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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
4876
« on: December 16, 2012, 01:27 »
The 13th is complete and some sales are showing for the 14th (hard to know if they've finished until you see the next day get some sales). It's up about 40% compared to October 1-13, but it's hard to know if that'll hold up for the rest of the month given the Thanksgiving slowdown.
Once my port growth at Thinkstock finishes (I had zero files there until the forced migration) it's also hard to know if I'm seeing real sales growth.
4877
« on: December 15, 2012, 13:31 »
My situation isn't in that list - and I'm not sure if a poll is the right way to capture this as you'll have so many options it'll make people dizzy.
I haven't stopped uploading, but I don't give them new stuff ('cause it'll go straight to Thinkstock). They'll get it in time. I no longer submit vectors there (and removed the ones I had).
4878
« on: December 15, 2012, 13:01 »
It's a bit of a shot in the dark to make recommendations when I can't see the images at 100%. Perhaps I'm not using Photobucket correctly or possibly you have to have an account, but all I can see is the small images in the slideshow. iStock is very picky on technical issues - focus, noise, artifacts - and I can't offer an opinion on those at a small size.
Dropbox is free and would let you post watermarked full size images if in fact Photobucket doesn't.
Given that caveat, I think two people pictures and one of something else would be good to show variety. However the outside shot of the deck won't do. Lighting is so dull, sky is blown, the flower box is awkwardly cropped and there should be more or less of the house, IMO (and I realize that might require re-arranging the furniture to make a good stock shot).
Don't submit the girl with the fish as I think the lighting will get it rejected even if the composition issues weren't there.
I like the shot of the girl lying down with the book, but the background is very dark and not very attractive. I don't know if you used a reflector or just had great light, but the lighting on her face is very nice
I think the concepts of the guy in bed and the girl taking meds are great. I'm not as sure as Lisa is that the lighting is OK. The shadows look quite pronounced and the guy's hand looks almost blown (in the one of him lying down). That's the sort of thing iStock is very picky about.
I definitely think you're heading in the right direction, but IMO you should try again on these concepts and get the lighting and composition spot on before you apply again. I assume there's a very long wait for the next try?
Hope this helps
4879
« on: December 14, 2012, 19:59 »
Using that calculator and adding on possible sales for the rest of the month I am probably going to be about 100 - 150 credits away from keeping 50% !!!
Do our commisions change at the beginning of each year and hold for a year or will they always be calculated on the previous 12 months? I hope it's the latter as then I could soon be back to 50%.
Here's the page describing this mess. Each month you add the last 12, so if you have some bad months in the prior 12 and you're close to the boundary, you could be bouncing back and forth between 45 and 50% for a while
4880
« on: December 14, 2012, 16:25 »
They have about 1K of the 1.7K images I have on 123rf. As I haven't uploaded to 123rf in many months, that isn't 'cause they aren't caught up with new uploads. I don't intend to submit to Pond5 directly so I'm OK with the images going this way.
You do have to wonder what was "wrong" with the 700 images they didn't want...
4881
« on: December 14, 2012, 13:37 »
I really like what they did with it. Makes you wonder if you could sell some edited versions of the original too...  Congrats
4882
« on: December 14, 2012, 13:29 »
I think I remember that one - they paid me the EL while I was exclusive, so they had to do a little tweaking to pay me as it didn't meet the $75 payment threshhold.
The sites with bunches of stolen SS items, particularly vectors, are an ongoing problem, so it looks like they're doing nothing, but I think it's a game of whack-a-mole
4883
« on: December 14, 2012, 13:25 »
It won't be as high as November (nothing ever is!) but it's already better than the whole of August, so I'm not fussing
4884
« on: December 14, 2012, 13:20 »
Mine are now adding to November 6th. I'll wait until it gets a bit further along before trying to compare
4885
« on: December 14, 2012, 11:45 »
You mean a bit like this example?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1206391/Dubai-hotel-pinches-bit-Dorset.html
That's a pretty extreme example, but yes! The notion that anyone could confused and think this was in the middle east is a bit of a stretch for all but the most geographically challenged. It's been a while since I was there, but I don't recall it feeling as if I was in a warm climate
4886
« on: December 14, 2012, 11:07 »
... Someone at Fotolia flicked a switch back in early 2011, and it's been downhill every since.
But you're emerald, aren't you? Isn't that what many other emeralds noticed and assumed that FT did exactly that to avoid paying out so much on sales - they'd rigged the search results? In their case, their reputation's in the toilet, so they haven't much to lose. It's a bummer - they had seemed like such a bright light when they started. The first agency since the "originals" to make it to top tier status...
4887
« on: December 14, 2012, 11:01 »
I do think that it's OK to use terms buyers are likely to search for - and when I think of a donkey, mule or burro, to me they're interchangeable (even though I know they aren't). I went around with the keyword folks at iStock over pine and fir for Christmas tree foliage, even though I know that a particular branch can only be one or the other. The one place I do think it's wrong to do this is with location. If it really matters to someone that they have a shot from a particular place, they need to be able to rely on your keywords. I've seen some images keyworded Bahamas, Jamaica, Cayman Islands etc because it's a tropical beach. That's just wrong. You can put tropical, Caribbean (although not if it was shot in the Maldives), islands and other general keywords to cover those who don't care which island. In the Getty CV you can walk back up the tree from a city (Seattle) to the state (Washington State), region (Pacific Northwest), country (United States of America). I never put in planet earth When I keyword I put in Washington as I don't think buyers would use the phrase "Washington State". For your example, I'm not sure what the generic phrase would be - like prairie, badlands, desert, tundra - but I would go for that not multiple places. Imagine a Canadian company using a US picture and getting caught by a sharp-eyed person. It'd be embarrassing.
4888
« on: December 14, 2012, 10:47 »
I'm assuming you were thinking of these for stock - in which case I wouldn't submit any of them. For the white line pictures - and at first I thought I'd copied the URLs wrong and had multiple copies of the same shot as they were so similar - the composition's awkward and not enough is in sharp focus. The lighting on the flower pictures is too harsh and you've blown out parts of the petals. The first two don't have enough of the shot in sharp focus. The last one doesn't appear to have anything in sharp focus, but you need to get the petals sharp for something like this. Especially for flower pictures (which are heavily oversupplied) you need to have excellent shots or they'll be rejected and these just aren't. More practice
4889
« on: December 14, 2012, 01:52 »
The thread started by a frustrated long term buyer has now been locked. His post from earlier today about the current state of best match results seems pretty accurate to me: "I have just come back to have a look at the site after one of my colleagues mentioned that the Zoom function is back. It does look good I must say and seems to load quicker than its previous incarnation.
however, I just wanted to say that there is a lot of talk about how dreadful Best Match is at the moment and how it got even worse.
Ive just taken a good look and searched for the sort of things I normally or typically look for. I just cannot believe it. How can 18 images by the same photographer all in a row of the same subject possibly be part of a legitimate Best Match?
I am sorry, but until this changes for the good (it is truly dreadful at the moment) neither myself nor any of my colleagues are likely to be rushing back here for stock images. Just have a look how well Best Match type seaches work on other sites and perhaps it will be easy to understand why previously dedicated buyers like me (and others) prefer to buy elsewhere at the moment."So SearchFairy twiddled a few dials and this is the outcome? It seems to me as long as iStock is a dumping ground for Getty Agency/Vetta files which get a huge advantage in placement (and it was promised when these ingestions began that they'd fix best match so that they didn't all appear up front like new content typically would; so much for that), and on which Getty makes so much more money - paying 20% royalty on content they don't own vs. up to 28% on iStock contributors' content - they have no incentive to fix this even though the results are so awful when you do common searches. On a separate but related note: I recall many forum discussions where someone would say they got terrible results searching for (some single term) and there'd be a chorus of self-righteous contributors saying that of course you got rubbish; you needed to refine the search with multiple terms. In the course of the discussion about best match results, Rebecca and SearchFairy said that buyers typically use a single search term so showing examples where multiple terms made for horrible results wasn't really pertienent. If it wasn't so many people's livelihoods, it'd be funny...
4890
« on: December 13, 2012, 20:35 »
Tyler - that's a great tool. Not sure how I managed to miss that you had done this. I've bookmarked it. Thanks.
Something I can do in an editor (TextWrangler) if I need to, but would be great to do there too, is replace words or phrases - such as replace Front or Back Yard with yard, garden Particularly helpful for departing IS exclusives but might come in handy if there are new rules about certain product names.
4891
« on: December 13, 2012, 20:11 »
The Fellowship of the Banned...
4892
« on: December 13, 2012, 15:23 »
Enjoy your freedom. While they pay me I put up with them and their insane similars policies. We each have to draw a line somewhere - perhaps you can use the extra dose of patience you used to use up with DT on one of the other irritating sites
4893
« on: December 13, 2012, 13:59 »
There's no knight on a white charger anywhere in sight...
However, there are a couple of key differences between iStock's situation and Shutterstock's:
SS's founder is still around, IS's isn't
Getty was founded by people with no interest in the product they sold, per se, just a vision that if they bought up all the agencies they could control the market and be successful (I'm paraphrasing, but Jonathan Klein has said this in interviews). SS is in business to make money, but it was founded by someone with an interest in the dog food he was selling (from a software business maxim that you should eat your own dog food; not a reflection on image quality)
SS is now answerable to shareholders who want to see a profitable business. Getty once was, but got bought out after their stock was hammered. The last owners - Hellman & Friedman - and current - Carlyle group - are private equity firms. They have zero interest in the business long term, just want to do 3-5 years and collect their check. They don't care if the business goes under after they leave as long as they have their money.
Any dominant business runs the risk of becoming complacent, greedy or lazy. It could happen to SS. However there is still at least the potential for some upside there.
With a business owned by private equity companies, there is no possibility for any upside except for the private equity companies
4894
« on: December 13, 2012, 12:21 »
I do the keywording in Photoshop (although I do use LR to start). The key thing is to try and keyword as generically as possible - so don't use CV terms like "Front or Back Yard", but garden, yard; dont' use "Residential Structure" but house, home - keyword like people talk and buyers search. Some sites don't support multi-word keywords, but i always include them. I generally upload to SS first and their spell check is useful to catch any mistakes I've made (I wish Photoshop included spell check; it's not like they haven't been asked). Include plurals or alternate spellings where you think it's appropriate.
To keep track of what's been uploaded, I have folders for each site. I put aliases (shortcuts if you're on the PC) of the JPEGs into each and use FTP to upload from there. I don't have enough volume to feel I need any of the uploading/distribution tools
4895
« on: December 13, 2012, 12:12 »
What happens when Shutter Stock stop growing?
I'm assuming that the natural rise and fall of things will mean that SS will not always be at the top of the earnings heap. I do think that the ability to supply whoever appears to be doing the best at the moment is the key to survival. I had really hoped in 2008 that in spite of Getty, iStock could be a solid, powerful agent to represent my work. Obviously I no longer believe that given my return to independence last year. I'm really sorry to hear about your partner's week - I made more than that on Monday with my paltry 17% royalties and indie prices. Not saying that to gloat, but just to point out that in spite of the scary thought of dropping to a low royalty rate, there are options.
4896
« on: December 13, 2012, 11:30 »
Things have been fine there this month - other than the odd swings from subs to credits. There's a ton of Christmas images in the mix, so if you don't have much Christmas stuff, it's possibly a pretty tough time of year
4897
« on: December 13, 2012, 10:55 »
The claim that refunds are within 14 days flies in the face of everyone's experience. But it's typical that companies who don't follow their own stated policies fall back on the "official" line when challenged.
And the nonsense about having to to reclaim fraudulent sales to prevent contributors defrauding them is ridiculous. If that ever happened, you could deal with it on a case by case basis. But refusing to implement decent security measures (that's our art that's then floating around out there because of iStock's negligence) - probably because you don't want to spend the money to do so - and then justifying your actions by blaming crooked contributors is truly rich.
They wouldn't say, but did they ever uncover a scheme like this, even once?
4898
« on: December 13, 2012, 10:49 »
So today the credit tap is turned on - 13 of the last 20 sales are credit. Just out of curiosity I would love to know how this all-subs then all-credits situation comes about...
4899
« on: December 13, 2012, 01:44 »
I'd contact support and ask. There is no large for 10 credits regardless of image level according to the aboutimages page on DT
4900
« on: December 12, 2012, 23:01 »
SS does not use any computer generated pre-screening programs!
"We also leverage proprietary review technology to pre-filter images and enhance the productivity of our reviewers." This is what SS said - are you saying they don't know what they're talking about or lied to the SEC?
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