Author Topic: What is happening to iStock? (Read 28458 times)

kimscreativehub2 · « **Reply #50 on:** August 04, 2015, 10:43 »

Yes, yes, yes! jjneff and cobalt 👍

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madman · « **Reply #51 on:** August 05, 2015, 08:28 »

Quote from: cobalt on August 04, 2015, 07:59

Isn´t part of the problem that direction and vision are missing? Klein is no longer CEO, but who will replace him?

Until they have a new boss, many decisions will be delayed and when a new person comes in, there are usually a few months until he or her with their team are settled in. Scott Braut was snapped up by Adobe and he was the most visible talent on the market, who else is there that has his level of experience?

Exclusive images would be an easy solution, they would get more good quality content if the money is there and the generic stuff no longer clogs up the system.

But September is coming...let´s see what new and exciting changes and announcements they have for us.

any changes made recently are not very useful for the contributors, at the same time not good for themselves too...

only beneficiaries are the big agencies who buy our images almost free...

I do not think it would be something different changes...

FlowerPower · « **Reply #52 on:** August 05, 2015, 09:29 »

I'll confess I'm a former exclusive turned indi that's why I'm new at SS.

IS can make new forums that are just moving the same bad attitude and arrogance to a different web site. The new interface is still broken and features are either gone or don't work. Last question to Scout was Feb. and I got a answer in July that didn't answer the question. IS is out of touch. They make new policy without thinking what it will do.

The loss of canister was the end for me. Another IS idea to screw us for more profit.

Buyers are finding the same poor site and arrogant attitude which drives them away. Everything isn't about price. Service or finding what you need and dealing with respectible salespeople counts too.

If you think it was bad in 2014 just watch 2016 with Adobe growing up and SS expanding.

Jeffrey · « **Reply #53 on:** August 07, 2015, 01:33 »

I was too a former Exclusive. I left because of the RC credit system. I wont go back to Exclusive even if they remove the credit system.

madman · « **Reply #54 on:** August 09, 2015, 11:10 »

Forgive me, but, It does not seem normal to me to fall my earnings several times in a short time,

that makes me think deeper, we have nothing to make any changes by ourselves, except increasing our folio or trying other selling sites, we only take what they give it to us,

before I was making almost $5 per image downloads in istock but for now only 0,25 cents, why would I want to earn less?

The worst part of the job is "we have nothing to make any improvements at this situation" as a contributor....

that makes me think deeper and deeper...

aluxum · « **Reply #55 on:** August 09, 2015, 15:19 »

__________________________________

breamal73 · « **Reply #56 on:** August 11, 2015, 09:33 »

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on August 01, 2015, 15:27

Quote from: Holmes on August 01, 2015, 14:43
...what do you think of the current state of IS/getty and future prospects. it appears the futzing has stabilized for the moment. (did i really say that?)

I think that they have one big problem they haven't figured out. 3 credits versus 1 credit for essentially the same content -search for orange slice, woman gym, new home and you can't see any reason that one image is three times the price of another.

And they still have the should-have-been-rejected content that came from off site and flooded the collection with rubbish - two examples (no surprise they haven't sold since 2013):

http://www.istockphoto.com/photo/close-up-of-orange-slice-25406435
http://www.istockphoto.com/photo/juicy-green-apple-25406521

There are smaller problems - the site regularly not working well and some really odd choices with the "new" interface versus the "classic"; inspection standards that I hear let just about anything in (when they used to have some of the most exacting standards, at least for technical excellence); no inexpensive sizes for blog or web use any more.

Why would you shop at iStock if you were a buyer? You have so many other choices that are a whole lot easier to deal with.

You think that's bad, have you seen what's happening with illustration search results? Type in certain key words and you get results like these:-

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19999283/iStock-spam.jpg

Page after page dominated by a growing minority of contributors. You can have 2 to 3 pages, 100 per page, taken up almost entirely by one contributor. The same simple symbol uploaded several times with very minor changes, or the same set of icons rearranged into different shapes, or ten minute doodles. None of these would have been accepted a few years back. And to add insult to injury keyword spamming means half these images shouldn't even turn up in the searches.
Why is iStock allowing this to happen? Is this part of some clever master plan to bring in more buyers? When a buyer is presented with such results are they going to think "wow, iStock have really upped their game", or are they more likely to think "what the f.... is going on here?" and then leave to search another site?
This type of spamming seems to have exploded since a few months ago and what's worrying is that it's not just newbies but veterans who used to be identified as inspectors and admins on their profile so I'm wondering if iStock is actually encouraging this for whatever reason.
It's pointless spending extra time creating anything decent if it's going to end up buried under all this stuff in best match.
When, a little over five years ago, I first thought of joining stock image sites I spent a lot of time researching and reading reviews and forum posts. Back then iStock was by far the most respected site, held in the highest esteem with the most stringent acceptance standards and quality control. It was with great pride when I was accepted and would boast to my artist peers who were always impressed, some having tried and failed several times to get accepted. Now I never mention iStock by name, it's more of an embarrassment, increasingly being referred to as laughingstock.

Noedelhap · « **Reply #57 on:** August 11, 2015, 10:42 »

Quote from: crispy on August 11, 2015, 09:33

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on August 01, 2015, 15:27
Quote from: Holmes on August 01, 2015, 14:43
...what do you think of the current state of IS/getty and future prospects. it appears the futzing has stabilized for the moment. (did i really say that?)

I think that they have one big problem they haven't figured out. 3 credits versus 1 credit for essentially the same content -search for orange slice, woman gym, new home and you can't see any reason that one image is three times the price of another.

And they still have the should-have-been-rejected content that came from off site and flooded the collection with rubbish - two examples (no surprise they haven't sold since 2013):

http://www.istockphoto.com/photo/close-up-of-orange-slice-25406435
http://www.istockphoto.com/photo/juicy-green-apple-25406521

There are smaller problems - the site regularly not working well and some really odd choices with the "new" interface versus the "classic"; inspection standards that I hear let just about anything in (when they used to have some of the most exacting standards, at least for technical excellence); no inexpensive sizes for blog or web use any more.

Why would you shop at iStock if you were a buyer? You have so many other choices that are a whole lot easier to deal with.

You think that's bad, have you seen what's happening with illustration search results? Type in certain key words and you get results like these:-

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19999283/iStock-spam.jpg

Page after page dominated by a growing minority of contributors. You can have 2 to 3 pages, 100 per page, taken up almost entirely by one contributor. The same simple symbol uploaded several times with very minor changes, or the same set of icons rearranged into different shapes, or ten minute doodles. None of these would have been accepted a few years back. And to add insult to injury keyword spamming means half these images shouldn't even turn up in the searches.
Why is iStock allowing this to happen? Is this part of some clever master plan to bring in more buyers? When a buyer is presented with such results are they going to think "wow, iStock have really upped their game", or are they more likely to think "what the f.... is going on here?" and then leave to search another site?
This type of spamming seems to have exploded since a few months ago and what's worrying is that it's not just newbies but veterans who used to be identified as inspectors and admins on their profile so I'm wondering if iStock is actually encouraging this for whatever reason.
It's pointless spending extra time creating anything decent if it's going to end up buried under all this stuff in best match.
When, a little over five years ago, I first thought of joining stock image sites I spent a lot of time researching and reading reviews and forum posts. Back then iStock was by far the most respected site, held in the highest esteem with the most stringent acceptance standards and quality control. It was with great pride when I was accepted and would boast to my artist peers who were always impressed, some having tried and failed several times to get accepted. Now I never mention iStock by name, it's more of an embarrassment, increasingly being referred to as laughingstock.

Oh wow, that's some horrible search. No wonder sales are down the drain.
I too notice lots of new contributors (signed up this July) with bucketloads of simple icons (created in 5 minutes) that indeed would never have been accepted 5 years ago. Worse thing is, these newbies are getting sales. It's feeding the beast all over again, quantity over quality. Or I must be doing something horribly wrong.

ShadySue · « **Reply #58 on:** August 11, 2015, 11:22 »

The sales you see there could well be subs sales, but the problems are as stated. Who knows what their Evil Plan is? They might not even know themselves yet: they don't have a history of mid-term planning .

breamal73 · « **Reply #59 on:** August 11, 2015, 14:18 »

Quote from: Noedelhap on August 11, 2015, 10:42

Oh wow, that's some horrible search. No wonder sales are down the drain.
I too notice lots of new contributors (signed up this July) with bucketloads of simple icons (created in 5 minutes) that indeed would never have been accepted 5 years ago. Worse thing is, these newbies are getting sales. It's feeding the beast all over again, quantity over quality. Or I must be doing something horribly wrong.

They're certainly not getting sales, at least not on these kind of designs.
I left the file details out to spare the contributors' blushes but if I had left them in all you would have seen is a whole load of zero downloads.

Julied83 · « **Reply #60 on:** August 17, 2015, 09:43 »

Some day with zero download. Maybe sub or PP. If AT LEAST, at least they were reported in real time ... we could more easily track our daily sales instead of a month later. that is very ridiculous from a big site as istock. Also those sales are not counting in the redeem credit level system , that is completely a way to give them more % on sales and contributor got almost nothing now. Things can't get better on istock, it's still going worst and worst month by month... sadly.

madman · « **Reply #61 on:** August 18, 2015, 16:47 »

sadly, my revenue so down at this times on istock so now I can not earn within 20 days, once I earned in 2 days

YadaYadaYada · « **Reply #62 on:** August 18, 2015, 18:02 »

TS was the start, removing canister replaced by RC was the final insult. Consolidation, merge, cut cost. They don't care about anything but profit. iStock is losing money. Will a division be harder to sell by Getty or easier? If they merge all of iStock to the Getty servers, that's the end. It will get worse.

ShadySue · « **Reply #63 on:** August 18, 2015, 19:26 »

They wasted a lot of development time and money on site changes which are either stupid (removing descriptions) or don't work properly/consistently.
The similars is still very dubious, and in case anyone hasn't noticed, they're now putting other people's alleged similars under any they manage to find of your own.
I checked one random file of mine, a particular bird species. They didn't manage to find any of my alternatives from different seasons, (uploaded at different times, obviously), but managed to fine one other from another contributor.
Clicked on that file, and there are a lot of totally random birds linked as similars there, plus some mammals (by various contributors). I checked the keywords and apart from very generic similar words like 'nature' and 'living organism', I can't see why the system thought they were 'similar'.
And my file isn't reciprocated there.

They tried before, a couple of years ago, and it didn't work then.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

madman · « **Reply #64 on:** August 19, 2015, 04:52 »

I am waiting more bad news after all this neutral happenings, e.g. maybe istock completely will remove the exclusivity like SS or will merge the istock with getty, I can not think of something positive after all bad developments, history repeats itself...

MilanLipowski · « **Reply #65 on:** August 19, 2015, 15:18 »

It is just business.

Take it easy. I was angry 5 years ago when it started. Now I am relaxed.

PeterChigmaroff · « **Reply #66 on:** August 19, 2015, 19:10 »

ObviousTroll · « **Reply #67 on:** August 19, 2015, 19:53 »

I guess I should admit this. Istock crashed because I badly overused their referal program by placing referral links all over my lightbox banners, profile, flickr, and pretty much anywhere a human could click accidentally or not.

Those were the good ol' days.

Its my fault everyone $:-\$

ShadySue · « **Reply #68 on:** August 23, 2015, 08:15 »

I worked out why the similars aren't very similar, or not similar at all.
I keyword specific to general.
However, by the time the file is indexed, and with no recorded views, the order has changed, as it has for years now.
BUT in the new view (different from the classic view) the keywords are really messed up, so that the generic words have gone to the top and the specific words are at the bottom. So, for example, the generic 'nature' goes to the top, and is lumped with other files with that keywords. Many files with 'nature' keyworded must be what city dwellers count as 'nature', leading to a total mismatch with 'similars'.
This can't help the buyer. If someone has searched on X species, how does it help them to find 'similars' including several files of girls sitting on manicured, 'unnatural' grass?

I only looked within my own areas of activity. Presumably this phenomenon ('general' keywords trumping 'specifics') is across all genres.

Why do they continue to shoot themselves in the foot, year after year, by launching 'new' or 'revived failed' features without thorough testing? H*ck, if I could find this so easily, why couldn't someone on their QA team? (Do they even have a QA team?)

hatman12 · « **Reply #69 on:** August 23, 2015, 14:43 »

They said many months ago that the mixed up order of keywords in the new UI was simply a 'display issue' and that the 'correct' keyword order could be seen by switching to the old UI. Unfortunately that was a long time ago and nothing appears to have been done to solve the problem. One would have thought that if it was just a 'display issue' it would have been a relatively simple thing to resolve.

If the search actually changes to the 'new' keyword order, then that will probably be disastrous for sales as the order shown in the new UI appears to be nonsense.

If, as ShadySue implies, the similars thing is based on the new keyword order then that of course would explain why that function also seems unable to work properly.

Unfortunately all of this is 'par for the course' at istock. Their technology people appear to be incapable of completing tasks without screwing lots of things up, which usually results in a negative impact on sales.

It really is quite extraordinary that they cannot implement a similars display. Nearly all retail web sites do it in some form, yet here we are (again) with istock seemingly incapable of introducing a function that should be quite straightforward. They just don't seem to be prepared to spend money on good technology people (or they are not allowed to because the money has to be given to the venture capitalists).

Edit: well I think I need to stand corrected on this one. I've just looked at my last five sales, and the keyword order shown on both old and new UIs is the same. So it looks like that problem has been solved, at least for those few files. If it's still screwed up for other files, perhaps it is something that will be gradually implemented.

Also, the similars links appear to be reasonable. Not perfect, but not outrageously poor. Some files have a 'same series' display, others don't.

Justanotherphotographer · « **Reply #70 on:** August 23, 2015, 15:24 »

I can even understand why they introduced RC, but the problem is the same as with bigstock. They didn't actually make the levels in any way obtainable and the compensation in any case way too low. It's the dishonesty when what they were actually doing was slashing our returns under the pretence of having a new, but still fair system.

ShadySue · « **Reply #71 on:** August 23, 2015, 15:32 »

Quote from: hatman12 on August 23, 2015, 14:43

They said many months ago that the mixed up order of keywords in the new UI was simply a 'display issue' and that the 'correct' keyword order could be seen by switching to the old UI.

But on one hand, they say that the phantom downloads are just a 'display issue'; and at the same time, they say that the phantom issues are sub sales showing in real time (before being reported).

It's probably code for "don't ask awkward questions".

tickstock · « **Reply #72 on:** August 23, 2015, 16:15 »

Quote from: hatman12 on August 23, 2015, 14:43

Also, the similars links appear to be reasonable. Not perfect, but not outrageously poor. Some files have a 'same series' display, others don't.

Yep similars look pretty good to me, even new files with no dls or views have mostly relevant similars.

ShadySue · « **Reply #73 on:** August 23, 2015, 18:06 »

Quote from: tickstock on August 23, 2015, 16:15

Quote from: hatman12 on August 23, 2015, 14:43
Also, the similars links appear to be reasonable. Not perfect, but not outrageously poor. Some files have a 'same series' display, others don't.

Yep similars look pretty good to me, even new files with no dls or views have mostly relevant similars.

Really?
Well, totally at random, I chose a mainstream search in which I have no vested interest: girl, pony.
I was already in a search by new, so lots of the hits were pretty irrelevant (maybe people are tagging a pony tail as a pony (horse), and it's not being picked up on inspection?). So I clicked on one which was the sort of thing I might have been expecting, and every one of the similars was totally irrelevant to my original search.
And as I found on my own files (I checked a lot of my own), the original order of the keywords (found by going in as though to wiki them (NB, that's just how to find the original order) was pony, girl, happy, horse, and the order in the new view is cheerful, child and happiness, all perfectly good keywords for the file, but the alleged similars bear no relationship to my search for girl, pony.(The file has no recorded views or sales.)
NB, I am not in any way criticising the file I picked. I praised it for being relevant to my search.

tickstock · « **Reply #74 on:** August 23, 2015, 18:22 »

Yep that's how it works. Until you get sales or maybe views the first keywords are given extra relevancy, you have to make sure to put the relevant ones first.

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Author Topic: What is happening to iStock? (Read 28458 times)

kimscreativehub2

madman

FlowerPower

Jeffrey

madman

aluxum

breamal73

Noedelhap

ShadySue

breamal73

Julied83

madman

YadaYadaYada

ShadySue

madman

MilanLipowski

PeterChigmaroff

ObviousTroll

ShadySue

hatman12

Justanotherphotographer

ShadySue

tickstock

ShadySue

tickstock

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