2012 didn't have GI sales.   For me that alone would cut more than 25% of my income.  If I were going to drop exclusivity now I would guess the loss would be 90-95% of my income.  I think if you only had a 25% drop in iStock income you are doing much better than most.

What? My GI Sales started in 2011 with the Vetta files moved over at the beginning of that year. E+ came later in addition. Though, I never sold a lot through GI Sales nor did I have a lot of Vetta files. So that certainly explained why my earnings did not drop as much as for many others who heavily rely on those higher priced collections at iStock.

I always said that dropping iStock exclusivity shouldn't mean to upload all your images to microstock. At iStock you have a lot of midstock priced sales, so you need to find a midstock or macrostock agency to replace those.

Today I am making more from Stocksy and my macrostock images than I ever did from Vetta.

To really compare indie to exclusive earnings you need to add income from the macros you will be supplying to and symbiostock or your own webshop.

if you already have an indepedent contract with Getty or have applied with other macro agencies or stocksy or offset, that will make a big difference to your overall income.

The biggest change is the freedom to decide yourself at which price point your images should be sold.

I don't think it is very wise to just "upload everything everywhere"

For me SS and Fotolia are the most important micros in addition to istock. I certainly wish I had uploaded much earlier to SS than I did.

Pond5 is very good for video and my photo sales are also increasing there.

The most interesting agency is stocksy, but at the moment it is hard to get in. And I still don't have results from the other macros, bevause I just started out with Westend and it takes time for files to be distributed and then even longer for sales results to trickle back.

But there are many macro sites and edited collections...plainpictures,tetra,blend...I would take a look around, see what you can supply and talk to the ones that interest you.

And then of course there is symbiostock and selling direct via your own website.

If you are indie there are so many options, it takes tome to test them and find what mix works for you, but you will defiently be a lot safer because your risk is spread over several different agencies and business models.

Good luck with your journey.

And maybe if more people leave istock will offer a third path of exclusive images like Getty has. On Fotolia many german artists are giving fotolia exclusive series, often of the regional German content. That seems to raise the overall visibility of the portfolio and of course brings in more money.

Quote from: fotoVoyager on April 16, 2014, 06:06

FWIW, someone I know with similar portfolio to mine is now making more per image per month than I am on iStock.

Are you counting mirrored GI sales in that?  Are they just on the micros?

Yes and yes.

The problem with going independent is getting out of the 80%+ income drop trough, not that income can't be replaced as far as I can tell from talking to people whose experience I respect. That takes quite some time and a huge amount of work, but it looks like it can be done.

I was hopeful that GI sales would make up for the crash in iStock exclusive downloads but the killing of the E+ programme prevented that. It appears that the GI best match is heavily weighted towards new images so a portfolio that can't be added to sinks heavily quite quickly. My returns from GI have dropped to 20% of what they were because of this I think.

Quote from: fotoVoyager on April 16, 2014, 07:59

Quote from: tickstock on April 16, 2014, 06:44

Quote from: fotoVoyager on April 16, 2014, 06:06

FWIW, someone I know with similar portfolio to mine is now making more per image per month than I am on iStock.

Are you counting mirrored GI sales in that?  Are they just on the micros?

Yes and yes.

The problem with going independent is getting out of the 80%+ income drop trough, not that income can't be replaced as far as I can tell from talking to people whose experience I respect. That takes quite some time and a huge amount of work, but it looks like it can be done.

I was hopeful that GI sales would make up for the crash in iStock exclusive downloads but the killing of the E+ programme prevented that. It appears that the GI best match is heavily weighted towards new images so a portfolio that can't be added to sinks heavily quite quickly. My returns from GI have dropped to 20% of what they were because of this I think.

The 80%+ part is what worries me (not to mention all the extra work and having the same kinds of problems on all the other sites you get with iStock).  If you are that far down for a year or two before you get back your income would you be better off or how long would it take to be better off?  I'm assuming that most of the income comes from SS which heavily favors new images, does that income start to drop off after those first two years?  I guess you aren't totally convinced it's worth dropping exclusivity yet?

I think that unless iStock starts to value their exclusive content and contributors in a way that suggest they want to keep them it'll be a moot point since the returns will drop to levels that make independence financially necessary.

I don't know why they don't realise that their exclusive content is the single remaining factor that separates them from every other agency, some of whom do some things much better, like video at Pond5 and subs at SS. Why would new buyers choose them if that additional content wasn't there?