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Messages - iStop
26
« on: February 25, 2015, 00:53 »
All the linking to any private Lightboxes on closeup pages you might have created is gone as of yesterday. The new style of closeup page is live now.
27
« on: February 24, 2015, 14:15 »
Private Lightboxes are gone now as of today. Brace yourselves on credit sales for the newest, new, new.
28
« on: June 25, 2014, 08:30 »
iStock now resembles the deer that was shot by the master hunter and fatally wounded. It has run swiftly and further into the winding forest after being startled by the sound of the huntsmens gun and being deeply pierced in the neck by the rifles bullet. It now can no longer run anymore after having sprinted long and aimlessly on borrowed time whilst carrying the lethal lead in its flesh. Exhausted by its deep wound, and weakened by its blood loss, it's sprint has now slowed to a subdued trot, deliriously delving it deeper into the unknown forest. The buck is losing its footing bit by bit each step it struggles to take, slipping on damp, moss covered rocks, stumbling ahead, now barely able to even maintain any sure footing. Alas, it is finally faltering, grappling to continue to lumber forward at all. Lay down and rest my poor, tired beast. The flesh quivering on your bones, you are only moments away from resting your weary head on the soft earth that awaits to pass you lucidly into the afterlife. iStock my dear, RIP.
29
« on: June 10, 2014, 10:32 »
It will come out of your royalties no matter what because for every minute the site is down you are losing sales.
30
« on: June 10, 2014, 09:58 »
Your lucky you can even login to the site. I can't get in right now.
31
« on: May 29, 2014, 12:07 »
Actually, nothing to be surprised or bothered about. Just business as usual.
32
« on: May 29, 2014, 11:45 »
In most companies that would be the last time that person hits the send button. In this case unlikely though.
33
« on: May 29, 2014, 09:05 »
There is a thread in the iStock forum on it already. Seems they pushed one out a bit too early.
34
« on: May 29, 2014, 08:59 »
Technological ineptitude on steroids.
35
« on: May 19, 2014, 11:09 »
If they really want to impress exclusives, help them to make a bit more money again without having to heavily tweak the best match all the time then they can try doing this once a month. That might be enough to stop some of the crown dropping. But as far as I am concerned, this one off day came and went and that's the problem with it, it's gone and forgotten. Once a month and people would actually take some notice of it perhaps. Too bad corporate bottom line chasing will prevent this notion.
36
« on: May 14, 2014, 03:22 »
It's all kind of ironic. First Getty makes all my images that are for sale on the Getty site usable on any other web site for free. Then iStock makes all of my images on iStock available for subscription sales. Neither of which I can opt out of either. Then they give me a free day of 100% royalties once they've done everything possible to stop people from paying a reasonable price, or perhaps any price at all for my pictures. Today should be an interesting exercise in futility. 100% of 0 is still 0.
37
« on: May 12, 2014, 04:49 »
I know lots of larger commercial blogs do pay for images. They always have. And then you have the blogs of news sites and other media outlets that do pay for content too. If you have a blog that creates a revenue stream or supports a revenue stream then you have a budget for stock pictures.
But so far the claims by Getty and Shutterstock that the free images won't effect sales may not be proven wrong yet with supporting lost sales data because the information about the free images will take time to trickle down to all the web sites that are now buying their web use images. So give it a year and lots of web sites should start taking advantage of this free content. How can they not?
Also, to say that it is just blog sites that will stop buying pictures from this is not the entire picture. There are lots of images bought for all kinds of web use that will start using the free content instead. Why not? I would if I had a site that wouldn't be harmed by the added text from Getty. Money saved is money saved.
38
« on: May 10, 2014, 10:29 »
Really the biggest problem is that shoot, upload, repeat really doesn't do anything anymore and is in a way the biggest problem now. It used to be that the best way to fix a declining portfolio was to add more content. No there seems to be no way to stop the declining curve.
39
« on: May 10, 2014, 08:47 »
Thank you. In a way I agree that #5 is a result of all the other mistakes, including and mainly the loss of buyers, but not completely. I'll explain.
When they changed the system to only show views of a logged in buyer account it means that views on new content doesn't add up to many views anymore. Lower registered views in turn effects best match placement, which in turn effects sales on new content. So they are basically causing new uploads to sell less than before with their new registered views system. Then no views and immediately the new content falls into the abyss.
What also has reduced views are the larger mouse over thumbnails they instituted. The new thumbnails are much better, but it also results in fewer buyer's needing to click to see a good image thumbnail. So no need to click and no registered view.
This basically in itself destroyed the long standing benefit of shoot, upload, repeat.
40
« on: May 10, 2014, 08:14 »
Thank you all for your feedback.
Stan, I agree, mismanagement is a big issue as you noted which is what led them to making many bad decisions that then led to my list of problems.
But the buyer loss thing must really be hitting them hard. If it wasn't then they wouldn't be trying to emulate Shutterstock so hard all of a sudden by pushing out the new subs program so heavily.
41
« on: May 10, 2014, 07:22 »
I still really find it difficult to see this as an act of true good will or as a positive move from iStock to show kind appreciation to their Exclusives. The company is owned by bankers and bankers only do things they deem as good for business. So if iStock throws you a freebie it's because they see some strong benefit to themselves from doing it. In this case it's simple. They just introduced subscriptions which is going to kill off a lot of higher dollar member sales. So they are trying to look like they are doing something good for their members too to diffuse some of the backlash when people's dollar figures really start dropping from subs. If they had really cared about members so much then they wouldn't have shelved the 100% royalty one day a year program to begin with which existed up until 5-6 years ago.
42
« on: May 10, 2014, 00:18 »
Following is in my opinion a summary of the top 5 reason why sales on iStock are tanking for Exclusives.
I am curious if other people feel the main reasons are the same or different?
My list goes in order, starting with what I think is the top reason:
1 - No Upload Limits For Indies & Lower Quality Acceptance Criteria Than Before
2 - Overall Loss Of iStock Buyers
3 - Subs Pricing Available On All Photos
4 - High Pricing On All Exclusive Content
5 - No Views Or Sales On New Uploads
Also, the search results probably don't help either. The fact that the best match is always changing, and often not for the better, isn't good. Plus, Exclusives no longer being able to choose which collection their content goes into is a setback too.
43
« on: May 08, 2014, 14:48 »
To be honest, my downloads are now averaging about 10% of what they were in 2011 with yet a 50% bigger portfolio than in 2011. I'm frankly pretty indifferent to this tempting sounding bone they are throwing us. Although it's a bit of goodwill (if you even see it that way) but it won't make much difference to me in terms of income at this point. It's all a bit too little too late. If they really want to help exclusives they can start with stopping making the Indy content so much more attractive to buyers.
44
« on: May 08, 2014, 14:09 »
Must be really getting desperate for some positive press there.
Must be getting desperate to try and retain exclusives. Let's call it ACDC. Anti Crown Dropping Campaign.
45
« on: May 08, 2014, 13:21 »
NOTICE: iStock graciously apologizes but will be offline for most of the day on May 14th for much needed site upgrades. In addition, overall site performance may be hindered throughout the day while these upgrades are tested and installed. iStock apologizes for any effect this may have on your buyers' ability to download the pictures they need that day, but will offer a 15% discount coupon code for a 1,000 credit pack to compensate buyers for any inconvenience this may cause them. The discounted credit pack can start being used when site service returns to normal on May 15th.
46
« on: May 06, 2014, 13:15 »
Besides the unsubstantiated and hopeful promise that if you stay exclusive with iStock that you will make more money than if you go Indy, I am yet to see any logic evidence to support that notion. Meanwhile, there have been many logical reasons posed as to why there is a greater potential to earn more as an Indy at this point. Especially given all the reasons why income of exclusives on iStock is guaranteed to fall and if for no other reason than dropping royalty levels next year and a shrinking monthly GI bump. What is the notion that staying exclusive will make you more money even based on? That you are on a higher royalty percentage than if you are an Indy? That's not enough to stand on. If downloads keep declining on iStock for contributors as they have been, and many people have seen their downloads drop to 25% of what they were 3-4 years ago, then whether you are getting 15% or 35% of what could eventually become 0 downloads per month then your income on iStock will still be 0. Now that equation makes logical sense to me. So $1 earned on another site could then easily become more than you are earning on iStock if your downloads on your old stuff eventually goes to 0 because downloads on new stuff are generally already at 0. If this sounds a little too hard to fathom, over the top, or sensationalism then simply take the percentage factor by which your own downloads per month have gone down in the last 3-4 years and apply that declining factor to calculate your anticipated downloads per month over the next 3-4 years on iStock and where does that leave you? God bless those who still have faith in exclusivity.
47
« on: May 06, 2014, 11:46 »
No matter how you look at it, exclusives on iStock are bound to make less in the future than they are now. So when you compare what you make on other sites you have to factor in a declining iStock income. You can't compare it to old iStock sales figures but need to compare to declining future iStock income figures. Growth seems impossible on iStock now with new files not selling. So there isn't much upside. And many exclusives will be dropping a royalty rate level next year because they won't hit targets again this year and most likely iStock won't give everyone a free ride again for another year. So there is in itself a quantifiable fall in income from one year to the next. Then you have the declining monthly GI income. Everything is going down on all sides. And subs sales has got to really hurt sales too on higher priced exclusive content. Then old files get older and more seen by iStock buyers and eventually sell less and less. Indy contributors are taking away sales too from exclusives with their cheaper content. It's not so rosy anymore. Exclusives then have their "available from iStock only" content to be happy about. But is that what most buyer's really care about? If they did then would Shutterstock sell so many more files than iStock? On the other hand, if you move your iStock files to a whole bunch of other sites, then you have a whole bunch of new buyers looking at it. It's new stock again. It seems like a pretty obvious equation to me.
48
« on: January 08, 2014, 09:43 »
Cheers for that ShadySue. Good to know they are aware of it and working on it.
49
« on: January 08, 2014, 09:08 »
According to my stats, my royalty rate has dropped one level at the start of the year even though iStock had said that we would be kept at the same rate for the coming year.
I wonder if this is a known bug, if other contributors are seeing the same issue, if iStock has said anything about this yet, and if they are going to fix it and pay us later for the remainder of royalties due as of the start of the new year?
50
« on: December 14, 2013, 16:50 »
So based on the above, I'm back to my original point. Don't offer any rights warrants with the photo since you can't guarantee those warrants for infinitude. Better to let the buyer know there are no warrants on the photo at all and let them assess the risk for themselves and decide whether or not they are willing to take that risk and buy the photo or not. A far better solution than giving them a potentially invalid warrant I assure you.
I think I would feel more comfortable in court with a signed release than without one.
I don't know that that's right. By providing the purchaser/agency with a release haven't you furnished them with a guarantee, thereby making yourself liable if the guarantee proves to be false? In the absence of a guarantee the responsibility - and liablity - for determining the legal position rests with the end user.
Yes, thank you, that was the point I was trying to make. Giving no guarantee as they are now seems far safer than giving a guarantee that may be invalid later thus creating greater liability for iStock and the photographer in the long run.
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