Microstock Group - A meeting place for microstock photographers

Downloads-per-image (DLPI) means downloads-per-image-per-month. Same thing goes for revenue-per-image (RPI): it's revenue-per-image-per-month.
A DLPI of 2.0 means that a portfolio of 2000 images would license 4000 images per month. An RPI of $5 for this same portfolio would mean that it earns $10,000 per month. Although there are people on iStock who can match this level of performance, it's a much lower bar on Shutterstock.

My second argument was made from the point of view of a non-exclusive who is currently licensing image at 38c on Shutterstock. By staying independent you'll only be able to sell your images for only 25c on Thinkstock, which isn't very attractive. By going exclusive you'll be able to get more - 36c if you're a diamond, 38c for a black diamond.

And yes, clearly I am an iStock exclusive.

I would recommend not downsizing for Thinkstock because when they introduce their image packs, I'm sure they will have tiered pricing like on IStock, so you will want to have the largest size available....woot..woot

I read the discussions here and many are intelligently presented. However the words future and low cost subs can't, or at least shouldn't, be used in the same sentence. Perhaps it can be said that there are low-cost-subs and really-low-cost-subs and eventually there will likely be pathetically-low-cost-subs etc. But there is no future in that.

I'm usually the first person in line to say "follow the money" in microstock, but even I can't stomach this one. Maybe I'm a hypocrite for taking $0.25 per DL from SS back in the day. Maybe it's my ego saying I'm worth much more than that now. Whatever it is, all I know is that $0.25 sucks and this has been handled badly by both istock and SXP admins from the start. Confusing credit transfer messaging, disappearing referral earnings, no way to add new images to TS via SXP, etc. On top of the low pay rate, it's all just plain old crap and I'm not getting on board with it.

What really gets me is that I used to really like and respect SXP. They have always paid well, and brought in enough buyer volume to make up more than 10% of my monthly microstock earnings. But this whole situation just stinks and for the first time ever in my microstock career I am finally drawing that proverbial line in the sand where I think enough is really enough. I yanked all of my images from SXP today. To hell with this week's earnings. I want my stuff off TS asap, and I emailed support for that final payout.

I'll figure out a way to make up that lost 10% some other way. It's just not going to be through TS.

I'd be happy to send 2mp to Thinkstock, but my conduit to them would have to be Istock since I'm closing shop at SXP.

I submitted a bunch of 2MP test images yesterday, some of which were accepted this morning. I'm hoping they appear near the top of the search results - if not, it'll be pointless submitting there: there's little hope for exposure if the newest microstock images are buried deep underneath the old RF stuff.
For now, I'm playing the wait and see game.

They play they own game running around the tree and try to  they selves.
When they realize that they dont can do it then they want to put you in they endles rottary game.
Now WE for any reason must be detective who in this f.. game screw us???
Why my all port is not on that Fckin Tihig.com from eXpert
Why my non checked images from iStock is on that Thing.conj?!

For greedy company which takes 80% of our royalty I think that they just must be able to do what they are to much payed for.
TO KEEP THINGS ON F... TRACK
 
I dont want to say that they will MUST to compensate US our average month royalty from eXpert site for every month while they Ting.com exist + sales from that thing.com if they have any balls.
From all posts of many users it seems thaat they dont have it.
OK now is cold wet season but for me they are cold bloody murderess in first agree...

I keep on wondering when an angry ASSIGNMENT commercial photographer will join this thread and start ranting about how all forms of stock photography are hurting their business.

I said I can't get in.  Because I didn't get in.  Tried.  And I'm not/wasn't talking about today.  I'm talking about 5-10 years ago.  That's when the boat sailed.

I agree with Sjlocke. Trad agencies were very arrogant and repeling with new applicants. What is funny most of them still are. They were/are accepting new photographers not because of their talent or work but because of their track record, name and/or contacts. They were digging their own graves when they were ignorant with the boom of emerging nameless talents. The digital age grown up and the old players can not control them. They could a few years ago... but meanwhile the market has changed and there is no way back anymore.
It is sad the fists who die are those small companies who were the less ignorant - while the big ones have enough money to buy a slot in the future. Now it costs them a lot but still, they survive and can stay dominant.

Just FYI, the thread on iStock was just locked, pending some kind of official response sometime today.

thread is locked on iS...until new announcement. I don't subscribe to the conspiracy theories usually, but this whole thing feels uncharacteristically shady for iS. even the way the admins seem to be gagged. I know they would insist they aren't, but their silence and the reasons for it leave me feeling uneasy. I have received notices in response to my support tickets to remove my images from the PP, which I opted out of last year. the reply was that my images had been removed, however upon searching both sites, all images still there.

I don't know what is going on, but I hope Getty are not so stupid that they would kill their iStock cash cow. quickly, or slowly.

In fairness, Jonathan, a number of us who were thinking of "jumping ship" to IS exclusivity were doing it less in response to the threats/carrots from Istock and more in response to disagreeable conditions at some other sites.  Which is actually more of an effort to stand up for contributor's rights than it is to line our own pockets at the expense of the industry.

As soon as it became obvious that Getty was not ultimately offering any better than the other sites we hopped back on the fence.  

Don't get me wrong, my own financial interests are of great importance to me, but you seem to be assuming that those of us who have been seriously planning to go exclusive at IS are indifferent to the fate of the industry as a whole, and that could not be further from the truth.

And BTW, the irony that we microstockers are faced with similar issues that macro photographers were a few years ago is not lost on a number of us.   However, like Sean, I applied to Corbis and Getty over 5 years ago before joining the micros and was rejected.