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Quote from: StockManiac on September 10, 2006, 01:46

Quote from: amanda1863 on September 09, 2006, 21:18

Undisputedly the highest traffic.

Can you please pass along the source of your info...

Freezingpictures:

That is precisely what I thought amanda1863 would say and it is not an undisputed fact.

First, all that the Alexa charts mean is that people that use the Alexa toolbar visit those sites more.

Second, the "traffic" on Alexa doesn't take into account the breakdown of buyers vs. photographers.� Much of this traffic might be for the forums or for people pressing F5 (Refresh), or something just as trivial.

Third, more people are reporting that Shutterstock is paying more per month than iStockphoto, so this would suggest that Shutterstock is actually the one with the "highest traffic" (at least from a buyers perspective).

Fourth, out of all of the design magazines that I have checked, Shutterstock usually has a more prominent position than iStock when it comes to marketing.� I went to the book store a few weeks ago, and Shutterstock was on the inside cover of almost every major magazine, while iStock was relegated to many of the inner pages.� So if iStock does indeed have the highest marketing budget, then they are skimping on the major trade magazines and pocketing some of that wonderful profit that they make.

So hopefully, amanda1863 has something more factual than Alexa in mind when she is talking about "undisputed traffic" and "highest marketing budget".

I'm not trying to start anything but seriously...people LOVE to bitch about two things with iStock.  Low Commission & Favoritism to Exclusives.

I am non exclusives and I don't feel unfairly treated by istock.. I recently put up an image for FIOTW and didn't expect them to use it as I am not exclusive but it was used only 5 days later bringing me lots of extra sales and a few designers putting me in their creative networks.  I think that it is totally fair that the exclusives  get extra commisions and privileges because of all the money they are losing out of by not uploading elsewhere.  If I get a photo refused by istock I can upload it elsewhere which is a privilege that exclusives don't have

Well I just got my batch of 20 pictures rejected by Istock, all pictures with model release, it's depressing.

the same batch of pictures got accepted  100% at FT, 19 out 20 at DT, 100% at BigStock, 19 out of 20 at StockXpert, 19 out 20 at SS. ( funny thing is that 3 out of the same series I submitted last week got approved at IS, all got 5 out 5 ratings, which they deserve )

Reasons for rejection: over use of  noise reduction degrade image quality or artifacts when viewed in full size, due to in camera settings.

first I apply a small  portion of noise reduction on each image, they are very clean to start with, since shot out doors over cast days, no shadows to worry about, secondly, all are shot in Raw, processed and converted to Tiff, and finally output to Jpeg 12, I cannot see any artifacts when viewed at 100%, I don't know what are they talking about???

Some images are resubmit due to a dead pix they found, sure out of 6m pixels, one dead pixel will get rejected, but once I fix the pixel, now there is more reasons...

Anyway, I have been working hard for two month trying to get pictures on IS, so with 20 per week, I only got 95 on line, while in less than half the time, I got 504 approved at SS ( lots of editorial ), over 300 at FT, 270 at DT, and 221 at BigStock, 200 at StockXpert...

it's really not very productive to submit to IS, it get you very frustrated, and earnings only distant 4th behind SS, DT, FT...

Or do they really intend to drive photographers away?

Anyway just want to vent my frustration, since I can not do that at IS
 

The problem is iStock has a different pricing structure you still earn only 20% but they sell for big bucks. I chatted with on illustrator who spends a couple of days on her creations. So they are really fussy about newbies.

So I have quite a few 10 mins - 2 hour creations that sell reasonably well elsewhere (most of my best sellers at SS are vectors) but iStock won't touch me with a barge pole so you are not alone.

I think I am in the middle here.  I think it is pretty impossible to choose who to side with (the photog. or istock) when we don't have images to look at ourselves.  I know from sites like DPChallenge  That a lot of people are really personal about their images and think they are 'THE BEST' then enter them in a challenge and then end up getting in the bottom third, and then complain about unfair voting.

So not saying enjoyimages pictures weren't  'really good', I am just saying, that I can't agree that istock is unfair either, unless I am able to see the images for myself and decide.

Sorry, I was a little vague. i didn't mean to say that some people thing they are 'the best' but that sometimes the people I was refering to (on dpchallenge specifically) thought that a certain image was 'the best' or really great.

I took a look at your images by the way.

Nice work.

Anyway my acceptance rate is a lot better now. And with the ones rejected they gave a good reason why so i,m pretty happy again.
My work:
http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery.mhtml?id=64551
http://www.stockxpert.com/browse.phtml?f=profile&l=EnjoyLife2
http://www.pbase.com/ericgevaert

You have some great work. My previous statement was based on the number of rejections. It may just be iStock. I'm not a real fan of theirs in the first place because of how much they sensor the forums. Look at all the "I love iStock" postings they have, and even with the stupid keyword change they still don't have a lot of upset postings.

by the sounds of it, you have to fix a noise problem for shutterstock.