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Messages - Mantis
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5376
« on: May 05, 2011, 19:33 »
"Everyone sort of settled down.", really? I guess getting tired of ranting to a brick wall on the forums constitutes agreement. I won't forget what they did.
I got a site mail from LOBO warning me about my postings in their forums when they made the big announcement. All I was doing was speaking my mind and not using any cuss words (like others did) but I figured it was because I was non-exclusive and a nobody in the eyes of ISTOCK. Shortly after, I joined up here. My sales dropped from around $540 a month to the $250ish range. So I am not in that fantasy land number of 99 point something percent unaffected.
5377
« on: May 03, 2011, 18:06 »
Scratching my head here but what kind of company treats their suppliers AND buyers like crap and expects to be successful? In my opinion there is DEFIANTLY an ulterior motive...should I say strategy..behind the behavior of the IS principles. To me they are obviously (intentionally) not communicating whatever it is they are concocting behind the scenes and are surely trying to manipulate a different desired business outcome. This is simple to infer due solely to their silence in the forums...all while their "valued" human capital (suppliers) are losing a huge chunk of their livelihood $$ and their equally valued revenue machines (buyers) are being shut out by high prices, poor system functionality and what amounts to ISTOCK trickery by placing Agency and Vetta at the top of best match searches.
They are a disgraceful business.
5378
« on: April 24, 2011, 20:10 »
At Shutterstock, is there a procedure for a second review of images; images the submitter feels should not have been rejected. If so, please provide method to contact the second review.
Yes and no. Going by the "rules" it works something like this: 1. For images with quality type rejections - if you resubmit you are supposed to leave a note to the inspector that you fixed the issue. 2. If you flat out think they made a mistake, you can contact headquarters for another look. However this is usually a one or two image kind of thing, not large batches per se. 3. LCV. No resubmit. Realistically many contributors wait a bit and then resubmit as new uploads and not resubmits, including LCV rejections.
5379
« on: April 23, 2011, 08:17 »
Thursday and Friday last week were certainly nothing to write home about. That's the way it's been going for me for a while though.
Today is like a Sunday so far. R e a l l y slow.
went from 15 a day as a non, then best match changed, so 10 a day, then ZERO DL yesterday (Friday). I know it's only one day but ohy vey.
5380
« on: April 23, 2011, 08:15 »
Why not clone out all LV logos and use it as an RF? There are lots of LV fakes out there. May be more useful as a purse isolated on white.
5381
« on: April 23, 2011, 08:10 »
I noticed that too 
It made me feel better about my own 'ignores'. I guess they didn't realise he was The King around these parts.
ETA: Unless of course he ignored himself just to make the rest of us feel better. Seems such a nice fellow that I wouldn't be surprised 
I bet Leaf knows who. He has a magic button.
5382
« on: April 23, 2011, 08:08 »
Racephoto, what are you talking about? Observations ARE evidence. So are posts by disgruntled buyers saying they are leaving and for every one who bothers to post there are probably 100 others who pack their tent and leave without saying a word. Maybe there are hundreds of others signing up to replace them. Maybe the overall "spend" from people switching to V/A and away from the non-elite is boosting iStock's profits. I don't know. But I do know that this is the first time in the company's history that quite a number of different buyers have come forward to protest about the service that they are getting.
And why would contributors continuing to upload make buyers less ticked off about having searches flooded with Vetta and Agency? Contributors are uploading everywhere else, too, and some of the top contributors upload a lot more to other sites than they do to iStock.
You're absolutely right that Getty will never let us see its books while it is a private company. But to go on from that to argue that therefore we shouldn't be saying anything because we don't have access to any evidence is just plain wrong. It's exactly like the Church telling people not to speculate about how the solar system works just because the official geocentric model is causing difficulties with the calculations (these observed difficulties aren't evidence of anything, are they?).
It's not just Shutterstock that is up, either. 123 is already up to its monthly average for me, with a third of the month to go. Canstock sales in the last three months have been well above the long-term average (so far, my number of files sold this month is 36% above the total for all of last April). Sales at both these sites would be more sensitive indicators of movement than Shutterstock, since their markets have been quite small.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, some buyers are not vocal about them leaving. Those are the kind of buyers that Istock doesn't notice unless them measure falloff (which any right minded company should measure). Case and point. My company just opened a Shutterstock account for two reasons: 1. Prices have gotten too high; 2. The site is dysfunctional. They will use up their credits and transition over to Shutterstock...and we do A LOT of visual management (web, TV, magazine, tradeshow, and brochure advertising). So this is an example of a buyer QUIETLY transitioning to another supplier. How many of those are leaving Istock? I bet more than one. So we cannot just tally up those vocal buyers we must consider the ones who are leaving in silent disagreement.
5383
« on: April 22, 2011, 16:43 »
They have some pretty useless forums over there, too. A ton of useless pimping, many topics not related to art imagery & video, tons of heated political topics, contributors begging for votes in photo competitions and very little value in the way of critique and real contributor help. Somewhere between there and Istock would be nice....oh wait, we have MSG:)
5384
« on: April 17, 2011, 09:20 »
You've chosen the wrong issue. Instead of telling them that you have lost out and want them to give you money, you should tell them that they are losing money because iStock policies are driving customers away.
The letter would probably still end up in the bin, but they would think slightly longer about their potential losses than about yours.
Exactly. Tell them what they are losing, not what you are losing...or at lease weight the two properly. However, back to the signing of the letter....there were two harassment issues at my work and both were clearly ligitimate. When the persons filed complaints through the proper ethics channels the issue was ignored.....as often happens in big companies. So both wrote signed letters and sent them to our parent companies ethics and legal department. What do you think happened? Both issues were simply sent back to the division HR department to handle, then HR sent them back to the original managers who ignored the issue and nothing was done at all.....except both complainees are no longer with the company. So given istocks retaliatory reputation I would be careful what you do unless you are willing to lose your account.
5385
« on: April 16, 2011, 09:04 »
To answer my own question, here's the words straight from the horse's mouth (sort of - it's via that Canon article where KKT was interviewed), so we have to take it with a grain of salt, considering he thinks all the contributors only sell stock to buy a new lens cap:
"Thompson also clearly has an eye on the long-term benefits of the site's search engine which has recently been overhauled. He describes it as awesome in delivering results based on a customer/client's location."
So it's supposed to be based on a client's location. So so stupid. Not all a designer's clients are local. Can they really be *that* dumb at iStock? (rhetorical question, of course)
You know, I hadn't really thought of that -- haven't bought stock for a remote client in a while -- but yeah, imagine if you worked in the travel industry or did design work for a multi-national? Pain in the ass.
^ I am that company. We do design work in Orange County but for India, China, Columbia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Russia, to name a few. We use Istock but now have a Shutterstock account and are transitioning away from IS due mostly to the pricing trickery they use and the many site problems. We may use them later if/when things are fixed but......sigh!
5386
« on: April 15, 2011, 18:44 »
Only yesterday I was assessing how well my newest 100 images (uploaded over the last 3 months) had sold so far on Fotolia and others. The results were extraordinary;
Fotolia - 6 sales
Istock - 30 sales
Shutterstock - 283 sales
It appears that new images on Fotolia are emerging so far down the best match that they're unlikely ever to be seen by buyers. It's a pity because new images often used to do very well on Fotolia. Right now it hardly seems worth uploading to them.
That pretty much echoes my recent experience on Fotolia, out of my last 200 uploads only 30 have sold.
I don't know what's happened there but speaking to a few of the top sellers in microstock we are all experiencing more or less the same thing.
Same here. Sales basically went away...I am 75% down in usual sales based on a 12 month average. Sure looks like they are trying a bastardized version of the IS debacle. Between the two I am down hundreds per month.
5387
« on: April 15, 2011, 07:47 »
https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Public/hands.jpg?w=d92b8ee8Once you save an image as a jpg you will get rough edges. Editing in PSD or TIFF gives you clean edges in these formats, but when you save the image as a JPG you lose data and will get jagged, rough looking edges. Istock knows this and, according to them, so do their inspectors. However, the best way to check for isolations is to use the same method they use by using a levels or curves layer. Your image has plenty of issues. I pulled your image, created a curves layer and the first thing is you can see the upper tight grey area. That is a the main issue. However, you also have that light gray around most of the hand, which is unclean. Use your dodge tool, set it to something low like 10 and a good feathered edge. Just kiss the edge of the hand and the gray will disappear. You can do it with the curves layer on or off, but make sure you inspect the image using the curves layer. Once the image is properly isolated, you can dump the curves layer and then save your work.
5388
« on: April 09, 2011, 19:31 »
Lol, Stacey said 'haters'.
no right-wing tea party reference intended. definitely do not support anything of that sort.
Oh, it's the left wing then, even worse.
5389
« on: April 09, 2011, 08:09 »
I suppose you guys could be right about a sale sometime soon. But I should have thought that an IPO would be very unlikely.
Why would they sell it as a part finished transformation ? Why not wait until the transformation is more complete?
I think they are...from my personal experience anyway. When our corporate leaders decided we were putting ourselves up for sale, the "enhancing of the books" was a priority for three years before we sought buyers and made our intentions public. So perhaps they are going through these pains now but won't formally announce anything for the next 36 months or so. My guess is, assuming there is an impending sale or IPO, that they are rushing to get things as optimized as possible from a web site functionality viewpoint and that the continuing policy changes are meant to pad the financials, as is the best match changes they keep doing by prioritizing Vetta and Agency. To be fair to Istock, I have ZERO knowledge of anything like this happening over there, only that the symptoms of a sale do exist.
5390
« on: April 08, 2011, 18:26 »
I would shoot everything in RAW and if you are doing that, then it totally doesn't matter what color balance you are shooting with, you have total control over it in post. So yeah, I always shoot in auto white balance.
^ This is by far the easiest way to deal with white balance in my opinion. Sometimes, depending on what you are shooting cameras may favor certain colors such as red, for example. Even auto white balance can get tricked into having a cast to the image, requiring a WB tweak. If you can swing it, shoot in RAW then edit in a raw converter.
5391
« on: April 08, 2011, 18:22 »
How would any buyer achieve sustainable growth on their investment ? Put the prices up even higher ? Cut royalties to 10% ? Either of those risk what could be fatal backlash.
Or suppose there was an IPO ? How could stock holder expectations of real growth ever be achieved long term in the current economy ?
Point surely is that the whole thing needs a few year of stability starting sooner or later or else it risks imploding. Which would be a huge shame.
The three large company sales I've been involved in all looked at the last three years of revenue, growth and profitability at a minimum. Knowing this our company did everything they could to pad the books, including cutting out advertising (like IS has apparently done so to some degree anyway), raising prices (like Istock has done), changed the sales force commission structure to favor the company's revenue stream (or pay more in commissions if stretch goals were met...kinda like the RC system at IS), pushed (and upsold) the more profitable products even though the lesser ones did the job just fine (like IS is doing with Agency and Vetta), controlled headcount and cut out overtime. They did this for three years to show how strong the books were. It is this behavior that makes an impending Getty sale more believable; it's probably why Lisa (and I happen to agree) believes a sale might be looming, or even an IPO as suggested. Also, getting rid of "damaging or negative" threads is probably good Istock strategy when it comes to protecting the brand....assuming a sale or IPO is in the crystal ball. Just my 2 cents.
5392
« on: April 07, 2011, 19:38 »
I'd say "anger" is justified. We signed up with the promise of a certain commission rate, we put up with their lousy site, and we were rewarded with a 25% paycut.
^ It's more than that for nons. With the addition of Ex+, Vetta then Agency, three new layers of best match priority have been bestowed upon the non-exclusives. So in addition to a ~15-25% pay cut, we now have poorer placement in the search as a result because these other layers receive preferred placement. I've been keeping track of my DL volume and I've gone from averaging 15 dl per day to 10 since January. I will be tracking this for the year to get enough data to make a reasonable inference as to whether these layers have affected my volume...but I am pretty sure it's contributing at least to some degree.
5393
« on: April 06, 2011, 21:33 »
I don't know where he's from. But I'm from Arizona.
well then you know of the crazy politics here in AZ -- I was making a sarcastic reference to that after all crazy politicians that are in this state. 
Don't you mean the Senate Democrats?
5394
« on: March 31, 2011, 21:06 »
Isn't the new motto if it ain't broke fix it?
5395
« on: March 30, 2011, 19:26 »
My Fotolia sales have dropped dramatically also, but I haven't noticed any problems with getting stuff approved.
^Same here. Sales for me are down 50-60 percent over the last month or two. 
5396
« on: March 30, 2011, 19:06 »
If you look at Fotolia's website and scroll down a bit, there is a paragraph about "Annual limit subscription plans". The royalties for one of those for an emerald contributor (like Lisa) are stated to be 2.5 Credits.
I have absolutely no idea what these plans are and neither had any of those sales yet.
Cool! Mystery solved!
I feel like an idiot for missing that. Thanks a lot for ferreting that out Dirk. I owe you one
Actually, I'd feel proud about this if I were you. That is probably something not a lot of contributors see very often. Nice job!
5397
« on: March 30, 2011, 07:20 »
Realflow-$4,000. YIKES!! That's a lot of MS downloads.
5398
« on: March 28, 2011, 18:31 »
Shady is right. I still have six images pending from March 6th and my batch uploaded last Saturday is now in its second week in the queue. I have site mails into them and still no answers. I bet they are simply short handed. Seems like lots of inspectors have been calling it quite of late. Be patient. You'll get there.
5399
« on: March 28, 2011, 18:28 »
I had about 10 downloads today most of which were 16 cents to 25 cents. What ever happened to 2-3 buck dl's? Geeze.
5400
« on: March 28, 2011, 18:24 »
The standard answer at Dreamstime is:
Questioning our policy will not be "tolerated." 
^ This is what I've found out to be true. I've been shut down more than once when posting in forums (in a very nice way I might add) with a threat of account suspension via site mail on the last time. The head guy (I think his name is Serban) just does not take criticism very well. That's just bad business not to listen to their customers. I call us customers because we do get paid from them and provide the foundation from which they make their profits as well. Just another issue to deal with in the world of microstock.
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