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Messages - gbalex
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1076
« on: May 09, 2013, 06:30 »
I work on both a PC and MAC and the keywords still will not copy to the clipboard.
1077
« 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down cost per sale; while they leave us to struggle with serious bugs caused by underlying technology which is old and outdated.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 unmanageableQ: 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
« 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.htmlShutterstock 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
« 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.
1080
« on: April 30, 2013, 22:24 »
don't get that many downloads at Bigstock, a couple of subs a couple of credits
BS is 10% of the earnings I get on shutterstock. which matches resonably well the the earning ratings on the right.
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
« on: April 30, 2013, 18:14 »
Ok, I knew this thread would probably end up going this direction. So, let me ask a question...
Why does everyone think that Shutterstock will intentionally move it's customers to BigStock. It simply doesn't make sense. While I understand the outage over the subscriptions and lower royalties, some of the reasoning (conspiracy theories) for this outrage seems flawed to me.
It makes sense for them to move customers to Bigstock if they make more money doing so. If they pay contributors a lower royalty rate it would make sense. I guess you are saying they are paying the same or more to Bigstock contributors as they are to Shutterstock contributors?
Even if the profit margin was higher at BigStock, Shutterstock would never intentionally direct it's customers away from SS and push them to BS. That is just not logical at all.
If Shutterstock wanted to make more money, we all know how they would do that, by cutting commisions at Shutterstock. BigStock is being run as it's own agency with it's own rules and it's own pricing and commission structure. It's clear to me that BigStock is targeting a different buyer.
Here is what is confusing... have you looked at the numbers?
A 12 month subscription that allows up to 50 downloads a day at BigStock costs $2879. Which, if the buyer downloaded 50 images every day for a year would cost the buyer $.16 per image, yet Bigstock will pay at least $.25 to the contributor for each sub download.
If we assume that each contributor only gets the minimum $.25 per sub download, BigStock is assuming that the subscriber will use no more than 30 or so images per day, otherwise they'll be losing money on each download.
Look at the 20 download plan instead, it's the one closest to Shutterstock's plan out of 20 dls per day they break even with 17 images per day downloaded at 25 cents while Shutterstock's 25 dls per day plan at 38 cents breaks even at 17 images per day also. This means Shutterstock breaks even with 68% or less of files being downloaded while Bigstock breaks even with 85% or less of the quota being used. Shutterstock is on a path where all contributors eventually will reach 38 cents so to up their margins they could cut royalty rates or try to get buyers to move over to Bigstock. The actual numbers are probably almost the same right now but going forward Shutterstock contributors will be more expensive to pay and Bigstock contributors will be cheaper.
My guess is right now the bigger focus is on switching buyers from credits to subscriptions within Bigstock, the cost of paying contributors is probably cut in half if they can do that.
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
« on: April 30, 2013, 12:34 »
Subscriptions at BigStock have clearly started to gain in popularity based on my numbers.
Although there is half a day left in April, I'm finding my sales numbers to be somewhat interesting and I thought I'd share what I'm seeing.
Subscriptions officially launched in February I believe, and I saw sub sales increasing through March which was by BME at BS.
My April numbers show a 96% increase in files sold over March (previous BME) - Revenue was up 52% over March (previous BME).
Obviously, I'm selling more for less on the new sub model.
Now, since I am on "the Bridge", my sub sales are at $.38 each. If I understand correctly, after six months, my sub sales will go down to $.27 each. If I adjust my April sales number to reflect a $.27 sub sale, my revenue increase for April would drop to 32% over March.
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
« on: April 28, 2013, 14:15 »
Hell all,
Thanks.
Our team has been contacted about this.
For any other issues, inquiries or complaints regarding potential legal issues with content on Shutterstock, please email [email protected].
Thanks again,
Scott
VP of Content
Shutterstock
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
« 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.
First, I don't encourage disrespectful treatment of agencies but most (!) of us have expressed clearly our dislike towards iStock in the past.
Axel, doing business from Germany, who IS most likely German, is nonetheless still dealing with a language and cultural barrier. How do I know? I'm German and I'm working in microstock for over 8 years now from the US.
Despite trying to understand different business practices it is sometimes unexplainable how some decisions by certain agencies are made. In any situation, misunderstandings can be the cause.
I get the feeling that Axel did not accurately state the issue at hand, which is not something he did intentionally in order to confuse anyone.
I can see how utterly frustrating it is to fight for image approvals that simply do not require MRs - ALTHOUGH this is at the discretion of the agency!
I believe Axel has had such issues in the past regarding MRs or PRs for images that are quite generic and I can see that it is aggravating, especially if these kinds of images are your bread and butter.
So here is what I see is happening (I hope this is correct and probably helpful for others to understand):
- Axel uploads an image to IS which gets rejected due to a missing MR/PR.
- Axel contacts the same person he has been dealing with at IS previously. That's something I do as well if I have a contact at an agency who helped me before - to speed things up.
- During the conversation between Axel and his contact at IS, apparently Axel argued why he requires a release for that specific image "providing" critique to IS, which we all know can be quite "unhealthy" in terms of continuing a working relationship with IS.
- Since the issue about the MR/PR was somewhat negligible, IS got ticked off and is now trying to find irregularities in his account in order to get him booted (Axel's words - NOT mine!).
- This lead to the communication about whether he is uploading content that may not be his as he is running a business in Germany employing other photographers.
- IS is inclined to assume that Axel is uploading content that is not only his work, which most likely can only be legally "contained" by having Axel fill out a PR that explicitly states it is all his work OR asking the photographers he is working with, if any of the content belongs to them (which is unfeasible).
- So in the end Axel feels discriminated against because, despite uploading as an individual to IS, IS now assumes he is uploading other people's work.
I hope that this is a rough run down of the issue. I may very well be missing points.
But still, as we all have signed contracts with our agents, I don't understand why some agents still treat us like garbage. If IS is sooooo concerned about the legal implications of Axel uploading other people's content why don't they just sue him then? No, instead, they give him the runaround.
It does go without saying however, that he is free to leave IS any given time.
I just want to point out that it happened to me as well in the past where I was treated like a criminal by several agencies and it took an awful lot (and lots of time) to sort things out.
It's a very uncomfortable feeling, knowing you haven't done anything wrong and being accused of something.
If I got facts wrong, please disregard this message. 
Take it easy fellas.
 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
« on: April 25, 2013, 14:02 »
Just flicking an 'upload limit' switch, then sitting back to watch the dollars roll in is not likely to cut it.
I'm not sure why removing the upload limit would cause 'the dollars to roll in'. It doesn't increase the number of sales, just the breadth of choice for buyers surely?
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
« 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.
1087
« on: April 21, 2013, 17:10 »
1088
« on: April 20, 2013, 19:05 »
Everything started to happen at the same time.
1. Editorial split between hard and soft editorial
2. Editorial now need credentials before submitting for certain events
3. Shutterbuzz known image restrictions was being updated
4. Vector and illustration artists now need to submit the original sketch
5. Review times started to go over 35 days
6. Weird and false image rejections start to happen
7. Announcement of Offset
Shutterstock is moving, reorganising and adapting. We are feeling the pain of these changes, as well, until it all sorts out and settles down again.
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
« on: April 20, 2013, 18:59 »
I also wonder if they are not shifting resources from SS to get Offset kicked off.
That's another possibility which I hadn't considered. But I thought Offset was still vapor - is it already happening?
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
« 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
« 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
« 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 "
1094
« on: April 11, 2013, 15:20 »
Jasmin, lol, I think tickstock has that special superpower that only anonymity can generate
@gbalex: it's the new agencies, the fair trade agencies and those that genuinely follow suit that are going to affect change in the stock industry. I don't think we can cleanly differentiate between macro/micro/traditional anymore; pricing tiers are all so varied, as is licensing today. royalties have been crunched in traditional as much as in microstock. in some ways, we've hit close to rock bottom and it is the new models that prioritize keeping artists comfy and cozy that will probably lead us into the next evolution in the stock industry. there will be bugs, issues, hurdles no doubt but we're all primed for change.
I agree
1095
« 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.
I'll say for SS, Jon Oringer and his execs are photographers first. They're artists and actively participate on the frontlines. So I give them more leeway than the upper echelon suits running iStock. having said that, I'm not loving piddly amounts for dls on SS thus far. but these are early days and I don't have enough files up yet. Offset has me intrigued too, which tells me they're thinking in the right direction.
Guess you believe the marketing hype. Jons Port. Dont know what happened to 30,000 Images. http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-ushutterstock.html
1096
« 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.
I cannot fathom what GettyCarlyle's long term plan is for the iStock brand; unless it's the seemingly obvious of squeezing every ounce of profit from the former iStock business unit and it's contributors for short term gains. That may be profitable for Getty and Carlyle, and they can sell off or write down the empty husk, but it's not sustainable for iStock employees, it's buyers, or it's contributors. iStock tweets daily now, welcoming new exclusives, but conspicuously absent is any appreciation for veteran exclusives -- whether they are staying exclusive or departing after bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.
After the buyouts, there is little hope for a sustainable career path as an iStock exclusive, unless you can land a spot on the inspection team. The supplier cycle becomes: welcome hobbyists and newbies, grow them a bit, but with RC based royalty growth suppression, income peaks and levels out prematurely, professionals must nab a subcontractor job or find other venues for growth. Generally, it's up, then out. Over the long haul in this pattern, the average level of experience of iStock contributors falls. (And by extension the overall quality of the library.) If they were still aiming squarely at microstock price points, it might work. But selling at close to mid stock prices, with a contributor base trending toward more inexperienced, and one that increasingly cannot earn enough to hire good locations and models... it just doesn't add up.
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
« 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.
Scott, you implicitly suggest that "RM" work and "assignment" work is for some reason superior to what is selling currently on micro agencies. It was true 5-7 years ago; but now your content is completely different. You are already selling former RM and assignment work and equivalents of. I am puzzled why you would consider creating this collection now - why take a step backwards?? I really don't understand your statements about "higher quality" - but I do agree with your implications that people don't quite understand what this collection is about - I don't. Why some photographers are "more equal than others"? National Geographic content is superb, but so is content from some of your better contributors. Shutterstock should know better than anyone that it was new technology that brought images prices down, not "inferiority" of the micro content. Taking a bunch of images that haven't been sold on micros before and calling them "superior" will not fool anyone, including your buyers, but it is creating negative feelings among your contributors.
+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
« 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.
I agree with you about the new rates with BS. That's such a huge error and I'm still in shock that Jon Oringer didn't step in and fix that. I'm sure a large part of the success of SS is because they haven't cut commissions like the other big sites in recent years. They've shattered that by allowing a site they own to pay us less commission for subs.
But I don't think IS/GI are clever. It would of been easy to crush the other microstock sites at one point, by paying us a bit more. Then when there was little competition, they could of got away with cutting commissions. Instead, they ruined their reputation with the majority of contributors and built up their competition. Why would clever people make such a dumb mistake? It might not of killed istock but it's so damaged now that I can't see it ever dominating the microstock business again. They missed their chance and they wont get another one.
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.
It is happening to me now  ......what is sad is I must now upload new content on IS again so my microstock income does not suffer during my time off from SS. This then just aides in a IS recovery but being a full time stock artist I have little choose. Thanks for your post
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
« on: April 09, 2013, 11:07 »
I also haven't noticed there being more rejections on SS
Nor have I. If anything the opposite. When I do a search and then click on 'Newest' I'm often appalled by what they have accepted, both in quality, quantity and also in keyword spamming. Fortunately the SS search facility is sophisticated enough to make most of those images 'disappear' fairly quickly.
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
« 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 agree with you about the new rates with BS. That's such a huge error and I'm still in shock that Jon Oringer didn't step in and fix that. I'm sure a large part of the success of SS is because they haven't cut commissions like the other big sites in recent years. They've shattered that by allowing a site they own to pay us less commission for subs.
But I don't think IS/GI are clever. It would of been easy to crush the other microstock sites at one point, by paying us a bit more. Then when there was little competition, they could of got away with cutting commissions. Instead, they ruined their reputation with the majority of contributors and built up their competition. Why would clever people make such a dumb mistake? It might not of killed istock but it's so damaged now that I can't see it ever dominating the microstock business again. They missed their chance and they wont get another one.
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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