I put a lot of thought into this.

The first thing I would do would be to increase commissions back to 20%.  Then I would turn it into a communist regime and pool everyone's portfolios into one giant port and divvy the royalties evenly among all the contributors... just to stick it up all exclusives who have been gloating during a time when all the poor independents had their souls crushed.

I finally figured out who you are and why you are anonymous:  Barack Obama!  

I think IS is one of..nope, scratch that..it is THE most frustrating site out there.  I am working hard to build up my portfolio on other sites right now.  I am so disgusted with not only the commission rate offered at IS but the uploading process that it boggles my mind that anyone would even consider putting forth any effort there.  

I can't help but think that the uploads have slowed considerably at IS in recent months.  I would really look hard at those numbers to determine if I were going to be falling behind the market pretty quickly as far as new, relevant content is concerned.  It would result in a short term loss more than likely but I would seriously consider increasing the commission and easing the upload process to motivate new image contribution.  Otherwise, in the long term I think they will do some irreparable damage.  

Who knows though..if I really had the job, I'd probably cut the commissions to 5% just to see if people still uploaded

Mat

Why on earth would you like them to come guning for SS?

Read THE THREAD TITLE.

I'm sure they lose money by cutting commissions because it leaves us with less money.  People don't work harder or more creatively when their wages are cut.  Any more cuts and it really wont be worth me staying there.  I really couldn't care less about the people that would be willing to work for 5% commission, they aren't going to be producing quality content.  They should be concentrating on cutting costs elsewhere.  They could remove all images over a year with no sales, they are paying to host them all now.  They could get rid of contributors that have a very low acceptance rate.  They cost a lot of money wasting reviewers time.  I'm sure there's lots of things they could do other than hurting their suppliers again.

Great post jsnover!

Let�s see what Rebecca comes up with and what her plans are. She is holding two full time jobs. It is possible she is only there temporarily to get a feel for the place before she finds a new full time manager. Wouldn�t be anything wrong with that either.

But whatever she does, she must increase profit and I think now this means aggressive sales. So at the moment I am optimistic and will try to free up as much time for shooting as I can.

And whatever I upload now will at least go to my portfolio. Whatever the new system is, at least these files will be in.

I'd probably go for competition crushing. Move the non-exclusives back to a flat 20% and move exclusives to a flat 50%. You'd pay more, but you would probably close down more than half the agencies to the right.

That might work to keep existing exclusives from bolting, but I can't see anyone (with a large established portfolio) would trust Getty enough to go exclusive at this point. Once they crushed the competition, who thinks they'd keep the 50% for exclusives for more than 10 seconds? Best predictor of future performance is past performance and all that.

To Getty, contributors are just an expense and as such they want to minimize it.

Keep in mind that we contributors will have no say as to how Rebecca performs, just as we can kick and scream about how Kelly does, in the end, it is Klein who makes the call.

Great post jsnover!

Let�s see what Rebecca comes up with and what her plans are. She is holding two full time jobs. It is possible she is only there temporarily to get a feel for the place before she finds a new full time manager. Wouldn�t be anything wrong with that either.

But whatever she does, she must increase profit and I think now this means aggressive sales. So at the moment I am optimistic and will try to free up as much time for shooting as I can.

And whatever I upload now will at least go to my portfolio. Whatever the new system is, at least these files will be in.

Quote from: jsnover on August 05, 2011, 14:25

That might work to keep existing exclusives from bolting, but I can't see anyone (with a large established portfolio) would trust Getty enough to go exclusive at this point. Once they crushed the competition, who thinks they'd keep the 50% for exclusives for more than 10 seconds? Best predictor of future performance is past performance and all that.

To Getty, contributors are just an expense and as such they want to minimize it.

Yeah, definitely true. I guess it would have worked better last fall before they did the RC stuff. I guess they'd have to rebuild trust first. I don't think I'd want to go full exclusive, but I'd probably ditch SS, FT, DT and a few others for 50% at IS. It probably would be worth a call or a poll to some of their top non-exclusives to see what it would take to get them to leave IS's major competition.

The first thing I would need to return to exclusivity would be trust.  Barring a spin off to Bruce, I don't see a way they can regain it.

I am working hard to build up my portfolio on other sites right now.

Sorry for hijacking this thread but this is so incredible. Mat, are you saying you are no more exclusive FT contributor?

Quote from: rene on August 05, 2011, 21:42

Quote from: MatHayward on August 05, 2011, 12:30

I am working hard to build up my portfolio on other sites right now.

Sorry for hijacking this thread but this is so incredible. Mat, are you saying you are no more exclusive FT contributor?

Oh, that one slipped right by me.  Is this true Mat?   

if I remember well Mat posts it is about Editorial stuff which FT allow

just remember all those people coming up with funny and evil suggestions that Istock will read them and implement them.

My business plan if I was the new managing director at Istock we'd all get ponies

Regardless of the fact that iStock have taken more commission over the past year than any previous year, even the most blind-faith iStock wooyayer would have to admit that in terms of the company's reputation, the past 12 months have been a disaster.

With high profile industry bods seizing on Kelly's words with gleefull 'haha, microstock is unsustainable' claims, the management strategy seemed to quickly move towards a keep-a-low-profile-and-hope-it-goes-away strategy, until months later the ill-advised, partly denied/partly corrected interview, where Kelly achieved very little more than further alienating any iStock suppliers who weren't already 100% hacked off.  Oh, and he let it slip that payouts to artists - which he'd promised would be rising - had fallen.

Rebecca has an opportunity to freshen up what's been negligantly allowed to become an extremely stale and negative situation.  She could and should act fast with a fresh attitude, and make a positive difference.  There are many thousands of active contributors who could still be turned back from their anger towards some level of enthusiasm for iStock.

She may not have a background in photography, but she has got a background in start-ups so she must understand the power of goodwill and word of mouth.  The power that's worked against iStock for 12 months.

A Pony for every contributor and the chance for people to invest in iStock at a subsidised price would be a good start 

Quote from: qwerty on August 07, 2011, 05:27

My business plan if I was the new managing director at Istock we'd all get ponies

How many? I mean, �25, bleagh; 100 ponies good, 1000 ponies better.

Two options, cause I'm a good boss and Istock will now be run through the results MSG polls 

1) The amount of ponies you would get would be subject to a redeemed pony system (known as RP) which would reward the hard working ones among you. I will announce the RP target exactly 4 months after I promise and it will it will be unachievable to get more than the bottom level of pony allocations. If for some reason someone does I will change the levels. The ponies for the bottom two levels will actually be virtual ponies as its hard to actually send them via paypal. The virtual pony program will be written personally by Lobo and needless to say it won't work. We will spend no money or time on it as that would be unsustainable.
2) For every 100 sales you get 1 pony, Partner program will now be changed to PP (Pony Program) which will now pay 100c per download to allow the purchase of hay for your pony collection.

After all it's not money that will make you happy but ponies.

Quote from: ShadySue on August 07, 2011, 08:32

Quote from: qwerty on August 07, 2011, 05:27

My business plan if I was the new managing director at Istock we'd all get ponies

How many? I mean, �25, bleagh; 100 ponies good, 1000 ponies better.

Two options, cause I'm a good boss and Istock will now be run through the results MSG polls  

1) The amount of ponies you would get would be subject to a redeemed pony system (known as RP) which would reward the hard working ones among you. I will announce the RP target exactly 4 months after I promise and it will it will be unachievable to get more than the bottom level of pony allocations. If for some reason someone does I will change the levels. The ponies for the bottom two levels will actually be virtual ponies as its hard to actually send them via paypal. The virtual pony program will be written personally by Lobo and needless to say it won't work. We will spend no money or time on it as that would be unsustainable.
2) For every 100 sales you get 1 pony, Partner program will now be changed to PP (Pony Program) which will now pay 100c per download to allow the purchase of hay for your pony collection.

After all it's not money that will make you happy but ponies.

ROTF! write a book about IS, stock, whatever I will buy it, freakin hilarious!