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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
5826
« on: December 05, 2011, 11:51 »
I think I have your 7 years beat!
I checked this morning ad we're now up to a grand total of 10 images of mine transferred to Thinkstock/photos.com. That's up from 9 at the end of last week and 8 at the beginning of the week.
At this result, I won't see the whole portfolio of 2500 for about 24 years!
5827
« on: December 05, 2011, 10:31 »
I checked this morning ad we're now up to a grand total of 10 images of mine transferred to Thinkstock/photos.com. That's up from 9 at the end of last week and 8 at the beginning of the week.
At this result, I won't see the whole portfolio of 2500 for about 24 years!
5828
« on: December 05, 2011, 10:26 »
i can't see how the rise of SS and the fall of IS are good news.
this trend is only showing that buyers are more and more into finding the cheapest price and the cheapest deals.
...
But experience at SS isn't showing that at all. I made more at SS in November than I had before I went exclusive at iStock - higher RPD and higher total - because their prices are higher than they were. It's the on demand and single sales that are bring the numbers up. It is the other sites that have hiked prices more - perhaps too high and in ways that buyers find irritatingly confusing - that has helped funnel business to SS. In the current economy, it doesn't surprise me that buyers are looking for value.
5829
« on: December 05, 2011, 10:20 »
Things are pathetically slow at iStock today, but I think the my_uploads updates are close to real time. After getting first child to school bus I checked in on stock sites and after reading your post went back to iStock to see the time on the one overnight sale's time. There was a second sale with a reported time of a few minutes earlier (after my first check), so although two sales for Asia and Europe's Monday is horrible, I think it's real time horrible 
5830
« on: December 04, 2011, 18:55 »
It depends on what you have for holiday images, I have generally seen December as #3 or #4 for the year (November is always #1; March or October #2, September or December #3). I do a fair bit of Christmas business.
5831
« on: December 04, 2011, 11:44 »
No, it's not
5832
« on: December 04, 2011, 11:42 »
Glad you finally got your cash, although I'm not at all surprised that it was so difficult. Given FT's stated (and proven) intention of retaliation against anyone who speaks ill of them anywhere on the net, they know that most people with negative stories will keep quiet unless they've already left the site. I'm wondering if the type of "no negative news about me" contract this dentist had patients sign will show up in artist supply agreements with our agencies
5833
« on: December 03, 2011, 11:46 »
If you're talking about the my_uploads page, I still see Nov 26 and earlier when sorting by last download. If I go to the user_view page (my profile) the stats there show two bars for December 1st and 2nd. However my $$ total for the start of December is half that of my total at SS, so I'll hold the champagne for now
5834
« on: December 02, 2011, 18:26 »
I used Sean's GreaseMonkey script to check my November downloads, and unless iStock has missed some sales from the chart on the user_view page (mine shows a bar for every day in November), Sean's script shows about $20 and 20 sales more than the iStock bar charts show. I'll wait until iStock says they've got everything up to date and see if it changes before contacting contributor relations about this. Many thanks to Sean for doing this. Some people in the iStock thread are suggesting that running this is loading iStock's servers, so they may ask him to take the script down at some point. If you've an interest in the data (which I imported into Excel to add the money and count the downloads) you might want to take a look sooner rather than later.
5835
« on: December 02, 2011, 16:38 »
...and Veer might reject an image with "isolated" other than to mean "remote".
There are tens of thousands of isolated images on Veer with the isolated keyword
5836
« on: December 02, 2011, 12:57 »
As I'm in transition (as it were), I can't make some of the comparisons I'd like to, but here's some facts I've pulled out of my re-done earnings spreadsheet (the old one was beginning to look like one of those houses that's been added on to too many times and is in danger of falling over) November 2011 wasn't as good as Nov 2010 - 40% drop in income. Up 26% from October, so things are (in general if you don't count iStock) moving in the right direction. The good news (such as it is) is that my iStock downloads dropped 60% from Nov 2010 levels, so something made up the difference, primarily Shutterstock. Except for some nasty months at the end of 2008 (a best match shift that made my life miserable for a few months) I have to go back to December 2007 to find a download number as low as Nov 2011 at iStock. SS was my #1 earner for Nov 2011, beating iStock by 20%. IS was 33% of the month total and SS 40%. SS was up 60% over October 2011 where IS was down 5%. 123rf and DT both did well, at 12% and 6.5% of the total. Veer had an extended license sale which was great, but the temporary boost in their contribution to earnings is probably just that. For me, looking at the reports of golds and diamonds in the iStock stats threads with drops over Nov 2010 of 15% to 50% in income, I suspect I'd have had a big drop in income, possibly around the 40% I had as an independent, but this way I'm in the process of building up my income elsewhere, versus just hoping something good happens to turn IS around. So all in all I'm content - not happy, but cautiously optimistic that if IS does really hit the skids, I'm reasonably buffered from the worst effects.
5837
« on: December 01, 2011, 22:52 »
I've been with 31 sites since I started RF. To me. The one that has the less bells and whistles gets my 6200 Images. Take a 6 question "Test" why? Zip submission? 25%? Thumbnails? Capitalize certain words? Im sorry But I can't go through all my stuff that has no Problem anywhere else and change stuff for one site. It's just not cost effective for penny stock. If I was starting out? Probably But c-mon Guys. Keep it simple and clean FTP,Then add releases One at a time or hundreds By clicking on the ones that apply. I think sometimes sites get to carried away with OOOO we can do this and that. Clean,Simple and elegant is the way to get anyone you want. trust me.
Just My Opinion.
Submissions of photos do not require making thumbnails and you don't have to change any titles. The zip file is only for the application photos - everything else can be uploaded via FTP. I don't like the release system much, but as they don't mind taking a batch FTP'd to the photos folder with a collection of releases in the release folder (where some releases don't apply to some of the images) it's actually not as hard as it sounds. The big issue with it is that you can't check if you forgot something by looking at anything on the site. At any rate, I'm not campaigning, just pointing out that it's the info text that needs updating as it's misleading with respect to stock photos.
5838
« on: December 01, 2011, 15:58 »
I only uploaded Adobe RGB (my default color space) while I was exclusive. For the 4 years prior and since leaving, I convert to sRGB for upload and everywhere gets that, even iStock.
I don't think any site other than iStock (but I'm 99.9% certain that even if some others do, not all do) correctly handles generating sRGB previews from AdobeRGB uploads, even when your upload has an embedded profile (which it should).
While I was exclusive, thankfully not for the whole time, I fell into the foolish practice of using iStock CV terms in my keywording, so phrases like Residential Structure that no human would ever enter in a search, found themselves in my keywords instead of house, home, residence, etc.
I'm assuming all your keywords are in your files, not in Deep Meta.
I would keep phrases - such as New England, New Hampshire, outboard motor - which some sites (e.g. Shutterstock) support but others (e.g. Dreamstime) don't. However I would make sure that I have the stem words where applicable too - picnic basket, picnic, basket for example.
50 keywords is a max many places and the minimums are as low as 7, I believe.
Big Stock has a foolish 7 word minimum on Titles and descriptions, but I just deal with that ad hoc on the few occasions the only sensible title is too short rather than putting the "stuffing" into my file. What's in the file is there for the long haul, make that sensible and deal with site foibles (if you even bother uploading to BigStock; it's not performing all that well for me) when you need to. I think DT has a 5 word minimum.
PhotoDune won't allow numeric keywords. Some of the sites won't allow combinations they consider potentially dangerous - sexy and child for example - so if you do nudes or sexually explicit images you may need to edit.
5839
« on: December 01, 2011, 13:53 »
The slack I suggest cutting for sites is directly proportional to revenues generated by those sites Given how few of my files are live on PhotoDune, I'm impressed to see 3 sales in a week. Perhaps I'm a cheap date, but I thought I'd share my overall sense of encouraging signs to those ready to walk given the bugs and frustrations. Your mileage may vary (and if PD are buying my files to make me say nice things, buy more and I'll say even nicer ones 
5840
« on: December 01, 2011, 12:39 »
Seven months of lab tests and they failed to realize that the whole system would fail? I think it's a massive red flag that they need to look at their "laboratory" as a testing environment before they try any more big site upgrades - the lab is clearly not able to predict actual usage (and of course there'll be a few bugs with anything new, but not complete collapse).
This also totally avoids the question about why anyone gave them permission to shift infrastructure on the site during the busy season? Was it blind optimism that it'd just work so that made it OK? Were the decision makers aware of the risks of site downtime and went ahead anyway? On the face of it it seems completely insane.
I have to assume that some Getty initiative is behind this - getting on a common platform - and they just don't care about some lost sales given their objective (which they won't share with contributors). All I can say is that they must think it's something really good for them (which likely means equally bad for contributors) to be willing to take this kind of risk.
5841
« on: December 01, 2011, 12:15 »
I thought I'd go take a look at your site and am had some trouble finding the content license agreement. I found it at the end of the Membership Agreement - probably not the best way to organize your agreements.
I read through the Membership Agreement and it seems to contradict the front page in that it says that AYCS gets a commission of 45% on sales. If the contributor gets 75% as the home page says, then the buyer gets to pay 120% of the price to keep everyone happy?
There's also language in the membership agreement that says that AYCS will send an invoice for their commission to the "User" - I assume the contributor - which suggests that the user somehow takes the payment directly? There's also talk of partial payments - that seems insane in the world of microstock. I don't want to be dealing with payments or the buyers - that's what one uses an agency for.
The call for offers is something other sites have tried before, but so far all these schemes haven't worked well. People can do work in response to a "call" but there's no requirement for anyone to pay for anything, so it often ends with both parties pretty ticked off.
The content license includes rights - unlimited press run, for example - that would normally be an extended license at other microstock sites. In light of those terms, prices would have to be much higher, which seems not to work well for buyers who might just want to purchase for web use. It appears that a license to print for resale (an extended license at most other sites) requires contacting AYCS "for separate license and pricing" - meaning it's handled as a one-off?
There's some truly bizarre stuff in there, including from 5.b/ The Licensor warrants that: "The image(s) will be free from defects in material and workmanship for 30 days from the date of license" Pixels will start deteriorating after 30 days? What exactly would a defect in material be for a digital image - these aren't slides?
You need to get someone who is fluent in English to go over the site; it's riddled with incorrect usage and that just doesn't look professional.
I think you need to be a bit more clear about what sort of marketing you're planning to do for the site and its content. 75% (or 55% or whatever it is) is meaningless if there are no sales. If you're expecting the contributor to promote their own work then be up front about that.
Doesn't seem ready for prime time to me.
5842
« on: December 01, 2011, 02:25 »
To the best of my knowledge they have never done anything to compensate contributors for lost income, so I can't see why they'd start now. They're hell bent on cutting costs and don't care if contributors leave (the site or exclusivity); if you looked at this event from their viewpoint, what would they think they would gain by spending more money to say sorry to contributors?
5843
« on: December 01, 2011, 02:07 »
My November stats didn't update with sales from Wednesday. Noticed that my November totals have moved into December totals, despite not selling any images yet in December.
Is anyone else having problems?
What I see is my stats from this morning sometime in the December slot and updated stats (including today's sales) in November's row. I'm assuming the December row will get cleared out in a few hours
5844
« on: November 30, 2011, 21:25 »
They've upped the ante - 15% vs. 10% - I assume because the site's been out so long.
I really, really wish that when they give out "sorry" discounts it would come fully out of iStock's unreasonably large share of the gross and not mine as well. It's bad enough that I can't sell if the site is down but then when we can sell again, it'll be with some lowball royalty amounts.
I don't begrudge the buyers a discount at all; I just don't want to fund it when it is 100.0% iStock's fault.
5845
« on: November 30, 2011, 20:11 »
I've done my share of complaining, but I think you have to cut PhotoDune a little slack as they're sincerely trying to help people who encounter problems and generally offering reasonable workarounds. When I started with SS in 2004 Jon was still inspecting and they were just getting FTP up and running. It was a buggy mess for a little while but look how that turned out If you abandoned all sites with bugs or irritants, you'd give up on submitting anywhere. I only have 150 files online (got started early last week) and I've already made 2 sales, so for me, I have the incentive to keep working with them on whatever issues there are.
5846
« on: November 30, 2011, 20:02 »
@gostwyk
5847
« on: November 30, 2011, 19:34 »
With the version of the text that said it was 1979 again in English, we had what appears to be the original monster stuff in German. In French, in both cases, completely different text.
Google translate makes this of the French section: "t seems that we meet at this time a temporary problem, but we work hard to resolve it quickly. To wait, we want to offer you 10% off your next purchase of 50 or more credits, using the Coupon Code below." No 1979 and no bats in the belfry. Do they think the humor (and I use that word loosely) in English won't play well in France?
I detect a whiff of burning hair...
5848
« on: November 30, 2011, 16:53 »
I just tried to log in from my laptop and got the "whoops" screen after I clicked the button, but it did log me in anyway - was the "whoops" for the wretched "are you a buyer or signing up as a contributor" screen perhaps? Yes, I know I can answer it and make it go away, but I haven't.
At any rate, it was late morning here (Pacific Time) before I saw my balance change and after a reasonable Monday and OK Tuesday, it looks as if today's a total washout at IS. Unless there are sales but we're not seeing them.
How would we know? I realize there are some in the Help forum insisting that they can look at various iStock-generated screens and be certain they are getting accurate reports of sales, but that's just illogical daydreaming.
5849
« on: November 30, 2011, 16:07 »
... And who knows, perhaps the PP will be a barn buster and I'll make it up there
It's almost a six percent drop in what you get paid for each DL, of course.
When I see those 12 cent royalties (admitedly not all that often, although I only spot check every now and then), 28 cents per would be an increase
5850
« on: November 30, 2011, 16:05 »
.. SS is now going to be face to face with TS with the exact same content. The only differentiator will be price and TS is lower.
Not so. Take a look at any of the big independents and you'll see they have thousands more images on SS than on IS. Start with Yuri. On top of that there are the "rules" of iStok inspection which rule out so many things (and I'm not talking about quality here). SS doesn't follow the same rules.
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