Quote from: NCHANT on August 12, 2014, 21:10

will reach payout each week, which is more than I expected.

I was there for years; not now, though.

It's good that you feel you are doing well, and that exclusivity will be good for you.
Indeed, maybe it will, but I can't remembering all the iS fanboys/girls who raved about them here for years, trashing all contrary comments (usually suggesting anyone who wasn't doing well there was a crap producer), and are now indie.

Ditto as far as the "not now" goes. Had a couple of weeks lately where payout wasn't reached. (OK one was the week with the repayment, but even so that was only $16. . .) and that's with 5500 images which used to do reasonably well for me.
This week for instance I've had one sale since Sunday evening. Nothing for over 48 hours.
If this present situation goes on for long I won't be an exclusive there much longer.
They seem to forget that they offer a service to sell images for the contributors who upload there. That is the deal.
Once they stop selling your images, for whatever reason, there is no point in uploading any more.
And certainly no reason to be exclusive.

Quote from: ShadySue on August 08, 2014, 17:08

^^@hobostocker: I realise the search algorithm is different for different searches, but when many searches are over populated with spammed files which don't even match the search term, the buyers arw getting a worse expedience.
Also the reported experience of most people is that new files - going back to Sept 2012 aren't selling as well as older files. That can be backed up by looking at most recent uploads tbrough a wide range of contributors. Be sure to check upload dates too - I found two BD ports where the recent uploads page seemed to be selling well - but neither had uploaded much in two years. New files sell from time to time - but not enough to encourage people to keep uploading.

agencies are in the business of selling photos, not in the business of providing a steady income to their suppliers, that's not their problem and never was and never will.

of course this is true as long as there are still suppliers willing to upload new images in order to earn a pittance.

but so far so good, i haven't heard a single agency taking action on this matter, as far as they're concerned they're all making fat profits so why should they bother ?

photographers earning nothing is not a bug, it's a feature of the actual stock industry.
either we move to greener pastures or we'll soon be unable to break-in with production costs.

but this will take time, maybe years to be finally acknowledged by agencies, if ever.
considering the millions of images on sales they could pretty much stop uploading new stuff for a long time and only a few buyers would ever notice or complain.

we're well over the saturation point in my opinion, and they don't need us anymore.

While I agree that the market is pretty well saturated, and will continue to get more so, I still don't see the logic in dropping standards to the extent they have been at iStock.
If you have plenty to pick from, why pick anything but the best?
It seems to me to be a classic example of "Skinning a gnat for a farthing, and spoiling a penny knife doing it"

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the older (?) yellow only equipment can still be a protected. I'd steer clear personally.

Quote from: MichaelJayFoto on August 05, 2014, 01:23

Quote from: Colonel on August 04, 2014, 07:45

They don't need to do anything as specific as that.

The RC system keeps their contributor % payouts at a level that is manageable for them. Each year they can control how many are at each level - they don't care how many are at diamond level as long as the aggregate payout % of all contributors is within specified acceptable/sustainable boundaries, which they can control by raising and lowering the RC level tiers.

Adding to that: Ever since they introduced it, they never had to raise the limits. Actually they had decided to keep contributors at least on their older levels. Which shows that people on average are doing even worse than what they had calculated at the start. Funny enough "not raising the bar" is an indicator of the business running not as good as expected in this case, isn't it?

And they've spun it as "we'll keep you at your last year's level, lucky you!" and people thank them for the underperformance and think they're lucky.... marketing spin done well....

The whole place is spinning so fast, that before long a lot of people will need to get off.

True enough about some having more ULs than DLs. The new standards aren't helping anyone there methinks.
Although obviously the model will, and has changed over time, the sudden changes (read drops) seen tend to point to intervention rather than evolution to me.

Quote from: ShadySue on August 02, 2014, 06:05

FWIW, I started at iS in late Dec 2006, and my July dls were the worst, bar none, since Feb 2007

I started uploading there in Jan 2006. This was my worst July since 2007.

2009,2010 and 2011 my July averages were $1 per image per month iS only - just the blue bit - i.e. not including GI or extended licences.

I really started uploading there towards the end of 2005. So about the same time as bunhill.
And guess what? This July is my worst for $$ since 2007. At that time I had something like a third the images online I have now, and of course the amounts per sale were much smaller.

Seems to me that the only exclusives doing well there are bronze and possibly silver. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions of the possible reasons for that, and where things might be going there.
 

Chapter 4

Far to the north there were partisans - bearded artisans and tattooed faeries who had escaped from the forest in brightly colored VWs and on old bicycles.  They lived a simple rustic life in a secret commune which was not on any map and was difficult to find - a tranquil  idle which smelled of fresh coffee and sourdough bread.

Many years ago I went looking for a friend of mine who was supposed to be at a similar place. I was a bearded artisan myself, with an old Transit van, so I didn't look that out of place.

Strangely though I don't remember it smelling of fresh coffee and sourdough bread there.

Haven't really checked that extensively. What I certainly can see from a quick look now, and looking in the recent past, is that some files seem to have every imaginable keyword applied. No matter how tenuous the link may be.  Now I know I've had the occasional keyword correctly removed from uploads in the past few months, so it makes me wonder if at least some of these are being added after acceptance, with little checking or thought.

Try narrowing the search "aciculum" with the word "handcarves"
They can't all be copied keywords surely? Some of them would have been DA'd out during uploading.

Quote from: Difydave on June 11, 2014, 10:38

Quote from: fotoVoyager on June 11, 2014, 10:00

A badge with my name on it and a teenage supervisor telling me how to do a very simple job.

And then, very quickly being jobless again. . .

We're all doomed to be serfs of neo-liberal capitalist Barons one way or another, taking photos, flipping burgers, wiping bottoms. People in the West will revolt eventually, but not in my lifetime I expect.

I thought us microstock photographers  already were "serfs of neo-liberal capitalist Barons"
We'll be OK though in the future you predict. Just as long as we can get releases for the burgers!

Work for free at my business. No I don't think so thanks. It's hard enough to make a living as a one man band without giving away freebies.
"Work for free until you want paying and then we'll find someone else to work for free instead of you"
Internships might be fair enough. As long as you're learning something. Certainly before WWII you often had to pay for an apprenticeship. I believe my my grandfather paid for my mother to be an apprentice hairdresser in the 30s.
As far as the rest is concerned, I wish that self employed people would realise that doing work for free or even too cheaply often damages the the trade or profession they are working in as it makes it more difficult for others to charge realistic prices.
"Start off cheap to get work then put up my prices later" Normally results in someone working cheaply for a couple of years, and then packing it in because there's no money to be made.

Quote from: shotupdave on March 18, 2014, 20:56

May I point out thay many of the old XP machines will be great Linuxed based platforms and should be able to be good for many more years

Hmmmm.  Never thought about switching to another OS.  I'd be interested in knowing more.

Try this out here
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD
You can run it from the CD to try it.
I haven't tried it for a while, but the last time I did it was on a machine running XP, and the Linux just worked. Internet and all. Very little messing about.
If you use software that has Linux versions it helps, although there are ways of running Windows programs on Linux. A program called Wine is one way.
I'm running Win 7 64 at present, and I think it was a good upgrade from XP. Like others have said I didn't like it at first, but I wouldn't want to go back now.
I'm thinking of moving over to Linux though some time in the future. I already use mostly open source programs for work.
 

What's the relative age of the files Liz?
At the moment. I think all my files must be at the back of the search. Whatever's making the best match tick at present.
It's getting to the point of me thinking what to do, and thinking that you can't get less than nothing!