Quote from: derek on March 22, 2017, 15:02

pugh! I just find it incredible but why? what would they gain? I cant work it out.

well dividing the cake between more people....let small portfolio sell something to get them busy to upload something and not stop....share sales between small portfolio so many don't reach a payout for month. instead of a single payout of 500 dollar ...beter one of 300 and 10 for 20 dollars...200 dollars less than physically leave the house:)...

The way to do that would be by weighting in the search, to push up poor quality, newbie work to the top of the pile. It doesn't involve a "cap" for individuals. The problem is that if buyers can't find good images on one site they will go to another where they can, so the site that's fiddling the search will eventually lose out.
The same applies to a "cap". The very idea requires a belief that the sites are trying to keep most decent images down in order to favour a handful of select portfolios. If they are doing that, what's the point of hosting all the stuff that won't be sold?
And, anyway, how can they stop people buying your work when you hit your daily "cap" without an infinite number of search engine changes every day in order to hide it? Or are you saying that the are selling your work but hiding the sales once they think you've got enough to keep you quiet? If you think that why do you carry on working with them?
This cap idea simply doesn't make any sense because there is no way of applying it other than fraudulent sales reporting.

No. Not any more.

In January I have a big block on the bar chart for "royalty free stills" and for February there is nothing at all under this heading. Anybody know what it is? Are other people missing it?

I'm not claiming any wrong doing, but it does make you wonder if they know what is going on.

It looks to me as if the management have dumped a plan on the tech department which that department is incapable of handling, perhaps  because it is impossibly complex.

This new system is horrible. With the old system, at least we got tiny thums to show us what was selling, now we just get file numbers and title.

And the title can be one they made up rather than the original. I thought the "woman in thongs on beach" must be someone else's sale credited to me, but when I checked it wasn't a woman in a thong, it was a woman in sandals. Perhaps Americans call sandals thongs, I don't know, but to me thongs are skimpy pants (which is another problematical linguistic term for our US friends)

If you've just seen your royalties listing you will probably realise that inability to upload is a good thing.

If sales are down, it's probably because of increased competition.

Not overnight, I've been in this lark for 13 years and I've seen the gradual erosion but there was a marked change the day the new sales chart appeared. I've escaped most of the shifts that other people have suffered but something got me this time.

And if the none exclusives put up with it Getty still wins selling images and creaming off 85% of the revenue. 

That seems to be the plan, but it ignores the possibility that filling the site with rubbish and driving away established contributors could be losing it buyers.

What they allow according to that article is pretty bizarre - run, runner and running all in the same title (example 3 in the link above). Unfortunately my titles are all just two or three words such as "Mumbles sunrise" rather than a spammy "The sun rises behind the lighthouse in the Welsh resort village of Mumbles" so I suppose I am losing piles of sales.

For what it's worth my earnings are almost the same as last year.
Up to now. Today's a bit grim 

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on January 10, 2017, 05:51

You're providing raw material for designers, not art for yourself. They can always add a grain filter if they like, but they can't take one off if you've put it on. In addition, if they want a grain effect, what size are they want to print the image at?  The size of the grain desired will depend on the final reproduction size. So all you do by adding filters to your photos is to limit the sales potential.

When I make an image I like to put a little of myself in it, like a lot of us I think.
If nobody will do that all the images will be the same aseptic boring flat (and maybe it is one of the reason why there is so much &*^% on microstock sites)

If a designer can add grain or not, change color or not, etc., according to his needs, to get the image like he wants, why does he not do the picture himself, exactly as he wants� we are never better served than by ourselves�

Concept, composition, lighting, DoF ... these are some of the things you can contribute as a photographer to make your work a unique base for the designer to work on. If you rely on photoshop filters to give your artistic imput you're probably missing something. The designer doesn't want to learn the photographer's job in addition to his own.

You're providing raw material for designers, not art for yourself. They can always add a grain filter if they like, but they can't take one off if you've put it on. In addition, if they want a grain effect, what size are they want to print the image at?  The size of the grain desired will depend on the final reproduction size. So all you do by adding filters to your photos is to limit the sales potential.

Thank you for the article. Everyone check it out!

I personally add the copyright notice in camera "Copyright firstname lastname"(and make sure it shows there while I do editing) and I believe the workflow for many Istock contributors is pretty much the same. So when the image is submitted the copyright information it is definitely there.

Istock has the nerve to dilute Copyright to wishy washy "credit line". They have to be stopped, or other agencies will follow suit.

Quote from: unnonimus on January 02, 2017, 19:19

I am not going to look up the law for the sake of this post, but I am pretty sure it is illegal to remove a copyright notice from a creative work in the US.

although i found this: "Removing or altering a copyright notice from an image or stripping metadata from the picture file is a violation of the DMCA.  A person can be liable for between $2,500 and $25,000 plus attorney�s fees for removing from a work what the DMCA calls �copyright management information� from a work". Murphy v. Millenium Radio Group LLC and McClatchey v. Associated Press

http://www.photolaw.net/did-someone-remove-the-copyright-notice-from-your-photograph.html

US courts might not count a copyright notice as counting for anything (after all, copyright exists automatically on every image that's made) unless the image has been registered with the Library of Congress. That's my guess, anyway.