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Messages - Mantis
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5326
« on: May 08, 2011, 17:20 »
The deal for video and vector was part of the incentive to get contributors to opt in to Vetta. There is no such deal for photographers. Right now they won't even give us a date for when they'll announce the photo targets.
Honestly, I don't see how they could leave the targets the same for photographers. Downloads seem to be in steep decline there for many, many people.
Very true but they will likely leave them the same so we all take another pay cut...that's simply been their M.O. for nearly a year.
5327
« on: May 08, 2011, 12:22 »
I haven't left yet but I haven't and don't expect to hear anything from iStock about terminating my exclusivity.
When they didn't contact me to ask about the fraud conference call even though I think there were many more "votes" for me than for some of the people who participated it was clear to me that I must have p*(#@d off a lot of people at HQ.
I think as long as they keep the visible exclusives - Lise, Sean, et al. - they'll not sweat loosing the rest of us.
Sorry they may think about you in that way, Joan. I can honestly say that I personally appreciated your critique forum feedback on some of my tougher images, especially my composites. Time will certainly tell a compelling story over at Istock. I'm still making enough to keep uploading there but that is softening a bit more each day it seems. There is a thing called the law of diminishing returns and many are almost there it seems.
5328
« on: May 08, 2011, 10:27 »
Since you are on the major sites already, I think the quickest way to increase your income would be to try and figure out how to create more salable stock. Or a way to create stock that Shutterstock accepts... Which is probably the same thing as more saleable stock.
That said, if you really want more sites you could check out yaymicro, deposit photos and PantherMedia
Took the words right out of my mouth. Figure out the "why's" and "what's" before you load to other sites. Why=Why aint my stuff sellin? Then "what do I need to do to close that gap"...is it key wording, content, composition, lighting, etc. Step back and look at your work...then look at other hot ports that are similar in content and compare...what's different? Many ports are awesome because the person is excellent in Photoshop, while others are good because they have PS skills and broad photo and studio skills. The latter combo is quite powerful.
5329
« on: May 08, 2011, 10:18 »
Just out of curiosity, did iStock contact any of those dropping the crown for a debriefing?
I remember once on here Lobo (as Pieman) saying that he regularly monitored those leaving exclusivity.
I'd have thought that if they were interested in maintaining the exclusivity program (tbh, I'm surprised they haven't just dropped it), they should get feedback on why people are leaving the program.
^ This would be interesting to hear feedback. It could infer, depending on how one answers, that they are leaning to eliminating exclusivity. By taking (and creating) the first step for nons with their version of a plus program means they probably make more revenue per credit that way...less with exclusives...so why not dump them or get rid of the lions share of high paid exclusives? I mean, look at Joan leaving. Did they chat with her? She's a big player over there. What would happen if Sean left? Would they say "don't let the door hit you in the ass?" or beg him not to leave? This would, in my opinion, be a signal of their near future intentions.
5330
« on: May 07, 2011, 07:39 »
The behavior of my income is like what many of you report; Shutterstock $$ has gone up considerably and so has Dreamstime. If the trend for this month at IS continues I will be 50% down in income, and I'm not talking $1 to 50 cents either. And I am also not talking 2 grand to 1 grand, but somewhere in between. So the income drop, to me, is significant...hundreds less per month.
5331
« on: May 07, 2011, 07:36 »
Kelly's answer:
Please concentrate on which of all your files will work as PNGs. That's exciting news, and we'll be the first agency to have them. And hopefully enjoy the bump in sales these articles (usually) give us.[/i]
Ah. OK. If they're keen to be the 'first agency to have them', I won't let them have them. I'll wait until Jon Oringer wants them thanks.
Good idea. In Jon we trust (in Kelly we distrust).
^ I was going to post something about trust but this pretty much sums it up for me.
5332
« on: May 05, 2011, 19:58 »
I'm astonished that people are even considering this, especially with a 6-month lock! A new round of koolaid must have been passed out.
I wouldn't touch that offer with a 12-inch turd, especially with the way they have lied, misled and cheated their contributors out of hard earned and well deserved commissions.
5333
« on: May 05, 2011, 19:33 »
"Everyone sort of settled down.", really? I guess getting tired of ranting to a brick wall on the forums constitutes agreement. I won't forget what they did.
I got a site mail from LOBO warning me about my postings in their forums when they made the big announcement. All I was doing was speaking my mind and not using any cuss words (like others did) but I figured it was because I was non-exclusive and a nobody in the eyes of ISTOCK. Shortly after, I joined up here. My sales dropped from around $540 a month to the $250ish range. So I am not in that fantasy land number of 99 point something percent unaffected.
5334
« on: May 03, 2011, 18:06 »
Scratching my head here but what kind of company treats their suppliers AND buyers like crap and expects to be successful? In my opinion there is DEFIANTLY an ulterior motive...should I say strategy..behind the behavior of the IS principles. To me they are obviously (intentionally) not communicating whatever it is they are concocting behind the scenes and are surely trying to manipulate a different desired business outcome. This is simple to infer due solely to their silence in the forums...all while their "valued" human capital (suppliers) are losing a huge chunk of their livelihood $$ and their equally valued revenue machines (buyers) are being shut out by high prices, poor system functionality and what amounts to ISTOCK trickery by placing Agency and Vetta at the top of best match searches.
They are a disgraceful business.
5335
« on: April 24, 2011, 20:10 »
At Shutterstock, is there a procedure for a second review of images; images the submitter feels should not have been rejected. If so, please provide method to contact the second review.
Yes and no. Going by the "rules" it works something like this: 1. For images with quality type rejections - if you resubmit you are supposed to leave a note to the inspector that you fixed the issue. 2. If you flat out think they made a mistake, you can contact headquarters for another look. However this is usually a one or two image kind of thing, not large batches per se. 3. LCV. No resubmit. Realistically many contributors wait a bit and then resubmit as new uploads and not resubmits, including LCV rejections.
5336
« on: April 23, 2011, 08:17 »
Thursday and Friday last week were certainly nothing to write home about. That's the way it's been going for me for a while though.
Today is like a Sunday so far. R e a l l y slow.
went from 15 a day as a non, then best match changed, so 10 a day, then ZERO DL yesterday (Friday). I know it's only one day but ohy vey.
5337
« on: April 23, 2011, 08:15 »
Why not clone out all LV logos and use it as an RF? There are lots of LV fakes out there. May be more useful as a purse isolated on white.
5338
« on: April 23, 2011, 08:10 »
I noticed that too 
It made me feel better about my own 'ignores'. I guess they didn't realise he was The King around these parts.
ETA: Unless of course he ignored himself just to make the rest of us feel better. Seems such a nice fellow that I wouldn't be surprised 
I bet Leaf knows who. He has a magic button.
5339
« on: April 23, 2011, 08:08 »
Racephoto, what are you talking about? Observations ARE evidence. So are posts by disgruntled buyers saying they are leaving and for every one who bothers to post there are probably 100 others who pack their tent and leave without saying a word. Maybe there are hundreds of others signing up to replace them. Maybe the overall "spend" from people switching to V/A and away from the non-elite is boosting iStock's profits. I don't know. But I do know that this is the first time in the company's history that quite a number of different buyers have come forward to protest about the service that they are getting.
And why would contributors continuing to upload make buyers less ticked off about having searches flooded with Vetta and Agency? Contributors are uploading everywhere else, too, and some of the top contributors upload a lot more to other sites than they do to iStock.
You're absolutely right that Getty will never let us see its books while it is a private company. But to go on from that to argue that therefore we shouldn't be saying anything because we don't have access to any evidence is just plain wrong. It's exactly like the Church telling people not to speculate about how the solar system works just because the official geocentric model is causing difficulties with the calculations (these observed difficulties aren't evidence of anything, are they?).
It's not just Shutterstock that is up, either. 123 is already up to its monthly average for me, with a third of the month to go. Canstock sales in the last three months have been well above the long-term average (so far, my number of files sold this month is 36% above the total for all of last April). Sales at both these sites would be more sensitive indicators of movement than Shutterstock, since their markets have been quite small.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, some buyers are not vocal about them leaving. Those are the kind of buyers that Istock doesn't notice unless them measure falloff (which any right minded company should measure). Case and point. My company just opened a Shutterstock account for two reasons: 1. Prices have gotten too high; 2. The site is dysfunctional. They will use up their credits and transition over to Shutterstock...and we do A LOT of visual management (web, TV, magazine, tradeshow, and brochure advertising). So this is an example of a buyer QUIETLY transitioning to another supplier. How many of those are leaving Istock? I bet more than one. So we cannot just tally up those vocal buyers we must consider the ones who are leaving in silent disagreement.
5340
« on: April 22, 2011, 16:43 »
They have some pretty useless forums over there, too. A ton of useless pimping, many topics not related to art imagery & video, tons of heated political topics, contributors begging for votes in photo competitions and very little value in the way of critique and real contributor help. Somewhere between there and Istock would be nice....oh wait, we have MSG:)
5341
« on: April 17, 2011, 09:20 »
You've chosen the wrong issue. Instead of telling them that you have lost out and want them to give you money, you should tell them that they are losing money because iStock policies are driving customers away.
The letter would probably still end up in the bin, but they would think slightly longer about their potential losses than about yours.
Exactly. Tell them what they are losing, not what you are losing...or at lease weight the two properly. However, back to the signing of the letter....there were two harassment issues at my work and both were clearly ligitimate. When the persons filed complaints through the proper ethics channels the issue was ignored.....as often happens in big companies. So both wrote signed letters and sent them to our parent companies ethics and legal department. What do you think happened? Both issues were simply sent back to the division HR department to handle, then HR sent them back to the original managers who ignored the issue and nothing was done at all.....except both complainees are no longer with the company. So given istocks retaliatory reputation I would be careful what you do unless you are willing to lose your account.
5342
« on: April 16, 2011, 09:04 »
To answer my own question, here's the words straight from the horse's mouth (sort of - it's via that Canon article where KKT was interviewed), so we have to take it with a grain of salt, considering he thinks all the contributors only sell stock to buy a new lens cap:
"Thompson also clearly has an eye on the long-term benefits of the site's search engine which has recently been overhauled. He describes it as awesome in delivering results based on a customer/client's location."
So it's supposed to be based on a client's location. So so stupid. Not all a designer's clients are local. Can they really be *that* dumb at iStock? (rhetorical question, of course)
You know, I hadn't really thought of that -- haven't bought stock for a remote client in a while -- but yeah, imagine if you worked in the travel industry or did design work for a multi-national? Pain in the ass.
^ I am that company. We do design work in Orange County but for India, China, Columbia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Russia, to name a few. We use Istock but now have a Shutterstock account and are transitioning away from IS due mostly to the pricing trickery they use and the many site problems. We may use them later if/when things are fixed but......sigh!
5343
« on: April 15, 2011, 18:44 »
Only yesterday I was assessing how well my newest 100 images (uploaded over the last 3 months) had sold so far on Fotolia and others. The results were extraordinary;
Fotolia - 6 sales
Istock - 30 sales
Shutterstock - 283 sales
It appears that new images on Fotolia are emerging so far down the best match that they're unlikely ever to be seen by buyers. It's a pity because new images often used to do very well on Fotolia. Right now it hardly seems worth uploading to them.
That pretty much echoes my recent experience on Fotolia, out of my last 200 uploads only 30 have sold.
I don't know what's happened there but speaking to a few of the top sellers in microstock we are all experiencing more or less the same thing.
Same here. Sales basically went away...I am 75% down in usual sales based on a 12 month average. Sure looks like they are trying a bastardized version of the IS debacle. Between the two I am down hundreds per month.
5344
« on: April 15, 2011, 07:47 »
https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Public/hands.jpg?w=d92b8ee8Once you save an image as a jpg you will get rough edges. Editing in PSD or TIFF gives you clean edges in these formats, but when you save the image as a JPG you lose data and will get jagged, rough looking edges. Istock knows this and, according to them, so do their inspectors. However, the best way to check for isolations is to use the same method they use by using a levels or curves layer. Your image has plenty of issues. I pulled your image, created a curves layer and the first thing is you can see the upper tight grey area. That is a the main issue. However, you also have that light gray around most of the hand, which is unclean. Use your dodge tool, set it to something low like 10 and a good feathered edge. Just kiss the edge of the hand and the gray will disappear. You can do it with the curves layer on or off, but make sure you inspect the image using the curves layer. Once the image is properly isolated, you can dump the curves layer and then save your work.
5345
« on: April 09, 2011, 19:31 »
Lol, Stacey said 'haters'.
no right-wing tea party reference intended. definitely do not support anything of that sort.
Oh, it's the left wing then, even worse.
5346
« on: April 09, 2011, 08:09 »
I suppose you guys could be right about a sale sometime soon. But I should have thought that an IPO would be very unlikely.
Why would they sell it as a part finished transformation ? Why not wait until the transformation is more complete?
I think they are...from my personal experience anyway. When our corporate leaders decided we were putting ourselves up for sale, the "enhancing of the books" was a priority for three years before we sought buyers and made our intentions public. So perhaps they are going through these pains now but won't formally announce anything for the next 36 months or so. My guess is, assuming there is an impending sale or IPO, that they are rushing to get things as optimized as possible from a web site functionality viewpoint and that the continuing policy changes are meant to pad the financials, as is the best match changes they keep doing by prioritizing Vetta and Agency. To be fair to Istock, I have ZERO knowledge of anything like this happening over there, only that the symptoms of a sale do exist.
5347
« on: April 08, 2011, 18:26 »
I would shoot everything in RAW and if you are doing that, then it totally doesn't matter what color balance you are shooting with, you have total control over it in post. So yeah, I always shoot in auto white balance.
^ This is by far the easiest way to deal with white balance in my opinion. Sometimes, depending on what you are shooting cameras may favor certain colors such as red, for example. Even auto white balance can get tricked into having a cast to the image, requiring a WB tweak. If you can swing it, shoot in RAW then edit in a raw converter.
5348
« on: April 08, 2011, 18:22 »
How would any buyer achieve sustainable growth on their investment ? Put the prices up even higher ? Cut royalties to 10% ? Either of those risk what could be fatal backlash.
Or suppose there was an IPO ? How could stock holder expectations of real growth ever be achieved long term in the current economy ?
Point surely is that the whole thing needs a few year of stability starting sooner or later or else it risks imploding. Which would be a huge shame.
The three large company sales I've been involved in all looked at the last three years of revenue, growth and profitability at a minimum. Knowing this our company did everything they could to pad the books, including cutting out advertising (like IS has apparently done so to some degree anyway), raising prices (like Istock has done), changed the sales force commission structure to favor the company's revenue stream (or pay more in commissions if stretch goals were met...kinda like the RC system at IS), pushed (and upsold) the more profitable products even though the lesser ones did the job just fine (like IS is doing with Agency and Vetta), controlled headcount and cut out overtime. They did this for three years to show how strong the books were. It is this behavior that makes an impending Getty sale more believable; it's probably why Lisa (and I happen to agree) believes a sale might be looming, or even an IPO as suggested. Also, getting rid of "damaging or negative" threads is probably good Istock strategy when it comes to protecting the brand....assuming a sale or IPO is in the crystal ball. Just my 2 cents.
5349
« on: April 07, 2011, 19:38 »
I'd say "anger" is justified. We signed up with the promise of a certain commission rate, we put up with their lousy site, and we were rewarded with a 25% paycut.
^ It's more than that for nons. With the addition of Ex+, Vetta then Agency, three new layers of best match priority have been bestowed upon the non-exclusives. So in addition to a ~15-25% pay cut, we now have poorer placement in the search as a result because these other layers receive preferred placement. I've been keeping track of my DL volume and I've gone from averaging 15 dl per day to 10 since January. I will be tracking this for the year to get enough data to make a reasonable inference as to whether these layers have affected my volume...but I am pretty sure it's contributing at least to some degree.
5350
« on: April 06, 2011, 21:33 »
I don't know where he's from. But I'm from Arizona.
well then you know of the crazy politics here in AZ -- I was making a sarcastic reference to that after all crazy politicians that are in this state. 
Don't you mean the Senate Democrats?
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