Quote from: Karen on January 21, 2013, 14:44

All the good guys left Getty. Just wondering why kelvinjay is still a Forum Moderator on Istockphoto?

For the money? It beats working for a living.

Hello Everyone,

Thanks for your detailed feedback...it has been very helpful.

We've been looking into this and we found an issue that started a few days ago with a normal refresh of our search records. The effect of the issue is that some older popular images are ranking higher than they should be. This was an issue with the normal refresh and not a change made to our search algorithms. The team has already identified and implemented a solution.  Only a portion of the collection was affected and you should see the impact of the solution as early as today, though it may take a few days for everything to be 100% back to normal.

Thanks again for your help and patience as we resolve this.

Best Regards,

Scott
VP Content
Shutterstock

I don't submit there because they are all about special deals and promises of special search placement. They contacted me about uploading. I said their prices and royalties were too low to consider it. They replied with an offer of an artificial bump to a higher royalty rate and special search placement.

The special placement (a) isn't in buyer's interests and (b) won't last beyond the next sucker they make the same promise too. Felt to me too much like being propositioned by a lecherous drunk in a bar - all sweet talk up front, but it's not a good deal in the long run

I think we call them agencies but they don't call themselves agencies, at least not any more. It implies a certain responsibility to their clients (us) and heaven knows they don't want any of that.

I opted out of partner sites when I started to upload direct to Pond5.  My images from 123RF were still there after a few months and I had to request Pond5 to remove them.  Just looked on the 123RF site and I can't find the opt out option anywhere now, is it still there?

Honestly I'm not sure what it would represent either. It's sold though, and so far has made me about 2-3 downloads per day. I know that's not huge but still money for very little effort. It's not the only one I have like this either. Overall out of about 4-5 pictures I've made about 40-50 bucks for displaying some overweight fat male nipples. This one was actually created in as a continuation of the other one I did with no props but rather a dude just standing grabbing his nipples.
I have no idea why they sell, who buys them, or what they are used for. I've actually tried to find them and the only thing I Can find so far of the santa one is people snagging it from the shutterstock site and using it on forums, blogs and such.

Though I think as someone else brought up is these are niche images I guess. If you look around at most stock sites there are not many of them at all. Only thing I can think of. I'll tell you this though I plan to keep doing them as long as they keep making a little money.

Thank you Luis, you are a genius,

Quote

istock's demise will send a clear message to the whole industry and save our future royalties and earnings

Ironically, I believe one reason given for not going to SS by IS exclusives is the small commission paid. I did look once, was it 25c-35c? Something like that.

I think fotographer is dead on.  We gather here and argue everything from commissions to shutter speeds and tend to assume that we are the microstock world. 
There are thousands and maybe millions of microstock contributors who have never heard of MSG and probably another couple of hundred who don't give a dam n or have found the negative vibes too prominent to get involved.

123 knows that.  and so does iStock.  We're just pissin' in the wind.