^Interesting handle Mr Newbie  

Quote from: Waldo4 on April 04, 2008, 10:11

Istock has no need to screw contributers to gouge more money from them, it does not make business sense, as the contributers are customers as well and vital to the operation of their business. 

....istock makes money in the end, and it helps the contributers as well and IMO is very attractive. 

....
The end of the day calculations would not crash their servers, in fact quite the opposite, it is more efficient. 
....

What business are you in? Of course it makes business sense. This is a corporation, the bottom line and margins are all that matter. Especially when you're being taken over by a private fund. I'll eat my shoe if at the end of the day contributors aren't making less and buyer's aren't getting less for the dollar (with iStock pocketing the difference on both ends).

Also please explain how this wouldn't be in increase in load on the servers. You're going from a simple per transaction dual entry into the database to a complicated calculation based on how many downloads by that client had been carried out in the day. Think about it. There will be a lot more queries and inserts necessary per transaction than before. Think about all the table locking issues in this parallel system that doesn't have downtime to only do the calculations. I'd be shocked if iStock's system can handle this.

^Interesting handle Mr Newbie  

The amount of calculations for an entire day of activity on istock in linear passes through the database is insignificant next to just 10 seconds of a modern 3D video game where literally millions of similar calculations are made (just to refresh the pixels at 30 fps takes at least 30 million calculations per second) across multiple databases each have to be continuously updated as well.

Quote from: sharply_done on April 04, 2008, 14:27

Quote from: thesentinel on April 04, 2008, 14:05

^Interesting handle Mr Newbie 

This thread attracted some attention from the higher-ups

Negative on that.

Quote from: Waldo4 on April 04, 2008, 14:21

The amount of calculations for an entire day of activity on istock in linear passes through the database is insignificant next to just 10 seconds of a modern 3D video game where literally millions of similar calculations are made (just to refresh the pixels at 30 fps takes at least 30 million calculations per second) across multiple databases each have to be continuously updated as well.

The difference between the two can be quite dramatic.  Calculations done on a 3D video game are basically all done on the CPU (or GPU) which is lightning fast, whereas database calculations usually require multiple disk reads which are orders of magnitude slower.

While speed is always relevant, and the database update for subs will probably only take a few minutes, updating a database will still look like slow-motion when compared to calculations done on a CPU.

I apologize for the tech-speak.

Carry on...

The much-hated istock proves the venom-spewers wrong once again.

As was just announced, they will be paying a standard percentage payout calculated on a minimum credit value of 96 cents per credit, which is the minimum currently being paid. In addition, they will be paying for EACH credit used, not a single unchanging pittance no matter which size is downloaded.

This is a very different model. It's understandable that it's hard to think outside of the moldy box currently being used by some other companies, but thank goodness someone is willing to do it. 

Seriously, I'm shocked on this one. I never expected iStock to be willing to take all of the risk while sharing the reward, because I sure wouldn't have in my business. I hope it works.

Quote from: yingyang0 on April 04, 2008, 15:42

Seriously, I'm shocked on this one. I never expected iStock to be willing to take all of the risk while sharing the reward, because I sure wouldn't have in my business. I hope it works.

I am also extremely shocked on this one, but I doubt that IS will take "all of the risk".

They will most likely greatly benefit from the lack of sales on the weekends, holidays, sick days, vacation days, business trip days, etc in which case they will receive 100% of the profit for that day (and we will receive none).

Quote from: bittersweet on April 04, 2008, 16:00

Don't know what AAC6D63 is exactly responding to, but I think the others may have been referring to the similarities between my username and a certain istock celebrity.

Yep, like maybe this guy.

On 2008-04-04 11:54:03, kkthompson wrote:

Quote

What's the maximum payout available?
Contributors stand to make more per file than they've ever made before from iStock. Here are two examples of what a non-exclusive can make off subscriptions:
- If a subscriber with a daily credit limit of 480 uses only 10 credits that day, all on one of your files, you'd earn 480 × 20% × $130*. That means a payout of about $26 for your single file.
- If a subscriber with a daily credit limit of 30 uses only 10 credits that day, including 5 credits on your image, you'd earn (30/2) × 20% × $10*. A payout of about $1.

* These values are 'Credit Package Value per Day', and have not been set yet. They are for illustrative purposes only.

Who gets the money when no credits are used on a day?
iStock does. This will offset the times where iStock will be paying out more in royalties than was paid for the credit, because of the guaranteed minimum on these days.

Isn't anyone else thinking if it sounds too good to be true??  it's a little ridiculous, one person getting a whole day's royalties if that's the only photo sold that day - isn't it?  $26?  Trust me, they are only doing something this outrageous to keep the Exclusives from jumping ship.  It will change.  I give it 6 - 12 months and there will be a new controversy, just like this one.