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Author Topic: 100% disambiguated :)  (Read 4629 times)

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« on: November 19, 2007, 08:37 »
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FINALLY!!!!!!  ... after how many months??? .. just wanted to celebrate a little.

Finally I have disambiguated ALL my istock files... wow, what a job.  Now that all my images have a rotten DL/month ratio they can continue sitting at the bottom of the searches :)

Istock sure has done some things right in regards to getting customers - my earnings/image online is the best there by far but wow... making it easy for the submitter is not exactly a high priority.


« Reply #1 on: November 19, 2007, 09:13 »
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congrats.  ;D

« Reply #2 on: November 19, 2007, 09:14 »
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Still not done with mine, what a pain.

« Reply #3 on: November 19, 2007, 09:35 »
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let us know if it helps with dls... I never bothered with mine:)
I mean, their upload process painful as it is and royalties of 20% from an average 5 dollar sales per image - and they expect photographers to do all this extra work with keywords which in many cases doesn't even make sense. If they want to improve searchablity of their db I am perfectly fine with them spending part of those 80% they make of my sales to do it.

« Reply #4 on: November 19, 2007, 10:02 »
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I dis'ed all my 30-50 best sellers, then I dis'ed only the images that were sold. I've done about 200-300 so far.
The month all this Dis started, now over a year ago, my sales went WAY down and haven't recovered yet. IS went from number one to number two, now trailing SS by about 10%.

It's such a major pain I doubt  that I'll dis any more unless they show up on my recent sales list.

Although IS has the best sales analysis capability, the uploading still sucks. And don't get me started with the category requirement BS.

By the way, has anyone noticed that the searches at IS are very strange? My theory is that unless you're an exclusive the "Best Match" is a liability sort for us. It seems to favor all kinds of weird off-topic  results. For example one of my best keywords yields a number 1 position on the first page when sorted by Downloads, but page 7 on best match. Many other of the best matches are WAY OFF, almost spam-like.

« Reply #5 on: November 19, 2007, 11:51 »
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[sarcasm on]

Well, it's about time.

[sarcasm off]

Congrats.  I'm sure that it is a huge weight off of your shoulder.  Hopefully, they won't introduce any new "upgrades" any time soon.

« Reply #6 on: November 19, 2007, 12:35 »
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Aw ... gee ... I'm still ploughing through mine.

When I do it, I order them in Downloads/month and its the really slow sellers at the bottom of the list that I've still got to do, so I don't feel so much pressure to get them finished.

How are you doing with Alamy's version of disambiguation?   ;)


« Reply #7 on: November 19, 2007, 14:11 »
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Congrats leaf!

I know how it feels, i have a rather small portfolio at istock (470 images) and it took me a looooooooooooooong time to fins the courage to disambiguate (or whatever you spell it) them all.

Grats again

Math

« Reply #8 on: November 19, 2007, 15:40 »
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Leaf,

I admire your patience!  How many images you had?  When CV started, I had about 100-120, and it was a painful process.  I also reported many keywords with lacking meanings, but I think none was ever included in CV.  :(

Regards,
Adelaide

« Reply #9 on: November 19, 2007, 17:29 »
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Disambiguated? Do you mean tweaking your keywords? I tried the improving upon my keywords, and it hasn't made any difference for me. Maybe you'll have better luck, though. I'm currently experimenting with only using five to ten keywords for my latest batch. My other images all use around twenty to thirty keywords.

« Reply #10 on: November 19, 2007, 19:23 »
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Disambiguated? Do you mean tweaking your keywords?
No, he means adapting the keywords on his older images to the IS keywording dictionary: their so-called CV (Common Vocabulary). This was implemented about a year ago, and those with images online that predate it have to go through their images one at a time to change old keywords to the accepted new ones.

Like you, I'm lucky enough to have joined IS after they implemented it. Or maybe I had one or two images online that I had to change ... I don't remember.

« Reply #11 on: November 20, 2007, 08:00 »
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their so-called CV (Common Vocabulary).

Actually it's "controlled". It's a good idea in principle. If not... you would never be sure about why fruit flies like a banana. Noam Chomsky, semantics, context-dependent semantics of words, blablabla. Nouns and verbs (flies) adverbs and verbs (like).

It was a very bold move, but you can only afford it when you're a market leader and the other sites have to follow you. That didn't happen. The disambiguation was decreed like a Papal Bull at the same time the exclusives were proclaimed untouchable Saints, -  and it took me by surprise, stuffed far away from Net and Mores in the Mindanao jungle. When I returned, my sales were bottoming and Istk went from place #1 to place #4 for me the rest of the year.

The disambiguation turned out to be so much work, and for what? I could better go and flip hamburgers for 7 euro per hour. After a while (around the begin of 2007) I even stopped uploading since their Java uploader is programming crap and it eats up all resources of my ailing PC. Still no FTP...

I know it's subjective but Istk gave me very bad vibes suddenly. Made me feel like an idiot, no respect at all. Ungrateful me, not going exclusive on God's Gift to Stock. Sales have been bad and worsening since then, although I disambiguated my 20 top sellers.

Right now, I'm checking them once every 2-3 weeks or so. May the Force always be with them, and may they finally find a programmer that can add FTP in a couple of days.

« Reply #12 on: November 20, 2007, 09:04 »
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CV can be a good thing, especially when they moved to a multilanguage site.

I wished they would read our suggestions to improve CV.  Months ago (almost one year, maybe), I suggested to include for "aquatic" the meaning "related or being in water" (or whatever they want to say to represent that).  However, nothing was done and my "aquatic sports" images have the curious meanings "Aquatic Mammal", "Aquatic Reptile" and "Water Bird". 

If I delete "aquatics" for inappropriate meaning, or if someone reports that, I'll be behind those who haven't disambiguated their images, what is quite unfair, given that it's a perfect valid keyword.

BTW, "aquatic sport" is also not part of CV, and i'ts considered a German word.  :)

Regards,
Adelaide


 

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