Hello Fotonaut,

Thanks for the feedback and we've got some good news.  

As you mentioned, we are performing a pricing survey right now to ensure that we're providing the right products at the right price for our customers.  That should provide continued growth at Bigstock and more sales for our contributors.

The survey you received focuses on pricing, but we are doing significant work on the content quality and quantity front:

• We launched the Bridge to Bigstock program.
• The collection has grown to 6.4 million images -- adding 2.4 million images in a little over a year.
• We moved to a new search engine that is much more accurate and returns higher-quality results than the prior search engine.
• NEW! We just lowered the payout threshold to $30 to help our entire contributor base realize their earnings faster.
• We've standardized our review policies in close collaboration with Shutterstock.
• We launched new upload tools last year with keyboard shortcuts and better support for batch editing, etc...
• We launched better sales and download reporting for contributors to analyze their performance.
• We launched a new blog, The Upload, and a new newsletter to provide informational material to contributors on creating high-quality, salable images.
  

• We're doing more to highlight the great images in the collection.
• We translated our interface into two more customer languages, German and Spanish, which included our contributor area.
  

We know that there are a few more items that have been requested, but we're working hard every day to create one the best marketplaces in the industry for stock images!  

Best,

Scott
Bigstock

Lightscribe - you make an important point and I think the answer is somewhere in between.  

From the perspective of a search engine, metadata is critical to showing *accurate* results.  For example,

-----
Title: Red Rose

Description: Macro closeup of a single open red rose  

Keywords: affection, anniversary, background, beautiful, beauty, bloom, blossom, botanical, closeup, color, decoration, elegant, floral, flower, fresh, gift, holiday, love, macro, nature, passion, petal, plant, red, romance, romantic, rose, single, texture, valentine, natural
-----

From the search engine perspective, the system knows that this is definitely a red rose; it should be a single red rose; and it's a macro or closeup image.   The search engine now also knows that it might be related to the concept of a "gift" or "romance," but those concepts are loosely related.  If this were a gift box, then the title would be "Gift Box" and the description would be "Single gift box with Christmas wrapping paper."   The system would then know that the image is definitely a gift box (etc..., etc...) and probably has a Christmas theme, etc..., differentiating it from the first photo - a red rose that might be given as a gift.  

If people *accurately* enter metadata, this should create very (relevant) search results.  Arguments could be made that the "short titles" should be more robust for SEO purposes, but in general, that will work.

Now if people rush through metadata, it's a moot point.   But everyone should keep in mind that metadata is how people find your images. If you put in *inaccurate*metadata, you'll just frustrate buyers and dilute the overall search experience for everyone.  If you put in insufficient metadata, when a buyer searches for "single red rose white background," your image might not come up and you'll lose the sale.

None of this is really a secret, but good metadata practices are something that the top sellers often use to their advantage.  

As always, our policies might get relaxed, but we're here to help and to ensure the best experience for both our contributors and buyers.  We want you to be successful...creating a good search experience is a shared effort.

 

Get rid of the demand of the seven word description!

Hi GRP - we may change our metadata requirements with time, but one thing I'd like to point out is that at this juncture in microstock, accurate and robust metadata is definitely your friend.  When we look at high-performing portfolios, many of the contributors with top downloads have as many as 30-40 keywords per photo, as well as carefully written titles and descriptions.

When there are hundreds of photos of a "business handshake," having a photo of a "business handshake with an African American businesswoman" gives you some room to stand out in both subject matter and search results.

I can't tell you how many times we speak with customers and they say they want "images of diversity."  I'll show the customers photos we have and some of the best images don't have critical keywords, descriptions or captions that would allow those photos to be found in search.  What a bummer!  It's pure lost sales.   Also - metadata plays a role in SEO as well, allowing images to appear in both Google's images search.

Even if we were to change things, I'm a big advocate for good metadata.

Best,
Scott

 

Hello David,

Unfortunately, the program is only for selected contributors, but it's still good news for everyone.  Some of this is covered in our answer to Matt Antonino's questions, linked below, but I'll summarize here. 

In a nutshell, the program is generally targeted at a small number of high sales / high volume contributors who most benefit from a single submission process or those who would find it difficult to move a portfolio over.  If there's a specific contributor whose work is high quality and fills a content need at Bigstock, we may go outside of the core group to invite that person as well. We're going to be inviting contributors in phases, but we won't be inviting every Shutterstock contributor.  Most of our initial invites will go out in the coming month.

There are a few reasons why we're not inviting everyone:

First, with every portfolio that we move over, we need to de-duplicate images and perform other tasks that require staff support.  A smaller invite list will keep those tasks manageable.

Second, we're intentionally not duplicating the collections.  Bigstock and Shutterstock service different kinds of customers.  We want to make sure that we provide the appropriate content for each group.

Of course, contributors with lower volume will find it more manageable to submit to both services. We made a number of improvements to the batch editing process last year and I'm confident that some more optimizations and improvements will be coming.  Your input is always considered and appreciated.  We'd like to do something for everyone.

The good news for all is that we've created this program because Bigstock is growing (as are the needs of the customer base) and we're going to be continuing to increase investments in marketing this year.  The improvements we made last year are only the beginning.  You may have noticed that we just launched (2) more languages (German and Spanish), support for (4) more currencies, and three separate domains to better service international customers.

We're already getting positive reviews in international press (in German):
http://www.fotoskaufen.de/bildagenturen/bildagentur-bigstock-test-preisvergleich.html

A few more details about the Bridge program will be found in Matt's blog here:
http://www.niltomil.com/microstock-world/bridge-bigstock-program-qa/

Needless to say, we're very excited about this year.

I'm always available for additional questions.

Best Regards,

Scott

Hello,

I'm talking with the team, but in all likelihood, we won't be able to give specific details of how fraudsters try to attack us and how we prevent those attacks. We realize that can be unsatisfying as a response, but for obvious reasons, it's very challenging (if not impossible) to release any level of security information on a public forum.  We made a general announcement via the Bigstock interface.

On the buyer side, most attempts start with a credit card number that's legitimate and able to be processed, but stolen. Many fraudsters try to appear as legitimate buyers (or mimic legitimate buying behavior) and modify their behavior once they get caught.  For that reason, fraud prevention isn't a one-time-only event...it's an ongoing process of adding and adjusting many different types of controls.
 
Best,

Scott

OK, the numbers look correct in your account (i.e., they add up to the right amount), but having not gone through the sequence - I'm not sure what you saw.  You're saying you had a total payable amount of $72, but your payout request only let you request $57, leaving $15 still payable?
 
I'll send this to the dev team to start them looking at it, but as stated (sorry to be a broken record) - individual issues are best sent to Support so they can reply in a single thread and track it. 

Best,

Scott

Hi Warren,

Since fraudulent downloads aren't uses, the most accurate response would be to say that we track and pursue copyright violations and work hard to prevent and identify fraudsters.  How we do that varies by situation once we locate the infringing use or the individual in question.

Best,

Scott

Thanks for your understanding.   It takes a little time to investigate and make the various adjustments we have to make, which is why communication can sometimes lag behind the events themselves.  In other words, we make a first priority of aggressively addressing any issue, and once we know more, we can then stop and communicate to the larger group.

Of course, there are plenty of lightning-fast forum participants around here. 

We do appreciate your patience in the meanwhile.   Thanks!

Best,
Scott

Happy Holidays from Bigstock.

Hi guys,

I'm forwarding this to our team for clarification.  If this type of question or issue comes up, always feel free to reach out to Support.  Someone from our team will confirm what the policy is and I'll let you know what I hear back.

Best,

Scott  
Bigstock

Hello all,

FYI...

We are planning some scheduled system updates for Sunday, Nov. 7th, 2010. FTP uploading will not be available from 7pm - 9pm U.S. Eastern Time.

We thank you for your understanding and we apologize for any inconvenience.

Best Regards,

Scott
Bigstock

PS - This update is unrelated to any support issues, so if you've had any issues requiring technical support, please reach out to our customer service team directly at: http://www.bigstockphoto.com/contactus.html

Sell Your Images
Bigstock Contributor Blog

Hi guys,

I spoke to the team and there was an isolated issue processing some uploads via FTP which is now fixed.  This is an issue that affected specific uploads.  In these circumstances, it's very helpful (and necessary) to get these reports to the Support team, since it can be a case of a process that stalled during a narrow window of time or on a few specific accounts.  If the team knows exactly what accounts were affected, then it helps the investigation, since we can simply re-process those thumbnails (which is what the team did).

When these issues affect a few individual accounts, it takes some more investigating, because we can't "reproduce" the error by uploading images on our end and seeing what happens (since it will work fine when we try).  Often, users will come into the forums and assume that everyone has been affected, but that's typically not the case.

We apologize for the trouble. We do address issues pretty quickly when we know about them and it's clear what the issue is.  Carlos - I believe the Support team was on the line with you yesterday.  Let us know if you run into any further problems.

Best,

Scott
Bigstock
    

Dear all,

Like other businesses (with credit card companies being the obvious example), we have a number of security controls, alerts and procedures in place.  If we notice unusual activity on any account and we suspect that activity isn't legitimate, we'll pause the accounts to protect the parties involved and investigate the transactions.  Pausing an account doesn't mean that we suspect all of the users involved, it simply indicates that we want to stop the flow of transactions or downloads for review.  Mr. Barber's account will be active again soon. He is not suspected of any wrongdoing.

These tools and procedures exist to protect our contributors and create a safe environment for everyone.  Thanks for your understanding.   

Best Regards,

Scott
Bigstock