MicrostockGroup Sponsors


Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - B8

Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 5
26
The classic view closeup page also used to show you how many total sales you have made for an image, including sub sales, etc.

When you see the image listed in My Uploads, the total number of downloads shown only refers to standard credit sales.

So this taking away of another site feature also results in an additional loss of useful information for the contributor that had helped contributors gauge which of their images are selling well, especially under the subs program.

Since the majority of sales are now also subscription sales, and not credit sales, it seems this additional loss of information is rather critical and the information that remains only about credit sales is rather superfluous. SMH

27
The latest chapter in the self destruction of iStock.

28
General - Top Sites / Re: Property Release on Alamy
« on: June 02, 2016, 00:27 »
Here is the full property release standard wording from the Easy Release app, which should be acceptable to all agencies:

As owner or authorized representative of the Property and by signing this
release, I give the Photographer / Filmmaker and Assigns my permission to
create and use the Content depicting the Property in any Media, for any
purpose (excluding defamation and / or pornography) which may include,
among others, advertising, promotion, marketing and packaging for any
product or service. I agree that the Content may be combined with other
content, text and graphics and cropped, altered or modified. I agree that all
rights to the Content belong to the Photographer / Filmmaker and / or
Assigns.

I agree that I have received Consideration for the rights granted in this
release. I acknowledge and agree that I have no further right to additional
Consideration or accounting, and that I will make no further claim for any
reason to Photographer / Filmmaker and / or Assigns. I acknowledge and
agree that this release is binding upon my heirs if applicable, assigns or
any person claiming an interest in the Property. I agree that this release is
irrevocable, worldwide and perpetual, and will be governed by the laws
(excluding the law of conflicts) of the country / state from the following list
that is nearest to the address of the owner or authorized representative
given opposite: New York, Alberta, England, Australia and New Zealand.
It is agreed that my personal information will not be made publicly available
but may only be used directly in relation to the licensing of the relevant
Content where necessary (e.g. to defend claims, protect rights or notify
trade unions) and may be retained as long as necessary to fulfill this
purpose, including by being shared with sub-licensees / assignees of the
Photographer / Filmmaker and transferred to countries with differing data
protection and privacy laws where it may be stored, accessed and used.
I represent and warrant that I am at least 18 years of age. I have the full
legal capacity and right to execute this release and grant the rights herein
granted with respect to the Property, and to bind all persons claiming an
interest in the Property.

Definitions: ASSIGNS means a person or any company to whom
Photographer / Filmmaker has assigned or licensed rights under this
release as well as the licensees of any such person or company.
CONSIDERATION means $1 or something else of value I have received
in exchange for the rights granted by me in this release. CONTENTS
means all photographs, film or recording, still or moving, taken of the
Property as part of the Shoot. MEDIA means all media including digital,
electronic, print, television, film and other media now known or to be
invented. PHOTOGRAPHER / FILMMAKER means photographer,
illustrator, filmmaker or cinematographer, or any other person or entity
photographing or recording the Property. PROPERTY means the place
and or property (real estate or intellectual property) that is the subject of the
Shoot. SHOOT means the photographic or film session described in this
form.

29
General - Top Sites / Re: Property Release on Alamy
« on: June 02, 2016, 00:22 »
This is standard wording from a standard property release I have. Most of the releases I have seen don't need one to fill in the amount of consideration. Just to say that consideration was paid is enough. The Easy Release smartphone app is also very useful. I generally just use that one. It has both a model and property release built into it and neither of them require you to fill in an amount of compensation either. Hope that helps.

I agree that I have received Consideration for the rights granted in
this release. I acknowledge and agree that I have no further right
to additional Consideration or accounting, and that I will make no
further claim for any reason to Photographer / Filmmaker and / or
Assigns. I acknowledge and agree that this release is binding upon
my heirs if applicable, assigns or any person claiming an interest in
the Property.

30
iStockPhoto.com / Re: This file is publishing
« on: May 28, 2016, 11:33 »
Someone just posted in the FB group that if you go to the stuck file, click edit, and save, it unlocks.   Tried it and it worked.

Hmm, these files are not locked. They have not finished publishing yet. Anyway, thanks, I just tried it on a few files and nothing changed for me.

Worked on four of mine from different dates, but took about ten minutes  for the  status  to  change.

Before I didn't bother to go back and recheck after 10 minutes. Just saw the status was the same after doing it and gave up. Then I just saw that the 2 I did before eventually did clear after a while as you said. So I decided to do the rest. I went back and checked a few minutes later and see that the rest are all cleared now too. Thank you.

31
iStockPhoto.com / Re: This file is publishing
« on: May 28, 2016, 04:09 »
I just tried it various ways. I added keywords, added text to the description, and added and deleted, each time doing a save, and nothing changed with the file's status. I also tried it from Deep Meta, again nothing changed. All files still say "This file is publishing".

In Deep Meta the files don't actually show as pending in the total of pending files at the bottom of Deep Meta, but next to the files they still all show as pending in Deep Meta. Fun Fun Fun.

32
iStockPhoto.com / Re: This file is publishing
« on: May 28, 2016, 04:01 »
Someone just posted in the FB group that if you go to the stuck file, click edit, and save, it unlocks.   Tried it and it worked.

Hmm, these files are not locked. They have not finished publishing yet. Anyway, thanks, I just tried it on a few files and nothing changed for me.

33
iStockPhoto.com / Re: This file is publishing
« on: May 27, 2016, 03:52 »
Thanks. Part of the new normal I guess. I also have seen some images of other contributors where the thumbnail on the image's closeup page is tiny (in the new view), like only the size of a postage stamp.

34
iStockPhoto.com / This file is publishing
« on: May 27, 2016, 01:31 »
I have files that passed inspection close to a week ago already but are still showing as "This file is publishing" in My Uploads. So the files are approved but are not live in my portfolio or available for sale online yet.

I often used to see the "This file is publishing" notice for a few hours after a file was approved, but then it would clear itself. Now it seems to stay like this for days.

Has anyone else experienced this problem of "This file is publishing" not eventually moving the files into being available for sale after a short period of time and/or is iStock aware of the problem?

35
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Are the good time gone forever?
« on: May 23, 2016, 11:55 »
Attached is a screenshot of Canva's WordPress login screen.


36
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Are the good time gone forever?
« on: May 23, 2016, 11:45 »
Eh-Hem, I am a photographer, I have set up my own stock site selling purely my own content

Well, yes, that's your own images. Put on someone else's images who uses different keywording than you do, find out a fair way whose images to show first for any given search terms, make accounting for those, pay out the earned royalties in an easy and cheap way. And then do that for 10,000 contributors and 100 Terrabyte of image data. Good luck trying that with WordPress.

At least you won't need marketing because customers will just jump on board once the word goes around that the photographers get 80 cents per download instead of 35.

Obviously you don't know much about WordPress. Canva is running on WordPress and claims to have 9.8 million users and 74 million images online. See here: https://about.canva.com/our-story/

And here is Canva's WordPress admin back-end login panel, which proves that their site is running on the WordPress platform: https://canva.com/wp-login.php

37
iStockPhoto.com / Re: GettyImages
« on: May 17, 2016, 15:30 »
Hello, I think they will be go worse every month since their interface is very slow. 

They can not even calculate  sub sales correctly. April sales appearing under march and some missing days. And their calculating process is the slowest, it takes 25 days for them to calculate prior months sup+partner program sales. I am aware that calculating sales and percentages by hand is not easy but they can hire more mathematicians or use computers instead.


Apparently they just got delivery on some new 250MB HDD. Things should be smooth sailing from here on out:


38
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Costumers feedback
« on: March 31, 2016, 05:41 »
In my inbox I have emails from them from 2012, 2013, and 2015 regarding different kinds of contributor surveys.

39
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Uploading to iStock Is About To Get Easier
« on: January 26, 2016, 00:47 »
The tedious process of uploading images for consideration by iStock is about to get much easier. On February 7th  Kasper Ravlo will be launching a new tool called Q-hero (http://www.qhero.com/). The average time to submit a file for review will drop from over one minute per image to less than 1-2 seconds. Instead of being the slowest site for image submissions, iStock will become the fastest.

I asked Kasper to explain how Q-hero will work and published the information on Selling-Stock.com. You can access the story for free at this link: http://www.selling-stock.com/Article/uploading-to-istock-is-about-to-get-easier


Does anyone even upload to iStock anymore? In recent months I have removed more images than I have added. This program is about 5 years too late.

We need a program that limits the amount of new uploads, makes the inspection and quality standards higher on iStock (as they used to be), get rid of subscription sales all together, make credit sales again based on size, not one price fits all, and stop racing to the bottom.

I have to stop here or the list will go on forever. But if they do those things I might actually have a need for a program like this again in the future.

40
Yes, I think they were originally going to take away Classic View all together by phasing it out after people got used to the new view. But I think contributors made a stink about it being useful in order to show linked lightboxes (amongst other things) so they have at least left it for now. Eventually they will probably just take it away I am assuming after this abatement.

Also, those big preview JPG files have actually always been there, but very few knew about it. There was/is a way to spoof the zoom script in Classic View to make the big JPG watermarked files pop out in a new window/tab. I used to do that myself to see them full screen.

With the new view though they just voluntarily appear when you click on the thumbnail now. So nothing has materially changed in a way because the zoom before was just showing a smaller crop of the bigger JPG preview anyway.

The only real difference in terms of the preview is now they let you have the full file without having to spoof the zoom script to get the large previews to pop out.

I just looked at one of the large previews I had saved from before when we only had the classic view and I spoofed the zoom tool to enlarge it. I see the measurements are 1235 x 923. The watermark is exactly the same too. So again, nothing has really changed in terms of the preview although they made it seem like they are giving us something bigger than before.

If I was able to spoof the zoom tool to get to the actual preview file before then I am sure many other web minded people were too.

41
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Dead & Burried
« on: May 29, 2015, 03:22 »
I expect Monday views and sales will start ratcheting down even lower with the start of the June summer months. I am expecting to see an even newer new.

42
iStockPhoto.com / Dead & Burried
« on: May 27, 2015, 23:51 »
In the last 14 days or so I put up almost 200 new files. Not even one single view has been recorded on any of them at all. I guess the new new just keeps getting newer.

43
I agree 100%.
But let's back up the truck a bit, the advent of race to the bottom primarily started with the introduction of Istock as the introduction to microstock and then several other microstock sites started up and followed suite with the phenomenon of the race to the bottom concept, and the bottom of the free fall was the introduction of subscription sales, which clearly has become the norm. Istock certainly was the pioneer to the race to the bottom, and now all they are doing is playing catch up as they clearly did not dive deep enough to the bottom at the beginning.
I have said it before and I will say it again, subscription sales are bad for everyone with the exception of the agencies, and sadly we are now in the strangle hold of subscription sales regardless of where where we place our images.
The genie is out of the bottle, and it's not going back in.

Conclusion: The cannibal is now being cannibalized by an even hungrier cannibal.

I can't say I actually agree with that view at all. At one time, experienced shooters could stay in the comfort of a small home studio producing high quality images of people and simple objects isolated on white and earn $10,000 a month with a portfolio of around just 2,000 high-quality images on iStock. I don't call that race to the bottom. I call that a great opportunity knowing that nowhere else would you have been able to sell those kinds of images and earn that kind of money. But now you are lucky to earn 10% of that with that same portfolio. That change in the dynamic is in itself the race to the bottom.

I do love though if you fast forward to 6:45 in this video by Derek Snyder from Getty Images where he says "Put simply, this is not a race to the bottom" when in fact for the entire 8:24 minute video he talks purely about how they are racing to the bottom with their subs program and considerably lower subs prices to take on Shutterstock and rebuild the iStock brand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R12s2Acv_IQ

That is my point! Before microstock came along (and this really had nothing to do with Getty as they did not purchase Istock till much later) basic web usage images were being sold for $30 - $75 depending on your source and royalties being roughly 30%-40%. Microstock brought that down to it's knees for $1 - 5$ per image and starting at 20% based on the canister system, if memory serves correct.  If that is not being a pioneer in the race to the bottom I really don't know what is.

Still not right. There are still rights managed sites trying to charge those kind of prices for web use, etc. But the point is iStock created the platform for steady sales and access to steady buyers if you could simply create high-quality simple executions for royalty free usage. And nobody was making the kind of steady income and growth that iStock could provide at one time elsewhere shooting just simple images at home. So when iStock came along they didn't pioneer the race to the bottom, they pioneered the ability to make a lot of money from easy to produce, and simple imagery that most of the big agencies couldn't be arsed to bother with or would even accept into their collections because it wasn't considered creative enough. Then Getty came along and destroyed the whole thing and the final nail in the coffin was infused when they followed suit into subs and everyone's income dropped to the lowest levels yet. That is when they joined the race to the bottom. Before that iStock was doing nothing but raising prices for 5 years and racing to the top.

On the bright side though, the only thing left that Getty can do to screw iStock up even further is go out of business completely. I guess that would make a difference. 

44
I agree 100%.
But let's back up the truck a bit, the advent of race to the bottom primarily started with the introduction of Istock as the introduction to microstock and then several other microstock sites started up and followed suite with the phenomenon of the race to the bottom concept, and the bottom of the free fall was the introduction of subscription sales, which clearly has become the norm. Istock certainly was the pioneer to the race to the bottom, and now all they are doing is playing catch up as they clearly did not dive deep enough to the bottom at the beginning.
I have said it before and I will say it again, subscription sales are bad for everyone with the exception of the agencies, and sadly we are now in the strangle hold of subscription sales regardless of where where we place our images.
The genie is out of the bottle, and it's not going back in.

Conclusion: The cannibal is now being cannibalized by an even hungrier cannibal.

I can't say I actually agree with that view at all. At one time, experienced shooters could stay in the comfort of a small home studio producing high quality images of people and simple objects isolated on white and earn $10,000 a month with a portfolio of around just 2,000 high-quality images on iStock. I don't call that race to the bottom. I call that a great opportunity knowing that nowhere else would you have been able to sell those kinds of images and earn that kind of money. But now you are lucky to earn 10% of that with that same portfolio. That change in the dynamic is in itself the race to the bottom.

I do love though if you fast forward to 6:45 in this video by Derek Snyder from Getty Images where he says "Put simply, this is not a race to the bottom" when in fact for the entire 8:24 minute video he talks purely about how they are racing to the bottom with their subs program and considerably lower subs prices to take on Shutterstock and rebuild the iStock brand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R12s2Acv_IQ

46
iStockPhoto.com / Re: iStock | 15 Year Anniversary
« on: April 23, 2015, 02:48 »
Someone get Brad Ralph a working spell checker please. If he is going to be trying to impress investors and the board members with his letters then he could at least spell properly. Here are 2 of the blatant spelling errors I noticed in his email:

recieved
credientials
 
 

47
iStockPhoto.com / iStock | 15 Year Anniversary
« on: April 22, 2015, 01:06 »
Quote

Its hard to believe that 15 years ago, a small team with an idea about changing the world of royalty-free imagery, would evolve into what we know as iStock by Getty Images today.
 This April marks a significant milestone in iStocks history, a history that has been largely based on an insatiable love of imagery, an appetite for disruption, and an irreverent affinity for change.
 
Even with our long history of evolution, the past year has brought more change to iStock than the previous decade and a half combined. Over the past 12 months, we have we have completely repictured the business, updating and simplifying the search and purchase process, removing barriers at every step.
 
The biggest change is our launch of a full subscription product. This has significantly shifted the business economics, but has also given iStock access to a new customer base that was simply unaccessible before with our singular credit model. Make no mistake, this shift in our core business has not been without challenges, but it is vital to the long-term growth of the business and will pay dividends in the future. High volume customers who have long wanted access to our premium quality, exclusive content, but have been limited by our credit model, are now free to leverage our content for their creative projects.
 
On the topic of content In an industry where our competitors continue to push quantity over quality, one fundamental ideology that has not and will not change, is iStocks a philosophy of Exclusive Artists providing premium content that you cant get from anyone else. We are proud to represent your content, and defy the race-to-the-bottom trend in pricing by rewarding talent, investing in our artists and paying higher rates for our Signature tier product. We continue to share the passion and creativity each that each and every exclusive artist puts into their work. It is these shared ideologies that separates us from the competitors, and has made iStock by Getty Images the leader in the market.
 
As one of the original founders of iStock, I have enjoyed many exciting experiences and challenges in the past 15 years, yet I have never been more excited for the future of the business.
 
From myself and the entire iStock and Getty Images team we thank you for 15 amazing years, and look forward to the next 15 as we work together to maintain our position as the leaders in the industry.
 
I invite you to watch this short business update video from Derek Snyder, Sr. Director of Product and E-Commerce for iStock by Getty Images, as he details the strategies and impacts of the RePicture project, and frames the business for the years to come.
 
Sincerely,
Brad Ralph
Senior Director, Content Development / Co-Founder iStockphoto

PS. If you are having problems viewing the video please ensure you've recieved your log in credientials for the Getty Contributor Portal. If you haven't recieved your credientals please send a quick email to the Content Manager.
 



What a bunch of bullocks Brad. Another unknown name pops out of the woodwork with the usual Woo-Yay rubbish. Who was it last time that sent one of these emails? I can hardly keep track of the list of one-hit wonders.

Quote
On the topic of content In an industry where our competitors continue to push quantity over quality...
- Now that's a complete oxymoron.

I think I will stop my rant here or this could go on for hours...

48
And here are the high-res comps they are providing now which are very easy to remove the watermarks on. This file was 988K when I saved it as JPG from the zoom page and it is a 3.26MB file when uncompressed. I had to compress it down to under 500K though so I could add it to this post.

49
I was just able to pull this up using Tor Browser without being logged in to the site. This confirms they are already using the new Asset Detail page design I first indicated when I started this thread and the layout contains all the elements I mentioned such as no descriptions, only the option to download the full-res image, and of course no lightbox links as expected.

I just pulled up this image at random, so there is no significance as to why I chose this image. If you pull up the Asset Detail page for any image then the layout and design will be exactly the same, but may show some "Similar Image" thumbnail options on certain images.

50
When I saw that new Asset Detail Page temporarily I also noticed that they removed the size options now and only offer the buyer the option to download the full, highest-res file that is available, even if the buyer may only require a small sized file for web use.

This means clients that are not adept at resizing photos may be putting the high res photos they download right onto their web sites, thus making it much easier for photo buyers to do Google image searches using the comp from the iStock site from the Asset Detail page and then locate a free copy of the full res image somewhere online for free.

This is just another level of decreasing security on our content and making it much easier for copyright infringement and loss of revenue to occur.

Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 5

Sponsors

Mega Bundle of 5,900+ Professional Lightroom Presets

Microstock Poll Results

Sponsors