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Messages - ShadySue
14327
« on: January 17, 2011, 14:05 »
I felt this story was important. I had enough information from publicly available sources, even if I had no quotes, to supply some important information to the photo community and particularly the macro community.
So you wrote a long piece, which you hoped people would pay for, which only said, "If you work with Yuri, you can do well in micro." Nice work if you can persuade people to pay for it.
14328
« on: January 17, 2011, 11:55 »
Microstock is more competitive...perhaps because there is less to be had...perhaps it's because the agencies pit us against one another.
That's certainly the truth now at iStock. With their bellchart determining earnings, even someone in a totally different niche is now your direct rival for earnings. A very, very dated model, totally lacking in Spirit. Surely it's better to work together to achieve greater things?
14329
« on: January 17, 2011, 10:55 »
I'll just stick to what I am doing, and keep away from training people.
Och, Sean, just when I was getting all psyched up to be your long-distance apprentice. 
14330
« on: January 16, 2011, 15:57 »
Without quoting the whole thing, the subject is supported by Dan's response.
Daniel Laflor shines
A very informative and straight shooting response. BRAVO
Can you post a URI to the response, please?
See Above. 
Oh, right, weird. Your post arrived with me before Daniel's response did.
14331
« on: January 16, 2011, 15:24 »
Without quoting the whole thing, the subject is supported by Dan's response.
Daniel Laflor shines
A very informative and straight shooting response. BRAVO
Can you post a URI to the response, please? Or are you saying his lack of response is the significant factor?
14332
« on: January 16, 2011, 15:11 »
Other issue is Jim trying to come up with material for his paying audience, trying to convince even more competition to step into the ring. Thanks for that too.
Och well, this particular article won't convince anyone. "You can be successful on the coat-tails of someone who is already successful.
And I'm pretty sure you've said you don't take on apprentices (or any other staff).
But, hey, we could broker a deal whereby you assign copyright on your out-takes to me, I'd upload them all over the place in my own name as an independent and we could split the proceeds 40-60 in my favour. After all, after you set up the shoot, you're covering your expenses already on iStock. I'm taking the time to upload and keyword them. You're making money from your less successful shots of a series and I'm sweetly helping you.
Where "I" and "me" = 'Anyone not iStock exclusive, (so not "I" or "me" ATM'), but "you" = you.
That could be a new business idea - take on out-takes for all iStock Exclusives and sell them under a new name as independent. Is your fee negotiable?
I'm sure you could find a conversation with my computer-phobic husband mutually advantageous. 
14333
« on: January 16, 2011, 14:18 »
I suspect they probably fired a lot of workers that they couldn't afford to lose, individuals they really needed to keep the site running properly. After all, if the intent is to rake in as much cash as quickly as possible, and then to dump the business after they've used it up and ruined it, wouldn't it make sense to save money by firing as many workers as possible? Or cut their workers' pay and benefits to the point where they quit in disgust, similar to how they're screwing us. These people are ruthless.
They claimed not. They claim to have a very happy workforce and a very low turnover rate. Yippers. But then how much of what they say can you take at face value. They must either have a rapid turnover in Quality Assurance Analysts ("can you break our software?", or an ever growing team of incompetents: they've been advertising for one for years, and I've never managed to 'catch' a time when they haven't wanted one.
14334
« on: January 16, 2011, 11:16 »
I play by the rules, and I despise those who don't (except Michael Schumacher). If everyone was doing what was best for their short-term gain, both in business and in life, it would be awful. I treat people and business in the same way I WANT to be treated, honest and with respect. Sure, iStock's dealings in recent times can be debated, but it doesn't give me a free card to do whatever I please, there is such things as self-respect, as well as contracts, rules and spirit. That's how I I am at least.
I find it somewhat ironic that you describe yourself as some paradigm of virtue or 'ethical man' when here you are virtually convicting people you don't know of falsities and crimes (which you don't even know have been committed), without any evidence other than circumstantial, without actually communicating with any of the parties involved and without hearing their side of the issue. Is that how you would like to be treated?
I'm pretty sure the whole situation was thrashed out on an iStock forum a while back, and the bottom line was that as iStock was OK with it, why should anyone else care? Of course, as the forums are so unsearchable, I can't find it.
14335
« on: January 16, 2011, 10:39 »
Other issue is Jim trying to come up with material for his paying audience, trying to convince even more competition to step into the ring. Thanks for that too.
Och well, this particular article won't convince anyone. "You can be successful on the coat-tails of someone who is already extremely successful.W And I'm pretty sure you've said you don't take on apprentices (or any other staff). But, hey, we could broker a deal whereby you assign copyright on your out-takes to me, I'd upload them all over the place in my own name as an independent and we could split the proceeds 40-60 in my favour. After all, after you set up the shoot, you're covering your expenses already on iStock. I'm taking the time to upload and keyword them. You're making money from your less successful shots of a series and I'm sweetly helping you. Where "I" and "me" = 'Anyone not iStock exclusive', and "you" = any exclusive high flier
14336
« on: January 16, 2011, 10:16 »
As I said before, my wife (who is my employee) shoots as well, we share models, equipment, style, office, expenses and the money go to the same pot, but would I ever think of using her name or details to circumvent the exclusivity at iStock? No. Neither would I train someone to essentially be a replica of myself, let them set up a business for themselves under my roof, sharing equipment, staff, expenses and continue shooting in a style or subject matter that was in direct competition with myself - that just DOESN'T MAKE ANY BUSINESS SENSE (unless I financially benefited by for example in essence being both independent and exclusive at the same time), and we all know Yuri is about business.
That is, of course, your choice.
I didn't know I had a choice in this matter if I were to be sticking to the rules. I'm completely taken aback that the notion of this set-up or similar would be ok by fellow contributors.
Whether I like it or not is irrelevant. I'd like to be able to make non-stockworthy but still very usable photos available for teachers for free (I used them for many years when teaching, and I'd like to pay back). I don't care what anyone else would think, but it's clearly not allowed under exclusivity rules. There is nothing against the Yuri/Daniel arrangement in the rules, so what you or I think doesn't matter. I really, really don't like they way they headhunted rubberball and waived the rules for them. But 'they' own the ball, 'they' can do what they want. IMO, that's totally unfair, as it's totally against the letter and spirit of exclusivity Compared to that, I find the Yuri/Daniel thing 'less wrong'; but that's just my opinion, which no-one but me GAD about.
14337
« on: January 16, 2011, 09:39 »
As I said before, my wife (who is my employee) shoots as well, we share models, equipment, style, office, expenses and the money go to the same pot, but would I ever think of using her name or details to circumvent the exclusivity at iStock? No. Neither would I train someone to essentially be a replica of myself, let them set up a business for themselves under my roof, sharing equipment, staff, expenses and continue shooting in a style or subject matter that was in direct competition with myself - that just DOESN'T MAKE ANY BUSINESS SENSE (unless I financially benefited by for example in essence being both independent and exclusive at the same time), and we all know Yuri is about business.
That is, of course, your choice.
14338
« on: January 16, 2011, 09:33 »
Well once again I'm banned from IS forums. Did I say something insulting, rude, incorrect, or offending? Nope I simply asked Lobo about what he said last year (he said he would work hard to make sure nobody missed the next level by a very small margin) and posted the same as above here asking for a better response than the generic, canned answer support gives.
You should know better than to challenge a promise or statement!  Indeed, he only promised to 'work hard', he didn't promise he'd be able to achieve anything.  Kelly promised he'd resign if most exclusives didn't benefit. Sadly, only he will know the true figures, so we'll never know for sure if he has to keep or eat his fancy promise. 
14339
« on: January 16, 2011, 09:29 »
The spirit of iStock has certainly taken a dent in the last year or two, so now even more important to protect it. The spirit was created by us contributors and will only vanish if we let it.
Nope, they have eroded the spirit and they will find it extremely difficult to get it back, at least from most of the existing contributors (the ones they lied to about 'grandfathering'). Oh, that was the letter they lied misled us about. We still get the cannisters, which was the 'spirit'. Big deal.
14340
« on: January 16, 2011, 09:25 »
Haven't spent any time thoroughly checking their portfolios against eachother, but what about sistering and similars?
There's nothing about sister or similar files in the exclusivity agreement.
14341
« on: January 16, 2011, 09:01 »
I'm pretty sure Yuri said in his blog at one point that you shouldn't sign up for an agency that was paying less than 40%. You should contact them directly and lay down your terms.
Of course if I did this, they would laugh all the way to the email delete button, but if Yuri does it, they'd need to sit up and take notice.
So they could either cut Yuri a private deal, that none of us would ever know about. But it couldn't include unlimited uploading, or we'd notice.
So, hey, a nice compromise. And although it may be against the 'spirit' of exclusivity, it's not against the letter.
And how much of the 'spirit' of iStock is left? So only the letter can guide us - but their letters, as I've often said before, are ambiguous and obfuscatory - probably deliberately so, to leave themeselves, if not us, some 'wiggle room'.
And yes, the above is all pure speculation, just like JP's article.
This post comes to you from someone previously so neurotic about breaching exclusivity 'spirit' that I made my poor husband take a non-stocky image that I wanted to put onto a particular Flickr stream as it was a very unusual natural history photo relevant to that stream, but I wasn't sure that exclusives could post on Flickr (seems we can, under restrictions). So he, the non-photographer, has a Flickr account with one photo. And no, I didn't 'set up' the photo other than giving him my camera and lens and asking him to take it.
14342
« on: January 16, 2011, 06:07 »
Someone start a site that only takes 40% of the final sale price, doesn't offer subs and then they could be talking about "rolling in the dough". Sounds a great deal like Alamy but they aren't micro and don't sell the same type of product that most people here are producing.
A new micro site that only takes 40%, for exclusives for example, would have a flood of contributors that would take that instead of 25-38 cents, or the 15% and up on IS, or whatever the rest are handing out to keep the starving artists from quitting, at the bare minimum.
I think my only question is, if it's so easy and there's so much profit to be had, why hasn't someone done it?
Some have offered better deals, most either don't sell (60% of very little isn't much) and/or go belly up fairly quickly. I'm guessing it must take a considerable amount of money to set up a site which would even begin to rival the Big 4. And it's difficult to persuade any but the most bullish - or naive - to submit their images to a company which was unproven, but you can hardly start to market a collection of, say, under 10,000 'general' images, no matter how good. Especially if these images were also available elsewhere. Of course, all stock libraries had to start somewhere, but the general micro market is now well established. The alternative would be for highly specialist niche RM libraries, where your marketing would be very tightly and personally targetted.
14343
« on: January 16, 2011, 05:58 »
agree with what you've stated JoAnn. production quality is very clearly a factor if photogs have ambitions to make a living in microstock...I wondered if Daniel or Yuri agreed to be 'featured'?
Clearly not, when you read all the speculation in the article. I guess you don't need to agree to be featured in an 'editorial' article. He obviously wan't interviewed. At least it's 'admitted' speculation unlike most of the speculation-presented as fact stuff we usually read:
"From his blog we know..."
"It is unclear when he went exclusive"
"probably occurred as soon as he reached the 250"
"It is unclear how Daniel was able to get so many images accepted"
"Based on what other iStock exclusive photographers tell us ... he should have averaged at least $4.50 per download"
"We have no information as to what his expenses might have been"
"We also suspect that he employs significant staff in order"
"It is also unclear how much experience he had as a photographer before he started assisting Yuri."
"there are a number of things we dont know about Daniels experience"
"it certainly appears that many might have been shot..."
To be honest, it looks as though JP is 'outing' Daniel, not using him as an inspiration for aspiring microstockers. For the latter purpose, we'd need to know a lot of the things he speculates about. I'd want to know exactly the income/expenditure ratio, and how that works for tax etc to know what the bottom line was. Of course, it's highly unlikely any top flier would reveal that. But, hey, we need to know the profit and the profitability (is there still no-one who can explain to me why the latter is more important?) and how sustainable the model is?
Clearly his model is not one for more than a micro-percentage of aspirees - those who can be apprenticed to Yuri (or similar) and have the great good fortune that their mentor will let them use their set ups and models to further their own career. I'd imagine (If JP can speculate, so can I!) he has to pay Yuri a pretty penny for that privilege, eating further into profit/profitablitiy. Which of course helps Yuri's bottom line.
And if the intention was to 'out' Daniel, iStock clearly know about it and don't care. They have subsequently headhunted at least one contributer on an 'exclusive-lite' deal whereby they can sell their 'exclusive' images elsewhere, whereas the rest of us drones can't even send our rejected images RM without crawling for permission.
I've read about two other 'togs who shoot together, one exclusive to iStock, one independent - and wrote about it on iStock's forums.
14344
« on: January 15, 2011, 05:51 »
See Content that is "Rights Managed" is excluded? I am talking about fresh images with no sales history.
Non-submitted content is fine to sell RM.
And even unsold accepted content (once deactivated from iStock).
Wait -- really?
So accepted (unsold) exclusive photos that is de-activated can be sold as RM, but rejected exclusive photos cannot?
There's something wrong with that picture.
And what happens if someone were to re-submit a de-activated photo and it's rejected? Now all of a sudden it can't be sold as RM?
Yup, there are crazy anomalies. Some months ago JJRD said they were going to review that. Either it didn't happen, or the looked at it and decided not to change it. As others have said, you have to plead your case with Support, and it depends on who your email lands with. Or maybe policy has changed, as I haven't requested a release for a few months. I was always given permission, but I've heard some recent incidences where people have been refused. The problem with having such badly-worded contracts is that it leaves you at the mercy of the whim of someone else's interpretation of the ambiguously-written rules.
14345
« on: January 14, 2011, 18:14 »
I'd think that would be against the terms of service at most agencies.
It certainly is at TS, but as I asked at the time and never got a reply, how could it ever be policed? It's but one of the reasons I don't allow my images to go to TS or photos.com, but not the first or only reason!
14346
« on: January 13, 2011, 18:00 »
How do you find out which FF version you've got? I use the most recent Windows version.
Go up to the help on the top bar -> about Mozilla Firefox. You can see which version you're using there Liz
Tx Sue and Artemis. Seems I'm using 3.6.13
14347
« on: January 13, 2011, 17:25 »
Ah, at least you get it to actually 'search' for things ShadySue.
I can click my search button until i weigh an ounce, nothing happening at all. (and the buyers using the same FF 3.0.19 probably are stuck with the same dead 'search' button too)
How do you find out which FF version you've got? I use the most recent Windows version.
14348
« on: January 13, 2011, 16:41 »
Any legal agreement has to be fair to all parties.
True. So nobody needs to sign an agreement he doesn't feel is fair.
True. But in this case one party can unilaterally change the clauses and all the other party can do is leave. No discussion, negotiation or clarification. Remember, their contract is deliberately ambiguous. I've seen two examples at least of the new clauses where people have had legitimate differences about interpretation of what is said. That should absolutely not be possible. Why oh why, since no-one on iStock ever seems to be able to write anything clearly and unambiguously, won't they pay the Plain English Society to do it for them? H*ck, even their contributer support department are divided on what the clauses actually mean. But it's almost certainly deliberately amibiguous. So if we question something unfavourable/unfair to us they'll interpret it to their benefit, but if anyone had the money/energy to take out a legal case, they could say, "Of course it doesn't mean that, it means this." Essentially, all of their legalese is gobbledegook, and there is no need for it to be so. Even legalese can be written in Plain English.
14349
« on: January 13, 2011, 14:16 »
I'd be even more scared of credit card fraud.
14350
« on: January 13, 2011, 13:15 »
Is the search working for you guys?
My search button all of a sudden died (was alive yesterday) and nothing can get it to work.
Fail fail epic fail...
Well, in a way it's working. I typed in 'horse' and it worked. I then typed in 'black' to the left hand refine box, and it worked. However, just after I hit search on 'black' I noticed a file in the 'horse' which didn't have a horse in it. So I hit the back button to get back to the general horse page, and got a page of blanks which needed a couple of refreshes to bring back the thums.
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