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Messages - dcdp
52
« on: January 31, 2012, 07:33 »
25 refunds on how many DLs? I guess whatever the case, 25 refunds is terrible.
53
« on: January 31, 2012, 07:21 »
You need a category for zero. Also it is relevant how many actual downloads you have in the month. You can expect someone who has 1000 to have more DLs than someone who has 50
54
« on: January 31, 2012, 03:19 »
and the word hate does not come into the stock-industry, its business, thats all.
I would rather say, its a great disappointment really, how such an agency, once flourishing, can turn so sour and as you say, do the best in destroying itself.
best.
Disappointment is a very good word for it. I know some people don't really get it, but it was more than just a business, it was a real community. When Getty came along they tried to turn it into a business, but unfortunately they weren't very good at it.
55
« on: January 30, 2012, 21:18 »
"I don't think it is going to happen immediately, but I suspect it will happen quicker than might be expected. "
hahaha way too many subjective terms in there! I can't tell what you think/expect, because you suspect three different things!
just giving you a hard time though, I agree 100% with your post. It's the same reason I left. Well that and the RCs.
Ha! The language is mangled, but you get my point.
56
« on: January 30, 2012, 18:59 »
I have a slightly different perspective here.
I am a former iStock exclusive (still in the 30 day period at the moment) who had a fantastic 2011. My sales were up on previous years for every month and income was well up on previous years. I had been contributing to iStock since late 2007 but at the start of 2012 have decided to drop exclusivity, despite 2012 being my best year. Why? Well for the last 18 months I have been hanging on and hoping iStock would turn the corner and start treating it's contributors and customers better. Quite frankly iStock has been doing well despite it's best efforts to sabotage itself. I think 2012 is going to be the year that iStock's behaviour will come back to bite itself. I don't think it is going to happen immediately, but I suspect it will happen quicker than might be expected. Think about the transition from MySpace to Facebook. I'm expecting that sort of a transition to happen and by leaving now I'm hoping to be in a position on Shutterstock (who I expect to be the recipient of the transition) to take advantage of it.
Who knows maybe I have made the wrong choice and iStock will turn the corner this year? It may do so, but I don't think so. I think the morale of the community is at an all time low because of the way HQ has treated them and even the woo yayers are clinging to hope. The customers are impacted by frequent outages and when the site is actually up, are barraged by high priced (and increasing prices) images in a complicated pricing structure (how many price tiers? DB, Non-E, P+, E, E+, Vetta, Agency). iStock is becoming a synonym for unreliability and high prices. Don't get me wrong there are still buyers there, but the smaller buyers are going elsewhere or being told to go elsewhere within Getty (what kind of company tells buyers white-ant's itself by telling buyers to go to a lower cost subsidiary of itself?)
I'm not an iStock hater (I know many here are), they have been good to me over the past few years, but unfortunately I don't think their behaviour is "sustainable". You can't keep screwing over your suppliers and buyers (and now staff) and expect to prosper. They had the lead and rather than looking for ways to go ahead and dominate the opposition, they gave up on outward growth and hollowed out the things that had made them successful. If you can't make a successful business out of a process where people give you your saleable assets and you keep 55-85% of the sale price you don't deserve to be in business.
57
« on: January 26, 2012, 23:52 »
Hi everybody!
I have noticed some delay on SS approval time. I have batches been in queue from the 8th of January. And my "batches" are usually of no more than 3 photos. Has anyone else noticed this delay ?
Thanks.
Yep. Mine have been piling up. Very odd. Some have been in there over a week. Must be all those iStock ex-exclusives flooding the cue. 
Speaking as a very recently iStock ex-exclusive, there isn't much point loading up the queue until the 30 day notice is almost up otherwise your images will be 30 days old when they become active. I'll be loading up my queue starting around the 15th Feb to make sure I have plenty of fresh files once I can make them available. Between now and then I'm only uploading a few here or there as "test" files to see what works and what doesn't at SS. I realise reviews and reviewers vary, but I have learned a few things alreayd in terms of differences between iStock and SS. Some rejected on iStock have been accepted at SS and vice versa. So in answer to your post, they could be iStock ex-exclusives but they have had to quit iStock mid December. ETA: As an aside my last batch inspected took a bit more than 3 days. I have a whole 13 images in my portfolio now!
58
« on: January 26, 2012, 20:02 »
Every time something like this happens my decision of a few days ago seems like a better idea. I know this sort of thing happens to all the sites from time to time, but it seems to happen far more often to iStock than others and if that is your only sale outlet, then you have no other outlets at least keeping things up for you.
59
« on: January 26, 2012, 19:59 »
Unfortunately, it's entirely believable, just very frustrating. It's very hard to track which sales were wrong and whether (when they dole out the supposed difference later) the make-up payment is right - too little information is provided on each sale.
Let's hope (a) it gets fixed quickly and (b) this time it stays fixed.
It's never a good sign when developers repeatedly break the same thing - poor source code control, or spaghetti code, or ...
To break something they have to release new code. Why are the releasing new code during the US business day. I realise iStock is a 24/7 company (except when it comes to customer support) but surely there is a better time to be doing this.
60
« on: January 23, 2012, 18:18 »
It also may be that the current employees were considered and not chosen as the best people for what needed to be done.
Interesting that Getty decided that all 30 redundancies in positions were best filled by Getty folks. Not one exception as far as we know.
That's not really a merging of ideas. More of a takeover, really.
If all the people booted were in IT it might be explainable.
61
« on: January 23, 2012, 14:56 »
Well I've had my 7 out of 10 accepted at SS, time to make a big decision I suppose. To jump or not to jump.
That was quick. Like a bandaid.
62
« on: January 23, 2012, 14:41 »
Well I've had my 7 out of 10 accepted at SS, time to make a big decision I suppose. To jump or not to jump.
63
« on: January 23, 2012, 03:58 »
 Gold
64
« on: January 17, 2012, 23:12 »
I doubt their profit is falling. It will in future but for now it is less business (and getting more so) but with higher margins due to decreased costs. They now pay less in royalties and less for operations. I suspect the prgrammers aren't paid much.
I think it probably is. Maybe not on a per image basis, but overall their profit is driven by sales and I suspect the number of Vetta and Agency sales dropped significantly when the price filter was put in which would have dropped profits. Do the programmers deserve to be paid much? Perhaps if they were well paid ones we would have all the problems on the site? Not that higher pay guarantees competency.
65
« on: January 17, 2012, 23:01 »
Wow this really came out of left field...
Let me recap...
Getty Buys iStock
iStock Expands
...
You forgot: iStock kicks contributors a wet willy . . . iStock kicks contributors in the shin . . . iStock gives contributors an atomic wedgie . . . iStock kicks contributors in the groin .
66
« on: January 17, 2012, 22:09 »
A Twitter post from six hours ago says there were 30 layoffs. I don't know how big the company is, how many they employ. Is that a lot?
I can't find that twitter post, might have been deleted.
Never mind, found it.
67
« on: January 17, 2012, 21:48 »
A Twitter post from six hours ago says there were 30 layoffs. I don't know how big the company is, how many they employ. Is that a lot?
I can't find that twitter post, might have been deleted.
68
« on: January 17, 2012, 21:47 »
It's hard enough getting any sort of information out of them as it is, it's going to be much harder now.
The writing has been on the wall for sometime now, but the lack of any sort of feedback about anything recently seems to indicate something has been going on there.
I wonder if they will make any sort of official announcement ... somehow I doubt it!
69
« on: August 26, 2011, 19:51 »
Empirically:
Weekday DLS % $ %
Monday 17.9% 17.5%
Tuesday 18.7% 19.3%
Wednesday 20.2% 21.5%
Thursday 18.4% 19.1%
Friday 14.9% 14.4%
Saturday 4.3% 3.5%
Sunday 6.1% 4.6%
They are the worst for me. Lower DLs and lower $ per DL than other week days.
70
« on: August 17, 2011, 23:29 »
It is interesting. I started a thread on iStock a month or so ago titled "If I were the CEO of iStock, the first 5 changes I would make are:" ...
The thread got shut down immediately unfortunately. I wonder if I should try again, in light of these most recent changes.
Translation: "if we want your opinion, we'll ask for it, and then ignore it!"
Sounds like a fair enough subject unless the fist replies were all negative and critical instead of brainstorming or positive. Didn't read it, I waste enough time reading and writing here. LOL
It actually got shut down before anyone could reply! Interesting now they have just announced they're sending out a survey to ask people's opinions and to get feedback and suggestions. They actually already have a forum for that which routinely gets ignored.
71
« on: August 08, 2011, 01:12 »
It is interesting. I started a thread on iStock a month or so ago titled "If I were the CEO of iStock, the first 5 changes I would make are:" ...
The thread got shut down immediately unfortunately. I wonder if I should try again, in light of these most recent changes.
72
« on: August 08, 2011, 01:07 »
on iStock JJRD said:
With that said : talented & hard working individuals have nothing to fear - quite the contrary. Does anyone else find this a perplexing comment? The July thread is full of people who are having their worst month in 2/3/4/5 years both in terms of DLs and $$ and JJRD comes out with a comment like that. It is either implying that these people who are tanking have nothing to fear (despite they are tanking) or it's implying they aren't "talented and hard working individuals" because they are tanking ... way to encourage people! And the response from contributors is "Thanks for allaying our fears JJRD!". It's like people live in a reality distortion field. Mystifying ...
73
« on: June 06, 2011, 22:44 »
Lobo* just took out a post altogether that he locked a short while ago - if I were CEO of iStock by dcdp. There was nothing rude or defamatory, just a list of specific suggestions about how to do things differently. They clearly aren't going to permit discussions of that sort, no matter how polite.
* I know lobo locked the post as I read the short "lock it" post he made. I don't know that he deleted the post afterwards, only that the post is gone.
This from the Off Topic forum (Push for gold)
Posted By dcdp:
"If I were CEO of iStock, the first 5 things I would change would be ..."
Feel free to add your thoughts here
Posted by Lobo:
Sorry. I think you might want to hold off on starting any threads that are liable to just become an offshoot of the main thread. I get where you are coming from but at this point we are going to have to only have one thread going at a time.
Yeah that was me. I chatted back and forth with Lobo about it and accept his reasonings for pulling the post. We may get it up again at a later stage, but for now he's told me he is canning it.
well if it was an "offshoot" why didn't you just repost it in the main thread since it sounds like he is saying that he just didnt want multiple threads on the same topic.
It covered RCs (1 of the 5 things I would change if I was CEO) but also covered a bunch of other things like EL and Vetta/Agency Royalty %, Agency ring ins, V/A Filters, Dollar Bin - so literally wasn't on topic with the RC thread and was an off-shoot. His argument was that the present "discussion" was strictly about RCs and if my thread stayed it be a chance for people who were already angry about that to start complaining about everything else. I wanted the discussion to be productive not another gripe session, Lobo didn't believe that was going to happen in the present environment.
74
« on: June 06, 2011, 00:42 »
Lobo* just took out a post altogether that he locked a short while ago - if I were CEO of iStock by dcdp. There was nothing rude or defamatory, just a list of specific suggestions about how to do things differently. They clearly aren't going to permit discussions of that sort, no matter how polite.
* I know lobo locked the post as I read the short "lock it" post he made. I don't know that he deleted the post afterwards, only that the post is gone.
This from the Off Topic forum (Push for gold)
Posted By dcdp:
"If I were CEO of iStock, the first 5 things I would change would be ..."
Feel free to add your thoughts here
Posted by Lobo:
Sorry. I think you might want to hold off on starting any threads that are liable to just become an offshoot of the main thread. I get where you are coming from but at this point we are going to have to only have one thread going at a time.
Yeah that was me. I chatted back and forth with Lobo about it and accept his reasonings for pulling the post. We may get it up again at a later stage, but for now he's told me he is canning it.
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