Recently Joined Photo Exclusive

Hi


I have just been accepted as an exclusive photograph contributor which is great.


Something I am having difficulty understanding at the moment that I was hoping for some help on was the following:


I understand that once I become an exclusive photographer for istock, I have the choice of selecting whether my pictures go onto the istock site or the partner site. But not both unless the pictures is over 18 months old.


Until being accepted as an exclusive photographer, my pictures were on both istock and partner. What will happen to those pictures? Will they automatically be pulled from IStock? or left on both?


Im having a bit of a wobble now I have gone exclusive, as I am thinking perhaps I was better off leaving the pictures on both sites.


I have attempted to search the forums already and have found several useful articles relating to the topic - but I couldnt see one that specifically answered my question.


Any clarity on this area would be greatly appreciated.


all the best and thanks in advance


Neil

- What happens if I participate in the partner program and decide to go exclusive?
If a non-exclusive becomes exclusive, any opted-in files that are younger than 18 months will be deactivated from iStock. If you become exclusive and you do not want your newest files to be deactivated from iStock, you will need to opt them out of the Partner Program.

Taken from the Partner Program FAQ

Many thanks, Much appreciated


 

So, you have to manually go through your whole portfolio to deactiviate them? Does that mean also that you have to keep track of all your new uploaded images and then manually opt them in after 18 months?

That is exactly what that means. The alternative would require iStock to make some pretty broad assumptions about what exclusive contributors want done with their content. It can be cumbersome for contributors with really large portfolios, but the only other course of action for us would be to say that every exclusive file that hits 18 months of age gets automatically opted in to the Partner Program if the contributor is also opted in to the partner program. That's not an assumption we can make for people, so we have to leave it up to contributors to keep track of it and decide for themselves.

ETA: answered my own question

(Edited on 2011-06-30 10:35:01 by asylumdown)

What happens about the 6 month limit?  I thought they would have to stay there that long.  Guess I was wrong.

The 6 month limit is for E+ and Photo+ collections. There are no such limit in the partner program (except the 14+ months wait to get your images up there)

Ahh - right - got my programs mixed up.  Howerver, that being said, the time it takes to get them on and off appears to be months at the moment.  Hopefully whenthe big push gets done that will occur faster.

Yes, the automated activate/deactivate feature of the connector isn't functioning at the moment. However, it's the iStock website itself that turns PP only exclusive files off on the iStock side, not the connector. If you opt them out when you go exclusive, they will remain for sale on iStock regardless of what's going on with the partner sites and the PP.

It's not exactly optimal, but we are definitely working on getting it fixed.

Thanks for the clarification!