MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: Perry on December 14, 2010, 12:47
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Some admin in the iStock forums claimed that iStock makes 50% of it's revenue in four last months of the year (sept-dec). Do you see the same pattern in your sales or is this just an illusion caused by iStock's growth? (or are they lying)
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I won't even make 30%
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They have a lot more images in the last 4 months of the year than at the start and I can see that in the past that might make a big difference to earnings but does that apply now they have a huge collection? Certainly doesn't work with my portfolio, the last 4 months there haven't been very good.
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Not even close!
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They have a lot more images in the last 4 months of the year than at the start and I can see that in the past that might make a big difference to earnings but does that apply now they have a huge collection?
This is an excellent point. Even if IS adds only 5% to their collection, then sales in December would be 5% higher then sales in the previous January, all other things being equal.
However, this increase in the size of the collection would not really be a justification for the way they have changed the royalties for individuals, would it?
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However, this increase in the size of the collection would not really be a justification for the way they have changed the royalties for individuals, would it?
Nope. Not at all. Very good point.
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Projecting the rest of December (and assuming they don't totally shut things down with bugs in the new search), it should end up being about 38% - above the 1/3 it represents in length, but not 50%
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Last 4 months: 60% of earnings.
And that's not even including the projection for december.
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Mine are tracking at 35.6%; barely more than the percentage of the year. But of course it'll be less, as sales dry up starting before Christmas and don't pick up again until January.
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Since all the holidays during December, I have no xmas pictures and don't plan to shoot some ever... No. Each years my best months are, January, February and March, just before the beginning of summer vacation.
Then August september and october are good to
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36% estimated for Sep-Dec
BME in Nov
Dec doesn't look good ...
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Hi, my first post in this forum.
I might make 50% in the last 4 months. Actualy my sales for the last 4 months make 45%. But last year from 15th of dec to 15th of january i didnt sell very much.
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They have a lot more images in the last 4 months of the year than at the start and I can see that in the past that might make a big difference to earnings but does that apply now they have a huge collection?
This is an excellent point. Even if IS adds only 5% to their collection, then sales in December would be 5% higher then sales in the previous January, all other things being equal.
However, this increase in the size of the collection would not really be a justification for the way they have changed the royalties for individuals, would it?
Sales don't increase with new images. Sales for me are less than 50% during the last 4 months of the year.
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I mis-clicked and gave the wrong response... can't undo it.
As with so many things in my life... I said "Yes" when I should've said "No" :D
So... whatever results you end up, deduct one from the Yesses and add it to No.
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With december projected earnings included i'll make roughly 30% in the last 4 months (i dont have much holiday stuff).
iStock doing very steady for me still...(unfortunately, sort of...)
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It applies to me, but I have a very small port. My top month is 300$
(http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=bvs&chd=t:39.60,48.09,23.72,34.98,40.06,40.77,51.33,63.04,154.87,153.35,315.5,115.97&chs=500x200&chl=Jan]http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=bvs&chd=t:39.60,48.09,23.72,34.98,40.06,40.77,51.33,63.04,154.87,153.35,315.5,115.97&chs=500x200&chl=Jan|Feb|Mar|Apr|May|Jun|Jul|Aug|Sep|Oct|Nov|Dec(sofar)&chds=0,325.5)
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Last year--60%. This year projected--45%.
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Yes. But I'm a relatively new contributor so pretty much every month is my best month ever. I became exclusive in September and my earnings have gone up like crazy.
Who knows if this will also apply to me next year?
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It looks like just about 1/3 for me with projections...
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Last year 28%. This year, just now 29%. (all agencies)
Last year 33%. This year, just now 25%. (only is)
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2008: 47.7% (most of my Christmas pics were uploaded in Sept 08)
2009: 39%
2010 (projected): 35.5%
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Only 30% more for the last four months for me. All the site issues certainly can't be helping. I'm not sure that they can keep the RC targets with all of the faults in the way the site has been running these last months...
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It applies to me, but I have a very small port. My top month is 300$
([url]http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=bvs&chd=t:39.60,48.09,23.72,34.98,40.06,40.77,51.33,63.04,154.87,153.35,315.5,115.97&chs=500x200&chl=Jan[/url]]http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=bvs&chd=t:39.60,48.09,23.72,34.98,40.06,40.77,51.33,63.04,154.87,153.35,315.5,115.97&chs=500x200&chl=Jan|Feb|Mar|Apr|May|Jun|Jul|Aug|Sep|Oct|Nov|Dec(sofar)&chds=0,325.5)
Well its rather easy to see why, the majority of your tiny port are Christmas themed files.
Add a few for each major holiday and I'm sure your downloads will be more even throughout the year.
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My stats (I´m counting DLs because becomming exclusive in June might otherwise change the stats too much if I count $):
34% this year (incl. estimate till the end of the year)
32% 2009
22% 2008 (took a deep hit in best match by that time of the year)
46% 2007 (my first year - and even then I didn´t manage to get to 50% although I had almost 0 sales in Jan and Feb)
If they don´t revisit the goals, I´ll miss mine by around 11% and get a huge paycut.
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For those exclusives who are going to be getting big pay cuts, are you going to stay exclusive?
I can't imagine getting a 20% pay cut from a hugely successful company, through no fault of my own, and staying loyal to them.
^^Not meant to be snarky, BTW, just genuinely curious if anyone will stay exclusive at IS after being treated that way.
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I've been watching my credit count every day for the past few weeks. I might make the 40,000 goal by a razor-thin margin, or I could end up the year with something like 39,999. As for "50% in the last four months"... for me it's probably been something like 40%, but then my port has probably increased about 15% in that same period, so it's hard to say.
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For those exclusives who are going to be getting big pay cuts, are you going to stay exclusive?
I can't imagine getting a 20% pay cut from a hugely successful company, through no fault of my own, and staying loyal to them.
^^Not meant to be snarky, BTW, just genuinely curious if anyone will stay exclusive at IS after being treated that way.
I bet you most will, because of being scared of seeing a much larger fall in income if they give up the exclusive benefits. It's not just the percentage, they would lose their access to exclusive-+ , Vetta and the higher prices that are charged on all exclusive files. So going from 35% exclusive to 20% non-exclusive could leave them losing 60% of their remaining income and having to hope they can make it up from elsewhere.
The exclusivity trap has been carefully designed.
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Yes, Lisa I will stay exclusive.
I have been treated badly by other companies too - like Fotolia.
I´m not a big enough fish to change anything by getting non exclusive again, so my decisions are purely economical. I would have made the cut if I had been exclusive from the beginning of the year, so I´m pretty confident to make it in 2011. Nevertheless I still don´t like the changes at all.
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Fair enough, Nataq. Thanks for answering, and I sincerely hope it works out for you :)
... So going from 35% exclusive to 20% non-exclusive could leave them losing 60% of their remaining income and having to hope they can make it up from elsewhere.
The exclusivity trap has been carefully designed.
I would have agreed with that, but some of the former exclusives who are posting here, and in their own blogs, seem to be reporting that they are doing a lot better than expected.
Some have even said (sorry, can't remember who or in what thread or I would link it) said that their downloads at Istock actually increased when they went non-exclusive.
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For those exclusives who are going to be getting big pay cuts, are you going to stay exclusive?
I can't imagine getting a 20% pay cut from a hugely successful company, through no fault of my own, and staying loyal to them.
I can look at my situation two ways. (1) I'm getting a 12.5% pay cut (from 40% to 35%) - plus the harder to measure cut in ELs with loss of the 10% bonus; or (2) I'm at the same royalty level as for the bulk of 2010 - 35% - where I have had a really great year for me.
I had a few Vetta files for a part of the year (February to September). I had initially opted out of Vetta as I wanted to make diamond and figured that the download count would be higher at the lower prices. I changed my mind earlier this year, but opted out again once they required content go to Getty. I don't want to assist Getty in the drive to 20% royalties everywhere, and that's what this enforced move to Getty of Vetta/Agency is about.
So, I have no loyalty whatsoever to IS any more. I'm so angry that they couldn't be content with a thriving, growing business where both they and contributors were doing well. But I think that there's good reason to think I have one more year (possibly more, but that depends on how things play out in 2011 and whether they ever fix the search engine) to make more money than I did the year before.
So enlightened self interest says stay for a while longer. No woo yays, but we can do business.
I do have to decide what to do about illustrations though (I have a very small number) - go independent for that or leave them exclusive and take the 25% royalty that's all they qualify for now things are split by media.
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For those exclusives who are going to be getting big pay cuts, are you going to stay exclusive?
I can't imagine getting a 20% pay cut from a hugely successful company, through no fault of my own, and staying loyal to them.
I can look at my situation two ways. (1) I'm getting a 12.5% pay cut (from 40% to 35%) - plus the harder to measure cut in ELs with loss of the 10% bonus; or (2) I'm at the same royalty level as for the bulk of 2010 - 35% - where I have had a really great year for me.
I had a few Vetta files for a part of the year (February to September). I had initially opted out of Vetta as I wanted to make diamond and figured that the download count would be higher at the lower prices. I changed my mind earlier this year, but opted out again once they required content go to Getty. I don't want to assist Getty in the drive to 20% royalties everywhere, and that's what this enforced move to Getty of Vetta/Agency is about.
So, I have no loyalty whatsoever to IS any more. I'm so angry that they couldn't be content with a thriving, growing business where both they and contributors were doing well. But I think that there's good reason to think I have one more year (possibly more, but that depends on how things play out in 2011 and whether they ever fix the search engine) to make more money than I did the year before.
So enlightened self interest says stay for a while longer. No woo yays, but we can do business.
I do have to decide what to do about illustrations though (I have a very small number) - go independent for that or leave them exclusive and take the 25% royalty that's all they qualify for now things are split by media.
Are you allowed to go independent for different media? Does that count for video too?
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Are you allowed to go independent for different media? Does that count for video too?
Video has always been a separate exclusivity deal, i.e. you could be exclusive in 'photos and vectors' but independent in video, or vice versa.
Yesterday's news
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=284422&page=1 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=284422&page=1)
...is the logical (at last) one (considering the RCs are unfairly counted separately over each medium) that you can be exclusive in both photos and vectors, independent in both (as at present) or exclusive in one and independent in the other.
However, the question has been raised (by our very own JoAnn) that in the scenario where someone wants to be exclusive in photos but independent in vectors, but the other agencies require a jpeg of the vector to be uploaded with the vector, and whether that would break photo exclusivity (as 'photo' has always included 'raster illustrations', confusingly).
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=284872&page=1 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=284872&page=1)
Looks like, as usual, they didn't think it through before the announcement.
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For those exclusives who are going to be getting big pay cuts, are you going to stay exclusive?
I can't imagine getting a 20% pay cut from a hugely successful company, through no fault of my own, and staying loyal to them.
^^Not meant to be snarky, BTW, just genuinely curious if anyone will stay exclusive at IS after being treated that way.
The thing is, it's a royalty cut, not a pay cut; with Exc+, Vetta, price rises and all that, it's going to be a few months before I can tell if it actually is a pay cut or not, and if so, how much. Only then can I decide.
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Thanks JoAnn and Gannet77 for the replies. The wait and see approach seems to make sense in your cases. I have just been surprised by some of the people I am reading in the Istock thread who are talking about taking cuts from 40% to 25 or 30% yet still seem to be planning on staying.
I do have to decide what to do about illustrations though (I have a very small number) - go independent for that or leave them exclusive and take the 25% royalty that's all they qualify for now things are split by media.
As I remember, illustration was one of the reasons you went exclusive, wasn't it? Seems like illustrators have gotten a particularly raw deal in the last year - omitted or pushed to the back of searches for awhile, and now required to come up with way more RCs. It's really good they will be separating illustrations for photography in the exclusivity agreement now.
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Thanks JoAnn and Gannet77 for the replies. The wait and see approach seems to make sense in your cases. I have just been surprised by some of the people I am reading in the Istock thread who are talking about taking cuts from 40% to 25 or 30% yet still seem to be planning on staying.
I do have to decide what to do about illustrations though (I have a very small number) - go independent for that or leave them exclusive and take the 25% royalty that's all they qualify for now things are split by media.
As I remember, illustration was one of the reasons you went exclusive, wasn't it? Seems like illustrators have gotten a particularly raw deal in the last year - omitted or pushed to the back of searches for awhile, and now required to come up with way more RCs. It's really good they will be separating illustrations for photography in the exclusivity agreement now.
As they say, that was then, this is now!
I spent the first half of 2008 reacquainting myself with illustrator and uploading vectors - and planning to become exclusive (which I did in August 2008). However somewhere in the spring illustrations started to show up at the back of the bus in searches and new files were getting a huge boost in the best match. I stopped illustrating and stared uploading a bunch of photos that I hadn't processed from the previous 6 months. Since then, illustrations have received one raw deal after another at IS, so that old idea stayed dormant.