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Messages - Shelma1
Pages: 1 ... 109 110 111 112 113 [114] 115 116
2826
« on: September 17, 2013, 14:12 »
I'd be curious to see what the reaction would be if iStock. changed their terms to add things like a 90 day lock in period (exclusives leaving and they want to stop the bleeding), using social media to market (more google drive deals), free (full sized?) comps (giving away our images), secrecy about earnings (the company is about to collapse), no opt out for sensitive use of some images (taking away our choices), etc....
To me those changes look bad for contributors.
You are so predictable
I don't like giving away full sized non watermarked comps for free (are they full sized comps).
Just FYI, being able to access non-watermarked comp images is a big reason the large ad agencies (which buy the biggest licenses) prefer NOT to use microstock. If they have a legitimate account through their job (they're required to register with their current work email, which proves they're employed by a large ad agency), they can download large unwatermarked images from sites like Getty and Corbis, which they far prefer to use in comp ads and storyboards, because small watermarked images look terrible in layout, especially when blown up for presentation, when they get very pixelated. Because all of our work is vetted by the clients' legal departments, and because we're fellow "creatives," the chances of someone "stealing" your unwatermarked image in that instance is very slim. I don't know of anyone in my 30+ years of experience who's ever done anything like that. If the client buys the concept, they pay for usage depending on the size of their campaign. This is where the biggest commissions come in.
2827
« on: September 17, 2013, 09:34 »
To me, "reviewers" means "inspectors," so the first time I read this I thought they were poking fun at their own inspectors. People who review my advertising work are "clients," "creative directors" and "account executives." I would never call them reviewers. I would probably use the word "clients" in this instance.
I think 'reviewers', in the context in which they are using it, means 'those who express an opinion' on a given subject. As in 'film or theatre reviewers'.
Perhaps, but no designer, art director, art buyer or writer I know would use that language. We'd all say "clients." So I was confused by it...I honestly thought they were poking fun at their own review process, in which case the statement is pretty true.
2828
« on: September 17, 2013, 09:01 »
To me, "reviewers" means "inspectors," so the first time I read this I thought they were poking fun at their own inspectors. People who review my advertising work are "clients," "creative directors" and "account executives." I would never call them reviewers. I would probably use the word "clients" in this instance.
2829
« on: September 17, 2013, 08:16 »
I think the period at the end of the logo is meant to represent a bug.
After all, now that they've "relaunched" the site is even more full of them.
2830
« on: September 16, 2013, 16:41 »
The new logo sure hasn't helped my sales today.
2831
« on: September 13, 2013, 10:11 »
I really feel for all the people that see a decline in sales, and I certainly dont understand why some portfolios, with a lot, and I mean a lot, of high quality, highly commercial images, fail to get sales.
Honestly, I feel guilty for having good sales, with my mediocre portfolio, when their portfolios should outperform mine by factor 10. Its like my portfolio is being favored in the search. I dont know, but I truly do not understand why I can have 40 sales, when others have 0. Its not the quality of my work. It just isnt.
It truly baffles me, and what I find most frustrating is that there are tons of threads and comments pointing this problem out, but no one from SS wants to chip in with a truthful explanation as to why that is happening. They know what its happening with those HCV portfolios, they should spill the beans.
I always assumed (maybe incorrectly) that SS just switches back and forth from favoring new files to favoring old files. If you have a mix of both, then you may not notice. If you have more of one, then your sales may take a hit for a few months.
I don't agree. After the "site maintenance" in mid July, my sales dropped off a cliff. New files dropped especially, but old files dropped as well. Weeks later, my portfolio is still not selling as well as it was in back in the beginning of July.
2832
« on: September 12, 2013, 12:51 »
Tell you what. I'm a creative director and copywriter in the real world. If a group of Symbiostockers could chime in and give me the details about Symbiostock and how it works, benefits for artists/end users, I could take a shot at writing a nice description for everyone. I suggest either a new thread or private messages so we don't clutter up the forum.
Anyone interested?
Ok, I joined the forums on Symbiostock.org...see you there!
2833
« on: September 12, 2013, 12:30 »
Tell you what. I'm a creative director and copywriter in the real world. If a group of Symbiostockers could chime in and give me the details about Symbiostock and how it works, benefits for artists/end users, I could take a shot at writing a nice description for everyone. I suggest either a new thread or private messages so we don't clutter up the forum.
Anyone interested?
2834
« on: September 12, 2013, 09:19 »
My sales are around what they were two months ago, despite uploading more files. I was hoping things would take off this month.
2835
« on: September 12, 2013, 09:07 »
There are relatively no bugs. What you see is a lot of people customizing their site running into errors, as they are rewriting the code, or needing help because they dont know how to activate something. I didnt do any customization and never experienced any bugs. Straight from the box is a working solution. Yes, it needs a lot of time uploading your portfolio and SEOing, but its worth it. Once its up and running its just like submitting to an agency. And probably even faster then a lot of agencies, except for 123, CanStockPhoto ,SS, and GL
Perhaps it's worth it to try kickstarter or the like so the OP can be compensated for all his hard work...and there might be a budget for advertising? Just an idea.
2836
« on: September 12, 2013, 07:08 »
I'm not a big player either. I haven't joined symbiostock yet because it seems like a lot of work, I don't have a handle on whether the return on time investment is worth it, and I see a lot of threads about bugs. That concerns me, because the big stock companies have (in the case of is, incompetent) IT departments in place to handle that sort of thing (one hopes).
I think step one, you need testimonials here from Symbiostockers who can attest to the ease and $$$ of using Symbiotsock.
I think it's an awesome idea. I see that you've worked very hard on it. I want to join, but I'm afraid my time investment won't pay off in the end. I think the hurdle is convincing people the time investment will be worth it. And people (well me, anyway) wonder who will "run" things when bugs pop up? Who will pay for advertising? The big stock agencies have big time ad agencies and PR firms.
I think the big players probably have a lot of questions.
But most of all I think you need to take a couple of weeks off and get some sleep!
2837
« on: September 11, 2013, 09:47 »
It sounds to me like they're headed for two tiers: Getty for high-priced, exclusive content, and Thinkstock to compete with subscription-based sites. Perhaps they will eventually do away with iStock, and have the content absorbed by TS and Getty?
On another note, I'm hoping this email was written by the individual who sent it, because it's almost as poorly written as the "newsletter" we received recently...and I'd hate to think they're paying a professional writer to put this stuff together.
2838
« on: September 01, 2013, 01:11 »
In addition to hiring new IT staff, they clearly need to hire a professional to write their newsletters (but maybe this one is so bad because they're losing money and had to fire the person who used to write them?).
RogerMexico (Andrew) who used to write the newsletters has left, and I believe Lobo writes them now, as he is the Contributor Communications Manager sic.
That would explain it. They've piled additional responsibilities on Lobo, so he just cuts and pastes his responses from the forums. Because he doesn't know how to write a newsletter (clearly).
In that case they should send a newsletter saying there will be no more newsletters and directing people to the forums. Because that newsletter just screamed of unprofessionalism.
The newsletter does not scream of unprofessionalism. That's a complete over reaction. It's just an update of stuff which people might be interested to know since the last newsletter. Remember that most people probably do not have time for the ...
It absolutely screams of unprofessionalism. It's poorly written and obtuse. And since most people do not have time for the forums, they probably won't understand a lot of the references in the newsletter. Going beyond the poor quality of the writing, there is nothing in this newsletter to rally the troops in a time when many contributors are experiencing a drop in sales and uncertainty about the future of iStock. And as others have pointed out, there seems to be no clear plan in place for the future of the company. No mention of making the site faster. No plans to make uploading easier. It's haphazard and lacks focus. Much like the company it comes from.
2839
« on: August 31, 2013, 07:07 »
I think the label is a double-edged sword. People can say "no use searching for this image elsewhere," or people can say "I'll scroll down and look at the images that are not available only at iStock, because I can find those for less elsewhere."
2840
« on: August 31, 2013, 06:57 »
In addition to hiring new IT staff, they clearly need to hire a professional to write their newsletters (but maybe this one is so bad because they're losing money and had to fire the person who used to write them?).
RogerMexico (Andrew) who used to write the newsletters has left, and I believe Lobo writes them now, as he is the Contributor Communications Manager sic.
That would explain it. They've piled additional responsibilities on Lobo, so he just cuts and pastes his responses from the forums. Because he doesn't know how to write a newsletter (clearly). In that case they should send a newsletter saying there will be no more newsletters and directing people to the forums. Because that newsletter just screamed of unprofessionalism.
2841
« on: August 30, 2013, 06:56 »
It's not a newsletter. Where's the news? It reads like they just picked up Lobo's replies to complaints on the forums. If I didn't visit their forums once in a while I would have absolutely no idea what the heck they were talking about. (Not that I do anyway.)
In addition to hiring new IT staff, they clearly need to hire a professional to write their newsletters (but maybe this one is so bad because they're losing money and had to fire the person who used to write them?).
Oh, heck, they need to clean house and hire an entirely new staff.
2842
« on: August 29, 2013, 14:22 »
That's a shame, because most of the art directors I know really like Veer. They appreciate the quality of the images there. Veer seems to be concentrating on promoting fonts now...I get font-related emails from them all the time.
It's always been a very low earner for me, because their upload process is laborious and reviews take forever, so I barely upload there.
2843
« on: August 29, 2013, 14:17 »
I'm a vector artist, but sometimes a whole batch of my jpg versions of vector files will be rejected while the eps files are accepted. Happened this week...all jpgs rejected for "rough edges" (I always export jpgs the same way), while the eps files were accepted. I think there's just a photo reviewer there who has his or her finger on the "reject" button.
I just resubmit them, and they're usually accepted the second time around when someone else looks at them.
2844
« on: August 23, 2013, 12:57 »
I've heard of a contributor who uploaded his entire (very suuccessful elsewhere) portfolio here at once, and nothing sold. I would think it would be kind of impossible for many, many similar files to "catch on" all at once as new images. Why not experiment? Try uploading a few dozen files a day for a week and see how they do, then the next week upload a really big batch and see if it does any better or worse.
2845
« on: August 23, 2013, 00:10 »
This sounds like a good deal. We get the same or more than a sub dl, and the customer never actually downloads the image...the thumbnail appears in their ad thru the Facebook interface. And for some reason they don't have to pay for the image, even though we get paid. So that could encourage lots of usage.
2846
« on: August 21, 2013, 14:28 »
I have a feeling every photo on his Instagram is stolen. They're all very different styles.
2847
« on: August 16, 2013, 11:55 »
Great way for Shutterstock to get a whole bunch of "commercials" for $75k. Just so you know, ad agencies charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for a video similar to the one on the site. That video was copywritten, art directed, expertly lit, shot in a variety of locations with a large pool of talent, including actors, cameramen, grips, lighting crew, etc., and well edited....plus they had to pay for the stock music (a very minor cost in the scheme of things).
My fee alone as a creative director and copywriter (coming up with the concept, writing the script, attending casting, shooting, editing, etc.)...one member of a large team... would be much more than $25k, which is the most you can hope to win.
Good luck to those who decide to enter.
2848
« on: August 16, 2013, 08:54 »
My sales plunged the day after the "maintenance" at SS in mid July, and have yet to recover. I'm really hoping September brings a big upswing. Did they make a concerted effort to push buyers towards subscriptions? Because non-sub sales have suffered tremendously.
2849
« on: August 15, 2013, 16:30 »
Hard to say. I have followers, but who knows why? Could be buyers (though it doesn't seem to have increased my sales), could be fellow illustrators. I think it's more likely the latter, because if the followers were buyers you'd think my new files would be selling.
2850
« on: August 12, 2013, 10:14 »
That's how long it took iStock's website to show me the status of my recently uploaded (and not inspected for five days now) files. It's like the stone age. What's up with their IT department? Do they have any clue how much that dissuades people from uploading?
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