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Messages - Shelma1
2676
« on: January 12, 2014, 10:40 »
As for the drinks cart Shelma mentioned, you just have to worry about how to get home if you're not on a bus/train route, so bizarre. Or go without, so it's a hollow perk (no treat for me anyway, I don't drink beer or spirits).
Yeah, new York, most people took the subway. But there was a sort of understanding that you took a 20-minute break to have a drink--Friday at 6 p.m., when you were still in the office, of course--and then you went back to work for a few more hours. That job was the worst. I worked 12-13 hours per day, 7 days a week. Which is why everyone who worked at Kirshenbaum & Bond called it "Kirshenbaum & Bondage."
2677
« on: January 12, 2014, 10:05 »
I also find a bit unfair that Shutterstock employees have all the perks:
We know that the trick to keeping awesome people happy is by creating a fun, comfortable environment. This includes competitive pay for top talent, full medical benefits, plus:
Stocked beverage fridges, free breakfasts & snacks
Lunchtime Yoga
Pizza & Massage Fridays
Happy hours and killer Summer & Holiday parties
And we, photographers (especially the top tier, that has given SS the most) are treated as crowd, not individual employees as we deserve.
These perks are there to keep employees working longer hours. Especially Friday perks. People won't be in as big a hurry to get home if they know their free pizza or massage is coming up. It's much less expensive to give one employee a free slice of pizza every week and get 10 extra hours out of her than to hire more employees to work the hours current employees are covering in unpaid overtime. I've worked for many years in "fun" environments where we get basketball courts, pool tables, on-site gyms and showers, free drinks (heck, we even had "drinks cart" every Friday at 6 p.m. at one ad agency, where we were served beer and hard liquor). The trade off is that you dedicate your life to your job, working 60+ hours per week and hardly ever taking a vacation because there's always an "emergency'" I look forward to leaving that behind for the freedom to do illustrations at home. Freedom is the world's biggest perk, IMO.
2678
« on: January 10, 2014, 15:46 »
At least with Shutterstock you get a "raise" after you sell a certain number of images (though I do wish there were more/higher tiers for those of us who reach new levels).
On iStock I'm at the one and only vector rate (recently raised to 20%), and my earnings per DL are dropping each month, as more non-exclusive images are shifted to PP purchases rather than iStock purchases. It's sort of the opposite at Shutterstock, where my earnings per DL are rising thanks to ELs, etc. They're close to neck and neck now, but SS will soon outpace iS.
So my earnings stay pretty much level (except for Amazing Mistaken October) at iStock despite adding new files, while they continue to rise at SS.
Keeping all my fingers and toes crossed for Symbiostock.
2679
« on: January 08, 2014, 13:52 »
Slightly off-topic...did they let tickstock go? No rah-rahs from him? her? in quite a while.
2680
« on: January 06, 2014, 20:31 »
At that time it was reported that 70% of all iStock sales were for exclusive images. After the end of the 3rd quarter there were reports that 75% of all downloads were for exclusive images.
While lowering the price of non-exclusive images did not seem to increase sales overall, gross revenue for iStock may not have declined due to the higher percentage of exclusive sales.
Hard to say. If DLs dropped by 12% overall, the relative percentage of exclusive DLs vs. indie DLs may have risen, but the real number of DLs in both categories may have fallen. So it's possible iStock's gross revenue fell as well. That might also explain why, though the percentage of exclusive DLs rose, so many exclusives are reporting a drop in their sales. It's possible for both things to happen simultaneously.
2681
« on: January 06, 2014, 12:53 »
One of the problems I have with Lobo is that he isn't straightforward. He misleads and obfuscates (euphemisms), and he's usually initially quite sarcastically dismissive when someone first brings up an issue or irregularity. It takes more than a dozen questions about the same thing from different people before he accepts that it's really a serious issue; then he makes promises and sets deadlines that are almost never reached...and avoids that thread when people asked what's going on, deadline's passed.
All it takes is a "sorry, guys, we're really trying but it looks like it'll take longer," but instead he offers more sarcasm when people complain when deadlines go zipping by. And unfortunately for him, with the state of things at iStock there are going to be lots of people complaining.
2682
« on: January 06, 2014, 12:05 »
Even if you shoot with a phone, you'd still need the technical skill, the experience, the subject matter and the lighting to have a good result. I take tons of shots with my iPhone that are complete [email protected] I'm not a photographer. (Photography was the only course I failed in college.)
2683
« on: January 04, 2014, 12:24 »
I honestly don't know what to think. I really don't know if October was big because they made a mistake, or October was big because that's what they actually should be paying us and they under-report all the other months.
And it's sad I feel that way, because it shows the level of distrust I have for iStock.
2684
« on: January 04, 2014, 12:10 »
I went back over the past year and took screenshots of all my DLS and earnings. I see the average amount I earn per DL bounces around from month to month, sometimes almost double in one month what I average in another. October is off the chart.
1. It's sad and disgusting that I feel I need to take screenshots of my earnings and sit and figure out anomalies on my own, because the large corporation that represents me and has a staff of IT "experts" and professional accountants is incapable of doing so.
2. I trust the IT experts and accountants at iStock as far as I can throw them.
2685
« on: January 03, 2014, 20:57 »
Well, you could see that coming. This should be fun. 
2686
« on: January 03, 2014, 06:05 »
Inspectors' New Year's resolution, maybe? A couple of my B&W vectors were rejected because the inspector wanted "reference," though they accepted the color versions of the same art.
2687
« on: January 02, 2014, 13:53 »
"You? How'd your vectors do there last year?"
I think you have taken what I said too personally, I didn't mean to offend, just to point out how difficult it is to gauge progress by figures, sorry if it came over as personal.
Well, it seems by your icon over to the left that you don't do vectors, but somehow you found it necessary to post in a vector thread and attack the one person who (at that point) had actually responded to the OP's question.
2688
« on: January 02, 2014, 12:32 »
From a vector person's POV, I think you guys are beating yourselves up and second-guessing yourselves for no reason. Honestly, when an entire batch of my illustration jpgs are rejected for some ridiculous reason like "noise" while the vectors are accepted, it's clear to me the photo inspectors (or a few photo inspectors) are off their rockers. Either that or there's some incentive we don't know about for them to make mass rejections.
2689
« on: January 02, 2014, 12:25 »
I agree.
2690
« on: January 02, 2014, 12:15 »
I don't know what you consider a small number of sales. I make maybe 80-90 iStock sales per month, 1,000 PP sales. You? How'd your vectors do there last year?
Michele, have you been exclusive to iStock before, or you've been exclusive to none all the while?
No, never exclusive. So I have no idea how a direct exclusive/non-exclusive comparison would stack up. But it does sound like exclusives' sales have been dropping overall, while at least in my case the PP program really made a big difference in my earnings there. My iStock sales were stagnant, despite adding a couple hundred new images. Shutterstock still earns me a lot more than iStock, even with PP. But my port is much larger at SS.
2691
« on: January 02, 2014, 10:15 »
The U.S. has a lot of laws around the size, etc. representation of paper money.
2692
« on: January 02, 2014, 10:05 »
I don't know what you consider a small number of sales. I make maybe 80-90 iStock sales per month, 1,000 PP sales. You? How'd your vectors do there last year?
2693
« on: January 02, 2014, 08:47 »
Saying your income quadrupled is fairly meaningless from a comparison point of view.
Why? How'd you do, BTW?
2694
« on: January 02, 2014, 07:00 »
My income almost quadrupled at iStock, mostly thanks to PP. (not that I make a lot there.) Sorry. 
2695
« on: December 31, 2013, 14:51 »
Can't get to the Symbiostock forums, and my website is gone.
2696
« on: December 30, 2013, 13:06 »
There's always the danger that they'll 'discover' that October sales were 'wrong' and claw them back. It seemed odd at the time, that they'd ban exclusives from putting files there even if they wanted to, and shortly afterwards PP sales/prices seemed to soar.
This! For me at least October was the (positive) exception from the norm rather than November being the negative one. I think it's quite possible that they'll discover a "glitch in the matrix" or "gremlins in the basement" that screwed up October PP reporting (what with Halloween, and all  ).
What also could have happened in October was that they did some house cleaning and made a mass payment of PP royalties overdue from previous months for some reason or other. Maybe they had a "Get your credits now, pay six months later"-campaign going at some point...
Looking back, this seems to be the case. Though my number of downloads didn't vary tremendously in September, October and November, my earnings per DL were double in October. To me this means they either: A) under-report our earnings every month and in October the truth came out, or B) there's something off in October. Sadly, based on their past performance, I'm not sure which to believe.
2697
« on: December 28, 2013, 11:16 »
I sent this email to istock to ask for an explanation..
"Hello,
Please explain why october partner sales were decent and this months partner sales are abysmal.
this is going to be a court case if you don't provide a logical explanation.
Best Regards,
Cihan"
They do owe me an explanation.. I urge everyone to do the same.. Don't let them screw you like this.. We have the right to ask for transparency about why the sales were good last month, and suddenly awful this month.. Did they withdraw our files from those partner sites? Did customers stop using them?
Unfortunately, there will be no court case, and they won't provide any explanation.
There would be a court case if someone sued them. I'm thinking back to the month PP sales were late, and everyone ended up with two or three days where there was a steep plunge in PP sales. Only because there was an uproar on the boards did iStock look into it and "fix" it. What if nobody had complained? I simply cannot trust them.
2698
« on: December 28, 2013, 08:59 »
Sorry to say, but it seems fishy to me. My October sales were great, and then the next day, November 1, they suddenly dropped? Coming after the Christmas Eve Clawback (sorry, "refunds") in many people's ports, it's especially fishy. My most popular file of all time on iStock sold the most in November, but somehow PP sales plummeted.
November was my BME on Shutterstock. Same images.
I simply don't trust iStock to be honest about my sales any more, unfortunately.
2699
« on: December 27, 2013, 13:36 »
Oh, be fair. If it had been another company, this might have dragged on for weeks, especially over the Festive Season.
Yes. There will always be bugs popping up, but SS fixes things pretty quickly. Unlike some other site.
2700
« on: December 27, 2013, 12:02 »
90% of my port is gone..the ones that remain seem to be my best sellers.
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