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Messages - jen
101
« on: March 18, 2011, 10:10 »
My sales are a bit down, but I am not going to attribute that to the Best Match. They were down last week too.
102
« on: March 16, 2011, 10:42 »
Use paypal and then have it sent from paypal to your account.
Paypal has such awful exchange rates.  I think it's time for me to open a US bank account because every week the exchange rate to CAD is worse.
103
« on: March 16, 2011, 10:39 »
You won't get any argument from me that IS is truly hopeless at communications, including updating wiki's, setting out the rules for new procedures, etc.
However, I've uploaded a bunch of editorial images over the last week or so and to date, none of the captions has caused a rejection. I'm using Deep Meta, I'm just entering city, state, country (leaving out state where not applicable) and it seems pretty straightforward using that workflow.
I agree with this. I'm not sure I've had any caption rejections (other than one from the very first day of uploading when there was confusion about whether or not to include a date, and a few that were overturned). I totally understand all of the frustration and the instructions definitely needed to be (and still need to be) clearer. And it bugs me that a lot of the examples aren't perfectly correct (I'm really picky). And I think they should have made it an automated form so there's less room for error. AND it should be editable before inspection! But it's honestly not that hard to get it right and complaining about things like "I put in the wrong date and they rejected it for having the wrong date! That's stupid!" is just silly IMHO.
104
« on: March 10, 2011, 19:34 »
Given the Jan/Feb clawback is much bigger than the one for December frauds (for me, and reading the forum for other people too), it makes Mr. Great Communicator Thompson's post in December even more irritating.
I have ranted about that post in length to too many people IRL, haha. All of my non-photographer friends know all about Kelly Thompson's "you should thank us for working over Christmas break" post. It's just unbelievable.
C'mon everyone, you know the deduction of money doesn't make you unhappy.
Get out there and do some merry ho-hoing.
I have an old school iStock friend who hasn't been active in a few years, but I still update him on what's going on. All he does now is shake his head.
105
« on: March 10, 2011, 19:25 »
I like the idea of requesting an audit (pretty sure some stinking puddles would be opened). Would it really be that expensive if we do it with a couple of peeps? It sounds pretty do-able and about the only thing we can do without having to get very organized in a mass-pull-portfolio action or something alike...
I made a comment about an audit in the angry-thread but I don't actually know how we could even go about doing that. Is that possible if they're a private company?
It always used to be part of the contract (and i presume it still is) that you could pay for an audit to check sales figures.
This? 15 c) Any and all disputes arising out of, under or in connection with this Agreement, including without limitation, its validity, interpretation, performance and breach, shall be submitted to arbitration in Calgary, Alberta, pursuant to the rules of the Arbitration Act (Alberta) in effect at the time arbitration is demanded.
106
« on: March 10, 2011, 19:17 »
I like the idea of requesting an audit (pretty sure some stinking puddles would be opened). Would it really be that expensive if we do it with a couple of peeps? It sounds pretty do-able and about the only thing we can do without having to get very organized in a mass-pull-portfolio action or something alike...
I made a comment about an audit in the angry-thread but I don't actually know how we could even go about doing that. Is that possible if they're a private company?
107
« on: March 10, 2011, 19:11 »
Given the Jan/Feb clawback is much bigger than the one for December frauds (for me, and reading the forum for other people too), it makes Mr. Great Communicator Thompson's post in December even more irritating. I have ranted about that post in length to too many people IRL, haha. All of my non-photographer friends know all about Kelly Thompson's "you should thank us for working over Christmas break" post. It's just unbelievable.
108
« on: March 10, 2011, 19:04 »
I'm only losing 8 bucks but it completely blows my mind how they're treating this. How can they take THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS from certain people and the effing CEO can't even be bothered to deliver the news himself?! Just... what? I don't even know what else to say.
109
« on: March 08, 2011, 13:10 »
Out of curiosity, I went through the sales thread.
People who say they are...
Up: 46 (of these, 27 said BME)
Down: 62
$ Up, DLs Down/Same: 12
Same/Average: 11
...
A lot of the BMEs are from bronze contributors. Given smaller portfolios and sales you get greater variability and a much easier time doubling small numbers. I'm not saying that diamonds are more important than bronzes, but just that it isn't useful when trying to get at the big picture to look at the ups and downs of new and small contributors.
Right, that's true. Stats from someone like Sean give a much greater overall view of how things are going than stats from someone like me. But if you're going to analyze the BMEs then we have to look at the WMEs too.  I clicked on a few of the most vocal people in the thread and a lot of them had just a couple hundred files and haven't added any fresh content in a couple of years. There are a ton of factors at play. I'm not saying sales aren't bad (it's disturbing when a major player can add 2000 good files and not see any growth), just that I don't think that thread is a great indicator of "everyone's" sales being down.
110
« on: March 08, 2011, 13:00 »
As an exclusive:
RPD in January - $3.00
RPD in February - $3.19
RPD so far in March - $4.04
111
« on: March 08, 2011, 12:17 »
Yup. Sean Locke is down enormously. It must be all the stuff he's got on PP.
Take a look at the Feb sales thread on iS. It seems almost everyone is down, regardless of whether they contribute to the PP or not. Out of curiosity, I went through the sales thread. People who say they are... Up: 46 (of these, 27 said BME) Down: 62 $ Up, DLs Down/Same: 12 Same/Average: 11 So I don't think it's accurate to say almost everyone is down. Not great, but I don't think it spells doomsday...yet. (I stopped around page 10 when the conversation went off track.)
112
« on: March 07, 2011, 19:19 »
What a mortifying experience for the OP!
Glad Istock dealt with it. They should really be more careful about what is displayed in promotional areas of the site.
Also, the inspectors drop the ball often on letting graphic nudity, etc. through the content filter. I have the content filter set and I see nudes etc. there on a fairly regular basis.
It really does make the site seem unprofessional. I have models that I am certain would not want to be displayed on a search page with nude people performing sex acts.
Istock has this sort of problem a lot and AFAIK it doesn't seem to happen elsewhere. Content filters on the other sites that accept nudity seem to be working fine.
But it was an external .jpg that the contributor created to link to a lightbox in the description area. Content filters don't work on those. The contributor could have added the banner after it became the FIOTW. I think it would be a good idea to not have any free images from contributors who have a lot of NWS images in their portfolio though :\
113
« on: March 07, 2011, 15:40 »
Sean McHugh is who sends the e-mail if you subscribe to CiC's newsletter. I am as sure as I can be without knowing that Mr. Shankie has nothing to do with CiC as he poo-poohed an article on it I referred him to way back when. He was wrong about something and I pointed to CiC's tutorial on that subject. He said who had time to read; he just wanted to take photos
Oh I believe you guys that it's not his site, just confused about why he would claim it was!
114
« on: March 07, 2011, 13:30 »
One IS contributor has reported PP sales of over $300 for January, with over 750 dls.
I think you'll find Shank-ali is not actually being truthful or indeed means to be taken seriously. It's what he does __ that and constantly try to talk up the PP of course. For example he also claims the excellent 'Cambridge in Colour' as 'his' business website.
Whose website is it? His profile says he's in engineering and I know he's in the UK. I mean, obviously the CiC guy writes better and actually uses spaces after punctuation. And the photography style is totally different. But it seems weird to claim someone else's website as your own :\
115
« on: February 25, 2011, 20:12 »
I don't know who was in the US when Nancy Reagan bought new White House china during a recession. There was a huge uproar.
Believe me I am not a big Reagan fan...or should I say a fan of the Reagan myth. But the "china" in question was donated, not purchased by Nancy Reagan.
Reagan also raised taxes 11 times...a little myth buster that some would prefer to bury in this day an age.
That was the point of the anecdote.
116
« on: February 19, 2011, 14:56 »
That's not what I meant. The 2% cut is fact. The "you are so grateful", kool-aid drinking comments were the out-of-context mocking to which I was referring.
(Context being that he will leave if it doesn't work out for his business. You took a comment saying, "I currently have a 2% decrease in earnings but I expect a 10-15% increase by the end of the year. If that doesn't happen I'll leave and do what's best for my business." and turned it into "I love iStock, I'm so grateful they only cut my earnings by 2%! I hope my earnings keep going down by such a small percentage! Pass the Kool-Aid please!")
117
« on: February 19, 2011, 14:47 »
Oh. Well, then you should call them!
119
« on: February 19, 2011, 14:28 »
Here's a glimpse, the big hefty drop has turned out to be a drop of about 2% because of Vetta/Agency sells.
I think it's wonderful that you are so grateful to your agency for cutting your commissions by less than you expected them to. Fantastic! How many pints of Istock Kool-Aid do you need to drink per day to maintain that attitude?
Be careful though __ if they only cut your commissions by another 2% this year then there's a danger you might actually explode with happiness and gratitude.
It's good of you to pick out the stuff you want to mock out of context and ignore the overall sentiment, "I think with VeTTa/Agency images placed on Getty I should see an increase of 10% - 15% over last year. If that doesn't workout I'll drop them in a hot minute, I'm not marry or in love with them,iStock is just a company I do business with."
120
« on: February 18, 2011, 23:11 »
I've only ever submitted to iStock and I only started 2 years ago. I started with a 30% acceptance rate and the typical anger/confusion/frustration that you see in the Critique Forum from new people who don't understand why their shots are being rejected, and think the inspectors are smoking crack. I'm at about 80% now. I do get the odd eye-roll rejection still, but I think that if you honestly try to look at your images objectively then most of the rejections do make sense. Subject also makes a huge difference. My acceptance rate is much lower on nature/landscape type images than on pictures of people, and the former doesn't sell much for me anyway.
121
« on: February 17, 2011, 18:23 »
Maybe if they actually launched it and it was a success, more people would bother contributing!
122
« on: February 17, 2011, 16:07 »
Yeah, I wonder why they don't just kill it off and be done with it, whatever the problems were. I'm told they planned to launch with 10,000 logo's and they don't even have half that. I'm amazed anyone is actually bothering to upload still as it's about 15 months behind schedule on the launch date.
This is interesting since today they said they planned to launch editorial with 5k files. Why so many for logos?
123
« on: February 03, 2011, 10:54 »
I am also one of the affected and also surprised at istock taking funds from my account without any notice.
It's not without notice. This is what they said they would do. I'm not sure why people are getting worked up about it now after it was announced weeks ago (though, of course, many people won't have read the forum thread, they should have e-mailed at the time).
I guess it was announced, if you define "announcement" as "an admin posting on a double digit page of a forum thread that was locked shortly thereafter".
124
« on: January 03, 2011, 16:45 »
I did the same test when I became exclusive and all of the files I checked moved up in best match placement. That was only in September.
Wishful thinking, or maybe you just happened to monitor mainly the images you knew were 'on the up' whilst subconciously ignoring your lesser files that were simultaneously on the way down.
Like I said earlier it's not a mystery and, whilst we might not be able to actually write the algorithm for the best match, we can certainly prove the effect (or otherwise) on exclusive images via a few sample searches. Anyone who has the ability to count from 1-50 can see for themselves. It's not Enigma code-breaking stuff.
Funny how exclusives all desperately want to believe they are being helped by the best match despite all the evidence against it.
I'm not "desperate" to believe anything. I checked some of my random files out of curiosity and that is what I found. I do not care as long as I am making sales. By the way, I did your test with a food item as suggested. Search for "quiche" (572 results): Best Match - 36 exclusive (2 Vetta) / 14 non-exclusive Age - 18 exclusive / 32 non-exclusive Downloads - 29 exclusive (2 Vetta) / 21 non-exclusive What does that prove? Probably nothing, there are too many factors involved in the best match so I don't see how any of us can make conclusive statements after doing a few searches.
125
« on: January 03, 2011, 13:40 »
^^^ But when was that? I know exclusivity used to affect best match placement but all the research I've done of late indicates that it is no longer a factor. I did the same test when I became exclusive and all of the files I checked moved up in best match placement. That was only in September.
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