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Messages - ShadySue
15326
« on: February 06, 2010, 09:17 »
I think there is single credit sale, contributor gets 20 % of price, but that sales will be rarely, because it is subscription site...
Oh, thanks for the correction. I'm not sure it makes much practical difference, but it's good to be accurate.
At the moment, there's a one-off price for larger sizes on photos.com, and these are expected to be few in number. HOwever, on the Thinkstock front page it says: " Image packsDon't need a full subscription? Our 5, 25, 100, and 250-shot image packs are perfect for smaller budgets or per-project use. Check back soon for details." The prices which will be charged were released on a press release, quoted e.g. here: http://www.photographyblog.com/news/getty_images_introduce_thinkstock/The relevant sentence reads: "Additionally, Thinkstock will soon offer multiple-shot image packs, with prices ranging from $59 - $999, ideal for customers with smaller budgets or who require imagery for a specific project."
15327
« on: February 06, 2010, 04:20 »
I will completely freak out on them.
2. How can I delete my images them from Thing.conj if they are not checked on iStock???
3. If I wrote to them it will not be nicely to read and if I am happy maybe I will receive stupid ignorant answer within month or two which will dont solve my problem and during that time my files will be prostituted on their Thing sites because they have lots of open tickets (read "problems which they produced by themselves")
Keep it cool. Remember it's not the fault of the Support person who takes your call/reads your email. Just check that you really are opted out in your Control Panel, then write a nice email to Support asking for all your images to be removed from the Partner Program. Getting agitated will make your message less easy to understand. It's called 'red mist'.
15328
« on: February 05, 2010, 18:25 »
Another day has now gone by and my images are still on thinkstockphotos...even though I opted out a long time ago. They can call it a h*ckup or a f*ckup or whatever sweet little terms they have going on over at the IS forums, but basically it doesn't seem to matter whether a person opts out or not.
I find it hard to believe my images couldn't have been removed in the past 3-1/2 days.
My oped out file is still there; I'm guessing they have a huge number of images to pull, and some poor junior is stuck doing it manually.
15329
« on: February 05, 2010, 16:16 »
I'd hope most people avoid this low paying fiasco.
Most people probably aren't aware, I haven't seen any email from iStock telling me that if I'd previously enrolled my images into the iStock subscription package they've now been shoved over to a new site paying the lowest commission in the industry, most people will probably carry on hoping for that illusive subscription sale where the buyer didn't use all their package leaving a big cut for the contributor.
The payment is the same as you'd already get at photos.com, though now its a much smaller percentage of the price that Getty rakes in because the annual sub is so much higher.My mistake; I misread your question. Your images shouldn't be opted into the Partner Program, i.e. Photos.com and Thinkstockphoto unless you have opted in to the Partner Program, either totally or image by image. However, there have been loads of mistakes, so you should check if there are any of your images on ThinkStock (by searching for your real name in double quotes) and if they're there, contact Support.
15330
« on: February 05, 2010, 12:35 »
Indeed the saga does continue and I think it will be a while before the dust settles with everything that is going on and we get to see a clearer picture.
On the evidence of the past year, there's no chance of that happening. In fact, they seem to have appointed a professional waters-muddier so that we never get a clear picture.
15331
« on: February 05, 2010, 03:12 »
Istock are actively pushing buyers away from their main site towards thinkstock. I couldn't believe it when I happened upon the latest istock contact sheet.
http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=731
So all that guff they fed us about it being a different market was just that - guff. They're trying to encourage iStock's customers to become cheap sub buyers. To be honest, I don't understand the argument of 'profitability' over 'turnover', but that's just me.
15332
« on: February 04, 2010, 19:12 »
last pic, as said they are dressed wrong,
Huh? I don't get that? How is that 'dressed wrong'? They're dressed casually for the beach. Would you expect business suits? ballgowns?
they are dressed smartly and would be great for lots of shots but for me if they are on the beach I'd want it to say summer and either swimming gear or shorts and t-shirts etc not jeans and shirts. Here at least you just dont see people wearing those sorts of clothes on the beach.
Here you certainly do. I didn't even blink at what they were wearing. It's probably a latitude thing.
15333
« on: February 04, 2010, 18:26 »
last pic, as said they are dressed wrong,
Huh? I don't get that? How is that 'dressed wrong'? They're dressed casually for the beach. Would you expect business suits? ballgowns?
15334
« on: February 04, 2010, 17:03 »
You gotta find something unique in your style and subject.
That's the easy bit. The difficult thing is the bit you missed out - "which buyer s want to buy"! (The plural is essential in micro, not so much so in macro).
15335
« on: February 04, 2010, 16:09 »
Hello,
I got this flickr message that they want to use my picture in a book about a German psychotherapist...it's a (nice) picture of Chinese Rice fields...only thing is I tooik it with my P&S, so it is not THE type of quality.
My top seller on IS was taken with a G9. I'm with the others, they want it, they pay for it - I think you'll be lucky to get the sort of fees mentioned above, but you never know. It may be that when you mention money, they'll run a mile (IME that usually, but not never happens).
15336
« on: February 04, 2010, 16:01 »
Thanks Sue...I figured it out. I opted in then went back and unchecked the ones I don't want on the Partner site. The ones I opted in on are the ones that never sell and have only sold a limited amount and that was when they were at the top of the barrel and not at the bottom. So maybe I'll get some sales on those forgotten antique photos sitting in their recycling bin or maybe I won't, but I feel 25 cents is better than 0 cents on these none performing photos.  I haven't made it up above the 25 cent level at Shutterstock yet...but getting close...so it really isn't that much different.
That's also my strategy for the moment. I suspect there may be some s**t hitting the fan before too long.
15337
« on: February 04, 2010, 14:11 »
Also, the default for the partner program is opted out. If you want to opt in, you have to opt in to the partner program and then go through your files and opt in each one individually.
If someone wanted to opt in all their pics, they could go into their control panel -> Contributer -> tick the box at Partner Program to opt into the scheme, then if you want to opt all eligible files in, you click 'add all'. If you want to remove all, you can do that too.
15338
« on: February 04, 2010, 12:09 »
Stop counting the numbers... Istock XL= 7.50$ XXL= 9.25$ XXXL= 11.20$ And that's only for a bronze canister
What you get elsewhere... 0.35$
The chances that Istock exclusivity give you what all other agencies give you are great. I know it does with me 
I sell very few at XL or above, but L at $6+ (Silver) is very nice.
15339
« on: February 04, 2010, 12:08 »
Informative post, thanks.
Supposedly the dominant factor nowadays is the keywords actually used when an image is purchased, the sort-order effectively being controlled primarily by the buyers __ which is how it should be.
Can you elaborate on this please?
Remember that the best match is made up of a number of factors and is subject to change. However, the implementation of BM2 had a factor built in which would auto-rerank keywords according to buyer popularity. So, say you had a bowl of apples. You keyword, bowl, apple, fruit. Someone buys it on a search for apple. Apple sort of 'gets a point' for buyer popularity. If the next time someone buys it on a search for bowl, apple, both of these words 'get a point'. If someone buys it on 'bowl fruit', these get a point. So now your first keyword is bowl, as that's been searched for twice. Note that it's not as crude or as simple as that. Some think that there would be a negative rating for keywords not searched on, but they've never replied to my questions as to why they think that, and I don't think that's true, but WDIK? It has the good side effect of pushing spam further down. For instance, if you had spammed 'pear' - as I used to see a lot when I started on iStock - the word 'pear' should quickly get moved to the bottom and out of harm's way on buyer searches. It's possible also that it would have an unfortunate bad side effect of buyer behaviour perhaps pushing a relevant search term down, for example if your first set of buyers bought on 'bowl' or 'fruit' or 'bowl fruit', your keyword 'apple', which is very relevant, would be pushed down and maybe wouldn't appear on the first page on a search for apples after a while.
15340
« on: February 04, 2010, 03:15 »
They even got that good looking guy with the great smile to do all those videos for them! Or maybe that wasn't about marketing to buyers...
I didn't see the videos, but "that guy's" testimonials about them roped me in.
I was VERY disappointed to learn much later that there was some paid sponsorship going on 
I'd never have imagined otherwise.
15341
« on: February 04, 2010, 03:09 »
*By the way, where can you opt in or out at istock???
As far as I know, the default is for both of these choices to be unmarked, so people essentially had to Opt in or allow files for either one. IS didn't just mark them for us.
Yes indeed; but it took quite a fight on the huge thread last summer: originally people were going to be opted in by default. Some people have, however, found their images in Thinkstock even though opted out, so it's always worth checking and if there's a mistake, contact CR.
15342
« on: February 03, 2010, 18:56 »
Are my istock images at risk of being sold at ThinkStock?
You'll need to check for yourself. I found an image of mine, which I deactivated last October, on there. Support are onto it, but I guess they have a huge mound of these issues to wade through.
15343
« on: February 03, 2010, 17:57 »
Thinkphotos looks like a mess to me at the moment. They should of at least sorted the search and got rid of some of the inappropriate images before launching it. I don't understand why people have such faith in Getty here. They might be the biggest company in the stock industry but I remember their share price was sinking before they were taken over. How do we know they have sorted out their problems and they are now going in the right direction?
Apparently it's a beta release, so hopefully they're right onto sorting out the bugs pdq. What scares me is that Getty are aiming to take over the photo universe; then they could well start squeezing the contributers, when there's nowhere else to go (as we've seen how difficult it is for new starts to take on Goliath).
15344
« on: February 03, 2010, 17:53 »
But it looks and operates just like Photos.com.
With the big difference that an annual sub for the same number of downloads is about $1000 more, yet contributors get the same amount per sale.
15345
« on: February 03, 2010, 03:17 »
As said above, iStock plays extremely 'safe' with both model and property releases.
In law, it's the jurisidiction in which the photos are taken which counts, BUT you can't expect inspectors to be au fait with the ever-changing laws in every country on the planet, so they seem to have taken the strictest possible interpretation of the law and run with it.
What you can do sometimes is check the laws of the appropriate country and submit that as evidence together with evidence that your photo meets that. For instance, if something is out of copyright 70 years after the death of its creator in a country, you can provide that information with an appropriate link and also evidence that the creator had in fact died over 70 years ago.
However, as also mentioned above, museum shots are generally no-go areas.
All that said, the PR issue shouldn't have been a big deal for submission shots.
Maybe you should be thinking of uploading to a site which accepts editorial images? Just a thought since the main uses of these image is probably travel books, text books etc.
15346
« on: February 02, 2010, 11:48 »
I also noticed a note on the support ticket page: * Please note * Due to an extremely high volume of tickets at this time, there may be up to a 5 day wait for ticket responses. If you require immediate assistance, please call us:
That note has been on the ticket page at least since I joined iStock in Dec 2006. Like several others, I found a pic I'd deactivated from iStock on Thinkstock.
15347
« on: February 02, 2010, 03:15 »
My figures were dls 25% down on Jan '09, $$$ 30% up, thanks mostly to a Vetta EL on Friday. (Compared to Jan '08, my Jan '10 sales are -45%, despite uploading about the same in 2008 and 2009 as in 2007. My 2009 pics haven't attracted much interest - not even 250 dls between them 
15348
« on: February 02, 2010, 03:02 »
There are two fact no one seems to realize:
1. Most of this collection - at least the top of the searches - are build from former macro images.
2. Images form microstock sources are far behind them in the search results.
Whatever reservations I have about Thinkstock, the assertion you made isn't (always?) true. I just did a search on 'elephant' and there were 19 iStock images in the top 96 (first one in position 10) in a search result of 4712 results, plus some from photos.com old collection. Admittedly only six/top 96 on a smaller result for 'handshake', but well mixed in. 40 of the top 96 (in a result set of 1284) goldfish are from istock.
15349
« on: February 01, 2010, 11:15 »
Probably most of the really successful microstockers use models. Just check out Yuri, for example. On the other hand, there are some high flyers with very few models, but carefully lit and arranged 'articles' arranged to fit popular concepts. I've also seen some people who are able to find models but whose work has been unsuccessful. Generally, there's a stock 'look' and 'style' (clue: the US is by far the biggest market), and you need to know what you're doing.
15350
« on: January 31, 2010, 13:29 »
It's a shame that although they credit the artist, they haven't credited the photo gs - isn't that an editorial article? (though as neither photo is stock exclusive, they may have bought the images from elsewhere).
Very interesting __ thanks for posting.
As far as the lack of credits is concerned, maybe the artist didn't want to reveal the sources of his 'inspiration'? I imagine it is much quicker to produce a picture from a montage of photos than drawing it from scratch.
iStock t&c state that credit must be given (artis/istockphoto.com) on editorial images, but I don't know the position of other agencies, or whence the images were bought.
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