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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
3026
« on: October 30, 2014, 19:48 »
I left BigStock when they refused to let me opt out of lowball subs (I wasn't in the bridge program). Fotolia refused to have me back when I left exclusivity. I'm with PhotoDune but I wouldn't recommend them to anyone new
3027
« on: October 30, 2014, 12:49 »
This is nothing new...a few years ago I discovered...
The thing I don't think any of us were aware of is the parent company skimming off the top before calculating our royalties
3028
« on: October 30, 2014, 11:07 »
I received a reply from support about the 18 cent royalty for an LEL. It was a special deal - a free trial subscription-like package for one client with a limited scope of uses. Apparently both of us with those sales had them from the same client.
Given that this isn't a generally available deal and the license scope was more limited than RF, I'm OK with it. I think they need a different column for reporting "extended" licenses that are actually reduced scope licenses. Royalty Free plus something isn't the same as Royalty Free minus something.
3030
« on: October 30, 2014, 10:10 »
I have opted out of distribution deals everywhere that I can - including 123rf. My images are at Inmagine in the "value" collection. I read the Google translation of your article (a bit rough but one can get the gist) - thanks for posting a link to it.
I'm going to contact 123rf support to request that either they pay me 45% (my rate) of the Inmagine sale price or remove my files from Inmagine.
This is beyond scummy and the fact that there are two corporate entities involved only gives them legal protection from this being fraud. It's despicable and immoral behavior.
They should be ashamed of themselves for (a) not notifying contributors that their work will appear on other sites owned by 123rf even if they opt out of partner sales, (b) posting information about the royalty rate sharing in the earnings chart on the site, and (c) not offering an explicit opt out in the UI
Shame on you 123rf
3031
« on: October 29, 2014, 14:10 »
I see no reason to delete anything - although I had been thinking about a catch-up upload to freshen up what I have there, but I guess I'll wait a bit  They've been an honest agency - if they can figure out how to generate more sales, that'd be great. I didn't get any e-mail from them (the message is on the site, which I looked at after seeing this thread) - I hope they email contributors when uploading is turned back on.
3032
« on: October 29, 2014, 14:00 »
I'm leaving the files I have there as sales are steady, if not all that high in volume, but I don't upload there any more.
Earlier this year I submitted a batch of images (30 or so I think) and I believe only 2 or three were accepted. I've no idea what the rejection reasons were as there's no record of that on the site. It's irrelevant anyway - Shutterstock is selling them and PhotoDune isn't. Shutterstock can sell over 20x what PhotoDune does in a month, so if I were to use a yardstick as to whose reviewers to try and cater to...
Any agency is entitled to set whatever standards they want to, but if, at some point, you wonder why some people don't enter your contests or don't upload any more you might take a look at your reviewing process as one of the factors.
3033
« on: October 29, 2014, 13:53 »
I'm very glad that it was a technical glitch - you've always been prompt in responding in the past and I couldn't imagine that you'd just given up on talking with contributors I have forwarded my copy of the original ticket from October 21st to the e-mail you mentioned.
3034
« on: October 29, 2014, 09:41 »
In Google Image Search, I have files at #3, #5, #11 and #12 for "Iceberg in Trinity Bay, Newfoundland"
All it proves is that the title and description should be relevant. It doesn't prove that their stupid story about the 'adorable' boy building a sandcastle and the dog knocking it down has done anything to improve its position.
Added: doesn't Google take into account your previous searches when serving you up results? So what I get and what someone else gets could be very different.
5, 11, 13, 28 are the positions I see for that image search - and I've never done it before - FWIW.
3035
« on: October 28, 2014, 20:28 »
I got one too. I don't mind being part of the test as long as they don't expect me to do anything. I won't be manually changing my descriptions tho, and if they want that they are S0L
I know it will sound a bit Eeyore (doom and gloom), but suppose whatever changes they make were a mess (sales stop completely for those images)? I'm sure you're supposed to change things back if you don't like it. Depending upon how many images you'd have to edit to fix what they did, you might want to ask for a promise that if they break it they fix it
3036
« on: October 28, 2014, 16:15 »
You will have to send the offending sites a DMCA takedown notice. There isn't anywhere to report this unless you are exclusive to one site
3037
« on: October 28, 2014, 09:26 »
I wouldn't see microstock as a dumping ground, but a lower priced outlet. You start selling things at the highest price you think you can get and when you've exhausted that, you offer them at a discounted price, often elsewhere.
That seems pretty reasonable in principle. If the images are not outdated (because of cell phones the size of a brick, or other obsolete props/fashions) people may buy an image for $10 that they wouldn't have for $100 or more. iStock's expensive collection may not be the best place for these images though as they're pretty run-of-the-mill.
3038
« on: October 28, 2014, 08:27 »
And I still don't have a reply - I sent a followup too, just in case the first e-mail was "lost" somehow. Nothing. Is it some sort of extended holiday in Malaysia (which is I think where all the contributor support answers used to come from even though they have sales offices elsewhere)? I realize that the silence for lbogdan from October 3rd would mean an extremely long holiday I used the Contact us form and selected Photographer for the type; I did get the automated e-mail when I checked the box to get an e-mail copy of my submission. Has that way of contacting them been replaced and they just didn't update the web site? Or put another way, has any contributor sent in a support ticket in October and received an answer? If so, how did you submit your ticket?
3039
« on: October 26, 2014, 18:44 »
But they have some photos uploaded in 2010.
The profile page says a member since August 2014, so I'm guessing that date was changed to be the date it was shot - didn't they talk about doing that for Getty images ingested a few years back to avoid messing with best match?
3040
« on: October 23, 2014, 10:26 »
I think the better way to approach this is to submit as editorial. Why take a risk of legal action and big hassles (I assume you don't have a model release and couldn't get one) for what earnings you might make shooting stock?
Even if you cloned out the flames (which you shouldn't do if you go the editorial route), there's a good chance the subject would recognize the workplace and their gear and get miffed about this being used without their permission. They don't have to prevail in a lawsuit to cause you expense and grief. Just not worth it, IMO.
3041
« on: October 22, 2014, 15:27 »
... I'm worried it becomes a cable tv sort of thing, and all of a sudden we're paying $100+ per month for software.
I'm a CS6 (Photoshop and Illustrator) & LR 5 holdout too. The cable TV folks may be getting a sharp lesson now that CBS and HBO are planning to offer content outside of a cable subscription. You can't sustain that level of customer ripoff forever (it seems like far too long already, but...) and I'll be quite happy to see Adobe go the way of Quark if they don't wake up and realize customer satisfaction matters in the long run.
3042
« on: October 22, 2014, 15:22 »
The iStock links already give a 404 error - that was quick Nice catch
3043
« on: October 22, 2014, 15:21 »
The most important thing is to embed a profile in every image you create, and set Photoshop to alert you if you open images without one.
Right now, everything assumes sRGB if there's no profile or the app/browser isn't profile aware. At some point in the future that might change so you don't want sRGB to look like garbage in some future app.
I work in AdobeRGB and the action I use in Photoshop to output the JPEGs I upload converts to sRGB and switches to 8 bit before writing the file (and ensures the include profile box is checked). Likewise any save for Web presets in Photoshop or presets in Lightroom - make sure the profile is embedded and that the image is sRGB.
I used to upload aRGB JPEGs while exclusive but switched back to sRGB after becoming indie because not all sites handle aRGB (or anything other than sRGB) correctly. I think most of the sites leave a profile embedded in the JPEGs you download - 123rf used to strip all metadata, but they now leave that information alone, along with keywords etc.
3044
« on: October 22, 2014, 10:47 »
I don't yet have a reply (except for the automated receipt notice), but in the past they've been good about replying to support tickets. I'll post here when I hear back from them - it would not be good news if they've stopped responding, so I'm hoping you have some sort of e-mail problem that's behind the apparent silence.
It would be good if sites had on-side records of open, and closed, support tickets so they could be viewed online. No one has that (iStock is close but they delete links to closed tickets from the UI)
3045
« on: October 22, 2014, 09:50 »
"...an in-app image browsing experience..."
Is that sort of what Canva is doing?
It might sound like that, but even though Adobe sells its separate apps as a "suite", anyone who has used them knows (a) it's multiple products, (b) Adobe struggles to have a consistent user experience across apps, so you're already used to being the "general contractor" yourself with the various bits and pieces you have to put together to get a finished design. I cannot imagine any deal Adobe could make would allow the customer to use an image without paying for it up front. Also can't imagine how Adobe could make their software restrict use of the images during the design process without rewriting just about everything, even with SmartObjects. Canva offers a much simpler set of tools (which is probably not a big problem for some substantial portion of people putting together simple designs or making changes to something their designer did for them) and you get to do everything in one place, including with the images, and you don't have to pay until you're done and are actually ready to use what you designed. There, everything really is in one place.
3046
« on: October 21, 2014, 11:32 »
Another LEL for only $0.18. Such a shame....
I make 0.324 cents for a subscription sale, so I wondered if it would be possible to see an 18 cent royalty on anything, but sure enough, when looking back through the LELs for this year I found one at 18 cents (the others were from 2.984 to 9.00 which seems more reasonable). At the 45% royalty rate (which I'm at) and the prior promise that for the purpose of calculating royalties, 40 cents would be the minimum per-credit price used, 18 cents is the smallest royalty possible on a 1 credit sale. And some buyer is getting some type of extended license for that? It's been a while since any 123rf staff stopped by here, but I think I'm going to write to support about my 18 cent royalty on an LEL because that just seems wrong.
3047
« on: October 21, 2014, 03:06 »
Canva is doing a lot of new things - micro rights managed, buyer never gets our files, and design in the browser. I'm willing to cut them a fair bit of slack to see if this can fly
50% is meaningless in the absence of some context
3048
« on: October 18, 2014, 14:23 »
I don't understand the graphs, but I have been keeping track of the major stock site's alexa rankings (global and US) roughly monthly since March. There's no big falloff in ranking numbers for iStock - it was 462 global on Sept 9th and 471 on October 18th. Its US ranking dropped from 265 to 323. Shutterstock was 197/192 in September and 198/223 in October
Here's the file:
March 4 2014
Site Global/USA
IS 424 / 252
SS 216 / 194
Thinkstock 5,824 / 1,519
Getty 3,003 / 1,107
Fotolia 528 / (DE) 64
dreamstime 656 / 607
123rf 472 / 551
DepositPhotos 1,317 / 1,060
PhotoDune 2,886 / 2,018
Canstock 3,636 / 2,027
Alamy 16,001 / 12,010
May 28 2014
IS 447 / 270
SS 193 / 199
Thinkstock 4,413 / 1,240
Getty 2,091 / 854
Fotolia 511 / (DE) 67 (FR) 148 (US) 1,188
dreamstime 664 / 629
123rf 659 / 620
DepositPhotos 1,191 / 927
PhotoDune 2,662 / 1,662
Canstock 3,443 / 2,416
Alamy 14,293 / (GB) 1,517 (US) 15,090
DollarPhotoClub 5,086 / 1,700
June 30 2014
IS 450 / 272
SS 195 / 178
Thinkstock 4,408 / 1,284
Getty 2,374 / 1,090
Fotolia 511 / (DE) 68 (FR) 151 (US) 992
dreamstime 679 / 642
123rf 666 / 610
DepositPhotos 1,153 / 840
PhotoDune 2,572 / 1,504
Canstock 3,754 / 2,788
Alamy 14,168 / (GB) 1,577 (US) 15,159
DollarPhotoClub 3,516 / 1,472
July 28 2014
IS 454 / 299
SS 188 / 191
Thinkstock 4,493 / 1,499
Getty 2,418 / 975
Fotolia 515 / (DE) 63 (FR) 165 (US) 1,195
dreamstime 681 / 646
123rf 635 / 591
DepositPhotos 1,110 / 902
PhotoDune 2,524 / 1,663
Canstock 3,832 / 2,500
Alamy 13,166 / (GB) 1,590 (US) 11,383
DollarPhotoClub 2,766 / 1,395
Canva 3,436 / 1,138
Sept 9 2014
IS 462 / 265
SS 197 / 192
Thinkstock 5,220 / 1,493
Getty 2,490 / 929
Fotolia 524 / (DE) 69 (FR) 197 (US) 1,306
dreamstime 678 / 684
123rf 614 / 614
DepositPhotos 1,097 / 932
PhotoDune 2,472 / 1,655
Canstock 3,903 / 2,674
Alamy 12,448 / (GB) 1,351 (US) 12,991
DollarPhotoClub 2,368 / 1,258
Canva 2,378 / 964
Oct 18 2014
IS 471 / 323
SS 198 / 223
Thinkstock 5,275 / 1,545
Getty 2,447 / 850
Fotolia 567 / (DE) 74 (FR) 175 (US) 1,617
dreamstime 722 / 726
123rf 657 / 694
DepositPhotos 1,113 / 910
PhotoDune 2,684 / 2,227
Canstock 3,923 / 2,935
Alamy 11,845 / (GB) 1,996 (US) 11,726
DollarPhotoClub 2,215 / 1,186
Canva 2,196 / 1,059
3049
« on: October 18, 2014, 14:10 »
I think the numbers speak for themselves.
Top right of those screenshots which Sue posted is the glaring clue:
"This site's metrics are estimated"
Estimated is a euphemism for meaningless
From alexa.com regarding what estimated means: "Not all websites implement our on-site analytics and publish the results. For these sites, we show estimated metrics based on traffic patterns across the web as a whole. We identify these patterns by looking at the activity of millions of web users throughout the world, and using data normalization to correct for any biases. The more traffic a site gets, the more data we have to calculate estimated metrics. Estimates are more reliable the closer a site is to being ranked #1. Global traffic ranks of 100,000+ are subject to large fluctuations and should be considered rough estimates. If a site has Certified Metrics instead of estimated, that means its owner has installed code allowing us to directly measure their traffic. These metrics have a greater level of accuracy, no matter what the ranking."
3050
« on: October 16, 2014, 19:28 »
If you're licensing content with iStock Credits, you can purchase an Extended License when initially licensing content or anytime afterward by calling Support.
http://www.istockphoto.com/help/licenses
Terms of original sale. Seems to me that contributors implicitly accept those terms (and the responsibility to the client) irrespective of deleting their content or later leaving.
The artist supply agreement clause on termination (section 12) states: "(ii) notwithstanding termination, iStockphoto and its distribution partners shall have the right to continue licensing Accepted Content until it is removed from the Site or other sites where Accepted Content is distributed; " That says to me that once the content is removed (and above that it talks about having 30 days to remove content) they no longer have that right. The help text isn't part of the Content License Agreement which says "d) No terms or conditions may be added or deleted unless made in writing and either accepted in writing by an authorized representative of both parties or issued electronically by iStock and accepted in writing by your authorized representative." so you can't amend the agreement by what's written in the forums or the help or anywhere else.
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