I started to contribute to istock back in July '05 so this is likely the first microstock site I signed up with and was accepted. I was thrilled, and my first sale happened in October of '06, it was exciting. My sales were sporadic after that but the per sale amount was good. IStock was a top site then, their prices were reasonable and their collection was pretty extensive. We used them somewhat in the first Worth1000 book (which I was main administrator/editor for) and damn near exclusively (the exception being if we found a worth1000 photographer) for the second worth1000 book, for which I was an assistant editor. Oh how we loved our istock.

So wtf happened?

Review times have slowed to a crawl. Don't even consider complaining about that in the forums, I saw someone banned for that. They reject for some pretty shady reasons too. Which isn't to say all their rejections aren't justified but many are just pure crap, they reject over lighting when all other sites accept the same image and those images sell on those sites. Not to mention their favorite players whose images get accepted with some gawd-awful lighting, this isn't sour grapes, how do you have a half orange/half white isolation (not going to link here out of respect to the artist but search on strawberry there if you want to see what I mean)?

While the per image subscription payout is better than shutterstock and not as good as stockxpert, I don't get any warm fuzzies from istock anymore. They come off as elitist without the clout to back it up. Sure they have long standing and exclusive contributors who make them some money, but for the average photographer giving them the icing on the cake they do not treat us as equals or even as humans. They even have some sort of weird algorithm for uploads/acceptance rating vs searchability or prominence. I have yet to see one of my images on the "newest uploads" area and believe me, I've looked.

Now I'm being somewhat harsh but that's because I've looked at what they let through and what they reject on istock and it seems to be a popularity/personality thing there. I haven't participated in the forums, it really seems cliquish there and after I saw the guy banned for voicing an opinion about review times (which really are abysmal) I don't think I want to join in the revere of them.

I wish that were the most negative but they lack in upload interface too. They have no interface for multiple uploads for PC users (there's a third party one for MAC users, can't comment on it since I don't have a MAC and haven't tried it, but it's third party, they didn't even bother making it easier for their own contributors). Their upload process is arduous at best. You have to click through multiple screens and checkboxes and their disambiguation (interpretation of keywords to over-simplify) is seriously lacking. They have 2 definitions of layers and peel, neither of which could fit my description of an onion recently submitted, yet both are pertinent to the image. In fact my most recent rejection was for keywording which was inappropriate. Mind you I'm probably the most careful keyworder in microstock, and I also have an extensive vocabulary. I put an old jalopy on the site, it was an old Fleetline truck with a "for sale" sign on it. I did take out the phone number and the copyrighted truck name but they were completely pertinent to the image in keywords, if only the reviewer had looked at full view and/or had a clue.

To summarize I think the reviewers are burned out or disinterested, for the most part, on istock and the whole site needs an overhaul. Shutterstock and stockxpert have moved along with the times, gotten fresh people in (or multiple opinions) on images before a rejection, neither takes anywhere near the time to review an image and they don't have the punishment/reward thing for searching on images that istock has (how archaic and just stupid that system is).

I hope that if Avi and Worth1000 ever do another book that they will consider a different site to negotiate a deal with too. Just getting them to agree on a contract for book 2 image use was agonizing and damn near stopped us from meeting a deadline.

All in all they have a professional facade and not much backing it up. Have I made sales there, yes (not enough for a payout though), but I almost wish I hadn't (then I could walk away, because really I like them less with each passing day). They should take this as advice and do something to improve the site, grow with the times and not rely on their "once was" status. Instead I suspect they will do their usual and punish the observer.

istock rating: B

Labels: Microstock image site review: istock

// posted by dollyllama @ 8:20 PM