Hi guys

I've had a few hard drive issues and I'm missing some high res photos.

Which stock site let you download your own photos in high res?

Thanks!

Can anyone upload?

I'm trying to upload via the website since FTP isn't working. But after 30 mins it still says uploading 1 of100.

Any insight? Thx!

So if I submit 100/wk starting today that means I can only upload 900 photos out of the 3000 I have. I guess I have a few hours work to choose the best 900 so that most can get accepted. If I can get 800 approved I'll be happy with the work/reward ratio. And hopefully sales kicking in the fall.

And what's up if the FTP? No worky...

I can't login anymore and I wanted to request my final payment. I wonder if my money will be transfered over to my IS account?

What about Canadians??? I pay my taxes on my US income here in Canada. Now I get double taxed?

mine is http://twitter.com/yanikphoto

Yeah baby! 5 ELs in one day! Thx SS!

Hey guys

I'm currently getting emails from istock informing me that image#xxxxxxx has been deleted because the new guidelines now require a model release for this file.

Why not give us a chance to upload a model release? Maybe a 48 hour window?

The worst part is that since the image has been deleted, I don't know which one it is! Very frustrating.

Your thoughts?

I can only say what I think but I also think that many top contributors might agree... if you want to attract top contributors, you'll need to invest in them. We need a risk to reward ratio that makes good business sense. We invest our product and uploading time. What will you invest? For me, I would need financial compensation to invest with a new agency. A bit like what Fotolia did when they started.

With many startups falling like flies, our risk to reward ratio is too high to warrant our investment without a financial risk from the new agency.

to me it's the big 4... in order

IS
FT
SS
DT

then

SX

then the rest

It Seems to be down again.....

Congrats Steve! oooooooo baby pikchers sell well..

Go for it! 

Thanks for creating the team Leaf! I just found out about it and joined it.

Things seem back to Sept/Oct sales. Gooooooooooooood. Me happy. 

Gosh darnit.... I wanted to go but I'll be shooting a SPA book in Cancun in a humble resort. http://paraisodelabonita.com/

Who says they're from IS? 

NO changes from November here. Just checked the best match and my files are still in oblivion.... no changes...

For those of you who don't know me and just to put you into perspective, I'm a full-time photographer and 75% of my income comes from microstock earnings. I'm no Yuri Arcus or Lise Gagné, but I make more in microstock earnings than my previous full-time job as a school director.

OK. I've waited a complete month of new best match before commenting on IS's new best match search and how it has impacted my sales. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't a glitch. It's been roughly 6 weeks since the new best match search was implemented and even during the first week my sales dropped dramatically.



As you can see from my graph, my November sales have, on average, been cut in half. For me, this represents sales that I was making back in 2005, 3 years ago. Before the October implementation of the best match my sales were steadily going up and October looked to be close to my September revenues. Then October became my worst month of the year.

What does this all mean for me (and possibly other high-ranking non-exclusives)? Let me give you my  thoughts on the future of IS for non-exclusives.

I personally think that my sales will continue to slowly decline (from it's November low) even though I continue to upload regularly because:

1- My acceptance ratio has declined from 80% to 50% because of non logical, subjective image evaluations such as: chromatic aberrations, artifacting, and irrelevant keywords. I don't need to go into details here since all of these have been talked about ad nosium here in the forums. Less acceptance means less images, not to mention that we already have a small upload limit compared to exclusives (which is fine).

2- The new best match search sends my top selling images that used to show up in the top 3 pages into non-existence by placing them on pages 97 or farther still. This means declines in sales from those high earners which means they will also move back in pages from "download" search. In th long term those images will vanish from the eyes of buyers. To go even farther still, non-exclusives will become less known since their images won't be at the top anymore so even rare search by "contributor" will become obsolete. The only search that could help us is "age" for our newer images but that will be short lived because of high volume.

3- New non-exclusive images are pushed back just like top images so they'll never (or rarely) get the sales to take off. I already noticed this happening.

In 2008, IS went from #1 to #2 when I made Emerald at FT (no fault to IS). In November it dropped to #3 behind SS (where sales are stagnant but not declining) and barely beat DT by a few $$. I predict that it'll be #4 in December. It won't take long for it to fall to #5 behind StockXpert since my sales at StockXpert are healthy and keep on increasing. It might take a few years for IS to fall behind BS and 123RF but it will happen if best match stays at it is.

I predict that many non-exclusives who currently make at least $100/month at IS will stop uploading once they can't get a regular monthly income. They will focus on agencies that do. I know that if this happens to me in a few years, I'll stop uploading since it make perfect business sense.

What does that mean for IS? I don't know. There are 1000s of possible scenarios. And my thoughts are purely based on current events.

Just thought I would share my view..... what do you think?

Yanik

Since this is my last 2008 payout, I did my Year-to-Date (YDT) %.

FT :  33% (up 325% YTD & BME) 
SS:  19% (up 24% YTD)
IS:    14% (down 40% YTD, down 49% since sept. worst month since 2005) 
DT:   14% (up 34% YTD)
StockXpert: 9% (up 98% YTD & BME) 
123   4% (up 21% YTD)
BS     4% (down 12% YTD)

WOW! I never even noticed that column!! Thanks for pointing that out! 

I checked and luckily they do seem to have "grandfathered" people in. I would have died loosing my emerald status and all my files going back to 1 credit! Especially with the Istock fiasco. That would have been a double whammy! I guess I'll be hitting saphire in about 5 years!

Like Lisafx, my income is up roughly 80% since I hit emerald. Since that time FT has been my #1 earner and I don't think this with change anytime soon with the whole IS fiasco. 

DT might beat IS for me this month!!!!! And that's no easy feat! IS went from #2 to #4 in 1 month!

I've also stopped uploading to Crestock this summer because for too many sub sales... and sales in general. Maybe if they met the rest of the market for contributor commisions on subs I would be inclined to upload again.... maybe.