I feel that Veer is so close to being a really great agency, but it's just not firing on all cylinders.

50 images a week and a month for the typical review times really leaves a lot to be desired, especially if you have an existing portfolio to try and upload. 2,500 / 50 means about a year to get my portfolio uploaded. There are no options for more (I asked when I started).

The interface for processing uploaded images is pretty, but functionally awkward and slow. Way too many clicks to do anything and tons of scrolling, checking & unchecking....

And since the software update a week or so ago, I can't see how many open slots I have. They acknowledged the bug but no fix so far.  I realize I could FTP some files and see what happens, but I'm not going to.

I got my first subscription sale  on Tuesday though, and it was for 83 cents, so that was great (meaning it wasn't the 25 cent minimum and was more than a SS sub sale)

BTW is Sjlocke already at SS?

Unless you know something I don't, Sean is still exclusive

Whether you're becoming exclusive or leaving it, you can't possibly see the full picture without a full year in the new environment. It is certainly worth considering the constraints of the contracts with any site you contribute to, including the 6 month lock at DT and 3 month one at BigStock.

I think the agencies need to have some very clear rules - with some way of appealing - for any account closures and/or forfeit of money.  Even though I have never intentionally broken any of the rules at any of the sites, I find it deeply scary that should one be thought to have broken one, the agency would behave like some sort of totalitarian state.

I don't know the details of this specific dispute, but just as I wouldn't want to go back to the times that spawned such idioms as "you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb", I don't like the apparent stonewalling of contributors or extraordinary penalties for what seems like a relatively minor offense.

Remember when iStock went on a rampage to remove cars, guitars and cruise ships? It would be analagous, IMO, to upload a shot that included a car taillight in an auto shop image and find that your account had been closed because you'd uploaded another car shot after having all your isolated cars removed. When the rules change, it isn't always as clear to the contributors exactly what's on each side of the line. I think clarifying that the earlier removals meant no content from this filter ever, not even as part of a collage, no matter how complex or intricate would probably have solved the problem.

When you consider what it would mean to most of us to have our account closed arbitrarily, I think a clear and transparent account termination process is in all of our best interests

Lovely images - and my favorite is the same one Liz chose. It has a wonderful sense of the speed of the horses.

Clothes change, hairstyles change, office decor changes - from mad men formal to dockers and polo shirts in only a few decades Technology changes faster than anything - desktops, laptops, phones and even headsets.

Even if you do food shots, styles of plating food in upscale restaurants changes over the years; all those plates with finely chopped greens sprinkled like glitter give way to drizzles of some glaze, for example. I think there's probably a reason the agencies are looking for what they call "fresh" content in areas they've been serving for years. And so the Christmas expert or headset expert (or whatever) will want to stay current with the latest in that area.

Compare old and new of a similar scene:
 

When images start to look too long in the tooth, seems the person in that niche has the greatest incentive to do the upgrades.

I received a reply to my e-mail questions this morning. It says, in part:

"...Well, even if you're images are already on our webside through 123 rf, there are many advantages why to register directly to Panthermedia. These are:

- Higher comissions
- Distribution partner network of more than 100 partners. Here are all our partners: http://www.panthermedia.net/index.php?page=cms/pages/display2.php&cms_id=196
- Subscription and partner subscriptions
- All extended licence sales
- Direct money transfer and account voerview with sales report downloads"

I really don't know what to make of this. How would they deal with duplicate content if I were to take them up on the offer and upload directly? I wouldn't want buyers confused with two copies of the same image - they might buy neither!

What they seem to imply is that if you are on their site via 123rf you don't get onto their partner sites or their own subscriptions.

I also wonder what 123rf would be thinking about a partner soliciting a 123rf contributor to submit directly instead - if everyone did that, what would be the point (from 123rf's perspective) of a partnership?

Partnership deals seem to introduce complexity and multiple layers of "deals" siphoning off portions of the buyer's cash so it doesn't end up in my pocket. Not clear that the added "exposure" balances out more parties slurping at the trough.

When I sell at CanStock, they differentiate sales from a partner site from ones on CanStock directly. I don't think 123rf does that - IOW how would I know if any business at 123rf is actually from the PantherMedia distribution deal?

The old UI was pretty unpleasant, and while this is a little punchier, it doesn't seem any clearer.

The thing that stands out is the colored part of the bar. That's longer for the files that have been in the queue for less time - and which are at the top of the list - and shorter for the items which have been there longer.

On the longer color bars, they appear to be greener on the right end and redder on the left. To me, green says go and red stop. Or green would mean approve and red reject (perhaps that's Stockfresh 'coloring' my perceptions).

Even though things are apparently handled out of order, not on a first in first out basis, why do things get short and red the longer they're in the queue? And my 6 day items have pretty short bars - how long are your 13 day ones? They must be mere slivers.

I'd like to see a count of things in the queue; I'd prefer an upload date/time to a number of days, but the big things are that I'd like to be able to see a thumbnail and have the ability to edit metadata for any image that isn't yet being inspected. If I were to see a typo or realize a mistake in the title, as it stands right now I can only delete the file and upload it over again which seems pretty daft.

With regards to your series photo, this is a point of confusion for our review team at the moment that I'm working towards clarifying. We don't currently want to accept photo collages or combined photos (where you might include four photos in one) unless they provide enough utility and value. However, the image you provided as an example is along those lines, but clearly has purpose, utility and value � so we want to accept those types of submissions.

Clarifying for the review team exactly what we do/don't want (which also involves documenting it) is sometimes harder than it seems though so it can sometimes be a bit of a process. You're welcome to email me when you have concerns like these though and I'd be happy to look into them. jarel[at]envato.com

I really appreciate the offer to get in touch, but I'm just ignoring all PhotoDune rejects at this point. I can't really think of a polite way to say this (sorry), but given that the team doing the reviewing is some third party company, why would I want to invest any of my time helping them do a decent job? They aren't part of PhotoDune or committed to it, they're just hired guns.

I checked a couple of image numbers and except for the A in front of them, PantherMedia's match 123rf's

how can you give this kind of general advice? you have 17 files on iStock and not many more with other agencies. just saying

3,200 on SS; 2,300 on FT; 3,200 on CanStock - by what yardstick is 3,200 "not many more" than 17?

a1bercik,  note that the transfer of non-exclusive IS images to TS seems to be happening so slowly that it's not even an immediate concern.   So far I have exactly 1 image on TS.   Maybe it will never go beyond that before IS decides to to abandon that plan and do something different... or is sold again,  or folds up.   

In the last 2 weeks, I've gone from 0 to 13 images (from about 2500 images total) on Thinkstock/photos.com. I keep expecting things to speed up, but although they can dump 70K+ EdStock images from Getty to iStock, they apparently do not have the technology to move the independent content from iStock to the partner program sites.

So on your file_downloads page for a particular image you'll see "Small Regular $1.35" and have no idea how many credits Small sold for.

Was that image in Photo + then or not? Was there a sale on or not? In the case of price-in-credits changes for certain sizes such as we had a month or so ago, was that sale date before or after? And given site hiccups, you can't ever be sure exactly when the new prices were applied. At the end of 2010 there was a big Vetta sale - with double RC credits given. Again no way to track.

And for extended licenses at any time, without contacting CR for every single EL sale you will never know. We get a report of an extended license sale, with the number of credits for the EL, but not for the image itself which doesn't register as a download in the counts and the credits for which are never shown anywhere to a contributor.

As it stands right now, without contacting CR for every single EL sale, a contributor cannot calculate their RC total, only estimate it. Pretty shabby situation.