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Messages - Elenathewise
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351
« on: May 03, 2012, 16:36 »
'Only customers who want his exclusive images have to sign up with his site. '
Bingo, you've nailed the USP.
However, as someone who shoots people ( and Lisa, you're included ), this is an attempt to draw buyers and build loyalty at a site you can't sell at. I'm not sure why I should think that's awesome.
Correct, the bias against istock/getty on here is very strong. It is so strong that people are cheering a "team" that is setting up a site if successful is going to take sales and money from the pockets of all the well wishers. And the "team" doing this is confused as to why some people have "negative" opinions of their effort. Hello, Mcfly if you do not like Getty because they take more of you money then you should not like this "team" effort that takes all of your money. The market place is limited and if successful this site will vacuum up your dollars. It makes no sense unless you work for or are related to this Team.
Umm, seriously? This can't be real. A LOT of serious photographers sale their images from their own sites. Like, majority of us. How is Yuri doing the same thing will put us out of business? Then there is another, painfully obvious fact - we all have our portfolios together with Yuri's on all major and not-so-major agencies, side by side. If Yuri's images could put anyone out of business, that would have happened long time ago. And yet many of us are able to carve out pretty decent living, even with all-people portfolios. Yeah, this probably won't affect agencies policies in any significant way, but why not cheer for the guy? He works hard and deserves his success.
352
« on: May 03, 2012, 14:25 »
Wishing you great success! Congratulations
I haven't yet been able to figure out why we'd wish him success (sorry  ). Any gain that the site makes is 'our' loss. Are we hoping he will cause our agents to up their game? I certainly don't want to lose any buyers.
I am not competing with Yuri and I won't lose any buyers to him. He has very distinct and straightforward style that buyers sometimes are looking for - now they'll be able to go to his site and get just that. If they want something different, they'd look elsewhere. I am not getting how is this "our loss"?
353
« on: May 03, 2012, 11:27 »
Hmm, I was going to reply to this saying that Istock doesn't allow "sensitive use", but then decided to go and read their licensing agreement more carefully. Here it the quote from Restrictions:
"Use that depicts model in a sensitive way i.e. mental or physical health issues, substance abuse, criminal behavior, sexual activity or preference without a disclaimer."
Now, little addition of "without a disclaimer" means that you can use images that way if you make a disclaimer. Which is what SS is saying about their "enterprise" license.
They were right, the other agencies, Istock specifically, allows for it and just phrases it in a more sneaky way.
SS' enterprise license says this:
A Sensitive Use is defined as a use of Submitted Content that contains one or more recognizable people in a context that might cause a reasonable person to believe that the subject(s): a) suffers from a physical or mental health condition or infirmity; b) uses, endorses, advocates, or believes in a particular, product, service, cause, and/or opinion; and/or c) is otherwise associated with a position that some might consider controversial or unflattering. Sensitive Uses of Submitted Content shall require an accompanying statement to the effect that the person(s) depicted are models and are used for illustrative purposes only. Enterprise Plus licenses shall still prohibit the use of Submitted Content in connection with the promotion, advertisement and/or packaging of tobacco products, as well as in connection with pornography, escort services, dating services and/or other adult entertainment services and/or products.
So... I guess it is the same thing. I might now consider opting in, unless I am prepared to take down all my model-released files from Istock...
354
« on: May 03, 2012, 10:33 »
Lot's of interest that is for sure. We just had over 1000 visitors in one hour and about 200+ visitors constantly on the site. Small numbers for big stock agencies, but it's still pretty nice.
Very nice site, Yuri - very fast, clean, easy to navigate. Would you share your plans for advertising? Bringing buyers to the site may not be easy - even with excellent and big image collection like yours. You will have a lot of people checking out your site initially but it's a different task to convince them to bring you their money. I do wish you a lot of success with your site - please keep up posted on the progress!
355
« on: May 02, 2012, 18:11 »
It's a special license a buyer purchases to use images in a "sensitive" nature i.e. medical, homelessness stuff like that. My brain is drawing a blank to explain it better.
The SU license gets the contributor up to $70 in royalties. Not sure what the $90 would fall under. So far they're not telling us anything unless it's them testing things out?
Thanks for th explanation. I can understand the meaning behind sensitive use.
But for an illustration, I wouldnt think someone will buy a SU license... Confusing
Well my understanding is that sensitive use is just a part of a new license that SS is offering - it may include other things like better number of copies, etc. So when someone buys a picture of tea leaves they don't care about sensitive use aspect of the license, but may want some other terms that this license contains. Which really sucks for photographers with people in their portfolios - just because I don't want to allow my models to be used in some questionable campaigns, my other images - not containing people - can not be sold with this new license! This still doesn't make any sense to me - why couldn't they allow to opt-out just images with model releases attached to them?
356
« on: May 02, 2012, 14:06 »
Ok now I am really interested if photogrpahers who had 75-90 dollar sales have opted in their portfolio for sensitive use. I didn't since I have to protect my models, but I also have (and am still producing) many images with no people in them. If these images would be at disadvantage because my portfolio is opted out, I'd rather not give them to Shutterstock - I have many other channels to distribute them.
357
« on: May 02, 2012, 12:21 »
I've had quite a few $18 dollar sales in the "single and other downloads" category, but not a $90 dollar one. I wonder if it is indeed the"sensitive use" license. My question to people who had them - is your portfolio "opted in" for the sensitive use?
Edit: Anita posted the reply to my question a minute earlier:)
358
« on: May 01, 2012, 10:32 »
It stinks, of course, but anyone going into this should understand that the rate of growth of the collections is bound to outpace the rate of growth of established individual portfolios as well as the growth in the market for images. That means that, long term, the return to artists will eventually fall - unless, that is, the low return deters people so much that an equilibium between the growth of the market and the growth of the size of the collections is arrived at.
True, but this thread is not about that, it's about the way the agencies are charging more, but paying us less or the same.
The equilibrium idea still holds in this case. If we have diminishing returns because of number of images on the market, and also get diminishing returns from cut commissions - this will actually speed up the arrival of the equilibrium. If noone will care to submit images anymore the agencies will have to face a problem of stagnant libraries and the only way to deal with that is to attract more submitters by ... well, increasing commissions for example. What we're seeing now is just the burst of a microstock bubble and it hurts; but it will get to "mature" state eventually.
359
« on: April 30, 2012, 22:08 »
3.4 million dollars investment? Wow he really knows how to spend money:) My investment in my own site was 250 dollars:)
Somewhere there's a web programmer with 3.35 million dollars in his bank account.
Heeeee....:-)
360
« on: April 30, 2012, 16:20 »
Thank you for the translation. Congrats to Yuri. It's a big undertaking, but he is better positioned than anyone else to do it and succeed.
I wonder what this will mean for his portfolios on the micros. Will he leave them there? Or will he sell exclusively through his own site? Will be interesting to see how this affects the industry as a whole...
Yeah, I too wonder what's the impact is going to be. He has reputation and means to advertise and promote his site, I am sure it will be a viable business. That should make agencies think more carefully when making decisions to screw people over...
361
« on: April 30, 2012, 16:14 »
3.4 million dollars investment? Wow he really knows how to spend money:) My investment in my own site was 250 dollars:)
362
« on: April 24, 2012, 16:53 »
How do you guys manage to keep track of what images are eligible to be bumped back up?
Lisa, by painfully looking at each recently sold one and seeing if the price can be adjusted... it's a great way to procrastinate and avoid doing retouching work on new images:)
363
« on: April 24, 2012, 12:21 »
... As soon as I am able to bump up the price again, the image goes on selling just fine. Lowering the prices doesn't bring more sales... I feel the same about that and my experience is also like yours. I bump them back up, a day later they sell, go figure.
I can even understand that a former good seller might have lost its commercial value and begins to sink, so a demotion may be "in order" but why are files that sold twice in 5 years still at a higher level?
Well, like I said noone knows what kind of system they are using, but it's out of our hands anyway. You can ask them why, and they they'd go - oh right, we should be demoting those too...
364
« on: April 24, 2012, 11:15 »
I've been Emerald for about 2 years now and at some point this rule was enforced that if our images have been set to 2+ credits for the smallest size (which probably every Emerald+ did anyway) but didn't get enough/regular downloads, they will be demoted to 1 credit.
I'm particularly surprised about files that get downloaded fairly regularly but somehow "earned" a 1 credit ranking. I try to monitor them as best as I can to switch them back to 2 asap.
But what I really don't understand is that some of my files that I uploaded 4 or 5 years ago that have only 1 or 2 downloads, still are listed with 2 credits and that can't be right. I mean, I'd contact Fotolia to have it investigated but I'm afraid that it will turn out to be all changed into their favor.
Did anyone else experience something along these lines?
Their "demoting" does seem random to me too! I know what you mean. I don't try to understand their system, they are well known to do whatever they please without proper explanations - but yes looking at some other contribotors' portfolios (like Yuri's:)) you see files that's been around for a few years, had a couple of dls and are still in higher price range. On the other hands, I have files with more than a 100 dls that are demoted to "1". Today this one got sold: http://us.fotolia.com/id/838141 78 dls and demoted to a 1 credit ranking. So whatever system they use, it's either way more complicated than they claim it to be, or totally random. The thing is I don't understand why they are doing it. As soon as I am able to bump up the price again, the image goes on selling just fine. Lowering the prices doesn't bring more sales. Both the agency and the contributor end up with less money for no good reason; Fotolia claim that they have to bring down prices because of competition doesn't hold water since number of sales are not affected by that; maybe they should rethink their advertising strategy instead.
365
« on: March 21, 2012, 13:06 »
@ruxpriencdiam: I sure hope you're not serious. If the process has flaws of course it makes sense to slow it down to fix it. Reviewers are people and sometimes they can make mistakes and respectable agencies like SS have dedicated staff to deal with things like that.
@stockastic: If you sure about quality of your images, why not try contacting them? You might be surprised. There is really nothing to lose. We can all participate in making this business better:)
366
« on: March 21, 2012, 10:22 »
Hi I'm the OP. DT accepted all these images, no problems. Yeah I know that doesn't really prove anything. Well it proves I'm not completely crazy 
Have you contacted SS about these rejections? I feel we need to do that more. They can't fix the problem with reviewers if they don't know about it. A polite and to the point email to them including maybe some fragments of 100% resolution of the images in question can surely do no harm, but might help. If all of us take it to them when rejections don't make any sense maybe it will improve their process in the future.
367
« on: March 09, 2012, 23:45 »
To be honest, I dont see how anybody can have time to maintain quality when uploading to 20-25, agencies. Sure, same pics and all but just the uploading process, editing, etc, takes time.
So where is the time for photography?
You get your husband (wife, children, pets... ) to do it:)
368
« on: March 08, 2012, 16:55 »
Tee-heee.... Google "infers" my demographics based on the sites I visit... According to them, I am a male and my age is 25-34:)
(I am a female and I am 44 years old:))
Too funny:)
369
« on: March 06, 2012, 14:17 »
March has started slightly better for me than previous few months, but then for some reason I always do better on Fotolia in spring than in the fall... must be the content of my portfolio.
370
« on: March 06, 2012, 14:15 »
Congratulations! Hope you'll get many more:) My site ( www.elenaphoto.com) has been around for a year, and it's paying for itself and even bringing in some profit. Of course, the money are not comparable to what we get on "big" agencies, but it's my own sales and my own clientele and it really feels like my own business. I am very grateful to people who buy directly from photographers, it's a bit more work I guess to find what you're looking for, but it's kinda similar to "fair trade"
371
« on: March 06, 2012, 14:05 »
I still using Intuos 3 and loving it... it's all scratched up but it's so "intuo-itive" for me:) I've programmed the buttons on it and almost never use the keyboard... well except for typing:) I can't even imagine now retouching with a mouse. The bad thing is I am so used to the button and scroll functions on the tablet that it's totally automatic for me, I hate to think about upgrading - they moved all the buttons to one side! Re-learning that would be like re-learning to play a piano after someone switched around the keys...
372
« on: February 29, 2012, 12:01 »
500 hundred bucks is the biggest amount I ever spent on a shoot with models... In my case, I recover that within 3-4 months, depending on how well the series sell. But the funny thing is most my bestsellers costed me nothing, just my time:)
373
« on: February 24, 2012, 18:43 »
Nice page! 'Liked' it. I have my photography page on Facebook, too: http://www.facebook.com/ElenaPhotoSame thing, if you "Like" the page you'll see updates on my new images in your newsfeed. I would appreciate the "Likes" - helps to spread the word!:)
374
« on: February 14, 2012, 16:45 »
Hmm. If you're shooting regular stock and want to earn a couple of thousands dollars per month, you'd need about 30-40 thousands images. That's take you a while to shoot and upload. Unless you're a stock genius and can do it with 5,000 images.
I have heard that editorial images sell better on Alamy than regular stock, but I haven't tried that myself yet.
375
« on: February 13, 2012, 14:11 »
What still confuses me is this:
if you opt out, does that mean that buyers can't use ANY TYPE of your images for sensitive use? Even if there are no faces or people at all in them? Then it could mean fewer sales than previously if the whole portfolio is opted out.
If "no faces or people at all" are in the image then how could it possibly be a 'sensitive use'? Inanimate objects or animals can't really be offended in that way (except for that bloke on SS who dresses his dog up in clothes, obviously).
"Sensitive uses" will be a small fraction of the licenses secured by these high volume buyers, but participation gives you full access to all of the sales opportunities that these buyers provide. What this means to me is that if you opting out of "sensitive use", you opting out of ALL sales opportunities that big volume buyers provide. No sensitive use - no big sales, regardless of what your portfolio content is, faces or no faces. Correct me if I am wrong, I'd like to be.
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