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Author Topic: "3 Weeks Of Exclusive Prestige" Email  (Read 36610 times)

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Microbius

« Reply #50 on: June 20, 2008, 04:52 »
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I for one do not appreciate the generalizations being made which imply that all exclusives are lazy conniving keyword spammers who plan to purposely monopolize the inspectors' time. It's ludicrous.

Said who?   ???
"We've given Inspectors a mandate to aggressively reject non-Exclusive files with poor metadata.Exclusives will not receive any rejections for keywords we're working hard to stop the influx of bad keywords right at the source. "
Could be read as implying the above?


« Reply #51 on: June 20, 2008, 07:21 »
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Maybe could be better worded, but that's just something that has been asked for hundreds of time: more keyword control. Looking at Recent Downloads you often find awfully extra-spammed files. Now, spammig would be a motive for rejection, but exclusives will have the extra-service of being re-keyworded in house. Maybe it's not enough to convnce those in the fence, I don't know, but it's good news.

« Reply #52 on: June 20, 2008, 07:36 »
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I dont know if this is good news or not, may be good for spamming, but this give me the feeling that istock is trying to drive non-exclusive out of their site. They are very hard on rejections, photos that sell real well in other sites they reject for stupid reasons, now this is another excuse to reject your non-exclusive images even more. Sales have dropped very much for me at this site and I dont see them coming back at the level I was before. As a matter of fact after being my second best selling site has gone to be the worst.

bittersweet

« Reply #53 on: June 20, 2008, 07:53 »
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I for one do not appreciate the generalizations being made which imply that all exclusives are lazy conniving keyword spammers who plan to purposely monopolize the inspectors' time. It's ludicrous.

Said who?   ???

Are you asking who said these implications are ludicrous? Or are you asking who made these generalizations? I assume it is the former and not the latter since you yourself said:

Quote
So Let me see if I understand this right. Exclusives can fill in all the crap they can get up to  ... That's a lott of extra manpower for all the lazy exclusives.

« Reply #54 on: June 20, 2008, 08:13 »
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Are you asking who said these implications are ludicrous? Or are you asking who made these generalizations? I assume it is the former and not the latter since you yourself said:

Quote
So Let me see if I understand this right. Exclusives can fill in all the crap they can get up to  ... That's a lott of extra manpower for all the lazy exclusives.

No I was asking who made these generalizations, because I sure as hell didn't.
"All the lazy exclusives" leaves enough room for exclusives who are not lazy. Where did I say that all the exclusives where lazy?
And in the context of the subject it was not necessary to mention that there are also lazy non-exclusives. ( note; not all of them)

« Reply #55 on: June 21, 2008, 00:46 »
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I dont know if this is good news or not, may be good for spamming, but this give me the feeling that istock is trying to drive non-exclusive out of their site. They are very hard on rejections, photos that sell real well in other sites they reject for stupid reasons, now this is another excuse to reject your non-exclusive images even more. Sales have dropped very much for me at this site and I dont see them coming back at the level I was before. As a matter of fact after being my second best selling site has gone to be the worst.

I would edit this: it's not only feeling, i's a fact.

Almost the same here. I'm with IS from the beginning and long time IS was my No1 earner, now it's No7, even BS earns more...

They should write very clear about rejections: "We don't like nonexclusives so all your images have been rejected" instead of stupid reasons..

« Reply #56 on: June 21, 2008, 01:24 »
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For some reason I didn't get the 3rd announcement.

Maybe they realised that I've no intention of going exclusive with them and tried to save on a teeny bit of bandwidth   ;D

Could someone post it here please ... or at least the text. I'd like to see what I'm not going to accept.   ;)

P.S I've calculated that, for me, it would require a 6-7 times increase in earnings to make exclusivity even remotely interesting. Of course, it's obviously an individual thing, but I've simply added up all the income I got from all the other agencies I sell through over a certain period of time and offset that against what I've earned at IS over the same period. As far as I'm concerned it's the bottom line that counts. Forget about all the win a free trip, get your images approved faster, contribute to Getty crap.

jsnover

« Reply #57 on: June 21, 2008, 02:29 »
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« Reply #58 on: June 21, 2008, 02:31 »
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Thanks   :)

Exclusives will not receive any rejections for keywords.  If your upload has any incorrect tags and terms, the team will remove them and approve your files.

That's a benefit? As an exclusive you can keyword spam to your heart's content and the poor underpaid inspectors will kindly remove all the rubbish for you.

What's next? No need to remove the dust spots, the inspectors will do it? Don't worry about noise, we'll work on it? Hey! Why not just send us your RAW files straight out of the camera - we'll do all the post processing.

I'm probably a bit old fashioned here, but I believe in getting things right yourself - even the keywords. It's a good way to improve your work.


« Last Edit: June 21, 2008, 02:45 by Bateleur »

« Reply #59 on: June 21, 2008, 03:27 »
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Could it be that they are a bit strict about keywords  last few days , cause I got few strange rejections , like rejecting rosemary plant for keyword "spice" etc.

« Reply #60 on: June 21, 2008, 05:12 »
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So with inspectors spending more time messing about with exclusives keywords, it will mean that non-exclusive files now take even longer to review....

Seriously, what a waste of time and resources - if contributors can't be bothered to take the time and effort required to keyword their images correctly, then the images don't deserve to be on the site in the first place. Why on earth would you reward contributors for doing something incorrectly?


« Reply #61 on: June 21, 2008, 05:51 »
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There is nothing wrong with extra advantages for exclusives.
But this looks like they do it the other way around, bullying the non exclusives!
I first thought that this new service would require extra manpower. But come to think of this; reviewers have to spent time checking keywords anyway, so why not deleting one or two irrelevant keywords if there is no blatant spamming involved? The sooner the image appears online the sooner the image brings in money for both parties. I wonder why all stocksites are not doing this already. Rejecting the image means more work for the contributor and more work for the next reviewer as well. So actually I think this is a wise business move.
BUT... denying this service to non exclusives and even announcing to aggressively reject more non exclusive images is very unprofessional in my opinion. Punish the real spammers, give them warnings, no matter if they are exclusive or not.
Istock makes me feel like a dope dealer who is doing business at the backdoor of a pharmaceutical factory.
They don't make me feel like a worthy contributor anymore. How should I be motivated to become exclusive this way?
I made the top 50 twice on SS last week, SS is my nr 1 earner again.
StockXpert is doing great, several credit sales every day, receiving 50% commission.
Had an XXL sale the other day--$7,50 for one download.
My last few uploads which are doing great everywhere, are doing miserable on Istock.
Is all this due the non-exclusive search ranking? Can Istock reassure more steady sales if I become Exclusive?
I can find enough exclusives with less sales than I do, so why should my sales increase so spectacularly?
I don't need business cards because I don't do commission work.
I don't need higher upload limits because I don't work so fast.
I don't need lotteries ( again very unprofessional, you're dealing with professionals here, not with Cola drinking-teenagers watching Mtv !)

Now give me a good reason to go exclusive Istock!

« Reply #62 on: June 21, 2008, 07:46 »
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Now give me a good reason to go exclusive Istock!


It gives me more opportunity with the other agencies   ;D

« Reply #63 on: June 21, 2008, 08:33 »
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They have a unique faculty to indispose people toward themselves and mischief contributors between istockers and others. It's a spirit, not only business. Kind of religious sect.

jsnover

« Reply #64 on: June 21, 2008, 11:05 »
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Maybe could be better worded, but that's just something that has been asked for hundreds of time: more keyword control. Looking at Recent Downloads you often find awfully extra-spammed files. Now, spammig would be a motive for rejection, but exclusives will have the extra-service of being re-keyworded in house. Maybe it's not enough to convnce those in the fence, I don't know, but it's good news.

Poorly worded? That's being exceedingly generous. There's a long thread about what a truly dreadful idea this is on the IS forums, so I don't think there's much point in summarizing that here.

I'm just hoping they're willing to eat a large helping of humble pie and fix this mess by removing this idea, doing something that actually deals effectively with serial spammers, and having something meaningful (commission percentage anyone?) as the third item in their incentive program.

« Reply #65 on: June 21, 2008, 17:39 »
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It seems the longer and harder iStock works to make independent content on their site rare, the larger the advantages of looking elsewhere for images will be. I for one have at least double the images elsewhere than at istock, and I imagine that many have much larger imbalances. Instead of trumpeting the exclusive content, they will have to try to hide how many great images they don't have.

I did get one Keyword rejection in my last batch, but since they rejected it for artifacts and light or miscolored pixels or something else like that, I won't even bother looking at what keywords they didn't like. probably something they keyword mapped to something rediculous and I didn't catch.

Rather than an added bonus for exclusivity, this latest "offer" is more of an added stick for independents.

They do get points for trying to fix ambiguous keywords and spamming, but they are doing a rather poor and annoying job of it as far as I'm concerned.

« Reply #66 on: June 22, 2008, 03:39 »
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jsnover,

just red your post on IS forum. Good questions. Interesting to see how no one, I mean exclusives, has nothing to answer

« Reply #67 on: June 22, 2008, 04:42 »
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A thought ...

Does anyone know, or is it Written anywhere ... will the exclusives be told what keywords have been kindly removed from their images?

I know they'll be able to check by comparing what they've submitted with what's accepted, but that's kind of unwieldy and not many people will have the time to do that.

What if a relevant keyword is removed and they don't know anything about it?

Sounds like a disadvantage to me.

bittersweet

« Reply #68 on: June 22, 2008, 08:32 »
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jsnover,

just red your post on IS forum. Good questions. Interesting to see how no one, I mean exclusives, has nothing to answer

Jo Ann has made several very thoughtful remarks in that thread. However, the only question that I see is the one where she is asking "why all this independent sniping?" (or something to that effect) to which I must question whether she is reading the same thread I am. There are a total of two individuals (in 11 pages of discussion) who have made even remotely snarky comments against independents. The overwhelming majority of exclusives seem to have their grievances directed where it rightly should be, toward istockphoto.

Interesting to see how you expect exclusives to answer on their behalf.

bittersweet

« Reply #69 on: June 22, 2008, 08:43 »
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Does anyone know, or is it Written anywhere ... will the exclusives be told what keywords have been kindly removed from their images?

There has been absolutely NO official statement made on this subject. There is a ton of wild speculation and the ranting responses to go along with it.

The announcement said that bad keywords would be REMOVED. There was NOTHING stating that good keywords would be added. Yet there are plenty of people ticked off because now "lazy exclusives" can just add the "minimum 5" and let the inspectors do the rest of the work. Then there are others who are ticked off and ranting because they don't want any keywords added to their files. THEY HAVE NEVER SAID THAT KEYWORDS ARE GOING TO BE ADDED.

I'm with everyone else in thinking this whole announcement is absurd, but I don't understand why people get all up in arms based on some random person speculating about their worst case scenario.

« Reply #70 on: June 22, 2008, 09:05 »
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The announcement said that bad keywords would be REMOVED. There was NOTHING stating that good keywords would be added. Yet there are plenty of people ticked off because now "lazy exclusives" can just add the "minimum 5" and let the inspectors do the rest of the work. Then there are others who are ticked off and ranting because they don't want any keywords added to their files. THEY HAVE NEVER SAID THAT KEYWORDS ARE GOING TO BE ADDED.

You're right! But by "lazy" I mean people who copy/paste keywords from similar files without bothering to delete the irrelevant ones! Sorry for the confusion.

bittersweet

« Reply #71 on: June 22, 2008, 10:23 »
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Hi Gregor,
While we are clarifying, let me say that my comments in reference to negative generalizations being made were not referring to a single comment, nor a single person's comments. It is pretty obvious that there is plenty of animosity towards exclusives, and I'm not sure why that is. We have absolutely zero to do with what policies are put into place.

I personally respect everyone's right to make their own choice as to whether or not exclusivity is right for them. I just wish there was a little more reciprocity in regards to others respecting my right to make that choice for myself. I don't feel the need to "convince" anyone that they should become exclusive, and I don't like being characterized as stupid, foolish, crazy, whatever because I have made that choice. Why do you care and why so much energy being put into such negativity when my choice does not concern you in the least? (And by "you", again, I'm being very general in my reference. I do not mean you personally.)

jsnover

« Reply #72 on: June 22, 2008, 10:32 »
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It is pretty obvious that there is plenty of animosity towards exclusives, and I'm not sure why that is.
I'm sorry if I should know you from IS, but I don't, so I don't know how long you've been around there. The animosity has grown from a long history of very unpleasant comments in the forums, by some exclusives, that were scathing about the work and the role of independents at IS.

Many, many exclusives there are wonderful folks with a great attitude, but there is an undercurrent of anti-independent sentiment that surfaces periodically - as it often does in any two-tier system of this sort. When IS seems to make policy decisions that drive a bigger wedge - not just more money or faster inspections, but which images get into the collection and where they get placed in search results - the flames tend to flare up again. Exclusives saying they have a right to this and independents that they're being dissed and or forced out.

bittersweet

« Reply #73 on: June 22, 2008, 10:38 »
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So your comment was partially based on past experiences, and not entirely on the contents of that thread. I understand. When I read that thread (yes, all 11 pages of it) I see more anti-exclusive comments coming from independents than the other way around. That's why I was confused. :)

I know what you mean about the divisive nature of these types of policies (I think I mentioned that somewhere in this thread). Still, I didn't really see too many exclusives saying that they agreed with this latest issue. I think it is productive to focus on the issue at hand, rather than bring any unnecessary baggage to the table. I guess it's human nature though.

Cheers.

« Reply #74 on: June 22, 2008, 13:45 »
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"When I read that thread (yes, all 11 pages of it) I see more anti-exclusive comments coming from independents than the other way around. "

... And you will see this pattern in any forum, no matter what other people can say. It's plain obvious. And useless, because, there's no point in an animosity exclusives/non exclusives.
« Last Edit: June 22, 2008, 15:39 by loop »


 

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