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Messages - gostwyck
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351
« on: November 17, 2013, 13:36 »
"If you like your own photography, you are not a good photographer"
What? Weird comment. This one too: "your image must be perfect to be bought" - unless "perfect" just means "perfect for the person buying it"/.
I particularly liked "Shutterstock should be building space ships". I've absolutely no idea what Yuri is talking about but the sentence does have nice syntax.
352
« on: November 17, 2013, 13:29 »
I'd be a lot more concerned if we ever saw Monkeybusiness become 'exclusive' to Istock but I'm pretty sure that will never happen. Yeulet is a sharp business woman as she proved when she sold Bananastock to Jupiter for $20M. I'd trust her judgement in such matters over Yuri's all day long.
Uh oh. Time to be concerned?
Just saw this Tweet on Depositphotos.com's feed: "more pressure to go exclusive than ever" (cathy yeulet, monkeybusiness images) #mexpo #microstock"
Yes, I saw that quote on the Mexpo thread. "Pressure"? Pressure from what or where exactly? Personally I think there has never been a worse time to even consider exclusivity with Istock. They appear to have lost tons of customers, have been shedding staff, the website appears permanently broken with no ability to fix it and the mothership is under real financial pressure struggling under a mountain of debt. Add to that the fact that new images hardly sell at all nowadays and everything is being swamped by millions of LCV images with apparently no QC at all. The only 'good thing' about Istock is the surprising and unexplained growth in the PP earnings but of course, if you went exclusive, you wouldn't benefit from the PP. Why on earth would anyone choose to go exclusive now?
353
« on: November 16, 2013, 12:34 »
It's an interesting read but I believe their conclusions are flawed for several reasons.
Firstly, they are using Istock's own keyword weighting system as their sole source of data. Whaaaat? Does anyone take Istock's supposed 'data' in any way seriously? They can't even tell us what money we made 3 weeks ago! Is it possible that Istock really have a 'keyword weighting system' that actually works properly?
Istock's system, whatever it is worth, is based on their own precious CV system which limits the options available to both the keywording contributors and the buyers. For example SP have concluded that 'Isolated on White' is one of the least used keywords by buyers. From my own data at SS I know that buyers use the word 'isolated' quite often (up to 23% on my popular isolated subjects). Maybe Istock's 'Isolated on White' is just too long to be practical.
SP state that 'Food' is a very popular keyword used by buyers. Not on SS it isn't. About 95% of my sales are of food subjects, all have 'food' as a keyword, and yet according to SS the buyers almost never use that word when searching other than for specific ethnic subjects (such as 'Indian food').
I'm not sure what we can learn from all this anyway. For example, just because SP tell us that buyers never use or 'convert' with the term 'female' is anyone going to stop using it? I don't buy images much myself but when I am doing searches then 'female' would be my normal word to use for an adult rather than woman, lady, etc.
354
« on: November 16, 2013, 06:08 »
3、If the theme of my files are belong to those who are hardly to be sold. If there are any problems of my files?
Your images are simply not stock-oriented. Nature images tend to be high in supply and low in demand and only the very best (and luckiest) will make worthwhile sales. You need to understand the market for stock images before you can produce for it. Before you compose your shot you need to consider who will buy it and what will they use it for.
355
« on: November 15, 2013, 14:04 »
Oh well ... coming to the end of yet another full working week for Istock's technical and management teams and still the stat's issue remains unresolved. Any bets for a fix next week?
357
« on: November 15, 2013, 11:19 »
Strewth! Yuri's put quite a bit of weight on hasn't he? Maybe 'professionals eat like professionals' too.
358
« on: November 14, 2013, 20:13 »
I get the impression that it was just another vanity shoot for yet more self-promotion showing us how much gear he's got and how exciting his life is. Note the vital close-up of his personalised registration plate on his car.
And to think he could be shooting tomatoes on a white background, he took a wrong turn somewhere.
I suspect the 'tomatoes on a white background' would actually produce a far better ROI though. Where's the market for stock images of a training jet shot at dusk?
359
« on: November 14, 2013, 15:24 »
It's a strange project. I suppose the air force wanted the shots and arranged it all, since the expense certainly doesn't seem justified for stock purposes. You could tell he works mostly in a studio from the time it took him to hit on panning as the solution, which I'm pretty sure a motor-sports shooter would have done automatically.
If it was a commission from the Danish air force then why was it done at a commercial airport? Why would they commission Yuri anyway as he is hardly an expert in aviation photography (obvious from the video) and surely the Danish armed forces would have their own specialist photographers anyway? The pilot looked way too old to be operational too. I get the impression that it was just another vanity shoot for yet more self-promotion showing us how much gear he's got and how exciting his life is. Note the vital close-up of his personalised registration plate on his car.
360
« on: November 14, 2013, 12:50 »
Something doesn't add up for me in all this.
My 'PP sales' are on target to be almost double my royalties from Istock last month or roughly equivalent to my earnings from DT and FT combined. Where has all this 'new business' come from almost overnight?
The sales from which these PP royalties are derived must be in the tens of millions of dollars (annually it could be the equivalent of a new agency with $100M in sales revenue). How is it possible that the market for our work has apparently grown so much so quickly? It is not as if anyone is reporting an equivalent fall in their earnings elsewhere.
Could this be an error or could it be that historic under-reporting has been discovered and is now being corrected? If so why would these new sales be so evenly distributed throughout the month? It is all very strange.
361
« on: November 13, 2013, 13:28 »
I have PP sales reported until the 13th and the amount is incredibly high when compared with the average month. In fact I think I've earned more in these 13 days than the whole month in the previous reports.
Same here. If the trend continues then I'm on target to earn almost twice as much from the PP in October ... as I did from my Istock portfolio.
362
« on: November 13, 2013, 13:21 »
I say get rid of 'em all. We should always look professional.
I'd agree. If Shakespeare, Twain and Hemmingway didn't need 'emoticons' to express themselves then neither should we. If we're going to have a limit though it should be based on age rather than time. If you are 4 years old or younger then you can use them.
363
« on: November 13, 2013, 13:12 »
there is also a new entry ANDRESR on istock exclusives
exclusive http://www.istockphoto.com/andresrimaging
no exclusive http://www.istockphoto.com/andresr
Hey guys, I just saw a previous post. I think it's kinda crazy that someone who produces really good images would get so little download (a bit more than 30) in 2-3 months with a 1000 images portfolio.
Would you say it's typical of the stock scene form the last year?
tx
Most of the images in the account you are referring to were uploaded very recently (mainly in October if I remember correctly) and, in case you haven't heard, ISTOCK STAT'S HAVEN'T BEEN UPDATED FOR OVER TWO WEEKS NOW.
364
« on: November 13, 2013, 12:03 »
Here is your response from March in a thread in which it was being discussed with respect specifically to non-exclusives. You even quoted a bit about 360:
Thanks! There are so many of these f+~king 'Getty deals' nowadays, mostly hidden from our view, that I can't remember them all.
365
« on: November 13, 2013, 11:35 »
Sorry just joking with gostwyck, I should have added quotes. He said that about the Getty 360 deal before. Now it seems to be a nice surprise?
What are you talking about? I couldn't have expressed an opinion about the "Getty 360 deal" because I don't even know what it is. I've heard references to it but assumed it was something to do with exclusives. What exactly is the Getty 360 deal?
366
« on: November 13, 2013, 11:31 »
Is anybody coming from Getty? I can't believe they have completly abandoned the German market to the competition. What kind of signal are they sending to the exclusive German artists?
Fotolia and SS have offices and sales teams in Germany and the 300 million dollar istock business has no official represantation in the German language market with it's 100 million people?
What about istock and Getty's future in Europe?
I really don't understand their strategy. Is all their income going into servicing their debts?
I'm really confused...
I actually doubt that Istock are still a '$300M business' nowadays. They've been shedding staff and shrinking for at least a couple of years now. The closing of the Berlin office was just part of that. I guess they must have decided that the costs of running it weren't justified by whatever revenue it generated.
367
« on: November 13, 2013, 11:18 »
Hmm. My stat's have clicked up $195 for about 200 PP sales up to 6th Oct. Something's going on. Unusual to have a 'nice' surprise at Istock nowadays.
I really can't believe what a total c**k you are making of yourself here in defending what is so clearly against the interests of all contributors.
Got out of bed on the wrong side this morning by any chance? Quite clearly I wasn't 'defending' anything in my original statement. I was merely reporting the facts with a wry observation.
368
« on: November 13, 2013, 11:14 »
Hmm. My stat's have clicked up $195 for about 200 PP sales up to 6th Oct. Something's going on. Unusual to have a 'nice' surprise at Istock nowadays.
LOL! I remember you telling me a long time ago that people would be lucky to see even $30 a month from pp! Congratulations on getting that sort of return, it looks as if it will end up being a really big boost to your October tally.
At this rate, iS/pp is going to move back into contention with SS in the poll.
Bizarrely, out of the 10 days of the PP so far declared, they actually beat SS on the 2nd Oct and equalled them on the 9th. What's going on?
369
« on: November 13, 2013, 11:11 »
"Seeking free family photographs, Adriana emailed a contact at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency responsible for the Affordable Care Act's rollout, about having photos of her and her family taken in exchange for allowing the photos to be used to market the new health care law. She was never paid. "
Because I know that when I want some good family photography done, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid is who I would call.
The clue is in the words "a contact". That suggests she knew someone who worked there. I need a couple of new tyres for my car. If only there was a 'Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services' in my area. I'm sure they could sort it out for me, maybe in return for a photo of my car.
370
« on: November 13, 2013, 04:02 »
Hmm. My stat's have clicked up $195 for about 200 PP sales up to 6th Oct. Something's going on. Unusual to have a 'nice' surprise at Istock nowadays.
371
« on: November 12, 2013, 17:30 »
iStuck.
"Professionals deal with professionals!" Hope Yuri's enjoying his new 'professional' partnership.
372
« on: November 12, 2013, 16:05 »
I joined Fotolia in 2006, and am Emerald in rank. My sales graph for FT shows a perfect bell curve from 2006 to now - sales initially grew rapidly, peaking in 2010, and have since declined just as dramatically, currently back to my 2008 levels and still falling. Since the decline started my sales have not improved at all whether I've uploaded regularly or not.
I'm very glad for all the newer contributors who are doing well - just a word of warning that you should be wary of doing too well - if you work like crazy and manage to climb their mountain, instead of supporting your efforts they give you a boot up the backside and push you back down the other side. Oh, and they deny doing it, of course.
To be honest I doubt if they've done themselves any favours either. Most times that significant contributors lose out then so does the agency. I suspect that one of the major reasons that Yuri and Andres recently defected to 'pretend exclusivity' was their inability to grow their income at FT. If they, like you and I, were back down to 2008 levels of sales then it is hardly surprising.
373
« on: November 12, 2013, 15:59 »
Sorry to say but that is incorrect. The first 50 files have well over 500dls, the stats stopped updating a couple weeks ago. The files were uploaded months ago but probably approved just a few weeks ago judging by how many downloads they've had since the stats stopped working.
With lots of Vetta images and about 2000 sales in the last 3 weeks, they probably made at least $10,000 per week.
^^^ Sorry to say but that is incorrect too. Some of that portfolio dates back to 2010 so the sales numbers have been gathered over a much longer period than you surmise. I would be absolutely amazed if that portfolio were generating more than a fraction of what you estimate.
374
« on: November 11, 2013, 20:24 »
You guys can bash Yuri forever but you need to pay attention to who they are targeting for marketing spend. If they were not worried about contributor poaching they would not have put out an industry ban on discussing income etc. and they would not have extended the time images need to remain on the site.
I think SS intends on using marketing spend to port enterprise sales to BS, if you don't shoot business you will not notice much of an uptick at BS.
Utter nonsense. SS are in robust good health. Forecasts for 2014 revenue are more than 50% up from the IPO barely more than a year ago. That's the truth. Your own sales, or apparently lack of, are a function of your own performance relative to competing portfolios __ not that of SS. No matter how many excuses or conspiracy theories you dream up, it will not change the facts.
375
« on: November 11, 2013, 17:43 »
So they lose 150k images, they add that back in half a week, and there are a ton of copycats. Maybe a few buyers buy the name, but I think the majority dont give a hoohaa on who shot the image. Not for stock. Art would be different.
right, both around 100k, like you just said half week of approvals at SS, there are 4 or 5 big "lifestyle" contributors at SS that will take care of their downloads, BTW they must be quite excited 
Exactly. SS losing 100K images out of 30M will not be noticed. They'll add that many new images in about 4 days. To be honest the 'photo factories' are pretty much going round in circles anyway. They are just shooting the same, relatively few themes, over and over. So are most of the rest of us too. There's precious little original in stock, especially nowadays, and any successful artist or image will rapidly be 'flattered' by an army of clones and similars. I'd be a lot more concerned if we ever saw Monkeybusiness become 'exclusive' to Istock but I'm pretty sure that will never happen. Yeulet is a sharp business woman as she proved when she sold Bananastock to Jupiter for $20M. I'd trust her judgement in such matters over Yuri's all day long.
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