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Messages - EmberMike
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51
« on: August 05, 2016, 15:01 »
...Lower prices... I'm still not seeing this alleged lowering of prices part of the announcement. Can anyone point me to it? Or did it just get made up in this thread?
52
« on: August 05, 2016, 08:30 »
embermike, sorry for being so negative, but you agree that lowering prices and giving away images for free is good news? I didn't read anything about that in the announcement. In fact, as I understand it there is no plan to lower prices. Where did you get that from?
53
« on: August 04, 2016, 18:43 »
Agreed. Someone new has to come in and challenge some of the assumptions... But not here, not at MSG! A lot of folks around here just want these companies to stick to the script and do things exactly like everyone else does them, but do them better and somehow be more successful. Change everything, but don't change anything really. Make it better, but don't do it any differently.  People want companies run by industry insiders? No innovation is going to come from the same old people trying to rehash the same old stock business model. The best thing we can hope for these days is that more people come along who are looking to challenge assumptions and defy the status quo.
54
« on: August 04, 2016, 18:22 »
It will never cease to amaze me how negative people here can be about absolutely anything. GL was barely showing up on anyone's radar until this week and it the news that it was sold to new ownership with plans to bring it back to prominence. And no part of that announcement had anything negative in it as far as existing contributors are concerned. But that won't stop anyone from coming in here and crapping all over some good news. I seriously think some folks around here want things to always be bad. Anyway, to the point of this discussion...I love that GL is back and under new ownership. I had the chance to chat with Phil from the new GL via facebook this week, something that in and of itself should be refreshing to everyone who has ever tried to communicate with most stock companies. Open communication and a willingness to interact with contributors is already a step in a really good direction. GL was always fair with royalties, and that doesn't change for most of us. Again, more good news. The new ownership team comes from a marketing background. Honestly I'll take a non-stock background over a stock background when it comes to these companies today. Which companies led by people from within the business have done well lately? On the other hand, I'm looking at companies like Creative Market, who emerged out of Autodesk, a company with almost no background in the stock business, rising to success (for me anyway, they're my #2 earner every month, beaten only by SS) despite no background in stock and doing things completely differently than the other stock companies. So I say "bring on the non-stock ownership," it could be the best thing for growth in this industry today. All I can see here in this announcement is good news. If this didn't happen and GL just quietly went away, I wouldn't have benefitted from that at all. Instead, GL is aiming for a reboot and future growth, and if it works, I'll definitely benefit from that. Its a chance for something positive to happen, and maybe re-open a good source of royalty income for us. How is that a bad thing? Best of luck to everyone at GL. Some of us are pulling for you and hope to see you succeed. 
55
« on: August 03, 2016, 08:57 »
Definitely has a Creative Market vibe to it, at least visually and in how they present the products.
How does this fit with Envato's weird tax policy? They've been regarding every sale as being direct between the customer and the contributor, and refer to themselves as just a marketplace to facilitate these transactions. So how will they claim to just be a facilitator in this kind of subscription model? Will they still expect contributors to regard every single download as a unique individual sale to a specific customer?
I left Envato because of the tax policies. Don't really feel like I'm missing out on anything by not being a part of Elements.
56
« on: August 02, 2016, 15:51 »
Does it matter if there's no link to purchase the clip? I'm not so sure that social media promotion needs to be so direct, just straight to the sale and seeming very obviously about selling.
I use Instagram more as a general promotion tool, something for sharing my recent work and creating a following. If people really want to buy something they see in my feed, they're probably web savvy enough to find it at a stock site if they're already savvy enough to find my stuff on Instagram.
I could be wrong, but I just don't want to be constantly throwing links at people and screaming "Buy, buy, buy!" with everything I do. Sometimes the best promotion is the one that doesn't say too much or try too hard.
57
« on: August 02, 2016, 13:58 »
There were Getty watermarks on some of those images. I think they'll have a hard time passing the buck on this one.
58
« on: August 01, 2016, 10:19 »
...This july has be a disaster. Less than My commissions from 10 Years ago...
...heads up, here come your new forum posters. they will be here real soon. I won't, I'll be out making Money, these fools have no idea about that part because we know how... Rinder I've gotta ask the obvious question... Why bother? Why even post the rant if things are so bad and you know how to really make money elsewhere? I'd have just moved on to something else if I knew a better way. No offense meant, just really wondering. Usually when people go on a rant here (myself included) it's because we believe things can still get better. It doesn't sound like you believe that anymore.
59
« on: August 01, 2016, 08:56 »
The common wisdom in this business has been to never put all of your eggs in one basket, at least when it comes to which agencies you work with and how you distribute your images. I apply the same logic to payments and receiving earnings. I don't want to rely on one company or service for all of my income, so I split it up across a few services: PayPal, Skrill, and bank transfers.
There's also a tax consideration for why I do this (PayPal's 1099-K reporting) but that's a discussion of a different sort and one that you can find plenty of info on with a search of these forums.
But as a general rule of minimizing risk, I don't do anything "exclusively" with one company for any part of my business.
60
« on: July 31, 2016, 21:43 »
Oh this is just too good to be true... Did Getty seriously put a watermark on these images with the name "buyenlarge", as in "Buy N Large" (or "BnL"), the huge corporation from the film Wall-e responsible for the culture of glut and waste that leads the earth to it's state of being uninhabitable in the story?  Getty = Buy N Large?  You just can't make this stuff up any better than they do it themselves.
61
« on: July 29, 2016, 14:20 »
My iStock income is now about 1/10th of what it was a few years ago. And falling still.
They pushed too far with pricing. $10 per image has always been the sweet spot for single on-demand images. iStock seems to have wanted to venture into the midstock model and get up to $50 per image. Obviously $33 is even too high a price, the market just won't bear it.
People here (myself included) have said for years that iStock could rebound if they just reverted back to sensible pricing and a simple purchasing system. But their stubbornness will never let them do that, so the decline will continue.
62
« on: July 29, 2016, 14:10 »
...But they're so greedy they couldn't be bothered paying someone to do that, nor paying a human to eyeball their extortion letters before they went out... Scary, isn't it? How they blast out these extortion letters with such frequency that they've basically made it an automated process with seemingly no human oversight.
63
« on: July 29, 2016, 14:07 »
Their defense is crazy. It's common for companies to issue licenses for public domain content? And then to pursue settlements for the use of that content without a license? What??
I don't see them getting off without paying out a nice settlement of their own to the photographer in this case. And rightfully so. What a deplorable company.
64
« on: July 21, 2016, 23:37 »
Shutterstock's policy seems to be to suspend accounts upon receipt of any suggestion of infringement, even those that aren't based on much solid evidence. It's a bit frightening that seemingly anyone can get anyone else's account suspended with just an email and an accusation.
Shutterstock does also work with contributors to resolve these issues when the contributor is innocent. But there's no recovering lost earnings during the suspension while the investigation takes place.
65
« on: June 22, 2016, 15:47 »
Consider the time when SS last raised rates. This business was still highly competitive, and companies still wanted to take customers and contributors from the others players.
Now it doesn't matter, there's no great need to entice new contributors to join or even keep current ones happy. They have plenty of contributors and content.
There was also a time when SS made an effort to appeal to iStock exclusives, trying to get them to jump ship and join SS. Again, now there's not much need to do that.
Times have changed, and any chance we had of ever seeing a raise is long since passed.
66
« on: May 10, 2016, 11:01 »
...Portfolio size has nothing to do with the number of sales you make nor money earned. Some people have relatively few high-quality images and make a lot of money, some have huge ports that make almost nothing, and everything in between.
Agreed. It's just different ways of playing the game. I think a lot of people want to uncover some sort of pattern or constant in this business. Like there's a formula for success. The reality is, people just do what works for them personally. For some that's volume, for others it's high-quality, and in between there are infinite strategies and methods of building a portfolio.
67
« on: April 25, 2016, 21:33 »
Do whatever you think is best for you, and ignore what the polls say. My #2 earner isn't even on the list. You need to figure out what works for you and the type of work that you do. One person's "low earner" is another person's "top tier".
68
« on: April 06, 2016, 19:41 »
I found out that some of the over-reporting of net earnings comes from Creative Market calculating what they pay us for the year in terms of total royalties earned through sales, and not by actual cash paid out, as most stock agencies do it.
This seems highly irregular. I'm not sure I can think of another company that works like that. Royalties earned aren't income until they're paid out via PayPal, check, Skrill, bank transfer, etc.
My income on Shutterstock, for example, is what hits my PayPal account each month of the year, not what the site statistics say. Creative Market does this differently as well.
69
« on: April 05, 2016, 22:24 »
...Between these things and 1099-K's, I may need to just write a long letter to the IRS each year explaining that it's complicated. It's an option on facebook for indicating your relationship status, and it would make a lot of sense to have "it's complicated" as a check box on tax forms for stock artists. 
70
« on: April 05, 2016, 11:54 »
You can search around for more discussions about colourbox. Last I checked, they paid really low royalties and I think they actually made the contributors pay the PayPal fees for cashing out, which is pretty unusual in stock these days.
I don't recall seeing much to make me want to join.
71
« on: April 05, 2016, 06:30 »
...Another reason to focus on and support only trusted and fair place(s)... The thing is, Creative Market was that kind of place. They've been more than fair with what they offered contributors, and for a few years they were among the best when it came to how they worked with us. They have great support staff, community relations, dialogue with contributors, etc. Just seems that they can't help it lately with missteps, and in particular when it comes to things that the majority of the industry does very differently. I'm not saying that every company should do everything the same. I have no desire to see innovation diminished because of industry standards when it comes to how companies offer their products, market themselves, work with contributors, etc. But when it comes to things that have very well established norms, and especially when it comes to taxes and financial dealings, there are some things that absolutely should be industry-standard, and Creative Market seems intent on going against the grain on some of those issues, to the extent that it harms contributing artists. My biggest concern right now is the language used around this tax policy, suggesting somehow that what everyone else knows about this stuff is wrong and has been for over a decade, and that somehow they've figured it all out and their way is the right way. Even in the face of conventional tax wisdom, many years of many companies doing things differently than CM does it, and even when tax professionals (like my accountant) say that they're wrong in doing it this way, they seem to insist that they know better. And that kind of thinking and behavior seems all too familiar in microstock. We all know about companies that insist they know what's best for us, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, and how things tend to go with those kinds of relationships.
72
« on: April 04, 2016, 21:22 »
Creative Market is pulling an Envato-like move and reporting 100% of every sale as earnings paid to contributors to the IRS.
I just got my 1099 (yes, just today, April 4th, I finally got a 1099 from CM), and in looking at it I immediately knew the amount seemed too high. Sure enough, after checking my books they over-reported my earnings by a few thousand dollars. I checked out the forum over their and not surprisingly there is a thread about the issue, and it seems that CM is reporting the full sale price of each item sold as the amount paid to contributors, and then asking contributors to write off the company's share as an expense. So if you earned $700 with CM in 2015, your 1099 will say $1,000, and you have to put down $300 as an expense.
Here's the issue I have with this: I never actually got the full $1,000 (for example), and likewise I have no documentation to prove that I ever actually paid out that $300 as an expense. They are essentially asking us to lie to the IRS and say we both received and paid out money, when in reality we received far less and paid out nothing.
The icing on the cake? The amount they're claiming to have paid us also includes refunds. That's right, money that was taken back from us is still in the 1099s. Mine includes over $100 of unexplained (refunded) earnings that I don't actually have.
I quit Envato over the same kinds of shady accounting practices, and I hate to say it when CM is my #2 earner but now I have to rethink my relationship with them as well. I am beyond tired and frustrated with these companies dishing out ever creative ways to screw us while we're expected to just accept it and be grateful for the opportunity to get screwed again next month.
Worse than the money issue to me, though, honestly is that I was championing Creative Market as the answer to all of the shady companies. They paid a fair rate, they gave the artists great control over their prices, products, promotional tools, etc., they were the company that was going to prove that artists still stood a chance to have success and strike a good partnership with an agency.
Then they made that license change (resale rights under standard license) and eroded some of that good image they had, and now they've gone full-dark-side with this tax move, a play right out of the books of one of the shadiest companies in the business.
73
« on: March 29, 2016, 09:14 »
...The idea that I've been earning from them the entire tax year and yet they issue a 1099 for just part because of some internal bureaucracy of theirs seems wrong. But as it doesn't make any difference to my tax return, I'm not going to pursue it further. Yeah, I'm not going to pursue it at all. Not my problem. They're not the first company to issue me an incorrect 1099, although not sure I remember another company ever being off by this much. But I'll just report actual earnings and not worry about it, knowing that my numbers are accurate.
74
« on: March 28, 2016, 21:17 »
Anyone else's 123RF 1099 way off? Mine is more than $1k under what they actually paid me.
75
« on: March 28, 2016, 10:59 »
That's been the case for a couple of years. Not for me. My 1099 for 2014 Bigstock earnings came from SS SPV LLC. 2015 is the first year I've seen Bigstock earnings reported as coming from Shutterstock, Inc. Have you been seeing your Bigstock earnings coming from Shutterstock Inc in previous years?
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