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Messages - sdeva

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51
Dreamstime.com / Re: Nightmare on Dreamstime
« on: July 20, 2014, 05:55 »
I'm in the club of misfortunes too.  DT sales this month upto now, are way below the average of July 2013.

52
Contributors need to be provided OPT OUT options on all these crappy schemes!!

As far as 123RF is concerned, my slide down began there some time after they introduced their 'tier system', which seems to punish contributors for the agency's own inability to sell one's content.  Rates at this agency are already among the lowest. And now this - the pack.  We need opt out.

53
General Stock Discussion / Canstock review time.
« on: July 06, 2014, 07:54 »
Canstockphoto claims to have review times from hour to few days on their website.  But I have images in pending there since almost a month onward !!

I even wrote to them and they said that the images were in queue - but I still have them in pending till today.

As this is unusual for Canstock, I've been wondering if its just me or are other contributors facing extremely long review times as well.. ???

54
Jo Ann's comment is in very good standing.  Due to lack of sufficient reporting its hard to precisely pin an increase or decrease in sales to isolated factors.  An amount of guesswork is therefore involved based on the general sales trend after a change.

55
Did you notice any change in your sales volumes or income, either good or bad, after opting out?

I would say not significantly, except at one agency.  In another case my RPD has gone up but volume has declined leaving more or less similar revenue. 

56
Or should we call it - Getting better control of one's work.

As stock agencies have evolved there have been all different types of resellers, API, partners and suchlike - who resell content uploaded by a contributor to an agency.

This impacts a contributor in at least two ways:

Firstly, loss of control of the works. It is amazing how far and wide I have found my content.  At times in hands of shabby looking 'little' websites, which may or may not be a suitable representation of one's hard, professional work.

Secondly, the compensation per sales usually drops big time. There is suddenly yet another agency between the contributor and the first stock agency - who are also taking a nice and hefty portion of the cut.

And - thirdly, I am not sure how good is the sanctity (including the terms and conditions under which the sub agency resells the works), and whether it is even broadly at par with the contributors first stock agency.

So where does all this leave a contributor?

Except of course at loose ends with control of work, and a lesser share of revenue.

Over time and in some recent months I have therefore opted out from all partner/ reseller/ API sites wherever such option is possible.  There is few stock agencies that do not allow that!  In such case I have stopped uploads to some of them.  There is still one or two out there where the income generation did not warrant a fast decision. 

But in pretty much all cases I am now either opted out or in close monitoring.  My awakening :) in this regard came from the DP- Shotshop mess of course!! 

I know that most longstanding contributors are already well aware of this issue and make their decisions as they think best.  But I feel that many contributors (like me) are not aware enough or care enough about this issue - except till a time when some shotshop type 'deal' comes around to jolt them.

Maybe its time for all contributors to reawaken to this issue and and to raise better awareness about it!   


 

57
DepositPhotos / Re: Deposit Photo's - 3% Royalty Confirmed
« on: July 01, 2014, 11:23 »
It seems to be a BIG MISTAKE that I ever became a contributor to Depositphotos.  Would not recommend them to anyone else, contributor or buyer, due to the experiences with them - first the shotshop deal and now this!! 

The agency priced its own sub rates - and they themselves set the contributor share on that.  So there seems no rationale for them to now come up with a monthly pack with 5 images and call it a sub plan paying out a sub rate to contributor - while keeping a huge chunk of revenue (97%) for themselves. 

I have already deactivated a big part of my port at DP.  This only motivates me toward more deactivations - while keeping a close watch on them. Because - and this is another issue of concern - they reportedly don't delete deactivated content. Instead I understand that they hang on to it in full resolution, for reasons that beat my understanding.

This is a no win agency from my perspective as a contributor.   >:(

58
I deactivated a chunk of my port and stopped uploading to DP after the Shotshop revelations came out.  Now I think I should stop Subscription sales on DP - as this seems to be a route to making them wealthy at contributor expense.

Wondering .. is it possible to opt out of subs at DP?

59
Am experiencing high rejections at SS in some recent batches as well.  Today it was 1 accepted out of 7 images.  Really unusual because I have had pretty good acceptance rate over past years. Wondering what's up there   :-\

60
A garb of anonymity can reduce the strength of a post or message.

Being un-anonymous has the potential for backlash from an agency or two, those that can't handle or won't respond to a post that is directed at them.

On balance I prefer to be myself - won't hide behind anonymity because I would rather say my mind and handle any consequences than go the other way around.  But to each his own.  This must be an individual decision for each of us to make. However, being anonymous should not be considered a right to become willful and offensive to any others including any agencies - because that in the long run would diminish the impact of this forum.  Anonymous or not we best serve ourselves in this forum by being forthright and direct, but within acceptable parameters of language and content.

61
Stocksy / Re: YES! I got accepted to Stocksy...
« on: June 23, 2014, 04:25 »
Congratulations Kathi!

I was excited when I read your post, it made me log into my Stocksy account, unfortunately it is still in review. My application status is CA-PCA. Anyone know what that mean?

Hi, where do you see application status on the Stocksy website?

62
Stocksy / Re: YES! I got accepted to Stocksy...
« on: June 22, 2014, 17:36 »
Thanks for the detailed response.

Pretty cool :)

I hope your email issues get fixed soon, they can be such a pain ...

63
Stocksy / Re: YES! I got accepted to Stocksy...
« on: June 22, 2014, 16:35 »
That's fantastic, congrats! :)

Just curious.. how many days did it take from application to acceptance?

64
Alamy.com / Re: Alamy sales
« on: June 16, 2014, 04:33 »
Alamy used to get few but high rated sales for me over a year ago.  Then it dried up. Completely.  I have pretty much stopped uploading new content there. 

Apart from complexities of key wording by their system, there seem to be aspects of 'working their system' in play to be able to generate sales.  I don't have the time nor inclination for that!  I think its become a huge white elephant with too many images and too little overall return to an average contributor like me. 

Good luck to those who can still make successful sales at Alamy :)

65
Three years can be a really LONG time in an internet spawned industry with very low entry barrier.

So three years from now the word 'micro stock' could be obsolete. Like some old relic of a bygone industry

Micro stock companies could have finished slitting each other's throats and the few remaining could boast of 100 million+ images available for free.  That's not at all unlikely with an acquisition or two thrown in. Advertising revenue wars could be the order of the day among these few remaining agencies.

Micro stock work could be something like what some of the sites like Flickr etc are today. Largely hobby-driven by amateur photographers.

Micro stock photographers could be in other jobs - from flipping burgers to shooting commissions for advertisers and celebrities or whatever!  Maybe there would be some closed-to-entry RM agencies, probably owned by few photographers, and possibly with specialized content, maybe topic based, such as medical images or travel etc.

Occasionally the ex-microstockers would chat online about the good ole days   ;)



66
General Stock Discussion / Re: May 2014 earning results
« on: June 10, 2014, 09:24 »
I read something about GAME OVER earlier in this thread, and there's something I want to say to all those people who are painting doom n' gloom scenarios about micro stock.

You're right !

The whole business is becoming an exercise in futility.  Revenue keeps edging down doesn't matter how regularly one uploads, RPD is in something of a free fall, and the one thing that's certain is one or another piece of 'bad news' from one or another agency relating to sale (or giveaway) of contributor content or some other business (mal-) practice.  The only thing that seems to be seeing phenomenal growth is the number of new contributors coming on to add to the chase for pennies and nickels.  There's very little incentive to upload new content because most of it disappears among the gazillions of images that search words now produce.

 Tis soon time to shake out the mood and seek a new place in the sun.  Microstock has had its day - and it will soon be time to foray into some other business model and another brave new world :)

67
SS sales slowly drifting down for me  :(. About 10% below May 2013 and about 5% below May 2012 !! I don't have upload stats at the ready, but surely my content there is steadily up, probably 400+ image each year.  With SS fast acquiring the leadership position in micro stock, perhaps its time they revised up the contributor share to at least keep us up with inflation...

68
Site Related / Re: A big cheers for ...
« on: May 23, 2014, 03:04 »
+ 1

This is a great thread  :)

69
Shutterstock.com / Re: Bridge to Bigstock
« on: May 21, 2014, 00:14 »
As I understand, BS is under the same ownership as SS.  Yet, they firstly undercut the sub commission and secondly (in my case and I think many others), they sell a lot less than SS.  So its a double whammy for the artist - less volume as well as less revenue per download.  I felt that I would be a schmuk to undercut my own earnings by continuing to upload to BS.  I therefore stopped uploading last year and also deactivated some of my better selling work from BS. 

Their business approach does not by any means come across as a healthy or fair one for the contributors, most specially the ones who are not on the bridge.

70
Shutterstock.com / Re: Bridge to Bigstock
« on: May 14, 2014, 09:21 »
I stopped unloading to BS last year because I wasn't on bridge and there sub commissions were not even on parity with SS !!!

71
Adobe Stock / Re: Fotolia D-Day (Deactivation Day) - May,1
« on: May 13, 2014, 18:19 »
I believe that the one thing we don't need, is to let emotions get in the way of what should be a direct business based approach.  And the other thing we don't need is for for contributors to start falling out among themselves.

As far as this one goes (and as already pointed out by others), I really don't think any malice was intended - it looked like expressions of contrary opinions and no more than that.

Whenever contributors get in solidly behind an issue, there's an impact!!  I hope we remember that. Its up to us to hang in together and make ours a unified and meaningful voice. 

Just my 2c  :)

72
I uploaded over 700 images and found their process cumbersome.. not sure if worth the effort as they seem far stronger with video than images yet.  However they are fair trade and I support their contributor-friendly business approach.

73
Checked my DP Profile and found a pre-checked box captioned 'Disable partner sites'.  This is probably done by them following my many emails to remove my content from all partner sites.  Maybe I should be jumping with joy while constantly checking Shotshop etc to make sure my content does not appear there, by mistake!!   

74
123RF / Re: 123RF API Partner Sites
« on: May 05, 2014, 10:15 »
I opted out as well.

On the one hand 123RF does not seem to have a contributor-friendly approach. I don't understand the rationale behind the hair-brained graduated royalty scheme - because its not the contributor but the agency that's responsible for generating sales!  Their search functionality has a major impact on what sells, to my understanding.  So DIS-incentivising contributors for lower sales is unacceptable.

Secondly, after the DP- Shotshop experience I did very much want to regain control of my work as much as possible.  I therefore opted out of API/ partner/ reseller sales from 123RF and some other agencies.

75
Alongwith the other issues is the question of Why DP holds on to full res copies of files that have been deactivated by contributors? This is a concern to me especially after the kind of behavior exposed with the Shotshop deal.  I've been wondering if they even have a right to do that

Logically speaking the content belongs to contributor /copyright holder.  At the time a contributor decides not to sell a file thru a particular agency and deletes/ deactivates it, the file should no longer be held by agency - not in a size and resolution that is useable anyway.  So I can't understand the reason behind this keeping in mind future security of contributor files.

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