There was a massive new ingestion of Getty Agency images over the last few days and the first page (200) of searches supposedly by Best Match are larded with those. Clearly new images and Getty transfers - or both - are currently considered "best" to the exclusion of just about anything else but a pink flame

It gets better.

 I just went to set up the cash out for the end of December and what do I see on the radio button for taking my full balance at the end of the month but this text:

"All earnings available at 31 Dec 2012 23:59:59"

So they do have a definition of the end of the month, even if it's not what they do and not what support told me...

I saw it this evening for the first time. I was logged in and could see other areas, but needed to provide my password again to see the Balance of account section

I can deal with pretty much any payment system, as long as it's predictable and reasonable.

I wasn't thrilled with PhotoDune's payment system which seemed to be the worst of both worlds - you have to request a payment, unlike SS or 123rf, but when you do, you have to wait until the 15th of the following month to collect your cash.

Imagine my delight to discover today, following a painfully slow exchange of e-mails with support, that when they say "the end of the month", making a request on November 30th - according to their clock in Melbourne - isn't soon enough to qualify.

"We manage our affairs according to time at our headquarters (AEST), which is based in Melbourne, Australia. Withdrawals are processed on the last day of each month, which was November 30th, and on that same day (but after the withdrawals were processed) we also made those deposits for the bundle warnings to the authors."


I had two sales on November 30th after the bundle deposit that he refers to, so I assume they wouldn't count either for the payment to be made December 15th. (I think he means bundle earnings, not bundle warnings).

With SS it's so simple. What you earn up until midnight their time (Eastern Standard) is paid out a week or so later. No rubbish about processing payments on the last day of the month so you don't get that money for another month.

The bundle sales ran from November 13th to 20th, so processing them before the end of the month should have been no problem.

I post this so anyone else who thinks that they can make a request to be paid on the last day of the month won't be fooled as I was by this insane definition of the "end of the month".

And Merry Christmas to me from Envato...

Why did you get a ban?

This post about the new Feast site.

It was a sarcastic post referring to the many current site bugs, one of which was that adult content (and other) filters kept getting reset. I was pretty miffed that they were spending time on stuff like that instead of getting the site working.

Lobo sent me site mail and told me to "take a little break". I've been banned ever since. Not only that but all the site mails lobo sent me and my replies to them were removed from my site mail. He was a bit rude, but nothing that could get him fired. I was pretty spooked that he'd go to those lengths.

That was September 2011. In May 2012 I opened the ticket to ask if the ban was permanent and if not, to ask for my privs back. September 5 2012 I received a comment on the ticket from Brenda (oldladybird) saying "I am going to forward this onto the correct department as it was assigned incorrectly and was buried in the ticketing system."

Three months after that, I guess it's buried in another part of the ticketing system...

Good leaders benefit companies and I don't much care if it's a space alien if the leadership is effective. It's unfortunate that there is attention to women in prominent positions because they are relatively few in number. Each one becomes a representative of half the human race in a way a useless or wonderful male leader does not. Same with any group that's underrepresented.

I think Ms. Rockafellar is just the wrong person for this job and somehow is expecting to regain trust with a few "I hear you" comments. No talk about the RC system or even adjusting it in light of the pitiful site behavior over the last 3 months. No talk about the delay in payments or ongoing problems with refunds. No talk about...

Quote from: jsnover on December 04, 2012, 16:37

I decided to contact contributor relations. They may never answer, and if they do it may be content free, but I figured I'd amuse myself and see what turns up I'll post if I get anything back.

do that, I also had one yesterday for 4.5$, a XXXL for 18 credits (I am at 16%)

I went to check on my ticket and it's gone from the list of open tickets. I used the link in the "Thanks for Contacting Us!" e-mail to update the ticket saying that I hadn't received an answer and the ticket had disappeared.

We'll see if that triggers a response, but I'm not optimistic. I'm still waiting for a reply to my May 4 2012 ticket asking if my forum ban is permanent - but at least that still shows as an open ticket...

Not only do they not offer exclusivity, but in a recent (post IPO) interview, Jon said they had no plans to.

None of the other agencies that do offer exclusivity - Dreamstime, Fotolia, Canstock - really do enough volume to make the deal worth it. You can do exclusive images there, which might make sense in select cases.

There is no one out there who is an attractive exclusive agent. Stay with IS, with all the risks and problems, or go indie

You're always on the hook if you submit work that violates copyright, doesn't have a valid model release or anything else that could get you sued. Having an agency doesn't change that - see this lawsuit here and here as but one example. Google will get you lots more

Quote from: ClaridgeJ on December 06, 2012, 10:46

Strange thinking here. Its seems as if many here which they would fall? malicious thinking is no good for microstockers. Remember: what goes around comes around.
Microstockers should instead invest their time producing not lend themselves to gossip and jealousy.

I'm not sure if the recent revamped version of MSG still has this info but a few months ago I found the hours that we'd all spent logged in here and thought how many more images we'd have produced if we'd stayed away, and how lower some peoples blood pressure may be.

I've never looked at that info, but I leave a tab open in my browser most of the time. I'm not looking at it, but I bet it registers as me being here, so the number isn't really about active time

A new thread was started this evening about discussing search results (by best match) on iStock.

If you look at the example searches that were mentioned in the earlier thread - some one phrase, some searches refined with additional keywords - they work just as you'd expect on Shutterstock, and on Thinkstock (and probably DT, Google and many other places), but the IT person's explanation makes it sound as if they really don't understand why they're getting horrendously crappy results when they're supposedly continuing what they've been doing all along. They appear to be lost. The comment that buyers don't see this suggests the IT person didn't read the heartfelt post of a former buyer here.

I guess my take on the "search team's" comments are that they are busy defending what they've done and I don't see any acknowledgement that the end result is just broken at the moment. The operation was a success; the patient died... As long as they're taking the view that it's working and they just need to do a few tweaks, I'm not optimistic.

Quote from: jsnover on December 05, 2012, 11:10

As far as the approach of being pretty literal with keywording, I think iStock has it close to right - putting sandwich on an uncut isolated loaf of bread just because it could be made into a sandwich is spam. Not as bad as putting "sexy woman" but still totally unhelpful to buyers.

Mmm spam sandwich, you sexy woman you !

Ha! The secret of staying married for nearly 25 years is out

I didn't hear back from 123rf support, so I sent them an e-mal yesterday asking what they found out when they looked at the XXL with a 31 cent royalty.

The reply was that it was an error and I actually earned $1.55. I'm glad they fixed it, but the reason they gave is rather worrying as I wonder how many more of these there might be:

"This occurs because our system miscalculate the earning from one of our partner's site. All error had been checked and fixed.
Thank you for notifying us about the error, and do not hesitate to let us know if any irregularity occurs."

I don't check the details of every sale out - I just happened to notice it because it was such a small amount and not a small. How many other "miscalculations" have been happening that I didn't notice? Really unnerving.