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Author Topic: What is happening to iStock, is it the end?  (Read 52307 times)

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Beppe Grillo

« on: June 15, 2013, 02:24 »
+10
What is the future of iStock? (Okay nobody knows, but)

When I started with iStock a few months ago it was quite difficult to get photos accepted.
Many were rejected for reasons often valid, but sometimes at the limit of valid, and sometimes for absurd reasons.
For some time (after that the upload limit became 999 I think) photos seemed to be accepted very more easily.
At some point I felt that the only rejections were the (possible) lack of "Property Release", or similar.

So I did some tests:
First I sent pictures that were rejected a few months ago. All were accepted without any problem.
Then I pushed a bit and I sent pictures whose quality was questionable. All accepted.
I pushed the envelope further, I sent blurry pictures, moved, noisy, with artifacts, etc.. All accepted
I did it again with others of the same kind ... All accepted .........

My conclusion is that now iStock accepts everything and anything ...
This is not good news I think

Is it only my impression or other forum's users feel the same?


Leo Blanchette

« Reply #1 on: June 15, 2013, 02:37 »
0
Thats very weird. Has the fine-print changed at all?

« Reply #2 on: June 15, 2013, 03:04 »
+1
I also tried with previously rejected files and every one of them got approved.

« Reply #3 on: June 15, 2013, 03:19 »
0
I recall somewhere reading that there strict criteria was being reduced - might have related to raster images - it does ring a bell

« Reply #4 on: June 15, 2013, 04:20 »
+6
I just can't believe the number of changes there's been with istock over the last 5 years.  It seems that everything the site stood for has been obliterated.  Most of the changes seem to be detrimental to contributors.  With this latest policy, it seems inevitable that contributors earnings will be diluted.  Buyers are going to be put off by the low quality images.  If they wanted to save istock, they should go back to how it was when it was popular with buyers and contributors but I think its probably beyond repair now.

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #5 on: June 15, 2013, 04:42 »
0
The reduction in quality now accepted and the apparent total disregard in many cases for title, keyword and description suggests they have some sort of 'evil plan' for the future - maybe geared towards lauching a huge Value Bin a few months down the line.
But my guesses are usually wildly off the mark.

« Reply #6 on: June 15, 2013, 04:44 »
+2
buyers are not forever.

while iStock was sleeping the competitors won their buyers one by one, it costed time and money but now it's too late for the IS management to suddenly make a U-turn.

what where they thinking scre-wing up both loyal buyers and contributors for the last 5 years ?

in microstock both buyers and sellers are a lot more wired to each other than in macro/RM.

designers are often also producers and photographers, if you scr-ew them they will buy elsewhere and sell elsewhere and tell all their friends and clients to do so, simple as that, see why SS is booming and IS is tanking.

 

Ron

« Reply #7 on: June 15, 2013, 04:46 »
0
I still got plenty rejections not so long ago. How bad must my images be then? Maybe I need to resubmit now.

« Reply #8 on: June 15, 2013, 04:47 »
+1
The reduction in quality now accepted and the apparent total disregard in many cases for title, keyword and description suggests they have some sort of 'evil plan' for the future - maybe geared towards lauching a huge Value Bin a few months down the line.
But my guesses are usually wildly off the mark.

lowering the overall quality is a good thing, in the long run it would set micro where it belongs.
it makes no business sense to provide a product on par with macro/RF and sell it a tenth of the price.

i'm all for Flickr-like image quality and bad keywording, that's what in the real world a 1$ image should be worth.

dont like it ? then pay more for a higher priced collection or stick to RM.
win-win situation for me.

« Reply #9 on: June 15, 2013, 04:55 »
+1
I agree up to a point but Istock really has gone from one extreme to the other - wonder if lots of buyers will be asking for refunds when they look at these images at full size?

« Reply #10 on: June 15, 2013, 05:22 »
+3
The reduction in quality now accepted and the apparent total disregard in many cases for title, keyword and description suggests they have some sort of 'evil plan' for the future - maybe geared towards lauching a huge Value Bin a few months down the line.
But my guesses are usually wildly off the mark.

lowering the overall quality is a good thing, in the long run it would set micro where it belongs.
it makes no business sense to provide a product on par with macro/RF and sell it a tenth of the price.

i'm all for Flickr-like image quality and bad keywording, that's what in the real world a 1$ image should be worth.

dont like it ? then pay more for a higher priced collection or stick to RM.
win-win situation for me.
Luckily most of the other sites don't think like that.  Buyers would soon give up on microstock if the quality was abysmal.  There's nothing wrong selling for $1 if you can sell lots of times.  I'd still rather have 150x$1 than 1x$100.  Unfortunately you'll never understand that, far too complicated for a macrosaur :)

So this latest istock policy is probably going to lose them more buyers but I think they'll probably go to other microstock sites, not to RM.  If they're used to paying lower prices or don't have the money to spend on the higher priced sites, they're not going to start using Getty.

« Reply #11 on: June 15, 2013, 05:38 »
+3
I will clearly have to try my luck! From my first shoot i have some wonderful out of focus, noisy, underexposed images.

« Reply #12 on: June 15, 2013, 05:54 »
0

Luckily most of the other sites don't think like that.  Buyers would soon give up on microstock if the quality was abysmal.  There's nothing wrong selling for $1 if you can sell lots of times.  I'd still rather have 150x$1 than 1x$100.  Unfortunately you'll never understand that, far too complicated for a macrosaur :)

So this latest istock policy is probably going to lose them more buyers but I think they'll probably go to other microstock sites, not to RM.  If they're used to paying lower prices or don't have the money to spend on the higher priced sites, they're not going to start using Getty.

Every one of the images that I resubmitted were accepted and sell at the other 12 other sites that I upload to so in my opinion shouldn't have been rejected at IS in the first place.
« Last Edit: June 15, 2013, 05:56 by fotografer »

« Reply #13 on: June 15, 2013, 06:51 »
0

Luckily most of the other sites don't think like that.  Buyers would soon give up on microstock if the quality was abysmal.  There's nothing wrong selling for $1 if you can sell lots of times.  I'd still rather have 150x$1 than 1x$100.  Unfortunately you'll never understand that, far too complicated for a macrosaur :)

So this latest istock policy is probably going to lose them more buyers but I think they'll probably go to other microstock sites, not to RM.  If they're used to paying lower prices or don't have the money to spend on the higher priced sites, they're not going to start using Getty.
Every one of the images that I resubmitted were accepted and sell at the other 12 other sites that I upload to so in my opinion shouldn't have been rejected at IS in the first place.
Their standards were too high at one time but judging by what people are saying in this thread and some of the examples I've seen, they don't have any now.  It's a shame they've gone from one extreme to the other.  Perhaps they're just accepting everything to get the queue down but that's not a good idea.

« Reply #14 on: June 15, 2013, 07:05 »
0
Maybe they just want to flood the search at lower pricepoints with crap files, to make buyers push it up to buy more expensive quality files?

« Reply #15 on: June 15, 2013, 07:41 »
+1

Luckily most of the other sites don't think like that.  Buyers would soon give up on microstock if the quality was abysmal.  There's nothing wrong selling for $1 if you can sell lots of times.  I'd still rather have 150x$1 than 1x$100.  Unfortunately you'll never understand that, far too complicated for a macrosaur :)

So this latest istock policy is probably going to lose them more buyers but I think they'll probably go to other microstock sites, not to RM.  If they're used to paying lower prices or don't have the money to spend on the higher priced sites, they're not going to start using Getty.
Every one of the images that I resubmitted were accepted and sell at the other 12 other sites that I upload to so in my opinion shouldn't have been rejected at IS in the first place.
Their standards were too high at one time but judging by what people are saying in this thread and some of the examples I've seen, they don't have any now.  It's a shame they've gone from one extreme to the other.  Perhaps they're just accepting everything to get the queue down but that's not a good idea.
I agree that it's a shame but I rarely put anything up unlesss it is more or less perfect or different engough from everything else that a slight imperection could be over looked and  Iused to get really annoyed at their silly rejections.  They can't seem to get anything they do right these days if they are going so far the other way.

Beppe Grillo

« Reply #16 on: June 15, 2013, 08:17 »
+1

Luckily most of the other sites don't think like that.  Buyers would soon give up on microstock if the quality was abysmal.  There's nothing wrong selling for $1 if you can sell lots of times.  I'd still rather have 150x$1 than 1x$100.  Unfortunately you'll never understand that, far too complicated for a macrosaur :)

So this latest istock policy is probably going to lose them more buyers but I think they'll probably go to other microstock sites, not to RM.  If they're used to paying lower prices or don't have the money to spend on the higher priced sites, they're not going to start using Getty.
Every one of the images that I resubmitted were accepted and sell at the other 12 other sites that I upload to so in my opinion shouldn't have been rejected at IS in the first place.
Their standards were too high at one time but judging by what people are saying in this thread and some of the examples I've seen, they don't have any now.  It's a shame they've gone from one extreme to the other.  Perhaps they're just accepting everything to get the queue down but that's not a good idea.
I agree that it's a shame but I rarely put anything up unlesss it is more or less perfect or different engough from everything else that a slight imperection could be over looked and  Iused to get really annoyed at their silly rejections.  They can't seem to get anything they do right these days if they are going so far the other way.

I agree with you, and personally I try to do the same.
I have already deactivated most of the "bad" images that I have uploaded, as I have uploaded these images only to make some kind of test. (I don't know if using Delete from DeepMeta will completely remove the image from the site?)

The problem is that if iStock will continue to accept anything, even the images of very bad quality, the good and the best images will finish to disappear in a kind of big melt of images without any value

« Reply #17 on: June 15, 2013, 09:10 »
+1
Luckily most of the other sites don't think like that.  Buyers would soon give up on microstock if the quality was abysmal.  There's nothing wrong selling for $1 if you can sell lots of times.  I'd still rather have 150x$1 than 1x$100.  Unfortunately you'll never understand that, far too complicated for a macrosaur :)

So this latest istock policy is probably going to lose them more buyers but I think they'll probably go to other microstock sites, not to RM.  If they're used to paying lower prices or don't have the money to spend on the higher priced sites, they're not going to start using Getty.

we will see.
if we look at how it all started, buyers only came to micros because of the ridicolously low prices, they never gave a sh-it about quality in the first years of iStock.

the actual micro quality is very good, even too good in some cases.
i don't think the average buyer will notice a big difference if iStock starts relaxing a bit the QC.

i see no reason why clients should leave in droves, the only mass migration so far has been from IS to SS, but never back to RM.

price is still king for the sort of cheap-as-s micro buyers, they would even pay 1$ for Flickr snapshots if they could.


« Reply #18 on: June 15, 2013, 09:11 »
0
The problem is that if iStock will continue to accept anything, even the images of very bad quality, the good and the best images will finish to disappear in a kind of big melt of images without any value

that's the price to pay to keep the archive "fresh".


« Reply #19 on: June 15, 2013, 12:42 »
+1

Luckily most of the other sites don't think like that.  Buyers would soon give up on microstock if the quality was abysmal.  There's nothing wrong selling for $1 if you can sell lots of times.  I'd still rather have 150x$1 than 1x$100.  Unfortunately you'll never understand that, far too complicated for a macrosaur :)

So this latest istock policy is probably going to lose them more buyers but I think they'll probably go to other microstock sites, not to RM.  If they're used to paying lower prices or don't have the money to spend on the higher priced sites, they're not going to start using Getty.
Every one of the images that I resubmitted were accepted and sell at the other 12 other sites that I upload to so in my opinion shouldn't have been rejected at IS in the first place.
Their standards were too high at one time but judging by what people are saying in this thread and some of the examples I've seen, they don't have any now.  It's a shame they've gone from one extreme to the other.  Perhaps they're just accepting everything to get the queue down but that's not a good idea.
I agree that it's a shame but I rarely put anything up unlesss it is more or less perfect or different engough from everything else that a slight imperection could be over looked and  Iused to get really annoyed at their silly rejections.  They can't seem to get anything they do right these days if they are going so far the other way.

I agree with you, and personally I try to do the same.
I have already deactivated most of the "bad" images that I have uploaded, as I have uploaded these images only to make some kind of test. (I don't know if using Delete from DeepMeta will completely remove the image from the site?)

The problem is that if iStock will continue to accept anything, even the images of very bad quality, the good and the best images will finish to disappear in a kind of big melt of images without any value

Using delete from DeepMeta will not affect the image on the site in any way.  You have to deactivate them online.

« Reply #20 on: June 15, 2013, 13:05 »
+3
I like headlines like this.

Donvanstaden

« Reply #21 on: June 15, 2013, 14:00 »
-1
I make more money on BS than on IS. The reason why that is significant is because my BS port is a whopping 8 images and my IS port is 84 images  :o for a newbie istock is a waste of time... I get getting zero traffic on my IS images.

« Reply #22 on: June 15, 2013, 14:10 »
0
I make more money on BS than on IS. The reason why that is significant is because my BS port is a whopping 8 images and my IS port is 84 images  :o for a newbie istock is a waste of time... I get getting zero traffic on my IS images.

With so little images any selling data has not meaning at all.

« Reply #23 on: June 15, 2013, 15:09 »
+1
I agree that it's a shame but I rarely put anything up unlesss it is more or less perfect or different engough from everything else that a slight imperection could be over looked and  Iused to get really annoyed at their silly rejections.  They can't seem to get anything they do right these days if they are going so far the other way.

Funny that, from the other end of the food chain, I do exactly the same.  I dont believe theres much technically wrong with what I submit to MS certainly pretty much everything gets accepted at SS, DT and FT so either IS was right and everyone else wrong or they were just ridiculously picky about certain types of submissions.  Im sort of tempted to send in a few recent images that were accepted everywhere else  and which they havent yet had an opportunity to reject, just to test the waters.  The P+ thing is annoying me a bit but was getting a couple of payouts a year there with 25 images (that is definitely past tense) but, bad as they are now, a few hundred images might yield DT / FT level returns which is still better than the mickey mouse sites.

Ron

« Reply #24 on: June 15, 2013, 15:10 »
-1
I make more money on BS than on IS. The reason why that is significant is because my BS port is a whopping 8 images and my IS port is 84 images  :o for a newbie istock is a waste of time... I get getting zero traffic on my IS images.

With so little images any selling data has not meaning at all.
It could be the best 84 images the world has ever seen. I know a few ports with only a couple hundred images that rake in the money. Its all relative.


 

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