I am certainly grateful for his vision and efforts in starting this industry.  It has brought a lot of happiness to my life.

I have often posted negatively about IS, the zeitgeist there rubs me the wrong way I guess.
But I would like to personally thank Bruce Livingston for what he has accomplished. The business model he created has changed the lives of thousands and thousands of people for the better, and I am one of them. What could be a greater accomplishment than to create such a wonderful opportunity for so many people, of every race, religion, and national origin all over the world? So I would like to say thanks, and wish him the best of luck in whatever comes next for him.

 I think the people there could run the ship well. What depends is how Getty or should I say H & F want to get involved or not at this point. They have been smart in the past letting Bruce run this during the transition. Especially when their history shows taking over companies cleaning house, and running it their way. I hope that won't be the case this time. Especially for the Exclusives that helped build the company from day one. Heck even Getty is deflecting rumors of themselves going out of business or being sold by some inside reports. I am sure we will learn more as time passes. Hats off to Bruce, he is a visionary. Maybe his next plan will be even bigger for image makers.

Nero

All I have to say in this thread is "thank you" to Jon from Shutterstock for actually raising contributors commissions and making for an extremely easy upload process at ShutterStock.... two things I cannot say for Bruce Livingstones (sp?)

Quote from: nruboc on March 24, 2009, 00:22

All I have to say in this thread is "thank you" to Jon from Shutterstock for actually raising contributors commissions and making for an extremely easy upload process at ShutterStock.... two things I cannot say for Bruce Livingstones (sp?)

So what percentage do we get with shutterstock then

That is what I was thinking!  We have no idea what commissions we are getting at Shutterstock.  Shutterstock has raised their prices and amount we get, but so has iStock.  I am guessing though that at Shutterstock we got a reduction in commissions the last couple years as they raised the package prices a larger % than they raised the commissions.

Additionally, and despite my grudge against iStock for their tight upload limits, horrible upload process, and measly 20% commissions, they very reliably have the highest return per image for the majority of non-exclusive photographers, myself included.

All I have to say in this thread is "thank you" to Jon from Shutterstock for actually raising contributors commissions and making for an extremely easy upload process at ShutterStock.... two things I cannot say for Bruce Livingstones (sp?)

I can't argue about the upload process because it is indeed a lot easier at SS, however the raising commissions is just a smoke screen, they put their prices up and increase our amount per download but as a commission percentage I actually think it dropped last time, add to that the diminishing number of downloads a lot of people are experiencing due to the increase in number of images being accepted (drop of standards?) and for me personally SS is getting worse. The OD sales have increased but then the commission on those sales are not as much as a same size download on some other sites.

Yes, I believe it is a fact. .... From the top 4 sites and 204 non-exclusive photographers, 93 said iStock gave the highest RPI.

Yes, I read it in the other thread. I'm a methodology freak (probably a handicap left over from a previous job) but with 93 out of 204 = 46%, istock doesn't have the highest RPI for most, not even for the majority. Given a margin for a low confidence limit on a sample of just 204, you can safely say that istock gives the highest RPI for half the respondents.

I always loved statistics and the result raises some interesting questions, for instance the correlation between the reported RPI and portfolio size on every site. But that takes us too far, and the question wasn't in the survey.

 Their image upload limits at Istock do play into the picture. SS might have a lower RPI but they allow you to upload a great deal more that easily offsets the returns per month that Istock brings. 50 images at Istock make you x amount but 500 at SS make you a great deal more at the end of the month. Unless you are Exclusive at Istock.
 I wonder if they will pull the plug on upload limits and make other adjustments now Getty might be taking over. Time will tell if we see changes or if they stay the coarse. I hope for all Exclusives at Istock they keep things just the way they are.

One things for sure judging by some comments, a lot of people don't understand or have a different perspective on how RPI works.

RPI per month on a particular site is the total income for that month on the site, divided by the number of images online at the end of that month. Correct?

This measure should not be confounded with income/download which would be the same as RPI if all your shots were downloaded in the same amount. You can have a very high income/download but a low RPI if only 10% of your port sells well.

Well your analogy is the basic and I'd imagine the one that most people use and probably based their results in the survey, however if you want to be really in depth about it then no there's other things to factor for a true RPI, for that you have to take into account production costs involved in producing that imagery including the time spent uploading

Yes of course, it's gross RPI. But comparing RPIs over sites, net RPI can be discarded since it belongs to an image, not to the site. If you define RPI as yield per specific image (over all sites), then you have to take costs into account to get the actual yield of course. Or rather all the images that belong to the same shoot and share the same costs.

I don't think most modest microstockers (like myself) want to do that since they only count their marginal costs. Those beautiful tropical beach shots are just a side product of a beach holiday they would have taken anyways. Or do an assignement and do some stock at the side, like on the end of the last film roll.
I guess if they would count the total production cost, included camera, space and equipment write-off, they would discover that they lose a lot on microstock. Some even buy a 20MP Canon D5MKII just for stock, when a < 1000$ D90 is good enough. You don't need a D5 for your holiday shots and your weddings. It could only be OK if your volume exceeds 1000-1500 new stockworthy accepted shots per year.

Since the vast majority of microstockers just counts their marginal costs and doesn't count their postprocessing/upload time, the professional stockers that have to count all their costs are at a very big disadvantage. The clever ones will need to do assignments, events, weddings etc... at the side to survive.

Masnick on Techdirt wrote about The Grand Unified Theory On The Economics Of Free in the music industry. Since digital music is in endless supply (like images) and the marginal cost is almost zero, those products will tend to be priced zero. A musician should make his income from side-effects that are scarce, like concerts, concert tickets, merchandise, backstage passes etc...
Applied to photography, you could argue that prices still will go down until they fall below the cost of even the cheapest production. A photographer can then only survive by his assignments, and use the prestige of being on stock as a marketing advantage against other local assignment photographers.

Finally, there is the often ignored aspect of globalization. I wrote about this 3 years ago on Talkmicro and most had to laugh. Just go to any site forum and look at the new contributors. Most are from Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, Croatia, Slovenia, Poland, and recently the Chinese started to pour in. Those are countries with a cost of living that is a fraction of that of the industrialized West, but they get the same price for their photos as Western photographers. The production cost of a shoot is much lower there and in the limit, they will dominate the scene. Devaluing the dollar is a great move from Obama, so the West-Europeans will be the first to go.

2 cents 

Finally, there is the often ignored aspect of globalization. I wrote about this 3 years ago on Talkmicro and most had to laugh. Just go to any site forum and look at the new contributors. Most are from Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, Croatia, Slovenia, Poland, and recently the Chinese started to pour in. Those are countries with a cost of living that is a fraction of that of the industrialized West, but they get the same price for their photos as Western photographers. The production cost of a shoot is much lower there and in the limit, they will dominate the scene. Devaluing the dollar is a great move from Obama, so the West-Europeans will be the first to go.

Well it's a theory except you're forgetting something, the highest yielding type of imagery are those that feature people, the buyers at present don't want that many images with Chinese folk in, and the other countries you mentioned are all poor in comparison to the largest image buying countries, and without sounding patronising I could spot a Polish girl in a cheap looking outfit a mile off, so although they may be able to mass produce the images cheaper than the Western world a lot of them will look cheap which is not what sells. Fit, healthy well dressed people is what sells at the moment because it's what the buyers want representing their needs, there are those from the countries you mentioned that do produce the type of images that sell, and if you check I think you'll find they're no better off than anyone else if anything some are worse off because they need to pay more for quality goods in their countries than we do.

Quote from: FlemishDreams on March 24, 2009, 16:21

Finally, there is the often ignored aspect of globalization. I wrote about this 3 years ago on Talkmicro and most had to laugh. Just go to any site forum and look at the new contributors. Most are from Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, Croatia, Slovenia, Poland, and recently the Chinese started to pour in. Those are countries with a cost of living that is a fraction of that of the industrialized West, but they get the same price for their photos as Western photographers. The production cost of a shoot is much lower there and in the limit, they will dominate the scene. Devaluing the dollar is a great move from Obama, so the West-Europeans will be the first to go.

Well it's a theory except you're forgetting something, the highest yielding type of imagery are those that feature people, the buyers at present don't want that many images with Chinese folk in, and the other countries you mentioned are all poor in comparison to the largest image buying countries, and without sounding patronising I could spot a Polish girl in a cheap looking outfit a mile off, so although they may be able to mass produce the images cheaper than the Western world a lot of them will look cheap which is not what sells. Fit, healthy well dressed people is what sells at the moment because it's what the buyers want representing their needs, there are those from the countries you mentioned that do produce the type of images that sell, and if you check I think you'll find they're no better off than anyone else if anything some are worse off because they need to pay more for quality goods in their countries than we do.

I agree, RT. Actually, if done wisaely it is cheaper to proce the kind of images the buyers want at the "Western World", than in the countries you quote. And I wouldn't call countries as Russia or Poland as something in the line of "third world", I've been in Eastern countries and life is not so cheap at all. Those are ideas from  the past.
In the meantime, no mater how many now contributors or from where they came, my RPI and my istock income grows day after day.

Do you know Golbachov? Find the cheap Polish girl 

Yes I do read the last part of my post, you've highlighted exactly what I was trying to say, Lev works hard to find the models and get the right gear for the look he wants, he is not one of the 'new contributors who have started to pour in'. 

And I'm sure the Western market rejects Asians!

I never said they rejected them, I said there wasn't same demand for them and there isn't, you show me one website/magazine/book with an image of an Asian person and I'll show you a thousand others that don't feature them.

why don't you guys start a new thread? talk about off topic.

Since it came up here. That's how forums go, right? I didn't even hear of Bruce Who before since I don't visit the istock forums. My only communication with that 0.19c/image site is thru PayPal. I just discovered he's a heck of a fantastic photographer. Now you can have your thread back. Enjoy it. I'm out.