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Messages - molka
Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 ... 9
1
« on: January 15, 2011, 08:44 »
Thanks, I love this kind of stuff. NASA Goddard Photo and Video is my favorite stream on flickr too.
2
« on: January 15, 2011, 08:40 »
... and looky-look what it got you with istock and microstock in general 
...A fairly decent chunk of money, a large portfolio, improved skill in my field, and some financial stability. Yeah, that stuff sucks. 
so what's the several hundred pages of pissed of whining on istock and here is all about then? it's suddenly "woo-yay again"?  my god you people are inconsistent infantile kids...
3
« on: January 15, 2011, 08:35 »
do you people ever do this thing called THINKING? it helps you make connections between certain phenomenona. of course you don't have sales on a place like alamy, when you got millions of files on sale for a couple fo bucks. jezuz... : (
Right, so by your logic, all I need to do is remove all of my images from microstock, upload to Alamy, and I'm rolling in money. I had no idea it was so simple!
what an infantile response... who talked about rolling in money? : )
4
« on: January 14, 2011, 18:24 »
Looks like truth hurts again. But you people sure are good at ignoring things! Great skill, it's called ignorance... and looky-look what it got you with istock and microstock in general
5
« on: January 14, 2011, 18:15 »
ok, how 'bout everyone withdrawing their shots from at least istock... or at least deactivating them? punishment due. the best would be everybody removing their ports from micro sites and uploading them to sites like alamy. think big, do something like this, or they'll just keep raping you untill you look like swiss cheese.
That's easy to say, not so easy to do. You're asking people to stop making a living from microstock and potentially move to a site that might not make them anything. I've been with Alamy, never made much money there. I make a modest living with microstock sites. Why should I give that up because of your moral objection to microstock?
do you people ever do this thing called THINKING? it helps you make connections between certain phenomenona. of course you don't have sales on a place like alamy, when you got millions of files on sale for a couple fo bucks. jezuz... : (
6
« on: January 14, 2011, 12:04 »
infantilism kicks in: 'opinion I don't like' = 'troll.' Grow up! : )
7
« on: January 14, 2011, 11:43 »
Well, with 45 contributors having voted so far, I guess that answers your question Race!
Over 50% of contributors are on 36c or more per sub download and less than 16% are on the minimum 25c (and even those should move upwards fairly quickly if they uploaded a few saleable images).
That basically proves that it is against the interests of over 84% of all independent contributors to support low paying agencies like Thinkstock.
What does it matter? All microstock agenciesare low paying.
If you sell in volume it makes a big difference.
You have to sell in volume because they are low paying.
Bravo. You have perfectly described the entire concept behind microstock
The question reamining then is how come ppl using just a ounce of common sense didn't refuse that crap offer? It's hard to beleive ppl are that stupid and shoprtsighted, but looks to be that way. It's just sad : (
8
« on: January 14, 2011, 11:38 »
That's a fair point about personal websites SNP. I'm just concerned that people feel pushed into it by the failure of one agency to deliver on it's fat-fee promise, rather than taking a leap by choice.
Choice = good
Backed into corner = bad
(IMHO)
One agency's failure has certainly been the straw that broke the camel's back, but really, all the agencies take too much and do too little to earn their money.
I think we must all have known for some time that the steady decline in the rate of sales per image means that there will come a point where the return from the micros starts to fall. We simply can't produce fast enough to compensate for the growth in the collections and the prices can't go on rising forever to make up for falling sales. Commission cuts simply accelerate the speed at which incomes will start to decline. Last year, I managed to make exactly the same as the year before, to within a handful of dollars, despite the pay cut at my biggest agency and the pay freeze at my second one. I can't be optimistic about the coming year, so I'm looking for different ways to make money from my images.
I'm not convinced that direct sales from websites in competition with the micros is the answer. If they are so flooded with images that we can't make decent money, how are we going to find customers that they miss - and if the customers know about them, why will they buy from us instead of using them?
Both you and molka bring up some interesting points.
The agencies pagerank is always going to be good. They have tons of money to buy their way to the top. I will never be able to compete with that.
I just hate having such a defeatist attitude, and I especially hate showing it to the agencies. A lot of bad things in history have happened because people were convinced that there was nothing they could do. I personally think there is something that people could do, but there are too many afraid to take the chance to make a change. <sigh>
ok, how 'bout everyone withdrawing their shots from at least istock... or at least deactivating them? punishment due. the best would be everybody removing their ports from micro sites and uploading them to sites like alamy. think big, do something like this, or they'll just keep raping you untill you look like swiss cheese.
9
« on: January 14, 2011, 09:47 »
I keep hearing all of the analysts saying having your own site is the way to go. "The future". I'm not buying it unless some new innovative method is developed for connecting buyers with contributors. In my experience, all of the people who have contacted me directly want freebies. Buyers use stock agencies. Freebie hunters use Flickr and Google. There are exceptions of course but it's rare. Every once in a while you hear about someone on Flickr making a sale.
Why would anyone want to do stock as a hobby? Flickr is a hobby. Stock is a business. But it seems to be turning into a "supplemental income" business. Commission cuts, competition, oversupply, economy, and hitting the growth wall all seem to be slamming contributors pretty hard right now.
If you build it, they will come. Kidding (sort of). If you have a site that has content and is relatively search engine friendly, people will find it. My site has only been open a few months, and guess who is leading the pack this month? ME!
I can't say this will last or improve or that other people will have the same results, but who knows. Especially, if you don't even make an effort. Do some research about SEO, web design, marketing etc. You don't have to be an expert, just motivated. Most of us know more about selling our work than any other agency does. Why? Because it is our work and we are actually paying attention to what sells and what doesn't. If I think 100 images of parrots in tuxedos are what people want, then I don't need rejections for "too many" parrots in tuxedos. I also have sold at many different price points, so I have some idea of what buyers want to buy my files for.
My quest isn't to become a multi-million dollar corporation. I just want to make a living off the work I do. If I have to do a little extra hard work now to make that more viable in the future, then I'm going to suck it up and do it. If nothing else, I can strive to have better customer support than istock, lately.
your site's pagerank is 0 shutterstock, istock, getty: 7
10
« on: January 14, 2011, 09:45 »
Well, with 45 contributors having voted so far, I guess that answers your question Race!
Over 50% of contributors are on 36c or more per sub download and less than 16% are on the minimum 25c (and even those should move upwards fairly quickly if they uploaded a few saleable images).
That basically proves that it is against the interests of over 84% of all independent contributors to support low paying agencies like Thinkstock.
What does it matter? All microstock agenciesare low paying.
If you sell in volume it makes a big difference.
You have to sell in volume because they are low paying.
11
« on: January 14, 2011, 07:39 »
Well, with 45 contributors having voted so far, I guess that answers your question Race!
Over 50% of contributors are on 36c or more per sub download and less than 16% are on the minimum 25c (and even those should move upwards fairly quickly if they uploaded a few saleable images).
That basically proves that it is against the interests of over 84% of all independent contributors to support low paying agencies like Thinkstock.
What does it matter? All microstock agenciesare low paying.
12
« on: January 11, 2011, 10:34 »
... top tier within two years. Of course, it's not "easy" but then $10,000 is a lot of money to most people....
10 000 in two years is a lot of money?? Not even in my country. That's less then minimal wage /month.
13
« on: January 09, 2011, 11:56 »
... remove the old stuff that is not selling! ...
How would that help contributors? It might help the company a bit, with some really minro cut in strage expanses, but that's not a big deal anyway. Actually going around weeding out stuff might just cost more then leting them lay around.
14
« on: January 09, 2011, 07:25 »
They already have more images then buyers need, they need to do something. As for increasing quality in favor of sales that's nonsense. Microstock has bad taste written all over it, at least half of the bestsellers (if not most) are the most distastefull rubbish you would ever see.
Not sure if you're referring to me here, but just in case... I was actually referring to technical standards, not aesthetic ones.
Technical standrads are already unreasonably high, pushing them is useless.
15
« on: January 09, 2011, 06:28 »
They already have more images then buyers need, they need to do something. As for increasing quality in favor of sales that's nonsense. Microstock has bad taste written all over it, at least half of the bestsellers (if not most) are the most distastefull rubbish you would ever see.
17
« on: January 05, 2011, 07:18 »
....had a 1T external USB drive for $59 last month!
You'll just love it when that $60 drive makes that tipical 'trapped tiny fly' sound and won't be accesible anymore.
Made by Verbatim, not some fly-by-night upstart.
But you are correct. Remember the Zip drive, click of death? When it made that sound, your data was on the disc but the drive had just turned into toast. 
After years of saving my photos and sometimes wondering why, because no one cares much once they are archived or made ready for sale... (another issue) I've found that in order of reliability, hard drives last best and hold the data better than anything else. Old drives, fill em up, put them on a shelf and they don't go bad. External USB is the same. Unplug it and save it. Next is CDs but they don't hold as much as they once did with smaller pictures. DVDs which are my emergency last resort back-ups and I don't trust them, don't count on the data being 100% there, and basically burn them just in case there's a catastrophic failure and I'd be happy with something, instead of nothing.
My preferred system would be two 1T drives, raid 1 where everything is mirrored. If a drive takes a dive, nothing is lost, just add another one and you're back up and 100%.
I've seen people complain that they formatted a hard drive or that they lost all their backup data, because they deleted everything. They won't saw that they were the cause, just that the whole backup was lost "somehow" and avoid the truth that they were the cause.
Ask yourself, how many times have you had your hard drive completely lose all data or crash? In other words, a simple backup and you'll probably never ever need it. That's why a cheap $59 1T external drive works so well. You have everything you shoot forever, on a drive. Each year you buy a new one and put the old one on the shelf. It's still good. New drives keep going down in price... I have everything on a 300GB drive, bought a 400 the next year, have everything on that, bought a 500 the next year, have everything on that, and when I get the next 1T drive, I'll put everything from the 500 onto it plus what's new and have redundant backups, because the main computer has the roiginals.
The point that started this was someone saying how their hard drive was filling when they saved all their PSD or TIF files.
And what I say is, for $59 you can back up all those old, mostly useless files, and keep your active work on the computer hard drive. Yes, I back up cards, right out of the camera, then copy them to the working computer, and only then format the cards in the camera. I've never yet, needed the backups because of a computer error, hard drive crash or losing the zero track or lost data of any sort. But I have needed them when I hit delete or threw away something by accident. Most lost data is Human Error! 
Maybe I'm just lucky but it seems that when my computers take a dive, they are already backed up or old. Oh wait, everything I own is old and started as a used computer except my Netbook and my external backup drives. 
I don't trust any brand by now, with a few very rare exceptions. As people sinking into consumeridiotism get dumber and dumber, these corps get the chance to move away from reliability, value etc (they are expensive), and rely solely on marketing to sell stuff to the common idiot. Many used-to-be reputable brands sunk into junk category in the last few years. The problem with HDs is that if they are broken, data rescue can get scary expensive. At the place I know where I live they charge several 100 $ just for taking the drive to have a look at it.
18
« on: January 03, 2011, 08:31 »
....had a 1T external USB drive for $59 last month!
You'll just love it when that $60 drive makes that tipical 'trapped tiny fly' sound and won't be accesible anymore.
19
« on: December 29, 2010, 05:32 »
Wow Cathy...thanks
According to these people these charges started back on Dec 14th....that's before they went on their glory vacation!!
You know what's really scary about all this? Why couldn't they take our payment information and take that also. Maybe they can't but that sorta concerns me.
you mean may 2009
20
« on: December 28, 2010, 15:49 »
1. Lens-less cameras will either be on the market or hints will be flying in the blog-o-spheres. Sorry, lens makers, get your research folks working on those logarithms now if they aren't already.
get your pinhole cameras now! it's the future : >
.... the current upswing in the economy...
vote for me in 2011! my porgram: - free beer - hot chicks(dudes) for everyone - eternal life
21
« on: December 23, 2010, 11:18 »
as economy crumbles, I think we will see more and more companies viciously using non productive means trying to get their hands on the remaining few extra dollars going around, as compensation. Capitalism is going to be showing it's worst face - expect that in microstock too (just look at istock)
The economy is recovering, not crumbling. Your reasoning is terrible at best
"Your reasoning is terrible at best" Where is yours? : )
22
« on: December 23, 2010, 11:17 »
as economy crumbles, I think we will see more and more companies viciously using non productive means trying to get their hands on the remaining few extra dollars going around, as compensation. Capitalism is going to be showing it's worst face - expect that in microstock too (just look at istock)
Quite a leap of reasoning equating Kodak's exertion of their perceived legal rights to a condemnation of Capitalism. And how exactly is istock lumped in with the alleged sins of Kodak?
1. Where is the leap? It's a direct connection. 2. I didn't condemn capitalism, I basically said it's getting perverted. Not a big surprise in a crisis.
23
« on: December 23, 2010, 09:44 »
as economy crumbles, I think we will see more and more companies viciously using non productive means trying to get their hands on the remaining few extra dollars going around, as compensation. Capitalism is going to be showing it's worst face - expect that in microstock too (just look at istock)
24
« on: December 20, 2010, 05:27 »
what a sad bullsh*t case. another pampered lazy american trying to make money thru lawsuit. exactly what harm has come to them from this? a few people asking if they are selling something? ohh, the horror Go on like this, and you won't be able to shoot anything, coz anything belongs to someone. The streets and parks here belong to the municipal government. The beautiful nature reserve area close to my town actually belongs to NortForest Ltd. entrusted by the state to manage it, so no more landcapes stock. Maybe the sky and the clouds... altho the airspace is courtesy of the state and it's military : D
25
« on: December 19, 2010, 11:05 »
Cmon, Hugo, explain whats going on here, you post this provocative post declaring your innocence, then disappear? If its all a big mistake, say something, its obvious youre reading.
Well said. This thread is now two weeks old and if you start something like this then you need to provide an update. SS/BS haven't publically accused anyone of anything but FD has chosen to accuse them of unfairness and also publish their private correspondence to him. After this amount of time I don't buy the 'moving house' excuse any more especially when he's been popping up here and elsewhere to discuss other issues. He's not Julian Assange.
This is a black & white issue. He's either totally guilty or completely innocent, there's nothing in between. Until now I've always given FD the benefit of the doubt and hoped it really was a mistake however with the deafening silence I am starting to lose confidence in him.
since when does he owe you or the rest of the bench birds any 'clarification' in a semi seriuos matter like this? interesting how some ppl seem to take the side of the ms sites after those have been raping them so hard for years a freight train could pass thru their aholes : > stockholm syndrome?
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