I'd be happy to participate in a conference call - no NDA - to discuss major contributor problems. Discuss is an operative word - i.e. not just listen. Problems plural is key as well - the clawback of funds and loss of control of our images is very important, but is only one of the major failings on the site at the moment. If they dont' fix search soon, the future doesn't look bright at all.

I think iStock is trying to deflect trouble rather than solve problems. I think they want to try and ratchet down the contributor discontent and aren't thinking about solving the problems as the way to do that.

I hope they're willing to revisit the sort of conference call they're willing to have. Going from "trust us" to "trust them" isn't much of a step forward IMO.

If it weren't for the systematic targetting of Vetta (December) and flamers (Jan/Feb) I might buy the argument that credit card scammers were testing stolen card numbers to see if they were valid. Based on a little online reading (i.e. I don't have any professional connection with card processing or security) scammers look for sites with real time processing to see if they have a live one. Then they move on to spend on something big with physical product.

The big caveats with this would have to be that they were using each card just once and then moving on to another card for another file (i.e. there was a big fraud because there were tons of cards being tested). I thought that the credit prices reflected large bundles in some of the December frauds, but in checking my list of January frauds, the credit price (a) wasn't the same on sales made the same morning or evening and (b) wasn't the minimum, indicating smaller bundles.

Obviously I don't know if there were lots of cards or a few involved as IS shared no info with us on this. And I can't see why they'd have gone for Vetta or flamers unless they somehow thought that buying from the front of the search results might attract less attention?

For me, the big scary part is the end of February frauds (I didn't have any after Jan 24th) which suggests that IS is still vulerable.

The Getty contract has an audit requirement, but AFAIK not the iStock ASA.

However, the Getty audit provision is pretty lame (i.e. very favorable to Getty and not contributors)

"4.7 Audit Rights. You may employ a certified accountant or licensed
financial advisor to audit payments made to you during the previous 36
months, at your expense unless the audit reveals that Getty Images has
underpaid you by more than 7.5%, in which case Getty Images will
reimburse you for the actual and reasonable auditor�s fees. Getty Images
will honor one audit request per calendar year, upon 60 days notice. If an
underpayment is discovered in an audit, Getty Images will pay
Contributor interest based on the average one month LIBOR rate for the
period under audit on the amount due from the date payment was due,
correct the books and records, and will pay any amounts due (subject to
any applicable Royalty Deductions) within 30 days after the amount due
is finally determined. In the event that an audit reveals any overpayment
to Contributor, Contributor agrees that Getty Images may deduct the
overpayment from Contributor�s earnings."

Note the 60 day notice requirement. If something untoward were going on, two months is lots of time to tidy it away where it can't be found. Seems pretty toothless to me.

I don't have any information to share, and given how swamped they are at the moment, it may take a while, but I suggest you contact contributor relations to open a support ticket about this.

They may not be able to help you, but if there is some sort of targeting of a competitor file going on, they could probably reset the views as well as stop whatever the abuse is. I don't think that's all that likely given the overall small number of downloads (I'd expect targeted fraud to go for the super-hot sellers)

There was a bug a while back where views starting soaring on new files because of a bug (things were registering thousands of views in a day or two) but it was happening to everyone. Perhaps there is a bug of some sort causing your problem. As you probably realize, there's a lot of buggy things on the site right now

There was a British TV series called Manor House which was a high-end reality show - people from today taken back to the ways of living of another era. The video diaries some of the participants kept noted how easily they fell into the roles assigned to them - the "upstairs" folks lording it over those playing servants even though that wasn't part of their real lives.

Where you stand depends on where you sit (I think a Don K. Price aphorism, but fits here).

Sales at Fotolia are reasonably steady for me. Last month might just have been a BME if they had not cut my commissions. Not so good this month though. I've barely had a rejection for the last couple of years. My problem is that new images appear so far down in the default sort order that they have very little time to be noticed before they sink backwards and into obscurity.

Out of curiosity, do have any idea why yours start out low down in the default order? Or put another way, do you know who gets to be up front in searches or what kinds/ages/prices of images get to be up front? I assume they give some sort of push to exclusive contributors and exclusive images - I think you said in the past you'd given FT some exclusive images; have they done any better in initial placement?

Quote from: ShadySue on March 09, 2011, 08:19

Quote from: lagereek on March 09, 2011, 07:51

Must also be a French speaking duck or cow, since English is banned in France.

French ducks say 'coin coin', French cows all just laugh, AFAIK. 

What a cheesy joke !

Huge groan!!

Exclusive. The variability in here is largely a result of extended licenses. As I mentioned before, this is plain exclusive stuff (no Vetta, Agency or E+)

Dec  $4.14
Jan  $4.59
Feb  $4.22
Mar  $4.66

is this better on the black background?

No.

For an application, stay away from puppies, kittens, sunsets, tomatoes and peppers - they're all a dime a dozen in the existing libraries and unless you can make a stunner, it's best to do something else.

And if you want to be Sean, you have to be in more than one place at a time

It's a lot of guesswork with only small (versus 100%) images, but I think it's technical flaws that are the problem with these three.

Even at the small size I can see a dark ring around the bell pepper - the background wasn't white and your post processing wasn't precise enough. If you can't see that dark halo, then you need to look at calibrating your monitor. Without a calibrated monitor it's all guesswork and you sometimes can't see the flaws.

The child with the chessboard was shot at ISO 400 and so may be rather noisy (can't tell at the reduced size, but with the Rebel, I wouldn't go above IS 200 for stock)

The asparagus shot was at f/2.8 and I'm guessing the issues there were focus - the sharp area is so tiny at f/2.8 that may not have been the best choice for this composition.

I am really curious about IS and how much $ people are making there.  I am assuming these tiny sales represent the minority of overall sales there right?

What's the most common size and price for a sale there? 

Mat

That's going to vary so much - vector vs. photos (or video or audio); image sizes available (it goes up to XXXL), exclusive/non (more credits per image for exclusives). For February I averaged about $4.25 per sale (almost all photos, handful of vectors). I don't do Vetta or Agency. Some of those who do will have much higher average sales.

That web site is just a blank page - not going to sell much of anything that way

Is it better to upload images as RGB or sRGB?  ...

Do you mean Adobe RGB or sRGB?

AFAIK the only common denominator across all sites at the moment is sRGB. If a site does not convert  images in spaces other than sRGB to sRGB when creating thumbs, lots of browsers will display the image with really unpleasant colors. As more browswers become color management aware (i.e. can read ICC profiles) it'd be OK for any image with an embedded profile, but I doubt sites will ever put profiles into thumbnail images as it'd make the files too large.

iStock is the only site that handles automatic conversion for thumbnail creation and web sizes from whatever profile you upload in - ProPhoto or Adobe RGB - but that's been broken for a month or so (fix supposedly just around the corner).

When I was independent, I always converted to sRGB when making the JPEGs to upload.