Agency Based Discussion > StockFresh
Stockfresh email about new curation standards
bunhill:
Looking at StockFresh for the first time, I like the fact that they accept PayPal. I won't buy from sites which don't accept PayPal. But like most of the microstock sites they seem to have a big problem with keyword spam.
It's getting more and more difficult to find the right content to buy at any of the microstock sites. I've spent most of today looking for a handful of images of 'brunch' in a certain style. Should be easy - in my head I can picture the sort of stuff I am looking for. But far too many contributors just add all food related terms to any image of food. Brussel sprouts, a glass of wine, Christmas party, birthday outing etc. It's very annoying. When narrowing down a search, it would be great to be able to hover over an image and select to exclude all results from that contributor. When you end up looking at thousands of results there needs to be a way to quickly exclude spammy contributors. Gets quite depressing.
pancaketom:
--- Quote from: bunhill on August 03, 2017, 13:59 ---Looking at StockFresh for the first time, I like the fact that they accept PayPal. I won't buy from sites which don't accept PayPal. But like most of the microstock sites they seem to have a big problem with keyword spam.
It's getting more and more difficult to find the right content to buy at any of the microstock sites. I've spent most of today looking for a handful of images of 'brunch' in a certain style. Should be easy - in my head I can picture the sort of stuff I am looking for. But far too many contributors just add all food related terms to any image of food. Brussel sprouts, a glass of wine, Christmas party, birthday outing etc. It's very annoying. When narrowing down a search, it would be great to be able to hover over an image and select to exclude all results from that contributor. When you end up looking at thousands of results there needs to be a way to quickly exclude spammy contributors. Gets quite depressing.
--- End quote ---
Since the sites don't seem to want to do that I see a business opportunity - open an API site and remove the spammy contributors from it. I'm sure for most searches there are plenty of decently keyworded images available. Just search on the top few hundred search terms and then remove the ports of the spammy images that show up in the first few pages. I bet it would clean things up a lot. I am sort of amazed that some sites haven't done this (or at least pushed those ports to the back of the line). They could request a readmission after cleaning up their act.
peter_stockfresh:
Hi Everyone, thanks for the feedback on this. I'd like to address some of the concerns voiced in the comments.
First of all, there will not be less content for customers just because we plan to be stricter with certain types of images, often the very types you have also been complaining about in the MSG forums. Remember those ridiculous, spammy portfolios from one of the leading agencies with tens of thousands of almost identical, useless images? Who needs those? Nobody. I'm sure inflated numbers sound really good at shareholder meetings, but we operate at a very different scale, and what works for the big guys doesn't necessarily work for us.
As for being arrogant by curating content and being more selective, we really don't mean to be. But I'm sure you are all well aware of the fact how saturated the market has become with images, if not from the growing number of topics here about earning mere cents per download. I'm not saying there isn't an element of greediness on certain agencies' part, but the fact of the matter is that billions of photos are taken and shared every single day (some big agencies claim to add over a million files a week) and there's so much competition -- even when it comes to sites offering free content -- that some of the images submitted to these agencies have almost zero value. I understand this thought upsets many people, but it's not like what it used to be ten years ago. Certain types of images are still very valuable of course and I believe customers should and will pay good money for them, but there are some that at this point people don't even want for free.
As a small agency with limited resources, we obviously need to operate very efficiently. On one hand it costs a lot of money to review incoming content and if we know from experience that certain types of images don't sell well, we need to stop those at the gates. This does not automatically mean that the content is bad, some just don't sell well here. This also protects contributors from wasting their time on things that don't work. On the other hand we also need to help top selling artists get their content online as easily and quickly as possible, and we're always coming up with new ideas to make their lives easier. Although we try to be as contributor friendly as possible, it's not possible to make everyone happy. In the end there has to be some level of curation, there's just no other way. It doesn't make sense to let everything online just because someone decided to upload it. Of course volume is important and I understand why people think it's the only thing that matters, but at this scale it's more like a balancing game where you need to take all sorts of issues into consideration.
I don't monitor this forum often, so if you have any questions about anything, feel free to send a message through our contact form and I'll be happy to answer it. Thanks! :)
Mantis:
--- Quote from: peter_stockfresh on August 05, 2017, 09:06 ---Hi Everyone, thanks for on this. I'd like to address some of the concerns voiced in the comments.
First of all, there will not be less content for customers just because we plan to be stricter with certain types of images, often the very types you have also been complaining about in the MSG forums. Remember those ridiculous, spammy portfolios from one of the leading agencies with tens of thousands of almost identical, useless images? Who needs those? Nobody. I'm sure inflated numbers sound really good at shareholder meetings, but we operate at a very different scale, and what works for the big guys doesn't necessarily work for us.
As for being arrogant by curating content and being more selective, we really don't mean to be. But I'm sure you are all well aware of the fact how saturated the market has become with images, if not from the growing number of topics here about earning mere cents per download. I'm not saying there isn't an element of greediness on certain agencies' part, but the fact of the matter is that billions of photos are taken and shared every single day (some big agencies claim to add over a million files a week) and there's so much competition -- even when it comes to sites offering free content -- that some of the images submitted to these agencies have almost zero value. I understand this thought upsets many people, but it's not like what it used to be ten years ago. Certain types of images are still very valuable of course and I believe customers should and will pay good money for them, but there are some that at this point people don't even want for free.
As a small agency with limited resources, we obviously need to operate very efficiently. On one hand it costs a lot of money to review incoming content and if we know from experience that certain types of images don't sell well, we need to stop those at the gates. This does not automatically mean that the content is bad, some just don't sell well here. This also protects contributors from wasting their time on things that don't work. On the other hand we also need to help top selling artists get their content online as easily and quickly as possible, and we're always coming up with new ideas to make their lives easier. Although we try to be as contributor friendly as possible, it's not possible to make everyone happy. In the end there has to be some level of curation, there's just no other way. It doesn't make sense to let everything online just because someone decided to upload it. Of course volume is important and I understand why people think it's the only thing that matters, but at this scale it's more like a balancing game where you need to take all sorts of issues into consideration.
I don't monitor this forum often, so if you have any questions about anything, feel free to send a message through our contact form and I'll be happy to answer it. Thanks! :)
--- End quote ---
Peter,
Thanks for chiming in and being forthright on your position. I no longer contribute to SF because sales were so sparse. In my opinion I don't think contributors would be so opposed to tighter curation if they made money. To me, the gap is tighter standards (higher rejections) with no pathway to better sales. So the recipe comes across as continued low sales but even tighter acceptance. So you are addressing the content side but not the lack of sales side, hence some of the "arrogance" comments. Would be nice to see you chime in on how you intend (or not) to grow sales. You have a fair royalty model and many of us would love to be strong supporters of SF if there was something in it for us other than tighter standards (I'm speaking for me only regarding sales, other mileage may vary).
Best of luck.
JimmyC:
--- Quote from: pancaketom on August 03, 2017, 15:03 ---
--- Quote from: bunhill on August 03, 2017, 13:59 ---Looking at StockFresh for the first time, I like the fact that they accept PayPal. I won't buy from sites which don't accept PayPal. But like most of the microstock sites they seem to have a big problem with keyword spam.
It's getting more and more difficult to find the right content to buy at any of the microstock sites. I've spent most of today looking for a handful of images of 'brunch' in a certain style. Should be easy - in my head I can picture the sort of stuff I am looking for. But far too many contributors just add all food related terms to any image of food. Brussel sprouts, a glass of wine, Christmas party, birthday outing etc. It's very annoying. When narrowing down a search, it would be great to be able to hover over an image and select to exclude all results from that contributor. When you end up looking at thousands of results there needs to be a way to quickly exclude spammy contributors. Gets quite depressing.
--- End quote ---
Since the sites don't seem to want to do that I see a business opportunity - open an API site and remove the spammy contributors from it. I'm sure for most searches there are plenty of decently keyworded images available. Just search on the top few hundred search terms and then remove the ports of the spammy images that show up in the first few pages. I bet it would clean things up a lot. I am sort of amazed that some sites haven't done this (or at least pushed those ports to the back of the line). They could request a readmission after cleaning up their act.
--- End quote ---
Search Brunch at Stockfresh and you could see the frustration, the five Christmas presents, the girl with balloons, the plants, I guess the best is the cartoon bear on a branch, although the vector Hawk is a close second in the nonsense category.
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