Quote from: Pixart on January 04, 2008, 23:51
Now... the burning question we all want to know.....

Dan.  Why did Istock contact you?  Was it an "exit interview" or are they reading this thread?

Just as an FYI, they would be reading this thread.  It will turn up in their referrer logs, plus anyone in marketing over there worth their salt will have a vanity feed set up with Google Alerts and more extensive monitoring services. Less for snooping, more for PR disaster avoidance. When people are talking about you, you need to know about it because things - particularly bad things - spread very fast online.

Disclosure: I work in marketing and PR for my day job, and as of a few days ago (but after my letter to LO and after my previous posts in this thread) I blog for LuckyOliver.

Quote from: fotografer on January 02, 2008, 19:45This benefits IS even more. By not using credits that you have paid for IS  gets to keep all the money instead of passing at least 20% of it on to the photographers.

Oh, bugger. I hadn't even thought of that! You're very right. I'll go spend money and close out my credits. Thanks for pointing that out. Just goes to show how different operations look from opposite sides of the fence.

Pixart, thanks, that's so nice of you. That site was done in 4 days for an emergency facelift deadline but we're going back to it this month, should be fun!

Bryan, that was three cents. You owe me a download credit!  But certainly, as a buyer I appreciate it when I'm heard as a customer, so thanks for being so cool about it.

DanP68, buyers will not normally come here because this site is very specifically not targeted at them. I only came here by accident, because people were visiting my site from here and the thread URL was turning up a lot in my logs. I was interested in what I learned but I wouldn't have ever even though to search that information out.

If you really do want to put the word out, probably the best strategy is for someone to register ethicalstockphototography.com or something, stick a blog in there and put information on it that is just targeted for buyers - who pays what, who is good to their artists, and the most highly read stuff: who stinks!

Gossip and porn: what the internet was made for.

Quote from: yingyang0 on January 01, 2008, 21:00
That blog read like a diary of a crazy teenage girl. Notice that she was mainly complaining about LO in the blog.

Leaving my crazy teenage girlishness aside for the moment, I would characterise what I was doing in that post as providing feedback for LO rather than complaining. The actual people behind LO got in touch with me on the back of that post and have been very receptive to my points, so I continue to feel like my relationship there is a positive one. Obviously, every individual experiences their own ride, and I'm a buyer not a photographer so YMMV.

And yes, IS annoys me for any number of reasons and I've decided to abandon my existing credits there and just not deal with them any longer.

But what I really popped in to say is this:

I came here through my referrer links in my logs. As a buyer, I am largely unaware of the splits made for photographers on stock image sites. I'm very surprised at some of the numbers I've read in this thread.

I suspect most stock buyers are unaware of photographers' issues around specific vendors - splits, late payments, unreasonable levels for payments, whatever they are. But I also think that people like me would be interested in being educated about things like that. I'm not a power consumer but I spend probably $500 a year on stock images for myself and my blog, $100 for pet projects, and a couple of K on behalf of clients.

If I can spend that money ethically, for lack of a better term, with vendors who treat their artists right and pay reasonable money, then I will. But I have to know who those vendors are, and nothing about that has ever crossed my radar.  Sounds like a grassroots education movement waiting to happen!