I'm gonna assume you're joking with your impatience remark?  Three weeks of unreported sales with no royalties paid and you don't see a problem?  That has to be a joke.

Okay, how about this - if we allow one site to get away with not reporting our sales and not paying us for them, then other sites will take note. 

This will cease to be a viable income source for anyone if the sites are not held accountable for accurate reporting and payment to their contributors.   

I have to agree that stopping payments to people who have earned them and not explaining why or when it will change, or if or when back payments will be made is not a good precedent.

Consider:
-The disastrous and ongoing "Worst Match" nightmare at IS (my sales are down 70% there, and I have stopped uploading for the foreseeable future).
-The days of submitted images which were lost at SS, with no proposed fixes for thousands of now-dead images which will never be able to overcome having been buried in nowhere land.
-The missing payments to StockXpert submitters.

And in each of these cases, the management response to the valid concerns of contributors in all of these cases has been poor to non-existent.

what is going on? And no doubt, on top of the above factors, the economic downturn and uncertainties are hurting too, although it is impossible to know how much.  I was looking forward to October sales, which should be the best month of the year.

Are the good times gone forever?

It seems to be human nature to look at a new development and see the threats and dangers, while the opportunities go unseen. I think that most of the contributors at IS have not found the acquisition by Getty to have been a bad thing. They seem happy to be a part of it.

In the past, StockXpert has worked to create new opportunities for contributors because that is good businees for StockXpert, and many people reacted with fear and loathing. This new development could create new opportunites for submitters, not just negatives.

Quote from: michaeldb on October 15, 2008, 09:07

Quote from: sjlocke on October 15, 2008, 06:55

Are you saying you got the weekly contact sheet, or that you actually got a directed mail about your keywording?

I was referring to their mass emailing "iStockphoto Tip of the Week - 10.14.2008 - Keyword Crackdown". I guess they wouldn't include an illustration in a direct email abouj my own keywording. I have always tried  to avoid spam in my own keywording, and I've only had a couple of images disambiguated by by reviews.

As to whether the "SPAM" was 'editorial' or fair use or whatever, I am no IP attorney. I just thought it was funny, given IS's well known pickiness about violations of its rules, and violations of its rules being the subject of the email.

I guess I don't understand what you consider as breaking their own rules. Their rules are against accepting and selling copyrighted and trademarked material as royalty free stock. They are not doing that. They clearly slapped together this silly thing to illustrate their article. This image is not in their collection and they do not violate any IP by simply using the word "spam". Even if they used an actual can of SPAM, because of the editorial context, it would be hard to classify as an IP violation since as an editorial, it would fall under the umbrella of parody. I'm not an IP attorney either. I'm just completely missing your point.

I didn't really meat to say that IS violated its rules, I don't know if it did or not and I don't really care. I said, "given IS's well known pickiness about violations of its rules, and violations of its rules being the subject of the email." I have no plans to email Hormel that they should send IS a cease and desist order.

As to my point, I just thought it was funny, that's all. Or ironic. Or something. If I offended any sensibilities, I'm sorry.

I just got my email threat from IS about their crackdown.

My favorite part of the email was an illustration of a can with the word "SPAM" on it. IS rejects all my vectors which have text on them. But any photographer who has ever received one of IS's infamous rejections for trademarks should be especially amused, or perhaps bemused, by the fact that SPAM, especially when spelled in all caps, is a registered trademark of Hormel.  Oh well.

I would like to know if any vector illustrators have tried it and how it works uploading thumbnails and eps files, it it really does that at all.

Maybe it's the same glitch that is preventing me from even viewing the site today.  I get an error that says "Internet Explorer cannot open the site www.cutcaster.com   Operation aborted."

Weird...it worked fine yesterday!

I have been getting the same failure and error message all day when I try http://www.cutcaster.com/. And this morning I got an email from Cutcaster saying that I got a sale there (my first). Hope it's not an error!

Having lived through the days of intense competition between Apple and IBM/MS for the PC market, it seems to me that the open architecture approach of IBM is what allowed it to win out in the end. istock's exclusivity program attempts to lock photographers into istock alone. Sure, the quality is great, but seems that many contributors find lack of commitment to be an advantage. While the community on istock encourages new people to become exclusive, as these companies grow and become more impersonal, the lure might not be as strong.

Thought provoking post. IS Exclusivity is frequently an issue here, as in "To go exclusive or not to go exclusive."

I do illustrations. Some time back IS, without warning or explanation, changed its Best Match search algorithm to essentially eliminate vectors from the results, and as the "best match" is the default search on IS, many of the exclusive illustrators, including some who were making thousands of $$$$ per month at IS, are seeing their revenues drop through the floor.

Some of those people are saying things like, "Maybe this is the end of vectors on iStock." One illustrator said that he hoped that IS would soon be BUYING other microstock sites.

I think this may be the secret hope of many IS exclusives, that IS/Getty will buy SS et al. And the IS exclusives will then get the best of all worlds?

StockXpert was my top earner in August and so far also in September.  I has sales almost everyday, more frequently than any other site.  And no subs!

I guess I'm profitting from the reduced number of images after people deleted their portfolios from there. 

Regards,
Adelaide

Good point. I had not thought about people deleting their portfolios at StockXpert as a reason for my sales bump. It would be interesting to know what percentage of StockXpert's images were really removed.

It's all about the quality of the search engine and the results. Spam is an issue here - and getting rid of irrelevant search results is important - but not the total size of the collection.

You want a wide variety of relevant options and plenty of ways to slice and dice the results - perhaps, in addition to age and dowloads, buyers should be able to search by "hot this month" (lots of downloads in the last month), "oldies but goodies" (lots of downloads, but none in the last 3-6 months), "hidden treasures" (files with at least one download but fewer than 25). Search refinements based on image picks - more like this (selecting one image as the sample), or zap any like this (excluding based on a sample).

I'd like to see CoolIris (PicLens) or one of the several visual image browser startups that have very interesting interfaces for sorting through huge piles of images integrated into the major stock sites. I think if you did these kinds of things and keep your acceptance standards high, it doesn't matter how big the collection grows.

Some really excellent ideas IMO.

Leo, I think this is a good idea for a thread. Certainly, we can depend on the microstock sites themselves to continue to come up with new improved ways to serve their markets, but we stockers necessarily have a different perspective, and one which could provide some new ideas to make the maretplace for our images better. And creativity is one of the traits of a good stocker, right?

Almost a BME.

BME here. Looks like StockXpert is becoming a really good outlet for vectors (PS I am opted in to everything they offer).

Displacement map probably? Btw, try this quiz (it's not that hard, they could have supplied even better renders ):
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/fakeorfoto/

Good link. I got out 8 of 12, "pretty good" according to them but I really thought I would do better. Maybe I better start saving my dimes to get 3DS Max after all.

In July somebody bought a bunch of my images - about $200 worth - in one day on FO, using the name 'Joshua Carrier'.

Not until many days later did FO revoke the credits I had earned saying, "Credit card refused." So now I still have a negative amount of credits there.

Of course, I googled 'Joshua Carrier', with no useful results.  I guess I can't fault FO. But I wonder what 'Joshua Carrier' is doing with my images.

There is a long way to go in this Micro game before we know the out come, stay tuned.

I believe that is true. Niche style agencies could blossom and thrive.
Conversely, the mass market for images may have only just begun. If I were starting a micrstock agency would try to get every possible good image and sell them at competetive prices. I would be Wal-Mart. To do this just offer:
-fast easy submission (and John has a good start on this)
-fast cheap reviewing
Cut costs so you sell cheaper without cutting royalties, and get tons of images. Then the buyers will come.

You could do the cheap reviewing by offering auto-reviewing, and take advantage of late entry into the business, turn it to your advantage. It could work like this: If the image has been accepted at other microstock sites, you would auto-accept it. If the submitter includes a link to the image on IS (the pickiest site) you would automatically accept the image. Alternatively, if the image has been accepted by any 2 of the other big 6, you would auto accept.

So you don't need real reviewers, just somebody to verify the links, or a program could do it. You not only cut out the cost of reviewers, you make the acceptance process almost instantaneous.

I agree with Chumley, what we are witnessing is only the beginning.