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Shutterstock.com / Re: submit.shutterstock.com/portfolio/suggestions has stopped to work [?] or not?
« on: May 09, 2013, 06:30 »
I work on both a PC and MAC and the keywords still will not copy to the clipboard.
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to. 1076
Shutterstock.com / Re: submit.shutterstock.com/portfolio/suggestions has stopped to work [?] or not?« on: May 09, 2013, 06:30 »
I work on both a PC and MAC and the keywords still will not copy to the clipboard.
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Stocksy / Re: my recent Interview to Stocksy CEO Bruce Livingstone« on: May 08, 2013, 18:29 »
A refreshingly honest and frank interview that was packed with relevant information for our industry.
A few of the points Bruce made stuck out in regard to all of the sites and our position in the industry in general. I think some of the sites have outgrown their initial site infrastructure and instead of replacing it they apply fixes that are temporary at best and ineffective in general. We see more bugs popping up every day because the sites choose to pour money into searches that bring them more revenue and bring down cost per sale; while they leave us to struggle with serious bugs caused by underlying technology which is old and outdated. http://www.tukusheying.com/info/es_t_20130506102659.html (Q stands for Question, B stands for Bruce. All photos are provided by Bruce) Q: Why you sell iStockPhoto then? If we can go back and you have a second chance, what will you do? Sell it or keep it? B: I sold iStockphoto for a number of reasons. I had been struggling with the loss of my two brothers and my father. I had some partners in iStockphoto that I didn't want to work with anymore and wasn't able to buy them out or move them away from the company without having a lot of money. I needed to grow the company very quickly in order keep our lead in the industry and to do that I needed quite a bit of capital. The combination of those things weighed very heavily in my decision to sell iStockhoto. I was able to stay with iStockphoto and Getty for three years after I sold it. It grew very rapidly with Getty backing me. It was what happened after I left iStockphoto that eventually made me want to get back into the industry. I don't regret selling it. It was at the size that it had become unmanageable Q: I read in forum that people missed you. Why you leave iStock? B: I was asked by Jonathan Klein to take a back seat, step down as CEO and become a chairman with no real control. I didn't want to sit idly by while Getty cut photographer's pay while raising the prices. As a result, I had to leave. Q: Someone said if Bruce was controlling iStock now, iStock surely will be different from what it is today. Do you agree? Can I have your comments on todays iStockPhoto? B: If I were controlling iStockphoto, I would be investing in a long term strategy, not managing the budget by the quarter. I would firstly work on the underlying technology as it's old and outdated. It was never designed to be as big as it has become. The "best match" needs a lot of work, or could be removed entirely. The most important thing I would be doing is giving a larger share of the royalties to photographers. They should be fairly paid. Q: When did you have the idea to start a co-op stock agency? And why? Q: From what you stated in stocksy website -- 50% on regular sales and 100% of extended licenses, pays out all profits to artists... It looks like you dont want to make money on it? Is it a just a hobby for you, or a charity thing? Otherwise, in what perspective shall people understand this? We all know iStockPhoto is a revolution to traditional stock photo industry, are you doing a new one to microstock industry now? B: It is Stocksy's goal to distribute the wealth and profits among its photographer-owners, rather than hoard a reserve of cash. With a 50% cut, there is plenty of money for good salaries and to properly market a product. Every photographer should know this and understand that if they get anything less than 50%, they're not being fairly paid. I hope that photographers will demand more for their work. I hope that big agencies will wake up and realize they're lost without their artists and they need to do treat people better. I hope they focus on making a good product, not a good profit. The reality is that this situation is going to get worse before it gets better. Photographers will earn less and continue to compete in a sea of competition as the big stock houses load more and more bad stock images. 1078
Shutterstock.com / Re: Last SS Raise - May 13, 2008 - 2013 Q1 RPI download increases 8% to $2.29« on: May 08, 2013, 18:01 »
We are still waiting for a fair increase to our per image royalties. Our cost have risen each year and our increase is long past overdue.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/shutterstock-reports-first-quarter-2013-200500835.html Shutterstock Reports First Quarter 2013 Financial Results - Quarterly revenue increases 36% from prior year period to $51.1 million - Adjusted EBITDA increases 136% to $11.8 million - Quarterly image downloads increase 27% to 22.3 million - Revenue per image download increases 8% to $2.29 1079
Shutterstock.com / Re: submit.shutterstock.com/portfolio/suggestions has stopped to work [?] or not?« on: May 06, 2013, 12:01 »
I had the same problem, the first and only time I tested it out. I tried to use it with Firefox, Chrome & IE and none of them would copy the keywords to the clipboard.
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Bigstock.com / Re: Subscriptions taking off - How are your April sales?« on: April 30, 2013, 22:24 »don't get that many downloads at Bigstock, a couple of subs a couple of credits The earnings on the right match my own. But I have not uploaded to either site since the announcement, it seems counter productive to undercut myself. The only reason companies undercut the pricing of competitors is to gain market share. SS has proven by recent massive growth that they do not need to cut pricing to become and remain competitive. Their pricing is already very low. If you look to the right with a Earnings rating of 83.6 SS is at the top of the Big 4 tier and SS has the greatest market margin to lose to pricing wars. They are fully aware of that fact. 1081
Bigstock.com / Re: Subscriptions taking off - How are your April sales?« on: April 30, 2013, 18:14 »Ok, I knew this thread would probably end up going this direction. So, let me ask a question... Two good points, they kill two birds with one stone. It would be easier to discount the validity of daveh900's logic in the absence of internet traffic trends over the last 1 to 3 months. Use the link below and use the compare site button on either link to plug in BigstockPhoto.com. BS's traffic is up by +88%, while SS is down -5%. In the end time will tell and in the meantime we really need to ask ourselves why would a business use one of its storefronts to drastically undercut the prices of it's largest storefront when they are both offering the same product? http://www.quantcast.com/shutterstock.com#!traffic http://www.quantcast.com/bigstockphoto.com#!traffic 1082
Bigstock.com / Re: Subscriptions taking off - How are your April sales?« on: April 30, 2013, 12:34 »Subscriptions at BigStock have clearly started to gain in popularity based on my numbers. That is correct you will get .27 after July, which is 3 months @ your old rate. It will not take much for SS to convert current & large corporate customers to BS buyers over SS. And it is even more attractive to small buyers. @SS A one year subscription will net buyers 25 images a day, every day for $2,388.00 or slightly over $.26 cents per image. @BS A one year subscription will net buyers 50 images a day, every day for $2,879.00 or $.16 cents per image. Why submitters are not more outraged by this blatant undercutting is alarming. The giant * sound is getting louder as we speak. 1083
Image Sleuth / Re: 70GB packs of stolen Shutterstock images on Pirate Bay !« on: April 28, 2013, 14:15 »Hell all, How will SS follow up on this complaint. I.E. What is SS doing to actively protect contributors from this common type of infringement theft? 1084
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Bullied by Istock??« on: April 26, 2013, 14:31 »I have to jump in and remind a few people here that iStock is not some cuddly toy that just loves everyone back either. ![]() I am not sure what happened in this thread, I did not find it a struggle to read the OP's post and my understanding was similar to your synopsis. Is the language barrier really this much trouble for some? The OP's post's are not that hard to understand, if you take the time to read them. 1085
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Uploaded limits raised to 999« on: April 25, 2013, 14:02 »
Think cost per sale. Flooding the site with Low Cost Per Sale images will improve the bottom line, however by lowering standards it drives down quality perception by buyers. It is one reason I left IS when they started flooding & pushing buyers to the high cost crap they flooded the site with over the last several years. 1086
Shutterstock.com / Re: Review Time tracking experiment - is FIFO real?« on: April 21, 2013, 20:19 »
No one wants to have SS mad at them for outing issues.
You might have a better response if the questions were in the form of a detailed poll and the image numbers and dates were not visible. Something more detailed than the polls on this site. 1088
Shutterstock.com / Re: Answer for long reviews« on: April 20, 2013, 19:05 »Everything started to happen at the same time. I agree that most of the changes are recent. But some of us have been dealing with bizarre and inconsistent rejections and for several years. 1089
Shutterstock.com / Re: Answer for long reviews« on: April 20, 2013, 18:59 »I also wonder if they are not shifting resources from SS to get Offset kicked off. http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/09/finding-extraordinary-shutterstock-ceo-jon-oringer-talks-offset/ Snip 'TNW: How far away is a full public launch? No one has ever done it like this before. This is not typical of how a stock photo agency releases a high-end collection, so we wanted to test the waters. We wanted to see how people would react. We increased our workload by a lot to make this preview available to everyone. Its going to take a little bit of time.' Snip 'TNW: How is Offset being treated from inside the company? Does it have its own offices or team? Offset is its own brand, but its within Shutterstock. Its one of our agile product teams and its in the Shutterstock ecosystem. Its in our office and we refer to it everyday. Its not something thats in another office somewhere, separate. Its a part of Shutterstock. When we realize something important about the customers that Shutterstock has, we will apply that to Offset too. Anything we learn from the Offset collection, we will also take back to Shutterstock. We will keep them separate, but learn and apply to each.' Because SS is not upfront with us, we are left to educated guessing. They lost my confidence several years ago when almost every batch I submitted either went missing or did not show up in searches because of keyword bugs. If you look, the problem is still going on today and they just expect submitters to deal with it. Years to solve the problem while hard work and resources still go down the drain for some submitters and others have never experienced the problem at all. Again we are left to speculate; is it database scalability problems that SS can't or simply chooses not to address? http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=114196 1090
Shutterstock.com / Re: Answer for long reviews« on: April 20, 2013, 17:23 »I doubt that any contributors are being treated better in a systematic way. More likely it's just luck of the draw - which reviewing queue or contractor a particular submission gets sent to. It might be a totally random thing. I have thought that they put us in queue groups for a long time and it would also explain why some people can get large quantities of very poor images through queues while others are scrutinized for every tiny imagined flaw. For about 6 months I was convinced that the mythical Attila was my personal reviewer. I went from near 100% acceptance to nearly 100% rejections. After 6 or so months my reviews suddenly reverted to normal again. My reviews have been longer but usually under a week. I have noticed that fast reviews have much higher rejections rates lately and wonder if those are not done by a non human. I also wonder if they are not shifting resources from SS to get Offset kicked off. It is funny how reviews and customer support really started to lag once they shifted into gear to get Offset and BS ramped up for new and expanded business. 1091
General Stock Discussion / Re: Micro agencies breaking the rules?« on: April 18, 2013, 15:06 »
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&ei=kzRwUaSJDImoiAK75YH4Ag&hl=en&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://sellimage.org/%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DpsZ%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&u=http://www.plati.ru/asp/pay.asp%3Fidd%3D1498689&usg=ALkJrhjSYxJqG-1bUbmd5QHH7_9wNYMX4Q
"We present you with the software "Sellimage", which will effectively organize work with major photobanks in the local network of your company. You can quickly find and download photos, videos or vector on any subject. Without registration, without authorization, in a few clicks within your local network. In the basket you can add up to 100 files simultaneously. If you have already selected images to photo stocks Shutterstock, Fotolia and iStockphoto and know their numbers or references, get them in two steps! Just enter the number (ID) image. The cost will depend on the file of your paid subscription to photo stocks. Script "Sellimage" can be placed on the internal network of the company with access to it all the staff, all the files will be downloaded through a single subscription (without violating the license agreement with photobanks). On the demonstration site sellimage.org connected only 3 image bank. You can also connect other photobanks by simply specifying the data access API uses the official nastroykah.Skript photo banks. The files are downloaded in 1-3 minutes. If the file is not downloaded - all information is displayed in a user-friendly administration panel. The files will be preloaded directly with microstock (in the settings specified credentials of the paid photo banks). IN "Sellimage" is intended for corporate customers, as well as design groups have in personnel freelancers and remote workers. http://sellimage.org/ - demonstration of work (with limited functionality). All of the files may not be used for any purpose other than testing functionality of the service. Additional Information: Sellimage - automatic service for downloads from the world photobanks. " 1092
General Stock Discussion / Re: Micro agencies breaking the rules?« on: April 18, 2013, 13:08 »
Envato is also quoted as being available as well as SS video
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=http://sellimage.org/about/&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://sellimage.org/%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DpsZ%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official&sa=X&ei=kzRwUaSJDImoiAK75YH4Ag&ved=0CD4Q7gEwAQ "If the payment does not go with VISA or MASTERCARD - try to pay through the services QIWI, Wallet or Yandex Money (pre-register them and attach your bank card.) Available photobanks The script allows you to connect the following photobanks: Shutterstock - it is the largest American microstock, keeping millions of pictures, images and photos. Daily updated with new photo stock thousands of photos, vectors and illustrations that are demanded by designers and advertisers. Microstock can be found on the image for a variety of purposes on a variety of topics. With this script you can download pictures from shutterstock at any time of the day. Fill up balance on shutterstock you can purchase a subscription and the cost of the image will not depend on whether it is a vector or a photograph of maximum size and quality. The site photobank just buy Shutterstock vector or another illustration or video. Fotolia - a large and promising photoblog where designers and photographers are making every day thousands of new images. Today, this microstock stores about twenty-five million of illustrations, photos and vectors. Fotolia is an international seller of stock photography, in Russian corporate customers easier to buy a picture on fotolia using our script. You decide how to use these images: in promotional products, corporate brochures, on packaging, web-sites, multi-media projects, and so on. The site fotolia.com available images and videos of varying quality and size. iStockphoto - the oldest Canadian photo stock. The main advantage of the agency - largely exclusive images and very high quality. Also, this photo bank gives the opportunity to purchase not only photos, but also video and audio. Download photos from iStockphoto by the proposed software "Sellimage" is possible (as in the other photobanks) - at any time and up to 5 minutes! Online image bank of more than 10 million images of different subjects. Price image depends on its size and is expressed in credits. A video is also available with Shutterstock and content from all network services Envato: GraphicRiver (a huge number of source files in PSD, vector images, icons, textures and various add-ons for Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator). AudioJungle (Audio) VideoHive (video projection and After Effects source) 3dOcean (3D models and materials) CodeCanyon (plug-ins and scripts) ThemeForest (more than 2000 html themes and templates for popular CMS, such as: WordPress, Drupal and Joomla) ActiveDen (Flash source) If your image is in another image bank, use search duplicate images on the Internet - service tineye.com " 1093
Shutterstock.com / Re: Days required for approval on Shutterstock« on: April 12, 2013, 11:17 »
Yes many threads on SS with little or no answers from admin. Some people have been waiting for over a month. Just one thread example.
http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=128001&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=210 1094
iStockPhoto.com / Re: death of istock postponed?« on: April 11, 2013, 15:20 »Jasmin, lol, I think tickstock has that special superpower that only anonymity can generate I agree 1095
iStockPhoto.com / Re: death of istock postponed?« on: April 11, 2013, 15:05 »Let's hope other agencies watch what iStock has done and use it as a cautionary tale. Losing some of your longest term contributors by squeezing them relentlessly is not the stuff that business legends are made of. Guess you believe the marketing hype. Jons Port. Dont know what happened to 30,000 Images. http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-ushutterstock.html 1096
iStockPhoto.com / Re: death of istock postponed?« on: April 11, 2013, 14:39 »Agree with you Stacey!! Dropped my crown recently. Appreciating fresh motivation for shooting, energetic about diversifying, and experiencing a breath of fresh air each day by no longer being highly dependent on one company that's rudderless and unable to make positive moves for it's suppliers. Very good post and I am afraid SS is headed in the same direction. They have very little regard for the base which made them successful in the first place. Stacey made some good points in regard to agencies. 1097
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock 'Offset' - a new high end marketplace for stock photos« on: April 09, 2013, 18:21 »Forgive me if this will sound a bit negative. I do appreciate Scott posting info and clarifications here, however, the description of "Offset" images implicitly suggests that images I submit to Shutterstock are of "lower quality", "don't tell a story", not "authentic" enough and so on. I shoot with Nikon D3X and painstakingly process all my images to the highest quality standards. I work from raw and produce 70 MB tiffs. And, while I do have some isolated objects and other simple images in my portfolio, many of my images do tell a story and look natural and authentic. I am sure many other professional photographers who submit their best work to Shutterstock must feel the same way. +1 http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/09/finding-extraordinary-shutterstock-ceo-jon-oringer-talks-offset/ 'TNW: Youve partnered with some high-profile photographers to make the collection rather unique. How long has Offset been in development for? Weve been thinking about this for nine years, but it took about a year of work before it was ready to show the world. That was because we didnt want to use the images that are in Shutterstock. We wanted to go out and find new collections. We approached people with collections that have never been sold as stock before, for instance. We wanted to do something new and different. We didnt want to have just another collection that cost a little bit more; thats what you would expect from a stock photo agency. We wanted to go beyond that. By approaching National Geographic and some special photographers that have never sold stock-images before that was how we were able to create the Offset collection.' 1098
iStockPhoto.com / Re: death of istock postponed?« on: April 09, 2013, 11:15 »I'm not fond of IS (understatement) however I see SS becoming much less contributor friendly of late. This position toward new content (massive rejections) from SS and the new rates on BS just allows IS the breathing room it needs to recover. Sadly IS/GI is clever..... very clever and SS mistakes will allow a recovery for IS/GI. New content is king and who gets the most wins no matter how these companies want to spin the facts making it seem we don't matter......we do in fact we control the content and its flow. This is only my opinion.Massive rejections? I don't see that. They've always had some bad reviewers, like most of the sites. I occasionally get more rejections than usual but it's always been temporary and most of the time they've had a very high acceptance rate. Your welcome, I wish some more of the higher end shooters would speak out, however it is understandable why they do not. Yes it is sad in regard to IS. That said as you mentioned we do have more power over our income than we have been led to believe. If we buy into that and become fatalist the long slide will continue. Find some new sites instead of IS. 1099
iStockPhoto.com / Re: death of istock postponed?« on: April 09, 2013, 11:07 »I also haven't noticed there being more rejections on SS It is not fair to mention names, but you would be equally appalled by the excellent images from very high end shoots that are being rejected while they accept blurry, underexposed snap shots with tilted horizons of the same subjects in numerous identical renditions. 1100
iStockPhoto.com / Re: death of istock postponed?« on: April 09, 2013, 10:56 »I'm not fond of IS (understatement) however I see SS becoming much less contributor friendly of late. This position toward new content (massive rejections) from SS and the new rates on BS just allows IS the breathing room it needs to recover. Sadly IS/GI is clever..... very clever and SS mistakes will allow a recovery for IS/GI. New content is king and who gets the most wins no matter how these companies want to spin the facts making it seem we don't matter......we do in fact we control the content and its flow. This is only my opinion.Massive rejections? I don't see that. They've always had some bad reviewers, like most of the sites. I occasionally get more rejections than usual but it's always been temporary and most of the time they've had a very high acceptance rate. I think we judge sites bases on our experiences. A year and a half ago I started getting mass rejections at SS after 7 years of almost 100% acceptance. I am fine with rejections when they make sense, however these were completely off and the entire batch was always rejected. At one point I quit uploading because every batch was rejected and I was hearing the same thing from some very high end shooters. This went on for about 6 month and I took a long break from uploading to SS because of it. I started uploading again after a long break and found that once again that 99% of my images are being accepted. While everything is back to normal for me, I am not surprised to hear that other submitters are experiencing the former. If I had not experienced the bizarre run of rejections I would tend to agree with you. However my experience has coloured my view of the SS review process. I agree with your IS summary. As for BS, I suspect that Jon was involved with the entire decision and it is part of his long term business plan to improve cost per sale. |
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