MicrostockGroup

+1. Moral has value, not only profit.

Same here!  Diamond indie with at least 70-80, sales per day. Nowdays, more like 6-7, sales per day. So, is this the result of indies being pushed way down?  no, hardly. Its tough for any business if the customer isnt around and the revenue coming in is then going to the fully employed and debts, loans, etc. Nothing lefte for the staff on the floor.

I know you are quoting Lagereek's figures and not mine but mine were similar.   I didn't mean that I had those figures for years but there was certainly at least a year when I did those sort of numbers just about every week day.   Sad to see how bad things have gone.

I think he is missing the obvious in what you were saying. That you had managed to get to a level where 70-80 perweekday was the norm, just for it to catastrophically be reduced to 6-7 sales a weekday now. Obviously you didn't start out with 70-80 per day in the from the moment you signed with iStock, but that is probably what he thought you meant. Always nice when someone calls you a liar eh! Don't expect an apology, we don't do them around here I learnt hahaha!

Apart from that my main reason for pulling most of my port is that i'm very convinced sales are not reported accurately there (no hard proof, but 1+1=2), istock to me these days feels more like a scam than a MS agency.

Again I'm surprised by the lack of manners and courtesy, people seem to act so differently behind a keyboard then in real life.

I bet you are going to back-track somehow, but you are in a not a very round-about way calling Christian a liar - uncalled for and rude.

That's an excellent point, also.

Thanks a lot to everyone who has posted useful info in this thread.  Cathy, JoAnn, and Christian, I know we have talked privately about this but I also appreciate your participating in a public discussion about it. 

I just requested my Friday weekly payout from IS and it was literally 1/4 of what it had been from 2008 through the first part of 2011.   I will admit that when folks like David Gilder and Cathy pulled their ports, I admired them, but could never see myself doing the same.  Of course I could also never see myself sinking from 150 sales/weekday to 20 or 30, with a portfolio of nearly 7k images. 

Looks like so far there has been some increase in sales elsewhere for most individuals who deleted all or most of their ports from Istock, but it isn't enough to conclude that buyers followed you to other sites. 

I think at the very least I will not be uploading to Istock until/unless sales improve.  I'll join JoAnn on that fence about whether to start deleting.  JoAnn, I'll bring the tea if you bring the cookies

+1  It's beginning to look like 1984 where 1+1 doesn't =2.

Hi Lisa, as you may remember I went indie in October of 2010.  I left all my portfolio there until a few weeks ago, when I deleted my nine best sellers.  I feel very unhappy to be getting only 16% of revenue for these files and so deleted the ones that I felt had fared well on other sites and had found a worthwhile 'new home'.  Some of my other images that have done well at iStock have not been accepted on other sites (DT and SS in particular) and so I just left them there.  In time I would like to delete all of the images that I have on iStock that have found a good home elsewhere.  While I agree with Lagereek that I don't for a second think buyers will search all over the net to find my images for sale, I also can't stomach supporting the bunch of greedy *insult removed* that iStock have become to the tune of 84% of revenue.

When I went indie I remember posting on a forum site on iS that I expected my iStock income to drop from about $350 a month to around $50.  I wasn't far off - I was earning around $70 a month for most of last year.  I also said that in that case it would not be a huge deal for me to drop iStock altogether and delete my images there.  I hope to soon have my other agencies built up to the level where that will be financially possible.  I have learnt a lot in my first year+ as an indie - knowledge and skill which I will be putting into creating images for the likes of SS, DT, Veer etc in the future.  I haven't uploaded to iS since I left exclusivity as to do so feels like cutting my own throat - if I allow them to profit from my new work at vastly reduced commission then they will have won, and if they win then others will follow suit.  I don't think it is an overly dramatic statement to make that I feel that iStock must now fail in order for the rest of the industry to survive.

If you want to check out my income figures then the link is in my sig line below,
Cheers,
Bridget

Hi Martin!  One thing is for sure,  we do come across some funny dudes in this place, dont we.

best.

It was the math that drove me insane. Little hypothetical gems like this:

Let's say you bring in 100K in sales and make 18% of that, it's 18K a year ($1500 a month). Although you are a fairly successful contributor, your 18K (pre-tax/pre-expenses) income isn't going to get you very far in the US. How did 100K turn into 18K? That's when it hits you that IS is taking 82K of your 100K booty...

82K? Seriously? What are they doing with all that? Advertising?

If that's the case, then shouldn't there be a billboard somewhere with you sitting atop a throned pyramid in golden sun god robes with some sort of tagline extolling your photography or illustrative godliness? (I want chiseled abs on my billboard. Maybe a panther or a dragon. There has to be some scantily clad women as well. Definitely some lightning bolts too as I call the thunder for my throng of adoring worshipers below.)

By this time, my brain has gone from simmering to boiling and I'm wondering why anybody is there as an independent. Doesn't Yuri have a calculator? Doesn't he want an awesome billboard too? He could buy a lot of billboards.