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Messages - B8
76
« on: June 14, 2013, 00:58 »
I also noticed if you go to My Uploads and you select Signature + from the drop down menu and click Search to refresh you will actually get an accurate reading of how many actual Signature + files you have after the collection changes and the figure/results will include your old E+ files and the new files added by the system to E+ after the collection changes. So even though the price slider isn't returning correct results yet based on the new collections at least the My Uploads is.
77
« on: June 13, 2013, 23:22 »
I am not sure how well the price slider is working yet. I was trying to ascertain now how many files I have in the Signature + collection now after the collection changes that were made. So I did a search in my portfolio for all of my Signature + collection files using the price slider. What came up are all the files that I had made E+ myself in the past. Meanwhile, when the collections changed, I noticed that iStock added some more of my better selling files to the Signature + collection as well. All good on the new files they added, but the new files they added don't come up in the Signature + collection when searching using the price slider as of yet. So this means the price slider is producing inaccurate pricing search results right now.
To reconfirm this I did a price slider selection in my portfolio of all my regular Signature collection files and sure enough all the files that iStock added to Signature + showed up in the regular Signature collection selection made using the price sliders. Perhaps once they remove the files that they feel shouldn't be in the Signature + collection then the sliders will start working correctly based on price.
The problem for the time being though is that if a buyer is looking for regular Signature collection priced files then the buyer is going to get a heap load of Signature + collection files as well. And if they sort their results by either best match or downloads then they will actually end up seeing nothing but Signature + priced files in their Signature only search results.
78
« on: May 25, 2013, 10:18 »
The reality is that these issues are actually the quiet before the mounting bigger storm. If history is any indication of future performance, then, as soon as iStock starts changing around the collections, the real storm will start once the stability and performance of the overall site starts coming undone again. Hold onto your chin straps boys and girls. I wonder how long this time it will take to put things right after things go wonky?
79
« on: April 28, 2013, 13:11 »
Is anyone aware of an upload problem with iStock at the moment using Deep Meta?
80
« on: March 27, 2013, 02:55 »
iStock is already becoming a Getty collection. Getty 360 will put the entire iStock site onto the Getty site. Done deal. Initially only open to exclusive Getty clients, eventually it will be open to all Getty clients is the prediction consensus.
81
« on: March 26, 2013, 09:02 »
I just checked and the lowest price for the smallest sized E+ file on Getty is around US$10 and about US$20 for the smallest Vetta file. Something does sound wrong here.
82
« on: March 25, 2013, 22:14 »
I like the look of the images they are offering, but I don't get the feeling it is really a place that commercial photo buyers will find the bread and butter stuff they need on a day in day out basis. At least not from what I have seen on the site so far. I could be wrong, but the type of images I am seeing there are not images I normally see used in advertising, for general corporate use, and etc.
I can see people enjoying browsing through the collection of imagery for the creative and artistic aspects of what is there to be seen, like the way people like to look through a photo sharing site for inspiration and pleasure, but I am not sure how much real buying will be going on for that genre of imagery in general if you are looking to place an image in an ad or a commercial layout.
For commercial use, people generally go for images that portray a clear concept or message, don't seem a bit eluf in their conceptual message, that are cropped in traditional ways showing a more complete subject, that have typical lighting and colors, that offer isolated subjects with crisp edges so perhaps they can be composited with other images, and etc. I am not saying they won't sell images. Of course they will sell some and I truly hope they do becuase there are some nice shots on there, but personally I don't think I would start shooting the style of imagery they are offering as a stock photo career move thinking I am going to make a lot of sales with them on a commercial stock photo site. In fact, I don't even see what they are offering as being competition for most stock sites. So most other stock artists don't have to worry either. And I still tend to think that the images people will buy time and time again are images that are more generic, clear, well in focus, with more depth of field, and the like.
I give them credit for what they are doing and are trying to do, the spirit and style of the site, and for trying to be out of the box. But as a shooter trying to get the highest returns for my efforts, I think I will stick with shooting the type of content most others shooters shoot, and in the way I know that sells in a traditional commercial stock photo market, rather than taking a risk of shooting something in a new genre that is trying to perhaps create a new market and take it in a whole new direction. So I guess it is easier to continue doing what you know already works rather than trying to reinvent the wheel in some way.
I guess if Stocksy-Style is already the way you shoot anyway, then you have nothing to lose. You put up some of your work there and you see if it can sell to a more limited niche commercial market. But most contributors who try and make a real living from their work need the mass photo buyer market to make it work on a day in day out basis rather than trying to appeal to a smaller, niche, artsy wanting buyer market.
So if you have to adjust your shooting style to try and go after a market that we are not sure even really exists in large numbers commercially, whilst pulling away from the style you normally shoot that has a proven track record of selling already, then I would say it is rather more of a risk to go Stocksy than to stick with what you know already works.
83
« on: March 18, 2013, 07:51 »
Income has dropped for most long time contributors on iStock by 30%-40% or more. For some that drop has happened quickly in a matter of just a few months. For others the fall has happened more gradually over a long period of a year or more, but the net drop is roughly the same for everyone. Nearly 6 months has gone by now since, when on September 1, 2012, iStock basically pressed the self destruct button by creating a vast number of site issues. 6 months later, they have now finally fixed most of the programming problems they created 6 months ago. That includes the zoom tool, lightboxes, best match, file description edits previously not updating correctly, and they finally reversed the prices to showing credits again instead of cash prices by default. The views still aren't working correctly though and the site is probably the slowest microstock site there is, but those aren't probably the biggest deal breakers. The main problem is downloads and incomes still continue to fall from a lack of buying. So this decline can no longer be blamed on site problems, which previously was the red herring everyone thought was the cause of the rapidly declining sales. It is obvious now though that many of the buyers have simply packed up and left and are not coming back. As an 11th hour last ditch effort to try and turn things around they have hired consultants and have started doing buyer and contributor surveys, but it is all a bit too little and too late. For many long time contributors it is viewed as a sinking ship at this point, but it still is better than many of the smaller ships as the poll results show. So until it sinks completely many contributors will probably still hang in there. Hopefully there is something bigger and better that will eventually replace iStock, but still time will tell on that. To answer your question though, no, I would say it isn't worth it as a new contributor joining now. Views and downloads on newly uploaded content is very low for everyone across the board, especially for non exclusive contributors. So the people still earning from iStock are making some dosh only because of older content that is still selling a bit. Good luck.
84
« on: February 17, 2013, 03:09 »
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57569639-93/istockphoto-founder-re-enters-the-market-with-stocksy/Article From CNET: iStockphoto founder re-enters the market with Stocksy
February 15, 2013 | Stephen Shankland
Bruce Livingstone, a pioneer of Internet-based stock-art sales, is launching a new venture even as his original company struggles with some disgruntled photographers.
Bruce Livingstone, who founded microstock powerhouse iStockphoto more than a decade ago and left it in 2009, is trying again with a new stock-art sales venture called Stocksy.
And he's doing it at a time when iStock is, if not necessarily vulnerable, the target of criticisms that it's out of touch with the army of photographers who contribute the imagery it licenses. To succeed, a microstock needs lots of customers licensing its photos, videos, and other works, and it needs a lot of contributors supplying a steady stream of fresh material.
It's these contributors Livingstone appears to be aiming to attract. The site describes Stocksy as "a stock photography cooperative owned and operated by artists," and it says contributors will have a stake in its success:
Our purpose is to create sustainable careers, ownership, and a long-term professional and equity strategy for our members.
Stocksy pays the highest royalty in the industry as well as dividends and patronage performance returns to artists, 50 percent on regular sales and 100 percent of extended licenses. By design, Stocksy pays out all profits to artists. In addition to paying dividend and patronage fees to artists on a yearly basis, each member of the co-op owns real equity in the company.
Livingstone declined to comment for this story.
Stocksy will face plenty of competitive challenges, and not just from iStockphoto, which since 2006 has been part of old-school stock-art firm Getty Images.
The microstock industry's growth was fueled by the abundance of low-cost, high-quality digital cameras and the Web, which provided a quick way to reach a global marketplace. Now there are dozens of microstocks around, including Fololia, Dreamstime, and Shutterstock, which is confident enough of growth that it went public in 2012.
But iStockphoto evidently is a source of talent for new microstocks. A case in point is photographer Sean Locke, who with 12,781 images and more than 900,000 sales is one of its top five contributors and a person who earned nearly all his income from sales through the company.
A week ago, iStock said it is terminating its relationship with Locke. According to his blog post on the subject, iStock was displeased with Locke's actions involving a Getty Images licensing deal with Google and with the fact that Locke had begun working with another stock-art firm.
"They also knew (somehow!) that I had joined this new stock site, even though it was closed to all but a relatively small group, and declared that this was against the 'spirit of the exclusivity agreement,'" Locke said.
Contributors often sign exclusivity contracts that pay them higher royalties if they agree to sell their imagery only through one microstock. Shutterstock founder Jon Oringer thinks exclusivity is bad -- "As a microstock photographer it just doesn't make sense to be exclusive to any one agency," he said in a January blog post -- but it's common. Now, though, Locke said he's moving his portfolio to multiple iStock competitors.
In a statement, iStockphoto laid the blame on the termination on Locke's helping a competitor:
In addition to other factors, Mr. Locke was actively recruiting exclusive iStock contributors to work with a competitive venture which is directly at odds with his relationship with iStockphoto. Given these actions, we made the decision to part ways with Mr. Locke under the terms of his exclusive agreement. We are excited to continue to work with the tens of thousands of contributors committed to the continued success of iStockphoto and Getty Images -- and wish Mr. Locke the best in his future endeavors.
Locke couldn't immediately be reached for comment about the recruiting issue. In his post, though, he said the severed relationship was liberating.
And the strong relations with contributors from iStockphoto's early days have faded, said Lee Torrens, author of the Microstock Diaries blog.
"iStock's soul is long gone," Torrens said. "They wiped out the entire content team, which was what kept the community functional...With the absence of leadership, old-time exclusives [exclusive photographers] are starting to jump ship. That probably doesn't hurt customers, but it bruises their reputation inside the industry."
Another photographer given the boot is Rob Sylvan, who also is author of "Lightroom 2 for Dummies.""I am very glad that I quit when I did and am no longer reliant on them as a source of income. I would urge any other iStock contributor to make sure you have a solid backup plan in place, and any exclusive contributor to start working on an exit strategy," he said in a comment to Locke.
iStockphoto said Sylvan "is identified as an administrator of a competitive venture's social media page, which, again, is directly at odds with his relationship with iStockphoto."
Some seeds of Locke's discontent were sown by the Getty deal with Google Drive, under which photographers' works could be used on Google Apps' online services for tasks such as word processing and presentations. The deal granted Google Apps users rights to 5,000 images, but they can be downloaded to a local computer and have copyright information and other metadata stripped out.
Locke objected to the Google Drive deal on iStock's forums, and a ruckus ensued with many photographers objecting. iStock scrambled to pull together its explanation as users howled.
Yesterday, iStock told CNET News it hopes for at least some changes to the Google Drive deal: "We can confirm that contributors were paid royalties for the use of their content in the license deal with Google. We are working with Google to refine the implementation which we believe will address some of the concerns raised by contributors."
85
« on: January 24, 2013, 08:03 »
I wouldn't assume all selling trends are always based on best match. Some buyers sort in other ways. Some use light boxes. It is not black and white.
86
« on: January 20, 2013, 03:01 »
The one of the woman doing the stomach crunches should pass. But the light on her knees is a bit hot. Also, make sure you don't have any blown out highlights on the soles of her shoes.
The other two I am not sure. The man doing the push up may be difficult since the lighting is more artistic mood lighting than commercial lighting.
The one of the pregnant woman is getting some light bounce off the background which is causing some haze on her leg and part of her stomach. Not sure if the inspector will have a problem with this, but if I noticed it then an inspector might as well.
Good luck...
87
« on: January 17, 2013, 11:55 »
The link that blog article provides to check if you are images are on the Google site is a dead link: http://kga.me/gds/
88
« on: January 16, 2013, 15:11 »
I don't think you ever want to soften isolations. In fact, one of the the problems with the fitness man's hair is that it is too jagged and not isolated enough. The fire extinguisher shot is not very strong commercially. iStock will typically accept these kind of images though, but I wouldn't use it for an initial submission. The isolation on the tool shot is pretty good, but there are a few spots that are problematic as well. I would try and submit other types of images that are more commercial and have less of a chance of being rejected because of technical issues. Meaning, I wouldn't submit shots that are isolations done by hand. What other subject do you have perhaps that you can submit. Also, as others mentioned the CA is a big issue and artifacting as well. Your images need to be really clean technically and still have a strong commercial presence. Hope that helps.
89
« on: January 14, 2013, 10:59 »
From the iStock main page today. Useless and shameless. 
90
« on: January 13, 2013, 03:14 »
Are there any other sites that provide similar data to http://istockcharts.multimedia.de/?I am just curious if there are any other sources for this type of data or something similar to it. Cheers...
91
« on: January 09, 2013, 12:12 »
iStock's traffic rank on Alexa yesterday hit a 2 year low when their rank fell to over 1,000. As late as October of last year they were still ranked at about 200. That is a massive drop in traffic when a site goes from the 200th position to over 1,000 in a matter of just a few months. That sounds like a total buyer exodus to me.
Even during the holiday season of December 2011 their rank never went above 600 and it also bounced back quickly the next month to around the 250 level come January 2012. But here we are in January 2013 and their rank is over 1,000!
Their official Alexa rank is 517 at the moment, but that is an average of 3 months and various other factors that don't really reflect what has happened in the last few weeks. But if the site visitor traffic stays the way it is now for the next 2 months, then their 3 month average ranking will go over 1,000 as well.
It is a dire situation. People on the IS forums are still talking about best match changes, hiding the $$ prices, and other tweaks. I don't think they get it, nor do I really see how any of that will make a lick of difference if buyers aren't searching on the site to begin with. The real question to iStock at this point should be "How are you going to bring the traffic back?". Personally I don't think they can. It's gone into free-fall already.
92
« on: January 08, 2013, 02:03 »
It works fine with Deep Meta. You simply have to first click on the "Releases" tab to add your model releases into the Deep Meta program. So in there you should add each model release file for each model you want to attach releases for.
Then, when you are editing the details for a photo you wish to upload, there will be another releases tab that will appear. In there you will see the whole list of model releases you have added previously into Deep Meta. From there you just click as many of the releases that you want to attach to that particular photo.
If you have already uploaded the photo though, and it is still in the inspection cue, then you can add releases through the web site using the method gostwyck mentioned. There is no way to add a model release to an existing upload using Deep Meta once it has been uploaded to iStock.
But if you are planning to add multiple releases though, and the picture is in the inspection cue already, then I would suggest canceling the upload on the iStock web site so that it isn't inspected and then uploading it again through Deep Meta as a new photo with the multiple releases you want to attach.
This will be faster than having to use a photo editing program to create a file with multiple releases inside the file and attach to the upload that is still in the inspection cue.
I hope that helps...
93
« on: December 02, 2012, 09:07 »
Thanks. I wish the signs were more encouraging.
94
« on: December 02, 2012, 08:32 »
Thanks. I didn't hear much about it from contributors so I thought maybe that they didn't get a chance to credit contributors for their E+ sales on Getty for last month. I guess they did credit people for E+ Getty sales though and it is possible then that the Getty site isn't rocking either at the moment. You would think that November would be the best month of the year for sales on Getty too and that contributors, with newly added E+ files on Getty, would at least see some decent sales from there knowing that the Getty site isn't problematic like the iStock site is.
95
« on: December 02, 2012, 02:17 »
Did anyone receive a Getty bump in November for E+ files sold on Getty?
96
« on: November 30, 2012, 00:36 »
Read this blog post from Sean with more on this. As far as I know from the photographers who downloaded their own photos with the $2 credit (and reported those file numbers via Sean to iStock) no refunds yet.
Not sure why it's taking so long for iStock to shut them down.
According to that blog post you linked, it says the site is hosted on Host Gator and that the Domain Name Server is located in Vietnam. I pinged the site and the IP address I got for the site is 108.162.195.57 I looked up this IP address and this IP resolves to a site owned by a company called CloudFlare Inc. which uses the domain name cloudflare.com A WhoIs search on the istockreseller.com domain name also points to cloudflare.com being the DNS, as well as being the host server for the istockreseller.com web site. The DNS for istockreseller.com are as follows, which are subdomains on the cloudflare.com domain name: IGOR.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM KAY.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM According to a WhoIs search on the cloudflare.com domain, the company name, address, and phone number are as follows: CloudFlare, Inc. 665 Third Street Suite 207 San Francisco, CA 94107 US 650.319.8930 fax: 650.230.7173 Under the WhoIs listing for cloudflare.com it shows cloudflare.com domain uses the following Domain servers: DNS2.CLOUDFLARE.COM 173.245.58.99 DNS3.CLOUDFLARE.COM 173.245.59.99 I further looked up the details on the 173.245.58.99 IP address listed for the above cloudflare.com domain name servers and they list the following contact information for reporting abuse on this IP address: +1-650-319-8930 abuse @ cloudflare.com As a result, I don't see anything pointing to Host Gator or Vietnam with regards to the istockreseller.com domain name or hosting of the site and it seems both the domain name and the site are being hosted in the USA.
97
« on: November 23, 2012, 04:50 »
I don't even have words to describe the current RC=0 debacle and the royalty percentages dropping down to 25% for everyone across the board, thus cutting some people's royalty percentage to nearly in half. And in all of the speculation that has been made about the long term viability of iStock exclusives to earn a decent income from iStock, I dont think anyone ever fathomed the scenario where the company is so poorly managed that it just destroys itself slowly and painfully, whilst letting its massive archive of fantastic, high quality imagery get to a point where it is hardly a sellable/desirable commodity to photo buyers anymore because it becomes too difficult to simply find or inspect the product you are looking for once you find it.
It is amazing what we are witnessing now for the last 3 months, and even slowly over the last 6-8 months before that with the huge list of newly created site bugs every month. If you told anyone the story how a hugely successful, multimillion dollar internet company imploded itself by destroying their own web site and all its good will with buyers and sellers by being too greedy to reach into their own pockets to hire enough (or just good enough web programmers) to run and further develop the site so that it would continue to draw in millions of dollars of buyer revenue, nobody would even believe you.
98
« on: April 13, 2012, 09:48 »
@DaisyPond, your right. I tested it too. This site does seem to be infected with malware.
99
« on: April 08, 2012, 07:43 »
just came along and read this, now you've removed the image I'm super curious.
Do a search using the keywords "Teriyaki Chicken". Sort by best match and it should be pretty easy to figure which image was being referred to.
100
« on: January 31, 2012, 08:08 »
I should have clarified a bit further on the purpose of this poll. All of the charge backs I received in January were from sales that occurred over a 3 month period in Q4 2011. So none of the sales that were charged back this month were actually from sales made in January. So January was a big month for charge backs for Q4 sales for some reason for me.
The purpose of the poll I created is to find out if I was an isolated case or if other people also had a large number of charge backs in January for sales that were also made in Q4 2011.
Sales you made in January, and which were charged back in January, would appear to be normal refunds when a buyer mistakenly purchased the wrong image and/or image size. Charge backs that occur up to nearly 4 months later would not appear to be so common or typical.
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