Hi All,
  A lot of Tornado's blowing around this post and probably some feelings getting hurt. I think this post alone shows and shares the frustration that many are feeling about Microstock. Try to remember that it is the industry you are frustrated with not each other.

Cheers,
Jonathan

I disagree. I'm frustrated with the people too. Kidding. Happy Friday.

Hi Ron,

 I agree, the percentage split with the big agencies is difficult at all levels.

Thanks,
Jonathan

...

Who is going to invest their time and effort in something which is obviously headed in only one direction?

That's what I'm wondering too. And what will happen with the agencies when nobody is uploading new material any longer?

Look at all of the people giving their work away as Creative Commons. Tell them, "hey not only will we let you give your work away, we'll even pay you 10 or 15 cents for ever download!" And I guarantee there will be a ton of people who think it is a great deal. Ever lower commissions for higher standards, just for the privilege of possibly having one of your images used in an advertisement someday. How exciting! 

so far it's not happening, also because of the CC licence itself imposing idiotic limitations on commercial use and allowing the author to even change the licence retroactively.

from what i see amateurs are more prone to sell prints for 10-20$ rather than digital downloads for a pittance.

there are some diamonds in the rough on sites like 500px, flickr, instagram but recently i wasted a few hours browsing some stuff about the city where i'm living now and i was flooded by cr-ap i don't want to ever see again, now i see why Getty's flickr experiment turned out to be a waste of time, even for top travel destination you can easily be facing 1 good image vs 200 absolute trash images, what would be the outcome if each one of these photos had a "buy" button for 1$ ? and it seems the authors are also quite proud of their cr-ap snaps, they would complain the price is too cheap, go figure ! that;s what they did with getty paying decent fees actually.

Maintenance on Shutterstock today, the RC schedule might come sooner than we think 

That maintenance is never for our benefit.  Not like they're going to do that then I get 10 EL's after they come back up :p

@Dan man I hope SS doesn't do that or head in that path then how many of us would leave there in droves?  And how many after that would replace us?  Most if not all of us knew that something was going to happen to the contributors once they went public and I think now we're feeling that effect now more than what we did the first few months.

I also know that's it's always going to be slow in the summer but it's slower than normal.  I don't even think that my numbers this year will be anywhere near last year.

I also agree that they don't care enough about the suppliers just their d**n bottom line.  And that's any of them.

Having started this business in 2011 I was officially done but didn't know it 

Quote from: stockastic on July 19, 2013, 16:52

Who is going to invest their time and effort in something which is obviously headed in only one direction?

And yet we're all still here. Wonder what that says about us.

It says that for years since we started, the reward justified the effort. 

As far as "still here", I don't know that's exactly true.  Many folks whose incomes are dropping seem to be uploading less and less in response. 

It's sensible to leave your existing ports up and wring whatever remaining income you can from them, but fewer people seem to be investing time and money in uploading new HCV shoots. 

There was a time when I thought that by increasing the costs and the commission payments iSTock risked wrecking the model, driving away buyers and pulling in people who would not have bothered when we were getting 10c 20c and 30c or evern 20c, 40c, and 60c per DL.

I'm starting to think again that I was right. Standards would have been much lower, the factories would never have appeared and the RPI might not have shrunk to where it is now. I'm not sure, of course, but I do wonder,

And now the iS commissions seem to be back at 20c, 40c and 80c anyway. No progress in a decade.

There was a time when I thought that by increasing the costs and the commission payments iSTock risked wrecking the model, driving away buyers and pulling in people who would not have bothered when we were getting 10c 20c and 30c or evern 20c, 40c, and 60c per DL.

I'm starting to think again that I was right. Standards would have been much lower, the factories would never have appeared and the RPI might not have shrunk to where it is now. I'm not sure, of course, but I do wonder...

I think istock was right that the industry can bear higher prices, they just got it wrong about which companies could do it and the context in which it would be accepted by buyers. They established themselves as a microstock company but ventured too far out of that realm. When really what they should have done was create something separate, like SS is doing with Offset.

Of course it is yet to be seen whether Offset will work, but at least SS isn't ruining their existing business by trying to change it up too drastically.

There's a proper place for what istock wanted to do. That place just wasn't istock.

Quote from: EmberMike on July 23, 2013, 16:01

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on July 23, 2013, 15:52

There was a time when I thought that by increasing the costs and the commission payments iSTock risked wrecking the model, driving away buyers and pulling in people who would not have bothered when we were getting 10c 20c and 30c or evern 20c, 40c, and 60c per DL.

I'm starting to think again that I was right. Standards would have been much lower, the factories would never have appeared and the RPI might not have shrunk to where it is now. I'm not sure, of course, but I do wonder...

I think istock was right that the industry can bear higher prices, they just got it wrong about which companies could do it and the context in which it would be accepted by buyers. They established themselves as a microstock company but ventured too far out of that realm. When really what they should have done was create something separate, like SS is doing with Offset.

Of course it is yet to be seen whether Offset will work, but at least SS isn't ruining their existing business by trying to change it up too drastically.

There's a proper place for what istock wanted to do. That place just wasn't istock.

Didn't they already have an Offset? It's called Getty. I agree though. They were doing a good job selling higher priced content until they broke it.

The original "offset" was iStockpro. The idea was that if you were professional standard, then you would be accepted into the "pro" section of the site which would sell at Alamy type prices.  The amateurs would stay in iStock, where we belonged, until we learned enough to move up.

That was where things were in April 2004, but iStockpro never took off.