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Messages - disorderly
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1201
« on: January 09, 2010, 19:36 »
For me there are seven sites that perform: SS (31% over the last year), iS (21%), Ftl & DT (12% each), SX (10%), BigStock & 123 (6% each). I upload to all of these regularly, plus a few others as they give me sales.
1202
« on: January 07, 2010, 20:40 »
Oh, brother. A Mac costs a little more than a comparably equipped PC, assuming you can find one. And for that you get well integrated hardware and software, as well as a set of applications that run circles around the Windows competition. You also get the benefit of a Unix/Linux workalike under the hood, which I love.
As for the iPhone, it's rather more than a phone. In fact, most of the time I spend on it isn't for calls; it's for web surfing, tweeting, tracking location, getting weather reports, identifying overheard songs, finding restaurants and a hundred other functions. Not so much a phone as a practical handheld computer, and one, like my Macs, that's worth what it cost me.
1203
« on: January 07, 2010, 18:38 »
I found the rejection noteworthy, but not necessarily the image. I've found submitting studio shots to iStock to be something of a crapshoot; my acceptances seem fairly random, and my sales of those images even more so. So I'll submit the image to Scout, on the off chance of a reversal. Doesn't cost me an upload slot, which I can use for another image from another shoot.
1204
« on: January 07, 2010, 15:44 »
Except... with the huge image backlog I have at iStock, it's not worth trying to resubmit. By the way, the tattoo in this case is tiny, taking up the ring position on the model's ring finger. Here's the 100% view of the offending area.
i am not a regular with IS, but if i recall, if they say MAY RESUBMIT it takes approval much faster when you CORRECT THE REJECTION REASON. at least it happened to me a couple of times.
I had a resubmit for possible trademark reasons (it wasn't but it was easily removed) accepted today, jumping some of my other in-queue pics by a few days.
Does no one read? My reason for not resubmitting is to not waste a second upload slot on the same image when I have so many others waiting to upload. With only twenty upload slots a week, I'd rather move on to another image from another shoot. It's not about where it would end up in the queue, but about how many I can have there. And resubmits do take up those precious slots.
1205
« on: January 07, 2010, 14:12 »
Except... with the huge image backlog I have at iStock, it's not worth trying to resubmit. By the way, the tattoo in this case is tiny, taking up the ring position on the model's ring finger. Here's the 100% view of the offending area.
1206
« on: January 06, 2010, 23:53 »
I've had some stupid reviews from iStock before, including several that told me off for using an on-camera flash, when the shots were actually taken with studio lights. But this one's extra special. I will quote it in full: We regret to inform you that we cannot accept your submission, entitled Brunette ( http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/11540140/2/istockphoto_11540140-brunette.jpg) for addition to the iStockphoto library for the following reasons:
++Letter on finger++ This file contains legible information such as names, signatures, license plates, phone numbers, identification numbers, etc. Due to concerns relating to privacy and related property rights, we cannot accept this file unless this information is removed, or a property release is obtained.
A property release. For a tattoo on the model's finger. What in the world am I to make of that? I've sent a query to Scout, which will take a month or two and probably leave me just as confused. It's times like this that I'm glad of my independence.
1207
« on: January 06, 2010, 09:58 »
I'd like to add my voice to the chorus. Ignoring the expense of working with a model and the desire to recoup that expense with as many good images as possible, I believe that offering a large number of poses of the same individual in the same outfit and setting is of value to buyers. It permits them to find the pose that's the best fit for their concept, something even small differences in images can affect.
Perhaps the problem is that your search mechanisms don't offer a set of related images in a way that's convenient for the buyer, giving a few representatives on the first pass but then delivering the rest when he or she dives in. But however they're presented, I'd argue that a larger number of similar is a good thing for the buyer. By discouraging it, indeed, by reducing my ability to upload based on an acceptance percentage damaged by "too similar" rejections, you are doing clients and submitters a disservice.
1208
« on: January 04, 2010, 19:38 »
I got two as well. A nice surprise.
1209
« on: January 03, 2010, 10:33 »
I won't draw any conclusions from one month's results, much less a month with major holidays. December was down across the board for me, but still much better than 2008. The next couple of weeks will be a better indicator. In any event, I don't see any signs of systemic problems with DT. My only complaint (okay, I'd also complain about their attitude toward image series) is that their minimum payout is too high. I can make a payout just about every month with all the other majors; DT's the only one where I can't.
1210
« on: January 03, 2010, 10:29 »
SS | 23.5% | -21.8% | iS | 19.9% | -15.6% | BigStock | 13.6% | +71.7% | BME | Ftl | 10.8% | -8.0% | DT | 10.4% | -13.1% | SX | 10.3% | +45.4% | 123 | 8.8% | -46.0% | CanStockPhoto | 1.1% | +28.8% | Cres | .9% | -55.4% | Veer | .8% | -35.7% |
1211
« on: January 02, 2010, 09:26 »
Of course, if not many people take them up on the offer, they haven't given away all that much 
Except the good will of those who've been with them since the beginning and were shunted aside in favor of the few iStock exclusives they might have attracted. My feelings about Fotolia continue to sour.
1212
« on: December 27, 2009, 20:07 »
Graphic Converter (Mac) - keywording; also for building web catalogues
1213
« on: December 27, 2009, 11:19 »
Just posted to iStock's Twitter feed: Note to Avast users, Avast has corrected a false positive. Update your Avast VPS. http://bit.ly/75e4cR
1214
« on: December 24, 2009, 15:23 »
Assuming for a moment that this discussion is anything other than academic, wouldn't it be easier to either start a new agency or acquire one and let the contributors become stockholders in the new firm? That way they could make money either from their sales or from the value of their shares. And entrusting decisions to a management team will work better than waiting for a consensus to form.
Of course, that leads to the first big hurdle: making that agency a success against much larger and well entrenched agencies that are already in place. That'll require marketing, and that takes money. Unless submitters are willing to front the expenses of a startup, someone else will have to be found. That someone will expect equity, which takes away from the submitters' share. And we're back to a set of big questions: is there room for another agency, how will it differentiate itself, and how will it find a large enough customer base in an already crowded market?
1215
« on: December 24, 2009, 10:26 »
Woo! Free images! Whose smart idea was that?
Isn't that how iStock started to operate ?
Started, yes. But then they figured out that people were willing to pay. Do we really want to go back to the beginning?
1216
« on: December 24, 2009, 09:34 »
PowerDroid,
The lower (blue) line is revenue for the month. Due to seasonal variations, it bounces all over the place. I don't track RPI and haven't since I started shooting with models two years ago. That's because my RPI dropped like crazy with studio work, even as my bottom line revenue increased. Shooting isolated objects or scenics or other subjects, I'd get a small number of shots in a day and have (I hoped) a high RPI. But shooting with models, I can get as many as a hundred usable shots from an hour session. Individually they don't sell terribly well, but as an aggregate they do. So even as they lower my RPI, they do good things for my bottom line.
Hank
1217
« on: December 23, 2009, 20:45 »
As for other sites refusing to remove the image because of their policies ... well their policies don't matter in a court of law and if the new owner of the copyright does not want them distributing it then the site must remove it immediatly or risk getting slapped with infringement charges.
I would be surprised if what you say is true. Having made an agreement with a group of agencies to offer an image, the photographer can't simply break that agreement and sell the rights to another unless those other agencies agree to relinquish their rights. They're likely to agree; there isn't much reason for them to object. But they don't lose those rights just because you change your mind. That's the point of a contract: that it be binding on both parties. I also wonder about your claims that DT's SR-EL transfers copyright. They talk about transfer of ownership, which, not being a copyright lawyer, may not also require transfer of copyright. In fact, they say explicitly that the purchaser may not sell it as a photo, which suggests that they don't get all the rights held by the original creator. I'm reminded of the SCO purchase of Unix, where despite SCO's lawyers' best claims, copyright did not transfer. But again, I'm no lawyer and have no idea what a court would decide based on the agreements DT has written up.
1218
« on: December 23, 2009, 18:01 »
I tend to get pretty cranky when I read the perceived wisdom of a new microstocker, full of pronouncements based on a couple of months' sales of a couple of hundred images. Part of that reaction is general crankiness; I've reached that age, after all, and enjoy the privileges it confers. But part of it is my own experience after doing this for a while, and my own understanding of the proper use and limitations of statistical methods.
It's generally a bad idea to extrapolate from small data sets. That was brought home to me today, when I saw that my balance at BigStock has nearly doubled since the last time I'd checked. Lo and behold, this doubling was the result of a single extended license sale, the equivalent of between 40 and 80 regular sales there. That was enough to vault BigStock from 7th to 3rd place for December, and to make a mockery of any attempt to estimate my sales for the month.
Fortunately, I've figured out a better way to look for revenue trends. Instead of looking solely at sales by month, I've adopted a 12 month moving sum. The idea is that for each month I add all the sales for the past year, with November including everything from the previous October, October going through the previous September and so on. Not only does this give me larger numbers of sales, so a single or even a few surprises won't affect the total much, but it compensates for seasonal variations; every figure includes a result from every month of the year. So assuming sales tank in December, or during summer holidays in the Northern Hemisphere, what I'm seeing are the success of my growing (and partially aging) portfolio, the microstock economy and perhaps the economy as a whole.
The attached graph shows two trend lines. The blue line tracks monthly revenue, the red shows revenue for the year leading up to that month. Blue shows an increase in revenue, but it's hard to tell with all the variation in customers' buying habits over the course of the year. The red line makes the trend more obvious, and shows where my portfolio was gaining real traction. Of course, I could also track the size of my port or other events that would explain the trends. But the important thing is to eliminate as much of the noise as possible and concentrate on what's happening over the long haul.
I hope somebody else finds this interesting. It does require of course that you have enough data, which is why my graph begins around my first anniversary with Shutterstock and iStock. Before that point, I just didn't have enough information to form an insight. Oh, and apologies for not including any scale information. There is such a thing as oversharing, right?
1219
« on: December 20, 2009, 19:30 »
I wouldn't be too worried if I were exclusive.
I wouldn't be quite so sanguine. First, they could be lying; their goal may in fact be to make more money for themselves, and hope enough trickles down to the exclusives to keep them quiet. Alternatively, their goal may be as stated, but are they competent enough to achieve it? These are after all the same people who can't read IPTC data from images reliably after years of trying (or not trying). They find difficult what every other microstock agency has accomplished. Doesn't give me a lot of confidence in their ability to execute.
1220
« on: December 18, 2009, 23:10 »
I wonder. If he's selling everything on, why wouldn't that transfer the purchased license as well? Requiring a purchaser to relicense all the imagery in all their brochures and websites and the like seems an unreasonable burden to me.
1221
« on: December 18, 2009, 21:57 »
I've been thinking about the canister changes, and I realized that the only problem I have with the change is that my paltry upload quota might remain just as paltry for another five years. I'll never go exclusive with iStock, or at least can't imagine a scenario where I'd consider it. So the only benefit I can see is the chance to work through my image backlog just a little faster when I hit gold.
Which is only a problem because iStock has made it a problem. You see, there are three different features that have been tied to the same milestone: upload quota for independents, upload quota for exclusives, and commission rate for exclusives. Right now they all hit at the same moment: with X downloads.
But why? Why does the change in uploads for independents and exclusives have to hit at the same point? And why does that have to be tied to exclusives' commissions? If the reason for changing the goalposts is one of cost, surely the cost of reviewing a few more images a week (and only for those of us who fill our quota every week) is small compared to a bump of 5% in commissions for the other guys.
If I were running things, I'd separate the commission increases from the upload quotas. I might not use the same download count for both, or I might use a different one for independents vs. exclusives. But the point is that I'd let independents have that one tiny benefit sooner rather than later. 10,000 downloads is a lot; enough, I'd argue, to justify a few more uploads a week.
1222
« on: December 18, 2009, 10:57 »
I can see the Brits' point. If you're advertising a miracle cure for signs of aging, shouldn't you have to limit yourself to the miracle cure? At what point does it go from advertising as usual to outright fraud? And this is separate from the question of what all this editing does to our perception of beauty and growing old gracefully and body image in general. Both the fashion world and mags like Playboy (Maxim for you youngsters) have a lot to answer for in that regard.
1223
« on: December 18, 2009, 08:27 »
In this economy, an 11% raise is a good thing.
It would be, if that's what we get. But in this economy, a price increase is likely to reduce sales. How much is anybody's guess, but I expect it'll be nonzero. A small decrease in sales will mean an increase in revenue for Fotolia and maybe one for us as well. A larger decrease will help them and hurt us, while a still larger one hurts vendor and suppliers alike. The big question is which of those scenarios will play out over the next year. Fotolia has dropped from 13.1% of my total in 2008 to 12.3% in 2009. Will this change reverse or extend that slide?
1224
« on: December 17, 2009, 17:22 »
I went for a stacked graph. One interesting fact jumps out: that I haven't seen a significant new player since StockXpert in 2006. Everyone else was already in place the year I started submitting. (Whether you consider SX a major player is another topic for a different thread.)
1225
« on: December 17, 2009, 14:46 »
If IS decide to put independents further back in the search I think that they will have less and less people going independent as the newbies will see it as a site where sales aren't very good.
I think you meant less people going exclusive?
Or maybe he means fewer new people joining as independents because it isn't worth it. I'd dispute this, though; even as an independent I do well enough there to make it a strong second to Shutterstock.
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