How Long is Your Queue?

782 to be keyworded? 500 to be edited? Wow. That's a lot. I don't know how I'd handle that workload. I think I'd be losing sleep and my fingers would be bleeding from all the typing. I hate having any amount of work just sitting there almost at the finish line not making me any income.

I hate to say it, but that type of "upload vomit" (for lack of a better term) is most likely what's causing all of us to wait so long for reviews these days. I used to think iStock was crazy for implementing weekly upload limits. But now, I see their reasoning. Oddly, however, they've greatly eased up on this limit lately. But still, even there, I sometimes get quicker reviews than here.

Not sure what the solution is. From a contributor's position, perhaps there isn't one. Other than to sit and wait.

BTW, my current review queue is at 86. The most I ever had at once was a healthy 100.

To be fair these are from several shoots over several months - I have been so swamped with other work that I have not shot / uploaded the amount I was looking to this year so really I am just catching up a bit!

TE

105 Clips. 1080s, 2Ks, 4Ks & images. Oldest from Monday Oct 21st, 4 solid weeks. Many featuring Ottawa & Toronto, home of a huge news story about our fat greasy crack-smoking mayor. Was gonna go down to city hall and film the protests, but they would be in the queue so long that it would be old news by the time they went live, so why bother.

108 clips - and about 4 weeks. Never had anything take this long before.

Once again, iS trumps P5 in review times http://www2p.istockphoto.com/stock-video-29440900-dishwasher.php uploaded to both places on the same day.

And SS takes an hour or two most of the time ... getting sales weeks prior to approval here... sad ;(

EDIT: I was wrong about the upload dates. It was uploaded to P5 2 days BEFORE iS.

And http://www2p.istockphoto.com/stock-video-30219154-green-screen-tablet-pc.php was shot last night and approved today on iS. What's P5's excuse? We can't let Canada trump us...

I suppose IS can afford the reviewers since they take 80-85% in commissions. They could have reviews in 30 seconds and give out cookies with every approved submission and I still wouldn't contribute a blurred photo of dog crap to those bastards. I sincerely wish the good content creators would stop submitting to them all together, it's probably the worst thing we could do to our own industry, keeping those greedy rich snobs going. They are a cancer and so many artists are willingly feeding them, when all we have to do is NOT support them.

Long review times, absurdly low priced clips and the cosmetic website issues everyone is freaking out about here are minor in comparison.

While it's true they take the most percentage and their numbers are slowly dwindling for me, they currently make up 16% of my income. I'd be foolish to abandon that on principle alone.

Now, if their sales numbers fall below what I think is acceptable for the amount of work I put into uploading, then I will stop.

I have no other problems with P5 other than the ever increasing review times. I have no issues with any design changes or other website modifications that others seem to take such a disliking to. And since P5 is still the #1 seller for me (currently at 38% of my yearly total), customers seem not to be bothered too much. And that's all I care about.

I just can't get past the math. If I make $150 in a month on IS, they make $850. I don't understand how that sits well with anyone of sound mind. The reason they still have the customer base is because contributors keep uploading there. If they didn't have the content, those customers would look elsewhere, like Pond5, and our overall numbers would probably improve. And maybe Pond5 could hire another reviewer or two with the extra money they'd be making.

I'm not suggesting anyone put themselves out on the street out of principle and cut off that income at once. But is certainly sets a bad precedent in the industry to have a company drop their royalties that low and the artists just accept it.