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Messages - DallasP

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26
Dreamstime.com / Re: Dreamstime increasing royalties
« on: May 29, 2020, 16:24 »
A noble and appreciated marketing action, but still a marketing action
Like SS jumped in with a scheme for former iS exclusives getting their files onto SS easily at the time G screwed iS.

Convenient timing indeed but, what does it matter? It would be terribly uncompetitive to not take advantage of their largest competitor. (now, if AS would offer exclusive  ... )

27
Dreamstime.com / Re: Dreamstime increasing royalties
« on: May 29, 2020, 14:53 »
https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/1266416370943574021

I haven't uploaded there in ages as sales were so weak, but I'll be uploading this weekend - and I'd encourage anyone on twitter to retweet their announcement. They are at least trying to help, unlike the fat cat tossers at #Shutterstock...

Put it all over public social media, not just twitter. Also all private stock groups and circles. And recommend them to customers.

They are a small agency, so giving us more money must really hurt them, but they are doing it anyway to give us hope.

They WERE doing quite well back in like '14

28
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock just became iStock 2.0
« on: May 28, 2020, 13:35 »
bahahaha. They're going to send me my $12.53 and deactivate my ... ~100 crappy vectors.

29
Quote


The very moment that Adobe offers exclusivity is the exact moment that my other portfolios come down. They're the only one doing innovative things besides ripping the market to pieces.


Nope. Still a newbie, perhaps negative biased on AS (or all agencies) but next time i will be asked to kill portfolios for an exciting opportunity i will pass. It is enough deleting or moving files due to whatever good news come from time to time.

I'm not new as much as I'm disheartened. I stopped submitting when I started seeing $0.125 revenue from sales. Just blows to spend a day on a piece and get paid like that (tbh. I think it's even worse than having it stolen. The agencies are supposed to be OUR PARTNERS in this * mess ... and they're just sleeping around.)

But, the Adobe software to Adobe stock workflow is FRICKEN awesome and I think there's even more stuff you can publish. For instance it seems like you can publish After Effects, and InDesign templates and all sorts'o stuff. I was a print designer for 10 years and could easily do 10 magazine or newsprint mockups a day for sure.


Edit: Where is Matt? Where and how would I sell InDesign templates through AS? There only seems to be the photos, vectors, and footage.

30
Dear Adobe,

For years we had been in the situation that content supply is abundant. And yes, this is still true. In some Areas.

With the recent development in Stock Video licensing the race to the bottom leads straight to a dead end. That is: professional Video and Animation content is not profitable to produce anymore . And this opens opportunities:

1. Stock Video is not the same as stock photos. Cutting prices in Photos is much easier since many hobbyists, professionals, semi-professionals use stock as a secondary source of income, oftenly for material they would have produced anyways. A scene of photography production houses has grown over decades and the creation is by far not as complex as professional Video. Uploading a photo today costs seconds and there are a myriad of stock agencies where you can source money from with photos, which reduces the liability of proper pricing of individual outlets. Uploading a 4K Video is a lot more complex and there are only a few sites to sell them - a price cut as we see now on shutterstock cannot be compensated easily by just uploading to some other sites. The cost and revenue relation of Photo to Commission is also much better than from Footage to (Subscription) commission. The demand for photos is also higher and higher volume compensated oftenly for lower prices.

Nobody will produce and process good 4K clips for subscription prices. If people want some exposure or benefit other than licensing income they will rather upload their footage to Youtube then subscription agencies. The marketis different.

2. The Libraries are great now. Nobody cares about exclusive material? Yes, the libraries are great, but given the factor in 1. this will change. Maybe you find easy to produce clips there, but not the great location with 5 Models or the complex 3D Animation with 120 hours render time anymore. This material will simply not be produced anymore due to the lack of profitability. Buyers will look at a increasingly crappy video library. And especially in Video the market can be assumed to be consisting of a higher percentage of professional customers. Times changed, but still not ever stock video buyer is a youtube guy arming another conspiracy video.

In a few years you could achieve dominance in the footage stock area for more demanding clients who need more than a pizza from top video.

3. Nobody risks sales on all the other sites? Maybe with Photos this is true since there are much more sites and outlets to sell pictures and the market is much more dynamic, but remember that there are far less profitable sites for Video. Also, the revenue of a regular footage sale soon will compensate for 10 sales on Shutterstock. Looking at the actual sales figures and estimating that 90% of future shutterstock sales come from Subs, Adobe sales would ALREADY have the same value or exceeding this value without even changing the commission structure. This all comes with the factor that footage is much less of a volume market. Even considering that nowadays you have many small players licensing stock video...who is gonna download 20 Gigs of 4K clips just because he can? A nice photo is easily downloaded on a subscription site. 4K footage not. Volume will not compensate for the massive decrease in sales price and those sites selling subscriptions are abandoned easily.

4. Experience shows already that many did not and do not bother to upload to low priced agencies. While it is true that there are always some guys uploading to the cheapos, many held back from it, especially professional producers. In the photo market most contributors jumped on every site no matter how cheap. This makes it more likely to create a better and more important exclusive library.

5. In Photography you have much more similar material which makes image exclusivity more irrelevant. As said, footage is different. It will only get produced when worthwhile and the competition of producers is much lower and hobbyists wont upload 20 clips with 60GB of footage as easy as 20 photos with 200 MB.

6. The race to the bottom is what it is. You can run into that direction as long a supply is not an issue and the buyer is the king. But as in any market, everything reaches a flipping point. With footage we have reached this point.  The one who is able to reserve exclusive rights to great content without even investing anything else than trust and fair commissions will attract the most professional buyers. Not today. Not in September. But as soon as the existing libraries get flooded with crap and lack of better quality supply.

7. The prices for Stock Video are falling? Yes. True. But this considers a well saturated offer on the content side. This was held up in the past by different sites with different commissions structures as mentioned above. As soon as the cheap sites dominant you just cannot cover the cost of production. The consequence is lack of great new content.

The very moment that Adobe offers exclusivity is the exact moment that my other portfolios come down. They're the only one doing innovative things besides ripping the market to pieces.

31
hi what is the cheapest place to buy single image without suscription ? Thank you

I think Adobe is only $10 ... If you can track down creator they'd probably go for a couple bucks even. Sure beats the quarter that we get from agencies.

You've got to be really desperate to sell a single image to a buyer who's keen on buying your image. I wouldn't go below 20 and even 20 is giving it away cheap.

Seeing as how we get quarters from subscription sales :/ I don't really care. In fact, if they took the time to track me down and everything I'd be more apt to give it to them for a decent price and undercut the competition.

32
Hey uh ... what ya testing there?

33
General Stock Discussion / This poor guy.
« on: April 15, 2020, 13:07 »
I'm sure everyone in the U.S. has seen this image by now. https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/concept-of-sars-cov-2-or-2019-ncov-coronavirus-royalty-free-image/1208953647

What's funny is that there's never a photo credit or attribution attached. So I thought I'd do some digging. The first use was Hungarian, from Getty images. The funny thing is though, when you go to that page on getty it doesn't appear that we can license it in the U.S and a local radio station JUST used it this morning.
http://midutahradio.com/news/local-news/central-utah-public-health-department-confirmed-first-covid-19-cases-in-sevier-county/?fbclid=IwAR2kgZh_mSOHSL-ixMWm6vn1Z_PhBEegWKsof7bbdtjmLX8SW2t42h36ZDo

So, what are you guys doing with your quarantine time? lol.

34
General Stock Discussion / Re: Coronavirus ?
« on: March 30, 2020, 17:24 »
Quote
life will become very quiet

outdoors.

but indoors will be active as usual.
From bloggers to youtubers, from social to advertising
to whatever job can be done remotely from home,

electronic media will work as normal if not extra time.

(perhaps)

It already is. The musicians and stuff that all had their spring and possibly summer canceled are all doing live streams. They nearly crashed Facebook the other night.

35
Alamy.com / Re: Vector Illustrations on Alamy
« on: March 30, 2020, 13:37 »


Thank You, I'll take a look at that. Most of the older files I do have the JPG with the data. I'm just lazy. What I mean is finding the file, renaming them to match and created a zip of each one, takes more time than pasting the keywords I have ready in a text file, adding a few specific terms and a title.

Awful previews wouldn't be good for sales, would they. I'll reconsider.


You could always use Adobe Bridge and Image Processor to batch the JPGS. If you've already got the metadata with the vectors it would make sense and take ... maybe 2 seconds each. (and then the upload obviously).

36
hi what is the cheapest place to buy single image without suscription ? Thank you

I think Adobe is only $10 ... If you can track down creator they'd probably go for a couple bucks even. Sure beats the quarter that we get from agencies.

37
Since it's WP ... just modify your 404.php to say that you're no longer offering images.

38
Years ago before he went private I usually noticed Yuri always maximized his keywords to 50 in still images. I tried to do the same for years. But, now-a-days I have tried to limit the number of keywords I use to 25 to make them more exact.
Besides keywords, I do make sure I use as much of the title and description characters as possible. I've found up to 64 characters when they like a title and up to 200 characters for description seems to work best for the sites I submit to, although some have more or less space. I usually split up the description into 2 sentences.
When I looked up an isolated tomato on Yuri's new site the number of keywords for one isolated tomato was 18. So, maybe they have found that less is better?

Which sites still read title? Because Adobe reads that as the description I've started to remove that data. Maybe I shouldn't do that?

Right descriptions can be just as important for searches, especially the part that search engines pick up.

Shooting yourself in the foot my man ... the title is the meta title.

Edit: I stand corrected. This contributor simply used the document title to spam some keywords and the online meta title is indeed the photo description.

Edit, Edit: nvm. They're both the same on this particular image. Where's Mat?

39
Could 50 keywords be to many? Or if they are relevant its ok?  I know that is the limit on the sites I use, like shutter stock, p5.   But is that the best thing to have?  All 50?  Or could search results be better by some chance if you just had 10-15?  Thanks

Seems a bit much. It would be more worth it to get down to about 15 of the most RELEVANT and LEAST USED keywords ... finding niches is kinda tough though.

40
General - Stock Video / Re: How to make videos?
« on: December 22, 2019, 13:53 »
I might have asked some variation of this question 6 months ago, but what I want to know is a little different now, same same but different.

In January I'll be in Australia, and February perhaps some parts of South East Asia.

I have very minor interest in shooting videos either for stock or Youtube. Maybe more for youtube, like a vlogger, since it seems if I could ever figure out how to get a lot of subscribers, the money is infinitely better on Youtube.

Right now I only know how to do stock photos. I don't do anything else but photos. I do also know how to do stock illustrations, though I no longer do it.

I know as much about video as a 5 year old. I don't know anything because I've never been interested in learning. I have a Nikon D800 I could bring, but most likely I might only bring my iPhone 11 Pro, which some people on the internet says records great video. I mostly don't like carrying around a heavy camera. I also have a GoPro 7 with a mechanic gimbal, which I've only used to take photos.

Could you please just write down some subject matter that I should google search on. I can do the research on my own, I just hope you guys would help me shortcut the process by telling me what to search for.

Also if I did want to shoot some travel videos for stock, what kind of things should I shoot that is high demand? I'm likely to be two different states in Australia. Traveling by car. Then I might hope over the ocean to New Zealand, or I might head straight back stateside, or I might head north to either Singapore/Thailand/Japan/Hawaii then back to the 48 contiguous states. BTW I love to go hiking, so I'd be looking for wilderness areas/mountains to go for a hike.

Thanks!!

I'd imagine the subject matter is going to be way different between vlogging and stock ... Just keep all the cameras running and edit up when you get home. lol.

(maybe take some releases along, photos/videos with people are always better.)

41
General Stock Discussion / Re: Secrets of successful marketing?
« on: December 20, 2019, 13:59 »

Just wait, it's a game changer, the next big thing, and will disrupt the market...  ;)

True, far from my worst ideas also, (one of the latest is a 25 foot sailboat), but positively done intentionally as humor, sarcasm and potentially wit. It could even be a commentary on Microstock. The first + on your comment came from me.

lol. Well, let me know if you need any help. With the websites, not the sailboat. That's on you man. lol.

42
General Stock Discussion / Re: Secrets of successful marketing?
« on: December 20, 2019, 13:01 »


So now you're telling me, owning http://www.Crapstock.com wasn't a good move?  ;D

Weekly Analytics Report
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Thanks for explaining, I'm not up to date on all the terms and analytics for websites.

Stuff like: Off-page optimization is the process of optimizing the off-page elements of your site. This usually includes building links to your site, conducting outreach to influencers, and guest blogging.


Probably not your best idea.

43
General Stock Discussion / Re: Secrets of successful marketing?
« on: December 18, 2019, 22:09 »

How does what you wrote apply to making money with Microstock?

Are you saying social media can increase my downloads and income? I should write a blog or something? Microstock is not a big ticket item. I can't pay 25c a click for people to come look at my portfolio.

But just wondering, how would you answer the OP about Marketing Microstock? You seem to have background, knowledge and information about Internet marketing?

what are the real working secrets of marketing your content? Instead of wasting our time on usual generic crap advices, what are we really supposed to do in order to succeed?


I wasn't directly applying what I said to microstock. If you're trying to directly compete with SS you're in a losing game ... and for what? A couple bucks a day?  Cost per click on say "stock image online" is $25 ... I'd near a guess that they're losing money on those adverts and they have more content than any one person could ever produce. Pick your battles.

Blog and video content is a great place to start. All of these 0 competition phrases are great places to start ... Again though, how are you going to CONVERT any readers into people buying YOUR content. Almost has to be something that you self host ... Microstock is a downhill battle ... with cactuses and ... rocks ...


Thanks that makes better sense now that I understand you better.  :)

Not sure I understand a 0 competition phrase or how I'd use that. I do try to find subjects that aren't well covered on SS for example. Not that they are also in high demand or will get high numbers of downloads, but a sliced kumquat 1537, or Kumquat 6,570, will get more selective views than sliced tomato at 711,603! So I'd agree, pick your battles makes good sense. I'm not going to ever say again when I find one. I did on SS forum and the title went from one page, mostly mine to spammed up with hundreds of images. Of course mine still stand out as they are distinctive, not a set of hundreds of similar, with nothing but a change of the flag.  ::)

I'm still interested in how anyone might market or attract buyers to our work. I mean posting on FB, Twitter, Pinterest, any of those?

Can you elaborate on 0 competition phrases? I mean something or some words that someone might actually search for?

I will give you my secret as a Christmas present. I do post photos with stories, on Twitter and LinkedIn weekly with a link to my different stock sites. I don't think I get any sells by doing this but I do think I get more sales by this. When I do the posting on these sites it seems my sales are higher that week. When I stop posting the next week my sales drop. What I guess is happening is the algorithm of the site is in favor for me the more new people look at my stock sites.Just my guess. If wrong that is OK....Merry Christmas   


Linkedin, there's the first useful comment I've seen, for my name. You can do photos with stories there? So what you are saying is, if I do a story on FB with my photos, or do you mean links to my photos on an agency site, even if I don't get a direct download, the traffic will increase and I'll get more downloads? Interesting and creative.

Here's one, and I'm not even going to take a side, because it's just so strange, but maybe it worked? People used to spam up the forums on SS and BS with images, and one guy did this daily, and claimed he got more sales because of the images that showed on forums. I don't know how this idea is testable? He's not the only one who used the same system for getting more attention and believed that there were more sales because of this.

I will say, when I managed websites, not my own, I'd put an unlinked page in with a link to http://CrapStock.com (for example) i don't know if search engines found how many pages were linked to a site and if that raised rank. Funny thing is, sites I don't work for anymore, still have those, unless someone happens to look at every web page on the system, to see what's there. I suspect somewhere I have links on hidden pages, to other websites that don't exist anymore.

Of course businesses change, they change hosting, information sites, drop and all those pages are gone into nothingness. I don't know if links from friends works anymore either. Back when, we'd have trades, you link to my site, I link to yours, Bob links to mine I link to his, Tom links to mine, I link to his... The idea was, more sites linking to something, make it more popular?

Anyway, the OP brings up an interesting question and reading answers is also interesting. I view it as, Is there actually anything we can do, that will bring more people to our portfolio on a stock site? I mean short of "free picture of the week" on a personal website, and a link to More By This Photographer on Shutterstock. LOL  ;D


The SEOC column I have sorted in that photo I posted is basically 0 competition. You still want to be using it in titles (permalinks and whatnot) that's what I mean. Keyword tools like this are handy when you're looking for long tail things to publish content on but, if you had the content for it you could effectively take something like "image photo stock" there with the 1,729 searches ... buy imagephotostock.com (from me, obviously ... https://bestwebsiteandhosting.com/cart.php?a=add&domain=register&query=imagephotostock.com)

Host your images and plan your content strategy around that ... Low competition and assuming your content is good, you'd hopefully be looking at a 3% conversion ... with $0 advertising dollars.

44
General Stock Discussion / Re: Secrets of successful marketing?
« on: December 18, 2019, 09:50 »

How does what you wrote apply to making money with Microstock?

Are you saying social media can increase my downloads and income? I should write a blog or something? Microstock is not a big ticket item. I can't pay 25c a click for people to come look at my portfolio.

But just wondering, how would you answer the OP about Marketing Microstock? You seem to have background, knowledge and information about Internet marketing?

what are the real working secrets of marketing your content? Instead of wasting our time on usual generic crap advices, what are we really supposed to do in order to succeed?

I wasn't directly applying what I said to microstock. If you're trying to directly compete with SS you're in a losing game ... and for what? A couple bucks a day?  Cost per click on say "stock image online" is $25 ... I'd near a guess that they're losing money on those adverts and they have more content than any one person could ever produce. Pick your battles.

Blog and video content is a great place to start. All of these 0 competition phrases are great places to start ... Again though, how are you going to CONVERT any readers into people buying YOUR content. Almost has to be something that you self host ... Microstock is a downhill battle ... with cactuses and ... rocks ...

45
General Stock Discussion / Re: Secrets of successful marketing?
« on: December 17, 2019, 07:51 »
This subject relates not only to selling stock direct or making a new successful stock site, but also to succeeding with any king of content - site, blog, forum, video, etc, with which people can try to make money on the internet.

1st basic generic crap I see on the internet is "content is the king - just have the good content and the money will come (automatically)". Wrong. Even the best content in 99% will not do anything alone because it will mainly stay invisible. So how to make your content visible and how to attract people / buyers to it?

2nd generic crap I see repeating all over the internet is "share your content and write about it on the social media, that is so awesome strategy and it so works". Wrong again. People on the social media couldn't care less about what you are doing (unless maybe if we talk about the closest circle of people). People are inert. People don't want to spend time, energy or money on something which is not already established. So how in this circumstances to get people really interested and invested in your non-established name and content? How to become established?

little more "advanced" and insightful, but still crap advice I see on the internet is to invest into paid ads on google and facebook. Still wrong. Many people who tried this reported that it doesn't work, and why would be when vast majority of people don't like seeing ads, some of us use ad-blockers, and there is still a story about really reaching out to people and gaining their trust - seeing your spamming ad obviously won't achieve this.


We all (should) know that the difference between successful and the rest on the internet is proper marketing. It's also familiar that successful people usually don't share their secrets. But 1. someone at least moderately successful will maybe decide to share something useful, and 2. the rest of us together can try to figure at least something out.

So the question is - what are the real working secrets of marketing your content? Instead of wasting our time on usual generic crap advices, what are we really supposed to do in order to succeed?

Well that's pretty pessimistic ... Firstly, people do read online ... A LOT ... and with smart voice devices you definitely want to be writing good, clear content for all those rich snippets for google to gobble.

Second, social does work ... post more ...

and thirdly, OF COURSE ADS WORK. But, sometimes it's difficult to advertise to people that have the need/intent to purchase your products. The ad cost is too expensive to justify for microstock but, a larger ticket item for 25 per click is not bad. But, you still have to target the ideal audience, preferably a very narrow audience. The more specific the better really.

46
Software / Re: Any way to search your own drive by metadata?
« on: September 30, 2019, 13:56 »
uh ... yup ...

47
Lol, why would microsoft acquire adobe?

It would be like Kentucky Fried Chicken deciding they wanted to purchase GM, and start making cars.

Makes no sense.

Why? Because Bill Gates has a taste for easy money. He owned Corbis for many years then sold it to VCG for a hefty profit. Guess he wants back into the game. Where else can you have a dedicated easily fooled group of people to supply you with your product and give them peanuts for their efforts? It's pretty much a cash cow for any entity/person that owns a modern day stock photo agency.

Bill Gates doesn't run Microsoft anymore ... At all from an operations standpoint. He's still majority shareholder and shows up for things related to that but, him and Malinda are working on The Gates Foundation and other important things now.

I hate that Forbes puts these crap articles out there. I mean, it's a fair analysis of Adobe's value and would basically double the MSFT earnings but, it's not practical. Microsoft itself has transitioned quite a bit into AI, agriculture, and things ... where Adobe is still absolutely killing it with their software and cloud services. It's just impractical.

I, however, like ADBE's numbers ... that price though :/

48
Adobe Stock / Re: Adobestock-Pond5: did I miss something?
« on: August 29, 2019, 11:13 »
Hi everyone,

Just wondering if I missed something ... I am about to upload some older footage to Adobestock. Out of curiosity I searched their content and found already the clips online! With me as the author and the source Adobestock/Pond5.

I can't remember of any partnership between these two. And I can't remember agreeing to share my files on both sites.

I didn't contact Adobe Stock yet, thought maybe someone here can give me a clue.

Thanks in advance,

Rob

Hi Rob,

As already pointed out, Pond5 has a Global Partner Program which includes Adobe Stock as a partner.  This creates a win-win for stock customers, the artists (you!) and companies like Adobe and Pond5. 

Ultimately, Adobe wants to allow the artist to be successful in the way they feel is best for them.  So, if you upload to several agencies at once (pretty typical) including Pond5 and Adobe, the content you submit to Adobe will be from you.

In your case, you were uploading older content to Stock which came through Pond5 already.  You can keep it like that if you'd like and we'll all be fine.

If you wanted to keep your libraries separate through submission, you can reach out to Pond5 and work with them who would send us a take down request and then you can upload.

Again, whatever works best for you. 

Hope this helps a bit.

Dennis

You know what's cool ... is these Adobe Stock guys frequenting these forums, answering questions and submitting our suggestions n such. It's almost like Adobe cares about artists or something.

49
123RF / Re: Do you make $100/month at 123RF?
« on: July 28, 2019, 06:48 »
How many images did you have online when you started to make $100 per month at 123RF (excluding EL sales)?

Huh .... tbh I figured 123rf was a waste ...

50
I was a photo editor for years and dealt with tons of issues like this. 99%  of the time it is the words (and context) used with the photo that cause the issue (and lawsuit)/ Companies tend to go after the source to try and eliminate the photo. I worked at a national newspaper and I received calls and emails all the time asking me to remove photos that offended a company/person etc. Sorry no can do!

lol. Yes, we'll take the photo off the already published paper ... twats.

However... The poster referred to images inside the plane of the staff and images through the window. Unless you were give permission to take and sell images on the private property of the airline, then you have no legal right to place the images for sale under any sort of license. You can't sell an editorial license for an image that you didn't have permission to take in the first place. Taking a plane from a private airport (and some are privately owned and operated I believe) may fall into the same category although less risky.

Steve

Righht.... no ... Editorial usage is pretty much everything you can see. If you work at a newspaper or something for instance, you don't need permission from people or about a property to take and use the photos... It's still polite but, fair game.

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