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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
6026
« on: November 08, 2011, 12:02 »
I think the thing that pi33es me off the most is the "we probably forgot" to announce it. He either announced it and can point to where that happened, or didn't.
As I posted on their forums, there's also my unanswered support ticket from October 25th - two weeks to tell me a simple piece of information?
They need to spell out this latest takeback from an agency on their page with all the royalty amounts so it's transparent.
The shame about this is that it does appear to be a small minority of subscription sales that are at the reduced rate. So they lose trust by being so slow to own up to this change over something that would have been fairly easy to swallow had they just been straightforward about it.
6027
« on: November 08, 2011, 11:15 »
Jsnover, I just posted a message in the "Tank" thread. Yesterday I had a bad morning and nil early afternoon. But the DLs picked up in late afternoon and evening. I wonder if they delayed posting new DLs.
Not according to the time stamps on the sales. I'm assuming that those times are when the sale actually occurred, but obviously I have no way to know how that whole mechanism works.
6028
« on: November 08, 2011, 10:45 »
... It's like there are no sales happening from Europe and Australia.
When I check in the morning Pacific Time, there's usually a decent chunk of sales from Europe and Australia and Asia. This morning on iStock there was nothing - zero. I now have a grand total of 2 sales, I assume from the US East Coast. If it were a holiday, I think I'd see SS down, but I don't, so I guess it's just IS losing ground in certain markets
6029
« on: November 08, 2011, 10:25 »
Oh, you have to love the independent group think on here. SS pays higher commissions? ...
How about a bit of data from an independent. Yesterday I made more than twice the money on SS that I did on iStock. No ELs at either site. The on demand and singles sales really bring the SS returns per download up, not to mention that if you get a lot of those wretched discounted credits (where the buyer paid around 50 cents) the returns at iStock really look weak. This isn't group think. This is just the way it is right now.
6030
« on: November 07, 2011, 19:10 »
I would generally discourage trying to game the system with resubmissions. If you resubmit - at SS and DT there's a field where you can put a note for the reviewer; I wish all sites did this - make sure the file is different or there's some type of note explaining why you want the file looked at again. Sites are not always consistent month to month (or weekday to weekend) - inspection systems may have guidelines, but there's a lot of judgment calls made by people as well. I've found 123rf and Stockfresh to be the most conservative about requiring property releases for things shot from a street or other public place. Not talking about famous buildings with famous architects, but things which a few years ago would have been accepted by all agencies without question. As they make more money, the agencies get more risk averse. For the most part I don't mind as long as I can get a clear picture of each agency's foibles so I can work around them. I don't remember hearing about any legal action taken against any microstock agency or photographer over a property release issue, but I wouldn't want to be the first 
6031
« on: November 07, 2011, 15:29 »
I take that back - now mine's zero too, with a negative amount payable
6032
« on: November 07, 2011, 15:28 »
Yes, I saw some phantom $60 show up in my total but no sales to show for it. I assume there's some sort of bug...
6033
« on: November 06, 2011, 15:34 »
I'm still waiting on an answer to my support ticket from 10/25 about a 28 cent subs sale. A query on MSG about it had some people mentioning subs through distributors as the likely reason. I'll be posting here when (if) DT replies to me.
6034
« on: November 06, 2011, 15:23 »
Although the standard compact can take 12-14 Mega Pixels, the problem is the size of the lens. Most of your pictures will get rejected for being grainy and / or out of focus. Under the most ideal conditions (perfect light with very low ISO setting) you might be able to get an approval here or there, but it will probably be more frustrating than anything else (1 or 2 approvals out of every 50-100 images).
IMO not worth your while. If you have Adobe Illustrator or CorallDraw you can perhaps rather look at creating Vector images to start with.
I'd have the same conclusion but would nitpick that it's largely the sensor (very small) and secondarily the lens quality that makes using a point and shoot for stock difficult. Given the work you'd have to do in post, including downsizing quite a bit with most of the images, I can't see how it could make sense.
6035
« on: November 04, 2011, 17:21 »
...I confess to NOT being smart enough to follow this thread. Are buyers leaving or not? If so, why? If not, why?
The agencies might know the answers to this question (and iStock's recent surveys certainly asked questions that suggested they were trying to figure this out) but I doubt they're saying. Contributors are just left trying to explain what they see with logical sounding explanations that fit the facts. Our own experience isn't data, but we don't have much else. When I see the sales thread for October and the large number of talented major players who are seeing poor results - many of whom are uploading regularly, in quantity, and doing all the things the cheerleaders say people need to do - I think iStock has problems. I've seen years worth of these threads and it's never been like this before.
6036
« on: November 04, 2011, 15:19 »
The newsletter I received 9/28 had this:
"The latest partners to join our reseller network are Amana and
LatinStock Brazil."
From the 7/29 newsletter:
"The latest partner to join our reseller network is Click Photo."
From 6/29:
"Matton is the latest partner to join our reseller network."
I don't know if one wasn't sent out at the end of August or if I just deleted it
6037
« on: November 03, 2011, 19:17 »
...Istock woes began with the dutch indie and then became worse with the english zoo lady dominating best match against their exclusives.
I don't know what this means. I think it might be referring to Yuri Arcurs (who I think is Danish, not Dutch) and Monkey Business Images. In addition to those folks being highly successful for a long time prior to iStock's recent series of own goals - which would suggest that they weren't responsible for any decline - I think the mass of very talented iStock top-producer exclusives might take offense at the idea that two contributors were so good they just lost in a fair fight to better images. How about all the Getty stuff in the Agency Collection that flooded iStock? The jacking up of Vetta prices so the content price levels would mesh (after which they had to have a Vetta sale with double the RCs for the lucky club members because sales tanked)? The endless broken site features... Talk about revisionist history...
6038
« on: November 03, 2011, 01:03 »
Why would you want to become exclusive at a middle-tier (for earnings) agency? From a financial point of view it just doesn't make sense at all.
6039
« on: November 02, 2011, 16:10 »
I know it's a small thing, but when I see careless mistakes on the front page of a web site, particularly one advertising creative services, it just hollers out all sorts of negative vibes about the organization.
"We'll be working together on the designs of yours projects"
I'd rather work with people who gave a toss about the finished product - would be my reaction if I were in the market for what you were selling.
6040
« on: November 01, 2011, 22:33 »
This is good news, and I would be happy to hear they quit subscriptions altogether. 
I'm not a fan of subscriptions (and that was one of the factors in steering me to IS exclusivity way back when), but DT has done something quite interesting with subscriptions that I'm warming to now that I've been back there a few months. I think the big thing is that there is something in it for the contributor to look forward to, as long as there's a mix of credit sales in there. For me that's been the case. When a file sells, even a 35 cent subscription, that boosts my take on future sales so that when someone buys a maximum size credit sale my take goes up. From level 3, my subscription commission goes up as well. So for each subs sale I feel much more positive than I do at other sites. SS does have a ramped commission structure but (a) the steps are quite far apart and (b) after $10K there isn't anything in it beyond the sales themselves.
6041
« on: November 01, 2011, 19:43 »
Your link doesn't work - here are the photosI'm sorry, but I don't see any strong candidates for SS in that selection. There are a couple of possibles - the Mechica and the Bull - but I don't see even those two as certain. You have shots on a white background where the background is gray - don't submit those until you can get the lighting right. The outside shots with harsh shadows will probably get rejected and those with rather muted colors (dirt road in the desert) will probably not fly either. SS likes good colors, even lighting and salable subjects - Microphone in fruit, even if reshot in better light, is not a common subject or arrangement. Poor lighting can be for shots that are in harsh natural light without a reflector or scrim to softten or modify. Shots made with an undiffused on-camera flash can often get that rejection as well.If you haven't found the strobist blog, go and read their lighting 101 to get some ideas about what you'll need to learn I agree with you that it's best to assemble 10 strong candidates to avoid having to wait a long time to reapply.
6042
« on: November 01, 2011, 09:34 »
It looks like you're not submitting much to iStock. I think that explains it more than anything, especially with the increase in really good competition. imho.
You really believe that? Honestly? That the lack of sales is down simply to that?
Our competition is uploading 200-600 high quality images a month. 3 a month just won't compete these days, no matter how good they are.
I realize you're having great sales at the moment, and that's excellent. However there are several major contributors in the stats thread who are reporting small sales growth compared to portfolio growth or sales and download drops in spite of substantial portfolio growth. I've been around iStock a while and the pattern I've noticed is that when people are having great sales they often try to cast it as a problem with the contributor, their portfolio, their uploads, etc. when others are not having the same experience. If it were one or two complainers, it'd be easy to dismiss, but I think that the stats thread is pretty clearly not so good for the big contributors overall. So enjoy your good sales, but don't dismiss other people's experiences out of hand.
6043
« on: November 01, 2011, 09:12 »
Take a look at this thread and the one it links to. You'll see that iStock gives bigger discounts than those you can buy on the site - customers have to call to get it. It's pretty wretched, but it's been around a while - as has just ignoring or foot dragging on answering customer service tickets. I'm not the only one that has just had tickets disappear, unanswered - there are problems with that aspect of their site operations too.
6044
« on: October 29, 2011, 11:19 »
Most of the flaws being discussed here have already been discussed, sometimes many times, in the iStock forums. The last big round of overall discussions (as opposed to those about particular keywords) was when they introduced editorial. What is the logic of adding brand names - which aren't translated - to the CV? As the size of this list, if you took all brand names world wide, is unmanageably large, and the value (in translating names) is zero, what on earth is the point of taking that direction. The addition of "other" to every single branch of the CV tree is a reasonable thing to do - although as Sean points out, the substandard state of iStock's IT efforts has denied us even that - but it isn't the whole solution. I'm not a huge fan of Corbis' CV-like system either, but in discussions with support once, they pointed out that when their system sees two keywords they know go together - in the case I was asking about it was Georgetown and Grand Cayman - they automatically put two and two together and disambiguate the Georgetown for you. Intelligent code versus the brute force approach of Getty putting a ridiculously large pile of terms into a system that is guaranteed, all the time, to be out of date. It will always have sports teams that don't exist and be missing the new hot products - Nest, the cool programmable thermostat that ends up hotter than iPods.
6045
« on: October 28, 2011, 09:52 »
... they said they would grandfather canister levels, not royalty levels. canisters haven't been changed. royalties.......clearly have.
I'm aware that they relied on this verbal gymnastics feat to try and avoid acknowledgement of the damaging and unethical change. However a halfway decent lawyer could probably make a very good case that as there was no separation of cannisters from royalties at the time the promise was made that it was clear iStock was expecting contributors to assume that grandfathering cannisters meant grandfathering all of the then-attributes of cannisters, not just the icon. If anyone knew that the royalties would have been separated from the icons, would anyone have participated in the program to quit being independent and get grandfathered? Obviously not as it would have been completely meaningless. I don't think this would even pass legal muster and it certainly doesn't pass ethical muster.
6046
« on: October 27, 2011, 20:09 »
...In this economy who can really blame any of them for following the corporate road map. In the end its every man/woman for himself in this business. ...
I don't think a poor economy is an excuse for lapses in ethics. In particular, the promise of grandfathering royalty levels, people acting on that promise and then you later say "oh, never mind" and don't grandfather anything. That, in my book, isn't just following a corporate road map but amoral and unethical behavior. It's not illegal, but it's scummy business practice. Some businesses don't care about anything but staying on the right side of the law, but I can certainly blame anyone who has no higher ethical standard than "it's OK as long as it isn't clearly illegal".
6047
« on: October 27, 2011, 01:51 »
Thanks for the reminder. I'd add to the password requirements that you noted - length is very important. 10 characters or more. See the discussions here and here
6048
« on: October 26, 2011, 19:47 »
I watched the whole thing from beginning to end. I thought KKT did a very poor job. Just because I have a negative opinion of him, what he did for iStock and this interview doesn't mean I'm out to get them. That's just my honest opinion. Other people's mileage may vary.
And having said many times that you feel people here are reflexively anti iStock, it's really rich, SNP, for you to throw out the idea that people might be commenting without watching. Talk about making wild assumptions...
6049
« on: October 26, 2011, 13:20 »
I suppose that would not exclude a system applicable to new content under which they could decide that particular images / batches would be most at home at the PP sites.
The idea of some human deciding what stuff should be sold where makes my skin crawl. It would kill the genius of microstock -- the brilliant notion of accepting anything technically sound and then allowing the market to determine the fate of the file through the Best Match mechanism.
There are some pretty weird bestsellers in microstock, stuff that's so simple or so corny that no up-his-arse editor would ever have given it the nod. Only a pure market mechanism could ever have revealed that such images had enormous commercial value.
And I think that Getty's establishment of the Flickr collection was an acknowledgement that there was a market for some of the stuff that no editor would OK but that buyers find useful. Especially when there was a perception that collections were becoming too homogenous - smiling faces, perfect teeth - and wanting to find something "different". Now that I'm not exclusive, I wouldn't mind as much having files placed in different sites IF I received RC credit for anywhere the file sold, and assuming I always had 100% control by being able to immediately disable a file if I didn't like the chosen destination. So perhaps this whole universal submission system will go the way of logos and that neat new Mac-only interface (remember Dexter?) and never appear, or just be fashionably late like PNG. We're still waiting for anything from independents to show up on any of the partner sites (meaning the forced ingestion of all independent content not already voluntarily in the PP).
6050
« on: October 26, 2011, 11:13 »
I loved the quote from KKT that iStock runs like a well-oiled machine - I realize things are more stable now, but they can't even get new content showing up reliably every 24 hours. Broken down jalopy might be too strong in the other direction, but well-oiled machine is just fantasy land.
There was also some blather about how accepting content that iStock formerly rejected and sending it to photos.com instead would make photographers better in the process. He also mentioned clipart.com several times, but the quality of the content there is so horrendously low that I can't see how that site can do well without a huge makeover.
No timetable for all of this, but as I've already decided that iStock won't get any new content content - not sure if I'll have them lag by 6 months or more; enough to give all the other sites first bite of the apple before Thinkstock gets it - I'm not in any hurry.
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