What are content review times normally like right now on Alamy?

I just setup a new computer, installed Deepmeta, and I would like to copy over all my Deepmeta data from the old computer to the new computer. I realize I could just download the data again directly from iStock, but a lot of the data in my existing Deepmeta install on the old computer contains file data no longer available from iStock, which I think is some data prior to 2017 which at one time might have been referred to as 2.0 data, but not certain. But I believe the only way to get all my data that I have now is to physically copy it over.

I am sure this question has been asked and answered many times, but I am not sure where to look for the information. So if anyone can please provide me the steps for copying my Deepmeta data from the old computer to the new computer that would be great. Thank you.

Quote from: X9D7CE84A2B5Y on July 20, 2016, 22:10

Quote from: Reckless on July 20, 2016, 21:53

I would like to keep my port intact until I see how it is affected by the changes. If at that time I am dissatisfied I will close my account. I don't see that option in the poll.

Thank you. Just added.

Thanks for adding that option.   I already stopped uploading a couple of years ago.  They are now a much smaller fraction of my earnings.   I can afford to wait to see what happens.  If they finally put indie content on the Getty site, I might see an earnings increase.  Not hopeful, but curious to see what happens.   If it's all bad, I'll pull the plug entirely.

Your welcome. According to the 75 poll results so far it seems the majority of people are not planning to change anything on their contributor accounts. I am kind of surprised seeing that so many people in the other thread stated they had either already deactivated all their files and/or closed their contributor accounts based upon the July 14th announcement. Perhaps many of those people have not cast their vote in this poll yet.

You may get iStock admins who lurk in this forum voting dubiously so they can sway and/or see the poll results. You may also get trolls placing fake votes to try and sway the results as well. Or other members placing votes who are not iStock contributors, just because they are curios to see the poll results.

Thank you and agreed. Like anything else, there will always be bad apples in a bushel. We can only hope though that people will act in good faith. And I would say we probably have more good apples on this forum than bad ones.

3 new voting options in total just added to the end of the poll.

If you are an iStock Contributor, please cast your vote in this poll.

Yup, sadly it appears to be gone. No more lightbox linking now. What a shame. I also don't think buyers can see how many times a file has been downloaded anymore. Descriptions no longer seem to show on image closeup pages anymore either. I guess images only will require a title now when submitting.

Quote from: X9D7CE84A2B5Y on June 07, 2016, 06:10

Quote from: Zerkalo on June 07, 2016, 05:01

Quote from: Mantis on June 04, 2016, 14:35

Quote from: X9D7CE84A2B5Y on June 04, 2016, 14:05

Quote from: PixelBytes on June 04, 2016, 13:52

So far looks like the extreme drops have hit both indies and exclusives pretty hard.

True, but what is very interesting so far (as of this moment) is that 6 indies have voted to say that they have seen no drop in income at all (which is amazing in itself) whereas not one exclusive has voted to say they have had no drop in income.

So far, every exclusive who has voted has had some sort of drop in income and I think we can assume that exclusives are also more inclined to add new content to the site on a regular basis versus independents who may not upload to iStock as regularly since they are presumably contributing to multiple sites and less focused on iStock itself than exclusives are.

The one thing I can say is that if things were the way they should be for exclusives, then shouldn't those 2 figures actually be in complete reverse?

Some may have started doing video to offset image income declines.  So while they may have serious declines in images, they make it up with video.  Just a theory.

I am an example of this. Exclusive on both stills and video. Last month was my BME (previous one was March 2016) on total iStock income. I am submitting more video since last 2 years. The GI income from mirrored stills/videos is balancing and even improving a lot recently.

We're talking about 4-digit numbers by the way. Just to give you an impression.

Thank you for the data. Two questions please:

1 - What year did you first start uploading to iStock as an exclusive? Was it around 2010?
2 - Have you continued to upload regularly since you became exclusive with iStock?

1- Yes, I started in January 2010.
2- Yes, I am not the biggest uploader but I can say that it's been regular without any long breaks.

Great, thank you. So it is really the GI sales from both stills and video you feel which has increased your income and provided the BME recently?

Also, have you seen an overall drop in income though on stills on the iStock site since 2012?

Quote from: X9D7CE84A2B5Y on June 06, 2016, 06:10

Now that we have had 93 votes on this poll, we have 20 independents saying their income hasn't gone down at all since 2012 and yet only 3 exclusives who say there income hasn't gone down over the same period of time.

For me, this is one of the most important aspects of the poll results so far. Yes, as many people have pointed out, there might be some discrepancies, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies on how the various contributors who voted have calculated their percentage of drops. But I think the issue of whether or not you have had a drop since 2012 in income or not is a pretty cut and dry matter.

Another thing I noticed over the last 18 months is how the best match on iStock hasn't really changed much at all. And what the best match mainly has been driving for the last 1.5 years is the newer content uploaded by exclusives and independents, plus some of the older stuff put up by exclusives which hasn't sold much in the past.

Seemingly, exclusives are no longer investing as much as they did in the past to create their new content, knowing that iStock has turned mainly into a low-cost subscription priced site. This means that the older exclusive content is probably much better quality than the newer exclusive content, if in fact many of the exclusives have even continued to upload at all. The current best match algorithm is also not showing the older and best selling exclusive content at the top of the search results, which results in minimal sales to exclusives of their high quality best sellers from the past that they spent more money to create.

So what does this all really mean for contributors?

In my opinion it means that iStock is discouraging buyers from easily finding the more expensive, high quality exclusive content and instead putting a mix of new, lower quality and lower cost indy content, with some older, poorer selling exclusive content which isn't going to interest buyers much anyway. And when the buyers see mainly a mix of lower quality pictures from the indies and exclusives together, they probably buy more of the indy stuff because quality of the two groups will be about equal and yet the indy stuff sells for only 1/3 the price.

I am not saying iStock is necessarily doing this consciously to make more money because of the fact they have a lower payout on the indy stuff. But maybe they are truly trying to promote the older content that hasn't sold much yet and to give the new stuff a bigger chance too.

But if buyers are mainly buying the cheaper priced indy pictures, rather than the higher cost exclusive pictures, it means the indys might not be seeing a drop income and the exclusives could be seeing huge drops of over 50% in income as the poll also has also shown us with 24 exclusives saying their income has fallen by 50% or more and only 14 independents saying their income has dropped as much too.

I don't know how you're coming to these conclusions.  As I read the poll, the indies that lost 50% or more are the largest group.

Yes, largest group, but similar in size to the number of indies who didn't lose anything. You now have 24 independents saying their income hasn't gone down at all since 2012. Second largest group. Yet only 3 exclusives say that their income hasn't gone down over the same period of time. Those 3 exclusives are one of the smallest groups and is only 10% of the number of indies who haven't lost any income. Simple math.

Quote from: X9D7CE84A2B5Y on June 06, 2016, 06:52

The poll results do not show that anyone who voted has had an increase in income. It also doesn't give any indication of the size of their portfolios or that their portfolios have increased in size since 2012 for the people who voted. What data is your conclusions based upon?

Sorry, I meant "hasn't dropped", they could mean "stayed exactly the same to the cent", but I assumed increased.

My conclusion is based upon there not being any exclusives in 2012 with portfolios below a certain threshold, the threshold you need/ needed to pass to become exclusive and the ease of growing that portfolio in percentage terms compared to larger portfolios. I am basing that on how percentages work.

With the 2 new voting options I added, perhaps we will get some feedback from people who have seen at least a 10% increase in income since 2012.

Mine dropped 100% 

I'll add an option for 100% drop on the next poll

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on June 06, 2016, 06:47

Quote from: X9D7CE84A2B5Y on June 06, 2016, 06:10

Now that we have had 93 votes on this poll, we have 20 independents saying their income hasn't gone down at all since 2012 and yet only 3 exclusives who say there income hasn't gone down over the same period of time.

For me, this is one of the most important aspects of the poll results so far. Yes, as many people have pointed out, there might be some discrepancies, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies on how the various contributors who voted have calculated their percentage of drops. But I think the issue of whether or not you have had a drop since 2012 in income or not is a pretty cut and dry matter.
....

Not really. There's a minimum sales threshold to reach to become exclusive on IS. The people who's income has increased are the ones who had very small portfolios in 2012, in other words much more likely to be independents.

Yes, statistically these polls have all sorts of caveats - they're from a self-selected group, the answers are unverifiable, they aren't corrected for increases in the numbers of contributors and images, size of portfolio, level of expertise or activity and no doubt lots of other things.

They're fun, but I wouldn't go drawing any far reaching conclusions based on them... if you are thinking of dropping exclusivity (or indeed going exclusive), base it on your own figures and aims, not what anyone else might think is best!

All agreed. But when I put up this poll I had some theories as to why my own income on iStock has dropped so significantly. Yes, the poll results may be flawed for all the reasons you mentioned, but so far the poll results have matched my theories. Pure coincidence? Maybe, maybe not.