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Messages - ShadySue
14027
« on: March 07, 2011, 15:32 »
14028
« on: March 07, 2011, 13:52 »
One IS contributor has reported PP sales of over $300 for January, with over 750 dls.
I think you'll find Shank-ali is not actually being truthful or indeed means to be taken seriously. It's what he does ...
Absolutely, it's the UK sense of humour, somewhere between irony and sarcasm: not meant to be taken seriously.
14029
« on: March 07, 2011, 11:41 »
In Alamy, there are 3 options, RF, L and L protected, so my understanding is if you choose L, then you can upload the same photo to other agency as a RM as well, is it right?
And one more question, can I remove all logos of a RM photo to Alamy again as a RF photo?
I believe L and L protected are now, or are shortly about to be merged into RM. RM is not exclusive to Alamy, but if submitting over multiple sites, make sure your record keeping is precise and always up to date. For example, should a buyer wish exclusive rights on an image, you'd need to know whether the same image, or a sister/similar, has sold from another agency to the same market they're hoping to buy exclusive rights for. Your RM/RF question is interesting, but I don't know the answer. Hopefully someone else knows the answer, as opposed to speculating.
14030
« on: March 06, 2011, 16:41 »
Hi
I am new to Alamy, but as I understood it, QC takes about 37 hours (or that is what was stated when I submitted my images). My first 6 batches where processed quite fast (2 days), but I now have some that is going over 5 days now. Does this happen / Is this normal / Am I understanding the process time incorrectly?
It may be that your current batch has an image which has been rejected. The way their system works is that if one image in a batch fails, they all fail, and you don't get the notice for a week. I guess it's their version of tough love. If it's any consolation, I've presumably got a rejection too, as I've had five pics in the queue since last weekend. (Oh, should have said, Alamy don't inspect over the w/e.) I think there has been a time or two when it's taken about a week then got an acceptance, but I know someone who had images pass through this week in the usual time, so don't get your hopes up.
14031
« on: March 06, 2011, 12:08 »
Instead of wasting time with resubmissions and appeals, I've had better luck just submitting the same image again after a few weeks. I don't know if that's technically a violation of their system.
Not if it's marked re-submit allowed? We just picked a different route to the same destination. (personal opinion of course)
Yeah, sorry, but that's actually not accurate. Or, at least, it wasn't a couple of years ago when I got "caught" doing exactly that. I got an admonishment stating that the file had been uploaded as new when it should have been uploaded as a resubmittal (I don't even know how they could possibly have found out), and I was asked (ok, told!) not to do it again.
Since then, I've always used the resubmit link, even though that's extra work since it can't be done (yet?!) through DM. 
I'm not surprised. What would surprise me is to find out there's a way to 'sting' contributors that IS hasn'tthought of. But let me be devil's advocate and ask, regarding re-submission vs. just waiting and submitting as new: what the heck is the difference and why should IS care? The photo is either good enough, or it isn't, and any inspector should be able to decide, and past history is irrelevant. Why have a special 'resubmit' process unless it's purpose is just to look closer and find even more stuff wrong?
Have to admit that when I started, I didn't even notice the resubmit button for some months. I read the email rejection notice, and if I could fix the file, I did. Not deliberately avoiding the rejection button: ignorance, not malice. That advantage of using the resubmit button is that your info is mostly still there, but you still have to DA and add categories.
14032
« on: March 06, 2011, 08:40 »
i somewhat agree. My numbers are so bad it will make anyone look better compared to mine.
I just left Dreamstime exclusive at mid-month.
Dreamstime at about $70, down from $125 (1000 images online)
the rest based on 15 days of being active (ranging from 19 images to 700 images online)
Shutterstock at about $33
Veer at 3.50
Fotolia at 2.00
DepositPhotos at 0.60
all others (14 of them including IS) at a big whopping zero
Wow with 1k images online it must hurt to only see 70$ for a whoe month. I am surprised you are not getting more sales off that many images, Shutterstock usually pay good money when you have a large portfolio.
I am wildlife photographer, different market
Yeah, dude, 1,000 photos is an extraordinary level of effort. I've put in 20+ hour weeks for 3 years and haven't hit 1,000 photos yet. I'd have to question whether the effort was really worth the return. Just sayin...
The difference is that most wildlife photographers are doing it for love, anyway. Obivously if you are shooting business concepts on white, or other 'set ups', you're doing it for money, and you wouldn't be doing it 'anyway'; so you'd need to look at whether it was 'worth it' (e.g. what other uses could you have for the images?)
14033
« on: March 06, 2011, 08:14 »
... many of us having got random rejections while they change the rules at a whim, the next 'privilege' is going to relate to acceptance rate.
That would indicate that there are rules. It seems that they are making them up as they go.
Making them up and changing them as they go, as some have had acceptances for editorial, which were subsequently rejected. The initial instructions re captions were unclear/ambiguous and led to many rejections while they clarified them. I guess it was the office junior's turn to choose something new and said, "Why don't we try editorial?" and they coggled something together, apu. Bear in mind that it was often repeated, and not so long ago, that they would not be offering editorial. But having decided that they would, why wouldn't they have got some people experienced in selling and marketing editorial and thrashed out all the issues, including but not only: - What are our target markets? (share with contributors)
- How do we want images to be captioned? (test with at least twenty users of various levels and experience who have nothing to do with development)
- What will/won't be allowed? Is there any logical/legal reason for this? Explain clearly to contributors.
- Hire and train members for Team Metadata, as there is clearly going to be a rush on new keywords. Urgently, the many words which already have a meaning in the CV, but new meanings for editorial, which mean that important words can't be used, even if they are the main keyword for that image. Of course, the existing team, which is stretched too far as it is, couldn't be expected to cope. Maybe the temps could do the background maintenance work, e.g. the backlog of wiki files, and the experienced team could work on the Editorial keyword issues.
- Hire and train new inspectors.
- Decide whether the 'normal' istock lighting standards are appropriate, bearing in mind that editorial events happen when they happen. If so, at least don't send lighting rejections with all these cookie cutter lighting hints for using artificial light for obviously available light situations (which are useless to natural light photographers anyway).
- Test with a sample of contributors from all levels.
- Launch to the general community.
[/li] [/list] I'm sure there are lots more steps, but I've never been in 'business'. Decide if, at the beginning, upload quotas for editorial should be limited.
14034
« on: March 06, 2011, 07:22 »
This only goes to January, who wants to take bets that Shutterstock passed iStock in February?
Yup, scary:  Vast difference between alexa and siteanalytics. For example, siteanalytics says that 1,823 sites link in to iStock, alexa says 16,115. Hmmm.
14035
« on: March 06, 2011, 07:13 »
For comparison, and I am not an evangelist for Alexa, here are the Alexa stats for two years:  For the individual contributer, the iStock figures are still worrying, as the gradual growth in visits is nothing like in proportion to the growth of files contributed.
14036
« on: March 06, 2011, 06:38 »
IS support ticket on my removed image: "You are welcome to re-upload the file as an editorial file if you like. We can't change the file type on our end, it needs to be re-uploaded and the 'editorial' checkbox selected."
BEWARE: http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=310332&page=1They're changing the parameters by the minute. My guess is that with so many of us having got random rejections while they change the rules at a whim, the next 'privilege' is going to relate to acceptance rate.
14037
« on: March 05, 2011, 18:05 »
Something to do when I'm bored. Find the upload from 2009, upload again and correct the copyright issue portion.
Or upload as editorial. The queue is now 89921, almost 2000 more than it was 13 months ago. They clearly haven't worked out what they mean by editorial: loads or rejections and inconsistencies being noted in the Editorial forum, and some important questions aren't being answered. Plus they are insisting on strict editorial guidelines about editing and captioning, which is fair enough for some buyers, but they still won't allow these potential buyers to filter editorial only, though you can filter out editorial images.
14038
« on: March 05, 2011, 11:35 »
Please submit a new release signed by the witness on the same date as signed by the model. Then to go through the freaking hassle to have a new release signed and the f*ckers reject the f*cking photo. I don't know who is stupider, me or them.
I had quite a few of those. They would reject it for one reason, I would fix, resubmit, then they would reject for something else. Like they couldn't list all the things wrong with it the first time. But this is really where I realized that there was NO consistency to reviewing and contributors are pretty much at their mercy and whims...
I had a series accepted last year, then deactivated for IP. I've uploaded them again for editorial, and half have been rejected, for a gamut of reasons.
14039
« on: March 04, 2011, 08:59 »
Because the keywords: Maybe he use Yuri's Keyword-Tool...
Gina
Good point!
14040
« on: March 03, 2011, 21:04 »
I see pretty young blond women carrying a scale around all the time while they eat their apple. it's a common scene, isn't it? 
I thought I must be the only person who wondered what that was all about!
14041
« on: March 02, 2011, 11:40 »
I had one Editorial file accepted this morning. I still have about 60 files+ in the queue just sitting there, most from around the same submission date.
Apparently iStock is constipated!
I just had two accepted in the past ten minutes. About an hour ago, I got a rejection because I had date month year in the caption and the rejection said I should have month date year. All my acceptances have had date month year and it's on sirimo's caption sticky that that's OK. I Scouted it instantly, of course, but resent losing a Scout ticket on that. http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=299102&page=1"(Location data might be "City, County" or "City, State, Country" etc. Date data might be 'month date year" or "date month year" or in rare circumstances where the specific date isn't known just "month year". "
14042
« on: March 02, 2011, 11:08 »
Hate to disagree, but I think 10MP just isn't enough at the moment.
There are a few sites where you earn more for bigger file sizes, so on those sites you're missing out on higher prices with an older camera. If you're in any way serious about this, and have any success then the cost of the new camera is far less than the sales you'll lose. You have to decide - is this really a business that I'm going to be successful in, or am I kidding myself. If its a business, then you need the right tools - an old rebel can be made to fit, but its a false economy.
Hi! Yes that was part of the question. Site likes iStock do give more per image. I think I will take on both advices on the sites.
On the reverse side, I and many others report very few very large size sales. Anecdotally, it's been said that buyers will choose a file which is available in a bigger size over one which is only available in a smaller size, even if they only want a Sm or XSm image, as they think the quality will be better. I couldn't possibly say what proportion of buyers think like that, and if your images were sufficiently 'unique' or at least 'different', that wouldn't be an issue. I have quite a lot of medium-only images because with wildlife, often either a 400mm lens isn't long enough, and/or I have to shoot on high ISO. I have no way of knowing whether they would have sold better had I been able to upload the same pics at XXXL. However, they wouldn't sell anything sitting on my HD. I will say however, that I started with a 350D which was a base-level Rebel, I believe, and lots of my port came from that. Indeed lots came from scanned slides shot on much more primitive gear. But that was four years ago. For good reason or none, iStock's acceptance standards have risen, so that some old shots I took on the 350D at the same time (sometimes literally only a few minutes apart) that I've recently submitted for editorial are being rejected for artifacts, even when I size down to 2560x1920, sometimes even when I size down to medium. But yes, in "iStock light" you'll probably be OK. Guess if you're using ISO with lights in a studio, you'll be fine.
14043
« on: March 01, 2011, 19:02 »
The queue is currently 83704, almost 4000 up in the past 22 hours.
My next pic in the queue has been locked and unlocked four times that I'm aware of, though a couple uploaded later on the 17th are through. Although I constantly dripped editorial files up over the last couple of weeks, my last notice came in sometime overnight here and it's now midnight.
Anyone had a file through in the last twelve hours?
Later: I see that almost concurrent with my post, Subman had posted an explanation that they are training inspectors. I'm really, really curious to know why this programme was rushed out, half-baked. And the queue's down to 83655: the first downturn for days.
14044
« on: March 01, 2011, 14:20 »
So with 2000 images you earned $796 as an Exclusive at istock? That comes to a $0.40 Return Per Image (RPI). Is this what other istock exclusives are earning, any exclusives care to share real RPI numbers. I am earning $0.50 per image/per month at istock as a non-exclusive...I have a much smaller portfolio however, I was thinking of exclusivity just to simplify my life but if these are real numbers from exclusives it doesn't sound so promising.
You can't compare RPI number between portfolios. If I have a portfolio that has a higher number of downloads per image on average than another portfolio, then the RPI will also be higher.
Plus some contributors remove images which haven't sold over a certain time, and others don't. The former's RPI will 'seem' much better than the latter's, but the figure isn't meaningful. It matters how much expense and time were put into an image. A picture which was taken when you walked to the shops and sells for $15 during its lifetime has done better than a picture which cost $500 to produce and earns $510. Although some people bang on and on about RPI, it's really pretty irrelevant.
14045
« on: March 01, 2011, 11:41 »
All earnings aside. Has it occurred to anyone that the entire micro industry is singing on its 11th year and the novelty among buyers is wearing thin? not so cheap anymore, gazillions of irrelevant stuff in almost every search, painfully slow sites with all sorts of problems.
Its no picknick being a buyer anymore and as many buyers say, even after hours of searching and still dont find it.
a partial solution to these problems could be that agencies started accepting the so called "low commercial value" pictures - which are actually selling if accepted:
- good, interesting lighting doesn't necessarily mean evenly lit;
- there's more to architecture than the big ben and brandenburger tor;
- not everyone is a businessman/woman smiling with a phone;
...
If I were a buyer, I'd like to decide MYSELF what I like, leaving to the agencies just a minimal technical/legal audit.
ITC, if you were a buyer you'd be better off considering Alamy for your main source. It's often said in their forums that they'd be better off with a more tightly edited collection. Me? I think they'd be better with more marketing and a better search engine.
14046
« on: March 01, 2011, 06:42 »
iStock exclusive.
DLs down unspeakably: Feb '10: 175dls; Jan '11: 102dls; Feb 11: 85dls.
$$$ up c5% on Jan '11, up c10% on Feb '10, thanks to a good EL early in month.
Jan+Feb still well down on Jan+Feb 2010 for dls and $$$.
84 acceptances in Feb (mostly editorial) and another 50 in the oh-so-slooooow inspection queue.
14047
« on: February 28, 2011, 14:17 »
I just found one of my images in an advertisement for a branded produce in a national magazine with circulation 1,000,000+ which would seem to surpass any standard licensing usage. I have not sold/received any extended licenses for this image. Just so I don't jump onto any contributor relations person prematurely, what kind of licensing fee would I normally expect for that usage on iStockphoto, Shutterstock and Dreamstime? A quick scan of my royalties does not show anything apart from standard licenses.
On iStock, 100 credits http://www.istockphoto.com/license_contributor.php
14048
« on: February 27, 2011, 19:37 »
Regarding this bug with the upload counter never decrementing, I think it isn't everybody affected as my upload counter has gone down as it should. Either that or it matters if you use the web site (I use DeepMeta to upload).
I use the website directly to upload, and my slots are decrementing as usual. So far.
14049
« on: February 26, 2011, 07:14 »
Some attendees at Tokyo have already covered all their costs from sales.
Must be from Getty sales then [1]. The top sale on iStock in the 'lypse lightbox has <40 sales. Of course, if a contributor lived in Tokyo, and already had the relevant gear, they would have had very little out-of-pocket expense for that 'lypse. Even if someone lives in central London, there's a $500 fee to participate. [1] Or maybe Thinkstock. 
14050
« on: February 26, 2011, 04:42 »
Discovered today via one of my CN that if you don't opt images into the EL scheme, they're really hammered in best match. Apart from a few early submissions that I've missed (opted in before I checked out the EL terms for editorial, which are exactly the same as for main collection fliles), just check out the last page of my port sorted by best match (and explains my low positions in two editorial lightboxes).
Until I get a clear reply to my support ticket of 7th February (the question that RM had previously failed to reply to and Sirimo "didn't know" and told me to contact Support about) the status is going to be quo. And new files will go to Alamy, which will result in a clearer mind through lack of dithering about where I should put files (which was driving me nuts).
That's real bully-boy tactics. On a par with 'if you don't want to submit to Thinkstock, you can't come to our shindig.
Yeah, Goswyck - that's officially a whine. But it's also a statement of objective fact.
Nor does this refer to earlier files dropping fast: my non editorial files are all included into the EL scheme - but they're not shooting straight to the bottom of the best match.
At least I can easily find the ones I missed to opt them out too, at least until that EL page gets changed.
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