Over here in the US, we're tired of Fraiser re-runs, but we watch Top Gear re-runs endlessly

and yes, OF COURSE your sales numbers have to move up with your portfolio growth. that's stating the obvious.

Quote from: SNP on December 08, 2010, 11:01

and yes, OF COURSE your sales numbers have to move up with your portfolio growth. that's stating the obvious.

I'm sorry, but this is just untrue.  By any of the standards you have laid out I should be keeping my 20% royalty rate at Istock.  I upload an average of 100 images per month, I have a portfolio over 6k high-production-value shots, I am one of only a handful of black diamonds (only a couple of us are non-exclusive), and yet in spite of growing my portfolio by over 1100 in 2010, my sales at Istockphoto have dropped 16% in the past year.  

So no matter how hard you work, how much you grow your portfolio, how high quality your work is, how long you have been on the site, etc., Istock is still quite willing to screw you over.  This new system is rigged.  They control the best match, so they control how well you sell, and can turn sales off or on certain groups of contributors like a faucet.  This is not a meritocracy anymore.  It's not even a lottery.  It's a rigged game of chance.  

Quote from: molka on December 08, 2010, 13:40

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on December 08, 2010, 13:00

95% of the images that are produced are no better or worse than a dozen others of identical subjects that are already in the collection and all the frenzied image production activity is doing is allowing submitters to jostle with each other for search engine position.

Istock's business would probably be better and more sustainable with 10,000 absolutely superb files entering the collection each month and no dross than it is with the avalanche it has at the moment that sometimes buries the occasional gem so deep, so fast that it vanishes forever.

But that's the nature of microstock, so what you gonna do? I hope for gods sake it doesn't need explanation why the micro model outlaws uniqeness and originality... you never know tho: I do see dumbos in site's forums going around giving advice to newcomers like "be original and unique" over and over again, while one thread away someone asking about 'how to get more sales' is told that pictures have to be as generic as possible to get a lot of dls. Are people really that stupid that they don't se the oximoron there?? Unbeleivable. : >  It's not hard to see how that makes this unsustainable for contributors on a longer term. And for the 100th time: microstock's death is the inspection / acceptance system.  There's nothing else they can do with clueless, art-uneducated 'inspectors' than set up a technical quality barrier and nothing else.

You misquoted. That was BaldricksTrousers. Not me.

Quote from: ShadySue on December 08, 2010, 15:21

Off thread, but I just got my EL bonus on three ELs. It's really scary to see how much we'll be losing post Jan 1st. 

that's great!  I was really worried that they were going to come in and say "the 10% is unsustainable.  so we're just going to hang on to that.  we'll reevaluate it in 2011." 

seriously, I honestly don't think they would do that, but it wouldn't have really surprised me.  I hope everyone else got their bonus cash as well and that little "fiasco" can now be checked off as finally being resolved. 

On September 27 we made a mistake here at iStock with a code release. We accidentally included a change that removed the 10% bonus we pay Exclusives for Extended Licenses. This change was not supposed to happen until January 2011.

We are about to run a script that will pay the missing bonus for all Exclusive Extended Licenses between September 27 and November 28. We will then continue to run the script every week, until the date in January when the bonus goes away. So if you have an extended license download between now and then, it won't have the bonus initially, but the bonus will be added when the weekly script runs.

Everyone affected will have the money added to their account immediately. You will also get an email detailing each of the licenses in question.

We apologize for the error and the delay in getting this addressed. Thank you everybody. I will make another post here when the script actually runs: it should be within the next hour or so.

oh yeah, you are right.  sorry, i  did not make myself clear.  I was referring to the 10% that is OWED.  I know that they are doing away with it in January, but was only referring to the part that should have been paid all this time that has not and is currently owed to contributors who earned it. 

Quote from: Risamay on December 08, 2010, 13:05

Quote from: cclapper on December 08, 2010, 09:20

Quote

From SNP: I guess it depends on how you look at. I upload my butt off. I work at producing better content everyday. I'm serious about my business. I guess that comment will ruffle feathers, but it's not meant to. my point is that contributors who mean to produce and improve and supply will reach their targets. if contributors on the whole don't meet targets, or just miss them....it seems they'll revisit the targets to the benefit of contributors.

I don't appreciate the comment about "being serious about your business" either. Just because a person isn't an uploading factory doesn't mean they aren't serious about their business. The statement and the whole situation reminds me of that of a wife-abuser. He beats the crap out of her then tells her it's her fault because she shouldn't have said or done something. Getty/IS takes away our commissions, changes the goalposts, "borrows" EL money, breaks the search engine, breaks the reporting of sales, and then some people have the gall to say it's our fault because we didn't work hard enough or we're not good businesspeople.

Yeah, I took offense to that haughty bit as well.

I'm sorry this offended you. it wasn't meant to be haughty. it's just realistic. anyways, it seems the reality isn't what you want. you want to gripe and you clearly just want to be pissed off. it's funny Marisa, when I first started on iStock, I read your blog regularly. I really love your photography and have always respected you, even when we've disagreed. guess that doesn't go both ways. anyways.