Yeah, that's a big violation. I would definitely report them.

Maybe the system is lactose intolerant? 

Thanks for the info. I'm really only submitting to a few sites regularly, so I ended up reorganizing my personal work flow to speed things up instead. Now if I can just figure out how to train a monkey to do my keywording. 

Quote

a buyer whos gonna spend 100 bucks plus isnt visiting these places at all

You're wrong there. I've been contacted by some big buyers, one in particular, via iStock. Lots of people shop there.

Definitely true. I've done plenty of freelance jobs through micros. Some people scoff at higher prices, but many buyers completely understand why freelance projects cost more.

As far as IS having the best vector collection, that's tough to say. They definitely have a lot of great exclusive vector artists and a lot less garbage than others. But, they are also missing a ton of files from good contributors with larger portfolios. Also, they reject a lot of styles from illustrators that are more designer like or use text. Some of those illustrators are really good and just give up in frustration with IS.

of all the evils done by google, google Images is certainly the worst !

just think what people could do without google images ... bloggers would go nuts and resort to Flickr ... others would start browsing stealing from other blogs or googling "free images".

image search should be BANNED right away as it's de-facto a piracy tool promoting piracy and theft !

You can't be serious?

Google image search is great. You can find where your images are being used, clients can find you to hire you for freelance work and don't even get me started on it's use as an easy resource library. Sure, people can use it to steal things, but that's why watermarks were invented. The positives completely outweigh the negatives.

Yeah, it's definitely a numbers game. Contributors sell more shiny happy people, so they make more images. It's harder to carve out an individual niche, so people gear their portfolios for what the majority want.

Never heard of 'iphotostock'.

I think you are exclusive there in Bizarro world.

Big problem. I found my best selling image there courtesy of Fotolia, with no watermark. I easily copied it to my desktop, opened it in CS4 to a file size of 4.7" x 7.1" at 72 p/inch. It should have been captioned: "Steal Me".
Welcome to the world of artist exploitation.

Fotolia actually does the same thing. You can download an unwatermarked comp that is the same size. I never understood that.

Not a chance in a billion years. Amateurs, for the most part, care little about the how much they make. I takes nothing to institute a policy of non acceptance from poor photographers.

I thought it was the amateurs that complained the most because they are trapped. All the pros have either graduated to higher royalty rates, better stock sites or the low royalties work in their business model.

I think that having a "global economy" has affected many businesses, not just journalism and microstock.

Another example is the graphic design industry. I checked out some of the top freelance sites. Designers in India are bidding $10 to design a logo. Retouching, color correcting and resizing photos in Photoshop...the bids start at 50 cents per photo. There is no way I can compete with that and still pay my bills.

This is definitely true. Maybe, this is why I'm always defending stock because it is growing faster than my freelance work. There are still a lot of clients out there that pay a fair wage, but a lot that want things as cheap as possible.

This sounds like a spillover from the cupcake discussion on SS. That definitely opened my eyes to what other people actually think is copying or not.

I don't see further price increase as a good thing, as an exclusive. Ever since the prices have been increasing (for vectors -which i have most of- almost times 3 since 08) I have witnessed a steady decline in sales, although the $ stayed leveled.
Has anyone else observed this? On the other hand- it would be curious to know if the independents have seen an increase in sales since the price hike for exclusive files this year..
With all the server problems Istock is going through now I would think the implementation E+ collection would be somewhat postponed

I agree the previous raises really slowed overall vectors sales, but they did increase my earnings. It always makes me laugh that canister levels are based on sales and not earnings because my earnings are about twice as much as my sales.

As far as being an independent, the new raise didn't seem to affect my sales. They are going up steadily though, although they were doing that before the change too. So, I can't say if that is just steady growth of my portfolio or price conscience buyers. I also think exclusives aren't favored quite as much in their more keyword orientated best match. So, I would assume former best match favored exclusive images will move to more realistic search positions as buyers download images that match the keywords they want. That's just my opinion though. Either way, it's nice not to be on the last pages of the best match searches anymore.  

Quote from: danhowl on April 13, 2010, 14:03

...  I'm sure that it will help many people.

Not really - I've written stuff like this before, only to have most people say doing things like these are a waste of time. The prevailing attitude here seems to be that time spent not planning, shooting, or processing is time ill-spent. The prevailing RPI here is also around $1 per image per month ...

Does someone need a hug?   Seriously though, I agree with what you wrote. I think I do all those things.