"Creating accurate, precise and easily understood descriptions for your images and footage is absolutely essential to getting them seen and bought. Why? Because good descriptions help customers find your images and footage on search engines like Google, which can be the first place potential customers look when they're ready to buy an image or clip."

Makes sense to me.  If 50 words is best then it's good to know that, if you don't feel like it will have an impact then you don't have to do anything.  Adding good keywords is nearly as important as making good images so it wouldn't surprise me if good descriptions play a role as well.

What we will more likely get is a well deserved cut.

I think there have been a few already they are just well disguised.  Multi user subs, bigstock, etc..  expect more of that.

Is this about collecting information from us so that you can try to sell it back to us?

I'm confident that as usual I Stock will have thoroughly tested the changes to be introduced  and we can all sleep soundly in the knowledge that the correct payment will reach our accounts bang on time.

Nurse! Time for my medication

In the meantime I thought I had narrowly tripped over the $100 on 5th and no reduction so far but to be honest I'm not certain I try not to fret about these things based on the philosophy it comes right eventually.........

It doesn't matter what your balance on the 5th was, just what it was for January.

You can check your payout report to see what they took out.

Contact Shutterstock, some of those are way too close to be acceptable.  SS should be protecting you from people stealing your images along with copying them.  You are wrong if you think an image has to be exactly the same, a carbon copy, in order for it to be infringing on his rights.  Good luck. 

I also don't see any reason to contact that contributor unless you do it through a lawyer.

Quote from: tickstock on February 16, 2015, 12:08

Quote from: Mantis on February 15, 2015, 11:29

Quote from: EM on February 15, 2015, 09:09

Is the information in the title an accurate assessment of iStock's royalty schedule for non-exclusive contributors? In other words, you make about 90 cents a video download?

All I can tell you is that as a non-exclusive, I make $6 to $8 a sale, full HD. I am considering killing my video on IS. They keep way too much of the pie.

They are keeping the same amount they always did(not always but for a while now), they just lowered the pricing didn't they?

Does it really matter? I used to get $23 commission and now i get $6-8. Thats a reduction to me of some significance. A result of their rc concoction six or so months ago.

I'm not saying it isn't significant,  just that your "slice of the pie" hasn't changed.

It is outrageous - without our work to sell there wouldn't be any extended licence to sell either.

I agree but it seems like standard practice.  SS does the same thing.  It wouldn't surprise me to find other agencies doing it too.

I never saw the face flag overlay thing done as a complete series before duncan1890 did it at iStock before the 2006 World Cup. I reckon that most people doing those today were either directly or indirectly inspired by his work (actual paint on faces is obviously a sport fan thing and is very different).

The face flags were the first thing I thought of when I saw this thread.  There was obviously some "inspiration" involved.

Don't bother.

Example I have a number of photos of Dario Franchitti. If a buyer searches for Dario Franchitti, the system says no results. Because it's a phrase and must be in quotes. Also if someone searches for one of the names, Dario for example, it also shows not matching results.

Don't worry nobody is searching for Dario Franchitti so you aren't losing any sales but if you really feel it's worth your time to shoot, keyword, and upload this kind of content then you can request that the name be added.

I always thought Peeps were those little marshmallow chicks you see at Easter - I'm surprised those aren't in the iS DA, because a Google search on "peeps" gets you marshmallow candies

It is.

Yea, I just looked that up, you are right. Well there's a lesson for ya, get lazy, don't pay attention and you miss something important. You'd think though that Getty would send a freakin' email to their photographers letting them know about something like that. Anyway, that's 200 royalty free images this last year I could have been submitting. My fault.

Thanks for pointing that out to me.

They had an announcement and sent out emails a while back.