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Messages - Danybot
76
« on: December 28, 2011, 19:21 »
You may be right that price isn't the only factor, but I expect it is still a major factor. Istock had a big head start and a large customer base, so the response to the high price would likely be somewhat gradual rather than sudden, and the worsening economic conditions have also made buyers more price sensitive than they were in the past.
Istock has the largest profit margin in the microstock industry, charging the highest to buyers and paying lowest to photographers. The service they provide just isn't superior enough to justify that profit margin. They are increasingly uncompetitive, and their business will keep sinking. This latest irrational move to abuse non-exclusives even further will backfire on them. Most non-exclusives will stop uploading (and even remove the files they already have there), leading to an inferior selection that will drive buyers away.
77
« on: December 08, 2011, 22:17 »
Very often, when I want to check something (e.g., my credits), the 123RF website asks me to type in a security code that appears as a graphic on the screen. This is after I have already logged in. It claims it won't ask me again unless I log out, but in fact it does do so, and often two or three times a day. Is that happening to everybody, or is it something about my computer?
It appears to be serious security overkill on a website of that type. My on-line bank and brokerage, where there is a lot more money at risk, don't have anything like that. I assume it would be a turn-off for buyers as well.
79
« on: December 07, 2011, 21:04 »
I've recently found when I am in various web pages, I see an istock banner ad that features several thumbnails, one or two of which are always from my portfolio. The first time I saw this I thought, "Isn't it wonderful. Out of 9 million photos, they chose one of mine to feature in their ad."
However, this was in a browser when I was logged into my iStock account. When I switched to a different browser, and went to the same websites, no more iStock ad at all, with or without my photos.
The ads are obviously being triggered by cookies on my computer. Is this another example of really poor policy, where they are wasting money in streaming ads to the person who is 100% certain not to buy the photo being shown, because he already owns it? Or are they trying to trick us into feeling grateful towards them, and upload more photos to get a princely 17% commission?
80
« on: December 04, 2011, 11:18 »
Since uploading and keywording was a lot of work, I have left most of my existing photos on iStock, but I haven't uploaded in the past year due to the commission reduction. Istock used to be my top earner, but it is now generally number two or number three each week.
I'm sure I'm not the only one. While it's true that there are a lot of people who continue to upload, different photographers have different images, and buyers will eventually start to notice that there are a lot of good images at DT, 123RF, etc. that they can't find on iStock. That's probably already happening
81
« on: July 24, 2011, 22:26 »
Their review process for editorial is ridiculously slow and ridiculously picky (e.g., punctuation in captions that nobody cares about). The result is that the selection of editorial photos they offer will always be second or third rate, and buyers looking for editorial will look elsewhere. Hence, you get a vicious circle of poor sales that discourages uploading, and makes sales even worse.
Considering the hoops you have to go to at iStock for a stingy 15% or 17% commission, it's a wonder that anybody bothers to upload there at all.
It used to be my top site a couple of years ago, but now it has slipped into third place. Their one strength used to be their better search engine, but in the past year even their IT has deteriorated.
82
« on: July 10, 2011, 21:20 »
It's hit and miss. Sometimes the submit button appears, and sometimes it doesn't. I've tried both Firefox and IE, and the same problem exists in both. I complained to Bigstock administration, but they had never heard of it.
In one batch of three, two of them could be submitted without any problem, but the third refused, even though I did everything the same. The clue is that the green check mark fails to appear at the top, even though there is a green check mark beside all the individual items.
My interest in this is more a matter of IT curiosity rather than anything else. Sales are so poor at Bigstock that uploading would hardly be worth the bother, even if it worked well. The second time it happened, I just deleted them, and decided not to try again.
83
« on: July 07, 2011, 22:11 »
It seems to attract a lot of photographers who think they are too good for the microstock sites, so it has over 20 million images on-line. However, the quality doesn't seem to be good enough to attract many buyers. Alamy used to release sales figures, but the last time was over a year ago: http://www.alamy.com/pressreleases/2010/pays-to-contributor.aspAt that time, they revealed that in 2009, they paid out 8 million pounds (about $13 million) to photographers, which was probably about 80 cents per image per year. That's way below what you would make on any of the top tier microstock sites. Uploading to Alamy is only worth it if you have a lot of spare images and a lot of spare time on your hands.
84
« on: March 17, 2011, 20:18 »
But it's honestly not that hard to get it right and complaining about things like "I put in the wrong date and they rejected it for having the wrong date! That's stupid!" is just silly IMHO.
Put that way, you make it sound like my complaint is trivial, but you are ignoring the context. I make a tiny mistake in the date that is not material to anything. The actual date from the exif is already there in another box. If the date being off in the caption bothers the examiner, why doesn't he just correct it instead of rejecting it. And they don't just let the submitter correct it. No, because there is one digit wrong in the date, I have to waste time uploading a 5mb file all over again, and filling in a bunch of other information that doesn't get carried over on resubmits. And then, if I have resubmitted the file with the caption corrected, there's at least a 50% chance they will reject it because of "a little more about compression." Their rejection messages make me want to puke. As I said, they treat contributors like dirt. And yes, I do know how to submit successfully to Istock, as I have several hundred images on-line with them. However, they are getting worse and worse, and I would much rather submit to some of the other places like Dreamstime and Bigstock that are more reasonable, even if they don't have quite the marketing power of Getty Images.
85
« on: March 17, 2011, 20:04 »
The situation for me at Fotolia has gone from bad to worse, in the short span of a few weeks. In fact, for me it's turned out to be even worse that at iStock. Everything is going downhill there - first there was the commission cut, then they changed the search function in way that caused a huge drop in downloads for me, and now they are rejecting almost half of what I upload - and they used to accept most of it. I've resumed uploading to iStock - Fotolia is even worse, and I can't afford to stop uploading to both of them. This is really discouraging. Am I alone in this, or are others feeling the pain?
I wouldn't say that it's worse than Istock, but generally the whole microstock business is getting worse. I have pretty much stopped uploading to Fotolia. I have some older images there that sell well, but for some reason my newer images are almost never sold. It has gotten much harder to get approved, and then even if they are approved, they don't sell, so what's the point?
86
« on: March 14, 2011, 22:44 »
Right now, it appears to be even longer than for regular images. It appears to be about 3 weeks or more.
87
« on: March 14, 2011, 22:03 »
Recently, I decided to try a few editorial submissions. One was rejected because the date I put in the caption was two days different than what was in the exif. It was just a background photo, and hardly newsworthy. (And how do they even know if I have the date set correctly in my camera.) Another one was rejected because I put the date first, instead of the name of the city.
Their regular rejections are bad enough, for nearly imperceptible noise, but their editorial rejections for details in captions are beyond belief. Oh, and they don't let you edit the caption once it's in the queue, in case you notice there's something wrong with it.
Not only are they treating their contributors like dirt, but they are wasting their own resources by having their reviewers look at the same thing over and over again. However, I will spare them the trouble, since I'm not resubmitting anything to them for the pleasure of getting 19 or 26 cents per download.
88
« on: February 24, 2011, 21:26 »
The concept in RF doesn't make a lot of sense. If it was a rights managed site, where the image might only have been sold a few times to specific markets, there could be value to buying it. But if somebody buys out an image that has already sold many times on an RF site, what value do they really get?
No new user in future will have it, but there might be lots of existing uses of it kicking around on all kinds of websites, etc. The buyer has no assurance of any kind of meaningful exclusivity, since the RF seller can't retrieve it from all the previous users.
89
« on: February 17, 2011, 18:57 »
About a year or more ago, I asked for all my former Stockxpert photos to be deleted from Thinkstock, and as far as I can tell by searching, that has been done.
The odd thing is that every couple of months I continue to receive a payment from HAAP media into my PayPal account. Usually, its about $5, but recently there was one for $40. I guess I should be pleased that they are paying me money that I had not expected, but it makes me wonder what it is for, and how long ago those sales occurred.
Is anybody else in this situation, and do you know what its about?
90
« on: November 02, 2010, 19:56 »
well, Alamy doesn't restrict submission of my micro portfolio, so I don't see anything unfair allowing Alamy to sell my pictures at low price if they are same pictures I already sell on micro anyway...
You should be aware that if you have posted a photo as RF elsewhere, Alamy's contact forbids you to post it as RM at Alamy. You are supposed to make it RF there also.
91
« on: October 10, 2010, 21:38 »
The same image as RF and RM might end you up in a lawsuite
No. That depends on what exactly the RM licence says. Alamy's RM licence (at least their "L" licence) does not include any exclusivity terms and no need to provide any image usage history.
The Alamy contract states quite clearly that if you submitted a file as RF to another agency, you may not have it on Alamy as RM: "2.2 You cannot submit identical or similar images to Alamy as both Royalty-Free and Rights Managed. The licence type on Alamy for an image must be the same as the licence type for that image and similar images which you have on other agency websites. " http://www.alamy.com/contributor/contract/default.asp
92
« on: May 26, 2010, 19:13 »
There's a new post from istock support. I changed the DNS number in my computer, and I can upload again. ================================= OK I have some answers. Rogers has discovered a DNS server issue on their end that is affecting your ability to connect to our upload servers. They are escalating it and will let me know when it's fixed. In the interm there is a temporary fix provided by them. You need to change your DNS server to use the follow IP address. It won't affect any of your browsing or anything, it's just directing you to a different IP that will work for you. Again this is temporary and once they let me know it's fixed, you can go back to your regular one. The temporary one is 208.67.222.222 Hope this information helps. If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]
93
« on: May 25, 2010, 18:01 »
I found a thread on it in an istockphoto forum. "This server not found" problem appears to affect mainly eastern Canada, which is where I am also. To add to the weirdness of it, I discovered that the problem is limited to my desktop computer. Using the same internet router, but using my laptop, I have no problem. (Both are HP computers using Vista.) http://nihongo.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=213051istock support has responded: Thank you very much for your message. We do have some contributing Members in Easter Canada that are having problems with uploading. Our development team is currently working on a fix for the problem. We should have this problem corrected by tomorrow. I apologize for any inconvenience this causes. Sincerely, Alyshia Contributor Relations iStockphoto
94
« on: May 24, 2010, 22:48 »
For the past couple of days, I get that error message whenever I attempt to upload to Istockphoto. I presume it's just me, or others would have reported it as well. I'm not having any trouble uploading to any other site, and it happens regardless of whether I use Firefox of IE. Does anybody have an idea of what might be causing it?
95
« on: May 24, 2010, 00:21 »
A policy of failing everything that's pending from maybe a week of uploads, which could be dozens or even hundreds of good photos, because of one bad apple, is an incredibly stupid system. I know that rejection reason is in most right column but I never saw it in other row than first so I assume they inspect first image and reject all other images even if these images are in different batches. I got once 3 batches pending and they rejected everything with same date. I do not know why I am trying to submit there. I must be masochist.
I'm sorry to say but you seem really off on how alamy works... Check the help pages to get an idea.
If an image fails, no matter if it's the first or last, ALL other pending images fail. If you have 5 batches pending with different upload dates, they all fail. They don't even check more once you get an image rejected because they assume all other images present the same problem.
96
« on: April 30, 2010, 19:18 »
Income is stagnant or very-very slowly increasing year to year while I doubled my portfolio every year. I'll see what happens this year without new uploads - I stopped uploading there.
By the way, in same parts of his comment I agree with PowerDroid: I dropped DT from my upload list and it instantly made me more happy and less frustrated.
I'm also pretty disappointed with DT. My earnings in April 2010 are 30% lower than in April 2009, even thought my portfolio is 40% larger (now up to about 800). Even before the latest dip, it has been pretty stagnant for the whole year, while other sites have been doing better. Not only are there a larger proportion of sub sales at low prices, but the total number of pics sold is getting weaker.
97
« on: April 27, 2010, 22:52 »
I have had several editorial photos accepted, but I see that they have not gone live. They don't show up as part of my portfolio, and they don't come up in a search. Has anybody heard about when they are actually going to go on sale?
I've had reasonably good luck with selling editorial at Dreamstime and Bigstock, and I'm happy to give 123RF a chance as well. I find that there is very little rhyme or reason as to which editorial submissions each site accepts. Some of my best editorials (in my opinion) have been rejected at Dreamstime and/or Bigstock, but I'm pleased to see that they were accepted at 123RF.
98
« on: February 02, 2010, 22:22 »
Presumably, what Getty achieved was that it bought some customers (and photographers), and hopes to get synergies and economies of scale. All my photos from StockXpert have been transported over to Thinkphoto, where quite a few of the photos from my iStockphoto portfolio can also be found. (If I recall correctly, the deal is that iStock dumps slow sellers onto Thinkphoto.) As we all know, different sites accept and reject photos for arbitrary reasons. Every site has their own odd standards of what is acceptable.. Some of my photos that weren't acceptable at iStock were acceptable at StockXpert, and vice versa, but now they all live happily together at Thinkphoto 
99
« on: November 18, 2009, 22:46 »
OK, it is now nearly a year that I have had my images on Alamy. I have had 39 zooms, with CTR of 2.01, which is considerably higher than the Alamy average. Still zero sales. I haven't registered for RF with them. Given that the minimum payout is $250, it would be pointless, since I would never get any money from them. I might as well keep my RF photos at Istockphoto, where they actually sell (about 60 per week, at an average of a bit more than $1 each).
@Danybot. Three month is not much on Alamy. Sometimes it takes quite a while until you are notified of sales.
[/quote]
100
« on: March 25, 2009, 19:42 »
As far as sales there, it is slow but one sale from an image I took in Ireland made me $270 recently.. So one sale is much better than months of sales at certain micro agencies.. Also remember that quite a few people are uploading their micro images to alamy and that will in the future have an effect on the way the sites direction goes as well.. Buyers will eventually figure out that the images are in both places and get turned off..
This is the kind of statement I used to keep hearing. I got sucked in by this faulty logic, and went to the trouble of uploading a couple of hundred images to Alamy (about three-quarters editorial and travel). I haven't had a single sale yet, after 3 months. I do regularly sell editorial photos at DT (at low prices, to be sure, but if you know your math, that's infinitely more than nothing). Alamy recently published some sales figures, and it turns out that the average photographer's revenue per image is 80 cents per year. If that's the case, it's not worth the effort to upload to Alamy, because I do much better than that on the microstock sites (where the best one is Istock, with $4000 in the past year on 1000 images, in spite of their low commission rate). In fact, I have stopped uploading to Alamy, and would have to see some sales before I go to the trouble of adding more. Alamy has some good images, but also a lot of junk, because they are the least selective of any stock agency I have seen. At the prices they charge, buyers don't get very good value, so it's not surprising that sales are poor. In spite of their high prices, Alamy's searching is pretty much cruder than any microstock, with no disambiguation, and that wastes the buyer's time.
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