Pixsy, are they any good?

Lufbrarunner

Lufbrarunner

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Name
Steve
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Last month I uploaded a few of my images to Pixsy, mainly to see how it worked. One of my images produced 30 matches across 7 countries. I am not bothered about getting money for this, I am more concerned about the image being used without my permission and more concerned about the type of site using the image, as I would not want to be associated with them.
Has anyone on here had dealings with Pixsy and were they successful?
 
I've lodged 2 claims / cases and in both cases they refused the claim. One was for my images in newspaper sites that went worldwide so no idea why they chucked it back.

I think some people here have had success but for me I wouldn't bother.

It maybe as I'm not a paid up member but that could just be me being suspicious.
 
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I've had 7-8 claims that paid out for varying amounts - certainly over a grand in total for people using shots of mine that I honestly didn't even know had been used. That being said, this was quite a while ago, I've lodged about 5 claims in the past 3 years (not reduced because i've not been producing, but because I've only a free account, and it's only looking at old stuff) and to be honest, 3 from 5 they've given up at the first hurdle, and the other two they took around 6 months before deciding that their cut wasn't going to be sufficient to pay for their time in chasing) - that coupled with pretty much every hit I get now seems to be hosted somewhere that they can't chase means it's not really something I spend any time on actively anymore.

still - it was a free account, and i've got some brass out of it in the past, so its all a bonus.

If I was actively producing work then I'd quite possibly entertain giving it a go on a paid membership, but at the moment, what I'd really like to know is how on earth I can delete the photo's in my current database and add a more hand-picked selection to search for - when I signed up i fed it links to things like flickr and in all honesty, most of the stuff it has been searching for has very low or no likelyhood of being used by anyone for commercial purposes, and therefore not going to generate a hit.
 
I have a free account and it picks up my images from Flickr

The only hits I have are websites using the Flickr feed to show images and for images that are posted in other Flickr groups.

They seem pretty useless to me.
 
When my son was running his website he'd be posting 3 or 4 of my images per day.
Lots of rip-offs worldwide.
We had limited success with Pixsy, decided it wasn't worth it in the end.

This was 3-4 years ago. He's sold that business now so I have no idea if this continues.
 
I've been signed up quite awhile, and have had a couple payouts from people using my images without permission, and payouts for £150 in total think. I have an image that has been very popular, but used mostly it seems, by people on sites like Pinterest and Facebook, which it seems Pixsy can't do anything about. And then there are a lot of hits from country's Pixsy don't think they can be successful in. I got an email from them last week saying that they are increasing the number of countries they can make claims in, so maybe that will improve.

It costs nothing to sign up if you think your images are being used without your permission. You can pay more for extra's, and for some it may be worth it.

I've pretty much stopped posting images online, and if I was too upset about people using my images, I would delete the 500px account they all take images from, or link to.
 
When they started up it was definetly worth signing up to ,it does at times require input from yourself though , I have had several fairly large payouts a couple into four figures so worth sticking it out .
, Now the current situation is the image thieves have learned how to get round things and use hot link sites to muddy the waters ,one guy in China was using around 50 of my images to advertise his canon lens sales but thought this will be a big payout but he was just linking potential buyers back to my flickrstream … .. but if you do see a bad infringement go for it just look through commercial usage sites really .. my two biggest payouts were a household name travel company and a very large American catering company both four figure payouts .. funny thing is neither shots were particularly good
To sum up I think the idea that you can just steal someone’s work and use it for your own gain has long gone .. bar one image that had the watermark removed i believe that copyright info on any photo posted online is the only way to stop it happening
 
Thanks for the input.

I am not really bothered about making any money out of this, it is the seedy nature of the sites involved that bothers me.
I guess I should follow through with Pixsy and hopefully get the images taken down.
 
Out of only about 20 images uploaded, I have a few that are regularly identified by Pixsy as being used elsewhere, mainly north and south America, but in every case they are either linked to my Flickr or to a flickr ripoff site that is redirecting. Nothing to be done, allegedly.
 
I used to get loads of hits, but pixsy claimed they were "outside" their jurisdiction.
The last one, UK based, large organisation, pixsy recons it would be worth a "decent 4 figure sum"
After a lot of back and forth, Form filling, proof it was mine, etc, the company effectively told pixsy to F-off.
That was the end of that.
I no longer belong to pixsy.
A waste of time IMO.
 
A quick response from Pixsy says it is not 'commercially viable' to proceed.
As I told them, it is not about the money, it is the nature of the site. Whilst the image they used is not 'porn' but the sites it is on are mainly pornographic and not something I would like to be associated with.
 
You get quite a bit of info about where they were used.
It picks up for example using them yourself in a forum but other instances are innocent enough and not making money.
The only one I pursued was a well known insurance company using one in material they spammed out and I got $500.
Though I aren't happy about two others used in a misleading way by activist groups
Nowadays it is east enough to find and pay $10 for a photo from stock agency rather than just steal one that will do and hope nobody notices.
 
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