Remember the times when you sold images through the iStock website with good and fair price. For one credit download you got something like 1 - 35$.

What you think guys... Are those good time gone forever?

What is your opinion, what iStock should do that we can get those old times back?

Now we get 0,75$ for xxxl-large photo if customers use subscription plan. That is ridiculous!!! 

Just my opinion but - I would not be pinning my hopes on Fotolia and I'm not going to spend the time uploading there.  I think Adobe was only interested in using their archive to push Photoshop, and they have no long-term interest in stock photography.   I could be wrong, though.     

yes good times will come back if we all pull our images, we hold all the power, but we are like deer looking in headlights

Lets make a site what is only the portfolio site at first and contributors can upload (copy and paste) their all the photos in there from every stock sites. Later when there is a lots of users and stuff we launch the site! Perfect plan! 😊👍🏼

We could get together and buy a majority share in a site that does work.  I think buyers would be interested because it would make low cost images more sustainable for contributors.  Probably wont ever happen but you never know.

When I think of the iStock site programming team though I imagine a bunch of children with mental disabilities who can't control their bowels sitting in a bathtub together, whilst floating amongst their own turds, squeezing them like Play-doh, and giggling away as if they haven't a worry in the world.

ROFLMAO!!!  OMG, I am laughing so hard I am literally crying!!  I'm sure this will be deleted, but thanks for the most graphic and hilarious metaphor EVER!!

Quote from: PixelBytes on March 29, 2016, 21:09

Quote from: NewStocker on March 29, 2016, 16:47

When I think of the iStock site programming team though I imagine a bunch of wolves with mental disabilities who can't control their anger sitting in a bathtub together, whilst floating amongst their own turds, squeezing them like Play-doh, and giggling away as if they haven't a worry in the world.

ROFLMAO!!!  OMG, I am laughing so hard I am literally crying!!  I'm sure this will be deleted, but thanks for the most graphic and hilarious metaphor EVER!!

Not polite correct but if you change it to a pack of wolves, in a pond, like Lobo, and other IS floaters, then it's fine.

Totally agree, not politically correct, but still funny.  Political correctness is the reason most comics won't play colleges anymore.  Hard to be PC and funny.

Quote from: NewStocker on March 29, 2016, 16:47

Quote from: MichaelJayFoto on March 29, 2016, 14:01

Quote from: Photostocker on March 29, 2016, 13:49

We contributors should set up our own stocksite where the royalty rates are something like 90%. 10% is only for the runing company and the website. And we need webtool for the copy and paste all the photos and keywords from the iStock if contributor wants to leave from the iStock.

Sure. Because customers are just waiting for that. And the site obviously is going to run flawless once set up because it is run by photographers who know what they're doing. 

Eh-Hem, I am a photographer, I have set up my own stock site selling purely my own content, it looks far more professional than iStock's site ever did/does. It has very simple pricing, it is easy to navigate, was built on a free and open source CSS platform, nothing is broken, the site can accept both credit card and PayPal payments, and it runs smoother and faster than the iStock site ever does/did.

Granted I don't have a sizable collection when compared to an agency that crowd sources from millions of potential contributors, or the traffic to be successful with it (yet), but it isn't hard to run circles around iStock's web programmers in order to build a stock site that works and people find easy to use, yet I still consider myself very much a coding hack at best. I set it up over only a few month period, on a part time basis, whilst tweaking and working the bugs out. Imagine what one could do if all they did all day was develop a stock site as a full time endeavor?

When I think of the iStock site programming team though I imagine a bunch of children with mental disabilities who can't control their bowels sitting in a bathtub together, whilst floating amongst their own turds, squeezing them like Play-doh, and giggling away as if they haven't a worry in the world.

What is your stockwebsite? We can make same kind of program what Qhero is to help people upload photos more easily and also make the webtool that contributors can upload all their stuff in other stocksites in the new site. Because of exclusive contributing the web site must be the first only for the showing photographers portfolio...but also there should be a button add this photo for sale...as 500px have! Whe should gather together few powerfull contributors and make this happen!

I built my site using WordPress and I purchased a very inexpensive theme that I added on to it which is designed for selling online products. Then I customized it from there.

There are numerous options like this available that one will find when researching the subject online. All kinds of different increased functionality can be added to a site as well. For example, files can be stored on a cloud server and secure download links can be automatically generated by the site when a purchase is made and which will expire after a certain number of downloads, or a short period of time, or both. All these things can be customized and different kinds of functionality added to a site like light boxes, etc.

Quote from: NewStocker on March 29, 2016, 16:47

Eh-Hem, I am a photographer, I have set up my own stock site selling purely my own content

Well, yes, that's your own images. Put on someone else's images who uses different key wording than you do, find out a fair way whose images to show first for any given search terms, make accounting for those, pay out the earned royalties in an easy and cheap way. And then do that for 10,000 contributors and 100 Terrabyte of image data. Good luck trying that with WordPress.

At least you won't need marketing because customers will just jump on board once the word goes around that the photographers get 80 cents per download instead of 35.

I don't see any reason to make it a site that is combined with other people's images. My intent was not to set up a stock agency, but my own outlet for selling my own niche content and by providing a much better user experience.

I had been scratching my head for a long time thinking how could a multi-million dollar company like iScraps put up such a poorly designed site, which functions so horribly and crashes all the time.

So in part, this was a test to see how difficult it would be to create something better than iScrooge and to prove to myself it could be done. The conclusions was it was neither hard or something that involved a tremendous amount of web design. And everyone can do the same. You would need some reasonable web design skills to achieve what I created, but you could also hire someone to build a nearly identical site to mine if you don't have the coding or design skills to customize a CSS package yourself. And the great thing is once you build the store it is done and always will be there. You can then develop it at your own pace with your own content however and whenever you wish.

There are also relatively simple and low cost solutions for all the points you raised if you did want to make it into a larger stock agency site. And yes, it is all completely possible with WordPress. I already studied it all when I had once considered taking on additional content from a small core group of friends. And video can be added as well.

Also, WordPress creates no limitations and is no different than any other CSS platform, which is what iStump is as well. WordPress simply adds a layer of easier user administration on the back end that other sites don't have and it also prevents you from having to write your own code for a core site.

It would be very easy as I said to get a few pieces of custom code written and added to the site to take it to the next level. Again, not an interest of mine. I am just happy to have proven to myself how easily it can be done, how inept iSpasm truly is, and to now have a fully functioning and fully automated eCommerce site with credit card gateway and secure download server to sell my own photos however and whenever I wish to.

By the way, I keep 97% of whatever I sell and I can price images for whatever I want. When it runs like that you don't have to sell nearly as much as you would when earning under $1 per sale on stock sites. And the best thing about it is my own site doesn't even force me to be exclusive with them either to get 97% royalties.

You make it sound like no one here has ever tried that before. Lots have. First of all, unless you have big bucks to pay the search engines, your images are going to get buried behind all the agencies. Second, yes, building the site is the relatively easy part. It's what comes next thats not. Driving customers on a minute, hour, and daily basis is not so easy. I was not happy with a couple sales every month...even if i did make 100%.


Impossible? No. Just not as easy as you make it sound.

For sure, that is the part you will need to develop. And that is no easy task. Not saying it is. But once you have enough content on the site you can start driving it. And it is a great feeling to have your own store. A total feeling of freedom and empowerment. Sure, you can never compete with the big boys, but one wouldn't need to.

What is different now though is also how the technology and the platforms are there now to receive low cost credit card payments and to host your content on a very fast cloud server for secure delivery. These things were not so readily available to the individual operator just a few years ago. If you think about it, the cost of starting your own business now has greatly gone down and the cost of keeping it running is so minimal now as well. All things we didn't have available in 2009 when iStock was still the biggest game in town.

newstocker, been done before and failed, check out the story of picturengine