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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
7076
« on: April 23, 2010, 20:15 »
i... That means NO NOISE as well in-camera colors... Try not to radically process your images and that is all!
...
[ADDED] Preferred Cameras for iStock: Nikon D700, Canon 5DMkII... And similar! If you have such camera - you'll have full pass!
For the benefit of anyone else reading this, especially those thinking of becoming a contributor, the above is utter nonsense. If you know what you're doing you can heavily process images and get them accepted. A quick browse through IS's big sellers will tell you this if you don't want to take anyone's word for it. And having a certain camera doesn't get you a "full pass". I am frequently amazed at those with expensive (lots of 5DIIs) cameras who stop by the critique forum for assistance with rejections and it's clear they really don't know how to work their equipment. You can produce a noise and artifact filled image just as easily with a 5DII as with anything else . And as far as RAW vs. JPEG, IS inspectors don't know or care how you got to the JPEG they inspect. My take is that typically folks who are working in completely controlled light do just fine with JPEG and those doing more shots outside in light they only partially control most often do better with RAW.
7077
« on: April 22, 2010, 23:48 »
Hi and welcome.
I was independent for nearly 4 years before becoming exclusive at iStock 18 months ago. The issue of the "fairness" of the split between agency and contributor came up again and again. One or two agencies started up with the central theme of being more fair to photographers and giving them a larger percentage. CanStock started in June 2004 on that premise and while Duncan (who started the business ) is a great guy, the business never really took off, so our "fair" percentage was multiplied by a very small monthly amount.
Bottom line is for a given portfolio, how much per month can each agency earn you. Two of the agencies with the "worst" per image returns (IS and SS) have consistently been #1 and/or #2 for a large number of contributors when looking at monthly income. There are other issues as well - long term vs. short term gain - but the percentage of royalty can be really misleading as a yardstick by which to judge an agency's value to you.
20% of $1,000 per month is a better deal than 50% of $50 per month...
I'd suggest that you start with the "big 4" from the chart at the right - but be aware of time commitments (DT holds files for 6 months and BigStock for 3 months).
7078
« on: April 20, 2010, 20:52 »
As for rankings of the various sites - Istock still ranks above FT in traffic, etc. but Fotolia has been steadily gaining on them. I don't always agree with every decision made by FT, but it is obvious they are playing to win.
...I've extracted the data from my spreadsheet to illustrate just how fast FT have been gaining on IS. You can view the last 28 months on a graph by clicking on the link below. The Y axis is the % each agency contributes to my total stock income;
For all the negative thoughts I have about FT, I have to give them credit for being the last entrant to the microstock arena who made it beyond the huddle of also-rans to be a major player. They aggressively pioneered selling into markets other than English-speaking and aggressively pursued partnerships and deals. When they introduced V2 software it looked for a while as if they might just have killed the whole operation, but they managed to keep the site going even though very little worked correctly for a very long time. I do think that more than any other site, FT is creating a very wide chasm between the top earners - independents who get to double (or more) their prices) and just about everybody else. Those who are emerald and above have a vastly different playing field from everyone else. It's not just the higher royalty but the higher prices - and across the whole portfolio, unlike individual images at DT. I wonder if you took a look at the more middle-tier players (i.e. not emerald & up) and compared FT gold with IS whether you'd see a similar pattern. Which is not to say that for those who are emerald and up that things aren't rosy at FT, but can FT do great with only the relatively small pool of emerald, sapphire and rubis (1) contributors if things aren't so great for everyone else. I guess you may not want to be too specific for fear of outing yourself and removing your ability to speak frankly, but I wonder if the period of the graph was all at emerald status?
7079
« on: April 20, 2010, 15:46 »
I would be very interested to get designer reaction to the introduction of another price "band" at IS. I don't think this site is it.
The link points to a thread with 2 posts from last night and nothing since. I looked around elsewhere on that site and didn't see any other angry designer threads. There was one comment from early in March this year from a designer looking for a free photo site - he commented that he used to use iStock exclusively but didn't any more because of price increases.
7080
« on: April 16, 2010, 14:48 »
Having the backup server in another city vs. just across town would be a good start. This isn't a novel idea...
I'm sure everyone is working really hard now to get the site back up and stable, but there's been a pattern of buggy software releases and site problems that they think they've fixed, but keep coming back from the dead and way, way too much downtime for a global e-commerce site.
I think they need to get some outside help to get the site performance and stability more like the major e-commerce sites. It can be done.
7081
« on: April 07, 2010, 15:52 »
I agree that monthly portfolio return is extremely important. Probably even the most important factor ITLR.
But we keep hearing that as a justification for lowering per/sale royalties. You know the old "you'll make it up on volume" justification handed out every time royalty % is cut on any site. ...
Here's today's variation on this theme. Getty now has a collection of "iStock vectors" - these are all available on both sites, but the Getty collection comes at a higher price with built in extended licenses (unlimited print run, unlimited reproduction). The catch? It's the Getty 20% not the iStocker's cannister percentage. This doesn't directly affect most of us - hand selected content and it's only from exclusives. To me, it's another way they're trying to shift sales to the 20% royalty for everyone. Instead of saying that you'll make it up in volume, they're saying look at the nice big $$ amount, hoping the smaller cut will be OK. See the locked discussion here and the official announcement here.
7082
« on: April 07, 2010, 13:58 »
My wish was "Fulfillment of all wishes" 
They're looking for you to get back to them - I think you need to do something to claim your prize. Check twitter
7083
« on: April 07, 2010, 13:08 »
I wouldn't dream of characterizing things as better or worse, but when I started in late 2004 microstock had
- much lower prices
- higher download numbers (relative to portfolio size)
- much less stringent inspection standards
- fewer/no upload limits
- fewer sites
7084
« on: April 07, 2010, 13:04 »
I'm not sure that this is useful, but FWIW my RPD for March for IS was $3.71 - no extended licenses last month to skew the numbers.
If you adjust that to a 20% royalty rate it would be $2.12. I think that gives you an idea of what Vetta and exclusive image prices does to the totals.
7085
« on: April 06, 2010, 19:13 »
Go out there and find me any other microstock company that offers a similar service.
Shutterstock and Dreamstime both offer upsized files (SS offers TIFFs). In all cases these are upsized JPEGs which really isn't the way to go - and isn't anything a customer couldn't do in a few seconds themselves.
7086
« on: April 06, 2010, 19:10 »
...What justifies us in getting 33% of profits? Also we don't know the costs of the implementation of this service. ...
The answer to the first question is very simple - because you created the copyrighted content that is the sole reason the buyer is forking over cash for a version of it. Regardless of the costs of upsizing and "cleanup", they occur one time, not for every sale as was pointed out earlier. This is a bad deal for the customer and a bad deal for the contributor. The bribe to get you to accept this rotten deal is the extra cash.
7087
« on: April 05, 2010, 11:16 »
... It really is just a lottery system when it comes to what they require on a release.
I don't agree - although mistakes do get made. The key thing they're trying to avoid is uploading shots that weren't covered by the release which might later lead to legal trouble. So if you did some stock shots in a business setting and some partially clothed glamor shots that were intended for the model's personal use saying "studio shoot 456" doesn't really help. Saying "various office, business, workplace stress shots" would clearly mark which shots were included (and prevent you from uploading the personal shots).
7088
« on: April 05, 2010, 10:37 »
Spring break is mostly in March.
We just got back from being away for the Spring break week - schools in different parts of the US have different vacation schedules. Some others are on vacation this week. I'm guessing it'll be a bit slower than usual.
7089
« on: March 26, 2010, 12:28 »
I am exclusive at IS now, but from 2004 through August 2008 was independent. IS was my first agency and I branched out after I read an article talking about other new agencies about a month after I started uploading at IS
Things have changed in that time, but if you're going the independent route I can't see any reason not to upload to all the major sites and maximize your earnings. Although each site has its preferences and biases you won't learn about those by uploading elesewhere - i.e. you need to just get on with figuring out the likes and dislikes of each and upload what you shoot.
7090
« on: March 23, 2010, 23:05 »
IMO, I would rather see IS stop taking the time to mess with reasons for rejections completely .. Maybe then you wouldn't have to wait a week just to get a handful of images reviewed.
Hop in your time machine and head back to SS in 2005 sometime. They had no rejection reasons and contributors were asking for them to include them. There was some back and forth in the forums - some quite snotty from some then-admins suggesting that they weren't running a photo school I was one of those arguing that it was in their best interests as well as ours to distinguish between a subject they didn't want any more of (at the beginning they were trying to discourage landscapes, beaches, etc.) so we wouldn't keep submitting them and something that had a copyrighted element, imperfect isolation or some other technical flaw. I still think that a collection of one sentence rejection reasons (I'd ditch the 5 page essay that iStock now includes with each) helps both the agency and the contributors keep submissions on track.
7091
« on: March 19, 2010, 19:06 »
I just checked and my portfolio is up to date and my newly approved files (from the last week or 10 days) are now showing up in searches, so it did get fixed
7092
« on: March 19, 2010, 19:00 »
The best thing we as individuals can do at this point is to refuse to participate in Thinkstock. If they have a small, poor quality collection, buyers will go elsewhere. Don't feed the monster.
Sadly, one of the Black Diamonds has over 4000 images on Thinkstock. 
An exclusive black diamond? I wish we had a rough idea of the percentage of exclusive content available on Thinkstock - I was hoping it was very low, and certainly there are a number of vocal opponents among the higher levels of exclusives.
7093
« on: March 19, 2010, 13:27 »
I can't remember when FT introduced their Infinite collection - and all the mockery they got from us about some of the horrendously dated old shots at inflated prices. Technology was a big factor in images looking dated, but not the only one. Of course some of the images were just terrible and always were terrible and FT removed those to avoid further public embarrassment.
My point is that some of the factors that age images can even be subtle things in background and clothing - even for the ubiquitous handshake images. Processing fads come and go - high key, low key, gritty, partially desaturated, flood filter, etc. Images that ride the wave of a new processing trend will likely rise higher and fall much faster than the general rule.
I think it was Ellen Boughn who described some images as "evergreen" - content that just didn't fade in appeal over time. Mixing in some of those doesn't hurt.
I also think that different sites have different patterns. A while back on SS's own forums there was a long thread about how sales stalled at a certain level per month even as their portfolio grew - running to stay in place. When the PPD sites introduced subs (DT, FT) that had an impact on the monthly returns. I can't think of a year since I started this when something material hasn't changed at one or more (typically all!!) of the sites.
I guess this is long way of saying that you should be wary of projecting out from the last 15 months to the next couple of years.
7094
« on: March 19, 2010, 13:10 »
Yes, they do have "a little hiccup in the matrix" - as Rob put it. Read all about it here: http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=188041&page=1
"This thread has been locked."
Hahahaha... still good old iStock. 
It's been locked because a new one has been opened on the subject. JJRD said they didn't fix the bug and that they're working hard to get it done today.
7095
« on: March 18, 2010, 21:35 »
WOW! Thanks for all the feedback. I do have one other question... I have an exclusive with iStockPhoto.com, but that only applies to images that they have accepted right?? I mean, just because I have an exclusive there doesn't mean I can't submit different images somewhere else does it? Thanks!
You cannot sell royalty free licenses anywhere else while you are exclusive. This applies to rejects and to things never submitted to them.
7096
« on: March 17, 2010, 17:39 »
Well there's a cure for insomnia!
This sort of silliness is what happens when you try to use a proxy for what you really want to tackle.
If similars are the problem, then tackle that. And with all the tools now available to find matching images I find it hard to see how agencies would have to weed this stuff out by hand. If they could just automatically see what's already uploaded (which would put a halt to all this gaming the system by trying to spread out the uploads) then they could easily handle this via the existing inspection process.
Encouraging diversity in the collection seems like a great goal. Increasing the number of shots of old wooden doors, rusted locks, photogenic rotting window frames, piles of nails, etc. etc. by giving higher limits to those who haven't figured things out just yet isn't going to do that - a decent policy on similars would.
7097
« on: March 17, 2010, 17:29 »
I think IS should really make a better system for us to see PP sales in real time, and to easily see which images are sold. ...
I don't disagree that in an ideal world the sales reporting system should be real time, but there are so many things on the IS to-do list that would come way, waaay higher than this that I'd hate to see them spend any time on it in the foreseeable future. Clearly I am influenced by the fact that I've been opted out of this program from the beginning (my view is that it's Getty trying to pull our earnings down to a flat 20% (max) for everyone. Whether you're independent and you end up hosing SS by participating in the partner program or you're exclusive to IS and you hose your own higher commissions over time, the only winner in this will be Getty). So if Getty wants to spend their time and energy building contributor reporting tools (which I strongly doubt) let them knock themselves out. But I wouldn't want any more IS developer time spent on enhancements to partner program reporting.
7098
« on: March 14, 2010, 14:27 »
This Flickr user had one of my images (multiple copies of) in his photostream along with many other Fotolia images. I have sent Yahoo the required takedown notice for my images, but you may want to take a look and see if any of yours are there and do the same. In the past I've found Yahoo to be very prompt at dealing with this sort of thing - but you must follow the wording in their copyright/IP notice to get them to act.
7099
« on: March 12, 2010, 14:32 »
Theoretically, if one was (un)lucky enough to get an EL every week they could NEVER request their money.
Their tribute to Lewis Caroll... "You couldn't have it if you DID want it," the Queen said. "The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday - but never jam to-day." "It MUST come sometimes to "jam to-day,"" Alice objected. "No, it can't," said the Queen. "It's jam every OTHER day: to-day isn't any OTHER day, you know." "I don't understand you," said Alice. "It's dreadfully confusing!"
7100
« on: March 03, 2010, 22:09 »
Newbie ... Is that a derogatory name?  
It certainly wasn't intended to be. I didn't think it had any "baggage" unless it is thought to be unfair to point out that some are just beginning. Have you got some other term you prefer for referring to those just starting with a very small portfolio and very little time in as a contributor?
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