John,

I included this comment in the survey, but just wanted to elaborate on it a little here.

My biggest pet peev about microstock is the poor corporate account systems (or total lack of) that exist in microstock. I'm not a huge fan of Getty as a company, but one thing that they have nailed down perfectly is corporate account billing and license designations. The design agency I work for has an account with Getty, and we bill image purchases to the end client. The Getty purchase system allows us to assign a job number and purchase order number to a single image purchase or multiple image purchases. Then we get a monthly bill with itemized purchase info. Our accounting department bills the image purchases to the corresponding client jobs based on the tagged job numbers. It's super easy for everyone.

As it stands now, to bill an image purchase in microstock we need to create the same purchase orders as with the Getty images, plus a separate expense report to log the transaction since no microstock site allows for similar job number or purchase order number tracking at the time of purchase.

Additionally, Getty allows us to designate a licensee, which in most cases is the end client. We get the bill, pass the expense along to the client, and the client is the real license holder. And it's all wrapped up neatly and cleanly in a monthly billing statement.

istock claims to have "Corporate Accounts", but it's nothing compared to the Getty system. It's probably better than what most other microstock companies offer, but it still leaves much to be desired compared to what Getty offers. It's little more than a glorified bulk credit buying system at this point. Limited purchase tracking and job number assignment, no end user designation, and no monthly billing.

I think that this is one of the biggest deterrents to microstock. The billing and license assigning systems that people are used to from traditional RF and RM stock don't really exists to the same extent in microstock. The microstock company that comes up with a simple, flexible, monthly billing system like what Getty employs will, in my opinion, draw in a great number of new customers by creating a buying environment that is as easy to use and track as Getty's. It also instills confidence in the buyer to be able to really specify who you are buying an image for and knowing that there is a record of a license being purchased for the intended client. If I'm buying an image to use in a project for Visa, I like knowing that the license I purchase via Getty will have the Visa company name indicated as the end user and licensee, not my company name.

It's a great system that I'd love to see implemented in microstock. istock will likely adopt the full Getty purchasing system someday, but it would be great to see some other microstock company beat them to it.

Just sent an email requesting that my account be closed. Read through your agreement again - which allows for 30 days to remove content from your site, plus 60 days to remove from affiliates sites.

I can't see why it should take so long to remove content, and certainly hope that it doesn't.

Edit:... Images removed very quickly... thanks!