Quote from: cclapper on August 12, 2012, 13:59

Quote from: halfshag on August 12, 2012, 12:55

I think you might be better off contacting WP contributors via email. Much more personal and looks a lot less desperate - maybe talk to WP buyers of the past to find out where the problems are?

I don't think Christian was trying to make it sound desperate (it's just his writing style), I think that's very far from the truth. I think WP is gaining momentum every day. I think he just meant that we could push it even farther, faster, if we all contributed. A good portion of us do already, and yes, we are already in contact through another means.

Halfhag is just trying to be funny, silver exclusive at IS, smallfry. Exactly theres no panic and theres nothing wrong, nothing going on. So we are all trying to speed things up and participate a bit.

I'm not trying to be funny, I was trying to help - that was quite insulting, especially as I was a diamond last time I looked.

I bow to you and withdraw a beaten man.

All the best,

Smallfry. (Halfshag)

That's right, we don't pester people into submitting work and we don't pad sales to give a false impression of business or take other nefarious shortcuts.

It's important to me that we do this properly meaning we should be and be seen to be fair and transparent which I would say already sets us apart from some.

I doubt iRockStock will feel right for everyone but if you are looking for a newer agency then I think you could do a lot worse than join us. Doing things properly always takes longer but the future for iRockStock and our supporters will hopefully be better because of it.

Quote from: halfshag on February 11, 2012, 12:19

We just spent a while cleaning up site messages to iRockStock contributors inviting them to submit to imagegate following a complaint. I would suggest a different way to market your site.

I hope you guys aren�t reading my site messages there, that doesn�t look nice to me, not that I had some hot conversation but they should be private no?

I would imagine that Facebook, iStockphoto & Twitter like us and every other site offering this sort of functionality have a duty of care to protect individuals from malicious or nuisance behaviour from others once a complaint has been lodged. Regulated access to our own servers is a must.

@juliannig we stopped you quickly.

Quote from: halfshag on January 18, 2012, 17:01

Quote from: Pixart on January 18, 2012, 14:26

There was a TED talk posted today. 13 mins though:

http://www.ted.com/talks/defend_our_freedom_to_share_or_why_sopa_is_a_bad_idea.html

Thanks for that link, well worth 13 minutes of my time and I would have missed it if you hadn't posted. I do agree with Clay Shirky (speaker) the way to deal with copyright violation is by trial with a presentation of evidence and the hashing out of facts.

It is for foreign companies.  Do we take these Russian or Chinese companies to trial in the US or do we fly there to file for a trial?

The UK are extraditing an English student, accused of copyright infringement to face prosecution in the US based on an anti terrorism extradition law that has been stretched beyond reason. I can't answer your question but surely something less wide ranging and open to abuse by governments prone to wealthly lobbyists would be better.

There was a TED talk posted today. 13 mins though:

http://www.ted.com/talks/defend_our_freedom_to_share_or_why_sopa_is_a_bad_idea.html

Thanks for that link, well worth 13 minutes of my time and I would have missed it if you hadn't posted. I do agree with Clay Shirky (speaker) the way to deal with copyright violation is by trial with a presentation of evidence and the hashing out of facts.

I wouldn't be interested if it wasn't challenging.

Edited: to remove drama

You can upload illustrations in groups of 20 per post (more over tabs) so minus uploading time it shouldn't take hours it should take minutes. I don't doubt for a second that FTP is the easiest way to upload.

Which parts of the process did you find difficult?

Hello to all!
Who has experience with the support service of this site? Week did not respond to the letter.
Maybe you can help me. Please tell me the iRockStock works with Moneybookers? Thanks.

Hello Gennady,

I read your email the day it came in. It was a request for information for your blog as far as I could tell so we treated it differently to a support request, it is on my todo list

I'll write something for you at the weekend all being well.

We don't support Moneybookers at the moment but we are going to add it as soon as possible.

I have a legal responsibility to act in the best interests of the company. This obviously includes staying within the
law. Other responsibilities include my best efforts to launch and run the site effectively. As part of the launch I chose MSG as the first place to advertise
because I like the site, visit it daily and because I knew my ad would create a reaction, negative or positive, it didn't really matter so long as people looked at the
project as a serious effort and talked about it. I think the ad has worked out much better than expected, thank you.

I've already rejected accusations of plagiarism and I stand by this, it is not my intention to harm the brand of any existing
company. What does bother me is if perceived similarities undermine our legitimacy in the eyes of potential customers or
contributors. This devalues our efforts and I'm not happy about that at all. Changes may occur on the site for that reason.

I've got no idea how other agencies will react to the project but according to our logs we had significant activity from Calgary last Friday so I would guess an opinion is forming.

Halfshag, if I understand the initial poster correctly you are advertising here to get contributors, how do do intend on getting customers?

Yes that's true, we're supporting MSG too. That's an easy question to answer but getting and retaining customers is the question most agencies ask themselves frequently I would think, not just start-ups like us. It's not going to be easy. It wasn't easy getting this far.

Value for money, useful content, ease of use, funds for advertising, referral system, good SEO, good customer service, extensive transparent stats are all things worth having. A unique selling point is a good thing - we've made no mention of that yet.

I have made no secret about my disappointment with iStock over the last 12 months, grumpy illustrator sums up my motivation quite nicely.

My view is that the differences far outweigh any similarities and those similarities you mention are superficial, widely used elsewhere and don't lead anyone into thinking that they are buying from or contributing to anyone other than iRockStock Ltd. I'm happy to listen to any difficulties any established agency might have with us but in reality they'll probably ignore us rather than throw free publicity our way or allow close examination of their own system and practices.

I really don't want this to sound like an ad but a lot of the functionality is different too, the model release system is more
of a library that you can pre-populate and then apply to images at any point before inspection, no categories, no subs,
multiple uploads via HTTP, bitmap illustrations are accepted, payouts at $50, contributors are told what type of credit was used for their sale (prevents hidden and outrageous discounting), images are available for sale after inspection etc.

I've made a site that works OK for me. It's only a starting point and yes we did pay for the ad upfront, just like we will next month.

Many thanks,

Halfshag.