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Messages - Shelma1
2726
« on: November 27, 2013, 10:17 »
I'm getting the white page of death. Perfect discouragement during the busy holiday season to keep contributors from uploading fresh content. Boy, will Shutterstock get a big benefit from this.
Have you been getting enough sales from recent work (2013) to encourage you to submit there before you've uploaded to all of your other outlets?
Should be working on Valentine's/Easter now, if we're doing seasonal work. A bit late now for the main Christmas/New Year buying season.
You'd think so, but one of my newest seasonal files is my best seller of all time there, by a very wide margin. Just uploaded a couple of weeks ago. Same with a different file (but similar subject matter) I uploaded a few weeks ago at Shutterstock.
Congratulations on your recent file at iS catching fire!
Thanks! I'm kind of amazed by it.
2727
« on: November 27, 2013, 10:08 »
I'm getting the white page of death. Perfect discouragement during the busy holiday season to keep contributors from uploading fresh content. Boy, will Shutterstock get a big benefit from this.
Have you been getting enough sales from recent work (2013) to encourage you to submit there before you've uploaded to all of your other outlets?
Should be working on Valentine's/Easter now, if we're doing seasonal work. A bit late now for the main Christmas/New Year buying season.
You'd think so, but one of my newest seasonal files is my best seller of all time there, by a very wide margin. Just uploaded a couple of weeks ago. Same with a different file (but similar subject matter) I uploaded a few weeks ago at Shutterstock.
2728
« on: November 27, 2013, 08:02 »
I'm getting the white page of death. Perfect discouragement during the busy holiday season to keep contributors from uploading fresh content. Boy, will Shutterstock get a big benefit from this.
2729
« on: November 25, 2013, 11:33 »
@shelma 
I did not say you must know css. I said if you dont like it right out of the box, you need to know those things. But then there are two or three of you here who dont really even read what i say. You are just going to argue for the sake of arguing.  Go for it!
My comments are addressed to people who want to make an informed decision.
"When the only way to get your site working and looking decent IS to mess around with programming, its not fair to people wanting to set up a site to minimize that fact, either." You spelled "it's" incorrectly, btw.
2730
« on: November 25, 2013, 10:29 »
The Redneck quotation refers to an error he caused on his own has I did myself, and thousands of others using wordpress that have nothing to do with symbiostock. It's a wordpress issue and the lack of knowledge from people messing around without understanding programing.
The people that are trying to set up these sites are basically photographers, and no, don't have programming experience. There are many wordpress themes that DO NOT require messing around with much of anything and all customizations can be done from the admin area. This theme is not one of those.
When the only way to get your site working and looking decent IS to mess around with programming, its not fair to people wanting to set up a site to minimize that fact, either. SY is not a typical wordpress theme and if you are not happy with the way it looks out of the box, you need to know css, you need to be willing to make changes to programming and you are going to need to talk to your hosting company.
The quotes that were pulled out do not give the whole picture, for sure.
I think that anyone wanting to set up a site can read through everything and decide for themselves. There are positives and negatives to SY and i dont think it's fair either to say something like "SY is wonderful and is easy to set up," and yet i have seen comments like that, too. Thats in total bad faith and a partial version of the facts, too.
I don't know any CSS. Yet I have a functioning site. I totally get that you had some issues, that you're studying web design, that you're familiar with zillions of WordPress themes you find flawless and that you wanted to futz with things, so you altered the CSS (I guess; I don't even know if "altered" is the correct terminology). But as much as you complain that it's misleading for people to say setting up a Symbiostock site is easy, it's also misleading for you to state that you must know CSS in order to do it. I'm happy to have a clean, simple site that functions properly, and I built it with no programming knowledge at all.
2731
« on: November 24, 2013, 20:07 »
Only 150 or 170? I thought the list had 200+ something sites in the network?
There are currently 158 sites in the Symbiostock network and it is gaining momentum.
You can see how many sites there are at the bottom of the following URLs:
symbiostock.info
http://cascoly.com/symbio/list.asp?list=25
Christine "I can't help either I eventually just accepted that people using IE will not see the colours in my site as I do not think this will affect sales."
Redneck "I'm on version 5.2.12. Your version should work, too. I guess the white screen error is caused by something else."
Lusoimages "I've just conducted a few searches on my website and in the symbiostock page and I've detected something that got me worried.
I've noticed that when a keyword is composed by two words it's ignored by the search."
marthamarks "However, I do have to say this: symbiostock-search.com redirects to this:
http://cascoly.com/symbio/symbiostock-network.asp
I find that a very confusing and unattractive page to look at and use. I'm reluctant to send any potential buyers there, to be honest."
Symbiostock_Newbie "One of the images I uploaded recently won't process for some unknown reason. It seems to process, but then when I go to "all images" it doesn't show up there. When I go back to "process uploads" the image is back there again awaiting processing!"
Snap Vectors "Hello. I've had three purchases on my site since yesterday. However, all three customers emailed me right after the sale, and said they couldn't see how to download their file."
Flawless
My site's running better than iStock. Looks nicer, too.
2732
« on: November 23, 2013, 17:54 »
Did you read the article? This came before the paragraph above:
Baio also argued that Getty Images New York picture desk manager, Andreas Gebhard, was aware of Morels images on January 12, 2010 because he sent an email that day saying the earthquake images on Morels Twitter account looked very decent. He also said that Getty senior director of photography news and sports, Pancho Bernasconi, saw an email from AFP indicating Suero didnt shoot the images in question, but Bernasconi didnt take action to kill the images. In addition, Baio said that Gebhard knew that the images were reissued from AFP with a new credit, but Gebhard did not take action to find out who the images were first credited to. Therefore the images credited to Suero were never killed, and Getty customers continued to download and use those images.
I'm not sure how my post amounts to trolling.
2733
« on: November 23, 2013, 17:43 »
I'm not sure linking to that article helps your employer.
"He said rather than issue an apology to Morel, the agencies wrote to him asking to license his images. In addition, Amalvy called Morel a crook in a March 2010 emailevidence that Baio says points to the character of the defense. Baio urged the jury to consider what it would take to make a statement to these leading news agencies that they cannot further infringe upon the rights of photographers."
2734
« on: November 23, 2013, 12:50 »
What urgent things are they doing on the buyer side that preclude them from repairing the seller side?
Making the site faster.
1. Losing contributor stats makes the site faster? If so, then was removing that feature purposeful? 2. The site is faster (after zillions of complaints from contributors, which they refused to take seriously at first and blamed everything but the sitethe country they were in, the browser they were using, etc.). So now what's the excuse? 3. Other sites manage to be even faster while simultaneously offering a much richer seller experience. What's up with that?
2735
« on: November 23, 2013, 12:31 »
A computer system is a computer system is a computer system, whether it's photoshop, an aircraft management system, a hospital system or an ecommerce web site. They all collect data, manipulate date and output data. No professional organisation just tries stuff out on a production system to see what happens, they use test and staging systems and, if after all that, there are problems on a move to production, the changes are backed out. There is no viable excuse for breaking something and leaving it broken for weeks.
There is always so much more involved than simply the computer system. A computer system typically encapsulates the rules of a business - how the business actually works. No two systems are ever the same because no two businesses are the same.
As you must know, in many cases the only way to see how a system works is to see what happens if you do x, y or z under real world conditions. Stuff like load balancing etc can be almost impossible to calculate and it is absolutely typical in the real world to be surprised or confounded by the results. And then there are all of the implicit problems and surprises involved with systems which have perhaps been added to over time or poorly documented.
Let's agree to differ over the details. But let's also be honest - contributor stats are not and should not be a priority ahead of the customer experience. And, as even the most indignant contributors must be aware, the customer experience is improving dramatically.
What urgent things are they doing on the buyer side that preclude them from repairing the seller side?
2736
« on: November 22, 2013, 15:31 »
Well, now it's very clear you work for iStock. Only their employees would be arrogant enough to put the onus of getting sales stats on their contributors and not on themselves. The site is poorly run, with continuous problems other sites either don't have or are capable of fixing very quickly. It's truly embarrassing, especially now that you're owned by a large corporation.
I think we all express our frustration here because we want the site to work properly and we want the company to do well. Because when iStock does well its contributors do well (sort of). But complaints about basic functionality are taken as personal insults and met with snarls of derision. With the tremendous percentage of commission iStock takes, it also expects its contributors to cough up their own earnings to get sales information? It can't fix a simple function that's been broken for weeks now?
It can't...or it won't? After all, iStock is capable of running a half price sale flawlessly while contributor stats languish.
It's a pragmatic solution, the site isn't working and you want to see stats in an easy to view way? What's the best way to do it? Complain and when that doesn't work complain some more or try to find a solution? I chose to offer possible solutions. Do people want to get stats or just complain that iStock isn't working?
And to answer your question bhr, 'Why?". It might have something to do with being called a liar, a stooge, a shill, or arrogant when you offer help. Or maybe people left to find a site where there were less emoticons in use?
Asking contributors to spend more than a hundred dollars a year to get access to stats that should be provided as a matter of course by their representative is not pragmatic. It's ludicrous. Especially when, I'm sure, many of your contributors don't earn that much at iStock in a year.
You're misunderstanding me then. I'm not asking you to do anything. I'm telling you there are ways to see your stats if you really want to. One way is to spend some money. Another is to spend some time. Other than that I don't think there is a good solution. If you just want your totals you can add up all the money you've cased out since the stats broke and add it to your current balance. The raw data is all correct so going through your sales on the 'my uploads' page will get you all the info too.
The good solution is for iStock to FIX THE WEBSITE. The good solution is NOT for contributors to spend more time or more money figuring out stats every other website is perfectly capable of providing. Contributors should spend their time and money creating content. All iStock's arrogance does is drive contributors away. I'm a perfect example. I'm a creative director; illustration is a hobby for me. I never would have even noticed there were other stock sites, really, if iStock hadn't aggravated me so much. (I was aware of Getty and Corbis, of course, and Veer; all the art directors I work with use them). It was only after getting completely fed up with iStock that I started poking around and discovered Shutterstock. I uploaded my work and immediately started earning 4X as much there. Until then my goal was to get enough sales at iStock to hopefully one day go exclusive. iStock immediately became the site I uploaded to much less often.
2737
« on: November 22, 2013, 15:15 »
Well, now it's very clear you work for iStock. Only their employees would be arrogant enough to put the onus of getting sales stats on their contributors and not on themselves. The site is poorly run, with continuous problems other sites either don't have or are capable of fixing very quickly. It's truly embarrassing, especially now that you're owned by a large corporation.
I think we all express our frustration here because we want the site to work properly and we want the company to do well. Because when iStock does well its contributors do well (sort of). But complaints about basic functionality are taken as personal insults and met with snarls of derision. With the tremendous percentage of commission iStock takes, it also expects its contributors to cough up their own earnings to get sales information? It can't fix a simple function that's been broken for weeks now?
It can't...or it won't? After all, iStock is capable of running a half price sale flawlessly while contributor stats languish.
It's a pragmatic solution, the site isn't working and you want to see stats in an easy to view way? What's the best way to do it? Complain and when that doesn't work complain some more or try to find a solution? I chose to offer possible solutions. Do people want to get stats or just complain that iStock isn't working?
And to answer your question bhr, 'Why?". It might have something to do with being called a liar, a stooge, a shill, or arrogant when you offer help. Or maybe people left to find a site where there were less emoticons in use?
Asking contributors to spend more than a hundred dollars a year to get access to stats that should be provided as a matter of course by their representative is not pragmatic. It's ludicrous. Especially when, I'm sure, many of your contributors don't earn that much at iStock in a year.
2738
« on: November 22, 2013, 14:57 »
So then basically all the many other options you kept referring to are vaporware. There's stockperformer, which costs 90 euros/year (which breaks down to, what, around $140/year give or take?)
There's a mobile phone app, which probably won't work on my 3 year old phone, and then there's counting sales and income one by one for the whole month? For some of us they run into the thousands, so that's not practical.
All other sites provide daily, or at least monthly stats graphs. I don't want to pay >$100 to get stats just for one incompetently managed site. I also don't want to have to go out and buy a phone for >$200 that I don't otherwise need just so I can get an app to do the stats for that same incompetently managed site.
At least we have exposed the lie of a plethora of convenient alternatives to Istock stats, so you can stop shoveling that into the conversation.
You are a very bitter person. Always making personal insults, I've tried to help and again you are insulting me. You said you get thousands of sales a month from iStock alone surely you can afford $140 a year to get the stats how you want them. I guess you can continue to whine about it and make personal attacks but that won't solve your problem. Good luck to you, I won't be responding to any more of your comments.
Well, now it's very clear you work for iStock. Only their employees would be arrogant enough to put the onus of getting sales stats on their contributors and not on themselves. The site is poorly run, with continuous problems other sites either don't have or are capable of fixing very quickly. It's truly embarrassing, especially now that you're owned by a large corporation. I think we all express our frustration here because we want the site to work properly and we want the company to do well. Because when iStock does well its contributors do well (sort of). But complaints about basic functionality are taken as personal insults and met with snarls of derision. With the tremendous percentage of commission iStock takes, it also expects its contributors to cough up their own earnings to get sales information? It can't fix a simple function that's been broken for weeks now? It can't...or it won't? After all, iStock is capable of running a half price sale flawlessly while contributor stats languish.
2739
« on: November 21, 2013, 14:22 »
Yes, we get at least 50% less RPI.
That's how sales work. They are trying to get more volume, attract new buyers, or bring back ones that left. The idea is to make more money overall than you would without it, hopefully it works.
Except they've already tried it and asked for feedback for contributors, and nobody seemed to earn any more money. If the contributors aren't earning any more, then iStock isn't either.
I seem to remember a few people doing very well or at least being very happy about the sale.
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=357676&page=1
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=353935&page=1
Well, the iStock forums are a sad place to be. You must be happy, happy joy joy or your thread is closed, you're banned, etc. Even knowing that, I don't see anyone reporting higher earnings, just expressing hope that the sale will make a difference.
And you are freakily well-informed if you are not a paid employee of iStock.
It doesn't take much work to look this stuff up, I also remember the last time there was a sale and basically the same discussion happened back then (many of these types of discussions have happened before). When there is a sale in 6 months we'll have it again. I make my living from stock so I feel like I have a duty to myself to be as well informed as possible.
Great! Then you can point us to the thread where people reported higher earnings during a sale? Or no?
2740
« on: November 21, 2013, 14:13 »
I was accepted with simpler initial illustrations than these. I think harnesses on the reindeer might be helpful, but if you look at other Santa/reindeer vectors on iStock some of the reindeer are attached just by reins or nothing at all. I don't think you need to be as literal with illustrations.
2741
« on: November 21, 2013, 14:07 »
Yes, we get at least 50% less RPI.
That's how sales work. They are trying to get more volume, attract new buyers, or bring back ones that left. The idea is to make more money overall than you would without it, hopefully it works.
Except they've already tried it and asked for feedback for contributors, and nobody seemed to earn any more money. If the contributors aren't earning any more, then iStock isn't either.
I seem to remember a few people doing very well or at least being very happy about the sale.
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=357676&page=1
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=353935&page=1
Well, the iStock forums are a sad place to be. You must be happy, happy joy joy or your thread is closed, you're banned, etc. Even knowing that, I don't see anyone reporting higher earnings, just expressing hope that the sale will make a difference. And you are freakily well-informed if you are not a paid employee of iStock.
2742
« on: November 21, 2013, 13:57 »
Yes, we get at least 50% less RPI.
That's how sales work. They are trying to get more volume, attract new buyers, or bring back ones that left. The idea is to make more money overall than you would without it, hopefully it works.
Except they've already tried it and asked for feedback for contributors, and nobody seemed to earn any more money. If the contributors aren't earning any more, then iStock isn't either.
2743
« on: November 21, 2013, 12:56 »
Half the price means that the customer pay it half the price.
But I think that the contributor will be paid the same price as ever.
Right?
No. We get half as much as usual. And some of my files are more than 50% off. For example, 5-credit files have been reduced to 2 credits.
On the other hand, when Shutterstock has a sale we still get the same amount of money.
That's only true for sub sales other sales work on a % just like the iStock sale. They 'flow' the discount on to the contributor.
How do you know? You are not even submitting to SS. I never got a discounted ODD or EL.
Me neither. There was a thread on the iStock forums the first time they had a half price sale, and though some contributors got double the usual sales (me included), we didn't earn any additional money. Some people had a drop in earnings. That's what's happening to me right now. If you run a half price sale on top of a sitewide half price promotion and you do it repeatedly, it's not so special any more.
2744
« on: November 21, 2013, 11:31 »
Half the price means that the customer pay it half the price.
But I think that the contributor will be paid the same price as ever.
Right?
No. We get half as much as usual. And some of my files are more than 50% off. For example, 5-credit files have been reduced to 2 credits. On the other hand, when Shutterstock has a sale we still get the same amount of money.
2745
« on: November 21, 2013, 10:02 »
Yep, I mentioned their amazing half-price sale, which is running and reducing my earnings without a hitch, in the thread about the lack of sales data that never seems to be able to be fixed.
2746
« on: November 21, 2013, 09:59 »
Welcome to the cult of Apple. You're going to be very happy here.
2747
« on: November 20, 2013, 14:25 »
2748
« on: November 20, 2013, 09:16 »
This thread reminds me of one of my favorite commercials ever:
2749
« on: November 19, 2013, 17:03 »
I like them! I think they would be accepted. Just be careful of the transparency around the stars in the Santa Claus illustration. I know there have been some issues with transparencies (I avoid them), and I don't think you really need it.
2750
« on: November 19, 2013, 15:32 »
I would suggest making them as different from one another as possible. If you're accepted, you can always immediately upload all of your Christmas/Santa Claus files.
Sure, I think the folks here would be happy to take a look at your files.
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