Quote from: Monkeyman on April 15, 2015, 12:19
I'm not seeing any changes yet. And when it comes to descriptions they are still there. I think they're visible for the visitor the first time they view an image, and then the text is hidden but still on the page so it can be indexed by the search engines. Or something like that.

I agree that large watermarks is quite risky. I see this at many sites, where the previews are huge and the watermarks are tiny, almost invisible or just covering a tiny part of the image. It makes it very easy to steal. Can't believe they don't take this more seriously.

When I was logged in yesterday, every Asset Detail page i looked at, whether for my own files, or someone else's were the new design with no descriptions or light box links at all and showing only keywords in big blocks across the page under the image.

Now they are all back to as they were before and have always been. Very odd.

I should have taken some screen shots of what I saw and posted them, but at the time I assumed it was a permanent change already and the same for everyone so I didn't record it.

The new asset detail pages now contain no descriptions at all. No more ability to link light boxes or anything either to your images. I realize this was coming for a while, but in this case what was the point of that whole recent campaign of trying to get all contributors to go back and write longer descriptions on all their thousands of old files in order to get better Google image search results? A big waste of everyone's time it seems in having everyone do that for nothing? What a big circle wank!

In addition, they are now offering huge closeup images of 1,235 pixels on the longest side. Pretty soon people wanting a small or medium sized download will simply download the closeup images only and for free and then run either Inpaint Pro (https://www.theinpaint.com/), Remove Watermark Pro (http://remove-watermark-pro.en.softonic.com/), or one of the myriad of other programs out there that work in a content-aware way to automatically remove unwanted watermarks from photos.

I'll bet we can expect to see our sales ratchet down another big percentage here very soon.

The point in all this that kind of leaves me there with my jaw hanging open, and my finger scratching my head, is why would SEO even matter if a stock photo company has a good search engine on their site and a strong customer base to begin with? Isn't that how stock photo sites grow their businesses normally? Are they trying to tell us now in a roundabout way that their search system is not efficient enough, that they can't pull in the buyers anymore, and are so desperate that their best chance of selling files now is Google web searches? This is insulting. It sounds like capitulation to me.

I thought the reason we were paying them up to 85% of the royalties taken in is because they are bringing the buyers to us? If one wanted to rely on Google and SEO to bring buyers to one's pictures then what incentive does one have to place those pictures with an agency to begin with? Theoretically one could place the photos on their own site with their own good SEO, have the buyers come in that way, and without having to pay out 85% of their royalty to an agency.

Who wants to waste their time with this nonsense? I already spent all my time keywording my images properly to meet the workings of their internal search system. Isn't that enough? What I want to hear is how iStock is successfully growing their business through direct marketing and bringing in more customers. That is what I am paying them for. Not how they are relying on Google image searches to try and bring in buyers. Plus, 90% (or more) of the people searching for images on Google are looking for free stuff anyway. If people searching in Google were really looking to buy stock photos then they would be searching on a stock photo agency site and not scrounging around the web using search engines. So iStock seems to be going down the wrong rabbit hole with their SEO campaign.

Desperate times for a company on the brink of bankruptcy, so that means desperate measures I guess.

I don't quite see how it will really be possible to spin off any of the Getty "assets" to try and save Getty, which I just consider links now to the main Getty site anyway. With all this pulling in of other sites under the Getty umbrella that has been going on, and trying to in essence remove the iStock brand in a way and convert it to a Getty brand, what would a buyer really be buying? Maybe just a decent domain name at this point? I may be exaggerating a bit on the weak value of iStock as an asset, but all the Getty collections are incestuous now. iStock content is all over the Getty site and even more Getty content is on the iStock site. So perhaps a part of what keeps iStock buyers there for all we know is the access to the Getty site content at lower iStock prices and vice versa. If you unhook the sites then you stand to lose buyers at both sites because you no longer can offer the buyers in each of the stores the same access to all the same collective content. So from an investor standpoint why would you want to buy iStock knowing you will lose a lot of the content available through iStock as soon as it is decoupled from Getty? Had they not married the sites together then an investor could more easily asses the future potential of the site. Now, who knows if iStock is simply a link to funnel traffic into the Getty site or if the Getty site is a way to sell their buyers cheaper iStock content from an investors standpoint and maybe investors don't want to take the risk of buying into that unknown. Either way, even if revenue for contributors doesn't drop if they decouple the sites I can see it not looking attractive to an investor for the reasons I just mentioned. But the truth is iStock contributors would lose any sales they are making from Getty if the two site are decoupled which could be another considerable hit to contributor revenue for some iStock contributors who get a decent Getty bump every month.

Quote from: Teddy the Cat on February 23, 2015, 08:16
What makes you think keyword order is used by iStock?

You are obviously uninformed. iStock told us long ago to place keywords in relevant order of priority for best results when searching. And if you are using Deep Meta it tells you on the page where you put in your keywords to upload an image "PLEASE NOTE: Enter the most relevant keywords to the top of your keyword list". I think the importance of this issue is undisputed.

Quote from: Toopy on February 01, 2015, 16:49
It will soon stabilize .... on zero ;]

Good for those people who like round numbers I guess.

?: http://instagram.com/turgay.gundogdu

I think this thread sums it up:

http://www.microstockgroup.com/istockphoto-com/is-is-dead-now/

No charges.

If you put your request in before 9am Canada time on Monday then you will receive your payment the following Monday.

If you put your request in today then you will receive your payment a week from next Monday.

PayPal payments are always made on Mondays unless there is a holiday then usually on Tuesday.

See here for more info: https://secure.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=350427&page=1

Quote from: KB on October 30, 2014, 14:56

Quote from: B8 on October 30, 2014, 06:57
It all seems like an exercise in desperate futility as with almost all of their changes ever since they pressed the self destruct button the first time in September 2012.

+1

Except I think the first press of that self-destruct button was in September 2010, when they created the RC system, reneging on the "Grandfathering" contract many signed, and creating ill-will among many exclusives and indies alike. When the History of iStock's Rise and Fall is written, I believe that will mark the beginning of the end.

The reason I said September 2012 was when iStock pressed the self destruct button was because from that day forward I saw my monthly income and monthly downloads on iStock start to drop steadily every month to a level where my total monthly downloads now are less than 1/10th of what they were before.

Since then, no matter how many more new pictures I add, no matter how well I optimize my keywords, etc, my income just keeps declining.

I don't think any of the previous changes leading up to that date, including the creation of RC system, or any other changes they instituted before September 2010 had any measurable negative effect on my iStock income the same way that September 2012 changes did.

September 2012 was when they more of less crashed the site at the very start of the peak selling season month for stock photo sales. They introduced cash prices which scared many buyers away, they took away the zoom tool for a period of time while they made some poorly implemented site upgrades, they opened up the flood gates to unlimited amounts of uploads from contributors, they removed the quality inspection standards to where they pretty much accept anything now, and the site slowed down to almost unusable levels for nearly 3 months while they attempted to fix everything they broke on September 1. At the same time they started flooding the site with low quality/overpriced Getty content, and the Best Match search became almost unusable for nearly 3 months until around December 2012 once the 3-month peak selling season came to an end.

That was also the same time when they changed the system to only start registering views on pictures viewed by photo buyers logged into the site. After that basically all new pictures stopped registering enough views, which causes most new pictures uploaded now to more or less disappear into the abyss shortly after being uploaded. All of that was enough to drive away a fortitude of long standing quality iStock buyers. Now we are finally at the point of desperation, perhaps you can even call it capitulation where they are now trying last-ditch tactics like trying to drive people searching for free photos to the iStock site from Google Images.

But lastly, let's not forget they also did Self Destruct again this year in September 2014 when they changed the whole pricing system and basically cut everyone's income in half again by reducing the prices to almost 1/3 of what they were before on XXL and XXXL files and putting the prices up so high on small sized image to where web-use photo buyers no longer find the prices affordable. Not to mention the big pay cut earlier in 2014 we all took when they started offering all of our pictures at subscription prices as well.

What I further don't understand is why don't they try and simply drive more buyer traffic to the iStock site directly by putting the same amount of added effort into marketing directly to photo buyers? Why spend the time, money, and resources on trying to drive traffic to the iStock from a place like Google Images where people are usually searching for free images for low-res usage?

iStock's new September 2014 pricing is also designed to get rid of photo buyers who are looking for low-res imagery by pricing it out of their budget.

It just makes no sense what they are trying to do. Where is the logic or sensibility in this new traffic driving strategy?

Bottom line, this tells you that things are really breaking down and they don't have enough direct image buyer traffic when they are trying to turn people searching for free images on Google into photo buyers when they are not. If they think Google Image search is going to drive worthwhile buyer sales to the site then they seem to be grasping at straws.

People often use Google Images to locate stuff in lo-res that they can perhaps use on a blog for free. If they are a real stock photo buyer they normally go directly to a stock photo site and not to Google Images.

Even if they do click through from an iStock image in Google Images to the iStock site, they are bound to click off when they realize what it will cost them for a low-res image on iStock. 

It all seems like an exercise in desperate futility as with almost all of their changes ever since they pressed the self destruct button the first time in September 2012.

I am wondering if anyone knows how long it takes before an image is removed from the site when you delete it from your portfolio for the following sites. I vaguely recall DreamsTime had some sort of waiting period, but I don't quite remember and wonder if that is the case with any of the other sites or if removal is immediate or let's say within 24 hours or whenever the data base is updated again on the site:

DeamsTime
Fotolia
ShutterStock
Alamy
DepositPhotos
123RF

I don't understand why Shutterstock has a login captcha. It seems like a waste of time. Captcha's are usually used for example when signing up as a new user on a web site or posting a comment on a blog to ensure the user is not a bot. But when you have already put in your login details to login to a site that already confirms you are not a bot if you have a username and password already. How could one be a bot if they are a member of a site already? It makes no sense. Shutterstock should remove the captcha from their login dialogue box. No other stock site has this either.

I just tried to login to my iStock account via DeepMeta and I got the following error message in DeepMeta:

Quote
4002 - Invalid login: Account temporarily locked. Try again later.

Meanwhile, I am able to login to my account via the Firefox browser to my iStock account without any difficulty.

I think the bigger question will be if exclusives will be permitted to take this content and sell it elsewhere once it has been deactivated. If not, then it could leave some people in a very bad situation who have already invested a lot of time and money to create these shots.

As of this moment this fails: http://www.istockphoto.com/my_uploads

Quote from: Gel-O Shooter on September 27, 2013, 01:56
Dear IS,
I don't really care how many tweets you twitter, or new logos you roll out, or even how many matches you "freshen" up.  The fact remains that you have the stingiest royalty structure in the business and you will never get any more uploads from me until that changes.
Sincerely,
An X-Contributor

Spot on. Great post. The bigger problem though is the fact that in the past contributors were able to tolerate all the hindrances and road blocks iStock would throw up because people were still making good money and could partially turn another cheek to all the blasphemy. Back then the mantra of "Shoot, Upload, Repeat" would often help one overcome short term drops in income from continuing site crashes, huge charge-backs on fraud, price increases, royalty decreases, bad search results, a mish mash of collections, the failure to mirror images on Getty, etc.

Nowadays, shoot, upload, repeat only means dashed expectations and a waste of time and money to create quality imagery that never sells or even gets looked at before it just disappears into the iStock abyss. As you said, they can tweak the heck out of the site now and introduce all these great new features they are touting but they have already thrown out the baby with the bathwater. And with so many buyers having gone for good it doesn't matter what you do to try and win them back. As the old saying goes, "you can't polish a tu*d". 

Quote from: Ploink on September 24, 2013, 06:09

Quote from: heywoody on September 23, 2013, 22:54
More than the strikethrough, the bit that's confusing me is the assertion that 4 is half of 10 and 6 is half of 15 etc 

Thanks for putting a song in my head:

"Now, if 6 turned up to be 9,
I don't mind, I don't mind.
If all the hippies cut off their hair,
I don't care, I don't care...."

*exits stage left humming Jimi Hendrix*

Beautiful People

I just saw this on the iStock site:



The line through the 4 just makes it still look like a 4 and the line through the 7 makes it look like a confirmed 7. They should have uses "X" instead to avoid any confusion.

I think what is also disturbing are the "Similar stock photos" that appear on most image close-up pages now. I have looked at many images where the suggested Similar stock photos are so far off from the original image. It seems the way the site works isn't effective. It takes keywords out of context and throws up images which are often very different from what the buyer is looking at. The buyers must see that and think W*F? And then the buyers lose more confidence in the search results when the system is suggesting similar stock photos which aren't similar at all.

Does anyone happen to know which is the largest and most successful food stock selling site? I am not asking just about micro or midstock, but the largest of all types of food stock sites in general? Cheers.

Perhaps the hamsters needed a break from running inside the wheel. Either that or maybe someone was eating pies too close to the main server and now it is FUBARED?    

Hopefully iStock has a crash recovery site with a real time mirroring server running in another city at least 100 miles away from their main server site which is standard protocol for large companies who depend directly on the internet for their total revenue. This way, if their main servers were to be flooded or ever go down in Calgary, they could at least be up and running again from the crash recovery site in minutes with the flip of a switch.

But then again iStock can't even get their Connector program working correctly to mirror images from iStock onto the Getty servers in New York. They have been working on that for a year or two and it still doesn't work right, if even at all most of the time.

On second thought forget the possibility of an iStock crash recovery site operating elsewhere. Even if one exists, its probably never been tested, and if it has been tested they are still working the bugs out of it I am sure.

Perhaps we should all prepare ourselves for something like this: http://www.istockphoto.com/503

Have buyers been notified in any way so they at least have a clue what is going on when they perhaps pull up a light boxed image and find all the prices have changed?