Think about some of the accounting games that could be going on - we'll never know, I realize, but this seems plausible.

 Getty is siphoning off content from iStock for its "upstream" and "downstream" sites. Costs related to acquiring that content - a submission system, inspection, etc. - all lie with iStock. Revenue at the Getty sites on either side comes with very few of the costs. When iStock's profitability isn't what it should be, Getty insists that they cut commissions to make the business look better, all the while pocketing its low-cost revenue from the other sites.

None of this would matter to contributors if royalty rates were the same across the board, but they aren't. And as revenue to iStock contributors now means RC if it's from iStock.com but not if it's from an upstream or downstream site, payout figures for iStock contributors that blend all three numbers are highly misleading.

Scum.

That was when search was more broken than working and I can't remember when that got fixed. Getty was playing hardball with the new contract for their contributors; perhaps that spilled over into all Getty properties.

Quote from: jsnover on October 10, 2011, 13:18

... At any rate, SS seems to be doing better with non-US sales than I realized - good for them.

Generally speaking less than 20% of my earnings at SS are from US sources. It depends on your port and subject matter I guess. Most of my sales appear to be from Europe with the rest scattered throughout the world.

For September my US sales were 43% of the total, but I probably have a larger US bias in subject matter given where I live

Is that response in English? It makes no sense to me.

Quote from: jsnover on October 09, 2011, 15:17

Firefox 7.0.1 Mac 10.6.8

I have to provide the capcha each time I create a tab and navigate to the site (I don't log out when I leave; I don't think closing the browser happens more than 3 or 4 times a week and I still get asked for the capcha)

Most (proper) websites will auto log you out if there was no activity from you IP address for a per-determined time (determined by the web developer for security purposes). So even if you did not press the log out button, you will get logged out after the specified time, due to non activity. Creating a tab to link the the site also implies connecting to the website. If you have been logged out by the system, opening the tab will require a re-log in and hence the need to provide the captcha again, as it needs to establish now again if you are a real person or a software application which try to obtain access.

I see no indication of any logging in (thus leading me to infer that I haven't been logged out) on each visit to the site.

As far as "most" web sites, that varies a lot with the security level - my bank has a short timer and many low-security sites allow you to specify that you stay logged in for 2 weeks or permanently. If 123rf has some sort of auto-logout, I think it should tell us what that is. In all the cases I'm aware of a logout, even when I've told firefox to save the user name and password for me I still have to click OK or login to start the process. I see nothing of the sort from 123rf.

Bottom line is that I used to be able to check stats twice a day with no hassle. Now it's a pain in the butt. If there are nuisance site scrapers or bots or whatever they put the capcha there to guard against, can't they id the ip addresses they're coming from and block them or give them a capcha and leave those of us who aren't causing a problem alone?

...No, of course we don't have any way of checking at the source - but then we have no way of truly checking downloads or payments anywhere as far as I know, we just trust that the agencies aren't outright scamming us!

I realize there is no absolute check. What I meant was that there were no download figures available directly from photos.com or TS versus at iStock. I've never seen them, but I haven't paid close attention to the PP as I've always opted out and thought I might have missed something.

Sometimes discrepancies between two sources can be a helpful way to catch errors. I'm not assuming malfeasance here, just lots of semi-functional code and no one really checking the details carefully (because doing that's a cost and costs are what they're trying to minimize).

I like the tool, although I'd love to see some more refinements. They did a great job putting this together, and I do hope they'll keep improving it.

So if I create a set with images selected, it puts them in the set automatically. That's good, but Lightroom has a great feature with  a checkbox for including the selected images - in case the selection and set have nothing to do with one another.

I'd love to have the catalog sortable by sales volume, $$, date so I can see if there's one star image or a bunch of good performers. You can click on the gallery stats and get a new window, but that's not sortable by earnings, only by downloads and date; it's also impossible to see most sets in their entirety in the gallery stats view as each entry takes up a ton of space. Nothing like as nice as the newer catalog set window.

I'd like to see icons in the corner (again like Lightroom) for images that are in a set and if you click & hold on that it tells you which set. You might not want to have an image in multiple sets and seeing that you'd already put the image somewhere would be helpful.

I guess the biggie is I'd like any image that is in a set to have a link on the page the customer sees to the rest of the set. It's not what the tool was designed for, but I think it'd work well to show buyers related images (without the stats obviously).

@fujiko - I sincerely hope you're joking.

iStock is still struggling to answer a simple buyer question about whether a clipping path is included with all file sizes or just medium or up (or just the largest size). It's more the fact that they can't answer the question about how their own site works that I find so pitiful.

iStock help forum has people commenting that the search index hasn't updated - earlier this week I had a sale on an image that was approved earlier in the day. If SS can do that, why does iStock routinely take 48 hours or more to update theirs?

If it weren't for Sean's greasemonkey scripts, the iStock my uploads page would be unusable in its latest form.

iStock's software department is a complete shambles, but in addition, they do things like work on a Feast site, and supposedly on supporting PNGs (today's contact sheet had a "we really are still working on this" update for all those who figures that PNGs have gone the way of logos). Heaven knows what will eventually happen to Logos, and although we're forced into the PP there's no sign of independent content actually go there (they said it'd take to the end of the year).

iStock used to lead the way with new features (some of them like the forumeter too awful to continue) but that was when someone who gave a toss about the future of the business was running it (as opposed to the current owners who only care about how much money they can draw from it this year and next).

You mean I would have to transfer all my pics to iStock but wait they pay only 8 cents from what I read a while ago on one post...

I have had 12 cent XS sales on iStock, but the OP's premise was that there were no extended licenses, on demand sales, XL sales or anything else, just a flat 20 cents a download. So while the 12 cents sales are wretched, the ELs and XXXL sales bring my RPD at iStock to around $2, not 20 cents (or 12 or 8 cents)

Can anyone fill me in on Photos.com?  Is IS content going there also, or just TS?

Unless they change things, the existing PP goes to photos.com and TS. The collection is smaller and subs are cheaper at photos.com - why, I can't fathom. It's the best URL for photos and they put the lowest end of the low end there.

So it's now been a week since JJRD made his cryptic announcment. Have I missed something - where is the follow up?

And not a word from Andrew since?

The longer the silence, the worse I assume the changes are...

Me three. I was assuming that I'd get a similar confirmation e-mail, but so far, just the "Thank you for contacting Veer..." from early Monday morning.

I hope everyone +1ed and hearted Aaron's post

No, I just opted back in

I am very happy that they decided to make changes, but I'm still pretty taken aback that they thought the original scheme was OK. Whatever internal compass they're using needs some serious recalibration - I would prefer it if we didn't have to have this cycle of horrible proposal-contributor outrage-improved proposal again. So no hearts or +1s from me.