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Messages - stockastic
3751
« on: June 16, 2009, 16:57 »
Yes, 'quality'. In other words, they want to keep selling what's been selling in the past. New images from new contributors go nowhere.
It seems to me that's self-defeating in the long run, but I'm obviuosly biased.
3752
« on: June 16, 2009, 16:47 »
Never saw the movie but I remember a really boring TV show where guys stood around in long dark coats for half an hour and then fought with swords while lighting flashed.
And the connection with Getty....?
3753
« on: June 16, 2009, 16:11 »
What's "Highlander"?
3754
« on: June 16, 2009, 14:31 »
Getty will just continue to jerk these companies around, changing the 'terms' of all the agreements, cutting contributor prices, and launching new marketing schemes every month, in pursuit of imposible profit figures.
That's what big companies do when they go on acquisition binges. Eventually, they wake up with a big hangover and lose interest. Then the market can reorganize and new alternatives can emerge.
Microstock is going to get worse before it gets better.
3755
« on: June 16, 2009, 10:38 »
Starting in January, I've gotten about 80 images onto Dreamstime and was making some sales. About a month ago they made some changes that caused the sales to fall way off, and new images no longer get any views. Once in a while an old image still sells.
3756
« on: June 14, 2009, 15:50 »
I'd have no reason to care. Their latest search engine "tweaking" killed my sales.
3757
« on: June 13, 2009, 18:29 »
Adeptris, interesting post. With regard to fake-looking "business people" shots, how can we explain the love/hate relationship that designers have with these images of a synthetic reality? I think it's a sociological question.
Although business dress is more casual than it was 30 years ago, the pendulum may be swinging back towards formality and stock images are being picked to foreshadow that future.
And the public is not comfortable seeing images of ordinary-looking people providing financial, medical, or technical services. We want a fantasy world of smarter, better-looking, more focused people. Designers may privately laugh at these images, but society seems to expect them. We don't want to see people that look like ourselves.
3758
« on: June 13, 2009, 08:39 »
Seriously though - I still find it hard to believe the apparently endless, limitless demand for fake-y-looking shots of young models dressed up as "business" people.
Where does all this stuff end up?
3759
« on: June 12, 2009, 17:08 »
It seems like new images are getting routed to 2 different groups. One reviews quickly, one does not. Depending on which group your images go to, they get indexed diferently in the database. In one case the indexing is bad - in some way - resulting in no views.
So, you either go first class, or you're bumped from the flight.
It's ridiculous to leave contributors speculating like this and wasting their time uploading images that aren't going anywhere. I quit weeks ago, but I'd resume if they'd make just one single sensible statement about what's going on and what the current status of the business is.
If this is how Getty is going to manage their acquisitions, it's a bad sign.
3760
« on: June 12, 2009, 15:34 »
Getting back to StockXpert for a moment - does anyone have any idea what's going on there?
3761
« on: June 12, 2009, 09:42 »
The whole point of the '0 views' thread on StockXpert is that some contributors get views on new images as always, and some get absolutely none. This change seems to have happened in February. If you read the thread you'll see that the StockXpert Admin acknowledged that there was a problem, and said it would be fixed. Apparently it has never been fixed.
3762
« on: June 10, 2009, 18:43 »
Somehow, contributors seem to have been divided into 2 groups. One continues to get views on new images, the other group is apparently uploading to one of the Mars rovers. I'm in the Mars group. I don't think it's because our images were designated as undesireable - I suspect it's a database error and that whoever was working on the Getty-mandated changes either hasn't finished the job or has quit, and no one has gone in yet and tried to fix things. Just a guess, but it seems to fit the observed facts.
3763
« on: June 10, 2009, 13:45 »
Wow how cool is that? So the site wasn't really working. So yes, my test was worthless.
Some notice might have been nice. The support guy who deleted my account might have said something.
I could just sign up again and reload the 20. But the difficulty of closing an account is, to me, enough reason to stay out.
3764
« on: June 10, 2009, 12:17 »
As has been true for months now, some submitters get views on their new images and some don't. I suspect thtat behind the scenes the new Getty overlords have things pretty well hosed up by now. Something is messed up with their database, I think, and some contributors just aren't getting picked up by search. They might be stuck in the middle of some Getty-mandated changes.
We will see if it ever gets straightened out.
3765
« on: June 10, 2009, 11:31 »
Yes I was also advised that sales at SS would fall off after 3 or 4 months while DT would pick up. Exactly the opposite has happened. SS continues to sell well after 5 months. DT has completely died. I think these sites are constantly changing and what was observed in the past may not be true today.
Put 2000 images on CanStockPhoto, then have to delete them one....by...one... someday, if I want to go exclusive somewhere, or CanStockPhoto changes their "terms" and starts paying 2 cents? Not likely.
3766
« on: June 10, 2009, 10:55 »
I keep checking their forum - 'Admin' has replied to some other issues but refuses to answer the '0 views' thread. I'm not cancelling my account yet, just waiting. At some point there will be an announcement, either of the site being straightened out or closing down.
3767
« on: June 10, 2009, 10:35 »
My portfolio is so small at this point that my results may not mean much. But my sales stopped, so I assume my images aren't showing up. Is StockXpert itself still active , or is it just a conduit to JI - or wherever Getty is putting our images this week?
3768
« on: June 10, 2009, 10:24 »
travismanley, I get what you're saying, but I also have to look at the evidence in front of my eyes.
I have only 80 images on SS and they make sales every day. Fotolia is selling them too. I put the top 20 on CanStockPhoto and they never even got 1 view, much less a sale. We're not talking about 'low' sales or 'low' views. It was absolute zero. Something is wrong here. Maybe small portfolios get ranked so low that they're invisible; there's no way to know.
Look at this from the point of view of someone starting out in microstock. I want to see if this is going to be worth the effort, and on which sites, and find out what sells. I'm not going to spend the time producing and uploading hundreds of images for no payoff. I think it makes sense to start with a small group, try a few sites and see what happens.
CanStockPhoto's trafffic is obviously so low that a small portfolio will never even make a payout. If I had an existing portfolio of thousands of images, things would be different. But I was sure not impressed to find that if I wanted out, I had to delete every image manually, one at a time. No way would I have thousands of images in that situation.
3769
« on: June 10, 2009, 10:17 »
Check their forum. There's an ongoing thread about new images getting no views, which has never been replied to by StockXpert.
I'm in that group. My first group of images, uploaded late Jan/early Feb, got plenty of views and made some sales. Images which I uploaded after that point got a few views, then died. I've had only a couple of sales since then and I quit uploading.
Obviously something bad happened, but they won't say what.
3770
« on: June 09, 2009, 21:55 »
I just hunted around for 10 minutes and couldn't even figure out how to delete an image.
Maybe I should just wait the 1,000 years it would take to get a payout.
3771
« on: June 09, 2009, 20:08 »
I think they started doing this recently - I had a couple accepted this way. Maybe they finally realized that rejecting for "wrong" keywords, was just a PITA for the submitter and it would be easier to just remove those keywords and accept the image.
3772
« on: June 09, 2009, 20:06 »
Does anyone know how to close an account at 123RF?
3773
« on: June 09, 2009, 19:57 »
After 3 weeks without a single view on any image, I moved on to the next stage of my relationship with CanStockPhoto - trying to close my account.
I found "Cancel Acccount" on the Account page - sounded promising. I clicked it and it warned me that all my images would be lost - clicked OK on that and it told me I had to delete my images first. Which I did, one... by... one.... (apparently no way to delete them all, or in groups). And "Cancel Account" still tells me I have images on line. I had to open a support ticket to close the account (which they did, quickly).
Oh and it also warned me I'd be deleting my images from StockSensation.com. Um who the heck are they? Some other junk site I unwittingly authorized to sell my images for 2 cents, I guess. Serves me right for not paying a lawyer $150 to look at the agreement.
I'm deleting my account here, and at 123RF, because I wouldn't get to payout on these sites in 100 years, and I don't want them going out of business while hanging on to copies of my images.
3774
« on: June 09, 2009, 12:36 »
I think that a lower-case 'i' in front of a capitalized noun can now be used to sell just about anything.
iStock has another advantage - a web page that looks like it was created by - well - an actual graphics designer. Most of the other sites are basically sandpaper on the eyeballs. Crowded, clunky, and corporate-looking.
3775
« on: June 09, 2009, 11:28 »
I'm thinking back to Netscape Navigator. People were actually paying money for this this new application called a "browser" - remember that?. Then Microsoft stepped in and decided browsers should be free. Then later Google decided that all applications - word processors, spreadsheets, image editors (Picassa), 3D CAD (AutoSketch) - should be free, paid for by ads. Oh and news, too. That's why AP is now litigating against Google, trying to stop their news aggregator.
Google wants people's online lives to be lived entirely inside Google, with ads just a ubiquitous part of the landscape. To do that they're buying or creating all the content people might want.
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