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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
4201
« on: July 15, 2013, 14:48 »
Thanks to those who provided info to answer my questions, especially Tinny for the detailed response.
I'm guessing that the investment is several days of time, and no additional money (given that I already have the web site and BlueHost).
I would prefer it if there were a decent agency or two and I could skip setting up my own site (as opposed to some who actively wanted to have their own sales site), but the bottom line is that the microstock agencies are either like abusive pimps, or decent folks with very little traffic and low monthly earnings.. Alamy used to be OK, but since late May sales for me have just collapsed.
Symbiostock appears to be a huge step up from KTools as a base for a self-hosted site. I was/am part of WarmPicture and I suppose I need to convince myself that a network of Symbiostock self hosted sites will be able to succeed where WarmPicture, even with all Dan's hard work, wasn't able to.
4202
« on: July 15, 2013, 10:05 »
I've been distracted from stock (mostly) for the last few months, but spent a part of Friday trying to catch up with Symbiostock to figure out what it would take to get a site up and running for my portfolio of ~2,000 images (and possibly some vectors).
I already have a web site hosted by Bluehost
I already have WordPress installed
I already have a personal PayPal account.
I already have a watermark and logo
I read posts here; I looked at the help and tutorial sites.
I read a bit on PayPal's site trying to figure out what I'd need to change to become a merchant (and I couldn't figure out if I could have one bank account connected to two PayPal accounts or what would be the issues for my other uses of PayPal - sending birthday presents to people in other countries, for example - if I switched to a business account)
I read a bit on BlueHost's site trying to see if I'd have to upgrade my plan if I were to host a stock web site (assuming at first there wouldn't be much traffic).
I looked at existing Symbiostock sites and their various licenses - not sure if I have to come up with my own license or just may if I want to. Some licenses referred to extended licenses but I don't see how that can be purchased.
I see all the sites have Blogee (? where did that odd name come from) Sm, Med, Large sizes - do I have any choices in names/sizes
And the real biggie is how much time to upload, watermark, import to WordPress and whatever else is needed 2,000 full size images
After all that I still don't have any clear answers. I have much more information, but I don't know if I have to commit a week to get this running or a day or two, or...
I need to know what I'm getting into before I start and I haven't been able to gather that level of detail. Other people doing it or saying "it wasn't that hard" doesn't really help me figure that out.
4203
« on: July 12, 2013, 13:06 »
More misleading/untrue advertising (the only from iStock and Editor's Pick being the other two recent ones).
As you noted, I see my former P+ files listed as having a previous price as if it were not P+. I can see why they didn't do it (I doubt they can track what collection the file used to be in), but it seems to be a classic consumer scam of the kind outlawed most places. You can't say something is on sale if it wasn't previously offered at the higher price, or if the merchandise isn't the same as the "regular" priced merchandise, etc.
It would be equally true to say that the prices had been "raised" from 1, 2 & 3 credits (from 2004 when those were the only sizes available) or any other price in the distant past. The most recent prices on these files were the ones they now show as "reduced". That seems fraudulent to me.
4204
« on: July 11, 2013, 14:47 »
... I've asked clients to search your site and I get "weird, not impressed, not what we're looking for" responses. ...
Funny. That's what Photocase said to my attempts to submit images to them  I don't submit there 'cause I couldn't find anything of mine they liked (and I left the objects over white out of the stuff I sent them)
4205
« on: July 11, 2013, 14:40 »
I understand the feeling - that the agencies have become by and large entities that are no longer our partners and often our adversaries. If you read about publishers and their go-arounds with amazon, you see a similar theme. Once amazon was small and the supplicant. Now it's the massive gorilla and is squeezing its suppliers whenever it can. Microstock agencies once treated their contributors better because they needed them. Now they believe we're a dime a dozen and can be treated like salt mine laborers.
I walked away from iStock over the lack of opt out on the Google Drive scam and from BigStock because of the lack of opt out on the crappy subs deal. I fully expect SS to implement the BigStock royalty model at some point, and great though the earnings are, if SS cuts my royalties, I'll leave them too.
I shoot what I want when I have the time. I can't change the agencies, but I've decided to just end abusive relationships rather than put up with them. I'm very fortunate that this isn't a full time gig for me - I realize that gives me options others don't have.
4206
« on: July 11, 2013, 11:01 »
Upload interface is complicated - too many steps and not at all intuitive. I agree that Shutterstock is the current best in class
Reviews are very slow. Sales have been so few that I have no idea how the contributor stats work but please don't copy Pixnac's stats which are awful
4207
« on: July 10, 2013, 19:43 »
See this thread for their prior Cafe Press deal. After my 83 cent royalty I opted out of all partner programs - I don't want to compete with myself and certainly not for such low royalties. I'm no longer with BigStock (because they refused to let contributors opt out of subscriptions, and as I wasn't part of the group offered 6 months at 38 cents I walked). If you're at FAA, Zazzle or any of the other sites, letting an agent take a chunk of the earnings when you can upload yourself seems mad - sort of like Alamy letting the distributor keep 40% of a sale...
4208
« on: July 10, 2013, 09:14 »
It clearly isn't a priority to Getty to spend money on fixing contributor problems. They have shown they can move fast when they want to, but that usually has to do with refunds. If you look at the compensation clause in the ASA, it says: "In response to a written request, iStockphoto will endeavor to make payment of royalties in respect of purchased downloads of Accepted Content on a monthly basis on or about the 15th day of the month following the purchase of Accepted Content, except when sales reporting from a Distribution Partner is delayed, in which case payments will be made in the month following the date such sale is reported, ..." They could very well argue that the sales from the PP are from a distribution partner and have been delayed (the fact that it's by their own incompetence might be beside the point) and that once they are "reported" (when they get the hamster wheel moving again) we get them in the following month - no date specified. It's a total crock as this could all be happening in close to real time if they wanted it to. These types of terms originated in another era.
4209
« on: July 09, 2013, 17:39 »
Seems to me that the iStock review system, with all its flaws, was very similar to commenting on whether or not certain images meet inspection standards.
I have had negative comments written on my images in the past (in one case by someone with a competing image, along with a low rating). It just goes with the territory. What's useful sells and what's not doesn't. Feel free to knock yourself out and post any images of mine you don't like. Mock me too if that floats your boat. What buyers think - sales - is really all that matters.
4210
« on: July 09, 2013, 15:41 »
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-25503909-background-from-white-paper-texture.php
Good stuff.
a real class act, linking other photographers work.
How can we discuss it if we can't see it? 'I just saw this crazy file, but I can't show you or tell you  '.
Interesting, recently someone linked old topic, and there , when certain guy made it clear that all his rejected photos got approved when another and exclusive author sent them to inspection you comment was:
"Im sure IS stuff would "love" to hear about that."
Without even questioning if the rights were transferred between them , you were the first one to judge and throw stones in conglomerates name on a person and its discussion that was no less truth than what u writing now.
I'm really wondering how u think now about yourself then , and its quite interesting how one can have different opinion depending on the spot where he stands at the moment of discussion.
How is your comment in any way linked to the current discussion? Let's just stipulate that you don't think highly of Sean. Do you have any other point that pertains to this discussion? As exclusivity used to be, having an independent partner and submitting their rejects (even if with a rights transfer) was an ethically dubious thing to do. Getty has since behaved in such an abominable manner, breaking promises and calling "exclusive" things that aren't, that the current situation is much changed.That doesn't entitle contributors to be as base and double-dealing as they are, but it certainly makes it easier to understand.
4211
« on: July 08, 2013, 19:29 »
I love this one.
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-25704679-wet-white-onion-with-roots.php?st=9e66cb0
I really don't understand their plan if there is any. Quality of images was probably last advantage of iS.
I see your onion and raise you a squash...
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-25704683-yellow-squash-on-wood.php
One can only hope this is a contributor testing the boundaries just to see...
I'll see your squash with this here potato http://www.stocksy.com/19921
again, a real class act linking other peoples work.
People upload their images for sale to a public, searchable stock image web site. This isn't taking anything private and making it public. I realize that some have a notion that this is akin to using the fish fork for the salad course, or even in some way ethically suspect, but I think that's irrational. From the toilet door shot with a flash uploaded when iStock's Agency Collection first got a dump truck of Getty files to the garbage in the Clerkenwell Images collection (to be clear, there are many files that are fine stock, albet not Vetta or special, mixed in with the garbage) we can't discuss problems with inspection standards or even the outright rubbish spouted by iStock that all incoming files would be subject to the same inspection standards without looking at the files. What's a real class act is trashing a once good stock web site with the dreck that doesn't belong on Flickr, let alone to be sold for money.
4213
« on: July 08, 2013, 16:23 »
4214
« on: July 01, 2013, 10:25 »
If any of the images have people in them, you'd need to look at the model releases the original photographer took to see if you need to get new ones in your name or if they have the right to sell the releases to someone else. Copyright in the image does not cover releases for the people in them.
I'd want to look very carefully at what was being sold - or pay next to nothing for it - before purchasing images to use as stock from someone who doesn't sell stock. The likelihood of the images selling seems to be fairly low in situations like that.
4215
« on: July 01, 2013, 10:21 »
If people are spewing out an unusually large amount of rubbish, why is the "solution" to that to limit how many minuses readers can give?
I don't have much time for the + and - votes, but limiting the quantity makes a not great situation really terrible, IMO.
If you're going to have feedback, let people give feedback, whether positive or negative, in whatever quantity they see fit. If there's some sort of personal vendetta going on, Tyler can take away a person's ability to give any feedback (or if he can't, that's a suggestion that it should be possible to ban someone from the feedback feature)
4216
« on: June 28, 2013, 14:32 »
I was searching for images of and got a survey popup (which I took). I thought it might be about the changes in interface, but it was just a question about what I thought iStock sold (photos, vectors, music, video, fonts) had I bought from them and would I recommend them to others, was the site easy to navigate, was the information confusing vs. clear. There was a comment box at the end and I noted how it was so confusing to see a bunch of images that looked close to identical at wildly different prices.
They get points for doing a survey, but I can't imagine that the current state of the site is the result of listening to buyers in prior surveys.
SS is having a great June (much better than last June); DT is only 75% of June's numbers last year (in spite of having more level 5, 4, etc. images than I did then) so if I had to guess where the customers are going...
4217
« on: June 28, 2013, 10:14 »
I stopped uploading, removed 500 of my best images and left them with the LCV stuff, what is everyone else doing?
I stopped uploading and removed over 2000 images over the Google drive fiasco - and it was a huge deal (although luckily they didn't grab anything of mine) I don't trust SS or any of the agencies at this point - each incident of "bad behavior" encourages the rest of them to keep pushing to see what they can get away with - however except for the ridiculous cuts at BigStock (which I suspect will come to SS in time) SS has been a straightforward agency to deal with. Terms have stayed the same or improved over time. Getty/iStock has broken numerous promises, broken the site too many times to count, cut contributor royalties and for many earnings as well. It has been opaque and obfuscating in just about every way it knows how. So when the PP payments are delivered later and later each month because they can't get the connector working (really? all this time later you can't make it work reliably? their IT is either a kindergarten class or they are understaffing them so badly that there's no one working on most of the problems) or it just gives them a way to hang on to contributor money longer (managing the float is a time honored way for businesses to pocket a little extra cash), suggesting that there is any realistic comparison with SS's reliable timely payment (I don't ever remember waiting until the 15th of the month, ever, since October 2004) is insanity. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.
4220
« on: June 27, 2013, 12:50 »
I just went to look after reading your post. Dates are a jumble on the most recent 20 sales - I checked a couple of older pages and they appeared to be in date order
4222
« on: June 21, 2013, 17:08 »
I watched part of it, but it just seemed very flat, fact free and excuse laden.
For example, in explaining that the customer's billing cycles were the reason you had to wait three months before pursuing unauthorized usages, he totally dodged the issue of why in the world they give customers so long to pay, particularly for RF sales.
Another example on keywording training. He said it wasn't feasible to do in house training because of the global nature of contributors. What about exploring web based options for this (Creative Live's sessions come to mind where they take questions via twitter or other social media during live web broadcasts)?
We've done it this way for forever so we'll just keep on going...
4223
« on: June 21, 2013, 09:16 »
I saw that article/interview yesterday and wasn't impressed - it seemed extremely unfocused. I think Shutterstock's story is an interesting one - though this didn't tell it. I found the comments about old Perl code interesting here... http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Shutterstock-Reviews-E270840.htm
4224
« on: June 20, 2013, 09:37 »
In case anyone monitoring the anti-mandatory-Creative Cloud isn't aware of it, there's a Facebook page that keeps updates on most news, articles, changes, etc. here: https://www.facebook.com/StopAdobeCC
4225
« on: June 18, 2013, 18:20 »
The fact that such an e-mail template exists at all, even if sent in error, raises a whole load of questions.
Is this something new that SS is contemplating offering? If it is, I sincerely hope that contributors can opt out of that specific type of sale (while leaving all other on-demand and extended licenses enabled).
Any chance of an explanation for contributors about what is going on here?
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