Indeed a nice portfolio
His portfolio on Istock looks quite different from his Shutterstock portfolio:


http://www.istockphoto.com/user_view.php?id=877446

But I see the same background again.

From experience I can say that the general policy on iStock is not at all forgiving on manipulation of skies...BUT those that sneak through can do very well there, this pattern repeats itself on a raft of issues at the edge of their criteria.

As ever Your Mileage May Vary.

In the UK currently the dollar is less than 2% off where it was 12 months ago, though in November it was a more than that, yet my sales value per image sold has risen by 60%, since Istock, where I am exclusive, has very significantly raised prices and this does not seem to have reduced sales. I am also selling significantly more than this time last year though I've not really uploaded enough to keep my portfolio size increase in line with percentage of the overall increase of the total available files.

You also need to consider that where the dollar has dropped against local currencies the buyers money goes further than it did and they may buy more------- though just how sensitive buyers are to prices in the microstock band remains moot given the istock price increases not resulting in the predicted, by some, sales collapse.

Quote from: hatman12 on March 02, 2008, 16:57

Also last week the 'newness' element of the best match equation was changed to give newer files a higher placement in search results.

This 'newness' component changes four or five times each year, which is why you'll see remarks like "Oh, it's nice to see some of my old files selling again" or "Why do my new files not get any views or sales?".

How do you know that?

Sort your own portfolio by Best Match and you can see the changes in the Force

thesentinel - how do you get those numbers?  Is there a league table somewhere?

All sales figures there are public domain and there is an istockapp called compare which can collate it

That sucks for many reasons


But lets compare that to any other business. Any huge store that wants to discount a product has to do that paying their share of the cut. What does a milk producer care about a store discount ? He has his price and as he is concerned they can give his milk for free after  they pay him his share.

Certainly here in the UK MANY suppliers fund both in-store offers, and long term discounting. Eggs, Poultry Milk producers etc can find the selves being paid less than the cost of production, and 2 for 1 offers are often fully funded by the supplier.

As has been pointed out that is a search by DOWNLOADS not BEST MATCH, claiming that is some sort of bias in favour of exclusives is incomprehensible, especially when it has been shown that you do better in the best match search than the person you imply is being favoured.

I too got some of my files rejected for not being stock worthy and later I discovered very similar but exclusive files were up there selling well  anyway I got them online elsewhere  and they are doing well, at the end of the day  it's not a great deal I think.
 

Funnily enough as an exclusive I've had  'not stock' and 'over filtered' rejections and then have seen similar files from non exclusives selling well... but I've not been able to sell them elsewhere.

Pah  istock  is obviously so biased against me 

So the reviewer was spot on :

�This file contains artifacting when viewed at full size. This technical issue is commonly created by the quality settings in-camera, in post-processing or in RAWsettings. Artifacting may be the result of other factors such as excessive level adjustments.�

And this was in fact incorrect as you MUST have being over compensating by moving sliders etc.

"The camera: 1DMkII + 24-70/2.8L. RAW with minimum of adjustments � barely touched in PS. The image didn�t need adjustments"

You may have been using a raw converter that you were not familiar with but you ought to have been suspicious if you were having to alter the default settings on a well metered image. I wonder if you had been more open to the reviewers comments in the past whether you'd have been constantly rejected all these times.

And to amplify a point, as for the rest of your folio on photo.net, you will find that files that get heaped with compliments on such site, from other photographers a different beast from stock buyers, do tend to be hyper real over saturated over processed artworks.

Pull back on your processing and take rejections at face value and not third in a list of conspiracy theories!

2)   I do not think that the image has too many artifacts � if any, but most definitely it has issues, and in the end I think that I have botched this one up rather badly. The final result is not what it could be � and �artifacts� is a convenient scapegoat here. I put this vase on the table, plyed with lighting � and most of people refer to as �artifacts� are actually there � mostly internal reflections and distortions due to rapidly changing thickness.

I fear with this you have not seen what some of us are, glass is smooth and there are jagged artifacts which just should not be there at 100% percent, period.

#8 The default "Top Rated" photos window showcases the highest MP Index photos for the last 3 days. You can apply different settings for while your browsing or searching, but the settings always go back to 3 days for the first search. This allows new images to be shown to anyone that is searching for the "Top Rated" photos fairly often

#9 The Photo Community concept really works. In my first few days there I have had plenty of feedback on my images that has been entirely useful. Those Swedish photographers that have been on that site from the beginning really know their stuff ! I am starting to see some familiar names that I've seen here on MSG if that's any sign ...

#10 There is member point system that encourages the ranking of your fellow photographers. You also get points for commenting on other's photos. All in all ... the point system is geared towards making MostPhotos an interactive community that works together to QC itself. From what I can tell so far ... this seems to work

#11 "Portfolio Summary" will show you things like you point total, and the distribution that you are receiving from the voting that has been done on your images, and the votes that you have given as well.

Mark

And the result of the above is a set of images akin to those on similar pages of photo.net or photo:sig, which are often far removed from useful saleable commercial stock.

Whenever I go to the istockphoto site, I watch the connecting bar at the bottom left of the Firefox screen. It goes to istock, then to google-analytics. Gee, I wonder why? By the way, istock isn't the only site that monitors you.

As a web designer at times I'd say it's pretty stupid NOT to have google analytics on your site.

I thoroughly recommend, for UK, the oddly named http://www.intelligence-direct.com