MicrostockGroup

I might consider it if I was already at the Diamond level.  As it is I'm a good 5800 off of that mark, so 33,000 to go makes that a lot less attractive given that many of my iStock sales came in the earlier years.  There is no way to estimate how much your sales will increase by going exclusive, and there is no way to estimate how much your sales may drop by staying independent.  We simply won't know anything until it rolls around and we see how things change.  

That's just how iStock works, sometimes changes are good, sometimes bad, and sometimes everything changes with no net differences in the results, but you never know for sure until it happens.  So ebb and flow, wait and see, F5, yadda yadda yadda.

Not a chance. They'd have to jack up the exclusive prices a hell of a lot more in order for it to make any financial sense for me to go exclusive.

I'm honestly pretty gutted about the canister changes. I've been working hard to reach gold (currently at 8412) and was all set to hit 10k around March-April next year.

For a long time I'd been thinking about the real possibility of going exclusive once I was gold due to the royalty increase, but the new canister levels will mean it's now going to be years until I reach a gold canister. iStock have pretty much guaranteed I won't be going exclusive as a result.

If they'd given a 6 month notice period for the changes, it would have given those close to the next canister a real opportunity to work hard and reach it 

Shoot less street lamps and more models doing something 

True they should open their mind on that a little bit. Especially on rasters. I know Dreamstime accept work from superb raster artist and this make them a little more a special agency to look at.

I wouldn't be surprised if they modify the changes they announced for the canister levels.  It seems that the sites often give us really bad news, receive a huge negative reaction, make a small change for the better and then most people think they have been reasonable.  It has happened a few times now and is starting to look like a deliberate ploy.

I abandoned street lamps a year ago and am using myself as model... we'll see how it goes

I think they will modify it also...I don't know that I would say it is a malicious ploy, more of a testing the waters scenario

They're taking a page from politicians...run it up the flagpole and see if it flys. If the masses revolt, give something back to them and look like the hero. Psychology 101.

Not sure if people saw this:

I've edited the "Quick Facts" post to remove the part about filtering the different collections. I also added this:
Q: Will people be able to filter out normal Exclusive images or illustrations from searches?
No. The standard Exclusive content will show up in all searches.

So basically even less joy for non-exclusives.

I wouldn't necessarily assume that this is just a test, that they are worried about a revolt. Things like this have happened before, where istock makes  a big change and the forums blow up for a few days. In the end, things settle down and usually everyone just gets on with life. This could go the same way. Regardless of the public outcry, istock can do whatever they want and really there isn't much anyone can do about it. They can push this new policy through and contributors have little choice but to accept it or take their business elsewhere. And frankly, I think istock knows what we all know but don't want to admit; that the exclusives aren't going to drop exclusivity over this. I think istock could drop canisters altogether and the contributor landscape at istock would look pretty much the same the next day. No one would quit, few people would drop exclusivity, contributors would just get over it and move on.

I'm not betting on istock conceding anything to the masses in this one. They stand to make a hell of a lot more money from their exclusives by delaying canister increases and jacking up image prices, and it'll be hard to convince any of the upper brass that they should scale this thing back and not rake in all that extra cash. I bet they go through with the whole plan as-is.

Did you read it 2 seconds after the initial post?  Cause it is anything but "well done" and "yiipie".

October '08 I think it was that istock decided to encourage contributors who were 'sitting on the fence' (rogermexico's term I think) about exclusivity by favouring best match even more towards exclusives than usual. istock dropped to number 5 position on that poll over on the right, independents got totally hammered, and exclusives still remember those heady days when the dls never stopped. I think that's what's about to happen again.