I dropped a Redeemed Credit level starting Jan1st. Even with the drop I'm still way down on downloads and royalties compared with Jan 2013. You'd think rather than leaving the 2011 Redeemed Credit Targets they should revise them down as they well know sales are down across the board.

Yeah, I'm getting killed. Finally gonna drop the crown because there's no way I'll make LESS going indie.

Quote from: blamb on January 21, 2014, 04:34
Yeah, I'm getting killed. Finally gonna drop the crown because there's no way I'll make LESS going indie.

I respect your work Blamb. Kind of glad to hear it's not just me but it's disappointing at the same time.

Thanks.  The three years of slow decline have taken their toll and I've rode this thing to the bitter end.  Time to move on.

Quote from: goober on January 21, 2014, 04:21
I dropped a Redeemed Credit level starting Jan1st. Even with the drop I'm still way down on downloads and royalties compared with Jan 2013.

Are you sure that the clients are still here?
Remember 2013 issues?

I thought IS was going to grandfather redeemed  credits -- nobody was going to go down... was that just for exclusives?

No-one is supposed to drop a level
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=357536&page=1
but it seems nobody told the programmers, and it isn't a priority to fix it:
Why is that in the Help forum rather than announcements? Like these:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=358648&page=1

Quote from: ShadySue on January 21, 2014, 09:01
No-one is supposed to drop a level
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=357536&page=1
but it seems nobody told the programmers, and it isn't a priority to fix it:
Why is that in the Help forum rather than announcements? Like these:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=358648&page=1

So when you click on the link "What are redeemed credits" on your stats page you get 2011 credit targets. To get the latest targets you have to go searching through the forums. That makes a lot of sense.

To top it off the programers have stuffed up and the site is recording the wrong royalty rates. You can understand why I thought I had dropped to the next level.

And when they get around to fixing the royalty rate problem I'll get an email saying we owed you $XXX but I'lll never know if it went into the account total because there's no proper accounting system in place showing line by line credits and debits.

really? doing pretty well here with 16.21$ from 24 downloads

I seem to be broadly on a par with Jan 2013 myself - DLs a little down, but RPD is up (highest ever in fact) so it's balancing out so far, and that's at a lower royalty rate than I should be getting.

In fact, when PP and GI figures come in (and assuming they add on the correction for the royalty rate, eventually) I would expect it to be better than last January.  But we shall see.

Quote from: blamb on January 21, 2014, 04:34
Yeah, I'm getting killed. Finally gonna drop the crown because there's no way I'll make LESS going indie.

Blamb and goober - Sorry to hear this news. But your RC rates are grandfathered from 2013 so you're royalty rate will not change so that's good. But yes, sales are a poor start for 2014 - I'm not sure what is going on and there is the royalty glitch (which they will fix). I would "sit and wait" for now and see what the next six months hold for us all. If you are committed to dropping the crown I would try this instead, form an independent business and as an artist, "sell" your images to the business for a dollar each under a "work for hire" contract. Then use the business to submit to other sites. By dropping the crown you're giving Getty images/istock a better royalty rate, so you're basically "rewarding" them your images. If I was going to leave Getty/istock I wouldn't leave my images there, they don't deserve them. Good luck guys regardless.

I think a ton of people will be dropping the crown in the coming months. They really have no choice. New work does´t sell, there is now 5 times more indie content coming in than exclusive content and the prices for exclusive content have gone up again. And then there are the "special exclusives". And the RC levels/targets have not been adjusted for the massive influx of indie files who can upload without limit now.

Exclusives will be a marginalised breed by end of the year, if the trend continues. Even if best match still favours them, the sheer volume of new indie content will swamp them out.

istock used to be an agency for high quality content where nearly 50% of the content was exclusive to the site. Now it is just a portal for everything the market has and files then get moved around the way the agency sees fit. The artist has no control over pricing although he/she knows their own specific niche best.

Very sad to watch, but I am glad I made the difficult decision last year. I keep hoping that istock gets new managers that will make it shine again. Even if I am indie, it is still hard to see what is happening there.

But I guess SS and now Dreamstime are the ones really making a visible effort to attract the artists.

They're not even highlighting their exclusive content.
Maybe iStockLawyer finally understood the legal minefield they were in by labelling content you could get in many places as 'only from iStock'.
So yet another hard slap in the face for their real exclusives.

Update: 'Only from iStock' seems to be back on.

Quote from: cobalt on January 21, 2014, 19:44
I think a ton of people will be dropping the crown in the coming months. They really have no choice. New work does´t sell, there is now 5 times more indie content coming in than exclusive content and the prices for exclusive content have gone up again. And then there are the "special exclusives". And the RC levels/targets have not been adjusted for the massive influx of indie files who can upload without limit now.

Exclusives will be a marginalised breed by end of the year, if the trend continues. Even if best match still favours them, the sheer volume of new indie content will swamp them out.

istock used to be an agency for high quality content where nearly 50% of the content was exclusive to the site. Now it is just a portal for everything the market has and files then get moved around the way the agency sees fit. The artist has no control over pricing although he/she knows their own specific niche best.

Very sad to watch, but I am glad I made the difficult decision last year. I keep hoping that istock gets new managers that will make it shine again. Even if I am indie, it is still hard to see what is happening there.

But I guess SS and now Dreamstime are the ones really making a visible effort to attract the artists.

Very well encapsulated Jasmine. The unintended consequences of earlier decisions will be felt particularly hard by exclusives ... even by the 'special exclusives'. At least they have the comfort of knowing that "Professionals deal with professionals".

Quote from: ARTPUPPY on January 21, 2014, 19:11

Quote from: blamb on January 21, 2014, 04:34
Yeah, I'm getting killed. Finally gonna drop the crown because there's no way I'll make LESS going indie.

Blamb and goober - Sorry to hear this news. But your RC rates are grandfathered from 2013 so you're royalty rate will not change so that's good. But yes, sales are a poor start for 2014 - I'm not sure what is going on and there is the royalty glitch (which they will fix). I would "sit and wait" for now and see what the next six months hold for us all. If you are committed to dropping the crown I would try this instead, form an independent business and as an artist, "sell" your images to the business for a dollar each under a "work for hire" contract. Then use the business to submit to other sites. By dropping the crown you're giving Getty images/istock a better royalty rate, so you're basically "rewarding" them your images. If I was going to leave Getty/istock I wouldn't leave my images there, they don't deserve them. Good luck guys regardless.

Is this what Yuri has done and is it legal? Surely you can't sell your existing images to the company for $1 and still sell them exclusively on iStock. It would have to be new images only. I've always tried to do the right thing by iStock as they are my primary source of income.

Quote from: Gannet77 on January 21, 2014, 11:20
I seem to be broadly on a par with Jan 2013 myself - DLs a little down, but RPD is up (highest ever in fact) so it's balancing out so far, and that's at a lower royalty rate than I should be getting.

maybe it's due the fact there is no XS size on istock ? gone today to use my last credit on istock and the cheapest images is only for 2 credits

Quote from: goober on January 21, 2014, 23:59

Quote from: ARTPUPPY on January 21, 2014, 19:11

Quote from: blamb on January 21, 2014, 04:34
Yeah, I'm getting killed. Finally gonna drop the crown because there's no way I'll make LESS going indie.

Blamb and goober - Sorry to hear this news. But your RC rates are grandfathered from 2013 so you're royalty rate will not change so that's good. But yes, sales are a poor start for 2014 - I'm not sure what is going on and there is the royalty glitch (which they will fix). I would "sit and wait" for now and see what the next six months hold for us all. If you are committed to dropping the crown I would try this instead, form an independent business and as an artist, "sell" your images to the business for a dollar each under a "work for hire" contract. Then use the business to submit to other sites. By dropping the crown you're giving Getty images/istock a better royalty rate, so you're basically "rewarding" them your images. If I was going to leave Getty/istock I wouldn't leave my images there, they don't deserve them. Good luck guys regardless.

Is this what Yuri has done and is it legal? Surely you can't sell your existing images to the company for $1 and still sell them exclusively on iStock. It would have to be new images only. I've always tried to do the right thing by iStock as they are my primary source of income.

Yes, but he presumably got a special 'professionals-only agreement' with iStock. And to keep his older images up at other agencies.
It's totally illegal in the UK, and several other countries, (including Canada AFAICS), to have photos labelled 'only from iStock' which are available elsewhere.
I believe he's not the only pseudo-exclusive.

Quote from: kelby on January 22, 2014, 00:05

Quote from: Gannet77 on January 21, 2014, 11:20
I seem to be broadly on a par with Jan 2013 myself - DLs a little down, but RPD is up (highest ever in fact) so it's balancing out so far, and that's at a lower royalty rate than I should be getting.

maybe it's due the fact there is no XS size on istock ? gone today to use my last credit on istock and the cheapest images is only for 2 credits

When in the world did that happen?

Actually, I can answer that. At least in part: It happened sometime in the last 24 hours, as I did have an XS sale just yesterday morning. But it's true, XS is completely gone from all collections.

Whose turn was it to 'think of something else we can try' today? 

Bizarrely, the explanation is "Part of our rationale is to provide the client base with a simplified experience on the site."
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=358810&messageid=6978246

File size is not the most complicated or inexplicable thing on iStock. In fact, it's about the clearest thing on the entire site.

There are other reasons I can think of; maybe that's the secret part we're not privy to.

Sales are strong for me on the video so far this year, Thankfully!!!!

Quote from: goober on January 21, 2014, 23:59

Quote from: ARTPUPPY on January 21, 2014, 19:11

Quote from: blamb on January 21, 2014, 04:34
Yeah, I'm getting killed. Finally gonna drop the crown because there's no way I'll make LESS going indie.

Blamb and goober - Sorry to hear this news. But your RC rates are grandfathered from 2013 so you're royalty rate will not change so that's good. But yes, sales are a poor start for 2014 - I'm not sure what is going on and there is the royalty glitch (which they will fix). I would "sit and wait" for now and see what the next six months hold for us all. If you are committed to dropping the crown I would try this instead, form an independent business and as an artist, "sell" your images to the business for a dollar each under a "work for hire" contract. Then use the business to submit to other sites. By dropping the crown you're giving Getty images/istock a better royalty rate, so you're basically "rewarding" them your images. If I was going to leave Getty/istock I wouldn't leave my images there, they don't deserve them. Good luck guys regardless.

Is this what Yuri has done and is it legal? Surely you can't sell your existing images to the company for $1 and still sell them exclusively on iStock. It would have to be new images only. I've always tried to do the right thing by iStock as they are my primary source of income.

Yep. Another istock contributor has done this as well. (I forget who, it was mentioned here before) His company name was his name with the "Inc." added and that one is non-exclusive. Correct, as an istock exclusive, those images would only be on istock. You will have to create new ones for your "work for hire" portfolio.

Quote from: jjneff on January 22, 2014, 01:37
Sales are strong for me on the video so far this year, Thankfully!!!!

I'm glad to hear that, as I know sales had not been going great for you recently.

My experience is entirely different, but I have a very small (and not very stocky) port compared with yours (~400 files). With only 10 days remaining to the month, I am in grave danger of my first month ever without a video sale at IS, since I started contributing clips back in late 2009. In fact, since Nov 2009 I hadn't had a month with fewer than 3 sales.

On the photo side, things are not quite as dire. But it looks like the number of sales will be down by 60% from Jan '13 (i.e., 40% of last year's number), with the fewest number of sales in a month since my first 6 months ('07 - '08).

Quote from: kelby on January 22, 2014, 00:05

Quote from: Gannet77 on January 21, 2014, 11:20
I seem to be broadly on a par with Jan 2013 myself - DLs a little down, but RPD is up (highest ever in fact) so it's balancing out so far, and that's at a lower royalty rate than I should be getting.

maybe it's due the fact there is no XS size on istock ? gone today to use my last credit on istock and the cheapest images is only for 2 credits

No.  The XS size was only removed in the last 24 hours, and I've sold a few which are included in my figures.

But we'll have to see how it pans out from now on...