Well, I'd like to see them (H&F) leave as soon as possible, but since they are strangling the goose, they might not be able to find a buyer. I do wonder how long it would take to get things back on track if they did leave. The damage (for contributors) might be terminal.

I took a quick peek - is 20 pounds the standard price for anything - all sizes? What is your minimum file size? 300 dpi is sort of meaningless w/o some other dimensions listed.

Having seen many new sites come and go many here (myself included) are somewhat jaded about new sites and want some assurances that we won't be spending a lot of effort only to see the site fold or worse morph into something unacceptable like a free image site.

In any case, good luck - experience suggests you will need it or some very deep pockets.

Yeah, I was going to check to see how the searches I've disappeared for compared to the searches I've appeared in... But it didn't work. I'd rather they fix problem A first though.

I do agree that copyright info should be saved. If unaltered (slightly altered?) images are put on the web they should contain our copyright info along with a unique code showing that the image was purchased legally so we could all go after people using images illegally. 

Many of the suspected bogus uses I have found from my limited image searches it looks like a whole bunch of people ripped off one other web page. (this is based on repeated odd cropping). I suppose you could track that down if there were embedded codes in it, but you would want to be able to go after all but the original buyer.


The other large source of likely bogus uses I have seen are ones with the watermark or a poorly photoshop-removed watermark. Those are pretty easy to tell where it came from if you can read the watermark.

For a popular image selling on multiple sites, you have to assume that it is a legitimate use even if it might not be.

For me new files are not being displayed in popular and relevant searches. Only in newest. This explains why new files get much less sales. Doesn't make any sense to upload files until the problem is fixed. And probably will have to reupload new files after that.

It used to be that SS would index images every day or so. Until then new images were only visible in our ports. If they had a glitch where there was no update for a few days it would mean either a very nice boost or complete burial depending on if your image was indexed right before the glitch or not.  A year or so ago they went to a sort of continuous update for newest, but I think that the popular and relevant searches have always taken a bit longer to update. In any case they only update the sales stats once a day and until a new image has a sale it isn't going to have a very favorable placement in the regular searches.

It would be nice for them to figure out whatever the problem is and fix it once and for all. I am much less worried about images disappearing and reappearing only from our ports than something weirdly wrong and inconsistent with the search overall and different search placement when searching with and without vectors etc. etc.

I have had some sales of possibly buried images since this latest switch, and when searching on some of them they do have favorable placement, so I don't think that it has effected my overall sales much in the short term.

In any shift there are winners (files at the front of the search) and losers (files that aren't near the front). The fact that SS says this is a bug they are trying to fix and that it took good sellers and put them far behind relatively weak sellers (at least in the case of the one search I am familiar with) suggests that they will try to return this to some semblance of how it was. Hopefully for me my best seller doesn't completely lose it's place near the front of the search.

Personally I would love to see any of my images that get to the top of the search to stay there, but realistically I realize that a compromise of stability and mobility with the ability of good images to rise based on their merits is probably the best policy - maybe a tiny bit of positive feedback at first and then over time gradually increase the negative feedback so an image has to continue to increase sales to maintain a top position. A few years ago I think SS was leaning a bit too much towards new images and lately they have probably leaned a bit too much towards old images. This latest shift is just a weird IS best match esque change, so in general I don't approve. If they fix it soon then it probably won't make much of a long range difference other than giving a few images the chance to rise more than they would have otherwise. If it takes a long time (someone suggested it was linked to the problem of new images disappearing which has been going on for months), then it might permanently kill some best sellers which would be unfortunate. Since I only have one best seller that was hit by this it doesn't effect my overall sales all that much (maybe one a day - certainly nice, but not that great a percent of my overall sales to notice a huge drop off).

edited to fix typo

It would be interesting to see the results of really showing the same search to everyone - from Getty on down to photos.com, but without a better way of sorting out the prices it would most likely just frustrate the lower tier buyers and send a few of the upper tier buyers to the lower tiers.

You would think that they would know if you were a buyer or a seller when you logged in and send the survey accordingly.

Some of the questions do sort of give the hint that maybe TPTB have finally noticed that all is not well in the Gettyverse. Maybe it has gotten bad enough that even wringing the final 20% out of the independents wouldn't be enough to maintain profits.

AGAIN!  DO NOT SPIT ON THE HAND THAT FEED YOU AND YOUR KIDS! THINK ABOUT THE PUNISHMENT!

Can anyone translate this?

WOW. The one image I had at or near the top of the search order is gone (well at least as far as page 25). Curiously another image with 2 orders of magnitude less downloads was on page 13. I hope this didn't permanently kill my one reliable image. It almost seems like an IS best match shift.

A slight boost to newer images would be nice though.

For their last survey I just answered as if they meant selling instead of buying since the wording was a little vague. Mostly I just listed about 5 things they could do at the end when they had a space you could actually type in.

Maybe in a few days they will say "based on buyer feedback we now realize that buyers want more expensive images..."

One potential downside of giving Tyler people's real identities is if the site gets hacked - unlikely someone would hack the site to get that, but it is a possibility.

I see no reason to pull a port merely because sales are slow, especially if the minimum payout is also fairly small. It doesn't take much work to request a payout once a year. Then if things pick up you can upload the backlog or maybe you can get onto the bridge to bigstock and have your stuff from SS moved there for no extra effort on your part. Now if the site is doing unsavory things that is a different story.

For me BS is slow but pretty steady. I made more on Veer in one day this month than many months on BS. Even without the Veer Dash for cash I make more than double the BS earnings on Veer.

As far as sales if you stop uploading I think that SS has switched their matches a bit so that it doesn't favor new files quite as much. That means if you have steady sellers there, they will probably continue to sell for a while. How well sales would continue if you stopped uploading has always been a bit of a wildcard for microstock. It is heartening to think that they might continue for some time. Many of my older images that I doubt would be accepted now continue to sell.

I don't think requiring true identity would be all that good of an idea, especially with at least one agency publicly stating they would take retribution for things said in public fora.

That said, some of the spats and arguments are pretty annoying and childish, and people coming back repeatedly with different usernames is annoying.

A side forum for only people that are verified might be nice though.

Generally I'd advocate for a pretty loose hand on the reigns here, but when people start insulting each other directly as opposed to disagreeing with what they said, it just gets messy, so go ahead and delete that stuff. Sometimes it might be tongue in cheek or meant as a joke, but that can be hard to convey with text. Just because you put a smiley after an insult doesn't mean it is ok.

I do appreciate this forum and most of its members. Over time there are some I have come to value their opinions more than others. Some people just seem to talk a big game but don't really follow it up. Maybe they actually do have a good game, but since they don't follow it up their posts don't carry as much weight for me. When a discussion descends into a pissing contest I usually either grab the popcorn or stop reading.