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Messages - Mellimage
Pages: 1 2 3 4 [5] 6 7 8 9 10 ... 19
101
« on: October 10, 2013, 07:08 »
Similar experience here - in August I had images often reviewed within 24 hours, longest review time was a week. The last batch in September however was reviewed after 3 weeks.
102
« on: October 10, 2013, 04:43 »
I hope I can help out with the site performance. I just asked for my account to be deleted. (After having deactivated my images there a few years ago already).
103
« on: October 02, 2013, 02:05 »
September 2013 is a bag of mixed news, with quite a bit of good stuff in it. First of - overall best month of the year, 99% from August (which was WMY), 71% up from September 2012. Agencies: Stocksy became my best earner - 31% (and 253% up from August, BME, but then again, just the third month) Shutterstock - came in 2nd, 2nd best month this year in terms of DLs, 2nd worst month this year in terms of rev. lowest RPD; 25% Fotolia - after having my WME there last month I had the BMY, 24% 123rf - BME, 11% total DT - flat - $$/DL about the same as last month, 8% All in all this may sound very good, but then in the grand scheme of things I still make fairly little money from my port. Good thing I have a day job.  But am really glad about Stocksy's development.
104
« on: September 18, 2013, 07:38 »
but it is how my port fits into the overall collection - and how the overall collection looks that sets stocksy's collection appart. you will have similar images on micros, but in the sea of images they will disappear, while the images pop out much more in the stocksy collection - and the stocksy collection overall is edited with a creative vision in mind. If i see the latest page, i am always amazed, how, in style, the images flow and work together.
105
« on: September 18, 2013, 07:06 »
For me, it is much less "Photographic Manoeuvres in the Dark" (love this 80s band reference hidden here). Gut feeling tells me a stocksy shot when i see it. (Of course, whether it sells later on is completely different matter).
106
« on: September 18, 2013, 04:57 »
I see the same images logged in and logged out. And I see creative use of filters, but definitely not the *the worst miscoloured amateurish snapshots I have seen in a long time.* That remark was one of the worst insults to the artists. Sorry, my very humble opinion.
107
« on: September 18, 2013, 04:30 »
It leaves me bewildered and worried.
your comment does the same to me - it's as if you are looking at a completely different site.
108
« on: September 04, 2013, 07:11 »
I was just sent a friendly email from Veer saying they are interested in moving some (or all) of my content over to Corbis. The eye popper however is that the rate for non-exclusive images would be a pitiful 10%. Really? As flattered as I am, I'm afraid that doesn't quite tempt my pocket book. Unless they sold sell thousdands of $$ of my content per day I'd be better off keeping it on Shutterstock and the rest ... and the thought of supporting an agency paying 10% doesn't suit my fancy much either.
Does anyone here have their content on Corbis? I just can't see how anyone would justify the 10%. The exclusive rate was 20% which is still crazy low.
Taking my chances with fewer sales and higher commissions at Stocksy (50%) seems like a much more sane decision.
Thoughts?
Let them clearly know what you think!
109
« on: September 03, 2013, 14:08 »
Not a good month overall - I made little more than half of what I made in July. August is thus far the worst month this year. Let's hope fall is picking up again.
SS - still my best earner, even though I had my WMY there (39.8%)
Stocksy - again second best earner, even though I have a very tiny port there. Slightly slower overall though (24.3%)
DT - better than July incomewise, overall average month though. (16.1%)
FT - WME! Awful month. Lowest RPD, Lowest RPI and only barely beating lowearner 123rf. FT used to make me 66% of my income, this August they were down to 11%
123rf - downloads up, income up compared to July, but overall, just an average month. (8.0%)
110
« on: August 26, 2013, 11:57 »
then you can disable selling extended licenses...
aand back to original topic: Looks like WME.
111
« on: August 21, 2013, 03:44 »
Every agency is slow this month, sales are crawling in at a snail's pace.
However, FT is currently dead last - behind 123rf, behind DT and of course behind SS and Stocksy.
112
« on: August 15, 2013, 10:55 »
There are two ways to measure performance from what I've seen-
1. If you have a decent size portfolio - over 5K images than comparing the particular month of one year to the next year is a good way to monitor the performance
2. If your portfolio is small but growing (newbies like myself) than comparing month by month within that year makes more sense
We want to compare Apples to Apples and Oranges to Oranges. I see (ok, read) folks saying things like- " My sales are up 5000% from last year at this same time!" Yeah, and your portfolio was 100 images last year and this year is it over 1,000 images. You are comparing an Apple with an Orange in my eyes...
T
I do not think you can only do year to year comparisons if you have a port over 5k images. I've been with SS for 6 years now - and have a small port - which is very slow growing. Why should i not compare the performance of my port to the performance it had last august - or even August 2 years ago. And if I see that compared to last year, despite some growth of my port, my dls and $$ are down, then this is saying something too, right?
113
« on: August 15, 2013, 10:34 »
mistake fixed, no comment necessary.
114
« on: August 15, 2013, 09:02 »
Sales are down at SS - half the month gone and not nearly the halfway mark to payout. But the sad thing is - it's bad across the whole board for me - and SS is not even the worst in their performance... .
do you mean you haven't reached 37.5$? 
That's what I am saying - and yes I have a 600+ image port.
115
« on: August 15, 2013, 06:58 »
Sales are down at SS - half the month gone and not nearly the halfway mark to payout. But the sad thing is - it's bad across the whole board for me - and SS is not even the worst in their performance... .
116
« on: August 02, 2013, 05:21 »
The very idea that IS can compete with SS in the longer term is utterly laughable. Who was it that said "professionals deal with professionals"? Oh yeah __ I just remembered. Boy, is he going to regret that decision within a couple of years from now! It'll be triple-helpings of humble pie for Mr Yuri when he can't feed his '100 employees'. I'm just sitting on my hands waiting for the inevitable to happen.
Don't forget that Yuri's employees consist of two large groups : the "production" group, needed for shoots, like makeup artists, models etc., and the "distribution" group, needed for submitting the images to 20 or 30 different sites. Now that he's only with Getty/Istock and his own site, he can probably fire more than 50% of that group (and probably even more once Dreamstime is cleaned up). So on one hand he gets a nice bag of money from Getty, and on the other hand he saves a lot of expenses by no longer submitting to a whole bunch of sites.
and then gets the award for fastest growing danish company...
117
« on: August 01, 2013, 03:51 »
Those photos are wildly overpriced.
Strewth....that's what I thought too!
Maybe not - just better photos are wildly underpriced!
118
« on: August 01, 2013, 03:21 »
And to the bolded part above: as stated earlier in the thread, I do have two files fulfilling that condition (old file, one download within the past six month), one has regular pricing, one has reduced pricing.
However they mean to do it, there seem to be bugs in their processing...
Yep, that is my experience too. Implementation is inconsistent - to say the least.
119
« on: August 01, 2013, 02:43 »
Hi there,
It sounds like either someone at support spoke out of turn or what they said was misunderstood. Regardless, the information Mellimage shared is not true.
If an image has not sold at least one time within six months it's price is reduced. Photos do not need to sell 3 times every six months to maintain current pricing. I would encourage you to go straight to the source for any questions like this: http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors/ImagesPricing
Thanks,
Mat
Just as an info - I translated directly what German support told me - I have asked for further clarification as their own Website does not make this clear - have not heard from them since.
120
« on: August 01, 2013, 02:38 »
Had overall a great month, though individual agency performance varied!
SS - 61% (BME)
Stocksy - 19% (first month!!)
FT - 13% (average)
DT - 5% (WMY)
123rf - 2% (WMY)
So as you can see this month was made great by SS being a great earner (due to a special download and an EL mainly) - my RPD was second highest at SS this month, speaking for the impact on Demand, ELs and SODs have on my earnings.
Also, it was my first month at Stocksy and with a very small port, I was able to make sales and Stocksy became my second best earner overall, with best RPD and best RPI. This sets thinking in motion with regards to the value of my images and where to submit.
FT - RPD sinking (2nd lowest overall), RPI low
DT - number of downloads was stable, but it was mainly subs, so it became second lowest earner same extremely low RPI as 123rf.
123rf gets the price again for lowest RPD and lowest RPI - largely subs and small sales. Will make decision about kicking it by the end of the year.
121
« on: July 30, 2013, 15:24 »
That is sad to hear, I've heard other things from several people. And Fotolia has a lot of very typical German content that is hard to find at the other agencies.
I'll have to try it myself, but I agree that the policy of expecting files to sell at least 3 times in 6 months sounds like they are now focussing on the ultrageneric stuff that has a superfast turnover.
Anyway, I still just have 350 files with them, so le'l's see how things go in a few months.
But there is a market for niche images that can justify prices above subscription and are not available everywhere. Otherwise all agencies are the same and they really can only fight on price.
Otherwise, I've been reading on the forums, that people are not happy with the quality of the search results. Some say, the contributors are to blame, too many spammy keywords. But the contributors upload the same keywords everywhere, don't they?
I do keyword manually in German for Fotolia, but I am not usng other keywords than I would in English.
At the moment, i think you'd have a good (better) chance at selling such images - first you are lower ranked (which means FT gets more from sales you make), secondly, as a newbie with a backlog catalogue you can also upload higher volumes (I have a tough time to get to 20 a month). So maybe your experience will be better. Best of luck and may it be worth the extra effort.
122
« on: July 29, 2013, 15:37 »
Fotolia is the biggest agency here in Europe and especially in Germany. I also like that they offer exclusive images, so if you feel you have a niche that sells better with them than elsewhere you can push that niche higher with a certain percentage of exclusive images.
It is a smart concept that works especially well for localized images. Europe is a small region with many languages and loads of local quirks and cultural nuances.
Exclusive images give you better trade off than trying to upload them everywhere and hope you can get your investment back while they compete with all the generic stuff.
So yes, I will keep uploading.
But these unscheduled, abrupt dramatic kind of changes are scary and disturbing. It reminds me of istock and I really would prefer a smoother and balanced way to do business.
Anyway, I am new to how they work, but here in Germany many artists are doing well with them.
This only works in theory this well - the thoughts you present are definitely correct, but the reality is a different matter. I tried to bank on this, providing localized content. I used to have a share of images that were exclusive to FT of above 10% and wanted to increase this. But my exclusive files, designed specifically for the German market have usually been pushed to the back of the search, while the generic ones tend to take off (if at all). With FTs new price strategy going for cheap prices I doubt that exclusive images at a higher price will continue to sell well. Interestingly, if I set some of these as non-exclusive and send them to other agencies later on, they sell better there than at FT.
123
« on: July 29, 2013, 10:20 »
I can't believe, 18 pages and counting and the topic is "Yuri Arcurs First Public Statement" SO WHAT. I can understand if the topic was Anton Corbijn's or Jan Saudek's photography but this is ridiculous. Honestly!
while the title may suggest that this is all about Y. - it is not - there are some interesting reads in the whole thread - i.e. on behaving in planes and the permission to walk around.  Also, to expect a discussion on Corbijn and Saudek at this forum which is primarily on microstock photography (as the name suggests) is a bit misplaced (though the work of both are well worth discussing...).
124
« on: July 27, 2013, 08:57 »
True enough - on the other hand - does that mean Bruce is the only person to make such a model work?
125
« on: July 27, 2013, 01:45 »
Still can't figure out why Stocksy dose not get more hype here.
That's simple: They want a small crowd of elite photographers to work for them. Why should we want to hype up an outfit that just wants to freeze us out of the business?If you exclude 99.9% of the population from your club don't expect to be a hit with the masses.
It's rather like asking why microstockers didn't hype up Getty ten years ago when it paid "fair commissions".
The question is - do you need to hype up Stocksy itself - or maybe a business model like stocksy's. Sure, Stocksy is rather restrictive in the number (and type) of photographers it represents - it is designed for slow growth. On the other hand - why not hype the model - found another stock-coop that has another unique selling point, communicate fair pricing and fair commissions to contributors.
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