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Messages - Not Today
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101
« on: April 20, 2019, 03:41 »
May I know is it Istock allow the buyer to refund? I saw my statement, there is a red amount on it. Anyone can answer my question?Thanks. Kindly see the attachment
Yes "What do the items in red font and/or parenthesis in my statement mean? Tuesday November 8, 2016 Sales with corresponding amounts in red font and parenthesis represent returns or corrections. They are subtractions from royalties, rather than additions. When reviewing the PDF or TXT version of your statement, the 'Sales Date' column shows the date of the original sale and indicates the statement month in which the sale was initially reported. Cancellations and corrections usually take place within three months of the original sale date but in rare cases may occur after that.''
102
« on: April 19, 2019, 12:39 »
Given that some agencies do not accept images of specific flags on fire due to laws around them... they might reject landscapes in similar situations (if fictional).
103
« on: April 19, 2019, 11:06 »
As long as you designed the UFO yourself and as long as there is no copyright in the photo of New York then yes you can upload as creative.
If the UFO doesn't belong to you, then you can't upload it at all.
104
« on: April 19, 2019, 06:41 »
I don't think it's about putting your entire portfolio on Pond5, but getting value for your best work, which Shutterstock or Adobe don't appreciate by not adding it to their own Select and Premium collections. Pond5 exclusive gives you the opportunity to have your own premium collection that you don't have anywhere else. The difference in value can be 5 - 10 times what you currently get depending how you price your work. Being at the mercy of the agencies can be down right depressing sometimes and valuing yourself can be good for the soul and the pocket, but even if you just break even through lower sales you know your cut is fair.
Isn't it better to go through a macrostock agency for these higher value files?
105
« on: April 19, 2019, 05:08 »
Surprisingly, AdobeStock outperforms Shutterstock and Pond5 for me (counting video only). It also doesn't make sense to make my portfolio exclusive.
106
« on: April 18, 2019, 06:09 »
Can't wait for the lottery results! 
107
« on: April 18, 2019, 01:51 »
I love my iphone. It has excellent stabilization and I have uploaded a lot of iphone clips.
Otherwise I prefer a real camera, but my xsmax is really amazing.
iPhone is definitely acceptable, I've used mine a lot, and all the shots have always been accepted and most of them sold. The trick is to know your way around a video editing software, and some basics colour grading skills will help too. Bear in mind its limitations thou, like you can't have a one size fits all DSLR camera and a lens that can shoot in every situation, phone videos are usually really bad in low light settings. So for stock websites, any of the new generation phones will do as long as you clean up the shots in post. It's best to get a DSLR if you just want to upload straight from camera. All in all, quality doesn't matter as much these days as prices are going down, as long as you produce 'acceptable' quality according to the websites standards. It's the content of the shot that sells.
108
« on: April 12, 2019, 09:24 »
Thanks! Wow IS is taking over AS, and DP is following
109
« on: April 12, 2019, 07:48 »
Fun fact 1:
On Pond5, 4 465 videos with the keywords 'Nasa' have sold at least once.
Fun fact 2:
On Pond5, 349 of these clips with the keyword 'Nasa' have sold more than 10 times.
Fun fact 3:
On Pond5, 20 of these clips with the keyword 'Nasa' have sold more than 100 times.
Fun fact 4:
You don't need to know anything about video to sell stock footage. Just download creative commons and resell them.
110
« on: April 12, 2019, 05:30 »
I don't get what the fuss is  Just make your artboard bigger and scale everything up. Adobe Stock has a minimum of 15 MP.
I'm guessing they are implementing this so buyers can purchase a decent quality JPEG from the vector file, otherwise it will be too small.
Adobe has two options - zip file with eps (any size) + jpg of min 15MP or standalone eps with 15MP. Shutterstock wants to keep only one option - min. 4MP eps.
I am contributor and buyer as well and I can tell you that working with vectors bigger than 1500px is just annoying to put it nicely. I usually work with 100% or bigger magnification for precision and if I want to change anything - even change one point on a curve I soon run out of screen space, even on 4k screen.
File size matters mainly because loading complex shadows, blends, various overlay modes takes much, much longer with bigger eps files - for both contributors and buyers.
Also, who wants to download and store gigabytes of vectors - extra money for internet connection and storage, again for everyone - contributors, buyers and even Shutterstock.
That's why it makes very little sense to implement this change.
Ah ok thanks, that makes sense.
111
« on: April 12, 2019, 04:38 »
I don't get what the fuss is Just make your artboard bigger and scale everything up. Adobe Stock has a minimum of 15 MP.
I'm guessing they are implementing this so buyers can purchase a decent quality JPEG from the vector file, otherwise it will be too small.
The problem is that there is a 50MP maximum limit. So when they scale up, they just can't upload...
And even if they would remove the limit, there are complex works which with new rules will be 500MB, 1,5GB etc.
This is insane, I'm so sorry for illustrators :/
Yeah but the file limit on AS is 45MB so it's the same issue. I don't think complex vectors should be submitted as vectors, but as JPEG illustrations - and each element within the complex artwork should be submitted as vectors. Otherwise you're giving away too many things for the same price. Giving away too much for the same price is driving the sales down, like people selling sets of 100, 200, 600, 800, 1500x icons [insert your category]. Instead of having a buyer buy 100 different vectors, they can now just buy one, with subscription service, and have them all.
112
« on: April 12, 2019, 03:46 »
I don't get what the fuss is Just make your artboard bigger and scale everything up. Adobe Stock has a minimum of 15 MP. I'm guessing they are implementing this so buyers can purchase a decent quality JPEG from the vector file, otherwise it will be too small.
113
« on: April 10, 2019, 09:42 »
I'm using After Effects and it's working quite well (and no extra fees if you already have Creative Cloud). Import all the photos as a sequence to edit via Camera Raw in After Effects, place the sequence in a new composition, and change the resolution and frame rate in the composition settings, export. Done 
114
« on: April 10, 2019, 06:49 »
What about starting a new agency with high prices that requires exclusivity and offer 99% to contributors (and take only 1%)? They wouldn't need to do any marketing since they'd own all the content. 
115
« on: April 09, 2019, 10:48 »
I agree thou with the 15% being excessive and I'd be happy to collaborate somewhere cheaper but haven't found any other place just yet.
If you like shooting & editing alone and have a fast internet, then you probably have no use for them.
Doesn't "collaboration" cost more than 15%?
Of course, but that is entirely up to you and your project partners. How much you want to pay actors, camera people, post processor...that is entirely up to you.
Or, you pay them cash, which is what I have been doing so far with people.
Some people have assistants they pay a monthly wage to, quite a few of my friends have that.
This way I could find people to team up with and we share the results.
It is an option that you can use.
Of course you can do the sharing right now yourself, but if the tool is built in, you dont have to worry about it.
In those agreements what happens if you take your videos off Black box and put them up on the sites yourself? What's the copyright situation with these works?
I don't think it is possible to delete your content once uploaded to all websites otherwise it would be too easy to have your editing and metadata done by someone for a %, and then remove it all and upload to your own websites (but probably if all 'sharers' agree to have it removed and message support that should be possible). As for the copyright situation, it is split between the 'sharers'. ''BlackBox will not own any content, only members can own content. we offer creators the ability to collaborate and share in the ownership of content. What are "Shares"? Shares are the percentage of a given piece of content that you own and therefore, the portion of revenue that you will make when the content sells, often for years.'' For a collaborative project, each creator that contributes to the creation of the content becomes a Sharer. More info here: https://www.blackbox.global/faq
116
« on: April 09, 2019, 09:54 »
It works for me.
I am treating blackbox as an additional agency and in time I will find content that I prefer to send there.
But so far I am really happy, it makes quite a big difference to my workflow, uploading costs a lot of time.
I agree that customers cannot bookmark you and you cannot sort your content by theme like on pond5 and now on shutterstock.
But I have a lot of files that are really generic.
Also, it does have the advantage that people cannot see all you have. While on pond5 you can see the bb bestsellers, the personal strategy gets lost in the collection. So part of my portfolio will be a more hidden moneymaker.
It is similar to working with image distributors like cavan or westend or eyeem. Although these places also offer direct sales, most sales come from a wide range of partners.
Again, everyone has to decide what is best for them. This works for me.
Same here I'm using it as an additional agency that I use for partnerships. For my other work, I'm still uploading directly to each website. With the 15%, you just upload to one website, and they re-distribute to all of them, which is good if you don't have a speedy internet connection. They also take care of the royalty split when involved with others, as this would be too much of a headache to deal with. And they provide a platform where you can upload your footage, and look for people to edit and/or keyword for a share of the footage in return. So basically you can just focus on what you like and do best, and leave the tasks you don't enjoy to others. I agree thou with the 15% being excessive and I'd be happy to collaborate somewhere cheaper but haven't found any other place just yet. If you like shooting & editing alone and have a fast internet, then you probably have no use for them.
117
« on: April 09, 2019, 05:00 »
How long did it take before you got your first sale on stock footage?
Shorter than it took for you to write your dissertation.
 S/He/IT would probably have made a sale by now instead of trolling around.
118
« on: April 09, 2019, 04:27 »
Yeah BB is definitely the winner, but also people sharing revenue.
It's nice to try and unite all photographers for better royalties, but I think it's nicer when we involve all other people working in the same industry, people that we hire and work with (actors, make up artists, location scouts, editors and so on...). That's the big plus that only BB offers (for the time being), and I'm really fond of this, giving people I work with the choice to get either a % or a flat fee. With a %, they also give a better performance as otherwise they might not care as much if it sells or not.
We can also reach a broader audience by involving them and then have more weight on agencies great and exciting news.
119
« on: April 09, 2019, 03:49 »
Blackbox does take 15% of net sales however, so that's not for everybody.
...and less than 0.7% of their clips on Pond5 have sold, so what happened to "great visibility"?
Only 27 clips out of half a million have 5 sales or more, and they've been around for a while now.
But it is a great way to get lost in the mix. 
That's very interesting data, thanks for that.
Although, it would be even more interesting to compare it to total sales of P5 since BB has been implemented, cause the meaning of stats can be twisted easily when isolated. Who knows, maybe P5 has not been performing that well in the last 2 years - They did mention that they are losing clients to competitors.
Then let me further brighten your day!
I cannot give you the data for ALL clips since BlackBoxGuild started selling, but I can give you the data for all clips uploaded since BlackBoxGuild started selling, which might even be a better comparison. Although 0.7% of clips sold is absolutely terrible by almost any time frame (down to a month or so), let's dive deeper.
---
Pond5 make it incredibly difficult to browse a large portfolio like BlackBoxGuild's (another reason for not selling with others), but this is the first clip they uploaded:
https://www.pond5.com/stock-footage/55100531/caribou-cross-frozen-tundra.html
This was around July of 2015.
---
itemgt:"item number" will show all items uploaded after that number, and the opposite is true for itemlt:"item number".
itemgt:55100530 artist:blackboxguild will show all clips uploaded by BlackBoxGuild (55100531 being the first one).
itemgt:55100530 will show ALL clips uploaded to Pond5 since BlackBoxGuild uploaded that first clip.
---
Feel free to do the sale searches yourself, but these are the results (hopefully I didn't screw anything up):
BlackBoxGuild:
0.68% of clips sold.
PRICE WAS SET TO $78 and above before any of the price activists freak out, but the results were very similar even with all price points.
Pond5 total since July 2015, not counting clips uploaded before July 2015:
2.94% of clips sold.
BlackBoxGuild:
1 out of 20,000 clips sold 5 times or more.
Pond5 total:
1 out of 693 clips sold 5 times or more.
---
Decent portfolios should have MUCH better results, at least 10-15% of all clips sold after a couple of years. Even that I think is low...
---
So we can clearly see that the BlackBoxGuild results were absolutely terrible compared to the overall average, and that's even with the BlackBoxGuild clips pulling the average DOWN.
---
I had to run the numbers again WITHOUT the BlackBoxGuild clips pulling down the P5 average (using !artist:BlackBoxGuild to exclude those clips):
3.2% of clips sold.
0.16% or 1 out of 620 clips sold 5 times or more. An even bigger difference.
Thanks, still raining over here thou Did some digging in the forum and we'd need the calculations from end 2016 - beginning 2017 to be as accurate as possible  "BlackBoxPat I shoot video Reply #32 on: December 05, 2017, 20:56 Quote #link0 Vote Up Hey there, I'm the Founder of newbielink:http://www.BlackBox.global [nonactive]. We've been up for almost a year and creators that are using the platform seem very happy. BB is an "upload once get to many" platform that also afford members the ability to collaborate and share in the revenue streams that the footage generates. We try to make the process simple so you can stop dealing with the agencies and concentrate on making great footage. Have a look for yourself. Thank you." Anyway, I wasn't advertising for them, just that some people mentioned a coop or virtual agency within an agency so I've used BB as an example of what is currently around, so if someone wants to start something similar but do it differently, they can check what works and what doesn't.
120
« on: April 09, 2019, 02:28 »
I got an email from [email protected] wich is from March.22, landed in spam,
A potential buyer would like to purchase one of your files with exclusive rights SR-EL.
I have 72h to remove them from other agencies, well that would take more than 72h,
The image sells very well, dont know what to do.
I don't think selling the rights is worth it on the long term, 1 year or 3 year exclusivity might be. https://www.dreamstime.com/level.php?lvlimag=1#11 year exclusivity any SR-EL1 any image based as low as $62.5 per image 3 years exclusivity any SR-EL3 any image based as low as $150 per image Sell the rights any SR-EL any image based as low as $250 per image
121
« on: April 09, 2019, 01:18 »
Which sites pay a higher percentage?
They don't market themselves as "caring so much about artists"
The sites that pay more than 40% don't market themselves as caring?
P5 did when they needed to attract more artists. Now they have enough material to become "just business" like everyone else.
Ok so which sites pay more than 40%?
Storyblocks (50%), Envato (45%), Dreamstime (45% for each video with more than 25 downloads), 123RF (up to 60% based on your contributor rank).
Storyblocks promotes its own content and third party sales get less (what % of sales are these and what % do you get?), Envato has about 2% of videos priced at $79 or more and 33% priced at $10 or less, Dreamstime takes about 50 sales of each file to reach 40% on average, 123rf you would need about 90 HD sales a year to reach 40%. I wouldn't choose any of those sites over P5 besides low sales you almost certainly won't get even the same % but if all your videos on DT have 50 sales, you get 90 HD sales a year at 123RF, and you don't contribute to any of the lower paying sites then by all means you should be upset.
Does P5 pay the same % when they sell through third party like AS and VS?
122
« on: April 09, 2019, 00:53 »
On another note, we should petition SS, AS, IS and P5 to implement a new (or better) contributor level in order to reward long term contributors and/or video content that sells regularly.
Currently:
SS: contributor level does not apply to videos
AS: seems to be discontinuing FT contributor level
IS: only applicable to exclusive content
P5: doesn't exist
123
« on: April 09, 2019, 00:37 »
Which sites pay a higher percentage?
They don't market themselves as "caring so much about artists"
The sites that pay more than 40% don't market themselves as caring?
P5 did when they needed to attract more artists. Now they have enough material to become "just business" like everyone else.
Ok so which sites pay more than 40%?
Storyblocks (50%), Envato (45%), Dreamstime (45% for each video with more than 25 downloads), 123RF (up to 60% based on your contributor rank).
124
« on: April 09, 2019, 00:21 »
Blackbox does take 15% of net sales however, so that's not for everybody.
...and less than 0.7% of their clips on Pond5 have sold, so what happened to "great visibility"?
Only 27 clips out of half a million have 5 sales or more, and they've been around for a while now.
But it is a great way to get lost in the mix.
That's very interesting data, thanks for that. Although, it would be even more interesting to compare it to total sales of P5 since BB has been implemented, cause the meaning of stats can be twisted easily when isolated. Who knows, maybe P5 has not been performing that well in the last 2 years - They did mention that they are losing clients to competitors.
125
« on: April 08, 2019, 13:49 »
Northern America and Europe aren't countries I'm afraid.
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