Good info to know. I will a little while longer. Thanks.
On a side note: I never though Right-Managed would be a direction I would go in but something in the back of my mind always had me not putting some of my favorite images up on the Micro sites because I believed those pictures were worth much more than a few dollars.

I always wanted to do Editorial/RM, but had to earn the equipment on iStock before I could afford/justify the gear! But gosh, Alamy's such a slow waiting game - to get sales and then to get paid after you get the sales.

Also, if there's a 'processing' (i.e. technical) problem with one of your images in a batch, that whole batch (but not subsequent ones) will be held up for a week, then someone goes in and manually shifts the problem.
That doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong with your file. I put three 'stickers' (without change) in one batch and uploaded them and they all went through in the usual 24 hours.

If the files were stolen, why should the photographer be punished?
Indeed, if her files were stolen and her account was frozen while the matter was investigated, she should be recompensed for the time her images were offline.

Quote from: TylerCody on September 11, 2010, 03:52

At this point I think the best thing everyone can hope for is that iStock decides to hire a proper PR firm to try and clean up the PR disaster started by Kelly.

Sounds like the way BP handled the oil spill or the pope took care of the child abuse scandal in the church. 

I absolutely do NOT want a PR spin. I want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
But I'm almost certainly whistling down the wind.

Quote from: KB on September 14, 2010, 21:28

How is it you, as an independent, had dollar bin images? Just curious; did they used to let everybody participate in that?

Apparently. I had about 40 in there too. I deleted all of them plus those with less than 2 sales after 3 years. Not a big loss since those images were mostly utter crap, or similars of which the "better" version sold.

There was a time when exclusives were invited to nominate ten of their files to the DB.
However, before and after that, there have been movements whereby pics that hadn't sold in a certain timescale were removed to the DB. IIRC, we were informed when it happened so that we could deactivate our files if we didn't want them in the DB.

Quote from: Zeus on September 16, 2010, 16:27

Based on your own personal experience? This is what drives me nuts. Why wouldn't you try and pull micro prices up rather than complain macro is overpriced?

Personally, I am all for higher prices, as long as photographers get their fair share. 
But I do think Istock risks chasing buyers away if the quality of the content doesn't measure up to the price being asked. 

Hey, hold on, Lisa.
I'm banking on my rejects getting put into the Agency collection.

I've been observing this over the last two weeks and all the other exclusives had a delay of a few days, up to a week.

This makes you think of what other undeclared preferences, like best match, some members may have.

One admin seems never to have his keywords checked. And they're really bad.

I'm no designer, so I don't know; but is it very difficult to make fair trade logo that microstockgroup could let some of the sites display on their site? GL has made their own, but a badge that shows that this site is supported by the microstockgroup could maybe carry some more weight?

The criteria are simple in my book: Minimum 50 % of the sale price goes to the photographer. The sites that qualify are
GL
Yay
Alamy
more?

I looked through my port, and I'm not sure any of my pics are suitable for such a logo. But if one of you designers think this idea is good, you are welcome to use any of my pics (for free of course).

The sites could pay a small fee to microstockgroup, that could be channeled into the Kiva programme?

What if the sales don't always get 50%, e.g. if sold through a distributer?
Would it imply we only wanted our pics to be used by fairly trading companies?

Quote from: ShadySue on September 12, 2010, 11:23

Quote from: acv on September 12, 2010, 08:35

There are alot of other agencies to work with. To begin with Alamy. I make very good $$$$ on there and they give you 60% on each sale. Yes 60%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Not some slave wage at 15%. And for big fees. Good people at Alamy. Can't fault them. However classic micro style wont sell too well on there. You got to submit editorial style.

Can I just correct this: yes, you get 60% if you sell directly through Alamy. However, if sales are made via their distributers, the distributer fee comes off your 60%. And while fees can be big, a lot of editorial sales are to education and newspapers, who get bi-i-i-i-g discounts off the published prices, so fees can be lower than an EL at iStock would be for the same use.
That said, I've been building my port at Alamy at the expense of my iStock port for some months now.
You can't expect big money quickly (but you could get lucky!): even after you get sales it takes weeks or months for the cash to come in to Alamy so that you can get your hands on it.
So for the moment, I'll continue with the plan of supplying Alamy (editorial) primarily, and keeping a watching brief on my port at iStock and looking at alternatives as time goes on.

Sales directly through Alamy are the majority by a wide margin, you can option out for sales via distribution, sales via a distributor are split like this 40% for the distributor, 20% for Alamy and 40% for you still pretty fair IMHO, Novel Use sales are 50/50 split you can option out for this too.

My sales there are still small so statistically insignificant, but over half of them so far are distributor sales, I'm out of 'novel use' (because it was so vague in definition, iStock exclusives aren't supposed to opt in to it). Because of distributor sales and educational discounts, three of my few sales netted me less than the appropriate EL at iStock would have got.
As I said, I'm building my portfolio up at Alamy; in it for the long game.
But now I don't even think 'eggs in two baskets' is all that smart.

Good idea if you can get some big names on board? What are Lise and Yuri saying? If you can get some heavy weights to support us it would be great. However they are so rich they probably don't care about the poor man and woman who has to scrap money together to put food on the table.

Lise has some big Admin job at istock, so I guess her lips are sealed.

There are alot of other agencies to work with. To begin with Alamy. I make very good $$$$ on there and they give you 60% on each sale. Yes 60%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Not some slave wage at 15%. And for big fees. Good people at Alamy. Can't fault them. However classic micro style wont sell too well on there. You got to submit editorial style.

Can I just correct this: yes, you get 60% if you sell directly through Alamy. However, if sales are made via their distributers, the distributer fee comes off your 60%. And while fees can be big, a lot of editorial sales are to education and newspapers, who get bi-i-i-i-g discounts off the published prices, so fees can be lower than an EL at iStock would be for the same use.
That said, I've been building my port at Alamy at the expense of my iStock port for some months now.
You can't expect big money quickly (but you could get lucky!): even after you get sales it takes weeks or months for the cash to come in to Alamy so that you can get your hands on it.
So for the moment, I'll continue with the plan of supplying Alamy (editorial) primarily, and keeping a watching brief on my port at iStock and looking at alternatives as time goes on.

This is not true.

Quote from: whatalife on September 11, 2010, 09:47

Remember that there is also a separate forum for exclusives, where I'd imagine there is quite a bit of discussion going on, hidden from public view where it may be more damaging (though I can't imagine what could be more damaging than some of the things already being said in public.)

Well it is true that there is an exclusive forum, but these issues aren't being discussed in there. The only mention of it has been eleven posts in a thread speculating about the agency collection.

As a buyer on DT, I have seen much better usable level 4 and 5's there than on Vetta. Vetta is just too expensive, and a lot is not very commercial. You can have loads of level 4-5 on DT for peanuts with a subs pack.

Sounds poor for the contributer.