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Messages - fieldsphotos

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1
Adobe Stock / Positive adjustment to your Fotolia account
« on: May 09, 2017, 09:19 »
Got this today:

Dear contributor,

We'd like to inform you that we added credits to your account today after discovering a technical issue that made it necessary to make a positive adjustment to your account.  The underlying issue was limited in nature and has been fully resolved. 

We take our commitments to our contributors very seriously. We sincerely apologize, appreciate your partnership, and look forward to seeing new content contributions from you. If you have any questions, please dont hesitate to  contact our Support team
.


Anyone else, or was it just my account?  I have zero idea how much was involved since I don't check my balances that often.

2
PhotoDune / Re: Anyone unworthy of Photodune yet?
« on: February 06, 2017, 20:26 »
Hmm - looks like I actually had $72 over there in my account (I don't log in there much anymore).   I applied to withdraw it all, hopefully that will process soon.   


3
PhotoDune / Re: Anyone unworthy of Photodune yet?
« on: February 06, 2017, 18:58 »
I got fired from PhotoDune today.    No big loss, I hadnt uploaded anything to them in a long time. 

I wonder what the new standards are that I didnt meet.  Oh well, I am not re-applying

4
http://app.engage.gettyimages.com/e/es?s=1591793372&e=388535&elq=cd125ddc08344981b0aaa1a66378b2a6&elqaid=7512&elqat=1&elqTrackId=c081583c3958443ba1ff3bec826dbb26

Got this in my e-mail this morning.   A bit rich coming from the same company that sold our images to Google Drive for pennies to be used as clip art a few years ago.    But whatever.   

5
However, I needed to have a minimum portfolio size for uploading,  and those images needed to be not in the micro world

What was the required minimum, if I may ask?

I am embarrassed to admit that it was only like 25-50 images.   Not a huge amount.     

6
I was contacted by someone at Shutterstock about Offset a while ago when I posted a question about it on here.   I do very well with some of my travel landscape photos on SS, however I wondered if I might have a better market at Offset.    I spoke on the phone with the rep from Shutterstock (can't remember her name, sorry), and she liked some of my images I sent her and the ones in my existing SS portfolio.   However, I needed to have a minimum portfolio size for uploading,  and those images needed to be not in the micro world, which I wasn't ready for at that time.  I could be allowed to use images from my SS port, however they would need to be removed from SS and since some of them were such good performers she wasn't keen on doing that (neither was I). 

She was going to send me some more information, but never did, and I never followed up.   

I ended up deciding that I was too small potatoes to do Offset if they were going to have upload miminums.   I do stock because I can do it on my own time and upload at my own pace (slow as that is) since I have another day job.   So Offset isn't for me at this time.   

I am much more interested in their new Premier thing since that sounds like it will use the existing SS catalog.    I will probably be too small potatoes for that too, alas.   






7
I think it's for the new bottle manufacturer.  They aren't going to be carrying the old Liberty bottles anymore so they are doing a mass migration of the designs over.  This has happened in the past for phone cases, etc.


8
TheArtofBusinessCards.com / Re: Account Suspension?
« on: February 17, 2015, 13:39 »
I got a notice yesterday as well.   I had uploaded a while ago and even made a few $5 sales (which they paid you for immediately which was nice), however their system was the clunkiest I had ever seen.   Then I uploaded more a while later and they rejected them because their design standards had changed in some way that I hadn't been made aware of. 

So, in the end it was too much of a pain to deal with. 

9
I liked the gear centric one.  I am contstantly asked by non photographers (and by other photogs) what gear, etc I am using with the implications that I am so skilled BECAUSE of my gear.  Or if they had the same gear they could make that image too.  My favorite is when they ask me to take a photo of them using their p&s or phone then are amazed at what a difference just good composition makes with their OWN equipment.  LOL

I am admittedly terrible at marketing. That is why I don't do photography as my primary income.  Doesnt matter that I am an excellent landscape photographer, I am terrible at selling myself as a brand.   So, I will always just do photography as a hobby that pays for itself




10
Is there an easy way to get those kind of stats on Shutterstock?   Now I am curious as to what my best seller there makes a year.

Easy. Go to 'Earnings' and from the dropdown menu choose 'earnings summary'. Ignore the current month and view the top of the page under 'Earnings Summary'. You'll see 'By Month' and all the various possible sale types. Under each dl type, your best sellers are ordered in largest dl numbers with a dollar amount earned. Just click through the various dl type and add up the dollar amounts then divide by the number of years you're on SS, to get an annual average of sales for that particular image.

I had no idea when you clicked on those other tabs that info was shown!   Thanks!

So, my best seller on SS has made $415/year (it was uploaded in 2013).   Not too shabby, but yeah, nothing like those old IS numbers folks were bantering around back in 2007 for flamed images.   

11
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock Reports Q3 2014 Results
« on: January 18, 2015, 12:27 »
Quote

On the other hand, I went to Venice once to shoot stock, that's a fairly high commercial value destination and my pictures sank almost instantly, without trace. It was an interesting trip but it's pretty clear it will never recoup its costs.  I've made quite a nice pile of cash from Santorini - but that's only because I was one of the very first microstockers to upload pictures of the famous churches.  I would say that breaking into a high-commercial-value area these days probably requires an absolutely extraordinary interpretation of the subject (which is then probably too good for the micros), if your pictures are just superb microstock HCV work then they are likely to be competing unsuccessfully against established, equally superb images and to be lost in the nether regions of the search before they've made an impact.  Yuri's HCV, high production cost, work now only seems to sell two or three times faster than my LCV, dirt-cheap, work; at one time he was outselling me 20 or 30-fold or more.

I have been surprised at the performance of several of my images of high commercial value, very well covered subjects.   I have a downtown shot of LA from the Hollywood Bowl overlook that there must be thousands of already on SS, yet mine has floated up to the first page to be a best seller for me.   (Of course, I live here, so it only cost me gas and the price of an In and Out burger to shoot).   I also have some Yosemite images (another well covered subject) that have also sold very well and are first page residents.     

I don't consider my takes of these subjects as any different than any other photogs, but I guess it is still possible to break into some of the well covered areas.  I expect there is a lot of luck involved though, so I wouldn't book a trip just to get stock shots or anything.     :)

The sheer numbers that the catalog is increasing by is very daunting though.  Think of how different SS was back in 07 when I joined.   In another 8 years, who knows what it will look like.  We will just all have to keep on our toes and move with the market. 

12
Is there an easy way to get those kind of stats on Shutterstock?   Now I am curious as to what my best seller there makes a year.

13
http://forum.zazzle.com/news/improvements_to_marketplace_search_on_zazzle

Looks like they are trying to clean up the marketplace.   If your item has had sales, it will remain in the marketplace.    For items without sales, if the item also hasn't had any views in the last 6 months, it will be removed from the marketplace search.  It will still reside in your store (they won't be deleted) however any traffic will now have to be driven to it by you.   

Views of your own product do count towards the overall views, so I suppose if you like to design your Christmas stuff in the spring, then you could manually keep them in the marketplace yourself for the Christmas season.   

Also, updating the keywords, or title descriptions will also reset the clock on unsold items. 

Thought I would let you guys know, since I know there are some Zazzlers here who may not follow the Zazzle forums.  This is supposed to be implemented next week. 

I don't do a lot of seasonal stuff, so I have mixed feelings about this.  Maybe my new designs will have less competition, but I do have several pages of unviewed products that will disappear from the marketplace. 

14
Shutterstock.com / Re: approval time
« on: January 02, 2015, 13:55 »
Sure fewer people are buying as well as uploading, but I nabbed almost instant sales on 2 images I uploaded Jan 1st.    That will help tremendously in their placement in searches - maybe they will catch some momentum.   

I don't see a downside to uploading during the holidays, really.   I figure with less uploads flooding in, my images have a chance to be seen in the "new" searches the way the old SS used to work.

15
Now I have got my first sales on Zazzle, about 10 days after I started to upload, but did not earn much (my first sale on FAA was more fun...). I also started to upload to Redbubble about the same time, but no sales there yet. Have had very few views on Zazzle, but two sales, and I have had more than 2000 views on RB but no sales. I wonder what counts as a view? Appearantly not the same on all sites.

Nice- that's pretty quick for first sales on Zazzle.   Yes, the amounts are not as nice as FAA, you have to treat it more like a micro - most of the sales are small, but you do get larger payouts periodically.   Business cards pay the best, since folks often order in bulk.   Although I did sell over 1000 postcards once, which netted me a nice royalty.  I hear the folks that do invitations do really well because people buy matching stuff - so, the invitation, matching envelopes, stamps, thank you cards, etc. will all be bought at once.

16

I wonder, do Zazzle mainly sell in the US (as FAA seem to do), or do they sell a lot in other parts of the world also? I live in Europe and I am not sure there is that much meaning of making postcards from here.

I also have some amount of European buyers, although not as many as objowl.    I would say that if your European images are of tourist destinations or subjects, then I would imagine folks in the US would be buying them as well as Europeans.  I have a Guatemalan themed image that does make most of its sales in the US.

     

17
Zazzle can be slow starting, I think it took me a month or so before getting a first sale.   You stuff has to build up rank in their search.  They also rank you by how active you are (creating products often) etc.   Once you get built up though, it seems to pick up speed.  I am closing in on the Bronze proseller level now with over $1300 in cleared sales.   

I do terrible at FAA (maybe 2 sales?) so maybe you will do even better at Zazzle.  It is hard to say.   

One tip:   If you are putting your images on postcards, etc, take the time to put a little message or something using the Zazzle tools.   I had one St John USVI shot that was literally the exact same shot and location as pages of other Postcards.   I added "St. John, USVI" to mine with the Zazzle text tool, and it shot to the top of the rankings. 

18
again unless you're going to do lots of promotion your zazzle name really doesn't matter since basically no one's going to be searching by your name  - concentrate on description and tags so people can find you
Of course the description and tags are the most important, I just wondered if the name of the shop also was important for the search. Does anyone know?

I think it depends on how you are getting your traffic.   For me, my "store" name could be something entirely random as far as I can tell.   I get most of my traffic from the Zazzle marketplace or affiliates who are referring my individual products.   I think folks who set out to market their store themselves via blogs, etc do get a benefit from having themed and organized stores, though.   

As far as ease of use, Zazzle is a huge pain to keep up with.  They are releasing several new products every week and you have to manually go in and add your images to the new products.  There aren't very good tools to do that since they don't read IPTC, and setting up your own quick templates becomes very difficult with the flood of new products.   HOWEVER, they are my 2nd best earner, just behind Shutterstock, so it can be worth it to mess with them. 

Someone needs to create the equivalent of DeepMeta for them to help all the rest of us out.   I would pay $$ for something like that. 


19
Did you see this: http://www.lik.com/thework/aviator.html ?

I wouldn't hang this anywhere in my home even if he paid me. And people actually give money for this, and good money.

L to the f*cking ol.


I just wonder where that air museum/boneyard is - looks like you can get some nice angles on that F-16 there.    (Most air museums have all the planes too close or with crap in the backgrounds that makes them too hard to shoot nice images at).   

As far as Peter himself goes - he is the photography world's equivalent to Thomas Kincaid.    More power to him in my opinion.   Just goes to show its all about the marketing.   I expect he will eventually have franchise galleries in every nice mall in the US just like Mr. Kincaid did.

20
Just got this in my e-mail.   I haven't been following the latest iStock happenings, so this was news to me. 
      
   
        
Moving iStock Forward - September 2, 2014

Since our launch over a decade ago, many millions of customers have made the choice to use iStock for their projects based on iStocks unique blend of high-quality content, affordable pricing and simplicity. To further benefit customers, we have introduced many innovations over the years. These include introducing premium collections, being the first to offer new content types such as video and music and leading the industry through innovations in search and user experience. These developments created tremendous value for our customers and contributor community and led to iStock being the leading player in the microstock space, which, as you know, was invented by iStock.

As we look forward and plan for the next stage of iStocks growth and market leadership, we are energized by a world that is increasingly visual - more customers need more content, for more projects, distributed in more ways and in more formats and on more platforms. This sets a great foundation for continued iStock growth. It also means we must adapt iStock to service these new customers, to meet the increased demand from existing customers and support the realities of new higher resolution project requirements.

The introduction of the new iStock subscription offerings in April of this year, and the corresponding support from the Getty Images sales team was a very successful step in this direction. New iStock subscriptions offer high-volume customers the ability to expand their iStock usage and to access the highest resolution file in support of their projects. The customer reception has been overwhelmingly positive and has exceeded our expectations. In only a few months, these subscriptions now represent a meaningful percentage of total iStock sales and materially increased spend-per-customer. The results also demonstrate the power of unique and exclusive content; over three quarters of all subscription sales are generated from iStock Signature offerings. The reception of our iStock subscription offerings has validated the power of something that we have long understood - customers value quality!

We are offering just one payment method: Credits

Credit pack size and pricing will be simple and clearly aligned to the number and types of files customers can download.
Credits will be revalued, making it easy for customers to see exactly how much they are paying for an image.
The value of a credit will change: 5 credits today will be equal to 1 credit after we launch. The conversion ratio for existing credit balances ensures customers receive the same or better underlying value with their new credits. Example: balance of 50 credits converts to 10 credits in the new system.
After the conversion, customer usage of the newly valued credits will be reflected in Redeemed Credits totals at 5x the number used by the customer (i.e., their historic value).
Since we will re-calculate the new credit value to the equivalent old credit value for contributor Redeemed Credits, there will be no change in redeemed credits targets or reporting.
Our collection will be divided into two quality tiers;

Signature (premium) and Essentials (standard), consistent with our subscription offerings
We will maintain a consistent 3:1 price premium for Signature to Essentials for single image purchases.
Weve unified price points across photos, vectors and audio
1 new credit=1 Essentials image, vector or audio file
3 new credits=1 Signature image, vector or audio file
6 new credits=1 Essentials video file
18 new credits=1 Signature video file
No More Pricing by File Size

Customers will pay one price per file. They can then choose to download whichever file size best fits their project.
Simplification to two collections, two file types means:

Vetta and Signature+ will move to Signature, our premium collection for single image sales and subscription.
Main will become Essentials, our standard collection for both single image sales and subscription.
Detail by File Type:

Photos
Vetta and Signature+ move to Signature and will be included in the Signature Subscription offering.
The nomination processes will stay in place.
Accepted nominations and former Signature+ and Vetta images will retain Signature+ status and retain search prominence.
Signature+ (including x-Vetta) subscription downloads will pay at the Signature+ subscription rate.
Vetta royalty rates will no longer apply; all files will pay at standard royalty rates.
Former Vetta imagery will continue to mirror in the Vetta collection on Getty Images.
Existing and new Signature+ will be mirrored in the E+ collection on Getty images.

Videos
Vetta will be moved into the Signature collection.
Vetta royalty rates will no longer apply; all files will pay at standard royalty rates.
Former Vetta video clips will continue to mirror in the Vetta Video collection on Getty Images.
Exclusive video will continue to be mirrored on Getty Images in the renamed; Creatas Video collection on Getty Images (previously iStock Footage).

Vectors
Vetta will be moved into the Signature collection.
Vetta royalty rates will no longer apply, all files will pay at standard royalty rates.
All existing and new exclusive vectors, including former Vetta, will continue to be mirrored on Getty images in the renamed; Digital Vision Vectors collection (previously iStock Vectors).

Audio
Exclusive audio tracks will remain in the Signature collection.
Exclusive sound effects and basic complexity loops will move to the Essentials Collection to remain competitively priced in the market.
All non-exclusive audio files will remain in the Essentials collection.
In total, these changes dramatically improve the simplicity of the iStock site, search and messaging. At the same time, they significantly improve customer value and transparency while maintaining iStocks unique value of exclusive content across all file types. When combined with your great content, cross-merchandising from Getty Images and support from Getty Images global sales team, we are confident these changes will continue to set iStock apart from its competition for the years to come.

Weve prepared a discussion thread in the iStock forums, but we would also like you to take a look at a statement from Brad Ralph(braddy - Senior Director, Content Development and co-founder of iStock).

    
    
    Contact Info | Privacy Policy
 
    Copyright 2014 iStockphoto LP. All rights reserved. iStockphoto, iStock, iStockaudio, iStockvideo, iStockalypse, Vetta and CopySpace are trademarks of iStockphoto LP. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.
 

21
Get accepted to either agency first, you're putting the horse before the cart. As a rule of thumb higher production value shoots that are not easily copied should go into macro agencies.

If you don't get in keep trying, clients are always willing to pay higher prices for quality work.

Well, of course I need to get accepted first.   But which agency to put the time and effort towards getting accepted at for landscape images - THAT is my question.   I wouldn't want to spend a bunch of time and effort to get accepted to say, Stocksy for example, only to find out once I upload that they hardly ever sell landscape images - that their buyers are mostly looking for lifestyle or something.   

Just hoping someone else had some experience selling landscapes at these sites so I wouldn't have to jump in blind.   But maybe my situation is uncommon enough that I will have to do that in the end anyways.

22
Not really sure where to put this question.   I have been thinking about attempting to get accepted at one of the newer places like Offset or Stocksy.   For anyone who is a contributer there, do landscapes do well?   

Browsing through the collection, Stocksy's landscapes are few and are the complete opposite of what I shoot.   So I am guessing I won't be a good fit there.    However, Offset's are a bit closer to my style, especially when I search on keywords for places I have shot (Death Valley, Yosemite, etc).

I guess the reason I am looking into this now, is I just got back from a trip with a new batch of Yosemite images and I am wondering about starting to put my landscapes elsewhere other than just the micros.   They sell well in microstock, but I wonder if I could do better with them at a different place.   (I have a few things at Alamy, but I don't seem to get any traction there - their collection is too giant I think).   

Of course this assumes I could even get accepted at either of these places.  ;) I applied at Stocksy when they first fired up and was rejected, but that was before anyone really knew anything about them.   

Here are a few of the latest Yosemite batch I am working on just as an example of my landscapes (the ones with people aren't for stock, obviously):  https://www.flickr.com/photos/fieldsphotos/sets/72157644428448711/show/   

Opinions welcome.  And if anyone knows some niche landscape places that do well, let me know.

23
Print on Demand Forum / Re: Are you doing Zazzle and Istock?
« on: February 24, 2014, 23:22 »
Sigh.    I REALLY hope this doesn't result in a mass takedown like Zazzle is so fond of doing.    Products get deleted and lose their search position while you fight the battle that the images from iStock are YOURS, not iStock's, etc. 


24
Don't know what would work with the Manfrotto System, but I second the vote for the "L-bracket" from Really Right Stuff.  I have RRS L-brackets on all my camera bodies.

I think several brackets for the Arca-style mounts offer that L-bracket type capability (RRS uses an arca-style mount).   Downside is you have to change out your entire quick release system.   Upside is it is rock solid compared to a standard plate system.


25
iStockPhoto.com / Re: iStockphoto Relaunch Sept. 17, 2013
« on: September 16, 2013, 21:36 »
I like it as the photo part was way to limiting and not inclusive of all that iStock offers, the Getty Images brand actually worries me because buyers will always equate Getty with $$$. Nothing earth shattering here but a good move

I have to wonder if adding the Getty name below gets istock one step closer to being absorbed as just another Getty Collection like all the other photo houses Getty has bought in the past.  Their Hemera collection (previously known as StockXpert) being a prime example.

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