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Messages - cthoman
2951
« on: December 13, 2010, 13:33 »
Hi -
We did make some changes on the vector upload process over the weekend. I'll be posting some news on this release, including a new walkthrough tutorial video from Shawn later today.
To keep you moving in the meantime though - the new JPEG version requirement is 4900px + .
A large JPEG file is required for not only the preview, but also to support a full-slate of rasterized JPEG versions of each vector that will be made available to the customer. Additionally - JPEGs are now required - we are moving away from the automated preview system that whatalife referenced.
More to come...
- Brian
- Brian
You do realize that some of us already have thousands of images that are already created, tagged and ready to go. This sounds like it will create a clerical nightmare that would probably be resolved by just not uploading any of it.
2952
« on: December 13, 2010, 12:50 »
Oh good. Another big announcement that is supposed to "benefit contributors" but doesn't put one thin dime in my pocket. 
Seems like a good announcement, but it doesn't really affect me either.
2953
« on: December 13, 2010, 12:02 »
You see a lot of inexpensive bids go through some of these job sites. It definitely makes you think about outsourcing stock or other work. I'd definitely be worried about putting my own name on something someone else created though. Basically, vouching that they didn't copy anything to create it. I could see hiring someone to make derivative versions of my own work, but I'm not sure about trusting them with something entirely new.
2954
« on: December 11, 2010, 12:15 »
Isn't that the financing company that owns istock? 
2955
« on: December 11, 2010, 11:33 »
I really wouldn't be worried about giving up that crown. My data suggests to me that times are a'changing in the world of microstock. SS in particular are going from strength to strength and so far this month my earnings there are 25% higher than they are at Istockphoto. It's a trend that has been developing for some months now. Nearly 55% of my December's earnings at SS are from PPD's and EL's. They are no longer 'just a subscription site' __ far from it. I sell more EL's at SS than from all the other agencies combined (5 in the last 4 days for example).
If I assume that my own portfolio is exactly 'average' in it's performance, relative to the size of the entire library, then working my sales figures backwards can give an estimation as to the overall sales at each agency. If so, based on my November sales, then last month SS had a turnover of $9.8M and IS were $10.8M. Obviously I've had to base those calculations on a couple of educated guesses regarding the percentage commission paid at SS (assumed to be 33%) and the size of the IS library (assumed to be about 7.5M images). SS of course have nearly twice as many images, many of them either similars or fairly useless because of the lack of upload limits, so I suspect that their figure is artificially boosted by that. I've run this exercise a few times in the past and a couple of years ago SS were barely half that of IS. Whatever the accuracy of the estimations, the indisputable fact that SS is now generating more money for me than Istock, from essentially the same portfolio, tells me that they can't be too far apart when it comes to the size of the agency.
It might take another year or two but I reckon SS will eventually emerge as the dominant microstock agency. Who do you trust the most to win out in the end __ Jon Oringer, serial entrepreneur and founder of SS, or Kelly Thompson, COO of an H&F subsidiary?
I can't say what it's like for the average independent, but this hasn't been my experience at all. If anything it has been the opposite. IS has gradually pulled away from SS with less images.
2956
« on: December 10, 2010, 13:33 »
Yes, it can be jarring to travel between "you've developed something you should've already had and made us dig through the forums to find it, wooyay!" and "those koolaid-drinking pom-pom-waving corporate c**ksuckers!!!" I am easily confused and disoriented. 
Yeah, responses at both places can wear on you. Reality is probably somewhere in between.
2957
« on: December 10, 2010, 11:30 »
There are leaders and there are followers and then there are the begrudgers and dreamers and the somewhere in betweens. Don't crticize these ppl for trying. Ok so anohter new site so what! At least they are doing something instad of sitting around waffling all day. I like this fact that they try!
But it's more fun to be grumpy. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14njUwJUg1I[/youtube] Happy Friday!
2958
« on: December 08, 2010, 15:14 »
I'm sure some don't use best match, but enough do that regardless of how easy it is to sort by downloads, best match changes are a very real assist/threat to us.
I agree, and I'm definitely not saying there aren't problems with the search. Throwing images buyers don't necessarily want and that piss them off at the front of searches doesn't help either. I thought IS learned their lesson with that by favoring exclusive files, but it's back again. On the other hand, excluding exclusive files or a more subtle price search would be a useful search function, but that probably would not go over well with exclusive contributors. I guess someone is always going to be unhappy. Your example did make me think of something funny though. I had this war image that sold well when Bush was president. Now, it doesn't sell very often. Should I be campaigning for Jeb in 2012?
2959
« on: December 08, 2010, 14:33 »
It's a lot of work if you do it yourself. You got to keep it updated and that takes time for the maintenance of the site. It's not that hard to set one up...it's just the time involved keeping it updated.
That was kind of my point. Nobody really wants to do the work, but they want all the rewards. Do I see an earn millions with your snapshots and a little html skills website in the works?
2960
« on: December 08, 2010, 14:27 »
To play devil's advocate for a second, how hard is it to switch your search to downloads instead of best match? That eliminates a lot or all of the Agency and Vetta. The best match has rarely lived up to its name, and I've always assumed many buyers (at least mine) don't use it.
Buyers should use some other search order. But sales trends indicate that the overwhelming majority DO use Best Match. So how best match gets rigged is a very big deal to all of our sales.
That was basically my point that some buyers should try using the other forms of searches and be a little more savvy. Every search is going to contain things you don't want because it has too many downloads, too expensive or any number of other reasons. That isn't going to get any easier as the collection grows and it probably isn't going to be any easier elsewhere. I'm surprised some of these agencies don't have a page describing methods to get the best search results (or maybe they do).
2961
« on: December 08, 2010, 13:42 »
To play devil's advocate for a second, how hard is it to switch your search to downloads instead of best match? That eliminates a lot or all of the Agency and Vetta. The best match has rarely lived up to its name, and I've always assumed many buyers (at least mine) don't use it.
2962
« on: December 08, 2010, 12:09 »
I don't think Photoshelter will be it, but my guess/hope is that someone offers a bundle of merchant services along the lines of amazon's for third party merchants who have "stores" at amazon.com. I don't think there'd be much chance of getting every photographer to become an expert in building a web site themselves. That scenario would require paying them something for the service, but possibly less than the large cut currently going to the microstock agencies.
And if it were Google doing it, at least we'd have a working search engine 
Of course it could also be an out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire situation, where it's a change of distributor but still very little control.
Well, there are a lot of companies vying for this market (Photoshelter, Clustershot, Photodeck, Ktools, Pixaria, StockBoxPhoto & more) Some are pre-built and some are do it yourself. The demand seems minimal for all of them, so I don't think any large company like Google or Amazon would bother to penetrate this market. I think people like to talk about running their own site, but don't really want to actually do it.
2963
« on: December 07, 2010, 17:43 »
From my reading of Ron's comment, it seemed he was talking about our selling images directly through Google and keeping 80% of the royalties. Maybe I misinterpreted him.
Thanks. Got it. The more I think about it, the more I think it would be a conflict of interest for Google to run a site. If Google doesn't show up number one in the searches, it would be embarrassing, but if they do, then it would be suspicious. I'm not sure they would do anything to hurt their search business. Bing and Yahoo would love to get that market back. I could see Google creating an engine for it like they did with Froogle, but that seems too small of a market to be profitable. I guess all these companies are pimping out their cloud type systems, so they could do hosting. But, that seems like a pretty small market too. I guess Yahoo has merchant solutions, so maybe they would be more apt to jump in. As far as competing with your own store, ask me again in a year. SEO has fairly basic and simple rules, but that doesn't necessarily make it easy to get to the top.
2964
« on: December 07, 2010, 15:27 »
Umm... Thanks for stating the obvious, but at the same time, missing the point of my question.
I am well aware that my images that are sold through stock sites are indexed on Google. My question was asked in the context of a suggestion that agencies would lose their market dominance in favor of contributors selling images through search engines directly.
Now, you've got me confused. I'm not sure I understand. Are you talking about a search engine running a stock site or people running their own stock sites? I reread your post and the other comments and you seem to be referencing both.
2965
« on: December 07, 2010, 14:17 »
Not sure how this will work. How will we get our images indexed in the search engines?
Umm... your images already are indexed in Google images. People probably already find them there and buy them from the stock agencies. It doesn't seem like much of a leap that the company that indexes those would try to sell them too. I'm not sure if they have any plans though or if it creates a conflict of interest.
2966
« on: December 06, 2010, 14:50 »
If someone with Ron's skill and business expertise has found microstock unsustainable, what does that mean? Is it unsustainable for all of us, or just the folks with high production costs and overhead? It sounded like part of his problem was high operating costs, but the other part was diminishing sales numbers due to competition. I think that part affects everyone. Our number of sales have steadily decreased, but price increases haven't necessarily kept pace. I thought it was interesting he mentioned setting your own prices and direct sales. Controlling more aspects of our business would be nice. As opposed to leaving it up to an agency that doesn't necessarily have our best interest in mind.
2967
« on: December 04, 2010, 14:18 »
Yikes!
2968
« on: December 03, 2010, 18:51 »
Like Lisa says, ofcourse theres gonna be repercussions and they will last for about six months and then all forgotten.
As long as an agency will exist: thats good news but when its killed off on purpose like SX, thats bad news, and for most of us.
I guess? I have no plans to upload anymore there, so I have to assume that has at least some lasting effect. Someone can always replace me, but I'm not the only person not uploading. How many new contributors does it take to replace one productive veteran contributor? How many will need to be replaced? Will their files go elsewhere? How many files will get deleted? How many exclusives will leave? I highly doubt IS will close or be killed off by this, but it would be nice for them and every other agency to get a little bit of a wake up call. You know that theory that businesses are built by people and not just a bunch of numbers and percentage points.
2969
« on: December 03, 2010, 15:49 »
Lisa - I believe you're not rooting for iStock to fail. but I think you're a minority. I think a lot of contributors would like to see iStock fail out of spite, as well as seeing iStock exclusives fail in order to say I Told You So, or to feed some other insecurity-motivated complex.
Definitely not out of spite for IS or exclusives. Like most of us, I just want to get the most for my hard work. With upload restrictions, harder reviews and lower royalties, I'm not sure the place to get the most out of my work is IS. I don't think it is DT, FT or SS either, so it isn't all picking on IS. IS is just the poster child now for poor industry practices. I'm not sure if others feel that way, but that's my perspective.
2970
« on: December 03, 2010, 11:24 »
What most people seem to forget is that we employ iStockphoto to sell our images, every time a buyer is insulted or put down on the forums it means a possible lost sale to us the contributor. There is a phrase in business "the customer is always right", of course anybody in business knows the customer is rarely right but they need to be treated with a level of diplomacy, otherwise as seen so frequently on the iStock forums they will take their business elsewhere.
As an independent contributor taking their business elsewhere would hopefully mean they'll find my product on the alternative site, but if I were an exclusive at iStockphoto I would be very very p***ed off at how my potential buyers are being spoken too by the staff there. Although as we often seem some exclusives seem to join in the banter and support this level of customer 'liason' and even more surprisingly defend the person who is driving their business away - something I just can't understand.
Well written. There are always going to be unhappy customers (some rational and some not), but there's no reason to agitate or belittle them.
2971
« on: December 02, 2010, 18:57 »
I'm guessing most people appreciate it that you show hard numbers.
I know I do. I always find it interesting when people post their concrete numbers, but there is a lot of secrecy. I guess the poll reflects a numbers range now too which is nice and still gives some anonymity. I think most people reserve the numbers for their blog. It gives you a little more control to delete the info if you want.
2972
« on: December 02, 2010, 15:30 »
So the new customer relations policy is to call people liars and frauds? Good luck with that.
2973
« on: December 02, 2010, 11:05 »
OLD THREAD ALERT
This thread is from 2007 - the current month earnings discussion is over here.
Well if it is from November 2007, then I just added my whole portfolio to StockXpert. It seems to be paying off.
2974
« on: December 02, 2010, 10:32 »
I'm just happy that there are other options out there. And I just found a great source for vector artwork that I'm really excited about. So, good riddance iStock. It's actually kind of ironic that their "punishment" for me motivated me to find other (better) sources for stock.
cough... mystockvectors.com ...cough. Oh wait, this wasn't a pimping thread. Back to the topic. It's hard for me to get too upset by this anymore. It is what it is. Buyers leave. New ones come in. I'm not a spokesperson for any of these agencies. I do find the exclusive postings of "I feel your pain" amusing. I'm not sure why, but I do.
2975
« on: December 01, 2010, 14:45 »
That's a good way to put it.
My istock earnings are down month after month for all of 2010. If the trend continues, I'd say that's pretty unsustainable.
I feel lucky that hasn't happened to me yet, but I'm definitely watching out for it. My concern was more growing my portfolio only to have my gains wiped out by royalty "adjustments".
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