Where's the food? I thought you were offering vouchers for 'Beefeater's' or something     

Then I'm also qualified to be a highly paid comedian.

Once you decide on which of these lucrative alternatives to microstock you want, can I have your images?

I'm going to buy a $69 microwave oven so I can make $250,000.00 per year as a master chef.

That's a brilliant idea. Seems like you're also qualified to be a BBC journalist.

If they have seemingly adopted a no tolerance policy in their forum, they should just do away with the forum altogether. They could at least have a 3 strikes and your out policy. istock once the apple of a contributor's eye, has become a laughing stock. Their site doesn't function properly, they give nothing but pocket change to their suppliers and these suppliers are thrown in the trash if they dare to voice their opinion in the forum.

Yes it's their company and they can do what they like and we are flotsam and go where the tide takes us. But we can get out, we really are worth more than what istock value us at. If istock fall from grace and it is a big if, it would be a lesson to any other agency to regulate itself in this seemingly unregulated market. Istock remember your suppliers, they made you. If you didn't exist they would still be able to flourish elsewhere, they don't need you, but you can not flourish without them. Just had to get that off my chest. 

The ability to "bulk" set your prices and edit your media details will be coming out early next week.

If you want to know your stats Warren, I can send you some information in an excel sheet but right now we don't have the views and downloads up on the site. Its a simple thing to do and will get done in the future though. Trying to focus as much as we can on what the buyer needs.

Could you kindly put all my images on at $99 at the largest resolution. It's great that you are focusing on buyers, but on your site I have micro and macrostock images and since the new site everything has been changed to micro prices, which also puts me in an awkward position in relation to other sites.

Quote from: Smithore on January 28, 2011, 12:06

I notice also the impossibility to reduce pictures size for shutterstock and other subscription site, it's easy to add and very useful, without that, I can't use picworlfow.
Thanks.

I have updated picWorkflow to let you specify for a destination the resolution (in steps of 1 megapixel) each image will be uploaded at. If any image uploaded is larger than the size you specify it will be downsized at 100% jpeg quality before uploading.

It will size as close to the megapixel as it can whilst still staying slightly above that number (so you can upload safely at an agency minimum), and will keep the frame divisible by a 'safe' number of pixels to avoid recompression artifacts (usually a size divisible by 4, but sometimes the height will cause a size divisible by 6/8).

It has also been requested to have an option to keep original filenames on export, this has been added too.
You can find both these settings on the credential management page under the 'Edit' panel for each configured destination.



Does that help Smithore?

Excellent. Thanks for that Bob. I'm enjoying using the service, great to see this new development.

I have sometimes sent agencies emails, only to find out that they replied with different addresses. If I hadn't checked my spam, I wouldn't have known they had replied. If you send it to the email they want you to send it to, their message won't go into spam when they reply.

I've added a group called Microstock Blogs, a public group for bloggers and those who like to read blogs. Here's the link http://www.microstock.me/groups/microstock-blogs-912218231/

The announcement is on their site. http://www.clustershot.com/
I got a sale once because I used the iSyndica syndication to Flickr, the images then went to Clustershot. It was around $100, so not bad.

Canstock is awesome. Recently, I have been sending stuff to Canstock first as they review so quickly. If something is rejected, I try and fix the problem and send it again. If it is rejected again, I don't bother sending it to the others. However, usually the new version is accepted and then I send this version to the others.

pfft... .

haha the best comment so far.

On one of the countless threads created on msg about istock in the past few months, I remember someone saying that istock takes and when the time comes gives something back, so as to appear as the good guy again. I've noticed other agencies doing exactly the same thing too. I wouldn't be surprised if these newly announced levels were the actual levels originally agreed on in the first boardroom meeting they had, probably in the spring or summer of last year.

Hi gostwyck,
 
 Those are great examples of what a company can do to make a huge profit and keep their content providers happy. Not only that but their providers have more money to make their photos even stronger. We are always having to settle for second best model these days instead of the model that we think would sell because of the overhead issue and our diminishing returns.
  I was trying to describe is the agencies were making tons of money at 50/50 when they changed it it was to increase their profit margin and it continues to grow to this day. Why not pay your people a reasonable share of the sales and still make a great company. Contributors would flock to Istock and they would reap the rewards of their followers with their strong business model.
 Nordstroms stores started here in Seattle as only a shoe store and they used to let you return a pair of shoes whenever you wanted for a replacement, no charge. That model is why Nordstrom grew so fast and strong, they had customer support that followed them due to their ethics and customer service. Now they are everywhere and they still offer good service.
 Why must a company try to pay the least amount possible to their workers, I think it will hurt them in the end. I know you get what you pay for and when I hire people to help me I try to offer them a good paycheck so they will bust their ass for me and return whenever I need them. Just my opinion.

Best,
Jonathan

Capitalism is a wonderful thing, but it isn't if it's not monitored at least to a degree. "I was trying to describe is the agencies were making tons of money at 50/50 when they changed it it was to increase their profit margin and it continues to grow to this day." There will always be cases of companies just wanting it all and their greed doesn't differ a notch in comparison to the heads of authoritarian regimes, they too want it all, they too can get away with it, because there is nothing to stop them.

iStock was a company already at the top of its game, when it decided to cut commissions. Other much smaller microstock companies offer 50% and although they only have a fraction of the contributors that iStock have , they stay in business for years and years. Dreamstime, was already in the top 4, when it decided to reduce the 50% commission that it offered, but it hasn't become a bigger player since taking more of the profit. There is no reason to believe that a company offering decent commissions can not be successful. I simply don't believe that a company already taking 80%, needs to take 85% to keep its head above water. They just want more money, it is that simple.

"Why must a company try to pay the least amount possible to their workers, I think it will hurt them in the end. I know you get what you pay for and when I hire people to help me I try to offer them a good paycheck so they will bust their ass for me and return whenever I need them." It won't hurt them, most of us couldn't get our foot in the door when there were only traditional agencies, correct me if I'm wrong here, because I actually never tried. Microstock came along and we can all have our bit of fame as well as the opportunity to make some money from our images. You will always get the contributor though, who will be just happy to sell his stuff or get a thrill from seeing lines on a stat chart going up, no matter what he is paid or how much he is actually earning. In microstock you don't get what you pay for, you get a lot more, as a buyer anyway. The quality of work these days is astounding and buyers get a great deal for their dollars. Microstockers who are making some money from this have already bust their ass for a lot less than they would probably like, but if they decide that they don't want to do it anymore, there are plenty of others who will replace them. There are not too many reasons to think of why an agency would want to pay us well.