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 - bunhill

Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 7 8 9 ... 62
76
Off Topic / Re: GO Greece!
« on: June 27, 2015, 11:50 »
also the reason behind the bubbles and the devastating market crashes

These are part of the normal economic cycle. A down is a time of low costs and opportunity. Out of down comes up.

77
Off Topic / Re: GO Greece!
« on: June 27, 2015, 11:34 »
I never understand how any country can borrow so much money and then ask for more when they can't even pay the interest on the loan.  It isn't just Greece, so many countries have been living beyond their means for years now and I hope it all comes to an end soon.  It will be painful for a few years but at the moment most of the world seems to be living in an unsustainable way.  Most of us aren't as well off as we might think.  When debts can't be paid, interest rates will have to go up and everyone that can't pay their mortgage or interest on loans is in for a hard time but at least it will be real, unlike the the world we currently live in.

The main way of creating liquidity (i.e. money supply) is via lending. Lending effectively  increases the amount of money in circulation. It's a genius system which has funded the vast progress enjoyed over the past few hundred years (and also the wars).

78
Off Topic / Re: GO Greece!
« on: June 27, 2015, 11:24 »
suggested for a very long time that the introduction of the euro ... would lead to the next step on European integration, fiscal (tax) union

The currency can only be credible on the markets if there is fiscal union. But fiscal union makes no sense because the economies of such a vast continent will never be properly in sync. The whole point of economic policy is that it needs to be flexible locally (e.g. tax rates, interest rates etc - these are how democratic govts and / or central banks can control the money supply, inflation, stimulus etc).

Since fiscal union is not feasible, the cannot survive in it's current form. Maybe The Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Germany will retain it - with fiscal policy set in Berlin. France has a huge economy but a very different approach to fiscal policy especially govt spending.

The and the idea of closer union has destroyed the goodwill and prosperity which the old Common Market stood for.

79
Dreamstime.com / Re: Request for image
« on: June 22, 2015, 16:58 »
What would be the point in lying if you are anonymous?  Showing off is pointless if nobody knows who you are.

Hmmm. I haven't done it for ages because I don't really care and I am working on something more interesting. But a while back I went through a stage of having an invisible tracking pixel in my signature and was able to more or less suss out who most people are starting with the location of their IP addresses and the time of the posts. Over time I would realise who people were from posts and portfolios on other forums.

The reason for doing it was not primarily to suss out who was who but because I was curious about who was using more than one login name to support their own posts - and who had quit but come back with another name. At that time the forum was more activate and argumentative. Also I was curious about what country some of the posts were from.

(The more surprising thing was noticing the company IPs which were reading the forum at that time. The agencies were to be expected - but there were financial companies reading the forum too.)

ETA: obviously there are much better ways of looking at the stats - before anyone starts a technical conversation. Mine was a lazy and only half bothered approach.

80
I'm surprised nobody is outraged to see that Apple is paying more than 70% royalties while iStock is paying us as little as 15%.

Remember that Apple is primarily in the business of selling hardware. The services they provide are ultimately about making the platform better. It's a completely different model.

Also - Taylor Swift is a rarer commodity than microstock which is over-supplied.

81
Oh and lets not forget that is just her album, LP, Cassette, CD sales and concerts.

cassette ?

82
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Is Imagebrief ok for Exclusives?
« on: June 22, 2015, 04:06 »
So the only briefs you can participate in without violating your exclusivity is the RM briefs which are very few.

No, the majority of briefs are RM. Roughly somewhere slightly over but probably less than ⅔.

83
Adobe Stock / Re: Introducing Adobe Stock!
« on: June 18, 2015, 05:31 »
There is a rather good article around this here at Paul Melcher's Thoughts of a Bohemian blog. In particular his focus on how selling stock is now about being on the inside of the client's existing workflow.

Quote
Shutterstock, as well as Getty Images and now Adobe,  have long understood that in order to compete in this space, you have to be where your clients are. Not by sticking a pretty website somewhere and waiting for clients to find you, but rather, deep into their workflows.

84
If everyone gets a fair share it can't be more than 27 cent per pack. Or 0.0035 cent per stocksy image.

Or perhaps the division is proportional to the original list price of the individual packages. And the Stocksy packages are amusingly priced at $thousands each - for a one-project license, not RF.

I've been spending a lot of time at Creative Market lately - mostly browsing potential app UI elements although the content is also potentially interesting. I haven't bought anything there but I find it interesting in terms of the trends. I like browsing Creative Market in many ways although it seems difficult to decide what might actually be any good. I cannot decide if I am wasting my time looking at it. And it would be a lousy place to search for stock photos I think.

Personally I'm not sure I am ever going to want a random grab-bag of stuff which I would then have to waste time picking through. Same as I mostly hate free stuff.

ETA: On the other hand - quality packs of style or subject themed images might do well at the actual stock sites. Stocksy started out as a great looking collection - but those packs are a poor advert for them IMO.

85
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Withholding Tax
« on: June 13, 2015, 10:12 »
(I) have been involved in systems deployments for US companies that included a withholding tax element and did cater for this type of situation.

How did the implementation work in practice ? Are you saying that the system was capable of doing a refund in the event that a person later submitted different details ? Or was payment withheld until after the person's tax details had been accepted ?

86
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Withholding Tax
« on: June 13, 2015, 08:27 »
A competent systems analyst would have identified this obvious scenario and put in place rules that would have prevented the deduction in the first place.

You are presuming that the IRS processes would allow this. I am assuming that they don't.

Putting in place exception scenarios to handle user mistakes is a significant consideration putting use cases or requirements lists together.

Yes and no. Knowing about possible exceptions is certainly an important part of analysis. But effective design is equally about taking deliberate decisions about what the system actually needs to do (for example - deliberately deciding to leave something out because of some conflict or difference of precedence between 2 criteria). Bear in mind that iStock has a contractual obligation to make the payout as detailed.

The system is not just IT. And it does include and account for the possibility of users failing to properly complete the paperwork - by thoroughly documenting and explaining the entire process well in advance.

87
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Withholding Tax
« on: June 12, 2015, 04:51 »
The "rules" in a properly designed IT solution would have accommodated this as it is a blindingly obvious scenario

Not if compliance with the IRS processes require them to do things in some particular way.

I believe that we can assume that this is down to the IRS - since the same conditions apply with respect to Kindle authors (if you Google this - bear in mind that many of the conflicting answers pre-date the recent revisions). Anyone looking to claim back an over-payment (including as a result of incomplete details) needs to deal directly with the IRS (which I think means submitting a US tax return). That's the system.
 
There is an interesting contrast with the way the PP overpayment was handled.

No this comparison doesn't work. Because it is not about contributors trying to get money back from the IRS.

88
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Withholding Tax
« on: June 11, 2015, 05:12 »
A well designed IT system would accommodate this situation automatically either by holding payments pending completion of the tax form or by auto adjusting balances.

Not necessarily. Systems are defined by the rules which they implement (using rules here in the systems-analytical sense). Unless you know those rules you are not in a position to judge whether a system is well designed or not. The rules of this system are likely constrained by two potentially overlapping sets of requirements - i.e. IRS process  / regulation and the contractual obligation to pay.

{Also _  This is just like -> if you were to overpay on the PAYE system in Ireland (or the UK) you would have to claim it back from the government. Not from the employer.}

89
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Withholding Tax
« on: June 06, 2015, 13:21 »
It seems though that they deduct 28% from non-US sourced sales which is a new one on me - thought only US sales were subject to US taxes?

People living in non treaty jurisdictions who complete the tax interview properly are not subject to withholding tax on non US sales. People who do not complete the tax interview properly are taxed on both US and non US sales. This was explained at various points ahead of the change.

Remember that part of the purpose of the tax interview (from the US govt perspective) is to identify US citizens living abroad. US citizens are subject to US tax wherever they live. Correctly completing the interview is therefore also about identifying yourself as not being a US citizen.

90
But just like Pavlov's dogs they keep ringing that bell and contributors keep salivating at the thought of a meal ticket sale that never arrives

...I'm glad I'm a cat :D

Eddie Izzard - Pavlov's Cats

91
Worth also remembering that, as well as the declining market, many countries are now beginning to experience negative economic inflation.

92
Let me remind that when istock,first with Bruce, then with Getty, was raising prices year after year, a lot of people, including a lot of photographers used to angrily protest

I was one who was concerned about it. I though it risked losing customers and the higher commissions risked pulling in a load of new photographers (which I suppose was part of the point).

Remember the crazy high prices people used to pay for a basic html website ? There was money being spent back then.

Those were the days before social media sharing and before the ubiquitous iPhone camera (Facebook went mainstream about the same time that the original iPhone was launched). It was an era of almost unparalleled economic boom and new speculative web businesses funded by debt. There was suddenly a big and growing market for easily accessible commercial images. Plus clubs, church groups and existing local businesses were being told that they needed a "web presence". About the time that everyone got fast internet.

So back then iStock was probably right to increase prices. It was still much cheaper than images had been and the demand existed. But today business is much slower - and many organisations have switched their presence to Facebook. Many of the old web sites are either gone or else replaced by what is effectively a simple contact page. And much of the content which keeps things fresh today is shot on an iPhone and shared by 'friends' of the business/club/church group etc.

If the price of a thing is going down then we know that demand is not increasing. I strongly suspect that with hindsight the Shutterstock valuation will be seen as the high water mark. And that has almost certainly been based on past performance (never reliable), unrealistic future expectations and a market which would have corrected years ago if it had not been for QE and record low interest rates.

93
Shutterstock.com / Re: Royalty Declines At Shutterstock
« on: May 17, 2015, 05:09 »
If I believe that I need 10 000 files to make 2000 dollars a month just on SS with photos, then I have no problem with that. I also dont care if someone else can achieve that with 500. I just need a realistic perspective for myself.

When you get to 10,000 you will find that the horizon has moved to 100,000.

94
Shutterstock.com / Re: Royalty Declines At Shutterstock
« on: May 16, 2015, 11:20 »
Subscription profits mainly come from higher pricing points (say $100 for a subscription), buyers not using all of their allotted downloads and expiring downloads after the end of the month.

DPC's doesn't have any of those limits, so a subscription package is basically a disguised credit pack for cheap

Yep. It's $99 for a year. And if you don't use your credits they carry forward. But if you use all your credits additional images are only $1 each. And it's good quality content.

How can anyone compete with that ?

I can only assume that Adobe will not be planning to charge more than this once Fotolia is incorporated into CC. It seems more likely to me that stock content will come bundled free with CC sooner or later.

95
good luck buying groceries with dollars or euroes once THEIR bubbles burst (which will happen as soon as the madmen at the helm at central banks run out of ideas, or steam, or staying power, and are swamped by the markets). Only then will the jury be in on Bitcoin and Alt coins etc as well.

In order for bitcoin to be useful as a currency it would have to be adopted as an asset by the very markets which the economic armageddonist argue it exists as an alternative to. In which case it would be subject to the same stresses and uncertainties as any other asset.

As things stand, the collapse of a major currency would make a bitcoin like system of exchange less rather than more useful to the society. Since bitcoin has no mechanism for creating the liquidity on which growth and recovery could be built. Additionally it is also a very poor way of storing value.

96
VideoBlocks / Re: Transaction fees
« on: May 16, 2015, 10:42 »
We're not talking "Bitcoin as an instrument for sepculation" here but Bitcoin as a tool for innovation (so it's not about BTC to USD rates but rather about **free, secure transactions** and worldwide free transmission of value).

The downside of BTC is that it is highly volatile and expensive to exchange into money with which to buy groceries, fuel etc

97
Shutterstock.com / Re: Royalty Declines At Shutterstock
« on: May 16, 2015, 10:03 »
Dollar Photo Club

This outfit is advertising aggressively. We had marketing from them.

I don't see how anyone can compete against their $99 annual subscription - and unused downloads roll-over.

98
Nikon / Re: More strange marks showing on D200
« on: May 06, 2015, 11:35 »
I don't usually recommend this, but since its 8 years old and I've done it with the same camera... maybe try a can of compressed air to clean it?

I strongly advise against using canned air. The propellant can come out as a liquid under certain circumstances. I was in a darkroom once when someone (else) destroyed a very valuable negative using that stuff at slightly the wrong angle.

Also - compressed air will not clean a smear / smudge. The correct approach is to do a wet clean using Eclipse or similar solution. Then clean for any dust spots using either dedicated brushes or a gummy dust stick (eg the Pentax one or similar - Leica use them in the factory). An illuminated loupe is essential for examining the sensor surface properly

99
I don't need to check anything with any sites I am with I know and understand the copyright / trademark  issues.

Either you don't, or you're trolling. Or both.

100
You can not shoot and sell commercial images taken on private property without a release, what are you missing?


Nobody is disputing this.

When you buy something you are not buying the copyright you are buying a product the copyright stays with the designer of the product.


Nobody is disputing this. As you know.

Your argument above, the point we are addressing concerns buildings - houses specifically. Copyright is not typically the issue with houses. The issue is one of permission. (Sometime a Property Release covers copyright - sometimes a Property Release covers a different sort of permission - eg with houses).

You will find the information you need here:

Getty Images Contributor Community - Model and Property Releases

and also here:

asmp.org

If those links are not good enough for you then why not contact Getty directly or whoever you sell via.

Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 7 8 9 ... 62

Sponsors

Mega Bundle of 5,900+ Professional Lightroom Presets

Microstock Poll Results

Sponsors