But, to assure others here is web size downloaded from istockphoto published on German language site (Austira): http://www.ichkoche.at/Cevapcici-Kroatien/rezepte/detail/html/93283

Nothing personal but if this is the rejected shot you're referring to I think you should bow out gracefully.

David, you're basing this on the poll results of 140ish people where the people chooses between 0 and 10 on earnings and that has little to no discernible meaning. Not to mention many people don't participate in the polls because they're exclusive to iStock. You end up with a poll that is negatively skewed against iStock that doesn't really measure anything to begin with. When I was nonexclusive iStock was still my best performer because I had close to the same number of images on each site. That's the main problem with the poll, the only objective way to measure one site against the others when using many people's opinions is revenue per image per month.

In all fairness it's the same poll and same people voting that had iStock placed 1st a few months ago and now their results have put it 5th so yes it does have a discernable meaning, certainly amongst the people here anyway.
Plus the poll is designed to compare earnings amongst all the microstock sites, so obviously it's not aimed at iStock exclusives, however assuming that some iStock exclusives do still vote and vote iStock a 10 and every other site a 0 it would actually mean iStock are even lower than they appear in the results.

I'm non exclusive and up until a few months ago iStock were my biggest earner by far, now for me they are 4th. But as the poll is designed to take into account the majority iStock come out overall as 5th.

As for JPG magazine, I never read it and to be honest I used to get fed up of all the forum threads from people on microstock sites asking others to vote for their images, if I entered and won a contest I'd want to know my image won on merit not because I begged for votes.

Hi there,
Richard, worrying about quality of photos? Well then, follow your own advice and go out there and improve yours.

Firstly I didn't advise him to improve the quality of his photographs, I advised him it would be better to spend the time taking good photographs instead of writing a blog - please get your facts right, and my reason for saying that is that he has a small portfolio with not many sales, I for one would check his credentials and dismiss any of his advice because I don't feel he has the experience to back it up.

You don't have to read the blog, and most certainly you don't have to waste your time posting fruitless messages here. 

No but I can and I will if I so desire, it's a forum and we are free to choose to respond if we so wish, this forum has a special section for blogs and you'll notice on the second of his blog promoting threads I advised him that he should have posted both of his threads there.
 

When it comes to 'Lei' or 'Tu', I would strongly advise you to keep it on second person, 'tu'.
It is a friendlier, more open approach.
None of my Italian photographers friends would even think of getting ticked the wrong way by the use of 'tu', instead of the formal 'Lei'.
They're inteligent people, have read many books and blogs and know the proper etiquette.
'Tu' is just fine.

I have no idea what you are talking about, I haven't used 'Lei' or 'tu' in my reply, maybe your intelligent Italian friends could shed some light on what you're trying to say.

Finally, thank you, LebanonMax, for posting the link, for your efforts and your time.
Regardless of what has been said here, I'm sure there are a lot of newbies and more experienced photographers alike, who will find it useful.
Mille grazie,
Anna

Well Anna most of what he suggests is either very obvious in which case no experienced photographer would find it useful, or as in the case of copying keywords, is generally known as bad advice, or the other advice of participating in a 'show me' thread which I think you'll find most succesful stock photographers will tell you is a waste of time. 

However you clearly feel that I'm wrong so please give me a link to your portfolio so I can compare my low quality work with your much higher standards, and just so I can learn a lesson could you get as many successful stock photographers as you can to come here and tell me I'm wrong, and that writing blogs is more worthwhile than spending time taking good photographs.

Happy Christmas

This is in the wrong section, it should be in the:
 'Blindingly obvious information to get people to view my blog and hopefully I'll get some referrals from it' section.
 Otherwise known as 'Blog updates'

Happy Christmas 

Just had an email from Getty with their new model release attached, and IMO it's probably one of the best I've seen from any agency.

Tyler if you PM me your email address I'll send it to you and maybe you could put a copy up, it's a PDF and attaching that here is beyond my internet illiterate capabilities 

Two of mine, I was PM'd about this by another contributor on SS months ago, she was annoyed that SS weren't doing anything about it - guess she was wrong!

The extra $30 per file is (as the old saying goes) 'better than a kick in the nuts' especially when you consider that a lot of buyers on microstock go that extra mile as far as the license is concerned!

By the way Steve did you buy the calendar?

I've just been sent this, it was posted by Chad Bridwell on the Yahoo micropayment forum:

"Hello Everyone,

 Would any of you continue to do business with a grocery store, restaurant, beauty salon, airline, etc who continued to call you names and use derogatory language against you publicly?
 No logical person would do this. Why should Fotolia be any different? What
Bobby Deal has done over the years is appalling and Fotolia has been
very  tolerant until now. Calling us F**kers, *insult removed*, and Rapists, is
not professional and we do not have to tolerate this any longer.
After giving him many warnings we decided close his account.
 Chad Bridwell
 Director of US Operations
 Fotolia.com"

Clearly there is a history involved here that goes way beyond the issue of recent changes.


 

I'm getting the impression some people are missing being in a dark room with the smell of chemicals 

Bobby, I sympathise that your account was deleted.

However unlike the majority of people who have shown support I'm also a businessman and am fully aware that you are also, I appreciate that you have in the past taken part in a public campaign against certain changes, as have many, but like you I only do what is in my best interests, I'd be interested as to the nature of the phone call you made, where you asking for some kind of special treatment?

At the end of the day Fotolia have done nothing illegal in changing their terms, they owe you nothing, you are a supplier and nothing more, as such they have the right to terminate your account, you keep stating you were close to Emerald and now it would take three years, so what! were they supposed to wait for you to get to Emerald before making any changes, you had as much chance as the others who did reach that level but you didn't and they did, that's business.

You've mentioned them lining their pockets (or words to that effect) ummm... they're a business and how they run it and what they do with the proceeds is their business, they have just raised the price of the credits we get paid which I notice hasn't been mentioned much. Tell me when you have a good month do you give your models extra money? Do you explain to them how you spend your profits?

As has been pointed out they made it very clear anybody bad mouthing them would have their account deleted, you can't say you weren't warned, I would advise you to be careful regarding your future actions and statements on public forums regarding Fotolia because you could end up in a legal battle, you're pissed we can all see that and my advice would be to move on.

I'm annoyed about the recent change on Fotolia, however nothing they have done has changed the way my images are represented which is what I choose an agency for, they have just raised the commision I receive on any sales which IMO is a good thing.

As for the petition thing, then sorry I'm not signing it, and to whoever wrote it no he hasn't been fired because he didn't work for them.

Will I stop uploading there, nope sorry they're a reasonable source of revenue for me, and in case you're interested yes I was close to a rank change, but that's business and I have the freedom of choice whether to use them as a representative for me or not.
Same goes for iStock and their recent best match change which has effected me far more than Fotolia, again it's my choice.

I keep seeing a lot of people saying things like 'standing up for our rights' etc ..... what rights exactly? We do not work for them we are all self employed (technically speaking)  they are an agency we we choose to represent our work in return for a commission on any sales they make on our behalf.
Apart from any rights regarding the usage of our work under the license they sell for us we don't have any.
For those who are going to stop uploading in support of Bobby, your choice but at the end of the day who do you think is going to lose out the most?

Bobby I wish you well for the future.

If you didn't get the email it means your payment has been selected for sharing amongst all those that did, it's SS way of giving us all a Christmas bonus, when I say all of course that doesn't include you 

Or another way to look at it is that you probably deleted the email by mistake and you'll get your payment same as everyone else.

I misunderstood and thought you were talking about istock exclusives selling RF elsewhere, which of course is a BIG NO NO. 

I know one iStock exclusive who needed a change of underwear when they heard Getty were buying Jupiter 

I agree with sharphot. I think IS wants to dominate the marketplace, and an important part of their strategy is to have as many exclusive images as possible.

I agree that they want to dominate the market what site wouldn't, however I can't believe for one minute part of their strategy is to have exclusive images, because if it was they would offer an exclusive image upload process, I think they just want exclusive contributors. However I think this recent best match change has certainly buggered up that plan, a couple of months ago I was seriously considering going RF exclusive with them, I've just lost $1500 in a month due to this best match change, there is no way on Gods earth I would even consider going exclusive now, and I know for a fact I'm one of many who feel the same way.

I have a feeling (and nothing other than speculation to back this up) that the heads of Getty want iS to lose it's market share and have deliberately conjured up this recent best match change to do just that, within the past few months I've seen a lot of old time RM photographers start to make enquiries about iS and microstock in general with the view of testing the water and they had been getting good feedback, of course none of them would go exclusive and would try various agencies, what would happen if they started to see good returns? they'd reduce their uploading to Getty. Since this recent best match change and all the bad press it's got, most of these have now decided it's not worth bothering.
Like I say just my theory but I can't see any other reason why iS would have implemented this change.

In such a way that the two groups are starting to be unfriendly with each other. Some of my CN that are exclusives are not reacting anymore to contacts or have even expressed the wish not to be in my CN despite they have been initialy taking the initaitive to invite me. On the other side, some non exclusives are getting a bit agressive with exclusive.

I think money brings out the bad side in everyone, everytime iS change the best match it means one side or the other will be worse off as a result,  and the result of that is blaming each other.