The survey came up when I tried to log in this morning. I thought it was probably another bug, so I closed the survey window and clicked Log In again. It said I was already logged in. That essentially ignored the survey.

It's not a bad idea to figure out what's going on with site visitors, but giving buyer questions to contributors suggests this isn't the most carefully targeted effort. I've never once purchased a credit (or converted any earnings to credits) so I can't see that I register as any sort of buyer.

With a reliable system in place - the sort that major businesses for the most part have - there should be no problem with adjustments in either direction if targets were to change.

As a practical matter, iStock couldn't handle the back payment of EL bonuses correctly (forget the timeliness issue, forget the fact that until contributors pointed out that they "accidentally" pushed the new code out months early, they couldn't calculate the correct amount). The reply to my support ticket pointing this out was that as they'd overpaid, they were going to let the mistake stand. If they can't handle something like that, I'd assume that retroactively changing royalties would be a big struggle.

There is nothing contributors have in the way of stats that can reliably show an accurate RC total (even if you wanted to go crazy and calculate everything by hand, you don't have the credits spent for any ELs, don't have any stats on credits for files that went into or out of Photo+ or E+ or any other collection, and so on). Which means we'd largely have to take IS's word for it that anything they said was owed really was. There's nothing about RCs in the downloadable stats - just what shows up in the web interface.

It is pretty sad that the accounting of money and stats in contributor accounts is in such a primitive state.

Quote from: klsbear on July 06, 2011, 11:26

Quote from: luissantos84 on July 06, 2011, 10:31

I am very close to the 1500 RC's which was the 16%.. so it means like more 35$ or such.. we will continue to receive on 16% for the rest of this year right?

The way I understood it was that you had to hit 1500 RC's during 2010 to get 16% in 2011.  Going forward, if you hit the RC target for the next year (2012 in this case) during the current year (2011) you will immediately rise to that new level.  Unfortunately they raised the 16% to 2000 RC's for 2012 so if I'm understanding this right, as soon as you hit 2000 RC's in 2011 you've achieved the level from that point on, into and thru 2012.  There will be new levels set for 2013 that you'll have to achieve in 2012.

NOP! that doesn�t make any sense, the RC for 2011 were 1500 so if we got over we change to 16% and get this retro..

I think klsbear is correct. To get a raise during 2011, you need to meet the targets set for 2012 during this year. The "good news" for newer and rapidly-rising contributors is that you don't have to wait until Jan 1 2012 to get your new rate if you qualify early.

I use both - Lightroom to organize and select which files to work on; RAW conversion parameters, including CA removal, vignette removal and any highlight recovery are set in Lightroom and then I edit everything (for stock) in Photoshop. I keyword in Photoshop - i.e. I want the metadata in the PSD file, not just the Lightroom database (and I'm not much of a Lightroom guru, so there may be a way to do the keywording in Lightroom and have that move over to get written into the PSD file).

If I had to give up one product for whatever reason, it'd be Lighroom.

I don't think you can have a straightforward workflow from Lightroom into Photoshop (i.e. just say edit in Photoshop rather than exporting a file) when the ACR versions are different - i.e. if you don't upgrade Photoshop but just buy Lightroom. So it'll work, but it will have an extra couple of steps.

There's a comment at the end from someone called Mark Stout suggesting that there was something about the business model of microstock that led to Getty cutting royalties for iStock contributors.

I think that's just missing the point. It was the need for cash by H&F (to pay them back for their half billion dollar dividend recapitalization) that led to this. Absent that, the microstock model of 2010 could have continued to be exceedingly profitable for iStock and a large portion of its contributors. There was nothing unsustainable about the iStock end of the business, just Getty and H&F's.

I can only assume Mr. Stout is one of those who see evil in the success of the microstock business model, so he reshapes the actual situation to fit.

One more stat that might be interesting is the return per download. For IS it was $2.10, down from $4.32 in May; for SS, 44 cents, DT 59 cents, 123rf $1.04, CanStock 85 cents.

For DT, bear in mind that all my images were at level 0 at the start of the month. I now have 21 level 1 images and one level 2, so the RPD should climb a bit as the sales take more images up a level or two.

For SS, the OD portion of the month's total was 22% (no ELs in June). Once I cross the $10K threshhold, the number should rise a bit but after that, only volume can help

Comparisons are hard to make as June was back to being an independent, but the iStock download total was beyond pitiful - down 21% on May 2011 and down 33% on June 2010

My reduction in return per download at IS was 51%, just about mirroring my 49% drop from 35% to 18% royalties which says to me that Photo+ is working so far (I put lots of files into P+)

SS had several days where my earnings there exceeded my IS earnings for that day - the OD sales are very nice and pull up the RPD nicely. DT was a pleasant surprise that in spite of the super-tight upload limits sales started right away and continue (albeit at about 12% of what SS made me last month!). I only have 298 images online so far (and at 53 per week it'll be a long haul. My 90%+ approval rate for new uploads is only 77.something overall, so until I can get that over 80% overall, I'm at 1/2 the weekly maximum).

123rf is seeing sales start to come in - I hadn't uploaded much there until about 2 weeks ago, and as their reviews appear to be speeding up and I'm getting much larger chunks of my portfolio up, I hope to see them join DT as a regular earner.

I had hopes for CanStock, but it's been a slow start. We'll see how things progress once the summer's over. $4.25 for the month of June is better than 0 - which is where I am with Stockfresh, but I know they're still in startup mode, so I'll try and be patient.

Veer's reviews are so slow, they just reviewed the 37 files I submitted when I was finally able to sell elsewhere at the beginning of June. Added to the 10 application files, that means I have 47 files approved. They're very nice people, but I don't think anyone's selling there, so I'm undecided about what to do with further uploads (beyond submitting the next 50 that I already FTP'd).

Pixmac's reviews are also a bit slow, so I have 49 images online and the next 35 have been waiting all week for a review (the 4 days seems to be more like 7). No sales there yet either.

I didn't see the answer I would want to give - I used to help, but I've stopped. It was largely via the iStock critique forum and I truly enjoyed the process of working with people there. I think I learned something through the process as well.

I'm not a big enough person to see past iStock's September 7th changes which destroyed, for me, the notion that we could build the business long term not only by what we sold but by having support for people starting out or anyone not sure of what to do with an image. Their changes said, to me, that there is no long term and there is no partnership between contributor and agency. In the climate of a grabby free-for-all, I'll spend my time on my own work and trying to boost my own share.

I hope at some point another opportunity like that might surface

Interesting tho. I wonder what will happen to the value of our 2d ports...

I think if this makes an impact (versus becomes another Foveon sensor), it will be over a long-ish period of time. (Most of) Your port will probably decline in value with time anyway, so I don't think it will have an impact on that one way or the other.

Thanks for the answers - but I'm somewhat amazed that there isn't some sort of written policy on the site. Here's what we want/don't want, caption guidelines, etc.  From browsing the existing files, it looks like an amalgam of iStock and Shutterstock's editorial content.

For the moment, I haven't uploaded any of my vectors as vectors - only as JPEGs which all the sites except iStock allow.

I agree with you that I'm not willing to let my vectors go for subscription prices - which would be the way DT, SS and some other sites work -  but I have no trouble selling the JPEGs from my vectors for subs prices, and I'd have to give that up if I were exclusive for vectors at iStock. As I have a small number of vectors, I'd only make 25% on those if I were to be exclusive, and given the sales volume I've seen in the last year or so, for me, it just doesn't make sense.

I'm not sure about CanStock and StockFresh - whether their subscriptions include vectors or not, but they do offer higher prices for Vectors than the JPEGs

Didn't they have a Fotolia 2.0 that was disastrous several years ago? I assume that that experience may make them a little more cautious this time. I guess I don't really have any investment in Fotolia anymore, but it will be interesting to see what they roll out.

They did, and the site wasn't as well established then. Sales plummeted and it was months before the site was working again. I honestly thought it was a 50/50 chance of survival.

I don't have any involvement with them any more, so from a purely selfish point of few, if they mess it up and more sales go to other sites, I can only benefit. I do realize that lots of others who still sell through them wouldn't feel that way