I have had the iPhone3Gs since June 2009 so I am more than ready for an upgrade. Overall I think the public will be disappointed, but if their camera claims pan out to be true I will be more than happy. iPhone already replaced a point and shoot camera for family snaps for me. I used to have Leica D-Lux4 and sold it because I realized that I either took a DSLR or just the iPhone.

I will try to upload one photo from the 4S to istock just to see if they will let it through. I am thinking bright sunlight landscape and resize to 2-3Mpix to get rid of noise.

Did anyone ever upload a photo from an iPhone and got it accepted by any stock agency?

EDIT: I am very surprised that phone running iOS5 with A5 chip is called 4S:)

Quote from: Redneck on May 04, 2011, 14:44

Quote from: maco0708 on May 04, 2011, 13:45

Quote from: Redneck on May 03, 2011, 21:05
Actually, I just received one an hour ago.  

OK, this pisses me off a little. You are a new non-exlusive member (I assume) and already had a file from 4/27 reviewed.
I am an exclusive and files from 4/26 are still pending.

All I have to say WTH? Fast review supposed to be a big perk of exclusivity.
I am surprised that they are not doing more to keep their exclusives happy.

P.S.: Nothing against Redneck, welcome to the forum and good luck all around.

Maybe it's some kind of "new contributor bonus". Waiting a week to get a file reviewed sure didn't feel like a bonus to me though.

My files from 4/27 got inspected today. That roughly means that non-exclusives and exclusives are inspected at similar time frame. I wonder why?

Quote from: Redneck on May 03, 2011, 21:05
Actually, I just received one an hour ago.  

OK, this pisses me off a little. You are a new non-exlusive member (I assume) and already had a file from 4/27 reviewed.
I am an exclusive and files from 4/26 are still pending.

All I have to say WTH? Fast review supposed to be a big perk of exclusivity.
I am surprised that they are not doing more to keep their exclusives happy.

P.S.: Nothing against Redneck, welcome to the forum and good luck all around.

I am confused by his numbers:
Does he say that hi average return per image (for entire 2010) was $7.10?

Is that what he got paid from all the agencies or some calculated figure after he subtracted all his expenses?

Because I find that number shockingly low.

Oh Crap.

As a iStock exclusive I was thinking about my options a whether it is worthwhile to go non-exclusive again (I was on majority of the sites about 2 years ago).
This Fotolia cut just tells me that the whole industry is doing down the drain.

I have no clue why Apple pays 70% to their APP (for smartphones) developers and we get ~30% (if that). It is pretty much the same process (I create it, they approve it and sell it).

I would submit and invest under one condition:
The royalty percentage (~50% is fine for me) needs to be in the contract as unchangeable. I am an iStock exclusive and I was very happy with them until about 2 weeks ago. Now my biggest fear is that this royalty change is just a first step and the royalties are going to drop further.

Quote from: stockastic on April 22, 2010, 23:07
And then, somehow, Google drives by and photographs every building in existence, and nothing happens.

I think you can photograph ANYTHING you like from a public space. Question is what can you do with those pictures. Royalty free license gives you a lot of power.

I think that the deactivation was warranted. I think the files should not be allowed and they were approved by error.

Let's put a specific example (different than my deactivated photo):
Harvard University buildings
Do you think that you need a release?

There are plenty of images of Harvard on iStock and they seem to sell pretty well. I highly doubt that they have a release. I can not imagine that anyone at Harvard would sign that release, they surely don't need $$$ and the iStock property realease gives you a lot of rights.

Let's say that a photo of statue/building/... that requires property release is approved by an agency without the property release.


If this would result into problem with copyright, who would be responsible? The photographer who took the photo? Or the agency for selling it without the proper rights? I could see both of them being responsible, but who would end up paying for the consequences.


Reason for asking: I had a photo that was deactivated for copyright reasons and it was told that it was approved my mistake. I accepted the decision and moved on. This happened over a year ago. Today I did a search for the same picture and I see almost identical photos for sale by other contributors. Should I inform the contributor/agency?


I would like to hear your thoughts.

My best 24/day. It happened the during the first week with shutterstock.
Total revenue that day $6.00

Today I got $6.75 for one downloaded image as an iStock exclusive (among other downloads). Times have changed for sure.

Quote from: Lee Torrens on March 12, 2010, 16:19

Quote from: qwerty on March 12, 2010, 10:24
I imagine it includes buyers aswell, you can have designers in your network and send sitemails etc.

Kelly said in a recent announcement that they have over 100,000 new registrations per month.  Obviously the vast majority of those are buyers, and there's probably relatively few who actually spend money. So the 85,000 could not include buyers.

Yeah, I think a while back they announced 1,000,000th member (buyers+contributors).
It is pretty shocking to me how few active contributors (people who have more than ~50 uploads total) there are considering they sold something over million DSLRs last year (could be more, can't remember exact numbers). I am pretty glad that is the case, though:)

Quote from: mocker on February 02, 2010, 01:32
Jan stats.

Jan stats thread on IS shows overwhelmingly earnings increase among exclusives
Several non-exclusives who responded there mostly reporting earnings decrease. Although most of the independents reporting there have really tiny portfolios and under 2500 downloads. So I'm not sure how representative it is.
Mine states are even lower then in December.

I think most exclusives had pretty low downloads but the earnings were pretty good due to the price increase. I am a silver exclusive and it was my worst month for downloads since June 2007. However, the earnings were not too bad. Also to be fair, by downloads Jan 2010 was only about 7% lower than Jan 2009. For me January was always a month with pretty low downloads. Also, I have not uploaded much in 2009 so my market share has dicreased since everybody is uploading like crazy.

Quote from: tamasvargyasi on January 20, 2010, 07:07
I bet there is more, like HusaKarl5.

That one is deleted now as well.

Unfortunately a lot of stock images can be downloaded on line for free through the same channels as illegal music. Therefore, these thieves can download all of the images for free and then any profit they make is for them to keep.
It might be a good idea to use a image recognition software for new members to check for thieves. Let's say, once somebody uploads their first ten images, check them against libraries at the other major sites.

I wonder if iStock has any right to sue Dreamstime in this matter. I am not blaming Dreamstime one bit, but in the end, they licensed the stolen images. Or I wonder if they recall the stolen images and direct the customers to iStock to license them properly.

I would start with iStock. I was at all the main agencies and a year ago I went exclusive. In retrospect I think it was a good decision, they made the deal very good for exclusives and pretty bad for everybody else.

The problem is that it might be pretty tough to get into iStock these days. If you can get it, I would stay with them and then go exclusive. If you are not good enough (or don't have enough time for them) I would just enjoy photography and stay away from microstock. Like Sean said, not everybody who has a DSLR can/should be a stock contributor. We all have computers but very few of us are programmers.

Good luck!

I got another e-mail pointing to the part of the contract that states 90 days. The same thing that Sharply has posted.

I agree with everybody that it is my fault and I can't legally force them to remove them earlier. It is in the contract and I DID sign it.

However, I still don't think that 90 day waiting period is cool and I think it should be written somewhere more prominent (like at BigStock, you have to click it every time you upload).

And I am even surprised that it hasn't been pointed out it great detail in this forum. As Sharply said, live and learn, I hope this thread will help other people to avoid this problem.

Little update,

Fotolia: The images from Pixmac were deleted and I can not find any other sites that would carry my images. I googled in many different ways and found nothing. So hopefully customers and iStock won't find anything either.

Stockxpert: Here is situation is lot more frustrating. I deleted all of my images a week ago and my images are still showing up on Photos.com and Jupiter Images. Since I deleted my images, I got two subscription sales (making whopping 60c). I contacted StockXpert, Photos.com and JUI. They all gave me the same answer: it can take up to 90 days to delete all images. I can't believe that they think that's OK to say something like that. What can take 90days? Are they shipping a paper letter from Alaska to Australia? I would understand that it would take 90days if I didn't do anything. But once I complain and people respond to my e-mails, why can't they just take care of it?

I think by biggest frustration come from the fact that I did not know about this. If I did, I would have deleted my StockXpert portfolio first, then wait till everything is taken care of and then delete portfolios at all other sites.

Quote from: madelaide on January 17, 2009, 02:37
I am not complaining that they buy it for the cheaper price - it is obvious anyone would.  My point is that not long ago, from the main agencies (the "big 7") only SS and 123RF offered subs.  Now only BigStock doesn't, and IS if you consider theirs is a totally different model.

Did the sites really need to go that path?  Subs is not for the casual buyer.  Designers could still download a comp image and then buy the ones they really need in the end.  What subs offers them is, instead of buying only 20 images @ US$10, get 750 images for the same price!  Even if they don't download the 750 images, it still a much better deal.

Microstock was and still is very cheap.  There was no need to make them even cheaper, except to get a bigger market share.  Ok, this is good for the sites, this is business at the capitalist way.  But are they really improving the market this way?  I see a lot of SS'ers complaining of less sales, can we assume that part of the former SS customers moved to other sites offering subs?  The total number of subscribers must have increased too, as the subs prices basically remain the same, whereas the credit prices have increased, making subs more attractive for frequent buyers.  Why do not focus instead on buyers that are not in the market yet, many who may not even know this market exists, who would buy images per credit?

I don't merely complain.  I stopped uploading to FT and 123RF (not to mention CS and CanStockPhoto out of the big 7), I opted out from StockXpert, I was never at SS.  DT has mixed results, so I still upload to them.

Regards,
Adelaide

So you cut out a lot of the sites. Isn't it better to go exclusive with iStock? For me it was either sell everywhere (inc. subs) or go exclusive with iStock. What % of your income is from iS?

Quote from: madelaide on January 17, 2009, 02:43
maco,

I have to agree with others posts that you should have considered a bit more time.  I would never expect sites being quick at something that means no advantage for them.  I found it however annoying that we do not know who are FT partners, except for some casual finding like Pixmac and that German print site.  DT and BigStock partners are also mysterious, so your images may be still around somewhere for a while.

Regards,
Adelaide

What do you guys think is appropriate time to wait? Every day can be very costly is someone like Yuri will ever want to go exclusive (for him it would be $1000 a day that he would lose in exclusivity bonus). This is an honest question.
I agree that there is no incentive for the sites to remove my images quickly (except that it is the right thing to do). I am still baffled what is the holdup, it's just a click of a button away (or they their software is poorly written).

Quote from: Sylvie on January 16, 2009, 17:16

Quote from: steve-oh on January 16, 2009, 15:28
Hi maco0708,

What is your StockXpert username? You can PM it to me. I'll see what I can do about expiditing the removal of your images from photos.com and JIU, but it usually takes a few weeks for this to happen.

Thanks,
Steve

This is well written on the StockXpert web site that it could takes up to 60 days to remove all the files from their reseller sites the day you claim your files.That's why in my case i deleted all my files from the site in early November.

Sylvie,
Where does it say that? I briefly looked around but I could not find it. I am surprised that this wasn't mentioned in the "preparing for exclusivity thread". I wonder how many people actually knew about this. I wish I did. Oh well, I guess I will wait and try to bug them in my free time.

Quote from: dirkr on January 16, 2009, 17:02
I see one big difference between StockXpert and Fotolia here:
At StockXpert you have to opt in to have your pictures offered on partner sites.
At Fotolia you don't even know where else they are offered... (and that is what I call unprofessional).

Good point.

However, as of right now, the fotolia issue (Pixmac) is solved for me. On the other hand I just got an e-mail from StockXpert that it can take couple of weeks to remove my files from JUI and Photos.com. Hopefully, Steve-oh can work some magic:)

Quote from: Tuilay on January 16, 2009, 15:56
as sharplydone mentioned firsthand, you just need to give them time.
you're not the only contributor at Fotolia or StockXpert.  they have so many contributors to think of , you just cannot expect them to jump at your request just so you said that you are now going exclusive with IS.

if the shoe was on the other foot, and you ask this of IS, i am sure you would be as mad as hell with them as you are with StockXpert and FT.
but this is no way to burn the bridges.
you complain of unprofessionalism. you are too doing the same to them 

Well, I gave them 4 days. I think that is long enough. I think this process should be automated and the update should happen every night (it can't be that hard to implement).
But I agree about your comments and I apologize for my tone to FT and StockXpert. I have changed the title for that reason and also make it more useful in searches for people with the same problem.

On the other hand, I got a sale from StockXpert today (through photos.com or jupiter) so if iStock wouldn't catch it I would be directly violating the contract right now.
At least in the case of fotolia they claim that the images could not have been downloaded.

Quote from: Tuilay on January 16, 2009, 03:56
just curious ...
were you always this mad at FT and StockXpert?
or is it only now that you're going exclusive with IS that you're so pissed off?
did you make any sales with FT and StockXpert?
if so, were you this mad at them then?   

I never particularly liked fotolia because they rejected more of my images than any other site. I was pretty happy with StockXpert. I had decent sales at both places but lately a lot of my sales were subscription sales. I personally think that 30 cents for a large photo is not enough nowadays. That's why (and other reasons) I am going exclusive with IS.

I deleted my pictures and I wasn't warned anywhere that my images can be still showing up at other sites. My exclusivity application was denied because of this. Result is:
1.) I have to take care of it.
2.) I am losing the exclusivity bonus for sales that happened these days.
I think I have the right to be little aggravated.

The main reason why I posted this was not to bash the agencies. I wanted to figure out how to take care of it (party done) and find other potential sites that also did not delete my images (also done). Also, I think this thread will be beneficial for other people who want to go exclusive (with whatever site).

Quote from: abimages on January 15, 2009, 17:02
Were you also opted into subs at StockXpert? I am still getting sales from Photos.com & Jupiter with some files I deleted months ago.

This is why I LOVE this forum. It is truly an indispensable resource.

SURE ENOUGH, I found some of my files for sale at photos.com. I contacted both photos.com and stockxpert.com.

If anybody knows of any other sites please let me know.

Quote from: sharply_done on January 15, 2009, 15:55
Your image on pixmac is no longer there - maybe it's just that you didn't give them enough time.
Out of curiosity, how long did you wait between deleting your Fotolia images and applying to iStock?

I contacted both fotolia and Pixmac today and I guess they acted quickly because the files are gone. That's good.
As mentioned below, apparently the files were still in the system, but they could not have been downloaded because they ask for permission every time from fotolia. However, that doesn't really help me since iStock denied my application because of it.

I deleted all my files on Fotolia on Jan 10th (today is the 15th) so they did not remove it from Pixmac in 4 days. I am pretty sure that if I haven't contacted them, the pictures would be there for a while.
I honestly thought that waiting 4 days was plenty. Apparently not.

Quote from: leaf on January 15, 2009, 14:54
I would suggest trying to contact pixmac to get them to remove your portfolio from their end.

That is a good idea Leaf. I just contacted the support at Pixmac. Thank you.

Anybody else had a similar problem when trying to go exclusive at iStock? I just want to make sure that I don't get rejected again.