MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: Smithore on February 06, 2013, 13:33
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So, after the "Istock affair", who is just the beginning, here is my personal list and thinking about some "bad" agencies:
-Fotolia: lowered many times commission, change many times the contributor ranking system, and is capable of vicious tricks like simulating a glitch in the file editing section to force the extended license at 10$ and many more to come...of course.
_Dreamstime: no more price difference for subscription download of high level files, disappeared during one night...more to come...
- photodune: very low prices, extended license is a joke, and never make the effort to change the painful upload procedure for model releases, they don't care at all for contributors, only "blablabla" on the forum, just to simulate a concerned attitude, but nothing in action, nothing at all.
Depositphoto: forces very low prices extended licenses if you don't ask for opt out by email, almost only subscription sales at the lowest price in the market. Tendencies to be not clear in the explanations and is capable of vicious tricks like his guru model, Fotolia.
123RF:new commissions cut and more...some of yours know better about it.
So, you think that you want, but we must warn every contributors about these sleazy acts.
Beside these agencies, others never stop to purpose new licenses and new products for both the customer and the contributor, some with 50% commission.
Like in the biological life, there's always symbiosis associations and always pests. If we want a nice future for stock photography, we must work in a symbiotic way and find solutions to stop feeding the pests.
Sorry for my low English level.
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Wouldn't it be easier to list the "fair" agencies? ;)
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Wouldn't it be easier to list the "fair" agencies? ;)
Hé hé hé :)
I know only these ones: Pond5, Alamy, Stockfresh, GL Stock, Mostphotos, Shutterstock (maybe not so fair, but sell well for now and has done many improvements last two years).
So it's 50/50, same quantity, we have the choice, until now...
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Wouldn't it be easier to list the "fair" agencies? ;)
Yes, I would like to turn the conversation in that direction as well.
For me, aside from commission rates and traffic, two important characteristics for a distributor to have are: 1) a standard licensing agreement that includes sufficient prohibition of sensitive use, and 2) ingestion that does not strip the copyright information from the metadata.
As of this moment, the only two three distributors that I am aware of that offer both of the above are GLStockImages, Fotolia (by opting out of sensitive use) and istockphoto (Google post-license actions aside). I welcome accurate input from others so that I may add to my personal list.
I could add 3) transparent reporting to that as well, but have no history or means of investigating this outside of istockphoto, which I believe should be more transparent.
Eta: GLStockImages
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Wouldn't it be easier to list the "fair" agencies? ;)
Yes, I would like to turn the conversation in that direction as well.
For me, aside from commission rates and traffic, two important characteristics for a distributor to have are: 1) a standard licensing agreement that includes sufficient prohibition of sensitive use, and 2) ingestion that does not strip the copyright information from the metadata.
As of this moment, the only two distributors that I am aware of that offer both of the above are Fotolia (by opting out of sensitive use) and istockphoto (Google post-license actions aside). I welcome accurate input from others so that I may add to my personal list.
I could add 3) transparent reporting to that as well, but have no history or means of investigating this outside of istockphoto, which I believe could be more transparent.
Did you say Fotolia?
For me the only site that actually “does what it says on the tin” is SS
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As an newly independent contributor, I am confused on which agencies to upload to. I have started uploading to shutterstock and GL this past month. Looking on the right side of the board, fotolia and dreamstime is still top tier but there are negative comments for both these agencies that leads me to hesitate applying to those sites.
Should i apply to fotolia and dreamstime? Would i be foolish not to? What other agencies should i really consider? I have mainly vectors.
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add CutCaster for kicking out contributors ;D
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As an newly independent contributor, I am confused on which agencies to upload to. I have started uploading to shutterstock and GL this past month. Looking on the right side of the board, fotolia and dreamstime is still top tier but there are negative comments for both these agencies that leads me to hesitate applying to those sites.
Should i apply to fotolia and dreamstime? Would i be foolish not to? What other agencies should i really consider? I have mainly vectors.
I don't think it would make sense to ignore the right side of the board.
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add CutCaster for kicking out contributors ;D
As far as I can establish it was only 1 *sshole ;D (just joking Luis)
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As an newly independent contributor, I am confused on which agencies to upload to. I have started uploading to shutterstock and GL this past month. Looking on the right side of the board, fotolia and dreamstime is still top tier but there are negative comments for both these agencies that leads me to hesitate applying to those sites.
Should i apply to fotolia and dreamstime? Would i be foolish not to? What other agencies should i really consider? I have mainly vectors.
You are lucky to get in with GL. I tried and got this message 2 days ago:
"APPLICATION STATUS
Thank you for submitting to GL Stock Images. Unfortunately, we are not accepting new contributors at this time. We will contact you when we resume accepting new contributors. We will keep your account open so that you may resubmit your images at that time. Thanks
Kelly"
or it's just a polite way to say my stuff sucks.... :-[
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I think GL would tell you that you images suck CD instead of the them not accepting anymore contributors ;)
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I think GL would tell you that you images suck CD instead of the them not accepting anymore contributors ;)
True Tom, forgot that no agency will ever let you down softly ;)
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This is a good list. iStock (obviously) and Fotolia, in my opinion, are both greedy, shady agencies that seem to not value their contributors at all. Fotolia really needs to work on their contributor relations (aside from their extremely low commissions). Both these sites have been performing worse and worse for me, so I guess it's catching up with them.
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Add BigStock to the list of sucky agencies.
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Yes, welcome to Bigstock, a low earner who start a wonderful subscription metamorphosis, almost a miracle, thank you Shutterstock, next?
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Rather than a list of "good" and "bad" agencies, we need a list of agency profiles listing the good & the bad for each so we can make up our minds about how we feel about them.