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Messages - pancaketom
Pages: 1 ... 76 77 78 79 80 [81] 82 83 84 85 86 ... 91
2001
« on: April 09, 2011, 17:47 »
I'm sad that it had to come down to this for anybody. We all would have been happier if istock had not been sold to Getty/H&F, whoever.
I completely echo this. What's been going on at Istock for the past 6 months or more is not good for ANY contributors ITLR.
Would love to see them get the search and site functionality back on track so everybody can start making (more) money again.
Agreed, but I'd REALLY like to see them get their commission %ages back on track too.
2002
« on: April 08, 2011, 14:27 »
I'd like to see the accepted images that didn't sell in 3 months separated from the rejected images that made > $10 (a much worse inspection issue in my opinion).
The former would make any new site inspectors look drunk merely from the low # of sales.
2003
« on: April 07, 2011, 13:56 »
I don't know about the weekly sub, but I do worry that they are a bit cheap for what one could get, and the likelihood of maxing out a weekly subscription is higher than a monthly one. Actually if they max it out, that is good for us (and DT will change things quickly). If they just buy that instead of a 50 pack because they need 2 big images and that is all they get - that is bad for us.
In other news, I've gotten my first 2 level 0 sales. One is XS for 1 credit and .29 - no big deal, the other is a Tiff - 11 credits and 3.17. It would have been 3.80 or so under the old scheme. I suppose the next sale will be for more if it isn't a sub though. I still think they could have kept it at 30%, or made level 0 for 0 or 1 sale at 30%. Both images were uploaded in the last 6 months.
2004
« on: April 07, 2011, 01:40 »
If you are already on SS, I would definitely send your stuff there. It might not get accepted, but if it does, it is more likely to sell than anywhere else. As far as I know rejections there only hurt your ego. I used sales there to help motivate me to produce more images, then I sent them to lots of places. At first the sales were almost all at SS, but over time the sales come at other places too.
At least some of the Flickr pics look like they would be acceptable (at least as far as composition and light go). The noise, CA, distorted pixel, etc rejections could still happen. It is true that landscape and wildlife are pretty hard markets on microstock though. That doesn't mean that an image can't be accepted and sell well though.
2005
« on: April 06, 2011, 23:12 »
beware that DT penalizes you for having a low acceptance ratio. That doesn't mean don't send them anything, but don't send them a lot of stuff until you start to get a feel for what they will accept or refuse. You get penalized by getting less upload slots per week, and also with a poorer place in searches (how much poorer, nobody really knows, but search results there do tend to clump by contributor). You might as well send 10 to SS if you weren't planning on sending an application in for a month anyway (as you have to wait a month if they fail - I think, better check that before submitting to make sure). the key is to sign up as my referral (hah). I would downsize the first 10 to 4 MP - that will help with noise and focus. If you are at all serious about selling photos you will want to get a DSLR. I don't know where you are located, but often used ones can be had for only a few hundred bucks. When I look back at my first pictures (taken with a Canon A80 and S3 IS) I cringe at the noise. (but some are still lovely pics and some of my best sellers that continue to sell). Also, keyword your images in the image file - iptc data. This will save you a lot of grief later when uploading to new sites. I wrote up about getting started in microstock for a friend... this was a while ago so some is a bit outdated, but in general it holds true. http://www.electricant.net/grundyman/microstockstart.htmlgood luck, and remember that rejections will happen. Learn from them if you can, otherwise shrug them off.
2006
« on: April 06, 2011, 17:05 »
My IS sales still appear nearly random these days (and down a lot). Some other sites appear to be doing well.
to go back to earlier discussions. I think sending buyers to somewhere that gives a better % is good for everyone but exclusives. I don't know that it makes much difference though. If it really did, it would make IS rethink their strategy, and that would be good for all I believe. What would be nuts is for contributors to send buyers to a place that didn't make sense, and at the moment that place is IS - the search is horrible, the prices are high, and the percentage is the lowest in the industry, why would an independent send people there?
I had some other witty/snarky comments to things said a few pages back, but I'll just hold my fingers.
2007
« on: April 06, 2011, 01:42 »
If she wanted to stay in Florida and go to a state college it would be much cheaper.
OMG,the price of education in America is so so ...expensive...i don't think the quality is equal to that money 
Actually it is probably similarly priced in most developed countries, except that in the USA we give our tax $ to the military instead of into education, so we have to pay privately for it. There are cheaper state schools though. (Cheaper doesn't necessarily mean cheap though). As far as the original topic. I stopped uploading there. If they can see it in their little black greedy hearts to bring %ages back up, I'll start uploading again. I am sure my measly low commercial value images won't make a difference for them, but I had to draw the line somewhere, and they crossed it. Luckily I am used to living cheap (and I do mean cheap in this case).
2008
« on: April 04, 2011, 17:03 »
It also depends on how you feel about getting 15% after jumping through all their hoops. If you do start uploading there, check out Deepmeta.
2009
« on: April 04, 2011, 15:38 »
yep, it seems to be fixed now. Thanks DT.
2010
« on: April 04, 2011, 00:58 »
I don't know what they are smoking there in Calgary... I was puzzled for a while reading this thread - which slider people are talking about? I think I found it now, at the very bottom under "Display settings" - it says "Choose the level of importance of keyword relevance". Seriously? Why would I want irrelevant results to be displayed in my search?... That's question number one.
Question number 2 - why oh why can't they just have "Show me cheap stuff" and "Show me expensive stuff" options? Wouldn't that make things simple and transparent for buyers and fair to contributors? It's depressing but I think I know the answer to this one - they think they can trick and confuse the customers into spending more money that they should. Although (sadly) it's a common practice with many companies these days, buyers are getting smarter and not taking this anymore - they just leave and take their business elsewhere. That's what I do. That's what many people who buy on Istock will do (and I know are doing already). Too bad....
Whats frustrating is the fact that even if the site gets back to normal, even with a good best match, even if everything starts to work to perfection, its just too late, the irreparable damage is done, blasted out all over the Internet and public forums.
In business you get one chance, thats it and the cover is blown.
Sad!
They have had many chances this last year. They always chose the dark side or just fumbled though.
2011
« on: April 03, 2011, 20:02 »
Get it in writing.
2012
« on: April 03, 2011, 20:00 »
March was my first full month with IS and I am completely disappointed. I had heard such raving reviews during the past year and was really looking forward to joining the team. I had my BME only because it was my first full month but I would not consider it worthy of a top tier agency. Dreamstime and Shutterstock both gave me very respectable earnings last month; Fotolia and IS should be dropped from the top tier.
Oh, the numbers; grand total of $13.94 for March for IS. Granted I have a limited port online at IS but I was still expecting better results.
At this rate, I will make diamond a couple hundred years after my death. My great great great grand children will be so proud of me; this is if my children have kids.
I think it took me 3 months or so to get up around 50 images. I made around 55$ that month and was pretty excited, I think one image sold 15 times. Then they did a best match tweak and I dropped like a stone and it took 100's more images to get to that level. Then when I had around 500 images they did another best match tweak and I dropped back to around 55$ for that month. IS appears to be off of their rails these days, especially for non exclusive contributors. It is a bit sad really. (Although personally I'd like to see all the sales at IS and Fot go to sellers that give us a fair %.)
2013
« on: April 03, 2011, 17:36 »
The more I look at the results of searches the less I think that buyers will like what they see. If Vetta/Agency don't happen to be in their budget then they're going to have to spend longer searching to find the good stuff. That'll be the same buyers whose patience has already been severely stretched over the last few months.
Istock do appear determined to cook their golden goose as quickly as possible. They seem to have forgotten that they came into existence mainly due to greedy agencies with over-priced images. Now they are rapidly trying to re-invent themselves into what they once used to despise. To me it looks like a recipe for disaster and the customers' goodwill is being squandered in a short-term cash grab. Heigh-ho.
Agreed. The other thing that helped bring IS into existence was the high priced agencies keeping the little guy out (and the rapid advances in digital imaging). They seem to be working on messing that up too. I don't think they can destroy the advances in digital imaging though, but I wouldn't be surprised if they somehow appeared to be trying at this point.
2014
« on: April 03, 2011, 13:17 »
I requested a payout at the end of March, so my earnings balance was at 0 at the start of this month. Since then it has gone up a number of times, but only 2 sales show on the image earnings page (the one that lists which images sold and the keywords used). Neither of them have multiple sales for this month. My account statistics page lists 3 sales, but the earnings balance has gone up twice more since those 3 sales. I don't have any referral sales listed and I haven't flagged any images in ages and ages (and besides the amounts are about what one would expect from sales, not just a few cents).
DT was down a bit one of these last days, so maybe it is taking them a while to sync all of the servers, but in the past when sales haven't shown up on the image earnings page, they were always there by the next day.
Has anyone else had this problem?
2015
« on: April 02, 2011, 22:49 »
I wonder with the shift from print to web content and mobile content if XS sales are becoming more and more common. Perhaps this is a way to cash in on that. I certainly have seen IS move to a very high % of XS sales.
or maybe it is pushing people towards subs. Especially the weekly subs? They seem a little cheap, as if I were a designer needing even just a few larger images I'd go for the weekly sub. Also it is a lot easier to imagine someone maxing out a weekly subscription than one for a longer term.
I suppose the proof will be in the sales stats over the next few months.
I agree it is stupid to make any changes on April 1, especially when you are also joking about things too.
2016
« on: April 01, 2011, 18:50 »
how does the 'levels' thing work ? Is it like the old cannister system as iStockphoto ?
Levels is per image. As the image sells more, it goes up levels - and also in price and % commission - from 25 up to 50% with the new system (from a flat 50% a year ago, but the levels take less downloads to move up and cost more credits now). A system I like a lot better than a per supplier system as every image rises on its own if it is worthy (and gets decent placement in the search etc. etc.). I disagree that DT has never shafted contributors. Dropping from 50% down to 30% for most images was a shafting as far as I could tell. Dropping to 25% isn't good either even if it is only for the first sale. Sure, make level 0 cheaper than all the others, but don't drop our percentage too. I don't much like all the smoke and mirrors between what a buyer pays and what we get, I wish they would list the actual price the buyer paid for an image along next to our cut. I can't see them doing that though.
2017
« on: April 01, 2011, 18:39 »
It does seem sort of like a grand evil scheme to get everyone and everything to 20% or less.
I don't trust them at all, and I hope their Getty providers take them to task for this.
2018
« on: April 01, 2011, 12:01 »
I do wonder exactly which parts of this are true and which are jokes. I don't have any SR images (I think?) so that doesn't concern me.
In general I think the level 0 idea is a decent one. I wish they didn't have to drop the commission % AGAIN to an even lower 25% (although istock does put even that into perspective). At least it will be only one sale per image at that level. I'd rather see a lower price with a higher %, but that is my take on it, at least the sub return doesn't drop.
2019
« on: March 31, 2011, 23:33 »
Wouldn't it be best to wait till March is actually over ?
I suppose IS could claw back a heap of earnings still, but since most of the other sites don't do that in a big way, and we already have a good month, it is unlikely to suddenly get not good. In fact I also managed to get a BME at SS. If I get a few more sales, guess what - still a BME.
2020
« on: March 31, 2011, 23:24 »
Actually, what they are requesting is one image with all of those poses in them - I mean, it is only 10 different poses or so, I think a .35 sub would be perfectly fair for that.
2021
« on: March 31, 2011, 11:28 »
No marketing = no business. Good grief.....I may have asked this before but do they have a salesforce working the phones to drum up new business?
A couple of months ago, they advertised for a marketing specialist and that job is not currently being advertised, so they may have hired same, or decided not to bother.
They also seem, for the first time in four years, no currently to be looking for "someone who can break our system".
I think they found someone who can break their system.
2022
« on: March 30, 2011, 23:04 »
not quite as nice for me, but 123RF and DT are BME and SS could make it. In any case it will be my best March for sure and quite possibly my BME. This helps counteract all the negativity coming from a certain site.
2023
« on: March 30, 2011, 18:18 »
I wonder how they decide where the photos are from that they choose to show - is it the photographer's address? Something in the keywords? As far as I know IS doesn't use geolocation data. Would my pics from a trip somewhere sell better if I uploaded them from the trip location? or from the location with the greatest number of buyers? I suppose it could decrease some non-desirable results, but could also skew the results in weird ways.
If the former, please change my address to Madison Avenue, NY.
2024
« on: March 30, 2011, 11:52 »
the article is fine IMO.
Including the blatant lie: "commission levels stretch from 20% to 45%"?
Can we hazard a guess as to the extent of this lie:
Number of contributors earning less than 20% commission = ?
Number of contributors earning 45% = ?
would it have mattered if he had said 15% to 40%? it wouldn't have changed the context of the article in any way. to put it in perspective, in publishing authors get 4% to 8%-if we're lucky. I'm not stating that I agree with 15% for non-exclusives. I completely disagree with so low a percentage in our industry for any artist. but I'm just saying that suggesting it was a great big LIE designed to mislead seems silly. because even had they printed the 'truth', it would have hardly changed the article.
How about if he said 25 to 50%? would that have mattered? I think it matters a lot.
2025
« on: March 30, 2011, 11:24 »
This month is actually not so great for me, but the previous 4 they have beaten out Bigstock and 3 of those months 123RF and one of them DT. Maybe that says more about the weak performance of the others those months, and 50% of an EL is a nice boost. In any case they are easy to upload to and if they can continue at this pace I'll be quite pleased. They were pretty comatose in 2009 and early 2010 though.
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