I don't know what they are smoking there in Calgary... I was puzzled for a while reading this thread - which slider people are talking about? I think I found it now, at the very bottom under "Display settings" - it says "Choose the level of importance of keyword relevance". Seriously? Why would I want irrelevant results to be displayed in my search?... That's question number one.
Question number 2 - why oh why can't they just have "Show me cheap stuff" and "Show me expensive stuff" options? Wouldn't that make things simple and transparent for buyers and fair to contributors? It's depressing but I think I know the answer to this one - they think they can trick and confuse the customers into spending more money that they should. Although (sadly) it's a common practice with many companies these days, buyers are getting smarter and not taking this anymore - they just leave and take their business elsewhere. That's what I do. That's what many people who buy on Istock will do (and I know are doing already). Too bad....
 

I think what they really meant to accomplishment with the "SR-EL" is something like:

Quote

Unlimited Rights EL:
- no restriction on print run
- no restrictions on seat limits
- unlimited items for resale
- unlimited electronic items for resale

etc.  The whole notion of "ownership" is foggy at best.  Why not have just offered an "all you can eat" EL?

Why there is suddently so much fuss about SR-EL on Dreamstime?... They've had that option for years and there's been many sales of that kind - I had one in the early days when removing an image from other sites wasn't a big deal (now I wouldn't do that - selling on too many sites). It looks like you've been sitting behind the tall fence of your little Istock garden for too long and know little about what's going on in a big scary world...;-)

Yup March has been good almost everywhere - economy's picking up? One can hope....

Yup my request to delete the files also went through very quickly.
Soon they won't have any images to sell though - I don't know who'd be ok with offering high-res images for 1 buck.

They need editors with some graphic design background. I can't tell you the strange variety of images I've needed to find to produce the concepts that pop into my mind when designing. You can't predict it and shouldn't try. I also don't care about the photographer who took the shot I need so his/her sales history is irrelevant. It's the quality of the shot that matters. They should accept images of good ( "top") quality and not worry about the rest. If the bulging image catalog is a problem, start weeding out old images.

I really hope people on DT hear you. The "similars" rejections there are not just annoying, often they don't even make any sense. They reject images of the same model with totally different face expressions as similars. You don't have to be a graphic designer to understand that often several images of the same model expressing different emotions are used to illustrate a concept or to promote a product or a service. But your choice on DT is severely restricted because they take 3 images out of available 15.... one of the reason I started to sell from my own site...

My father was a singer for his entire life, and made a huge mark in rock music.  Cancer took him last year, but I wonder what his take on this song would be?  If you do a web search on me, you can probably figure out who my father is, lol.  

You dad is RONNIE JAMES DIO??? Cool!!!

Sigh... Soon they gonna make 7-year-olds sing - that market is still unexplored, right? And after that - toddlers.

I consider it my job to supply customers with enough variations of compositions on the subject (I've had many direct emails from people asking me if I had the same subject shot at different angles, with more space to the side/top/bottom, different orientations) but at the same time not offering images that are too similar. For me, it's just common sense. So, with my own store (www.elenaphoto.com) I don't see a problem - if I have 10 images of the subject showing up in a row, I know they are different enough and there is no need to mix them up.
With agencies though it's a different story - sometimes reviewers don't have a good understanding of what is too similar and what's not (Dreamstime often drives me nuts - for example, images of the same model, one smiling, one totally serious were considered "similars", one approved, one rejected). So I do mix up for agencies, but not because I supply images that are too similar...

Quote from: lagereek on March 18, 2011, 12:35

Quote from: ShadySue on March 18, 2011, 12:29

Quote from: lagereek on March 18, 2011, 02:36

By not uploading you only hurt yourself, nobody else. The agencies dont care, they can replace anyone tomorrow, nobody and I mean nobody is infallable, ( did I spell taht right)?

I think you meant indispensible?
http://www.ellenbailey.com/poems/ellen_323.htm

Yeah thats what I meant, still its true though, isnt it?

Absolutely: iStock, sadly, is not infallible and we, sadly, are not indispensible. ;-)

I would like to point out that iStock is also not indispensible... ;-) Works both way, right?

@ GL Reviewer - nice informative post, thanks!

Had enough of Russia?;-)
Return per image per month - 1-2 dollars on average, unless you do only highly conceptual shots and then it could be up to 5-7.

Quote from: lisafx on March 12, 2011, 13:45

A thought I just had...  Perhaps the reason that Istock announced this clawback a week in advance was to see what, if anything, we were going to do about it. 

Would the organizing of an audit or a class action lawsuit cause them to rethink the wisdom of this theft of funds from their contributors? 

I think that they only real reason that they gave a week's notice was to allow 'easy payment' arrangements to be made if necessary.

With the amount of money at stake, particularly for exclusives, an audit has to be necessary. My own 'refunds' are quite suspicious and mean that on one Saturday for example I was only left with two 'real' downloads. Really? I haven't had a 'two download day' since the f*cking old king died.

Wow nice catch. I am usually too lazy to look at details like this - but people reporting here that some images got downloaded twice or unrealistically low number of downloads per day does makes you think that Istock explanation of this has nothing to do with reality.

I'm just wondering ...
- my total loss (this month) is about 26 dollars = 5% of January sales (so the 1 in 20 rule goes for me too)
- my lowest figure in the fraudulent download list is 1,9 dollar
- my lowest sales in general (for XS size) is 0,20 dollars (average 0,25 dollars for XSmall)

Did the thieves only steal large sizes, or did Istock take back the full sales price instead of "just" our 15% royalty?

And one funny thing :  he/she stole one image twice   

This is disturbing. After their first money grab I thought - who on earth would go buy images if they have access to huge credit on stolen card(s)?
Ok let's consider scenario when the thiefs make CDs with stolen content and then try to sell them. This is bad enough - Istock just plain failed to protect our intellectual property, which is supposedly now available on some pirate sites; we might as well upload our images to Flickr. Taking 85% cut and not even be able to protect images? - this unprofessional in the least, and at the most plain criminal.
But then - if someone's making CDs, why do they buy different sizes of images???
And why buy the same images twice? Plus the scale of it - who'd have access to such credit? it's not just one or two cards (as it happens with DT or other agencies) - it's hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Them not saying anything at all on this issue makes me think the issue is internal, not external. Pissed off or fraudulent employee who had access to the right data. If it was a hacker why not say so? Security loopholes get exposed and fixed on the internet all the time. But I bet it's something nastier.
Any blogs out there on this matter? All of us should write about this - let everyone know what's going on with Istock. I think it's the only real power we have.