MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => Selling Stock Direct => Topic started by: Yuri_Arcurs on October 18, 2012, 09:20
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Here are some statistics from our backend at PeopleImages.com from today :. Just wanted to celebrate a bit, since my sales are down on almost all other sites. :(
Peopleimages.com: 5 months in, $0 spent on marketing (to come later) and increases in sales by almost 100% per month. (Still low actual monthly sales, but with days like today, getting much closer to something that might actually go into profit one day)
Clients report two things they like:
The site is super fast and userfriendly. They are tired of waiting for pages to load on fotolia, dreamstime, istock, shutterstock, etc.
Customer support is extremely helpful and friendly.
Anyway. A little celebration. Y
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Here are some statistics from our backend at PeopleImages.com from today :. Just wanted to celebrate a bit, since my sales are down on almost all other sites. :(
Win-win.
Congratulations, but not much relevance to the rest of us.
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I bet Sean will have something to say about this. ;D
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be nice...
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It's a Sean trap... Shhhyyy. Don't say anything. Let's see if he jumps in. :)
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I'm happy to hear you have a good day to celebrate. In some way, shape or form, it'd be good to see the current behaviors of the existing micro agencies disrupted. Given your huge presence and name recognition, what works for you wouldn't work similarly for everyone, but it's a place to start.
Congratulations
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Customer support is extremely helpful and friendly.
And don't ever change that, costs nothing and yet lacking it is probably one of the biggest reasons for iStockphoto's downfall.
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And don't ever change that, costs nothing and ...
What? Customer service is free?
Hey Yuri send me some free customer service reps over to me and I retrain them to do something I have a use for...
That's a nice paycheck for "a day at work". Congrats.
I think you shushed away Sean - now he's never gonna post... or is he...?
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Great news, certainly encouraging.
But the fact that you are a "brand" - thanks to your good job over the years, no doubt - plays probably a large part in your success.
For us "anonymous" self-selling is less relevant unfortunately. Although we should give it a try (and some are actually doing)
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Good luck to you.
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I hope one day i could eran that number in one...month,lololo ;D
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If peopleimages.com one day becomes enough of a success to open up for contributors it would be great. I just don't want to go that way with nothing to pay out to photographers. We will see. In the future it might a be posible. :)
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If peopleimages.com one day becomes enough of a success to open up for contributors it would be great. I just don't want to go that way with nothing to pay out to photographers. We will see. In the future it might a be posible. :)
i will join it first,if the site open to us,hehe...
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you might put Getty out of business if you do that Yuri! ;D
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Congratulations Yuri. Nice to see you are succeeding.
Doesn't affect the rest of us, as Liz pointed out, but perhaps it will eventually be a wakeup call to the big agencies.
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and thats 3 topics open regarding PI ;D
can I think that you are pulling that numbers yourself?
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Hi Yuri,
thanks for your insights!
I just spent a few days with several stock photographers and among other things we discussed if it is possible to use portfolios on several agencies as a way to create leads to your own website and portfolio.
But obviously most of us have neglected to build a brand name for our work, especially those of us who are exclusive to istock. Some artists donīt even have a website of their own, or a blog etc...
Many of us still hope that istock can go back to itīs glory days, but with the lack of communication and frustrating site instability, insecurity if we are even being paid correctly over our sales, more and more exclusives are looking seriously into alternatives.
Since we are moving into a phase of multi polar agencies and no "amazon" or "ebay" in sight to dominate the market...if you open your doors to other contributors, you will be flooded with content for sure.
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Congratulations Yuri. Nice to see you are succeeding.
Doesn't affect the rest of us, as Liz pointed out, but perhaps it will eventually be a wakeup call to the big agencies.
There won't be a wake up call for the agencies unless someone makes a site where all artists can submit "their sites" and integrate it in the search so it functions as a huge stock photo search engine that when you click on a photo, you are redirected to that artist's website..
This site would have to be free to be any different from the agencies.. In fact this site must be built by us, contributors and when popular enough it will destroy the middle man..
Everybody will earn as much as their own potential and there will be no fees... artists will only pay an annual amount so the website can survive.. nothing more.. the more artists there are, the less fee to be paid.. probably only as much as pennies and cents :)
Instead of a contributors union like we discussed many times in the past, this is the only long term solution I can see..
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Congratulations. You continue to inspire ... wish you great success! :D
Here are some statistics from our backend at PeopleImages.com from today :. Just wanted to celebrate a bit, since my sales are down on almost all other sites. :(
Peopleimages.com: 5 months in, $0 spent on marketing (to come later) and increases in sales by almost 100% per month. (Still low actual monthly sales, but with days like today, getting much closer to something that might actually go into profit one day)
Clients report two things they like:
The site is super fast and userfriendly. They are tired of waiting for pages to load on fotolia, dreamstime, istock, shutterstock, etc.
Customer support is extremely helpful and friendly.
Anyway. A little celebration. Y
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I'd join if landscapes count as people! :D After all, corporations already do....
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Congratulations Yuri. Great job
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If peopleimages.com one day becomes enough of a success to open up for contributors it would be great. I just don't want to go that way with nothing to pay out to photographers. We will see. In the future it might a be posible. :)
congrats on the sales - exciting to build something and see customers come in the door. Your site is very nice, I'm sure buyers love it.
Perhaps in the mean time you'd like to sell us peons a license to use your site code ??? pretty please :)
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Congrats Yuri! Now you may think about any further steps e.g. creating a own, contributor open Agency as soon as you are financially independent of the existing Micros :D
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are you telling us that you are having more downloads in your website than in DT ??
I can only think you will have PI on the NYSE next ;D
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I think you've reached payout...
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I think you've reached payout...
Hahahaaa, good one :D
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I think you've reached payout...
Nice. 8)
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If you don't spend any money on marketing where do clients come from ? Is it mainly Google/Bing ? I'm sure with the publicity you were getting for years your name and "stock photo people" are probably high in search.
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If you don't spend any money on marketing where do clients come from ? Is it mainly Google/Bing ? I'm sure with the publicity you were getting for years your name and "stock photo people" are probably high in search.
Yuri is a brand in stock photography...He need much much less marketing compared with one of us; even if we had a comparable portfolio in terms of quality and quantity.
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Congrats! Im not surprised, you got some great stuff there. :D
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We're doing some of the marketing for Yuri, discussing his site here. I've always thought that if we had a big site run by contributors, paying us a decent commission but keeping it buyer friendly, we wouldn't need to spend much on marketing. With all the contacts, social networking sites and people that know what SEO is all about, buyers are going to find out about it.
Would be great if Yuri could open up Peopleimages for other contributors. I would need a non-people section though and so would all the vector contributors. Making it a one stop shop for buyers would be a good idea, if they can find what they need on one site, they wont have to look elsewhere.
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Would be great if Yuri could open up Peopleimages for other contributors. I would need a non-people section though and so would all the vector contributors. Making it a one stop shop for buyers would be a good idea, if they can find what they need on one site, they wont have to look elsewhere.
We have that. It's called iStock. Or Shutterstock. Or Dreamstime. I don't know why you think his agency would be any different.
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Would be great if Yuri could open up Peopleimages for other contributors. I would need a non-people section though and so would all the vector contributors. Making it a one stop shop for buyers would be a good idea, if they can find what they need on one site, they wont have to look elsewhere.
We have that. It's called iStock. Or Shutterstock. Or Dreamstime. I don't know why you think his agency would be any different.
+1 to that..
Do some people really think yuri will pay them more than %25-30 ;D
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Would be great if Yuri could open up Peopleimages for other contributors. I would need a non-people section though and so would all the vector contributors. Making it a one stop shop for buyers would be a good idea, if they can find what they need on one site, they wont have to look elsewhere.
We have that. It's called iStock. Or Shutterstock. Or Dreamstime. I don't know why you think his agency would be any different.
+1 to that..
Do some people really think yuri will pay them more than %25-30 ;D
I do :)
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I think you would actually, because you know how it feels to be on the receiving end of an unfair cut.
It won't help me because I'm certain my work wouldn't fit the criteria of your site, but nevertheless I congratulate you on your achievement, and wish you well for future developments.
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I think you would actually, because you know how it feels to be on the receiving end of an unfair cut.
So did Oringer and Serbian, right? He also knows how likely a contributor is to stick around, no matter what they end up getting paid. Remember our whole discussion on $3/hour for Photoshop work and all that...
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Ah well... err... you got me there... ;)
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Would be great if Yuri could open up Peopleimages for other contributors. I would need a non-people section though and so would all the vector contributors. Making it a one stop shop for buyers would be a good idea, if they can find what they need on one site, they wont have to look elsewhere.
We have that. It's called iStock. Or Shutterstock. Or Dreamstime. I don't know why you think his agency would be any different.
+1 to that..
Do some people really think yuri will pay them more than %25-30 ;D
I do :)
So do I :) I'm sure it would be possible to pay contributors 50% and still make a big profit, especially for a privately owned company without the share holders and hedge funds taking their share. Stockxpert used to do it. Alamy still pay 60% non-elusive.
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So do I :) I'm sure it would be possible to pay contributors 50% and still make a big profit, especially for a privately owned company without the share holders and hedge funds taking their share. Stockxpert used to do it. Alamy still pay 60% non-elusive.
You mean like SS up until two weeks ago?
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So do I :) I'm sure it would be possible to pay contributors 50% and still make a big profit, especially for a privately owned company without the share holders and hedge funds taking their share. Stockxpert used to do it. Alamy still pay 60% non-elusive.
You mean like SS up until two weeks ago?
I never heard it even claimed that SS was giving its contributors 50%.
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Yeah, that would be sarcasm about a privately owned company.
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Whoops, sorry!
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Arent your sales down on the agencies because you opened your own site?
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Here are some statistics from our backend at PeopleImages.com from today :. Just wanted to celebrate a bit, since my sales are down on almost all other sites. :(
Peopleimages.com: 5 months in, $0 spent on marketing (to come later) and increases in sales by almost 100% per month. (Still low actual monthly sales, but with days like today, getting much closer to something that might actually go into profit one day)
Clients report two things they like:
The site is super fast and userfriendly. They are tired of waiting for pages to load on fotolia, dreamstime, istock, shutterstock, etc.
Customer support is extremely helpful and friendly.
Anyway. A little celebration. Y
Congradualations!
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@Yuri - site looks really nice and is very fast, well done.
However, the only thing that puzzles me is that images up to (and including) large are being sold for $0. Are you giving the images away for free?
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Just noticed that too, wow, that is generous.
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Just noticed that too, wow, that is generous.
Not really. It's just a promotion, shown in a confusing way. The first $15 is free. So, basically $15 off your order. If you put more in your cart past the $15, you'll still see everything listed at $0 for the smaller options, but the regular price will be added.
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Would be great if Yuri could open up Peopleimages for other contributors. I would need a non-people section though and so would all the vector contributors. Making it a one stop shop for buyers would be a good idea, if they can find what they need on one site, they wont have to look elsewhere.
We have that. It's called iStock. Or Shutterstock. Or Dreamstime. I don't know why you think his agency would be any different.
+1 to that..
Do some people really think yuri will pay them more than %25-30 ;D
I do :)
LOL. I guess people could have just asked. ;D
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Encouraging news, shows there is potential in true independence.
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Encouraging news, shows there is potential in true independence.
For some, or one, not necessarily for you.
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Encouraging news, shows there is potential in true independence.
For some, or one, not necessarily for you.
Not necessarily even for 'one'. The OP stated he was still some way from making a profit.
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Encouraging news, shows there is potential in true independence.
For some, or one, not necessarily for you.
Not necessarily even for 'one'. The OP stated he was still some way from making a profit.
Did you do the math?? If this is a typical weekday that is $25 per image downloaded and over 3 million dollars of sales in a year. But he said monthly sales are doubling. In a year from now he will be at 3 billions in sales with $0 marketing. Why keep you images on other sites where you make 25 cents a sale. Pull all your images off other sites fire all non-critical staff and wait for the other agencies to panic and offer you 7 billion dollars in a buyout.
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Encouraging news, shows there is potential in true independence.
For some, or one, not necessarily for you.
You think iStock is going to take good care of you?
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Encouraging news, shows there is potential in true independence.
For some, or one, not necessarily for you.
Not necessarily even for 'one'. The OP stated he was still some way from making a profit.
Did you do the math?? If this is a typical weekday that is $25 per image downloaded and over 3 million dollars of sales in a year. But he said monthly sales are doubling. In a year from now he will be at 3 billions in sales with $0 marketing. Why keep you images on other sites where you make 25 cents a sale. Pull all your images off other sites fire all non-critical staff and wait for the other agencies to panic and offer you 7 billion dollars in a buyout.
LOL! You are funny!
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You think iStock is going to take good care of you?
I wasn't talking about iStock or me. I was pointing out that just because one business has sales, that isn't an across the board indicator that anyone can follow the same path.
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I wasn't talking about iStock or me. I was pointing out that just because one business has sales, that isn't an across the board indicator that anyone can follow the same path.
Indeed. But you can't help but admire Yuri and his project.
I only wish I'd thought of it when he did, had the same drive and the opportunities that Yuri created.
More power to him.
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Indeed. But you can't help but admire Yuri and his project.
I only wish I'd thought of it when he did, had the same drive and the opportunities that Yuri created.
More power to him.
What's stopping you now? One site is not the end all of opportunities for the rest.
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You think iStock is going to take good care of you?
I wasn't talking about iStock or me. I was pointing out that just because one business has sales, that isn't an across the board indicator that anyone can follow the same path.
True, but it isn't an indicator that no one can follow that path either.
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Indeed. But you can't help but admire Yuri and his project.
I only wish I'd thought of it when he did, had the same drive and the opportunities that Yuri created.
More power to him.
What's stopping you now? One site is not the end all of opportunities for the rest.
Hey, I opened my site a year before Yuri opened his. I should be making more money than he does! ;D
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Indeed. But you can't help but admire Yuri and his project.
I only wish I'd thought of it when he did, had the same drive and the opportunities that Yuri created.
More power to him.
What's stopping you now? One site is not the end all of opportunities for the rest.
Good question Sean. Life is getting in the way at the moment but I also think that Yuri got his timing spot on when he started a few years ago. Having said that, I'd be glad with a fraction of what both you and Yuri have achieved.
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Indeed. But you can't help but admire Yuri and his project.
I only wish I'd thought of it when he did, had the same drive and the opportunities that Yuri created.
More power to him.
What's stopping you now? One site is not the end all of opportunities for the rest.
Good question Sean. Life is getting in the way at the moment but I also think that Yuri got his timing spot on when he started a few years ago. Having said that, I'd be glad with a fraction of what both you and Yuri have achieved.
I have a fraction of what Sjlocke and Yuri have achieved and I am still not happy.
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Indeed. But you can't help but admire Yuri and his project.
I only wish I'd thought of it when he did, had the same drive and the opportunities that Yuri created.
More power to him.
What's stopping you now? One site is not the end all of opportunities for the rest.
Good question Sean. Life is getting in the way at the moment but I also think that Yuri got his timing spot on when he started a few years ago. Having said that, I'd be glad with a fraction of what both you and Yuri have achieved.
I have a fraction of what Sjlocke and Yuri have achieved and I am still not happy.
Well, yes. So do I. The trouble is that 1/100,000 is a fraction just as 999/1,000 is.
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or 2/1 .... that's a great fraction.
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Congratulations Yuri. Nice to see you are succeeding.
Doesn't affect the rest of us, as Liz pointed out, but perhaps it will eventually be a wakeup call to the big agencies.
This is puzzling. A site that you are not on that is going to eat up big market share does not affect you???? Yet you are so affected by sites you are on that lower commissions. I predict that Yuri's site will be dominant in 2-4 years. After reviewing the site if you sell people photos you will lose sales. I predicted google would be the dominant when the had 15% market share. Once sells get high enough, and his army is grown to produce enough content, then if he is smart he will pull all content from other sites. One great advantage is there is no "low quality content" which clutters up the other sites. If he expands to other genres and keeps the same standard the you who say you aren't affected will be affected big time.
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This is puzzling. A site that you are not on that is going to eat up big market share does not affect you????
Don't state the obvious. We must applaud, applaud!
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Hey, I opened my site a year before Yuri opened his. I should be making more money than he does! ;D
Me too. What's the deal? Maybe, I need a "Yuri approved" sticker on the front page. ;D
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Congratulations Yuri. Nice to see you are succeeding.
Doesn't affect the rest of us, as Liz pointed out, but perhaps it will eventually be a wakeup call to the big agencies.
This is puzzling. A site that you are not on that is going to eat up big market share does not affect you???? Yet you are so affected by sites you are on that lower commissions. I predict that Yuri's site will be dominant in 2-4 years. After reviewing the site if you sell people photos you will lose sales. I predicted google would be the dominant when the had 15% market share. Once sells get high enough, and his army is grown to produce enough content, then if he is smart he will pull all content from other sites. One great advantage is there is no "low quality content" which clutters up the other sites. If he expands to other genres and keeps the same standard the you who say you aren't affected will be affected big time.
If buyers prefer his content, they will buy it no matter where he is.
This way, he isn't paying huge commissions to agencies - or he won't be when he pulls his content from them.
I can't remember if his own website has only exclusive content, or if his stuff on the other outlets is also on his site.
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There won't be a wake up call for the agencies unless someone makes a site where all artists can submit "their sites" and integrate it in the search so it functions as a huge stock photo search engine that when you click on a photo, you are redirected to that artist's website..
This site would have to be free to be any different from the agencies.. In fact this site must be built by us, contributors and when popular enough it will destroy the middle man..
Everybody will earn as much as their own potential and there will be no fees... artists will only pay an annual amount so the website can survive.. nothing more.. the more artists there are, the less fee to be paid.. probably only as much as pennies and cents :)
Something along with that concept exists already. It's http://www.picturengine.com (http://www.picturengine.com).
Or if you want to build your own site then check out Gumroad: https://gumroad.com/faq (https://gumroad.com/faq)
Building a great search engine is challenging, but not impossible. ;)
Until then I'm really happy joining new innovative agencies. :)
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^^ You are a bit late to the party
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Congratulations Yuri. I wish you all the best. I do believe success of this venture disrupts the power of the larger agencies.
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Does the website is down for anyone else? www.peopleimages.com (http://www.peopleimages.com)
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Does the website is down for anyone else? [url=http://www.peopleimages.com]www.peopleimages.com[/url] ([url]http://www.peopleimages.com[/url])
Yup:
A Database Error Occurred
Error Number: 126
Incorrect key file for table '/tmp/#sql_3b4_0.MYI'; try to repair it
DESCRIBE `roles`
Filename: /ebs/site/application/libraries/datamapper.php
Line Number: 645
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Perhaps Yuri and his website have been so horrified by iStock's latest freebie venture that they can no longer function.
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Perhaps Yuri and his website have been so horrified by iStock's latest freebie venture that they can no longer function.
Or worse ... their lawsuit has been issued an interim cease and desist order. Has anyone heard how that is coming along?
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It's up again now.
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It's up again now.
Yes, thanks! :)
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Great news Yuri! Congrats, and best of luck to you!
You are actually the reason I started to do stock photo about one year ago.. :)