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Messages - alan b traehern

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1
No. I hired someone to make me an original character design...

Were they cheap?

No. I am seriously considering just dropping this stock industry crap and start drawing... I could boost sales of my artwork through my filming knowledge and make better money. Just thinking about making investments FOR making stock footage and then getting rejected makes me sick to my stomach. Meanwhile I had 95% approval rate with all AI generated images and had many sales already. Makes you think twice about what should be the logical course of action. There is a good saying: "The only way of making money in photography is by selling all your gear."

If you are offended by rejections, because you think you are better than the standards or the reviewers, you should do something else. We all have to work and live with the same situation.

2
123RF / Re: 123RF sales stopped.
« on: March 04, 2024, 11:09 »
Hi there!
Do you think it's worth starting your 123rf adventure in 2024? I'm a fairly successful contributor on Adobe Stock where my monthly revenue is between $2,000 and $3,000 and my portfolio is 35k images. I'm wondering if it's worth putting my entire portfolio on 123rf and to start uploading there on a regular basis?

I also noticed that they offer PREMIUM or PREMIUM+PLUS sales - which option is better according to your experience?
No

If you do not need additional $100-$200 than do not submit.
Is that every 5 years? Will 123 be in business in 5 years?

No, that is for every month and in accordance of the monthly income and portfolio mentioned above. Ofcourse not every portfolio can make such amounts.

If we believe the poll here that shows $15 a month, there must be many who don't come near $100-$200 a month to make the $15 average. You are the exception.

3
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock steals sales. Control purchase
« on: February 17, 2024, 04:26 »
I find it hard to believe a major agency would so blatantly and obviously pocket royalties belong to the contributor. Because the legal consequences would be huge if this was found to be true. Would they risk it for a few cents per sale?
I wouldn't be surprised if either one of the following scenarios is true:
1) The claim is a lie
2) The 'control purchase' was not conducted properly or one of the buyers made a mistake
3) The sale was delayed due to a system error or some flagging and will show up sooner or later

You must have been very surprised to learn Enron was cooking the books.  Giant companies cheat and lie all the time.  They are seldom caught because there is negligible oversight.  We have no access to sales data apart from what SS or other agencies tell us and they have a very good incentive to lie.  The best we can do is conduct these risky unscientific experiments to try to get a little more data.  I'm not saying OP's post proves anything but its one more data point than we had before and you're welcome to believe it or not.  I'm tempted to try it myself but I earn so little from SS that it would cost nearly all my earnings to buy a single pack.

How can a claim on a forum be a data point, with no data. PokemonMaster is behind Stock Coalition and pushed the boycott Shutterstock protest. Giant companies or Enron have no connection in what SS does unless you want to believe guilt by generalization without facts. The answer is right above this. Screen shots, video of a buy, collect the data and if they are cheating us, take them to court. Everything you read on the internet is not true. Same goes for this forum.

5
General - Stock Video / Re: Freepik Wants My Videos For A Price
« on: February 17, 2024, 03:40 »
I see this wrong logic from time to time in discussions. No, no one buyer will search for your image on other agency to buy it cheaper. Even if he want it's almost impossible to find it in the search straight away, as a whole this does not work. Selling in many agencies will only extend your income and competition between them and from there better commissions to the contributors. I'm in this business from 2007 and I'm full-time and I have experienced view on all this.

I agree that individual buyers will generally not search to find a specific image at the cheapest price. However, it does not follow that it's fine to supply free and all-you-can-eat low price agencies.

Over time, and in general (i.e. not for any particular contributor) Unsplash, pexels, the various free sections at agencies are all eroding anyone's ability to make a decent living licensing stock. It used to be that free images were of obviously lower quality than paid ones, but that's no longer true. In looking at uses of an image featured in another thread here there were many hundreds and all the credits I saw were for Unsplash and pexels, not iStock (where it originated).

I've been licensing stock images since 2004 and about the only constants have been agency drives to increase their share of the buyer's money and contributors ignoring long-term harms for short-term cash. Often the excuses of the form "it's all going to hades anyway, so might as well make a little money before it does" or "if I don't someone else will and then I'll lose out on both short and long term"

We are too diverse a group with too many divergent points of view (and many contributors who don't do the math often enough to see what's in their interest and what isn't) to balance out the agencies' power and self interest.

And Freepik's history is deeply unsavory. I wouldn't trust them further than I could throw them. And I'm not all that good at throwing :)

Then this version isn't true?

You can't opt out of video subs.  You got to make a decision to just delete your videos one by one.  I deleted like 7,000 videos last May when I got fed up with seeing most video sales going for $2.80 subs.  You should definitely delete your 4k videos and re-upload HD version, or just delete video clips for good and also un-publish videos from Shutterstock.  Customers aren't stupid.  All they have to do is to google your contributor name with "Adobe Stock", "Shutterstock" or "Storyblocks" to find if you offer your clips dirt cheap rather than paying decent price you set on Pond5.

6
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock steals sales. Control purchase
« on: February 14, 2024, 10:37 »
It's a third-party information, so probably I will not be able to provide further details. But it comes from a trusted contributor, experienced, with a pretty old portfolio.

At the end of October, we decided to make a control purchase on the Shutterstock, collaborated with colleagues and bought a package of 25 Standard one-time demands. Purchases were made of works that had never been sold, with the help of a real customer within a spread of 10 days.
Divided it like this: 5 purchases from my accounts, 11 purchases from colleagues accounts, 9 purchases randomly.
Of my five - 1 appeared on the first day, 1 - after a couple of days, and another one after 4 days
The result as of February 1 is the total number of sales for all interested parties - 7

So, 70% of the sales via one-time demands package are lost! What do you think about this?

If any of this is true, you need to take the evidence to the state attorney general of New York. Then get representation and file a class action suit on our behalf, all of us can collect back earnings after an audit.

Where is the stock coalition? They should be all over this and tracking data for a legal filing against SS. If this claim is false, we should be told that it's nothing but a sensational lie. The fact that 19 people gave a claim with no evidence a + tells me how weak education is and the lack of critical thinking. Do you believe everything that an anonymous person on a forum write is truth. Or is it just because you want bad things about SS to be true?

7
How's your video sales on SS compared to pre-video sub January 2020?  Is it like 1/4 of January 2020?

January, 2020 was literally 10x higher than January, 2024.

184 sales in January, 2020 vs 95 last month, so I don't think the subscriptions was the ultimate culprit.

Wow.  Thanks for the info.  That pretty much cancels a possibility of me enabling video sales on Shutterstock.  My video sale went down immediately after the video sub intro by 1/2 and now top producer like you're making 1/10?  Not worth it and probably negatively affect my Pond5 sales.

You don't have any video on SS? Pond5 is owned by SS that's the end of them.

It's the genius type who hate SS, hate AS, hate all other except Pond 5, owned by SS. They remove all of their video and go Pond 5 exclusive to help make SS rich. Then come here every day to tell how terrible video sales are at the rest.

8
Adobe Stock / Re: Illustrative Editorial Requirements Question
« on: February 12, 2024, 07:36 »
Mat, would it be possible to an official answer on this question?

"So, my question is: are you allowed to remove or blur people from a photo and then submit as illustrative editorial?"

Thanks!

Why no answer?

9
If you follow fb groups and discord, the 8 weeks seems to mostly affect newbie accounts.

Slowing them down to actually think before they upload is probably a good thing.

Slows down the spammers as well.

Illustration and photos are currently being inspected in my case in about a week, only pngs need 30 days.

That is a very fair review time.

Plusback to over 90% acceptance rate, which is even more important.

Main change - upsize with stability or midjourney directly, less gigapixel use and upload much smaller versions, often 3500*2000

I have a bunch of AI photos in review que for 3 weeks now.  Maybe mass rejection affected my rating?

We have a rating? Where do I find that?

10
Shutterstock.com / Re: Very low video sales
« on: February 02, 2024, 14:28 »

OK you hater HodagMedia on Shutterstock forum.  You should work on your photo skill rather than wasting your time posting craps you stupid redneck MFer.

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portrait-girl-showing-middle-fingers-on-697911292

Just a reminder of the low class character of this person.

All those nobody stock contributors hate me.  LOL!!  Whatever. 
They got nothing better than ridiculing people.  Useless posters.
They've never started a meaningful thread/conversation.  All they do is to come in and ridicule people.  And then I strike back, they get upset like a little punk.  LMAO!!  Weak.

Just ignore him, he's always starting arguments and posting nonsense. Was banned from SS forums, so he came here to stir up crap.


11
Grusch told legislators that he was told there has been a "multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program" but was denied access to the program.

He told his superiors, essentially "becoming a whistleblower," for which he said he suffered retaliation. Other people have been harmed or injured both by UAP activity and by government efforts to cover up the program, he testified, without giving specifics.

When asked by Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., whether the U.S. has the bodies of the pilots of crashed aircraft from the UAP programs, Grusch said, "Biologics came with some of these recoveries."

When Mace asked whether they were human or nonhuman, Grusch said, "nonhuman, and that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge of the (UAP) program I talked to that are currently still on the program." He later said that he had not seen any bodies personally.

12
I want to share my custom keywords generator.
I've used it for thousands of stock images I've published in the last year with great results.

It's quick and easy to use,
generates a list of keywords and a breakdown for each keyword with amount of results.

it's free, try it here:

https://upstock.guru/keyword_checker

Very nice work, especially the tag breakdown by best results first to show us the most used words.

13
For those who want to speed things up and want proof now. For $9.99 you can download an app called CE5 contact which guides you through meditation and tones to call in UAP.

 https://youtu.be/v03hbaEnSGM?feature=shared

😳

All about the selling of science fiction.

...

The heck, even if only some part of Grusch's claims are true, it is a gamechanger, and the denialist worldview crumbles like a house of cards.

not sure who you're referring to as 'denialists', but  those critiquing here have never said there are no ET just that no conclusiive evidence has been presented yet.

No you and others have repeatedly called it nonsense, make believe, and worse whilst denigrating the evidence and testimony given by serving military and civilian alike.

Which is why when you see this reported and investigated you'll see they always turn to you, Pete and gang for advice and confirmation instead of experts military or otherwise. Your name crops up regularly along with Petes and Annie's and all the other denialists that have contributed regularly here. Thank goodness we have you.
The little girl has soiled her nappy again, maybe you should check with the doctor for that frothing at the mouth and drooling problem. Something here smells like a pile of hot dung.

That's mature and relevant to the thread.

I reply the way you write to everyone else. I expected you would treat us as you want to be treated. Like a liitle screaming, crying baby.

14
I wrote to the forum, not to you. Maybe you can tell me, what do you think of Bob Lazar, Billy Meier, Ed Walters, George Adamski, David Icke, Jonathan Reed, and Steven Greer? How about Roswell, Ray Santilli and the alien autopsy? Or are you only going with Grusch from now on and ignoring the long history of fakes and frauds.

As I said, please work on your logical reasoning skills. What you present here is a classic case of whataboutism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Maybe some, or all, of those people were frauds, maybe there were some nuggets of truth in their claims, I honestly don't know. Some are suspicious.
But whatever they claimed is absolutely irrelevant to the person of Grusch. They don't matter. All it takes is one single confirmed case and the whole denialism crumbles like a house of cards.

Grusch is an investigator tasked with this job by the US government. He did present evidence to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community - Thomas Monheim. Based on that evidence he briefed Congressmen about his findings. Coming out of the briefing, they said "Grusch's claims have merit", "Grusch is legit".

These are facts, for crying out loud.

Another fact is that a lobby in the House fought hard (and won) against the Schumer amendment, which had been passed earlier in the Senate. It is logical to assume that there is some struggle in the circles of power; some are for disclosure, others are against it.

Now, can I say with 100% certainty that what Grusch claims is true? No, I cannot, because I have no means to verify that information myself. And that is OK.

But if you think that Grusch doesn't say the truth, the IGIC told lies to the Congress Committe, then you must deal with one very serious question and that question is:

W*T*F is going on???

Escaping that question is intellectual laziness and mediocrity. If you think that there is something suspicious going behind the curtain, then there you go: that is a conspiracy theory, too.

Yes it is whatabout. Your history the mythology the beliefs the fantasy science fiction is all flawed, lies, fables, fakes and not science. What about that? Talk about escaping the question, you divert and don't answer. What about all the fakes and debunked stories for over 60 years. And your pal Lowls doesn't answer anything, he just turns into Donald Trump and starts spewing personal attacks, trying to bully anyone who disagrees. How childish.

If you want it all to be about Grush and parallel planes, that's fine. But you have to excuse me for pointing out, UFOs and Aliens have attracted a large set of liars and nut cases. Religious doomsday cults that ended in suicide. End of the world, with the aliens coming down to save us.
Whatabout the history and the false claims. That's a fair question to ask.

If I borrowed money from you and didn't pay it back, then borrowed again and didn't pay back, would you just find a way around that and loan me money again? The alien and ufo claims have been biased and unsupported and instead of payback, we just get more unsupported debunked claims and frauds. Why should I buy that? How many times does someone get fooled before they stop and see there's something wrong with the history? I'm not lending my trust to a proven set of lies.

15
Another phony pseudoscience story is deflated. Pop go the aliens.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/they-are-not-aliens-peru-officials-debunk-claims-that-figures-are-extraterrestrials/ar-AA1mTjPM?OCID=ansmsnnews11
"The conclusion is simple: they are dolls assembled with bones of animals from this planet, with modern synthetic glues, therefore they were not assembled during pre-Hispanic times," Estrada said. "They are not extraterrestrials; they are not aliens."

In the light of the recent events, that story and your post are COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT and uninteresting. Red herring.
In other news, yesterday it didn't snow in Morocco.

I thought you would be against lies, deception and coverup. Instead you try to defend the science fiction fantasy, fake news about alien bodies. This is over but another claim or fake will replace it. There are no alien corpses, no photos, no evidence, every. It is completely relevant to the UFO alien cult that will believe any trash fake news and spread it like it's real. Don't you have any integrity or standards in your search for the truth?

I suggest you sharpen your reading-with-understanding skills and work on logical reasoning.

You have built a strawman and now you are burning it. Where did I write that the mummies were real? Did any of the serious people working in the field (Nolan, Elizondo, Grusch, Mellon, Coulthard) even picked up the story? No, they avoided it, perhaps because they knew it was a distraction. Who cares about the dolls when there is Grusch?

"in the light of recent events" = an investigator working for the US government had made some very serious and specific claims about a cover-up and more. On Friday, the Inspector General informed the Congress Committee about his findings based on the evidence provided to him by Grusch. After the briefing, Congressmen said "Grusch is legit", "Grusch's claims have merit".

And that is the real story, not some mummies. The briefing is a FACT. It is a scandal that many mainstream media chose to cover the mummies and remained silent about the implications of the briefing. You pick some facts that fit into your denialist worldview and choose not to see the real story.

You have swallowed the red herring that most likely was thrown to the denialist crowd as a distraction. Bon apptit.

I wrote to the forum, not to you. Maybe you can tell me, what do you think of Bob Lazar, Billy Meier, Ed Walters, George Adamski, David Icke, Jonathan Reed, and Steven Greer? How about Roswell, Ray Santilli and the alien autopsy? Or are you only going with Grusch from now on and ignoring the long history of fakes and frauds.

16
...

The heck, even if only some part of Grusch's claims are true, it is a gamechanger, and the denialist worldview crumbles like a house of cards.

not sure who you're referring to as 'denialists', but  those critiquing here have never said there are no ET just that no conclusiive evidence has been presented yet.

No you and others have repeatedly called it nonsense, make believe, and worse whilst denigrating the evidence and testimony given by serving military and civilian alike.

Which is why when you see this reported and investigated you'll see they always turn to you, Pete and gang for advice and confirmation instead of experts military or otherwise. Your name crops up regularly along with Petes and Annie's and all the other denialists that have contributed regularly here. Thank goodness we have you.
The little girl has soiled her nappy again, maybe you should check with the doctor for that frothing at the mouth and drooling problem. Something here smells like a pile of hot dung.

17
Another phony pseudoscience story is deflated. Pop go the aliens.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/they-are-not-aliens-peru-officials-debunk-claims-that-figures-are-extraterrestrials/ar-AA1mTjPM?OCID=ansmsnnews11
"The conclusion is simple: they are dolls assembled with bones of animals from this planet, with modern synthetic glues, therefore they were not assembled during pre-Hispanic times," Estrada said. "They are not extraterrestrials; they are not aliens."

In the light of the recent events, that story and your post are COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT and uninteresting. Red herring.
In other news, yesterday it didn't snow in Morocco.

I thought you would be against lies, deception and coverup. Instead you try to defend the science fiction fantasy, fake news about alien bodies. This is over but another claim or fake will replace it. There are no alien corpses, no photos, no evidence, every. It is completely relevant to the UFO alien cult that will believe any trash fake news and spread it like it's real. Don't you have any integrity or standards in your search for the truth?

18
Another phony pseudoscience story is deflated. Pop go the aliens.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/they-are-not-aliens-peru-officials-debunk-claims-that-figures-are-extraterrestrials/ar-AA1mTjPM?OCID=ansmsnnews11
"The conclusion is simple: they are dolls assembled with bones of animals from this planet, with modern synthetic glues, therefore they were not assembled during pre-Hispanic times," Estrada said. "They are not extraterrestrials; they are not aliens."

19
General Stock Discussion / Re: best agencies
« on: January 08, 2024, 03:49 »
I have some friends making some big money on a company called Freepix. I submitted to them but failed their test. The take only the best of the best.
The test was easy to pass and after a year I made nothing. Did they pay you to write that Freepix is good? The name says what they are, and that's terrible.

20
Agency lawyers decide what they will take or not, they make their own rules.

21
...
These new medical examinations follow on from previous ones which although doen live were literally laughed at by American news outlets because they were "mexicans" ... just lovely. Nice bit of racism. Well we shall have to see where it goes.

please show references where this occurred

the results were laughed at because they were nonsense, not for any racial bias

Another important congressional investigation. A congressman is calling for a federal investigation of Warner Bros. for its handling of Coyote vs. Acme.

23
No one called anyone a N**i though. It would be more accurate to coin a term for an "SJW" or "Woke" or "Neo-Marxist" Law. Far more likely someone's gonna get called that nowadays.

Anyway, I have nothing against Pete being an SJW or Neo-Marxist with politics of aggrievement for his racial group. Or that he is woke to the systemic policies of repression of the white man by the new world order. I make no judgement as to the validity of his aggrievement. I can't speak to the suffering he has suffered under the heel of whoever (though I can't remember anyone bringing up his race on this forum other than him? that could be a lapse in my memory?). But does it have to be forced down everyones throat? Can't we live our lives without these woke SJW people and their agendas?

I also dont care if someone else believes in chem trails, that covid and climate change are a lie. Whatever, its just that theres an off topic section especially for this stuff.

Self appointed moderator control freak has left the forum.

24
When did following actual 'science' and stating the obvious become offensive? This isn't just about UFOs it is also about, freedom of speech. I have a right to my opinion, without being attacked and called names. I won't be intimidated or silenced by your torrent of incorrect, irrelevant, or idiotic arguments. You don't answer any direct questions, but instead, avoid, deflect and distract.

I have a right to disagree without your abusive, bullying replies.

25
Adobe Stock / Re: Account blocked - another story
« on: October 11, 2023, 07:11 »
I am so sorry. It is terrible that they treat their CUSTOMERS like this. We are not just producers and suppliers, we are customers.
Dnde est Diego? This is terrible and they are slow.

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