevation 9203 ft (2805 m) Current Volcano Alert Level: NORMAL Current Aviation Color Code: GREEN Although, of course, the fake news brigade will insist the scientists are lying as part of a conspiracy. Incidentally, the hoax warning dates back to last July, which just goes to show that old hoaxes never die, they scarcely even fade away.
157
« on: February 20, 2018, 03:20 »
I bought quite a lot of 1970s Nikon film camera gear from Japanese sellers last year and - with one exception - was astonished by just how good it all was. The Japanese really look after stuff (unlike the ex-Soviet countries). The one exception was an incredibly cheap lens which turned out to have fungus.
158
« on: February 20, 2018, 00:33 »
Let me make this easy. No I didn't post a blog, I don't have one. Stop trying to say you know who I am or that I can't be capped because I don't make enough. You are wrong. Stop saying where I live, including the city, as a way to say, I know who you are, because you are also wrong. But please keep saying that only upper level people are capped, it's good news for the rest of us who aren't. Reminder that when you criticize people for their work or levels, you are making fun of over half the people here, maybe 75%. But you're so vane you don't mind putting down all the new people and all of us not as wonderful as you.
Now you can go back to writing political hate messages and maybe keep busy with that. Or you can keep stalking me because you don't know what you are writing about and know nothing about who I am or my work. Please stop the obsession with my data or illustrations and video collection.
I think you've officially lost it.
No, a few moments with Agent Google reveal that she's from the US (it's easy enough to find the address). So you're probably mixing her up with someone else.
159
« on: February 19, 2018, 00:55 »
How accurate is SS reporting? Is it possible they don't report all sales?
Anything is possible but deliberately doing that would be an open-and-shut case of fraud and I doubt if the owners are so poor that they are willing to risk jail to snaffle our 38c commissions. However, they did once credit me $10 for a referral from a year earlier that had been overlooked - so yes, they can miss things, but if they do then they pay up if they spot the mistake.
160
« on: February 17, 2018, 07:00 »
But have they actually closed iStock to new contributors? Nobody's answered the original question.
161
« on: February 17, 2018, 06:58 »
Thanks found it.....within a few cents of last year....clearly a cap on my already puny earnings  .
Mine's actually the best since August - there seems to have been a significant sum from Germany this time. Maybe a one-off at a decent rate, I can't be bothered to trawl through the depressing sales report to look for it.
162
« on: February 17, 2018, 06:24 »
Am I the only one not got this report yet?
i haven't either.Oh, yes I have, it's just not obvious. The bar chart for Jan 18 is nestled up against the one for Jan 17.
163
« on: February 16, 2018, 01:00 »
If you decide to only upload to Alamy, is it better as RM or as RF?
This question is one I have pondered. From a buyers point of view, I would have thought RF was a preferable option as it is simpler to understand and buy. Logically, it should be more expensive than RM, but traditionally it was the other way and now my experience is that on Alamy at least, they are pretty much the same. If that is the case, then you have two sorts of buyers - one that doesn't care if it is RM or RF and just wants the right image. The second is one that would prefer the flexibility of RF and so would prefer an RF license if they had a choice of two images that more or less met the requirement. In my mind, therefore, an RF license lets you serve both people, an RM license is potentially a bit more restrictive in who it appeals to.
Although this has been a no-no for some time, I know don't really understand why the same image couldn't be RF on one site and RM on another these days. I can understand how exclusive RM has value in terms of control of usage etc. but non-exclusive RM doesn't really help much unless you carefully track every site you have uploaded it to. Anyway, that is probably off the point!
Steve
Added to which they seem happy to sell RF images on RM licenses these days, I'm not sure if they are also selling RM as RF. Of course, the advantage with RM is that you might get a second sale to the same client a year or two later, though even that is undermined by the super-long usage periods that some clients get. ..... Yes, they are selling RM images on RF terms, here's one: Country: Worldwide Usage: Single company - multiple use editorial only Industry sector: Education Start: 05 September 2017 Duration: Unlimited Here's another one which has terms pretty much indistinguishable from a micro editorial license: Country: Worldwide Usage: Single company - multiple use editorial only Editorial print + digital use. Industry sector: Media, design & publishing Start: 23 October 2017 Duration: Unlimited Mostly the standard duration for RM is five years. And here are the details from an RF image, where the terms it's been sold under are clearly "RM": Country: Worldwide Usage: Commercial electronic, Websites, apps, social media and blogs (excludes advertising). Worldwide for 5 years. Media: Website, app and social media 57 MB 5471 x 3648 pixels 1 MB compressed Image Size: Any size Start: 04 October 2017 End: 04 October 2022
164
« on: February 15, 2018, 14:11 »
I license images from my own website
The trouble with that is the marketing. How do you get places like the Smithsonian to search for stuff on your website when the agencies have vastly larger collections at lower prices? OK, so you could negotiate to provide a feature on a topical subject - though the chances of them biting on that are poor. But for if they are looking for an illustration for a travel article, why would they go to you first instead of getting an image from an agency?
165
« on: February 15, 2018, 06:32 »
I love Alamy but I'm finding sales on there so unreliable / sporadic
That's it in a nutshell, really.
166
« on: February 15, 2018, 05:40 »
There might well be companies that instruct their staff to search microstock first and only go to Alamy if they can't find what they want. The trouble is, unless your file is different from anything on the micros then buyers are likely to find something good enough without having to resort to Alamy. So rather than protecting your Alamy sale by not using the micros, you end up missing out entirely - and as the figures show, all those 30-40c micro sales do add up in the long run.
BTW - a couple of days back I got $13 total from three sales on Alamy - is it really worth trying to protect that sort of value per sale by not supplying micros? On the same day one SS sale was for $10.
167
« on: February 15, 2018, 02:06 »
You might lose some sales from images that are on Alamy and the micros - that is they might sell for cents instead of $$. Of course if you just leave them on only the micros, they will never sell on Alamy
I think you can solve that conundrum mathematically: do 50%+ of buyers on Alamy go on to search the micros to see if they can find the same image cheaper? If not, then it's rational to assume that every Alamy sale lost by having your stuff on all sites will be offset by an Alamy sale gained. I think it's almost certain that a majority of Alamy buyers don't search all over the place to find a cheaper image - after all, we all agree that most people won't look beyond the first few pages of a search before deciding what image to buy, so the idea they will go trawling through the micros if they're prepared to use Alamy is pretty laughable. Secondly, there seems to be some confusion. If you divide your images into micro and Alamy then you can only lose an Alamy sale if you put the Alamy collection into the micros, you cannot lose an Alamy sale by putting the micro collection on Alamy - because the sale you "lose" could not have happened if the micro image wasn't there. Thirdly, if you keep your Alamy collection strictly on Alamy then you will lose the possibility of selling any of it on the micros. If the poll results on the right hand side mean anything, then the earnings potential of an image that is on Alamy must be much lower than the earnings potential of having an image on Shutterstock. If you select a particular picture then, of course, one brilliant sale on Alamy could dwarf any earnings it might get from the micros, but if you look at the overall earnings of 1,000 images then on the whole they will earn less on Alamy than they would on Shutterstock alone, let alone what that 1,000 would earn if spread across the top 6 micro sites. Trying to guess which image is going to be a shining star on Alamy is like trying to predict the winning number in a national lottery - it's just not going to happen - so you have to look at the broader averages to work out the best course. Fourthly, is it worth uploading anywhere these days? If you take account of how much you're likely to earn, it would make more sense for most people to be flipping burgers at McD's. But this is much more fun than that. Finally, you will get quite a lot of rejections from the micros - if you're doing well then different files will be rejected for various strange reasons by the different agencies (if they all agree the lighting is rubbish or your horizon is tilted then I'm afraid the problem is you, not them) so the file inspections will cause you to have slightly different portfolios on different sites, but as long as you work doesn't have serious technical errors, like colour banding or sensor spots, Alamy will accept it all. Anyway, I think I've demonstrated that the rational approach is to put everything everywhere - assuming you're happy to accept paltry returns for all your effort. PS: if you want to minimise the possibility of Alamy buyers finding your work on the micros use a different alias for Alamy. That will stop them finding you by user name on the micros.
168
« on: February 08, 2018, 02:03 »
Is it even legal for them to cut rates secretly? We are meant to have a contract with them and contracts usually allow you to opt out in advance if one side decides unilaterally to alter the terms.
The only reason they can do this is because they get their hands on the cash before we do, imagine how they would squeal if we got the money first and decided to increase our commissions without telling them before handing on the balance.
169
« on: February 06, 2018, 10:14 »
Presumably there are different servers providing the data we see and they aren't completely in synch with each other.
170
« on: February 02, 2018, 10:58 »
They remove 35% and 45% levels and everyone who was on this two levels are one level down and have lower commission. This is so unfair
So it would seem anyone in the old Tier 4 bracket, which I am guessing would have been a LOT of people, have lost 5% on credit sales, and 4cents on every subscription overnight with no explanation. 123Rf - Care to explain?
Except your maths is wrong, going from 35% to 30% commission isn't a 5% loss, it's roughly 15%.
171
« on: February 02, 2018, 03:04 »
They merged some levels so some people will get a drop and some won't . Here's the old level structure - https://blog.123rf.com/2-6-royalties-commissions-payment/ . The new one has already been posted here although the credit targets are missing . The way they are handling this is totally unacceptable . I won't be uploading there anytime soon .
I stopped uploading there when they awarded themselves a commission rise at my expense because they weren't marketing my work as well as they had in the past. I don't believe in rewarding failure.
172
« on: February 02, 2018, 00:57 »
My point is (see above examples) that both Alamy and SS are tapping both micro and macro markets (maybe mid-stock is a better term)
This is why I'm saying that Alamy can to do better than 5.4% of my revenue.
OK I'm going to stop boring everyone with replies after this. I just want to make a final observation, which is that SS has spent 14 years establishing its relationship with its customers. There's no reason to think any of those customers would switch to Alamy even if it duplicated the SS pricing and tried to copy the marketing techniques SS used and if they did start to switch, you can bet that SS would cut its prices - and our commissions - to counter that. There's a long string of sites on the bottom of the list that have tried to duplicate the market of the successful few and failed. Its not an accident that iS, SS, DT, BS, Fot (Adobe), 123 and CanStockPhoto are all among the oldest sites. Only Pond 5 and Deposit Photos in the two top tiers were set up since 2005 IIRC. DP managed to break through with an extremely aggressive marketing strategy backed by a huge budget (but still only got to 6th place) and Pond 5 is for footage, not stills. I recall someone observing that the reason DT didn't rise above 3rd place in the poll in the early days was probably because it paid commissions of 50%, which limited its advertising budget, while iS and SS had a lot more cash to put into promotions. So, really, the first thing Alamy would need to do if it was going to "do better" would be to cut the commissions to 20% or less.... Not really what we are looking for, is it?
173
« on: February 01, 2018, 11:01 »
I don't know where you've got the idea that I've got self-imposed exclusivity with Alamy. I never said that. I'm on SS, iS, 123, DT, BS and CanStockPhoto as well.
I didn't call Alamy a "macro" either. It's a hybrid but it markets itself with generally higher prices than the others and doesn't aim primarily at the subscription market. Would it generate more money if it did? Maybe, who can tell? But then it wouldn't be Alamy, would it?
174
« on: February 01, 2018, 09:37 »
Hang on, though ... why do you think you know what ranking Alamy has for me? It was already in my top three for earnings last month. So perhaps it can't do better. It certainly already meets your criterion for an agency that's doing well.
As I already said before, I'm not only looking at my own stats to state that Alamy is lagging behind (as you do)
My stats are virtually identical with the stats we see on the right side of the page.
Of course it doesn't mean certainty, but it means that there is a higher probability that I'm right and you are wrong.
It means that for me, as well as for many others, Alamy can do better. Much better! 
Actually, it probably means we have different portfolios and supply different sites. I'm not on Adobe (I fell out with Fotolia) or Pond 5, and for a few months Alamy has been outperforming iStock-of-the-exciting-news-announcements. But how can you compare, when Alamy and the micros sell into different markets? In the end it's apples vs oranges. And because a microstock commercial oriented site does well, that doesn't mean a midstock editorial oriented site should be able to produce the same returns. If you are milking a cow and a goat* and you find that the goat produces less milk than the cow, it doesn't mean the goat can do much better - it means it is not a cow, it is a goat. * I've milked both so this is a real-world comparison.
175
« on: January 31, 2018, 23:25 »
Very strange ... sales that were shoehorned into the last day of the downtime now seem to be redistributed across those days. At least, that's the best interpretation I can put on how my stats for January have been rejigged.
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