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Messages - gostwyck
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401
« on: November 01, 2013, 07:21 »
I believe a business called Istockphoto recently closed their offices in Berlin. Maybe the offices and the staff previously employed there are still available?
402
« on: November 01, 2013, 07:17 »
My entry is also deleted. I think there were too many facts at once about fotolia. 
That's a shame. I thought your post provided useful information to the group and was certainly heartfelt. The wording was strong because it reflected your feelings __ quite understandingly so.
403
« on: November 01, 2013, 07:02 »
There is no complete or normalised data. There are only a few anecdotal personal posts - not data. Snippets of information at best. The rest is speculative interpolation.
But more than that - what are you trying to determine about the strategy in general ? How can you have any sense of whether or not it is working when you have no idea what the aim is or what kind of time frame is involved ? For all you know Getty may be expecting to sell fewer images via iStock. They may be expecting to sell fewer images in general. I am sure that what they are doing is also going to be about trying to shape the market - that may mean losing sales in some quarters.
Some people are reporting fewer sales but broadly equivalent incomes. We cannot call that data either. Though I know that I much prefer to sell fewer images for more money.
FWIW - I am completely neutral on this - it is all just interesting. If I thought that the sky was falling in I would say so. And I am a big fan of one or two of the other sites - because I love photography - I love looking at really great work. I also very much support the idea of there being alternatives. But my sense over the past 6 months is that Getty is playing a long game and that they know very well what they are doing. I believe it is a significantly different company than it was during the H&F era.
There is data or at least detailed factual information in places like this; http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-09-04/caryle-group-s-getty-images-ratings-on-review-for-cut-by-moody-sThat to me looks pretty grim. It doesn't yet include the fall in revenue from the Main collection price reductions either __ we should be getting that information in about a month from now. All I know is that since June my portfolio is earning 40%+ less for me and also for Istock. Getty has $2.6B of debt. That's a lot. If all of that debt was accruing interest at the rate of 7% (as some of it is according to the article) then the interest alone would amount to over $180M per annum. That's about 20% of total annual sales for GI as they stand when last reported. If revenues fall further, as many of us consider likely from our own sales and that of others, then that proportion increases further. I would consider the situation to be extremely serious. Further falls in revenue (or the need to pay higher interest rates on future revolving loans) could easily spiral out of control. So what happens next? What if Carlyle decide that they've been 'sold a pup' and just want to sell their 51% stake in GI to minimise their losses? Anyone know of an entrepreneur in the stock image business, who is sitting on a mountain of cash, and looking for a suitable acquisition with which to expand their empire? I do!
404
« on: November 01, 2013, 06:19 »
I'm been in the IT industry for decades, and I would never get a RAID system for personal use for the simple reason that if the controller board fails then you will probably lose everything on the drives. RAID is useless without a controller board and finding one that exactly matches the system that you have is almost impossible. While having a controller board fail is not too likely, I still wouldn't want to take the risk.
RAID systems are also usually more expensive.
I would much rather just buy two drives and synchronize them with cheap software (such as SyncBack, etc). Basically, everything that you save on one drive will then get copied to another drive. If you lose one drive, you just buy another one and copy the files from the other drive and start the synchronization process all over again.
Not so at all. With RAID 1, the drives are mirrored, and if the RAID controller fails you can always just mount one of the drives in another PC or external caddy and it will read it just fine.
At least, that's my experience. Perhaps other RAID controllers operate differently, but that's always worked for me. Besides, I've never yet had a controller card fail; the disk is the most vulnerable item.
Exactly. I've been WD My Book Duo's (set to RAID 1) for years and have yet to have any issues. I store virtually nothing of value of my PC's HD other than the OS and programme files. I like the look of LiveDrive, as suggested earlier by Hatman, for off-site storage. Cloud storage was previously a bit too expensive in the volumes I require but costs appear to have come a lot (and broadband speeds have increased too which also makes it more practical).
405
« on: October 31, 2013, 18:17 »
Cutting prices in half did pretty much halve, or nearly halve, our istock incomes overnight.
Is that true for all nonexclusives? I thought most people had reported something like 30% down but that was a while ago, I can't remember too many reports about this recently.
The ones I have talked to, yes, royalties are halved, or as I said above "nearly halved". But even assuming you are correct, and people are down a mere 30% ( ) and you think exclusives would jump at the chance to lose only 30% more of their income, then I guess you have proved your point... wait... what was your point again?
The point was to get an accurate number. The difference between 30 and 50% is pretty large, not that it's a good thing to be down at all. I was asking because it has been a long time since I saw many people posting how they are doing on iStock, almost no one posts percentages or posts anything in the monthly sales thread anymore.
As I have reported before my monthly income at IS is down around 43-45% since the price reductions. As Lisa said, 'nearly halved'.
406
« on: October 31, 2013, 15:56 »
Maybe it's Istock's new way of limiting the ever more gloomy monthly sales threads?
407
« on: October 30, 2013, 19:12 »
I just chucked a cat in among the pigeons 
Your thinking that 'no new contributors could ever gain the sales to become exclusive' doesn't work because IS could simply remove the requirement of 250 sales (or whatever it is nowadays). There's no incentive for IS to do this anyway. They would lose the revenue from the non-exclusive sales (and thereby a significant sector of their customers) and would also lose new content for the PP. It isn't going to happen although all of IS's competitors would love it to happen..
408
« on: October 30, 2013, 14:09 »
With the last fall in sales on iStockphoto it looks like I will go down by 5% to lower RC level. Are you going up/down or stay at the same RC level? Thoughts?
You may be dropping 5% on your royalty rate, unfortunately however your income will drop by a lot more than that. For example a drop from say 35% to 30% is actually a reduction of 14.3% in revenue from the same sales.
409
« on: October 28, 2013, 20:50 »
Excellent and interesting response UP. Take a heart for your trouble. I insist!
410
« on: October 28, 2013, 13:02 »
I haven't read 4HWW but I did buy Ferris's 'The 4-Hour Body' and, from reading it, I'd take anything he has to say with a large pinch of salt. Ferris is very good at self-marketing and making good money in supposedly providing simple solutions to all of life's problems. Unfortunately the real world is actually much more complex than he would have us believe and therefore his basic ideas often don't actually work. This issue is a good illustration of how Ferris's theory breaks down when examined. We (i.e. microstock contributors) may consider the 'product' being sold by our distributors to be the content we create. SS however wouldn't agree. SS believe that what they are really selling is a service and it is their skill on handling data that allows them to provide a better service than anyone else. Once again here's Oringer's blog explaining his thoughts on the issue; http://jonoringer.com/2013/01/13/why-going-exclusive-as-a-microstock-photographer-doesnt-work/Let's say I had a real tangible product to sell __ a really good homemade jam for example. Here in the UK we have the 'Big 4' supermarkets (a bit like we have the Big 4 agencies). Now I could do an exclusive deal with just one of those supermarkets. They would then be able to sell it at the optimum price and both they and I would achieve good margins for the product. However, if I sold my jam on a non-exclusive basis to all the supermarkets, then it might sell in 4x the volume. Price competition might mean that I made less margin on each sale however the greater volume might mean I made far more money.
411
« on: October 27, 2013, 21:50 »
Gosh, it's so much easier here - even out in the boonies we have two charity shops in our small town, and every other town has at least one, often several. One (maybe both) will come and collect bigger stuff.
Ouch! To be honest I had completely forgotten the charity shops, which pretty much represent about a third of our High Street. That would have been the ideal solution as my chosen charity would also have made a few quid and I, at the risk of being politically incorrect, would thereby have avoided direct contact with the chav scum that I encountered.
412
« on: October 27, 2013, 17:27 »
Excellent reading! Thanks for posting.
On a slightly different tangent, but also illustrating the value of 'for free', I recently had no further need of a small dining table I owned. The table was of good quality and in excellent condition so I was loathe to simply take it to the dump. I decided therefore to offer it for free on my local 'Freecycle' website, so that folk in need of such a table could contact me via email and arrange to collect it for free.
What a pain in the ass it turned out to be. Blunt messages like "is it still there" with no 'please', 'thank you', punctuation or the courtesy of a name started to drip-feed into my In-box. One reasonably polite lady requested a full description and then turned it down because she was "holding out for a different colour". I was eventually contacted by a girl called April who said she could collect it that same evening. When I agreed I later got a call from her boyfriend who asked instead if he could collect the following day. I was going to be out but made arrangements for the table to be outside available to him. He didn't turn up.
I finally did get the table collected, after having lots of contact with people who I'd rather not have contact with, but next time ... it'll be going straight down to the dump.
414
« on: October 24, 2013, 13:13 »
Thanks for that info. That rules me out until they have a simple tax form in English.
It certainly does! With the agency's cut and then 40% to the Japanese tax-man there won't be much left for the content creator. I'd still have to pay more tax in my home country too.
415
« on: October 24, 2013, 13:09 »
can someone give a quick summary what is it about?
This is quite a good one; http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/the-search-for-the-mysterious-obamacare-website-girlInterestingly the spokesman at 'Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' had this to say; CMS spokesman Richard Olague then told BuzzFeed via email, The woman featured on the website signed a release for us to use the photo, but to protect her privacy, we will not share her personal or contact info with anyone.That suggests to me that it was a custom shoot, in that he is inferring that CMS had a direct relationship with the model, although he could just mean that it was a model-released shot from an agency.
416
« on: October 24, 2013, 01:36 »
personally i have never understood the 'forum junkies' who have this incredible desire to reply/post their opinions daily/hourly about everything and anything. then their are the constant complainers who need to do pretty much the above and find the negative in everything and anything.
seriously, would you rant on in such a manner in front of the water machine in your office about your boss/manager/ceo/etc. and do so openly in person? chances are they would more than delete your post, they'd fire it.
for some reason 'keyboarding' give people the courage that if 'spoken' in person would be called 'stupidity'.
there is an adult constructive way to bring up a pitfall of a company, and a childish negative way to do the same thing. frankly, i am glad to see the crackdown on the bu!!sh!t on the IS forums.
if i want negative, speculative, and childish rants, i come here where they don't edit such drivel.
i look at so much of what is posted here and makes me wonder the average age of some of these people, cause they use big words like adults do, but the overall conveyance of the message is sand box level.
Personally I have never understood why 'forum half-wits' don't use proper punctuation when posting. Does anyone bother to read or attempt to interpret such drivel?
417
« on: October 22, 2013, 20:15 »
Back when the PP was optional, I opted out. One of the main reasons for that was to support Shutterstock. Fast forward a couple of years, and all indies are now in the PP, whether they like it or not. Shutterstock has gone public, and is now answerable to shareholders.
I no longer see the point of starving the PP in favor of supporting Shutterstock. Don't get me wrong, I like SS, but my sales have been in the doldrums for over a year now, there and elsewhere.
It occurs to me that none of these sites are making decisions based on what's in my best interest, and I am not obligated to make my decisions based on what's in theirs.
Surely the reason we supported SS over the PP was because SS paid 38c per download and, originally, the PP only 25c? Ok, the PP eventually upped that to 28c, because so many of us would not provide our content, so then IS made it mandatory for independent images. Even now my RPD at the PP is still only 40c whereas at SS it is 80c. That's a very big difference and I have no wish for sales from SS to be transferred to the PP. The financial differential is only part of the issue. Sales at SS are fully credited, buyers can 'follow' you and stat's are reported in real time ... so at least you can project how the month is doing. None of that is true with the PP. Personally I trust the reporting of SS way ahead of that of Getty, IS or the PP. It's a matter of perceived competence as much as the lack of transparency at the latter. Ok, SS is now an IPO. That's still streets ahead of being owned by a hedge-fund. At least we get the full disclosure of the financial reports. The only reason we get any financial detail about Getty is because their last hedge-fund owner left them so deeply in debt, by awarding themselves massive (unearned) special dividends, that the debt itself is now openly traded on the market (at a loss). SS's strategy is both clear and long-term. They want to grow the business and the way you do that is .... by growing the business. Sure, you can make a little short-term extra profit by hammering your suppliers, but mostly that will end up damaging the business in the long-term and will almost certainly improve the opportunities for your competitors. Oringer didn't get where he is today by making such foolhardy short-term decisions. If he had wanted to make a quick buck then he'd have sold out long ago. As a self-made billionaire it is now just a game to him. He won't make the same stupid mistakes as Getty and Istock. All the reasons we originally had for 'starving the PP' still apply IMHO (in so far as we have control). We earn far more with SS per download, we get full credit or our work (that's important to me) and SS are far more transparent and trustworthy than Getty/IS.
418
« on: October 22, 2013, 15:09 »
Does anyone really think that a website could be created to serve the needs of 300M people instantly and expect it to work perfectly from Day 1?
It was apparently 1 million visitors in a day which crashed the site. Companies like Apple and Amazon easily handle that sort of traffic when they do new product launches.
I'll bet that Amazon didn't get 1M visitors on their first day of opening in 1995. It is hardly a valid comparison anway. Amazon has annual revenue of over $61B and 97K employees. The US government has apparently spent $394M with various contractors setting up the website and exchanges; http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/21/technology/obamacare-website-contracts/
419
« on: October 22, 2013, 14:19 »
Wow! Minuses on that post. I guess nobody else has tried to use the site and been totally frustrated. I know the woman on the homepage isn't responsible, but her smiling at my misery doesn't help matters. 
I think that people outside of the argument probably miss the complexities of the issues.
First of all - many people probably do not realise that one of the major issues over the past days has been around how poorly the site was implemented - despite the huge amount of money spent on it. It was not capable of handling the traffic and the people put up to talk about that clearly did not have a clue.
Secondly - there is a tendency to see any criticism of Obamacare as if it were a criticism of universal healthcare in general. In truth many people are critical of Obamacare because they see it as a dreadful compromise which will end up best serving the insurance and pharmaceutical industries - and therefore ultimately the finance sector.
When healthcare is paid for by insurance there is a tendency for the price of pharmaceuticals and treatments in general to increase. Which ultimately pushes up the price of policies. A vicious circle.
Imagine what governments internationally could do in terms of providing universal healthcare if they were to slash their military spending.
I'm British but we get a lot of coverage regarding the issue particularly regarding the recent government shutdown, etc. Does anyone really think that a website could be created to serve the needs of 300M people instantly and expect it to work perfectly from Day 1? Especially when a significantly minority of the country would prefer it to fail and no doubt quite a few will be doing their best to wreck it either physically or by undermining it's credibility. The way they have turned on this unfortunate girl is the proof of that.
421
« on: October 18, 2013, 17:17 »
Hey everyone,
Eli from Bigstock here. Earlier this week Bigstock tested emailing different promotional offers through a partner site (MediaBistro), as you've noticed. One of these offers accidentally applied the limited time discount offer to all subscription types, when the intention was to have the discount apply towards the first month of a monthly subscription. This was an error on our part and we apologize for any confusion. We quickly caught the error and the offer will be restrained.
Bigstock often tests different promotional offers but it's important to note we never move forward broadly unless a test has proven to drive increased downloads or overall sales that result in increased downloads. These investments are made to ensure our business continues to grow and stays competitive in the marketplace, which benefits both contributors and Bigstock. None of this affects contributor royalty rates.
Again, sorry for the confusion. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.
Best,
-E
Thanks Elijah. Please can you get yourself 'verified' by Leaf as speaking on behalf of BigStock so we know it is 'gospel', so to speak.
422
« on: October 18, 2013, 17:12 »
only Android? nothing for iphone?
Dunno really. It's ever so difficult to understand. The creator of the app states quite explicitly, on the very same thread that you have quoted, "I have no plans to write a version for other platforms - sorry iPhone, Blackberry, Palm Pre, Windows Phone users." So maybe there is something for iphone? Who knows?
423
« on: October 18, 2013, 06:09 »
With the PP having finished reporting, I sold around the same number of images as last month, but with a 35% bump in income.
The PP is now far out-performing Fotolia for me, and if separate from Istock would be my fourth place earner.
I'm almost tempted to try some uploads at Istock with an eye to getting them in the PP. Is the connecter to the PP fixed yet?
September was a surprisingly good month with the PP for me too. The PP ended in 3rd place, just behind IS themselves, with an average RPD of 40.5c. As far as I can tell most, if not all, of the 100-odd images I uploaded to IS in June do appear to have been transferred to TS. Those images have generated 140 sales (of which 50 were from one particular image) and generated about $45 from the PP. That works out at about 50c per image ... over 4 months. On IS those same images have generated a further $26. (NB: On SS those images have made nearly $1K although they have been on-line for about 3 months longer). I will keep monitoring the situation but at the moment it is certainly not yet worth my time to upload to IS. It has become incredibly difficult for new images to get noticed and sell in any quantity. I also don't want to support the agency with by far the lowest royalties with new content.
424
« on: October 17, 2013, 15:59 »
This might have something to do with the promo DepositPhotos has been running on MightyDeals for the last few weeks.
http://www.mightydeals.com/deal/depositphotos.html?hmref=home
The link might expire. Basically it's 100 images for $99 or 200 for $160. No daily download quotas.
It's been popular among people who make book covers because it's a really good deal for them.
How much do DP contributors earn per download under this offer?
425
« on: October 17, 2013, 13:13 »
"Designers, rate your downloads! We're currently testing a new feature, available on your downloads page, which enables you to rate and add a review for the images you licensed. We'd love to have your valuable feedback, use this feature to send us your opinion on our images."
Does anyone think a buyer will take the time to rate an image? The buyers that are worth anything buy in bulk and won't take the time. One-off buyers might but is their feedback valuable, and if so for what purpose? Odd.
The trouble with ratings and reviews is that some of them can be very negative. I foresee some damaged egos amongst contributors if their wonderful image was trashed by a buyer. Back to your original point I don't see how this will help the buyers, the agency or the contributors. Buyers will surely choose an image because it fits their purpose not because it has lots of good reviews. It's not like an image can break down after a couple of weeks use or is too similar to the author's previous work or whatever, which are useful things to know when buying from Amazon ... but not from DT.
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