I used Chrome instead of Safari today and had no issues with the new uploader. I suppose I could alert SS support about the Safari issues, however often in the past when I have reported bugs the support staff were extremely polite but nothing ever got actioned.

Yes, you said that right. It's like, "Thank You, but we're just pretending to care or listen" 

Your results could be very helpful to others who use Safari. As I mentioned before, someone I know says her phone doesn't work now. I'm pretty sure she has an iPhone. Next would be, iPhone with something other than Safari, might work. Thanks for the idea.

Quote from: Stock4Me on February 23, 2025, 09:43

Only 1289 people in the world ahead of you. Very small number of people making a living at this while sales and income are dropping.

The estimated annual revenues from the merger between Getty and Shutterstock will be 2 billion dollars.

Given the earnings of us, contributors, we can estimate that Adobe Stock also has 1 billion in revenues.

Total 3 billion from the 3 main competitors in this market.

And from 3 billion only 1000/1500 contributors manage to make a full-time salary?

This is incredible in my eyes.

But I wonder: Do the agencies take a slice of the profit too big or is the cake divided into too small slices? 

Aside from "where do you live" and all that. And how much is enough to live on.

I think the answer to your two part question is both. As an example of the agencies taking too much of a slice for themselves. How would someplace like 123RF or Deposit be able to stay in business, if they paid us a fair share. They are both companies that are staying alive, only because they can still make some sort of profit, from artists who supply images and video for a minuscule earnings reward. Eventually they will fail. I'm surprised they are still in business.

Is the cake divided into too small of a slice because of too many contributors? Maybe, but as you pointed out, only the top, the factories and maybe some like Cobalt, who make a serious effort to produce new work, and also study what sells and what's in demand, are making enough to possibly make a living wage from Microstock.

Using the more recent number and I still say it's like a cork floating on the waves, the rank/position, goes up and down. What we should be looking at is not the crests and troughs, but the average position. Looking at things daily for a weekly rank is just too many points and too variable. The best view, in my opinion,is at most Monthly, once a month.

That number will reflect the income and download, peaks and valleys with the average, in a more sensible form. Looking at daily income from Microstock is just watching too close. Also since there are the obvious trends, Saturday stinks, Sunday isn't very special, Friday people are usually working a short day... weekly average, makes for a smoother viewpoint. Unfortunately the "Position" from Adobe is unreliable in any sense, since it's only downloads, not income.

The fact that no one knows how it works and the claim that it's 7 days, including the last 7 days, which is impossible, because it goes back to zero on Sunday night, makes the who idea of watching position, daily, or weekly, even more absurd.

Oh yeah, back to the question. Sorry. Yes I think you are right on both points. The agencies don't pay us a fair percentage. Adobe comes the closest, at 33%. The rest that are 15% or the one that includes the silly dime Singles and the reset are a terrible insult. But then, it's a take it or leave it marketplace for many people, as there's no other way to scuffle for nickles and dimes, from making Stock Products.

The losers, bottom feeder agencies, don't have enough sales volume to make sense for anyone who's actually trying to make a living from Microstock. The only favorable consideration is, the artist already has all the images, with the data, so it's really not much additional effort to add images to the parasite agencies. On an individual level, that might work and be helpful, but for the entire industry, every time, someone adds images to the parasites that don't pay well and are giving us an insulting low percentage, that undercuts the agencies that do give us a reliable return and volume.

So, while we may not be competing directly with our own images, the effect of supporting the parasites is driving the value of the entire market down. And that's where the low paying agencies beat us all into the ground with low pay and low earnings, because too many people are so desperate that they will take fractional cents from places like Freepik or Envato or Miricanvas and so many others.

Whether it's 2,000 accounts, or some other debatable number, the point is, there's not enough business, not enough return and not enough money, for someone to make a living wage from Microstock, except for a very small number of people or businesses. That's in the World! Pretty elite business that says, only 1% of the people who are trying to make a living at it, are a success.

I will admit, people who try and are serious are more than 1%, it's just that if there are 200,000 people who have something online, the return on that is dismal. Personally, from experience and the past, I'd say it's very possible that 5% of the people who work at Microstock are making a true business profit.

For Cobalt as an example, being 2,000 or 3,000 is pretty good and a compliment to her hard work, smart work, paying attention and doing what's right. If I'm usually around 25,000 sometimes higher, sometimes lower, and I represent part time, hobby. That shows something about how few people are serious or making money from this. To be clear, not weeks or months, and I only started when Adobe bought FT, my Lifetime right now is 26,200th.

I'm not very good, I don't work hard, I barely have 1,000 images (1,046), I don't do video. 26,200 of all the people on Adobe. What's the message about how successful others are? And Adobe is my best agency right now, but lifetime I've made more on SS or Alamy, since I started in 2008.

I love blue cheese and it photographs really beautifully. The only thing wrong with your photo, Pete, is the background. The two-tone is too distracting. But a full black background would have been too flat. It's good to have some texture in your backgrounds too sometimes.

Getting the right background is 50% of what makes a good photo. As you know I used to go to salvage places and get a lot of things there. Like those old wooden large trays that I painted and distressed. Or get some sample vinyl floor tiles. I still use the dark slate ones.

Here is a page I left out of the book because it was getting too large. The background of my black forest trifle in the champagne glass are those dark slate vinyl tiles. Used just 4 - 2 behind and 2 on the base.


Oh, and there are my polka dot cups and saucers !! 

Not my photo, just used for an example. However... Good advice on backgrounds and worth remembering. I also have flooring and counter samples for backgrounds. The further advice on side lighting for food is also always something to remember.

Yum, Yum, one of my delicious and attractive food photos.



 

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 21, 2025, 13:12

Like this?  https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/administrator-zeldin-announces-billions-dollars-worth-gold-bars-have-been-located

�Roughly twenty billion of your tax dollars were parked at an outside financial institution by the Biden EPA. This scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history and it was purposefully designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight,�

I can see that that would be of great concern to Americans and needs to be investigated.
But I saw nothing there to suggest that the money had been at any time earmarked for Ukraine.

Just a note. I never said anything about the Ukraine and I have never written anything about the Ukraine on this forum.

The government spending and waste isn't limited to Biden, or recent times, just that some of the worst of it and some of the most underhanded, illegal actions, were committed under the Biden administration. There's some concern that he didn't know what was going on, and people under him, were pulling the strings, but in defense, agencies and departments can misuse funds, without the President knowing.



Yes, that's what's going on, these concerns and claims are being investigated. More fraud and illegal activity is being found every day. Stopping the waste is a good project. Just like securing the borders while reducing spending on non-citizens who don't pay taxes and only drain the system. We the people who pay taxes and have, deserve to have that money used for Our Country and our people, first.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 21, 2025, 11:39

Quote from: Big Money on February 21, 2025, 07:43

wow! Thank you Annie! Amazing! Thanks

Tom

Everyone who knows anything, knows you never serve food or take food photos, on a BLUE PLATE!  For everyone else, who doesn't understand that, it's a running joke that's been going on for over ten years. And we also know, that the best food photos, are made on polka dot plates!

hahahahaha - omg, I almost forgot about that!

I better explain so that Tom doesn't throw out his plates. Years ago, yes over 10 yrs as Pete said, we used to have a food competition on the old SS forum. We would pick a topic, for example, 'raw food' and anyone who wanted to participate would go away and shoot raw food that week, and the most innovative photo was the winner, and the winner would pick the next week's topic.  That thread went for a long time. A few fights but not too many, considering it was a competition. A lot of people joined in along the way.

There was a guy called Barry who would shoot all his food on these awful plastic blue plates, which Pete said turned him off his food - but I think that's all Barry had. lol.  As for polka dots - I have an old dinner setting of different colour polka dot plates. I love quirkiness. I used to shoot red food on red polka dot plates, green food on green polka dot, etc.  I still do sometimes.   

I don't know if they were awful old blue plates, but eggs for breakfast on a nasty blue plate? At least you guys have some taste in colors. I have generic, kind of white, restaurant and cafeteria plates, so I won't get rejected for the pattern being trademarked. Boring! And I can't defend baked cod dinner, isolated on black. But that's the color of the table top at the hotel.

While you wrote the how to book, I could write the how NOT to, from experience and using my own images. I think the positives and how to do things right, is a better approach.

This is my kind of blue... 

Actually one striking reason the stock has fallen is pretty simple. The Merger, makes it a dead corporation. No future, no gains, no potential.

The Merger terms: Shutterstock investors will receive $28.85 per share in cash for each share they own. However, Shutterstock shareholders can elect to receive GETY stock, or a combination of cash and stock as an alternative.

I could understand if someone paid the fees for buying the stock and the cost was under $28,85 a share. Small gains, but no point, because the stock is going to be deactivated. Maybe people are dumping their SSTK shares, because they don't want Getty stock? And I didn't find the cash and stock offer.

If the value of the Getty stock plus the cash, is $26.11 which is what SSTK is listed at right now, that all makes perfect sense.

Should I buy all the SSTK I can afford at $26 and then take the $28.85 a share and pay the short term capitol gains tax? A little help on this: Short-term capital gains tax is a tax on profits from the sale of an asset held for one year or less. Short-term capital gains are taxed according to your ordinary income tax bracket: 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35% or 37%.

So I buy SSTK for $26.11, 1,000 shares @ $26.11 for $26,110 plus the brokerage fees. If there's a merger, I get $28,850 for a profit of $2,740 then I pay 25% income tax, and I made $2000 profit for risking my $26,110 on the bet that the merger will go through, as planned.

That's why the stock is at $26.11 right now. Potential investment profit and loss, nothing else. Someone with $27,000 to risk, might not think that $2,000 is enough profit?

wow! Thank you Annie! Amazing! Thanks

Tom

Everyone who knows anything, knows you never serve food or take food photos, on a BLUE PLATE!  For everyone else, who doesn't understand that, it's a running joke that's been going on for over ten years. And we also know, that the best food photos, are made on polka dot plates!

Yep - there was a database error.  I got it fixed yesterday morning.
I've also managed to stop some of the spam, which should help speed a little bit (hopefully)

To add insult to injury, there is a total lack of guidance from them about what the merger with iStock will do.  Will they merge their portfolios?  iStock has different selection criteria.  Will the SS files that don't meet their standards be deleted?   All these factors make uploading to SS a waste of effort.

What merger? There hasn't been one, so no one knows, not Getty and not SS.

I played with the new system today. It felt a bit clunky but that's probably because I'm not used to it. I did an upload and was able access the legacy keyword tool so that was good. Don't really understand the need for change but I guess the IT department has to be seen to be doing something.

Seems that way at SSTK, lets change things that are working fine, just to make a change. I'm getting used to the new, it's cumbersome and navigating is a little odd, but with the pop out menus on the left, it's starting to make better sense.

The whole, leaving for the keywording tool, actually works better for me, because I leave it open, instead of the way it used to be, jumping in and back out.

Heavens above. And this has all got to do with food photography, how?   

A big thanks to the wonderful person who has just bought my book. Please let me know what you think of the different format. Is it easier to absorb all the information?

Good luck with the book, I second the compliments and the history of your photo and design advice.

I bet they don't get reset to base salary every January.

This will likely end up the most upvoted post of the year, if not all time! 

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 17, 2025, 13:30

People are worshiping the stat Oracle, instead of the money and the images. Are we in business for money or for stats?

I think that to understand WHAT sells, WHERE sells, and HOW sells you need only one thing: numbers. Data analysis.

50% of what I earned is due to my images' quality and 50% from data analysis. Every type of data is important for something.

I think I sell much more than you, I have almost 20 years of experience in this business.

If you do it as a hobby and I do it for work, it's probably because you haven't taken care of the analysis of agency sales, your competitors' sales and the sales of your images. In addition to not improving the quality of your images. 

What sells and where, and analysis of that, is the answer. 

My point is about all that statistics, RPD, RPI, Position, Rank, where am I in the search, which don't do anything, we can't control and are only something to look at, after the fact.

Of course, good research, better images, knowing what sells and having more of that, is the right way to do this as a business. I hope you understand the difference? Stats don't go into the bank, they don't pay for more gear, they are just a distraction from making products and actually earning more.

Let me put it this way. If you watch an egg, rolling off a table, and falling to the floor, does that change what happens when it hits the ground? That's what all the stat watching does. Nothing to stop or change anything, it's just watching as things fall and break.

Watching what images sell and where and for how much, makes for interesting research into, what to make more of and where to sell it. But that's about content, markets, specifics. It's useful for predicting the future and building more sales and income, for the future.

Does that make more sense of what I'm trying to say?

Yes, it's a hobby for me. I try to make more and earn more, but it's not my living. If I was going to find some gig business, or tell someone else how to make some side money, Microstock would not be on my list. Maybe in 2010 it would have. But with the conditions, the market, the pay/commission, the competition from AI, theives and the image factories in third world countries? Nope.

I wish the best for everyone here, success and better earnings, but watching a ship sink or a building burn down, won't change what's happening, in fact. Stats will just point out, how sad it is to still work, upload and hope that I can make some spare change from Stock Photos. What happened to residual income? Building a larger portfolio, so I'd make more money over a period of time? How about that stat?  (it's the egg rolling off the edge of the table and V = gt, gravity makes the egg accelerate and smash into tiny bits, and a puddle, on the floor)

RPD income per license, RPI Income per image, total sales per agency, vs lower earnings, lower sales, less commissions = The Microstock Egg, falling, while we watch, and make notes, all kinds of stats, which aren't going to change anything in the end.

Yes, make better, smarter, more images, more things the buyers want. I agree with the people who look for needs and things that aren't covered well enough. I agree that niche images, are actually going to bring in some fair return for the effort, some of the time. Research and knowledge are the answer, to the future, and moving forward. Looking backwards is a waste of time.