0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
The high number of images in the queue tells me that Dreamstime is the place where people want to be.
This is so funny to me coming from the traditional stock business where three to four week review period is considered very short. But I'm certain that your issues will be addressed.
On top of that, their review process is one of the worst in the business. They seem to randomly reject images or give some sort of bogus reason for rejection ("not stockworthy", "we have too many of these", etc).
Big question: Why is review time important?
Ideally, we should have our seasonal images online months in advance, when designers are looking for them.
I wanted to take a look at your images but I can't find them on Dreamstime. Do you have a different user name than you are using here? Thanks!
Quote from: boughn on April 09, 2007, 13:28I wanted to take a look at your images but I can't find them on Dreamstime. Do you have a different user name than you are using here? Thanks!Why? Are you looking to mark my images for rejection?
Quote from: StockManiac on April 09, 2007, 14:49Quote from: boughn on April 09, 2007, 13:28I wanted to take a look at your images but I can't find them on Dreamstime. Do you have a different user name than you are using here? Thanks!Why? Are you looking to mark my images for rejection?You must be kidding. You aren't serious are you? Then you would have something to complain about. I'm a visual person. Just like some people like to connect a face with a name, I like to connect images to a name. But if your work isn't on Dreamstime, it may not be fair for you to complain. But no problem. Bye
StockManiac: The Director of Content and Business Development asks to look at your portfolio. Your response: Question her motives and insult her. Way to go. Smooth move. Real smooth.She writes a blog that many users access on a daily basis (who wouldn't?). You may have received free publicity. You may have been able to bend her ear so that she could influence the DT powers that be to address your concerns. She may have been a valuable resource to this forum. Furthermore, she's very new to this site, and this was only her second post here - I'm sure she feels very welcome now.
Stockmaniac, take a deep breath and look through the DT site. One thing I like to do is read between the lines and see what's going on.1) Have you seen the thread announcing the new reviewer?2) Have you seen the thread THANKING the reviewer that resigned in the off topic section?3) Have you seen the busiest photographer list lately? Most of the folks that are on that list have a lot of images online and are high volume producers. Have you seen that Iofoto is on that list? Clicked on his portfolio? That's over 3,300 images uploaded in the past month. There are others that are moving there portfolio there as well and the rate of images going up is unprecedented since the time I've been on the site.Review time is a dynamic thing. I've had iStock take 2 weeks in the past (when I contributed there) and I've had DT review in a matter of a day or two. If it makes you feel any better, I've had Canstock review in a matter of minutes. It's all an elastic process.I hate to say this but if your images are getting stale over the course of 2 weeks, then your submitting the wrong types of images to sell as stock.
Quote from: sharply_done on April 09, 2007, 16:16StockManiac: The Director of Content and Business Development asks to look at your portfolio. Your response: Question her motives and insult her. Way to go. Smooth move. Real smooth.She writes a blog that many users access on a daily basis (who wouldn't?). You may have received free publicity. You may have been able to bend her ear so that she could influence the DT powers that be to address your concerns. She may have been a valuable resource to this forum. Furthermore, she's very new to this site, and this was only her second post here - I'm sure she feels very welcome now.Yes, she might have been able to do all of those illustrious things, but instead here is how she responded to this thread (which was about the large inspection queue at DT):- She first stated that reviewers have to sleep and take the Easter holidays off. A useless statement as I said before, especially since the queue has been this large for a long time before Easter weekend.- She compares microstock to macrostock.- She asked to look at my portfolio. Once again, something that has nothing to do with this thread.If you don't understand her tactics, it is to take your eyes off of the original issue and try to focus it elsewhere. From your comments, it seems like it is working.If she really wanted to do something about the issue, she would have asked for more comments and stated that she would bring it up with management.
Some Facts:Larger portfolio owners get their reviews done a lot quicker. I have been keeping a log of them.Larger portfolio owners have stacks of non selling images Larger portfolio owners get preference over the types of images they submit, you submit them and get stupid rejection reasons only to find someone else get virtually the same type of image accepted after your rejectionDT NEEDS TO EMPLOY A LOT MORE REVIEWERS ... not just ONE. Shutterstock review times for me average 12 hours - DT 3 weeks!DT needs to learn about professionalism in business, and consistencyDT needs to answer their emails and they would not get criticised in open forumsDT needs to employ someone with better English speaking skills to monitor the forum instead of their current stack of rude idiots
Have you seen the busiest photographer list lately? Most of the folks that are on that list have a lot of images online and are high volume producers. Have you seen that Iofoto is on that list? Clicked on his portfolio? That's over 3,300 images uploaded in the past month.
http://www.dreamstime.com/Iofoto_info[/url]) has 3,385 images. According to their portfolio, they joined on 02/04/2007 (which was 64 days ago). DT has a daily upload limit of 40 images. If they uploaded the maximum of 40 a day since they joined AND 100% OF THEM WERE ACCEPTED, that would total 2,560 images.So how did they get 3,385 images online?
The reason you suspect that the larger contributors get faster reviews is because they upload via FTP, then go back and enter keywords, categories, etc. at a later date. When a file gets uploaded, it gets assigned an image number. Reviews are then sorted by image number. Say you upload 500 images tonight, then come back a month later to keyword them. Your images will be at the top of the list a month from now - and will get reviewed within hours of hitting the pile. That's how the system works - it's been addressed in their forums.
Remember that this assumes that he had 100% of his images accepted (which I highly doubt could ever happen on DT). If he had 80% of is images accepted, then that would only bring the total number of images allowed online to 2,336.
So, are some submitters getting better treatment than others?
According to this thread, the upload limit was set to 40 back in 09/2006:http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_1832
the issue is about DTs ongoing inefficiency, ongoing lack of consistency, and ongoing failure to do what they promised: rid the site of non-selling images.As StockManiac pointed out, despite the "one-off" success of IoFoto, it is hard to believe that one person could possibly have had that many images approved when most of us have stuff in the line for weeks and weeks, and are lucky to get 5 looked at a week.
And since I last posted (less than 20 minutes ago), Iofoto's portfolio has gone from 3,385 images to 3,409 images. An increase of another 24 images. This is getting quite interesting...
Quote from: litifeta on April 09, 2007, 17:12Some Facts:Larger portfolio owners get their reviews done a lot quicker. I have been keeping a log of them.Larger portfolio owners have stacks of non selling images Larger portfolio owners get preference over the types of images they submit, you submit them and get stupid rejection reasons only to find someone else get virtually the same type of image accepted after your rejectionDT NEEDS TO EMPLOY A LOT MORE REVIEWERS ... not just ONE. Shutterstock review times for me average 12 hours - DT 3 weeks!DT needs to learn about professionalism in business, and consistencyDT needs to answer their emails and they would not get criticised in open forumsDT needs to employ someone with better English speaking skills to monitor the forum instead of their current stack of rude idiotsI think you need to get your facts straight. I too had the very same concerns you have and I addressed them directly to Serban a few months ago (he did answer the email). I can assure you from Serban's response that the agency is very transparent with relation to what they do.The reason you suspect that the larger contributors get faster reviews is because they upload via FTP, then go back and enter keywords, categories, etc. at a later date. When a file gets uploaded, it gets assigned an image number. Reviews are then sorted by image number. Say you upload 500 images tonight, then come back a month later to keyword them. Your images will be at the top of the list a month from now - and will get reviewed within hours of hitting the pile. That's how the system works - it's been addressed in their forums.
Quote from: StockManiac on April 09, 2007, 20:27And since I last posted (less than 20 minutes ago), Iofoto's portfolio has gone from 3,385 images to 3,409 images. An increase of another 24 images. This is getting quite interesting...Iofoto now has 3,511 images online (and it seems to grow by the hour). That is an increase of 102 images since my last post, which was less than 12 hours ago.So this confirms what litifeta was saying (that some contributors are getting special treatment).This also explains partially why the queue has grown so large: Certain members are allowed to bypass the normal rules (of 40 uploads a day). My bet is that these "special" members are also bypassing the normal inspection queue and getting their images reviewed as a priority. If the reviewers then have time after reviewing their images, they then work on our photos (which are at the bottom of the stack).So it seems that DT implemented the new 40 image/day upload limit (for the rest of us) so that they could make way for some of their "special" members. Gives me a real warm & cozy feeling all around.eendicott:Thanks for pointing out Iofoto's portfolio. It has been a real eye-opener into how DT treats the rest of us.
eendicott:Don't you care that Serban (aka Achilles) lied to you?
What's your agenda?
-and take it easy on the personal attacks.
I am surprised by the behavior exhibited by a few members in this and another thread.
Have you seen his average monthly uploads? That equates to 28.5 images per day.
If you have 25000 contributors and they all have $50 (average of 0 and 100) then that is 1,250,000. Interest a 5%pa is about $50,000. Even if everyone has $99, that is only $100k so it is not millions per year.
Quote from: CJPhoto on April 11, 2007, 01:38If you have 25000 contributors and they all have $50 (average of 0 and 100) then that is 1,250,000. Interest a 5%pa is about $50,000. Even if everyone has $99, that is only $100k so it is not millions per year.I am afraid your estimation doesn't take into account size of the portfolio, shelf-life, seasonal trends and so on, so I have to tell you they are not accurate. We don't even have 25,000 contributors, but only half of that.However, if they would be, do you see a problem somewhere?
Quote from: Achilles on April 11, 2007, 03:48Quote from: CJPhoto on April 11, 2007, 01:38If you have 25000 contributors and they all have $50 (average of 0 and 100) then that is 1,250,000. Interest a 5%pa is about $50,000. Even if everyone has $99, that is only $100k so it is not millions per year....If a person cant get to $100 to get a payout, I think it is only fair you use the money you earn on interest to market the site better so they do get to payout!I agree.And Achilles, thanks for taking the time to explain.
Quote from: CJPhoto on April 11, 2007, 01:38If you have 25000 contributors and they all have $50 (average of 0 and 100) then that is 1,250,000. Interest a 5%pa is about $50,000. Even if everyone has $99, that is only $100k so it is not millions per year....If a person cant get to $100 to get a payout, I think it is only fair you use the money you earn on interest to market the site better so they do get to payout!