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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
5926
« on: November 16, 2011, 17:41 »
If you have IPTC data embedded, uploading 1000 images on SS, DT and FT wouldn't take a day!
Rubbish!
5927
« on: November 16, 2011, 15:49 »
DT has this feature (albeit customer service has to do it for you). FT doesn't, but unless you've upset them, they may be willing to work with you.
5928
« on: November 16, 2011, 15:25 »
Just a note to anyone considering taking SS up on their offer: The opt out feature is great. Getting approved and doing some uploads to get a feel for SS's approval standards and desired subjects while still exclusive is an excellent idea.
One thing to consider is that you probably don't want to have a huge quantity of material uploaded and not for sale as I think it may affect the placement of your images in default (popularity) searches.
As such, while you can definitely smooth over the bumps, if you have a large-ish portfolio, you probably won't be able to flip the switch on day one of independence with all or most of your portfolio already approved on SS.
SS is very smart to promote this, but like most promotional materials, it makes things sound simpler than they really are.
And DT will disable your portfolio for you (support has to do it) so you can effectively do the same thing there).
5929
« on: November 16, 2011, 10:51 »
It's a false choice to suggest that your options for stock are landscape/nature/macro shots or people. There are tons of opportunities in staged still life shots for both business and lifestyle themes.
And just to reiterate what other people have said: don't try to find sites that will accept anything you chuck at them that's in focus and exposed correctly. If you want to sell your images (and if you don't, make a gallery somewhere and share it with friends) then focus on getting accepted at the top tier sites and building your portfolio.
If you like to shoot things that don't sell as stock, then stop trying to build a stock portfolio. There's nothing wrong with that.
5930
« on: November 15, 2011, 10:51 »
Photos+ prices went up the same way that regular exclusive files did - XXL from 25 to 27 and XXXL from 30 to 32. It's good that they kept those two in sync, but these little price hikes seem truly bizzare. Not only that they're doing them, and doing them under the radar (no announcement), but that they bumped one size group for Exclusive plus and a different one for Photos+/regular exclusive. Regular independent files had XXL go from 20 to 22 and XXXL from 25 to 27.
I'm assuming they're more worried about their own numbers than contributors' RC numbers and that they have some data that leads them to think there's the best chance of a boost from upping the prices on these sizes, but soaking more cash out of the buyers you have - versus getting more buyers or more volume from the same buyers - seems strange to me.
5931
« on: November 15, 2011, 02:04 »
...I think contributors being hit particularly hard are those that have gotten used to making sales off best sellers, who began early when growth was truly exponential from year to year. the landscape has changed, the collection has grown and it's far too competitive today to be riding on the success of so few files. no matter how good they may be, there are a lot of very good files these days.
And does that explain Sean's drops, nico_blue's, johnwoodcock, ericsphotography ... (from the iStock October sales thread)? People who are contributing regularly and delivering high quality stuff. While there clearly are some people who get hit when a best seller on which they're dependent gets whacked by a best match change, that isn't the explanation for the dismal October so many contributors had.
5932
« on: November 13, 2011, 18:56 »
Well 50% of $2 IS more than 15% of $6......
No, $6 photographer's commission is more than a $2 commission, but some people see it otherwise.
I assume this is all hypothetical as I don't recall any conversation like this on MSG. However, the missing piece in your hypothetical is what the license terms are for $6 vs. $2. If they're the same, there's no discussion, but if you sell very limited rights for $2 versus anything-and-everything rights for $6, the lower amount may actually be more. Print run, template uses, items for resale, etc. all can make a very big difference in what the price should be. As far as amazon and books, I think that they're in a different phase (courtship) with suppliers - where the micros were a few years ago. As soon as the business model is established and amazon's very successful at it, I wonder if the "success of the supplier" chit-chat will survive. It's the rare business that continues to behave decently once they have all the power in a relationship.
5933
« on: November 12, 2011, 21:07 »
I wouldn't say everything depends on luck, although that is an element (primarily on whether an image gets good placement in default search results). Image quality, variety and having subjects that are useful (and thus in demand) are the biggies. Without seeing your files it's impossible to say whether they're of subjects that might sell once or twice a year, or whether you should expect more sales volume.
I still don't have all my images up at 123rf (I returned to being an independent in June after 3 years as an iStock exclusive) but I get regular daily sales, although at nothing like the volume of SS.
5934
« on: November 11, 2011, 21:35 »
I have no idea what the whole picture at iStock looks like - and I don't think any contributors do. The people who do know don't talk about it.
What I would say regarding your comment that only a small fraction post in the forums is that while it's true some people don't bother, that has always been the case. In the past, those who posted in end-of-month threads had generally much more positive tales than those who have posted the last few months.
So while it's not impossible that the bad times have just happened to hit that small portion that posts and everyone else in the top 2% (diamonds and up) are doing great, it's hard to imagine a scenario in which that vocal group is the only one seeing a downturn.
The sky isn't falling because lots of people are buying stock images. Just not at iStock.
5935
« on: November 11, 2011, 20:49 »
I'll be the first to admit that 100% of my portfolio is ordinary. Pretty, not edgy; normal, not unusual; recognizable, predictable stuff. That hasn't stopped it from selling (and I would argue in many cases that's why it sells as stock).
It used to sell at iStock. It still does sell everywhere else. That old expression says when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not Zebras.
So, when you look at all of these snippets of data, you could conclude that buyers are morons for buying my boring ordinary images in large-ish quantities. The moron buyers have left iStock and the remaining discerning folk don't care for my chaff, but prefer the fine and un-ordinary content that the exclusive bronzes (those reporting BMEs in the October stats thread) are supplying.
Or, you could alternatively conclude that iStock's multitude of software train wrecks and policy changes in the last year or so have resulted in fewer buyers than before, and that the various futile efforts to fix this by playing with best match result in a wildly uneven sales performance from day to day and week to week.
5936
« on: November 11, 2011, 14:22 »
I don't think it invalidates the point, but I did check today and yesterday's sales total was actually 3, courtesy of one more sale at 11:27pm!!
5937
« on: November 10, 2011, 19:26 »
So iStock ends the day (I know it's not midnight Calgary time yet, but this is always quiet time) with a grand total of two downloads - what I saw today at BigStock, not known for its high traffic! That would be a slow weekend day...
Utterly pathetic.
5938
« on: November 10, 2011, 10:05 »
... It's like there are no sales happening from Europe and Australia.
When I check in the morning Pacific Time, there's usually a decent chunk of sales from Europe and Australia and Asia. This morning on iStock there was nothing - zero. I now have a grand total of 2 sales, I assume from the US East Coast. If it were a holiday, I think I'd see SS down, but I don't, so I guess it's just IS losing ground in certain markets
And again this morning when I checked - 0 on IS, 18 on SS and 5 on DT. I'm sure that there will be some sales on IS later, but this really does look some sort of change for sales outside the US at iStock.
5939
« on: November 09, 2011, 20:20 »
Masterfile bought them over a year ago, didn't they? Back when that happened I started uploading there again in hopes sales would pick up. If anything they got worse. Sales at Crestock are the worst of the 14 sites I contribute to.
These changes look positive, and are quite welcome after the royalty cuts elsewhere. I will wait to see if sales improve before I get too excited though.
What's new is that they're going to put Crestock content onto the Masterfile site - I thought that was something they had not previously done, but if I'm wrong, being 14/14 on Lisa's list of sites isn't much of a recommendation 
5940
« on: November 09, 2011, 16:46 »
I never contributed to Crestock (not even prior to exclusivity in 2008), but if Masterfile has any reasonable sales traffic, this might make putting my portfolio there an interesting possibility.
Does anyone have any knowledge of Masterfile and an opinion of how likely this is to revive the moribund Crestock?
5941
« on: November 09, 2011, 11:17 »
After posting on the DT forums about this issue, Serban asked for the ticket number for the unanswered support message from 2 weeks ago about my unusual sub sale. He followed up with me and said that when someone asked for clarification before answering, the ticket fell through the cracks when the answer didn't come. He apologized and acknowledged it shouldn't have happened.
I suggested that it'd be good to have an internal flagging system for tickets that aren't answered after a certain time to catch such slip ups, but that in general I've had good experience with DT support.
Edited to add that I received a very apologetic and straightforward e-mail from the customer service rep who got the original support ticket. I've often felt that how an organization handles mistakes is in some ways more important than the fact that they occasionally make them. I'm really impressed with DT's handling of this goof. They were forthright and apologetic. Very refreshing and commendable.
5942
« on: November 09, 2011, 10:45 »
As a contributor still on the fence about whether I should add PhotoDune to the sites I upload to, this thread is not at all encouraging.
First is a rather odd approval process - a ZIP file of images? Of course I know how to do that, but does PhotoDune realize that no other agency out there does it this way? Then there's the bugs in the system - and I know that all software has bugs, but when the contributor acceptance process isn't even working, that first impressions count saying comes to mind.
Then I read the thread about FTP problems, and although there is one person at the end who had a problem free experience, the description there of having to place images in one folder, model releases in another, etc. sounded seriously in need of work. Someone at PhotoDune should become a SS contributor and use their upload process to see how to do it.
Even if I got my head around the low EL prices issue, is this site really worth uploading to?
5943
« on: November 09, 2011, 10:12 »
For those who see slower than expected sales at SS, do you have Christmas images? I have been having a good week at SS so far and there's a ton of Christmas stuff in the mix.
5944
« on: November 08, 2011, 20:23 »
If I get his meaning correctly, he's saying that it was supposed to work this way from the beginning, but it didn't. A bug/mistake was recently corrected which means they now take the cut form our royalties.
5945
« on: November 08, 2011, 14:05 »
if things are so great as an independent, why all the effort to convince exclusives that we're willfully walking the plank? ...
No one makes any initial effort to convince exclusives of anything, certainly not here. What happens when an exclusive starts making claims about how much better off independents would be as exclusives, is those with some data comment on or refute those claims. And as far as sales growth goes, you have a relatively very large portfolio - bigger than lisafx or gostwyk and triple the size of mine. The one thing you won't/can't know is how much better that might be doing (a) elsewhere or (b) at iStock if they hadn't taken a dump on contributors and buyers. The decision to stick with iStock isn't of any concern to anyone other than you. But expect pushback when exclusives make inaccurate comments about the outside world.
5946
« on: November 08, 2011, 12:02 »
I think the thing that pi33es me off the most is the "we probably forgot" to announce it. He either announced it and can point to where that happened, or didn't.
As I posted on their forums, there's also my unanswered support ticket from October 25th - two weeks to tell me a simple piece of information?
They need to spell out this latest takeback from an agency on their page with all the royalty amounts so it's transparent.
The shame about this is that it does appear to be a small minority of subscription sales that are at the reduced rate. So they lose trust by being so slow to own up to this change over something that would have been fairly easy to swallow had they just been straightforward about it.
5947
« on: November 08, 2011, 11:15 »
Jsnover, I just posted a message in the "Tank" thread. Yesterday I had a bad morning and nil early afternoon. But the DLs picked up in late afternoon and evening. I wonder if they delayed posting new DLs.
Not according to the time stamps on the sales. I'm assuming that those times are when the sale actually occurred, but obviously I have no way to know how that whole mechanism works.
5948
« on: November 08, 2011, 10:45 »
... It's like there are no sales happening from Europe and Australia.
When I check in the morning Pacific Time, there's usually a decent chunk of sales from Europe and Australia and Asia. This morning on iStock there was nothing - zero. I now have a grand total of 2 sales, I assume from the US East Coast. If it were a holiday, I think I'd see SS down, but I don't, so I guess it's just IS losing ground in certain markets
5949
« on: November 08, 2011, 10:25 »
Oh, you have to love the independent group think on here. SS pays higher commissions? ...
How about a bit of data from an independent. Yesterday I made more than twice the money on SS that I did on iStock. No ELs at either site. The on demand and singles sales really bring the SS returns per download up, not to mention that if you get a lot of those wretched discounted credits (where the buyer paid around 50 cents) the returns at iStock really look weak. This isn't group think. This is just the way it is right now.
5950
« on: November 07, 2011, 19:10 »
I would generally discourage trying to game the system with resubmissions. If you resubmit - at SS and DT there's a field where you can put a note for the reviewer; I wish all sites did this - make sure the file is different or there's some type of note explaining why you want the file looked at again. Sites are not always consistent month to month (or weekday to weekend) - inspection systems may have guidelines, but there's a lot of judgment calls made by people as well. I've found 123rf and Stockfresh to be the most conservative about requiring property releases for things shot from a street or other public place. Not talking about famous buildings with famous architects, but things which a few years ago would have been accepted by all agencies without question. As they make more money, the agencies get more risk averse. For the most part I don't mind as long as I can get a clear picture of each agency's foibles so I can work around them. I don't remember hearing about any legal action taken against any microstock agency or photographer over a property release issue, but I wouldn't want to be the first
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