Hi Ryan,  if by 'PT' you mean Pacific Standard Time, then your outage seems to be running over by seven hours.  I cannot login and am getting the 'sorry' page.  Nothing on Twitter - did something go wrong?

Hmm, no thanks.
StockFresh was way more professional and well-supported when it launched and it has gone nowhere without a decent marketing budget.  I wish you luck as I think you are going to need it.

Stockcube, check it out, their minimum payout for bank transfers is $500 and they charge $50 for that.

So why not withdraw to your paypal account and transfer to bank from there?  Like I said, it's free....

Quote from: stockastic on December 01, 2011, 13:06

Quote from: ShadySue on December 01, 2011, 08:53

As of this moment, the listed jobs are:

Contributor Relations Representative (G-CAL 11336)
Calgary, AB, CA

Lobo is leaving?!  Or is that Rob's old job still unfilled?

Hi, I just wanted to point you in the direction of my blog if you haven't found it already.  I am a former iStock exclusive that left in October last year.  I have been blogging on independence with full earnings transparency every since.  It also links to a forum page - in one thread Doxadigital talked about a deal he came to with Shutterstock re asking to have his application accepted but put on hold to stop his images going live for sale before his exclusivity fell.  It might be useful for you:

http://stockcube-stockcube.blogspot.com/

Best of luck

I'm sure the childish error messages were just an attempt to laugh off the seriousness of the issue and downplay it.

My, how we chortled.

Thanks for the analysis Don, that was very interesting to see.  You are right that I am earning about half at the moment, but if you had slavishly read every word of my uber interesting blog,  then you would see that is because my life kind of went down the toilet at about the same time as I quit iStock.  I'm not going to go into details, but it is probably an achievement worthy of some special sort of medal that I have managed to upload elsewhere at all. *takes discreet bow*

Prior to this month, I had uploaded just over 100 images and you are quite right that I of course chose my best images to upload first, so a direct extrapolation is maybe a bit flattering.  I do think that if I got my finger out I could easily match my old exclusive income though.

I won't be uploading all my 650 iStock images elsewhere - quite a bit of it is dross from my early days that I am a bit embarrassed by, which iStock are welcome to.  As brutal as the Shutterstock inspection process is, it has definitely taught me a great deal about stock and refined my eye as to what to submit/shoot.  When I look at my teeny port on SS, I feel quite proud of it, less so with my iStock port.  Coming out from behind iStocks skirts will be good for me in the long run, I am sure.

ps - Don, can I be the first to hit you up for an SS referral? 

Quote from: gostwyck on November 29, 2011, 05:22

Quote from: RapidEye on November 29, 2011, 02:15

By the way, I was at a party of South African media people at the weekend, mostly editorial types from magazines. Mentioning price, nothing else, they said they'd shifted most of their stock buying from IS to SS, with the occasional splurge on Getty and Corbis. No mention of Thinkstock at all. I'm really starting to get scared now.

There's nothing to be scared of. It's just business and the situation deserves to be assessed and acted upon with logic rather than emotion. It was emotion rather than logic that got most exclusives into the situation that they face now. The sooner they wake up and take action to safeguard their incomes the better for them.

If the traffic is rapidly declining from your one agency and growing elsewhere, which it is and has been for some time, then accept the situation, drop the silly bling and get your share of the action at the agencies where the buyers are doing their shopping. Istock have blown it, simple as that, and there's unlikely to be any way back for them. Istock have completely forgotton what the 'microstock' model, on which they built their business, is supposed to be about and have essentially morphed into 'Getty-Lite'. Prior to the sale of Istock in 2006 Getty was always regarded by microstockers as the 'arch enemy' that was insensitive to the needs of the market, charged their customers too much and abused their power over their contributors. Does that sound familiar in the latter day context? He who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it.

You're right in general. But, for me, it was never particularly about emotion. I wanted the higher exclusive upload limits at what was then the leading agency, with the prospect of doubled royalties, and I grew my portfolio fast. I was diamond in just over a year. At the time it was the right decision, though I've always remained slightly queasy about eggs and baskets.

As things stand now, I'm not one of those who's afflicted by declining sales. I can't explain it, except possibly that I've been producing better content as time has gone by; I might be doing even better as an independent. But for now it's fine for me at iStock. The worry is, for how much longer?

My real fear lies in the initial earnings crash that must follow dumping the bling. I have to support aged parents, young children, ex-wives, you name it. I have employees to pay. I lack the cash reserves to tide me over for more than a couple of months. What is someone in my position to do?

Get ready now for when you need to hit the ground running.  Get accounts opened in your name at all the agencies (you may already have done this to protect your name) and get all your keywords, descriptions etc into the metadata in the correct format for the other agencies.  If you contact the agencies personally then they will approve your contributor application without putting your images live for sale to allow time for your exclusive contract notice period to pass. If you have your whole portfolio ready to go along with the bandwidth to support uploading it then that will minimise the inevitable blip in income.  Inspection times in indie land are a lot less than at iStock so your portfolio should be live very quickly.  A contributor of your standing with the quality and size of portfolio that you have won't have any difficulty in reaching payout thresholds quickly.  A short blip versus standing by watching a steady decline whilst others stake their place with other agencies.  One you can do something about, the other you can't.  Whatever you do, I wish you the best of luck, you always seemed a sane voice on the iStock forums.

Thanks all, I have managed to get it set up to distribute to Fotolia and Photodune 

Ah, ok, thanks for that Steve and Micro.  I will have a dig around on Fotolia to see what I can come up with.   Also thanks Attilla - I am a strange one as I don't have any people shots in my port, so don't need releases.....

Incidentally, I tried to upload 5 images to a bunch of agencies last night as a trial, but so far only CanStockPhoto and BS have gone through.  It is now nearly 24 hours since I started the process, does this mean that something has gone wrong with the others?  The ones I am waiting for images to arrive at are Veer, DT, 123RF, Deposit, Yay and Crestock.  The icons are still showing amber on my Lightburner page.

Cheers

I have been uploading to Photodune.  I would agree with what others have said that having to retype the title is a pain, but I am getting through it.  I have been pleased to have two sales right away (only for 25c each, but it is a start), so I feel optimistic for the future with them.  Has anyone managed to link Lightburner to Photodune to automate the uploading process?

Cheers

I have exactly the same issue with them.  It is stupid and frustrating and makes me feel that I know a good deal more about photography than the reviewer, which does not give me any faith in the company at all.

I had a series of images of prehistoric standing stones rejected for not having a release and accepted as editorial instead.  I think that given that the guy who made them has likely been dead for around 5,000 years the odds of hearing from his lawyers are somewhat slim.

Its just plain silly.  I have also had large numbers of best sellers rejected.  I'm sorry, but I shouldn't have to resubmit or contact support about this - the inspectors should know better.  They are definitely bottom tier for me, mostly because I cant be bothered putting up with this incompetence.