Quote from: NewStocker on March 29, 2016, 16:47

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 key wording 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.

I don't see any reason to make it a site that is combined with other people's images. My intent was not to set up a stock agency, but my own outlet for selling my own niche content and by providing a much better user experience.

I had been scratching my head for a long time thinking how could a multi-million dollar company like iScraps put up such a poorly designed site, which functions so horribly and crashes all the time.

So in part, this was a test to see how difficult it would be to create something better than iScrooge and to prove to myself it could be done. The conclusions was it was neither hard or something that involved a tremendous amount of web design. And everyone can do the same. You would need some reasonable web design skills to achieve what I created, but you could also hire someone to build a nearly identical site to mine if you don't have the coding or design skills to customize a CSS package yourself. And the great thing is once you build the store it is done and always will be there. You can then develop it at your own pace with your own content however and whenever you wish.

There are also relatively simple and low cost solutions for all the points you raised if you did want to make it into a larger stock agency site. And yes, it is all completely possible with WordPress. I already studied it all when I had once considered taking on additional content from a small core group of friends. And video can be added as well.

Also, WordPress creates no limitations and is no different than any other CSS platform, which is what iStump is as well. WordPress simply adds a layer of easier user administration on the back end that other sites don't have and it also prevents you from having to write your own code for a core site.

It would be very easy as I said to get a few pieces of custom code written and added to the site to take it to the next level. Again, not an interest of mine. I am just happy to have proven to myself how easily it can be done, how inept iSpasm truly is, and to now have a fully functioning and fully automated eCommerce site with credit card gateway and secure download server to sell my own photos however and whenever I wish to.

By the way, I keep 97% of whatever I sell and I can price images for whatever I want. When it runs like that you don't have to sell nearly as much as you would when earning under $1 per sale on stock sites. And the best thing about it is my own site doesn't even force me to be exclusive with them either to get 97% royalties.

Quote from: Photostocker on March 29, 2016, 13:49

We contributors should set up our own stocksite where the royalty rates are something like 90%. 10% is only for the runing company and the website. And we need webtool for the copy and paste all the photos and keywords from the iStock if contributor wants to leave from the iStock.

Sure. Because customers are just waiting for that. And the site obviously is going to run flawless once set up because it is run by photographers who know what they're doing. 

Eh-Hem, I am a photographer, I have set up my own stock site selling purely my own content, it looks far more professional than iStock's site ever did/does. It has very simple pricing, it is easy to navigate, was built on a free and open source CSS platform, nothing is broken, the site can accept both credit card and PayPal payments, and it runs smoother and faster than the iStock site ever does/did.

Granted I don't have a sizable collection when compared to an agency that crowd sources from millions of potential contributors, or the traffic to be successful with it (yet), but it isn't hard to run circles around iStock's web programmers in order to build a stock site that works and people find easy to use, yet I still consider myself very much a coding hack at best. I set it up over only a few month period, on a part time basis, whilst tweaking and working the bugs out. Imagine what one could do if all they did all day was develop a stock site as a full time endeavor?

When I think of the iStock site programming team though I imagine a bunch of children with mental disabilities who can't control their bowels sitting in a bathtub together, whilst floating amongst their own turds, squeezing them like Play-doh, and giggling away as if they haven't a worry in the world.

I think is time to pass  from Top Tier to the middle tier forum, it's going down day by day    The glory days have passed

There haven't been glory days on iStock since 2011.

Once they remove both the links to lightboxes, and ability to link in thumbnails of similar pictures to your image closeup pages, people who utilize these methods now as a viable sales channel for cross selling their images will probably perhaps see an additional 20% drop in regular sales. Then when the summer months hit, you can expect another ratchet down of 30% or so from where your sales are at in May. I think people stabilizing themselves on iStock will occur from a metallic clanging sound when gold crowns start hitting the pavement in amass.

Welcome to the forum!
Yes, it's a security measure - you can't start a new thread until you have at least one post, it's explained here:
http://www.microstockgroup.com/newby-discussion/why-can%27t-i-start-a-new-thread/

Regarding the cc frauds, I didn't have any recently luckily but it's important that we keep posting here as they happen

Cheers for that. I wasn't actually suggesting it was fraud for sure though. I am only trying to determine if it might be and if there was a pattern forming today on iStock and/or if it was an isolated case. I do hope they are legit sales of course, for various reasons obviously, and was hoping to compare notes with anyone that might have experienced any similar activity today.

Thanks.