MicrostockGroup

Non exclusives at iStockphoto contribute significantly more to Getty revenues than exclusive contributors based on iStockphoto's own top 15 images downloads per last  3 months/ last month and even last week. You can check this yourselves if you go to the Contributor Lounge and click on Trends. I've done the analysis of the current data (shown below) which was a real pain as the Contributor lounge/trends pages are full off bugs and resets each time you page back - non of the images load either but I'm pretty sure their data is correct.

Last Three Months (Top 15 Image downloads during that period)
Non Exclusive Contributors 12 Images (80%)
Exclusive Contributors 3 Images (20%)

Last Month (Top 15 Image downloads during that period)
Non Exclusive Contributors 10 Images (66%)
Exclusive Contributors 5 Images (33%)

Last Week (Top 15 Image downloads during that period)
Non Exclusive Contributors 12 Images (80%)
Exclusive Contributors 3 Images (20%)

I am sure some 'bright spark' will start quoting Pareto but clearly iSP's own statistics are telling their masters at Getty that two-thirds of their revenue sales comes from non-exclusives and if you take into account they pay considerably less to non-exclusives than exclusives surely if their going to 'rationlise' contributors there should be a cull on the non-performing exclusives?

Bearing in mind that one non exclusive contributor in these figures appears again and again and is shortly going to 'go direct' I think Getty might have a revenue problem coming - although his leaving will certainly help a few of the exclusives that skulk around in his shadow.

Sean's right - Getty still makes more on individual exclusive sales, although perhaps they may make more on the independent collection overall. 

Since Istock began with the collections, I think it's a safe bet that whatever they are pushing to the front of the best match is what they make the highest profit on. 

Thanks for compiling those stats, though.  I didn't realize that the sales were so heavily skewed to Yuri (although of course I knew he was the best seller). 

When he goes out on his own, has it been decided that he will definitely be pulling his port from the micros? 

Impossible to say what he'll do really. If it were me I definitely keep the revenue streams alive with existing outlets until traffic was sufficiently good. If it ever got so successful on my own site and then at that precise time I'd pull everything external down and bump my prices down by 10% and clean-up. Game over.

^^It makes sense, they're ripping them off with low A/V/GI royalites.

Exactly!!  when like Yuri, you graduate from a sole earner, into an institution, you have to re-think, find differant strategies, you cant leave yourself open to others blunders, risk-takings, external and internal politics problems. Too much to lose. Sooner or later you have to go on your own and what better timing then right now?

He makes his move now,  he is bound to succeed.

Lagereek - "How is he ever going to get enough traffic if he leaves his files on gazillion sites? It makes no sense at all. He should pull everything down and start selling on his site."

It would be suicide to kill existing sales before his own site is at least vaguely known about - and that could take some time. I am only surmising in regard to Lisafx's question - who really knows what he'll do. I only wish him well - I think the majority of his images are really great. I do (well not really) fear that libraries like iSP and a few others will feel the hit when he turns them off though.

OOPPs - Sorry Slovenian and apologies to Lagereek! Not intentional I promise.

@Cogent Marketing - you are not including in your calculation the money which Getty makes from exclusive iStockphoto content sold via the main Getty site. Often for hundred$ per sale.

'How is he ever going to get enough traffic if he leaves his files on gazillion sites? It makes no sense at all. He should pull everything down and start selling on his site'

That doesn't make sense though, as buyers would just move on to similars from others, including the people he trained.