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Messages - JohnTravolski
26
« on: November 25, 2020, 18:16 »
I was recently contacted by a company who wants to use one of my animations as part of a documentary. We've agreed on a price but they also want something (a document I assume) which acts as a "proof of license" for them to be able to use it commercially. Since I haven't sold directly to somebody like this before this is a first for me, and I don't exactly know how to go about it.
I don't really know what the contents of the license should look like. Should it simply say that I'm giving their party the ability to use the clip commercially for project X and that's it? Just include that single statement in an PDF with my name signed? I just don't know what it should look like. Has anybody else had to do this themselves? Can you give an example of what this may look like?
27
« on: October 03, 2020, 01:10 »
https://pocketsense.com/royalties-schedule-e-5790575.html
"You would use Schedule C, not Schedule E, to report royalties if youre a self-employed writer, songwriter or artist. The key phrase here is self-employed. You created something with the intention that it would earn you a livelihood. It's an ongoing endeavor, not a one-shot effort. Schedule E is appropriate for reporting passive income."
https://www.thetaxadviser.com/issues/2013/dec/kelley-dec2013.html
I'm a regular W2 worker doing a completely unrelated job at a large company, which is responsible for 95% of my income. I do stock for fun and only sell it to try and earn a little extra money, which is why I find it hard to consider myself "self-employed" and is why I was giving consideration to schedule E. I'm just wondering if there are others in a similar situation and I'm wanting to know what they did.
28
« on: September 29, 2020, 21:11 »
Or do any of you report this as royalty income on a schedule E? I'm so confused since this isn't my primary source of income.
29
« on: September 27, 2020, 11:45 »
Hi! I use native always. Normally render in 8K. Sometimes it takes 3 to 4 days to render 15-20sec.
I tried upscale but image seems a little fuzzy specially when projected.
I don't know if this works for you but last year i made this workaround:
I had a 2d/3d project with 20K size for an Arena/stadium show. I split screen in 5 4k sides (kind of inverted cube frontal perspective) and render. Afterwards i stitch it one by one in premiere and render final. quality was 4:4:4 and it was faster.
What 3d applications do you use, and what are your system's specs? I'm using C4D (both standard renderer and redshift) but my system getting old (i7 5960x and two GTX 970s).
30
« on: September 27, 2020, 10:34 »
I recently learned that Envato's 1099s report income as including some of the "author fees" that they charge, and the correct way to get around that is to deduct those "author fees" as expenses on a schedule C (I think).
Does anybody know if there are other agencies that do something similar? Or is there anything else I need to watch out for? What's everything that you deduct on your schedule C?
I only started selling stock late last year (I only made $140 from Shutterstock and Adobe in 2019 so I didn't bother with a schedule C for that tax year), but now that I'm making more and I'm on more agencies I don't know what to expect for my 2020 taxes. I know it's still way early but I want to be proactive and not have any unpleasant surprises last minute.
31
« on: September 27, 2020, 06:51 »
videohive.net u can set u r own prices, i am selling more animations then shutterstock,adobestock or pond5
Do you keep your prices relatively similar to Shutterstock and Adobe's pricing? Or do you sell them for a lot lower? It seems like most stock footage on Videohive is being sold for a lot less.
Dang you were right about videohive. I've been on there less than a week and already made 6 sales with only around 70 videos. Way better than any stock agency, at least for 3d renders.
I am happy for u  ...(as an ex) finished one 2 days ago and today bang 83 $, nice.
What prices do you usually target on Videohive (1080p and/or 4K)?
32
« on: September 25, 2020, 12:39 »
videohive.net u can set u r own prices, i am selling more animations then shutterstock,adobestock or pond5
Do you keep your prices relatively similar to Shutterstock and Adobe's pricing? Or do you sell them for a lot lower? It seems like most stock footage on Videohive is being sold for a lot less.
Dang you were right about videohive. I've been on there less than a week and already made 6 sales with only around 70 videos. Way better than any stock agency, at least for 3d renders.
33
« on: September 24, 2020, 16:13 »
Time is precisely the reason. I render lots of them frequently and my computer is basically never turned off at this point. If a 4K frame takes 20 minutes to render and a 1080p frame takes 5 minutes to render, even if it takes a few minutes to upscale each frame, that's still a huge amount of time saved.
34
« on: September 24, 2020, 14:33 »
Does anybody here create 3D animations? If so, do you render at the native resolution or do you upscale your frames? For me, it's much faster to render at 1080p and use the photo model of waifu2x to upscale them all (including separate passes like depth and specular), but unfortunately the quality still isn't quite as good as I'd like (it's not as good as natively rendering in 4k).
Does anybody else upscale their animation frames? If so, what software do you use?
35
« on: July 25, 2020, 15:40 »
Does anybody receive money using Payoneer? Are there any fees associated with using them? It looks like I can get paid directly to my bank account, but it seems to be set up using Payoneer and I was wondering if there were any fees associated with using them.
36
« on: June 22, 2020, 00:52 »
I don't sell many videos, but I've sold one so far this June as a "cart sale" and the amount I received for it was $35.80, which is higher than any cart sale I've ever received in the past (they've ranged from $20 to $30. Of course, I haven't sold many videos to begin with (maybe around thirty total), so I don't really have much to compare it to, but given the circumstances I was surprised to see that it was higher (I should be in 20% tier for video, whereas in the past it was always 30%). Maybe it was some kind of extended license or something?
Anybody else had a similar experience? Or has the amount you all have received been going down as expected?
37
« on: June 22, 2020, 00:44 »
Really, I'd like to know. I get the impression that there isn't any fee with Adobe Stock, but I'm not sure. Can anybody speak from experience?
38
« on: June 15, 2020, 14:44 »
I've been using Paypal to accept payments so far but I'm considering using additional methods to accept payments (primarily to avoid the double income reporting problem). I noticed that both Pond5 and Adobe Stock accept Skrill, which I have never used and know nothing about. I noticed that on Pond5, if I choose Skrill, I get a message:
"Due to fees charged by Skrill, 4% of your payment will be deducted at each payout. Consider a Payoneer option to avoid this fee."
Which I obviously don't want. However, Adobe Stock does not present me with such a warning. I'm not sure if Skrill always charges this fee or if there's a difference between the way Adobe Stock and Pond5 have Skrill set up.
Does this fee apply to Adobe Stock as well? Does anybody use Skrill to accept payments? If so, why?
39
« on: June 10, 2020, 14:02 »
Submit enough materials it'll make money for you. YOu must have the stamina to last the distance.
They only let you submit up to 75 clips each month, so it takes eons to get an entire portfolio up there. Do you submit clips there and make decent income?
40
« on: June 08, 2020, 21:58 »
I haven't heard much about Dissolve ( https://dissolve.com/). Does anybody submit videos there? How are earnings relative to other sites? Any reasons to avoid them or bad experiences?
41
« on: June 07, 2020, 18:24 »
I can't believe how bad of a speaker he is.
42
« on: June 01, 2020, 13:38 »
Thank you. Does anybody else have any advice? Please share if you do.
43
« on: May 30, 2020, 16:37 »
Right now, I only use Paypal to accept money from the stock footage agencies. I currently do not make enough money from stock to have to worry about reaching the 200 PayPal transactions + $20,000 to have to worry about double income reporting as of now. However, I anticipate this will change in the future as I continue to produce animations in my spare time. I don't want to have to learn the hard way, so I would like to avoid the double income reporting problem as best I can.
I noticed that some of the agencies, such as Adobe Stock, will also pay via Skrill. I have never used Skrill before and I don't know anything about it. I suspect that it's probably a good idea to diversify how I receive my payments so that way PayPal never sends anything to the IRS. I don't know if Skrill does the same thing or not after a certain number of transactions or earnings. And I think you can have some agencies deposit directly to a bank account if I recall correctly, but I'm not sure.
For those of you who earn much more money than I do, what do you do? How do you get around the double income reporting problem? Please give me as much detail as you can, I'd love to hear from you all. Thanks.
44
« on: May 30, 2020, 16:24 »
I started Dreamstime back in October 2019. My portfolio consistss of around 380 images and 380 videos. In total, to date, I have made $18.
Of course, I have Python scripts that manage the uploads to all the stock footage agencies at once, including creating the agency-specific keyword csv files, so it takes me almost no effort to continue uploading to Dreamstime at this point. So, personally, I have no real reason to stop despite how bad the earnings are. But if you don't automate it, I would say no.
45
« on: April 21, 2020, 02:27 »
videohive.net u can set u r own prices, i am selling more animations then shutterstock,adobestock or pond5
Do you keep your prices relatively similar to Shutterstock and Adobe's pricing? Or do you sell them for a lot lower? It seems like most stock footage on Videohive is being sold for a lot less.
46
« on: April 19, 2020, 19:05 »
I've been making abstract 3D animations (purely as a hobby) for about five years now, and last summer (July 2019) I became interested in submitting them to the various stock sites. Currently, I submit them to Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, Pond5, iStock, and Dreamstime. With around 320 videos I've probably earned about $1000 over these past nine months, with most of my sales on Shutterstock. I've found these types of videos tend to sell somewhat often on Shutterstock but extraordinarily rarely on the other sites. I'm not sure why.
I was wondering if there were other non-exclusive sites that some of you may have had luck with when it comes to submitting video. I know that not everyone here does 3D, but I'm just curious to hear your perspectives.
47
« on: April 17, 2020, 16:17 »
Yeah, I've had two there since starting 8 months ago.
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