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Messages - Equus
26
« on: December 07, 2012, 12:03 »
It's interesting to note that when we first heard about PE, Grafix, as far as I remember, was all over the idea. At that time, being a natural cynic, I wondered if this was a scam. $480 was more than I was prepared to give to someone I didn't know, for something that doesn't exist.
Now it seems that Grafix has completely turned around and is violently opposed to the idea, and in my opinion has become quite poisonous in his opposition, and I am curious to know why the change?
It does seem to be taking a long time to get started, but haven't we complained many times about IS pushing out revisions to the site without fully testing them?
I still have my doubts, but I have decided to give it a go, mainly because of the way we are treated by the agencies.
I do agree that Justin doesn't do himself any favours, but we should remember that he must be very busy, and the site is still in Beta. It's not really surprising that there are contradictory statements on the site, my guess is that Justin changed his mind along the way about how to set the thing up, and hasn't yet sorted out the wording.
If this is a scam, there won't ever be any customers, and since the customers won't directly be paying for PE, there would be no need to write the paragraph about finding the cheapest image, which is in full view and easy for contributors to find.
I can't help thinking about Colemanballs. You may have to be old and English to know what these are, but you can Google for it. I think these could be labelled Justinballs - unintentional, to be fixed before launch.
Also, if this a scam, there isn't a lot of money in it. How many people are going to be paying $480 before launch? I can't imagine it will be enough for an American to bother taking the risk.
If anyone is going to flame me for this, please do something you seem to have not bothered doing before, and read my comments in full, don't skim, make a guess at what you think I said, and start ranting. It's very clear that people are commenting without fully reading what's gone before, and without thinking.
27
« on: December 04, 2012, 19:08 »
With nearly 4K files on line I must say I find PE a bit late in the day to emerge. A couple of years back it would probably been Ok but now micro seems to be like flogging a dead horse. With the exeptions of SS, DT and IS, it just doesnt produce anymore. As many have said previously, micro is probably back in the hands of the amateurs, where it all started.
The missed point here I think is that PE isn't designed to be a "Microstock" site. While micro pricing is accommodated so is traditional RM and RF pricing. I think in the short term, at least, it will appeal more to professional picture buyers rather than the masses.
why? why would pros even look at a site that is an order of magnitude smaller than their current source? and how is anyone going to find them in the first place? when i've searched for stock images, i find my images that are represented by various agencies but almost never the ones on my smugmug or redbubble site:
http://cascoly.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-use-Google-increase-HubPages-traffic-and-microstock-sales
so most user who find pictures thru google are going to continue to be directed to the major agencies.
PE hasn't made any argument for how they'll overcome this basic problem - that's why the advertising only option seemed like a reasonable way to test them out - except it was only during the not-yet-even-beta phase and now they want $ while they try to launch
Not sure I understand this. Have you been asked for money? I haven't.
28
« on: December 03, 2012, 22:42 »
- Contributors are mad
no, we are fine!
BTW just got a sale for 4.5$ (16%) and iStock share was 23.62$ 
Just think Luis, when PicturEngine launches, that will be all yours 
29
« on: November 28, 2012, 12:24 »
Time to rebuild and suck up the initial pain or stay at IS as a protected species facing possible extinction.
I like this. It describes the situation exactly.
30
« on: November 28, 2012, 12:06 »
People say they get about about 1 sale per 5 zooms on average, and that's how it's working out for me, with most sales having been zoomed within the last few months.
31
« on: November 25, 2012, 18:31 »
I would think so, but I've decided to suck it and see. Alamy's commission reduction finally made my mind up for me, which I suppose shows that Justin has some marketing ability - he timed the free trial offer just right. I'm uploading 
32
« on: November 25, 2012, 13:28 »
I'd rather the choice of a 50% commission or the annual subscription. Then we could all get behind this without losing money and switch to the annual fee when it was worthwhile.
As I understand it, Justin needs a chunk of cash at launch for ADVERTISING. So taking 50% commission won't work. The money would dribble in too slowly.
33
« on: October 23, 2012, 12:50 »
It may be that the best match you are seeing is not the best match which many of the customers are seeing. They may be seeing imported Getty content.
Exactly. This seems to be the only explanation for all the conflicting stories from IS and contributors. This ties it all together.
34
« on: October 22, 2012, 18:39 »
As someone else has said, the BY DEFAULT is not correct. The search will in fact bring different results to different buyers, depending on their profile.
Also, someone JOKINGLY said that they had no sales since the new search came in, that is on Saturday and Sunday, so the new search wasn't working, but of course there are almost no sales at the weekend anyway.
35
« on: October 22, 2012, 15:37 »
On friday Alamy sent an email to all contributors telling us that from now on the image search will bring BY DEFAULT results picked from their (manually ?) edited selection while the other images will appear after the BestOf ones, that means 10-20 pages for common keywords !
There's a 20 pages thread in the Alamy forum :
http://www.alamy.com/forums/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=14107
Looks like a very cruel step taken by Alamy, this is gonna kill the business of so many photographers there, even the ones with tens of thousands images are reporting no sales since friday !
This post is ridiculous, please check your facts then maybe you won't spread wrong information.
36
« on: October 22, 2012, 12:36 »
PicturEngine - we first heard about it in April, and at that time it was supposed to launch in 30 - 90 days. It's now 6 months - regular updates from Justin would help keep people interested, I for one am beginning to think it will never happen.
37
« on: October 19, 2012, 14:08 »
SS have cut commissions.
When they first started, they paid 40%. Jon Oringer used that fact as a point of difference with iStock, who at that time paid 20% to everyone.
SS now pay 25-30%.
I like to repeat this occasionally, even though I know it's pointless - people don't want to believe it, so they just block it out.
38
« on: September 22, 2012, 14:24 »
I like the sound of this and would definitely be interested. One problem I see though, and it also applies to Picturengine, is licensing. Are people really going to buy half a dozen images from different producers if they all have different licenses? Especially if they are paying microstock prices. It seems to me that people joining such a scheme would need to agree to all use the same licence.
If that can be sorted, I would want to join and would be willing to pay, monthly subscription would be most convenient.
39
« on: September 18, 2012, 17:14 »
Judging by the last couple of batches I have submitted (images with motion-blur that is clearly supposed to be there and images with shallow depth of field) that have been rejected for "focus" or other suspect reasons, I am kind of thinking that SS is using some sort of software A.I. to review images.
Has anyone else seen this type of review of their images? What are your thoughts on companies using some type of software to review your images?
It's been talked about for years. Judging by the number of forum posts on both this and their own forum, SS is aware of what's going on, but are quite happy with the results they are getting. So, nothing you can do, except submit elsewhere.
40
« on: August 09, 2012, 17:41 »
Is it true that SS pay less than 20%? I read through the IPO paperwork and I thought it was just under 30%. Am I wrong?
41
« on: July 20, 2012, 14:53 »
I don't use Microstock Analytics, but I checked one of mine using Excel and it was correct to the cent. It isn't in PP, so maybe that's where the problem is.
42
« on: May 31, 2012, 15:06 »
I think we'd all like to know why you preferred to remove all that content from Alamy, rather than offer an opt out? Is it because you didn't want to say how much commission you were planning to pass on to contributors, and how much keep for yourselves?
43
« on: May 29, 2012, 15:16 »
Justin, thanks for answering some of our questions, but I feel that you still haven't answered my main question, which is what do I get for my $40? Presumably, you would be hosting my images on your site, but I would like a clear answer on that. Do you have FTP? Would I need to categorise? Just knowing a bit more would be helpful.
I think this is a great idea and would love to be involved from the beginning, but I'm a cautious person. If I could pay monthly, I'd be much keener to join than if I had to pay $480 up front. Is that a possibility?
44
« on: May 27, 2012, 11:01 »
Thanks Warren. I agree, I'm enjoying this too. I welcome other opinions as I don't want to miss anything I haven't thought of before signing up.
I was just doing a search on Google for similar sites and found this one:
http://shotspy.com
Interesting. I've never seen or heard of it before. Has anyone else? I see it's limitations. It has duplicate images, the site is slow and 123rf images aren't populating for me. What I do like about it is that they have the check boxes so buyers can tick the sites they want to see and ignore the ones they dont.
Justin, will you be doing something similar to your site? That would be helpful for buyers that don't want to sign up with certain agencies.
There would be disadvantages in this, with no duplicates on the site. They could search say DT and SS, but of you had uploaded to IS first, they wouldn't see your image, even if it was there.
45
« on: May 26, 2012, 14:54 »
There's a couple of things I don't understand, having read everything here and the FAQs on the site.
You say you have 300 million images from the world's top stock agencies. You also say that agencies with over 1 million files can join for free. Does that mean that many top agencies have already joined? Can you give us some examples? Someone in this thread said you would be crawling all the sites, that suggests without any permission from them, but if that is the case, why would they need to "join"?
If I don't have my own site to sell from, how do I get my images onto PE? That doesn't seem to be addressed in the FAQs.
On the surface, this sounds wonderful, and what we've all been waiting for, but you know what they say...
Thanks for any help you can give.
46
« on: April 30, 2012, 18:57 »
Okay, I am starting to worry. Today's sales, like Fridays, are about 1/3 of normal.
I've had consistent sales at Dreamstime for 7 years. Something is definitely amiss. '
To those reporting vastly improved sales, it would seem to suggest the search engine has been shaken so that different people are in front.
May Day holiday in Europe, Lisa. Different from the UK, which is May 7.
47
« on: April 28, 2012, 12:27 »
My last sale at DT was just after noon on Friday - and Friday was a weak day (it's often the slowest weekday as Asia/Pacific is already having a weekend). Nada so far today.
Remember it's May Day in Europe - big holiday, lots of people taking time off. As I remember, DT always suffers more than the other sites at May Day.
For the month so far, downloads are down 30% on last month and $$ are down 34% (by contrast, SS sales are so far down 15% over march and IS is (a) in first place this month and last and (b) April is up over a strong March).
Interesting. I have April way down after a very poor March. Maybe it's time to go Indie
48
« on: April 27, 2012, 19:22 »
What a dismal month this has turned out to be. My April is always a bit down from March, but unless today and Monday are outstanding (no indication they will be), this month has turned out to be a huge disappointment. Is crappy the new normal?
So it seems. Most days now I find myself saying, hmm, another crappy day. What to do about it, that's the question
49
« on: April 27, 2012, 18:25 »
But look at it that way; even if your sales are 50% down (yearly trends), they're still a lot higher than they are for 99% of the contributors. That would comfort me, if I were you.
It wouldn't comfort me a bit if I were Lisa. "Getting more than 99% of contributors" doesn't put food on the table or put your children through college.
Of course it does! And more than that! I know ppl that were ranked from 70-200 on IS charts. That is in the roughly better 95-98% of the contributors range. They were all getting 6 figures in (yearly). Now it that's not enough to put food on the table and kids through college, than I don't know how much is...
No way. I was just outside that bracket last time I was able to look, and I was nowhere near that, and I'm rapidly going down now. We need accurate information in this forum, don't just make things up please!
I saw it with my own eyes, diamond with just over 40k, making 70k last year. Of course he wouldn't be even near the top 200. I didn't see the earnings directly on computer screen while they were logged in for the others, but I believe most of them. The math is easy, if you make 20K DLs/year, getting 40% royalties and have at least some A/V/E+ files that sell, you're over 5$/DL. That means you make over 100k. Of course Americans pay taxes and loose another 25% (or what?). So you might be out of that bracket, but that can be due to great sales back in the days, and not so good lately. Or having the same 20k DL/year, but not having or at least selling A/V/e+ files and/or not selling enough large sized files and ELs.
70K is not 6 figures, is it? To make over 100K in euros, which is what you said, you would need about 130,000 US. I'm sure some of the people you mentioned are making that, but not the "All" that you stated.
50
« on: April 27, 2012, 14:42 »
But look at it that way; even if your sales are 50% down (yearly trends), they're still a lot higher than they are for 99% of the contributors. That would comfort me, if I were you.
It wouldn't comfort me a bit if I were Lisa. "Getting more than 99% of contributors" doesn't put food on the table or put your children through college.
Of course it does! And more than that! I know ppl that were ranked from 70-200 on IS charts. That is in the roughly better 95-98% of the contributors range. They were all getting 6 figures in (yearly). Now it that's not enough to put food on the table and kids through college, than I don't know how much is...
No way. I was just outside that bracket last time I was able to look, and I was nowhere near that, and I'm rapidly going down now. We need accurate information in this forum, don't just make things up please!
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