Seriously, you are a month late to the party. And completely ignorant of the threads covering that subject being discussed to death.

Old news but here's my take.
 
Lots of people, even on this site, said Istock's prices were too high and for nonexclusive work they probably were.  Look at the biggest competitor, Shutterstock, they sell the average image (full size) for about $2.50.  How can Istock license the same exact content for 10 or 20 times that price and expect to compete? It seems simple to me, they had to lower prices.

I love it how you keep forgetting the 70-200 dollar X-SODs and 28 dollar ELs. Plus regular medium SODs of 5-25 dollar.

Old news but here's my take.
 
Lots of people, even on this site, said Istock's prices were too high and for nonexclusive work they probably were.  Look at the biggest competitor, Shutterstock, they sell the average image (full size) for about $2.50.  How can Istock license the same exact content for 10 or 20 times that price and expect to compete? It seems simple to me, they had to lower prices.

I love it how you think that the majority of exclusive content is really worth 10x more than the 'Main' collection. Take a reality pill __ fast.

NB: That's for a Medium image, which happens to be the average size downloaded.

ooooooooold 

Quote from: gostwyck on August 20, 2013, 17:40

Quote from: tickstock on August 20, 2013, 17:17

Old news but here's my take.
 
Lots of people, even on this site, said Istock's prices were too high and for nonexclusive work they probably were.  Look at the biggest competitor, Shutterstock, they sell the average image (full size) for about $2.50.  How can Istock license the same exact content for 10 or 20 times that price and expect to compete? It seems simple to me, they had to lower prices.

I love it how you think that the majority of exclusive content is really worth 10x more than the 'Main' collection. Take a reality pill __ fast.

NB: That's for a Medium image, which happens to be the average size downloaded.

You are the one always talking about letting the market decide right?  As far as I'm concerned I have my answer.

Personally I think all images are worth exclusive prices but companies like Shutterstock have tried their hardest to devalue them.

What you think is irrelevant. What's important is what the customer thinks __ and that's the bit that Istock has always got wrong in recent times.

SS have stayed reasonably true to the original concept of 'microstock', whereas Istock have not ... and thus have suffered accordingly. Istock used to give away images for free so if any agency is guilty of devaluing images then it has to be Istock themselves.

Truth is that IS are now utterly * and no matter how much you try to talk them up will change that. The die is cast. Good luck in choosing at what point you will give up your crown ... because that is pretty much as certain as 'death and taxes'.

Istock used to give away images for free so if any agency is guilty of devaluing images then it has to be Istock themselves.

They still have a free image of the week or month or something, but AFAIK, it's still opt-in.

AIUI, in the old days it wasn't a giveaway, but an exchange between artists. Was somewhere there at the beginning who can confirm or refute? Didn't you have to upload so many for each download? Then, again AIUI some people wanted to submit but didn't want to download much, so the pay model came in.
Or did I get that all wrong? (Before my time).

/

Thats cute. I thought the change to accept 999 images at lesser standards was going to amount to something... this was it.

I guess I was "late for the party" too so its good to see whats really happening.

Its like watching a star go nova just before it's collapse.

Quote from: Ron on August 20, 2013, 17:25

Quote from: tickstock on August 20, 2013, 17:17

Old news but here's my take.
 
Lots of people, even on this site, said Istock's prices were too high and for nonexclusive work they probably were.  Look at the biggest competitor, Shutterstock, they sell the average image (full size) for about $2.50.  How can Istock license the same exact content for 10 or 20 times that price and expect to compete? It seems simple to me, they had to lower prices.

I love it how you keep forgetting the 70-200 dollar X-SODs and 28 dollar ELs. Plus regular medium SODs of 5-25 dollar.

I didn't forget those, I said the average, those sales are included in the average.  I like how you are forgetting the 99% of all licenses though.

I must have misunderstood when you said the average image, instead of the average price...

"I'm glad that I'm not an exclusive iStock contributor."

Take a look at the earnings ratings, there are plenty of people happy to still be exclusive and earning considerably more than the 25 cents a pop that SS pay.

There is no one I know on SS who has an RPD of 25 cent... so I dont know where you got that from.

I'm not talking about RPD, I'm talking about what people can receive for the sale of a file.

People can receive over 150 dollar for the sale of an image, in fact, someone reported a sale of 231 dollar the other day on SS.

http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=131653&highlight=sod

istock is in full retreat mode, slashing prices, unlimited uploads, what's next ?

more and more signs of desperation.

it's the last stage of the microstock rat-race to the bottom before giving away everything for free and monetize the collection with advertising and print services.

People have been predicting that for years but since I started, prices are still generally higher than they used to be.  Istock have swung from one extreme to the other but who knows what they'll think of next?  They've had no long term strategy and its costing them now.  Printing services have never worked for microstock.  I don't see any of the sites using free images for advertising making much?  If that was a lucrative market, Google AdSense would be all over it.  If microstock was on the way out, the Shutterstock share price would of collapsed.  It could happen but after years of these predictions of doom, it isn't happening yet.  I think the real fact is that microstock is still a huge market with good growth potential.  The problem for contributors is getting a fair share of the profits but that's the same for content providers in lots of online industries.  I'd be more concerned about the traditional sites.  I don't understand the Getty finances, how much are the hedge funds taking out of them?  If they're being run by the same people that are wrecking istock, what's their future prospects?  Will alamy carry on cutting commissions and lowering prices?