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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
5826
« on: December 22, 2011, 12:00 »
It has nothing to do with the "If the exclusive content is so superior". It has to do with content and the price of the images. ... You cannot compete on price and act as though the buyers won't notice and gravitate to the cheapest next best option.
It wasn't contributors' idea to price exclusive content higher than independent or to exclude independents from Vetta. iStock raised the price of exclusive content a few years back - you can't then accuse independents of competing on price because they didn't get to participate in the increase. If iStock wished to, they could have made Vetta and Agency image exclusive (sort of the way they did with any 'lypse content that an independent would shoot, or DT does with its assignment photos). The current search results for best match are just not putting forward very appealing results. Whatever meat grinder they want to put the collection through, it should produce something that looks great for the first page or two and this algorithm doesn't. They did change it a bit from yesterday - moving independent content ever so slightly forward - so perhaps even they see an issue with it.
5827
« on: December 21, 2011, 19:45 »
Bigstock has been dead as a door nail for me. They used to be OK so perhaps it's just bad for newbies?
5828
« on: December 21, 2011, 18:26 »
What amazes me is that not a word of this is being spoken on the IS forum (unless exclusives are laughing behind their hands on their own forum). Have we become so used to Istock's shenanigans that we can no longer be bothered?
There was one thread earlier, promptly locked. The guy had a small port and got the typical dismissal based on needing more files before the thread was locked. Why would anyone post when they know they'll be licked or banned or both
5829
« on: December 21, 2011, 14:45 »
Maybe they want to put fresh and unseen at any other competitor site content on front.
Buyers already have a way to select exclusive content only, if that's what they wish to do. There's been a check box for that for a long time. Buyers can also search newest first and check exclusive only, if they want fresh and exclusive. Best Match is, or was, supposed to be about something else, and for a long time was supposed to be about helping the buyer. All this nonsense about favoring one group of contributors over another means the company has taken its eye off the ball. In the long run, if you don't serve the buyers well, someone else will. Maybe they have some year end objectives they're trying to meet - although doing something December 21st is cutting it awfully close. Perhaps it's just a bug, although they locked a Help forum thread versus said "we're working on a fix" so I suspect not.
5830
« on: December 21, 2011, 11:35 »
Don't disable images - you can only disable a certain percentage of your port unless it's 6 months or more old.
Contact support and they will suspend your portfolio. Then upload and get things approved. Once you're past your 30 day wait, write to support again and ask them to enable it. That's how I did it with DT back in May/June
5831
« on: December 21, 2011, 11:31 »
That's a huge change.
One of the searches I look at is San Antonio. There are 621 photos and one of mine is #6 by downloads and until today, has typically been somewhere in the first 5 or so by Best Match.
Today it's somewhere near the bottom of the second page of 200 and the whole first page of 200 is exclusive files. Unless I missed when scanning the page, all the images have a crown!
Even funnier, if I search for driftwood there are 3,123 photos and one of mine is #2 by downloads. It has been floating around on the first page by best match - it used to be on the top line. Today it's just past the 2,000 mark and the first 1,400 images are all exclusive! They have old (2007) zero download images from exclusives higher up than independent files that have actually sold.
This truly makes it clear that best match has zero to do with helping buyers find what they need better but is just a tool for the agency to see if they can't meet some goal or other of their own.
I can't wait to read the official explanations for why this is a good thing. If it actually helps boost sales at the site overall, that'd be one thing, but if it just drives more buyers away because they don't like what they see in searches, we all end up taking the hit in the long run. Tossers!
5832
« on: December 20, 2011, 16:04 »
Clickthroughs are in the referral section, so I assume it's some type of referral. It can't be views as I've had sales and it shows 0 clickthroughs for me.
5833
« on: December 18, 2011, 20:24 »
Late last week I had my second sub sale - this one for 25 cents. There were other credit sales so the overall return is still good, but the concern I had when subs were introduced was that the bulk of them would be at the minimum, not the higher numbers emphasized by Veer personnel.
We need to give it a few months to see, but will definitely be watching the subs numbers closely...
5834
« on: December 18, 2011, 18:31 »
Other customers.
Not all the people that buy from istock shop at Getty direct.
It is like all the getty content (including my own images) that I am finding on Corbis, Masterfile, some Russian website etc...etc...
Most of these agencies have more or less the same images, but the agencies have different owners and apparently know how to attract "their kind" of customers....
Seems to me that these layers of distributors are a holdover from the old days when stock meant slides and physically moving things around. I get being able to talk to support in my language, pay in my currency and have a site in my language so I can easily get things done. But why a Corbis web site is carrying Getty images - and Sean found some of his on a Corbis site that came via Getty I think - still puzzles me. Inmangine and some other aggregators do it too - collections of content from all over via many layers of distribution deals. I know that this happens, but I can't see how this business model will continue in the future. Surely this way of doing things will be gone in 5 or 10 years? Which is why I can't understand why you would layer this old-style business model on the "new" business model - microstock; in Getty's case iStock. Instead of taking iStock's model into the rest of their business, they seem to be burdening iStock with all the holdovers from their old ways.
5835
« on: December 18, 2011, 13:08 »
Hey Monkeybussinessimages has been a uploading a collection she amassed from how many years back onto Istock and anyone else who will have her. The collection was taken with a 1ds mark II which came out in what year (2003). These images are being sold as new with no mention that they have been used in previous years for who knows what.
I don't think I made myself clear. I was not talking about the goods in the store, but the store itself. Why would having two stores that looked essentially the same, had the same owner and the same prices do anything but confuse buyers? There are various reasons why buyers choose one site over another as the place to buy items - one is subscription, one allows instant cash purchases but others make you buy credits, and so on. I also was not commenting on the generally old and generally "meh" quality of the images that Getty is smothering iStock with. It was simply a reflection on the futility of Getty making iStock look almost exactly like Getty - they've moved iStock Agency & Vetta to Getty and a pile of iStock content to Thinkstock & photos.com, and are in the process of moving lots of Getty RF stuff to iStock. People came to iStock for a reason; they have always had Getty to shop at if they wished. Just because iStock has/had lots of traffic, Greedy Getty thought they could cash in by putting their stuff there too. But when they're done and they have two Getty sites with much of the same imagery, what's the point?
5836
« on: December 17, 2011, 13:14 »
So if iStock ends up looking almost like Getty, why will existing buyers shop there?
And for those exclusives who see Agency/Vetta as their way to make the money side of it work for them, aren't they going to feel choked out by this huge pile of OK images competing with theirs?
The original idea of Vetta (and to some extent Agency as it pertained to real iStock contributors) had some value to buyers. Encourage the production of things that couldn't be done for existing microstock prices by having a tightly edited collection at a higher price. There was a hiccup at the beginning as existing files got more expensive overnight and buyers were ticked, but there was some great content being produced.
Now, the buyer gets nothing new - they could get all this stuff, if they wanted, at Getty Images. They're just smearing the content around as many places as they can hoping to pick up a few new sales.
So it seems to me like a huge lose-lose for buyers and contributors. In the long run possibly also for iStock (if not for Getty) if too many buyers for the moderately priced material don't go there as much or at all.
5837
« on: December 16, 2011, 19:13 »
It's not yet clear - given the absence of anything detailed about what exactly they are planning to implement - that it is a pure cash grab, although that's certainly what recent experience has led many of us to fear.
It would be good to have a date by which we'll see the details on this. Why drop bombshell and then go silent?
If this is just a tiered earnings system - similar to SS's - where the cash you've earned the agency gets you a higher rate over time, I don't think there'll be much fuss. If it's an arbitrary two-tier rate with no opportunity for newcomers to earn the 50% we're now getting, I think it won't be long before the rest of us see a rate cut. Growth in profits coming from squeezing contributors is not a long term strategy.
If we won't get any news until the new year, let us know now when the details will be forthcoming.
5838
« on: December 16, 2011, 17:32 »
I don't think SS is as much the active cause of iStock's problems but the lucky recipient of the customers as iStock has systematically pissed off group after group of buyers. I am back as an independent because of my educated guess at where iStock's bad decisions would leave them in a year or two. I'm still no fan of subscriptions but if you look at the November stats thread here you'll see that (a) the SS average per sale is more like $1 these days and (b) SS walloped IS for me I can't do anything about iStock's choices, so pursuing the best option out there right now - which is independence with SS as the lead earner - is the best I can manage.
5839
« on: December 16, 2011, 15:50 »
I'm going to leave what I have there as I can't see it doing much harm, but I've been very discouraged with StockFresh performance. I've had a decent chunk of my portfolio (nearly 1,500 images) up there since June and the total thus far is $11.50. PhotoDune has surpassed that with 300 images in one month (less than a month and for most of that time less than 300 images). WarmPicture (the artist collective/agency/?) has surpassed that and they have done no advertising at all and don't have close to a million images. Veer only has 300 of my images online (glacial reviewing and upload limits) and I've recently passed my first payout.
Unless I see some sort of uptick in activity, if I were asked if it's worth uploading there, I think I'd say don't bother for now. It's a shame as I think they've got a lot going for them.
5840
« on: December 16, 2011, 15:04 »
I don't see the message you see. Perhaps it's because they can only display one message on login, and I get the ridiculous "tell me about yourself" that has no applicable options and which I bypass by closing the box every time I log in. Who knew? I have a magic shield against annoying & impertinent messages - an ill-thought-out if persistent message  iStock working hard to earn back my trust 24/7 8/5 who the heck knows when...
5841
« on: December 16, 2011, 10:35 »
I haven't been able to find anything except the accepted count in your portfolio (top of the screen in the portfolio tab).
If you opt for the daily summary e-mails, you won't even be able to get a full list of files accepted, rejected or soft rejected - you just get 5 of (x) with the first 5 titles.
As a result of the rather limited display of stats on the site and their erratic review standards I'm doing something completely different in my tracking of uploads to PhotoDune. I just dump the aliases for files I've uploaded into one folder and do the next batch of uploads from the remainder - I don't bother to sort out what was accepted and what was rejected the way I do for all other sites.
Where a site has a consistent review policy, it's worth learning it so you avoid submitting things to them you know they don't want. When it's all a crap shoot anyway, that has no benefit.
5842
« on: December 16, 2011, 00:56 »
You don't opt out - that choice was taken away some time in the last year or so. My guess is that independents don't have to worry - they won't use our images anyway.
5843
« on: December 15, 2011, 23:29 »
Not sure exactly when it happened, but if you look here, you can see it used to say 95 cents. As I've seen sales where the credit price was in the high 40 cents range, I don't know what, if anything, the prices on the front page actually mean in practice. Great time to raise prices, when your site is busted and you can't even give contributors a list of what you sold...
5844
« on: December 15, 2011, 19:00 »
Sorry, I had missed the rights managed tab when I first looked - I saw the words but didn't realize it was a tab.
I checked on the price for a couple of advertising uses and direct mail uses - for North America and for one year. Everything I checked came up at 429 euros. As I can (with the microstock agencies) print an annual report using an image with a regular license - no extended license required from most agencies unless the print run is over 500K - why would I pay 429 euros for an RM license from Imagegate? Why wouldn't I just buy your own royalty free license for 20 euros? When the rights in the RM tab overlap what is typically permissible with a standard royalty free license, I can't see how offering both for the same image makes any sense.
If I put an image in the cart for royalty free and check the box to agree to the terms and conditions, I get a EULA displayed, but it doesn't say anything about the details of what I may do with the image (beyond the typical stuff about ownership of the file and not stripping copyright). Where can we find the terms of your royalty free license?
5845
« on: December 15, 2011, 18:32 »
Subs are very new - so far I've had one subscription sale and it was for 83 cents. I have only a tiny fraction of my portfolio online at Veer, so it isn't directly comparable to any of the other sites, but credit sales with a mix of subs at those sorts of prices seems pretty reasonable to me.
5846
« on: December 15, 2011, 18:30 »
Couldn't stand to leave the Calgary winters? As I'm in the Seattle area, I realize that winter here's not exactly the tropics either... Thanks for taking the time to let us know that you were leaving - it's a pleasant situation to have staff at agencies keep us in the loop. Good luck with whatever's next.
5847
« on: December 15, 2011, 18:27 »
Veer's reviews are glacial. Most of mine have taken 4 weeks. I think 2 weeks has been the fastest.
5848
« on: December 15, 2011, 17:15 »
Took a quick look at the site. In addition to seeing the details of the license you're offering, I don't understand how the pricing works. On the images I checked they said "Royalty Free & Rights Managed" for the license type. They had some size based prices from 1.25 to 20 euros - I assume that's royalty free. If there's a rights managed option, how does a buyer go about that? And is that similar to what the microstock sites sell as an extended license (e.g. unlimited print run or printing on products for sale)? Without seeing what rights you get for the prices posted, it's impossible to say if it's a good or bad price. Then I did a couple of searches and I can see why you're looking for content. The search for "tropical beach" produced one murky black and white shots of silhouetted people on a crowded (non tropical) beach. Searching for "woman office" produced five results: 4 women, not in an office and one iphone with a stethoscope on it, no woman. I guess the search does an OR not an AND but I think most places use AND as a default. Not sure what the FTP "upon request" is about - do you have criteria for being permitted to use FTP? I can't imagine anyone with a sizable portfolio (including me, and mine's relatively small at 2,500 images) would even think twice about uploading without FTP. The biggie, however, is why you're starting this agency and why you expect buyers to shop with you versus any of the other agencies already out there. How will you bring buyers to the site? 50% is appealing, but only if the number you multiply it by is large enough
5849
« on: December 15, 2011, 13:35 »
Thanks for posting the link. The look of that clip is very clean, high-end stocky (nice looking but real, vs. hollywood). Unless Getty doesn't do well in video (and someone else is the hot video distributor) I'd think that if video were the hot ticket, that sort of work would be selling. I don't have much of an emotional connection to video in the way I do to stills. The only thing I saw recently that really tempted me was some of the gorgeous time lapse work posted in this thread (the dolly manufacturer link has some great videos on their site). No idea if that would sell as stock, but if I had the time, that's what I'd want to get good at.
5850
« on: December 15, 2011, 12:14 »
... Has anyone gotten one yet?
When I checked Veer this morning, I saw my first subscription sale - Tuesday, for 83 cents. I'd prefer a credit sale, but for subs, 83 cents is pretty decent
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