I do remember reading about Rinder's musical contribution to the film Enter The Ninja. Also, one of the SS forum members was watching an old movie (can't recall the title) and Rinder's name appeared in the credits for the music.

In the past, I found reviews on Adobe Stock to be more harsh. I used to get a fair few rejections but also a fair few accepted images as well. Can't recall if it was close to a 50 / 50 split or not. In more recent times, Ive found the AS reviewers are a lot more generous. Currently, I only have the occasional issue with illustrative editorial images. Some of my images are accepted as IE and some aren't (it seems pretty random.) Most of the photos I submit as IE have similar kinds of subjects with no recognisable people but apparently, some just don't qualify as IE.

2 of those sale were at DT with $3,70 each for me.

Oh darn, that's low. But still higher than my last two video sales from AS.

I know I'm getting desperate considering DT for video but times are tough.

I had a sub to Wile E. Coyote yesterday Acme, United States

Out of curiosity, did the image happen to be of a road runner?

It's 5% for Australia, I got the info from https://eezycontributors.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040283911-What-is-the-Withholding-Rate-For-My-Country-

Oh yea definitely confirmed now. I'm puzzled why my previous W-8BEN form says 0.5%. When I updated the new form, it wouldn't let me fill in the section that requires the amount / percentage. That particular area remains blank. Though what I am assuming is that it will be filled in automatically with what was typed into the previous form - 0.5%. And that is not ideal.

Thank you! I had looked on the IRS website but didn't come across that particular page.

It's time for me to fill out the W-8BEN form again. It's been ages since Ive filled one out and Ive forgotten some of the fine details like the amount of tax to be withheld. Australia has a tax treaty with the US so it will only be a very small percentage that will be withheld. Surprisingly, I couldn't find any such information online about the exact amount. Another Australian stock photographer on another forum assured me that it was 5%. Though today, I managed to download an old W-8BEN form that I had previously completed and it says 0.5%. So now I'm not sure whether I should put 0.5% or 5% on the new form. Would anyone here know?

Woops. I meant to say "subscription sales" in my opening sentence.

Yea the guy is a fool. No matter what anyone else in that thread says, he keeps repeating the same thing over and over again.

Gosh, in it's latest reply, he seems to think that it will be cheaper to send someone out to film something specific. Despite people telling him otherwise. I don't think he can be reasoned with.

With the latest antics on Shutterstock losing content (which I just counted my portfolio and have at least 7 videos vanished) Adobe Stock seldom sell videos and IStock has low commissions, I think Pond5 exclusive is worth a go.

What's this about SS losing content? That's news to me!

Quote from: Firn on March 25, 2022, 04:35

However, my personal opinion is that microstock just doesn't earn enough to justify the extra time it would take to create different sets of keywords for the same image for every agencies, even if I fully understood how each of their algoirthms worked. I add my kewords to the metadata and that's it.

agreed.  My only difference, is once in a while i'll add all the recommended other keywords on SS, since they obviously know better than i do about their algorithm

I don't submit photos to SS anymore. But when I did, there were many recommended keywords that were irrelevant and had nothing to do with the image that I was submitting. So yea I would be extra careful about which ones I would choose from the automated suggestions made by SS.

Since no agency is really willing to share with us how exactly their search algorithm works, we can all only speculate.

Generally true. Though unless my memory is playing tricks on me, I thought I recall AS making two recommendations -  avoid using long titles and avoid using too many keywords.

I think too many keywords, of which some are less relevant to the image than others (keywords that are not relevant at all should never be used

Oh yea I only use keywords that are relevant to the image.

However, my personal opinion is that microstock just doesn't earn enough to justify the extra time it would take to create different sets of keywords for the same image for every agencies, even if I fully understood how each of their algoirthms worked. I add my kewords to the metadata and that's it.

Agreed. It's not worth the extra fuss.

There is a belief that with some stock agencies, there is such a thing as having too many keywords. After a few years of shooting stock, I still don't really know if this is really a thing or not. On DT, there are some contributors who advise against adding too many keywords as supposedly, this can hurt sales. By contrast, on SS, the general philosophy is to add as many keywords as possible. I actually mentioned on the SS forum that folks over on DT were advising against putting in lots of keywords. An SS contributor replied that this was nonsense and urged me not to listen to them. So since then, I have been adding as many keywords as possible with all the agencies that I submit to.

Though now I'm wondering if I'm doing more harm than good with certain agencies.

AS is another agency that, if I recall correctly, warns against adding excessive numbers of keywords. But unfortunately, I can't help myself.

Actually, some time ago, I did a little test on DT. I tried some searches for one or two of my images on there that had a rather large number of keywords. And I had no trouble locating those images in the search results. So I'm guessing that buyers wouldn't have any trouble either.