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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
5251
« on: August 21, 2012, 05:57 »
I just checked (haven't been keeping track regularly as I'm away) and it was working. Sales are slow, but the dashboard did come up (slowly)
5252
« on: August 20, 2012, 10:22 »
Perhaps it'll end up as a vector site - I don't see any signs of life for photos. Just a ongoing dribble of sales.
5253
« on: August 15, 2012, 13:13 »
"Jonathan Klein: No. Nothing will change for them, just like the Hellman deal didn't change anything for them."
I don't believe that the H&F deal changed nothing for contributors, both to Getty and to iStock. They may say that all the forced RM to RF subscription migration and cuts in royalty payments had nothing to do with it, but IMO that's just fantasy.
5254
« on: August 15, 2012, 10:03 »
Sounds to me as if getting the Getty family and Klein to pitch in - along with a lower price than initially sought - was the only way to get the deal done. But I don't understand what it means to have the Getty family roll their interests (thought to be 15%) into the transaction? And Klein investing equity means he borrowed against his stake?
Was H&F so horrible as a boss that Getty and Klein wanted them gone badly enough that they put up their own money to make it happen?
And all this stuff about Carlyle investing in growth doesn't square with what I've been told about how private equity firms operate - which is that they need to make money on the deal and in the short term, not the long term. But as Getty's already been through one round with private equity owners, it's hard to believe they'd have any illusions about what this really looks like day to day.
5255
« on: August 13, 2012, 22:00 »
One refund for $3.60, but I also see no sales since August 10th, which is very surprising, even for August.
5256
« on: August 11, 2012, 07:41 »
I know this is an old thread, but I logged in to check on Veer this morning and was surprised to see that on Thursday I got one of the jackpot $4.95 subscriptions (first time for me).
That was a nice surprise, but on a Thursday?? That means, I think, that mine was the only image that buyer downloaded that day, a work day. It was also the first sale at Veer since July 31st, a particularly long gap.
5257
« on: August 11, 2012, 07:04 »
As a parent, I would note that these "free" games are anything but - much more expensive long term than buying a game for $60 IMO.
I've tried negotiating lifetime caps on spending for these "free" games so that my kids don't ending up putting more than a certain amount through the shredder (I guess you can tell what I think of these expenditures but I try not to judge...too much)
My formerly X-box addict son hasn't touched it in nearly a year, having moved to Steam and playing games on a PC again. Some of the games there are straight purchases, but many are the free plus in-game spending.
5258
« on: August 11, 2012, 06:59 »
IS was laying off people because H&F was siphoning money out of there with a big fat straw. They have taken over $1B out of Gettty in "dividends" for themselves.
There is a huge difference between changing the business model as microstock did - lower prices with higher volume, similarly to mass producing cars or furniture versus hand crafting it - and keeping the business model and sticking it to the contributors which is what the agencies are doing at the moment.
The first is smart business, the second is as close to larceny as you can get
5259
« on: August 10, 2012, 20:20 »
I think it's pretty simple though. If they would pick an image of mine for this collection and wouldn't be paying me (or just paying me 28 cents to license once), I'd deactivate it from iStock just to keep it from them. At most it'd be one or two of my images and even if it were a best seller I would be willing to forego the revenue from IS/Thinkstock to avoid it being given away under this "deal".
I can't see how under any reading of the ASA they could legitimately use an image if I deactivate it.
5260
« on: August 10, 2012, 16:42 »
I hadn't seen that. And how are contributors to Thinkstock to be compensated for the images that end up being picked in this collection?
5261
« on: August 10, 2012, 11:33 »
I work on the assumption that now (versus a while back) none of the agencies will do anything unless there's a ton of their own revenue on the line.
There have been several complaints from iStock exclusives who contacted CE about violations and no action was taken. I don't see exclusivity anywhere as being a guarantee your agency will actively go after violators on your behalf. In some ways it's worse with IS as they specifically asked contributors not to pursue things on their own and then appeared not to be doing anything (or doing it so slowly it appeared to be nothing).
Back at the beginning of my own stint as an IS exclusive, Lobo was very helpful getting some derivative works using my images off DT (where the slimebucket was selling them). SS has never been very sprightly (and when the collection of pirated stuff says it's SS images, the issue isn't where things came from; likewise when someone who had a subscription was offering to get you the image if you gave them the number) - you get something after a few days saying they'll look into it.
In a better climate, it'd be nice to see the agencies have some way to jointly pursue violators - even if only the top agencies did it, it might eliminate the inaction from arguments about where the download came from.
5262
« on: August 10, 2012, 07:48 »
I was thinking it may result in "a throw it against the wall and delete whatever doesn't stick" attitude in contributors, which may achieve what DT is trying to do by stopping similars going onto the site or what IS is doing by limiting uploads.
IS and DT are two different situations - IS is protecting exclusives by limiting uploads, not trying to "improve" the regular contributor's portfolio. The problem with deleting things that appear not to be selling is figuring out how long to wait. I've had several flaming images at IS that didn't sell for 7 months (one case) or a year in another. A best match lurch made them visible later, perhaps? At any rate, I don't delete images if I'm not forced to as you never know what event might surface them.
5263
« on: August 10, 2012, 07:43 »
For me, the last sale at Veer was July 31 - as if they were taking August off! I keep expecting to hear they're shutting down, but perhaps they'll bring in the crash cart and revitalize the place...
5264
« on: August 09, 2012, 19:53 »
I just don't see how a system like this could ever make sense.
Stock is about what sells well not what is "best". We all upload what we think will sell but for most of us we aren't good judges of what will and won't sell - not to mention that the search placement can materially affect initial sales which can then influence how images take off.
I'm not privy to any internal numbers, but I can't imagine the costs of unsold images affect agencies' bottom lines half as much as having the big sellers take off. In which case, you would want to reward those who bring you the most revenue without regard to how big their portfolio is overall.
5265
« on: August 08, 2012, 21:20 »
I think that the risks you're taking on by going exclusive are high. Especially if another private equity firm buys Getty from H&F. I completely get the pull to avoid all the idiocies at all other agencies, but the iStock that was is gone. Go read the July earnings thread on IS and look at the diamond and black diamond reports
5266
« on: August 08, 2012, 00:36 »
I just sent support there a message asking how I opt out of bidder. I think it's an insane idea - with a volume discount on credits or buying a month subscription, the buyer is doing something in return for getting the discount. For this scheme, the buyer does nothing. Their FAQ says that if they reject your bid they'll counter with something guaranteed to be less than the list price. I'm guessing they'll say I can't opt out, but it's worth asking.
I too do not recall this being mentioned anywhere when I signed up...
5267
« on: August 06, 2012, 11:07 »
I know it's still early doors in August but so far this month my Istock earnings have been disasterous. They are currently in 3rd place behind FT and contributing just 17% to my total. Two years ago it was more like 40% and even recently they were holding steady at 25-30%. Hope it's just a glitch and things will pick up soon.
Even for August, the last week was dire. The last couple of months, IS has held the top earner slot, but SS is beating it at the moment (and SS has had a slow start to August for me too). If I look at some of my popular files, their position in searches has moved back a few slots, but not much, and certainly not enough to explain the crash in sales. In a FB group there was a contributor who buys who was complaining that they were getting poor results in searches today (and saying it was the first time they couldn't find what they were looking for on what they believed was a simple search). Perhaps something has changed in searches (versus an overall dropoff in business)?
5268
« on: August 05, 2012, 18:28 »
Welcome.
I hope you find a good balance of whatever your day job will be and microstock as an outlet for your photos and images as a sideline. One of the great things is that you can do this part time if you want to, and can upload within limits, whatever you want to. There's a pretty broad range of contributors all the way from image factories to "I can pay for my camera gear" part timers.
One of the things you can use microstock for is to improve technique - lighting, composition, post processing. The discipline can pay off for all sorts of other purposes, which might be helpful over time.
5269
« on: August 05, 2012, 18:10 »
Some months have made the same as the same month last year. Most are less.
Not sure what the delta is July 2011 to July 2012 in portfolio size, but I recall in some earlier reports you had said your portfolio had grown by a couple of thousand images over the prior year. Given price increases and portfolio growth year to year, I would view staying even as a pretty poor result. And I don't mean that you did poorly - I'm criticizing your agent, not you, your images or the effort you're putting in. I occasionally get ticked by the contingent that complains the only ones complaining are those not putting in the requisite effort - I think they just need to believe everything's wonderful to avoid acknowledging that this can happen to them too.
5270
« on: August 05, 2012, 11:31 »
Uploading to DT? You've lost me there. Do people still do that?
I do - until they trash my portfolio's sales (it happened once before in my prior life as an indie). I've never used the Java uploader as the one time I tried, it appeared to be brain dead and would only look at my Mac's boot drive, not any of the others. I fully expect it'll happen again at some point, but at this point I just try to follow the sales, wherever I find them 
5271
« on: August 04, 2012, 13:46 »
I don't know why this would be - I haven't deactivated anything on IS - but for the second time, my portfolio on Thinkstock has shrunk.
I haven't deleted anything, deactivated anything or, as far as I know, had anything deactivated by IS. I checked the annual CSV file which shows 0 deactivations.
I had been watching portfolio numbers to see how much had made it over, and had been seeing an increase up until about a week ago to a high water mark of 2,014. I had been very surprised a few weeks back to see new approvals show up at TS the day they were approved on IS too, so things seemed to be improving in getting files moved over.
About a week ago I saw the 2,014 drop to 2,008 and then this morning it went to 2,007. I have no idea what files are gone though; and recent approvals are no longer showing up right away.
Nothing to be done, but has anyone else seen their numbers drop for no obvious reason?
5272
« on: August 03, 2012, 15:22 »
Neither crazy nor stupid I do hope that your buyers find you and that the move works out - as we know, you don't have to have as many buyers when you aren't paying anything/as much to the agency. I no longer upload to 123rf but haven't yet pulled the plug (I think I'm going to hold on until the end of the year and see if they go through with their ill-advised commission changes).
5273
« on: August 02, 2012, 15:59 »
And today they've cut the price on some sizes in Photo+ and "regular" - see a thread here. For Medium, exclusive and P+ are the same price (as things once were when P+ was introduced) but for other sizes exclusive is still a big premium - XS for exclusive is 4 vs. 2 for P+ and for XXL, exclusive is 25 and P+ is now 20
5274
« on: August 01, 2012, 13:25 »
Not bad - not great, but decent for the middle of summer (November is typically my best month each year). Once the IS partner income comes in it'll probably be flat with June. But it's up 25% from last July (somewhat unfair comparison as that was turbulent following exit from exclusivity).
SS was the same as last month ($1 less), IS similar ($15 less) and DT had a good month - they were 13% of my total, having dropped to 7% earlier in the year with the various search engine problems. 123rf is lower the last two months, possibly because I haven't uploaded there since they announced their plans to cut our commissions.
5275
« on: August 01, 2012, 00:30 »
I think it's important to let the contributor choose, and helpful to have the option to automatically take the first 50.
I think if you do let the contributor choose, you need to keep the keyword count updated as items are deleted - so there's no guessing about how many more to remove.
I don't know how your search works with stems and plurals, but if you automatically find items keyworded "duck" if the searcher enters "ducks" and color/colour, painted/paint, etc. then you could really help by handling removal of redundant keywords. Shutterstock does this (they have a feedback loop where they tell you about misspellings and redundant words). That would help get the total count down if people have lots of words just to handle the variations in US/UK english and words with a common stem.
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