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Messages - qunamax

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51
Just had 0$ sale on the sidebar, in sales it's 0.10, I get what?

52
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Review times
« on: May 13, 2021, 07:27 »
Finally they got reviewed, after months, IS must be watching these forums  ;D

53
iStockPhoto.com / Review times
« on: May 10, 2021, 07:26 »
I was wondering what are everyone's review times for model released images?
I got a batch or two that seem to be stuck for months, unreleased images from the same batch went through in matter of days, but released stuff doesn't get reviewed.
Usually it does take longer, but this is months now. Just checking if it's the new norm or I should contact support.

54
Shutterstock.com / Re: Anyone get paid (April)from SS yet?
« on: May 05, 2021, 17:18 »
Yes, just now.

55
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Earnings for Mar'21
« on: April 25, 2021, 11:53 »
Well for extreme fairness, I can't upload with Xpiks and that breaks my workflow.  :D Clicking the keywords is the worst procrastination inducing part.

Definitely varies from person to person. I have less than 10% of the connect sales, maybe even less that 5%, and I simply pretend they are not sales at all, it works for me. Adobe was always unpredictable for me, good RPD, but sales are all over the place, from extremely hot days to complete silence for days or a whole week. SS was very good, above IS until they made a cut to 10c and even before that new uploads were a complete waste of time for me since none of it got traction.

56
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Earnings for Mar'21
« on: April 22, 2021, 10:41 »
Strong month, about four times more than SS (with a bit bigger portfolio).
I see a rising trend constantly, probably thanks to new uploads. Most importantly it drives my will to upload.

57
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Earnings for Mar'21
« on: April 21, 2021, 17:49 »
Hard to believe all other agencies can tell me instantly what I have sold but iStock/Getty - with decades of experience - is not able to issue a monthly statement.

iStock used to report in real time. And with lots more sales in those days, it was really fun!

I once tried to explain this to a friend: so the agency is called iStock but it's actually owned by Getty, but you have to use Deepmeta to upload, but your keywords ain't valid unless you choose what you meant, your images are sold on iStock but also on Getty, but actually not, but actually yes and you use completely other site called ESP to check your earnings and upload status but you can't check your earning because they are published only once a month every 20th but are actually almost never out straight on 20th...

58
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Earnings for Mar'21
« on: April 21, 2021, 12:33 »
Why were they deactivated Pete?

Because the evil agency...  ;)

Just kidding. When Getty took over, around the time of ESP and when all of our images were changed to the Getty servers, they had a policy change. In simple terms, sports and editorial, news, entertainment,  those kinds of things, that isn't from Getty, would no longer be sold by iStock. I can understand their reasoning, I just don't like it. Tough luck? Business is business.

Getty pays people to go to these events and take photos. They are sold and branded as Getty Images, I'm sure we've all seen those on news, current entertainment events and sports stories. Standing next to their hired guns, at the same events, is little me, who uploaded my work to iStock. Getty owned iStock and iStock was competition. Easy answer, eliminate the completion. Eliminate Pete.

Audio they signed an exclusive contract with a different provider, no more in house uploads from us contributors. Phased out.

So just take this as whining and complaining about something that's expected and standard business. I don't make much or sell much on IS now because first off, I didn't have that much that wasn't editorial. I also got tired of the system, where I could upload things and get accepted and a week later, the release wasn't right. I'd finally get one that was approved, or hit and miss, and then the new one was not suitable. The processing, the CV and the torture, I gave up. So lets say much of the problem with low sales is created by myself.

Good images will sell, and the people here who still earn on IS are proof. But in fact, I've been stabbed, then shot and finally hung, of course I'm a little bitter, because I barely make $5 a month now.  ;D

So they didn't remove my images because I was a PITA or did something wrong. Just policy changes.



I wasn't aware of that, I don't do such work, very sorry. Wondering if that kind of images would be rejected now if submitted?

Anyway, here we go again:

59
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Earnings for Mar'21
« on: April 21, 2021, 10:56 »
Why were they deactivated Pete?

60
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Earnings for Mar'21
« on: April 21, 2021, 04:38 »
I was hoping when I wake up the statement would be ready, but it's still spinning. Told you, it's either early or it's late.

61
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Earnings for Mar'21
« on: April 20, 2021, 11:10 »
Well it's either 18. of month or it's problems and it's late, they rarely nail it on 20.

16th shows as my earliest, 19th or 20th is usual I see one last year on the 24th.

I'm kind of excited (kidding!) to see if I actually had two sales for the period, because I checked the numbers by memory and it looks like one photo and one illustration. I'm happy because that makes it much easier to close up and leave them.

Got nice number of downloads and currently IS is the only agency I can truly rely on for income, overall best earner and new uploads get instant traction. AS is great with returns but I have a miserable number of downloads, serious number of never downloaded files, as opposed to IS which seems to move every files at least a dozen times. 

62
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock Technical Problems Again
« on: April 20, 2021, 11:05 »
One from 3-4 days ago showed up finally, thou a lot more waiting in line...
Guilty too, as alternative to starving.

63
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Earnings for Mar'21
« on: April 20, 2021, 10:04 »
Well it's either 18. of month or it's problems and it's late, they rarely nail it on 20.

64
Interested to know your thoughts if you believe that there's any reason to be optimistic in regards to the future of the microstock photography industry as a viable business opportunity.

https://brutallyhonestmicrostock.com/2021/03/18/7-reasons-why-microstock-photography-is-probably-a-waste-of-your-time/

Just checked my February 2021 iStock earnings results making me even more pessimistic.

Looking forward to a fruitful discussion.

Best regards,

Alex

Well checking my February IS earnings just made me optimistic, they are constantly rising month after month, moving my new uploads, currently they are by far my best earner. That's it from me about IS right now.

65
General Stock Discussion / Re: Wirestock news
« on: March 15, 2021, 14:46 »
I'd like to steer out of trouble as much as I can on part, regardless of their way of checking similars. Down the road, something like Eyeem - Getty thing could happen and threads of account closures.

Don't know Pete, now as a new user I can easily select, per image or global in account settings and I opted out of Instapay right from the first batch.

66
General Stock Discussion / Re: Wirestock news
« on: March 14, 2021, 10:46 »
Not to open a completely new thread, can anyone tell me what is the Wirestock take on uploading similars/photos from the same series that I already have uploaded through my accounts?

Duplicates are not allowed, and will be rejected.
As far as I know, similars/other content from the same series are fine, but whether it's a good idea to do that is subject of discussion.

Maybe uploading image A from a series to your personal account using your own keywording and uploading image B from that shoot to Wirestock using their keywording service might be a strategy to consider. Just don't stretch similarity, and make sure there's a distinctive difference between the two images.

That's what I was thinking, as an experiment, I would surely avoid submitting bestsellers, but for additional shots from series - never uploaded, it might be a good idea to give it a go, to see how would they do in a more exposed portfolio.
Thanks.

67
General Stock Discussion / Re: Wirestock news
« on: March 13, 2021, 07:48 »
Not to open a completely new thread, can anyone tell me what is the Wirestock take on uploading similars/photos from the same series that I already have uploaded through my accounts?
 

68
iStockPhoto.com / Re: "exciting" News from Getty
« on: March 11, 2021, 18:50 »
Before I deleted the email, I noticed this.

Briefs are moving home! Soon you will be able to browse briefs and submit your content, all in ESP. And were not stopping there later in the year we will be introducing a new, simpler look to the ESP website, so stay tuned!

Maybe [idle speculation] too many people were opting out of the briefs emails, or ignoring them.

Count me in, I don't even know what "briefs" are.

69
Nice, I've been using your keyworded for some time now, will try it out.

70
General - Stock Video / Re: To 4K or to not 4K...
« on: March 04, 2021, 09:08 »
Upgrading to 4k equipment isn't necessarily a steep investment. You can pick up a second hand Panasonic G7 for pretty cheap if you keep looking.

Don't forget the computer, power and storage, I can edit and export 1080p in a blink of an eye, 4K throws me back into Cyrix6x86L era.

71
Pond5 / Re: Unusual rejection reason
« on: March 04, 2021, 08:58 »
I submitted the same clip again and it was flagged by their duplicate detector. I sent P5 an e-mail and in their reply, they recommended that I submit the clip as a 4:3 file instead of 4:3 inside of a 16:9 file. So I selected 4:3 with an NLE program and exported it as  3840 x 2880. When I view the thumbnail of the clip, there are no more black bars on the left and right. Though now there are thick black bars on the top and bottom. I wasn't expecting to see those.

Why not just crop it tightly and tidy to 4:3?
I'm with them with this one, if the original is 4:3 submit as 4:3, buyer can easily incorporate it into 16:9 as he pleases.

72
Ignore this nonsense.  Just some cancel-culture keyboard warrior.

I know quite a few people with afro-hair.  They all refer to their hair as "my 'fro" or "my afro".

Its descriptive.  There's a trend these days to ban accurate, descriptive words.  Don't fall for it.

The only real issue is that the woman doesn't have afro hair in the photo. I would argue the keyword is still valid outside of the hair as people search for Afro American (and buyers almost never use hyphens or quotation marks).

The weird thing is the person jumping to "you're a racist" from Anyka getting the name of a hairstyle wrong.

From where I come from, this exact style of hair is shortly called exactly "afro", a woman goes to a hair dresser and says "make me an afro" and this hair style is the result and I've seen lots of ads on facebook stating "cheap afro hair style, afro hair style specialist and so on".
I'm pretty sure in a lot of other Slavic countries it's known as "afro" and probably many more in Europe and Asia, so I think it's rather relevant keyword for this hair style. 

73
You melted some snowflakes. Good job.
What you should do? Block the snowflake and forget about it.

74
General Stock Discussion / Re: Idea, don't make fun
« on: February 10, 2021, 13:14 »
With the price of royalties falling from ALL stock sites. Here is a idea that just might make your payments go up. Now before you make fun of me have an open mind to this. I do hope Mat is reading this from Adobe as this would be a first for Adobe and would get them a lot of publicity which might move Adobe Wall Street stock price up. Have an option for payment in Bit Coin. From the stock contributor side what do we have to lose when so many stock sites are paying 10 cents a sell. Yes Bit coin is very volatile but that can also work in your favor. I for one would take the Bit Coin for payment in 2021.  if this was 2007 no I would not take it as we all made a lot more money in Stock at that time. Adobe what do you think ?

As I understand it, that is supposed to be a gamble that's dependable on bitcoin exchange rate? Not sure we need another variable when microstock is already full of them.

75
General Stock Discussion / Re: Dreamstime uploading not working?
« on: January 31, 2021, 05:50 »
It probably has to do with images ending up overprocessed and sharpened to hell and back, hence processing taking so much time.

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