Quote from: Whitechild on May 02, 2010, 13:12
I agree with you lagereek. What I was trying to say is, there is a flood of amateurs, semi-pro, and pro photographer from poor countries who submit thousands of images every week. That flood cannot be stopped, at least not very soon. So, I think the only solution for every pro photographer who lives in a country with high standard is to find something more, besides microstock photography, to make living. Microstock can be always done part time.

A flood of useless images just requires higher wading boots to find the right image for your project.  That's why having a good search engine is one of the most important features of any stock site.

Now before people scream, I said useless, not worthless.  I'm not talking about the quality of the photography simple the availability of correct subject matter, locations and accessories for those photographers.
Clothing styles, architecture, furniture, etc. all vary from country to country and designers do care about those details.

I've had a serious dropoff after the server crash.  Maybe best match is broken? http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=203721  If so, I hope it gets fixed soon.

The upper range of the numbers is too low. 

They're probably not talking about something you drew rather the guidelines or grid that you can pull or put on in the program. 

You need to upload the full size if you want a real critique.  It looks like it might have some noise under the plate and be a bit over-compressed/over-sharpened and have artifacts throughout.  Honestly though that might just be because of the settings you used to save the thumb and might not be on the original.

Quote from: Vonkara on January 05, 2010, 18:10
No and it can harm you from going exclusive with a agency

No it wouldn't.  If you post the file all rights reserved with a watermark you're certainly not offering a RF license on it.

As to whether it helps you in sales.  If people see something they like and you can let them know where to find it, I imagine it would.  Might help with referrals too.

Flickr accounts are OK as long as you set your permissions to "All Rights Reserved"  I also watermark my images.

Quote from: gostwyck on January 04, 2010, 15:55
JoAnne - It's a fair point about the reciprocity but then again we have all either accepted those conditions when we joined DT or have had ample time to leave since the 6-month lock-in was imposed. Don't forget the lock-in was only brought in as a counter measure to Istock's exclusivity deal.

The 'getting the content ready for sale' costs are indeed significant. Take SS for example who we know have peaked at accepting over 100K images per week. To do so they might have inspected 140K images or about 20K per day. Even if the inspection/bandwidth/storage of each image was just 10c then it still works out at $60K per month. I'd imagine that DT has to cope with a fairly similar number of images.

True, some countries have walls to keep people in while others have walls to keep people out.  Where do you want to live?  Metaphorically speaking of course.

Done.  I anticipate 2010 to be much different though for me. 

It would be a shame if DT were in fact in trouble but let's not forget their sub program which played a big role in my decision to back to being Exclusive with IS.

I believe that you only need to contact them that you are making the moves to be Exclusive by Jan.  11th.  As for how best to proceed, if you're serious about it you have nothing to lose by talking to IS Support next week.

Yes, you might take a hit for a month of two.

What are your shooting conditions?  I would always rather put a good lens on a cheap camera.  However, the amount the camera quality influences output is strongly affected by the shooting conditions.  If you're shooting in a studio at ISO 100 you won't notice the difference as much as ISO 800 handheld at a sporting event or a wedding chapel.  Or being able to use high speed fill flash which the Rebel doesn't do.

I was exclusive when it first came out and then went independent.  While I was independent I only uploaded to IStock, Shutterstock, Dreamstime, StockXpert, Fotolia & Canstock.  (Independent 2007-2009)

Canstock- I stopped uploading almost right away because I just didn't feel they were very professionally run and they never made money for me.

Fotolia- Started off good but then they changed the search engines and locked key words.  Between the rejections and the fact that my images got lost in the shuffle a couple years back I lost my interest in them but kept uploading sporadically.

StockXpert, Shutterstock and Dreamstime were good to me but because I'm not a volume uploader I found that IStock consistently accounted for over 50% of my earnings.  Factor in the loss of StockXpert, the hassle of dealing with multiple sites, subs on sites that didn't have them when I went independent, tracking rules that change across multiple venues, the potential of Vetta, my desire to do more portrait work and regaining the crown just made sense.

Of all the sites DM makes the least sense to upload multiples of similars since you make more money when a file sells more often.  Let the buyer contact you directly.  You can negotiate a RM license then.

Quote from: sharpshot on December 21, 2009, 11:47
Hasn't istock moved away from microstock now?  The prices for exclusives and Vetta are more like what we used to call midstock.  Perhaps lots of buyers don't mind the higher prices but it does make me wonder why the microstock sites have been selling at such low prices for many years if that is true.  It will be interesting to see how this works out, there must be a price level where the average microstock buyer becomes uncomfortable and switches to a lower cost site or subscription plan.  Don't know if istock are there yet, most of the other midstock sites have struggled to find enough buyers but they haven't built up the way istock has, so there is no real comparison.  It will be very interesting to see what happens in the coming months.

IStock has multiple tiers but they're grouped into different collections.  Everyone seems to be forgetting about the Dollar Bin.  If the routine Exclusive files don't sell at the higher price they can be moved to the Dollar Bin.  If I was really on a tight budget I'd probably start there and then if I didn't find what I wanted I'd move on.  I wouldn't search the expensive files and then see if I could find it cheaper.

I only looked at the first one, berry sticks, but the sky was full of artifacts.  Never sharpen the sky. 

Nontheless Sean, that lightbox is all the same contributor's files.  This thread is about as bogus as it gets.

Quote from: elvinstar on December 19, 2009, 04:18
It looks like you're not buying the domain name, just the code that runs the site (which includes the photo). This allows him to sell this "website" over and over.

So he's selling a template?

I think a lot of it would boil down to how the business and the sales are structured wouldn't it?  It it's a corporation and the corporation owns the license and the new buyer buys the corporation then the license never transferred ownership- the corporation did.  

Interesting information but would the symbology be the same?  How is Father Frost traditionally depicted?

Checking = deleting.

Somebody mentioned in another thread that you can still delete the files.  They just deduct the .5 back out of your account.  Of course I'd verify that before I did anything.

Be wary of the fine print.  If you ever allowed Fotolia to put something in the free section, you committed to leaving it there for 18 months when you checked that box.  That's not a function of the contributor agreement.  It's in the agreement you made when you donated it to them.

Well clearing temp files didn't work but clearing cookies did.  Which is always a major pain.  So if you can access and delete your temp files and cookies you might try that.

Just upgraded to IE8 Vista last night and I'm having the same problem with IS.  All the other sites are working fine.  Sending ticket to Support.