recently one of my photos have been approved on istock but they said that the following keywords are not fully relevant to the subject: {[Joy,  Day,  Copy Space,  20-24 Years,  25-29 Years]}
This is the file: http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=7831720

Maybe they're right....actually the model looks sad, this photo has been shot at night, there is no room to write a message or insert objects, and of course the model  is 50 years old....but she just came back from a spa and looks younger!! 

I think I should go for exclusivity....my doctor said it will help me to have good sight.....

Best,
diego

All the removed words were clearly innapropiated. Abouyt the model's age, when in doubt, inspectors just have to look at the model relase, where there's the model's date of birth.

Yes, there is a double standard, but at the same time I would expect that someone with 37,000 dls should have a much lower bar to hop over and would have a stronger urge to self-edit.  Many times I see IOTW and I think I wouldn't have even dared to submit that.  I can't get anything approved that I think is pretty good, let alone stuff that I think is exposed wrong or fringed or just ugly.

It really should have been rejected for keywords

Tree:  there is no tree in the photo, only 2 branches and some leaves
Maple tree:  above
baby girls and Little girls:  there is only one child
baby girls, little girls, female :  redundant, the sex of the child is unidentifyable
cute:  what is cute?  The leaves?  There is no cuteness in this photo
offspring:  no relevance to photo

There, now my karma is all screwed up for being mean, but seriously....   anyhow, the shot has been killed with the views to dls we have artificially caused by looking at it.

In my opinion, keywords are correct.

Mapple tree: there's a mapple tree in the photo, as told by the leaves; to leave "tree" and "mapple tree" just for root to peak trees wouldn't be make sense.

baby girls and little girls disambiguate the same with singular that with plural.

The "redundant terms" are not incorrect at all. One buyer looks with "little girls", another with "children" and "female". Redundancy is not bad keywording, if the term reflect what is in the photo.

The kid is cute. Tha't's subjective and  is my opinion, although yours is different.

"offspring" maybe is stretched, but then again, if a buyer is looking for a tree with green leaves, or for a child in spring/summers clothes can easely use this word.


 

Let us see your perfect photos to judge, ichiro.-

Oh come on, thats a stupid argument.   Unfortunately its arguments like that which upset me because "oh blah blah blah you can't do better"



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"Garbage", "Stupid".... Please, go on. Im'm sure that you still have a lot more of polite nouns and adjectives.

istock is still in a big slump during the busiest time of the year.  I am having a great month on most of the other sites.  Perhaps it isn't a bad thing if the buyers leave istock, as I only make 20% commission there.

Yes, probably is better to got 30-35 c. for an XXL suscription elsewhere than 4 dollars at istock...

(BTW, going for MBE there)

If you don't understand the point about uniqueness in a market that offers almost exactly the same pics everywhere, I'll just add that I disagree.

And, well, the fact is that anybody can have anything both ways. It's a choice.

I like the Alamy way of doing it because it is based on precise algorithm and criteria and Alamy provide very useful tools to analyse your own ranking and thus imrove your keywords. And the whole thing sounds logical to me.

Concerning IS new best match, whatever the criteria or result, I cannot see any good explanation to the fact that an almost blue flame photo (i.e. which buyers do like a lot) which is ranked #3 when sorting on number of download is ranked when using best match after an older photo with 7 downloads... but from an exclusive photographer.

There are a variety of factors in this result: age (results ordering by dowloads last years to change, people gets more or less the same results there than six months ago; that would create a boring and repetiive best match result), dls/month, ratings, etc.

On the other hand, pushing exclusives carries to the front the photos that any other agency has. That's good for the customers and for the agency. An then, for exclusives. After reading in forums like this how much are doing many of you (as stated by you) independents on others sites, if istock wan to retain their exclusive unique strength, probably the extra comission and other little perks are not enough.
Losing independants would be bad, but losing exclusives would be even worse. After all, there's a clear surplus of new photographer's and lost independants woukld make room for new ones.

Weren't Marseilles and Buenos Aires exclusive only events?

Yes, they were. Actually, last year, all except Malta, that was a kind of 'Lypse and vacation combined.

My two best-sellers are one in the first page, the other on the last. Almost iddentical dl/views ratio, uploaded with a month of diference time ago...
What people forgets it's that with all probability best match always include a random percentage, to diffcult reverse engineering.
That said--- I think this best match isn't so bad at all.

I don't really thing that any new "me too" site can work if not backed by a really heavy invstment. Think of LuckyOliver, gimmestock, and scores more of vanished or semi-vanished sites. Having "better content" it's not a new idea, and then, you would need a lot of "better content", at least one million images.
Last great ideas that I remember at the microstock market are the concept of microstock itself, by istock, and appliying the subscription model at this idea, by Shutterstock.

Quote from: loop on November 06, 2008, 12:57

The difference is that ther can't get this image elsewhere. Just at istock.

..and the little plus of knowing exactly how many times has been bought (and so probably used) this pic. There's no way to know when the image is spread at five or ten sites.

Most people sell with the other sites before becoming exclusive, so they don't necessarily know exactly how many times an image has been bought before.

That just applies to a small nuber of old images in this members portfolio. Easy to tell.

Hi Loop,

 It is very hard for those of us without the numbers and info to be able to be sure what tomorrow will bring for sure I can only speculate from my own personal experience as we all do. But what you say is I would imagine what Getty would love to have happen. All the other Micros falling apart until they sell out to Getty or just die. To have total control of the stock industry has been their plan for years, they are closer than ever before.

 Just offering that this industry can change over night I have seen it happen for years and years. I have carried one basket of eggs before, I tripped and broke a lot of them. It took my chickens a long time to get my revenue back.

 Don't fear the future just keep talking about it ya'll

Peace,
AVAVA

Don't have fear... and I think that nobody will destroy his RM and Macro RF wealth just to take control of something that dosen't give so much and that, anyway, they already have hald controlled (IS, Photos com StockXpert) today.
And... talking of eggs and baskets... if living just from photography it almost doesn't mind if you are exclusive at istock or not. The clever way is to broad the spectrum to other photography fields and opportunities not related with any kind of stock photography.

Uber f5 just suggests next proggrammed istockalypse in Berlin.

If you need a sure answer, don't hesitate to write to support (mark "Contributor relations" and you'll probably have a faster answer). Ah... and don't forget to post what you have larned when getting the answer!