Yap!  they want horrible pimply snotty nosed kids and cycloped eyed women with bow-legged men, let your creative juices flow man.

seriously though I do shoot for Getty in the RM.  This business where you have to PAY? to get a shot in,  well it seams a bit odd to put it mildly. Youre reffering to photographers-choice, arent you?

What I want to know is, if you are a Getty contributor, how is it working out for you financially and regarding your creative fulfillment... and any other thoughts about the joint.

As far as I read all your few posts, you are only here to ask info about anything, not to share anything, not even your port. Yes, I know a way into Getty. I will gladly tell you after a 1.999$ consultancy fee by PayPal.  - Ploink.

I have been a stock photo buyer since the late 90s and have been a creative director for over 30 years. I may be sharing my thoughts from that point of view soon.

please do! we always welcome viewpoints from buyers and buyer contributors. just out of curiosity, why did you switch to the other side a month ago?

by the way, fd is a good egg once you get to know him. you can certainly pick his brain on anything web related.

Oh locke, where have you been?

please do! we always welcome viewpoints from buyers and buyer contributors. just out of curiosity, why did you switch to the other side a month ago?

I still buy alot of stock and own a successful branding company but a good friend of mine and photographer turned me on to the microstock world and l like the idea of making money without client issues and creating art (photography) on my own terms.

FD might be an OK guy but 7 folks have him on ignore. We might just get along fine, now that we both know were we stand.

OX
...when do we do the group hug thing?

Nows good!  You can't let the comments get to you. Ignore the parts you don't like and take the rest. I find most of them quite amusing. I'm hard to offend and I don't take it personally.   

(((((OX-FD-SJLOCKE)))) LOL! these guys don't get to me. It's all good and amusing.

I've been the admin for massive forums for over 5 years. This  stuff is common -- new guy gets tested by the regs. a little smack talk and we all fall back into place (unless new guy shows weakness and is feasted upon). 

OX
...Teflon

I wonder how many people that might be good for this place and might even buy images from us are eaten alive?  I wish everyone was a strong as oxman but some get both barrels and are never seen again.  Can't see anything wrong with the OP, I would of answered if I was on Getty but I'm not and I don't think I will be until Corbis buy them

I'm with you sharpshot! The nasty comments normally say more about those dishing them out than those on the receiving end! But back to the thread... I've just applied to Getty through the normal channel of submitting 10 pics etc etc. Will let you all know how it goes. Every post I've seen here the last year or so seems to have been offered photographers choice and the fee. If that's the case I will pull out!

Btw... what I've submitted is complex illustrations. I have a photo port in development but it's not distinctive enough right now. I would only submit if I thought I could offer something not already there. 

joingated - I'd love to know what your experience is with sending illustrations to Getty. I'm starting to build an illustration collection to send to macros. I didn't realize Getty carried its own illustration collection. Good luck with your submission!

I got into Getty through the istock exclusive program. So far I like the experience. Yes, it takes much longer to get your images online and I certainly miss all those statistics we have at istock but the returns are good and the placement of my images in the search is excellent.

Because some customers get very large discounts the same image can be sold for 5 Dollars or 500 USD. Our share for RF is 20%.  So the monthly returns vary greatly and you never know how much it will be. It all depends if you got a few supersize sales or not. The average per image sale is higher than on istock, but the downloads are a lot less, so I think it is very difficult to compare.

Personally I am very impressed, though, I only have 100 images online and usually get a few sales every month. Nothing stellar, but last month I got 4 Dollars more than a well known microstock superstar... . But like I said, the monthly income varies greatly from zero, to 2,39 USD to a few hundred dollars a month.

Also I can�t really predict what will be successful. Images that I thought would be interesting are not selling or only for a few dollars, images that I just added to fill up the submission get sold for a few hundred dollars.

Since the early 90s my marketing firm often bought from Bettmann Archive, Getty, Corbis, Masterfile and Tony Stone. (Before all the merging). We probably got 500 pounds of catalogs a year!

TS was our favorite for advertising work since it was the most "out there" and worked well with marketing concepts. But that stock photo line-item on the estimates made clients nuts. And having to pay the annual usage fee was often a deal killer. Some of my national clients had the budget but most mid-sized company marketing managers did not like it and explaining it to the CFO was another issue. So we often shot what we needed.

I think I became aware of iStock around 2003 through their "Dirty little secrets" advertising in Communications Arts magazine. (I hated that campaign and told them). Most of the work then was created by hobbyist and unusable (still is). Around 2005 it appeared that some of the pro photographers had started submitting work and the quality had dramatically improved but was still hard to find.

It was tough finding good edgy concept images at iStock (that hasn�t changed either). 85% was dreadful and uninspiring and those �happy shiny people� were mind numbing. I have new clients tell me, �We don�t want that stock photo look�. Interesting.

Fast forward. It appears that more and more of the pro photographers have heard about some of the money being made by the early contributors and begrudgingly waded into the microstock showground. This has been GREAT for buyers but a concern for the RM/RF empires (macrostock?). As the stock photo buying paradigm continues to shift and the micro vs RM/RF quality differences evaporates, I do not see how the RM/RF can survive except for editorial use and fewer big budget clients. Hell, who would by from those dinosaurs and pay (i.e.) $1500 annual usage for equivalent images found in micro for a ten bucks one-time fee?

So where is the industry going? Not sure but things need to change. There is too much weak content on the microstock sites which makes searches a long frustrating journey into the night. So art directors are sorting by DOWNLOADED in search of the risen cream, which only re-circulates a cloud of top feeder images and buries a lot of new quality work. Yuri claims 80% of buyers search by DOWNLOADED � dunno for sure.  The micros need to cull the herd. IS has about 7 million and SS sits at around 12. What happens when they are at 30 million? Or 80 million with the 80/20% rule of crap vs. gems? YIKES! Getty is not stupid � thus Vetta was born � the proverbial missing link.

Also, depending upon whose blog you believe, microstock sales are starting to flatten indicating that the pool of potential buyers has been filled. I don�t believe this. Time will tell.

What I want? I�d like to see iStock slash all the bottom feeder images, foster Vetta with a reasonable pricing structure (Don�t get greedy Getty!) and figure a way to allow new quality images to rise to the top of searches.
Overall, I think the mircostock future is bright once the few growing pain issues are resolved.

OX
�one man�s opinion

Quote from: oxman on August 28, 2010, 22:06

Check my posts Sean.  I have been contributing when I can. Who said I am demanding anything.

Ok, I checked.  Seems you've started one thread on saturated categories, and posted something thoughtful about rejections.  Otherwise, I don't see much yet.

Why don't you post some experiences about your 30 years as an image buyer, that others here might draw value from?

Kinda took care of that one.