MicrostockGroup

A look ahead was just posted:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=151691&page=1

Some interesting points and thoughts, some I agree with, some not.  Just FYI.

Thanks for linking... Yes the new canisters will own me too. I was getting close to silver slowly. Now I just have to wait until I do something else of my life, for opening my silver canister wine bottle. I guess it will taste better in 3 years _Sigh_

Just like in FT, I have to give up any hopes of changing level in my lifetime. 

So basically no good news for non-exclusives. Seems IS is keen to make the gap between exclusives and non-exclusives bigger. Its becoming pretty clear that the direction is to treat non-exclusives as cannon fodder.

The canister changes are bad for non-exclusives because they make it harder to reach higher upload limits.

I am currently at a gold canister with 13024 downloads. I don't understand what he means when he says "So if you have 15,000 downloads when the change happens, you will remain at your gold canister for the purposes of upload limits and Exclusive royalties".

What about non-exclusives? Gold used to start at 10,000 downloads. so when he says no contributor will drop a level, I will still be a gold, correct? Little confusing, to me anyway.

seems like some exciting changes.  I hope the other sites take a hint and provide more tiered pricing.  iStock has proven that buyers are willing to pay for more expensive content and they seem to be the only agency who is really making it work.  Dreamstime's image levels work in a similar way however but i think they could have a premium collection too.

The cannister levels - yeah it is a bit of a hit, but like dirkr said - it doesn't really change anything.  Fotolias change was bigger since it essentially just lowered everyone's commissions by 2%.  That, and the fact that Fotolia's announcement was retro active while iStock is giving us 2.5 months notice.

I don't mind the extra pricing for exclusives.  I can only think of good results.
A. Buyers will buy the cheaper images, which means non exclusives
B. For those who are exclusive or thinking of going exclusive  - it will increase their income
C. Buyers will get used to paying higher prices and other agencies should be able to charge higher prices
D. Other agencies will perhaps start using more tiered pricing - giving us more income.

iStock may seriously increase their exclusive attractiveness with this move.  I am curious about how other sites will respond.

Very interesting news indeed.  Some of the things that strike me on first reading:

1.  Canister level changes.  This is exactly what Fotolia did that angered contributors so much.  Moving the goal posts in the middle of the game just seems wrong.  Of course as a non-exclusive diamond my income won't be affected in any way.  Still, I was looking forward to black diamond anyway.  So now I have to get 30k DL's by February in order to qualify.  Not likely to happen

2.  Higher prices for exclusive images.  As Tyler points out, this could be a double edge sword for exclusives.  On the one hand, they will be making REALLY good money per sale. On the other hand, unless they produce extremely unique content - which many do not - they stand to lose sales to independents whose images will be lower priced.   I hope you are right, Tyler, and that if this is successful the industry will resume the trend toward higher prices.

3.  Credit price increase.  Great for istock, great for contributors.  At least on the face of it.  For us non-exclusives this will be the only raise we get at IS.  But Sean makes an excellent point in the IS thread - this is not the ideal economic time to be squeezing customers.  Could backfire and send more to the competition.

4.  Plans for JIU - Wonder if this means they will be dumping StockXpert content from JIU as they did Photos.com.  I will be sorry to see that extra income go, but remain convinced that .25/sale is just not adequate compensation for sub sales at this point in the game. This is not 4 years ago and many of us are not doing this for giggles and grins anymore.  

And I guess they'll be hoping that they'll go to photos.com

Not really an increase if it comes along with a decrease in the number of credits needed to buy non-exclusive files... 

Not exactly. At least IS have given a couple of months notice and are open to helping out those on the verge. FT didn't even have the decency to make an announcement let alone negotiate on the issue.

Having said that IS's wailing that "the current canister levels are unsustainable" is patent nonsense as all it affects is how little commission they pay out (and only to some of their exclusive contributors) and much more profit they get to keep themselves. IS are already eye-wateringly profitable and still growing at a staggering rate. To say they can't continue to pay the same levels of commission is simply absurd and downright greedy.

Good point.  Although with the very low volume of XL and larger sales, the only real affect will be the 2 credit reduction in L sizes.  

Hopefully we will make it up in volume as the more cost-conscious buyers choose the cheaper non-exclusive files over exclusive ones.  

If I were exclusive I would want to option to choose which of my exclusive images were put in the various collections.  I might want to keep my more commonplace ones in the "main collection".

Right, that might bring more sales to non-exclusives...