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Quote from: borg on June 28, 2013, 06:12So, we need another topic, "War against iStock", not "How to support friendly agencies"!Reading your posts today, I am just shaking my head. Back in February hundreds of us got together and staged a protest by deleting all or part of our portfolios and stopping uploading. Where the F were you then? Going on like business as usual? Now you want everyone to follow you into some "war" with Istock? We already had the "war" and you and a lot of other people who are irate today evidently didn't participate. If everyone had, maybe they wouldn't be pulling yet more sh*-t.
So, we need another topic, "War against iStock", not "How to support friendly agencies"!
In that case, why are they piling rubbish into the main collection with the 999 files a day allowance and ridiculously lax inspections?
You can shoot me for this but I think this is a good move! They are looking out for their exclusives first and giving the customer what they need! I hope buyers come running back to iStock, heck it stills pays more then SS most of the time! This is a customer centric change so lets see what happens! You can always become exclusive if buyers come running back!
Slightly OT, but I still don't understand how they can get away with saying "only available from Istock" on images that are sold all over the place at Getty and non-Getty sites. Isn't that blatantly false advertising? And isn't that still illegal??
Do you now understand why the famous danish professional microstock photographer we all know changed his mind agreeing to do exactly the opposite of what he was preaching for the last 8 years? He wants to be out of the microstock price war that is coming taking refuge in the medium stock exclusive harbor
Exclusive will dominate the upper price points so the up sale will benefit all exclusives.
Buyer habits dictate most buyers won't use the lowest price point, now at the lowest price point iStock now is priced to include the small spender, the one man band like myself. For the past two years I have bought from SS and Pond5, now that IS prices are lower I will be shopping there for my images. Exclusive will dominate the upper price points so the up sale will benefit all exclusives. Since the market is saturated it is good to have less competition in the upper price points. Don't get me wrong as I feel non-exclusives should never be lower than 20% and iStock has not treated you fair at all, I am sorry for this massive pay cut for you as well! For the customer it is a good thing and only time will tell if it is good for exclusives or not. All of you are so talented, please keep in mind I have 40 pages of video in the "$" collection and I know the same will happen to video as photo.
it's finally becoming a rat race to the bottom.on the other side i've met a guy working for NGOs who made around 20K with his latest exhibitions, prints in A3 format of street photography stuff of asian cities, and this on top of his well paid full time job at NGOs, he's also planning about doing expensive workshops to teach newbies.another guy works for a local newspaper, they're so cheap they dont even provide him the gear, he's using his own 5DmkII with a few lenses, if he get robbed he 's F-ed.
Hi all... I am both, buyer and contributor, trying to look at new iStock policies in realistic way from both angles. I'm writing this post because this thread looks is a bit away from reality and sounds like bitter chanting of angry ex-iStockers. My apologies.Anyways, to me it looks like things are moving in good direction there for a simple reason. Client needs ONE LOCATION to find good content. He hates to waste time visiting 10 websites and buying credits heaps here and there. IStock now offers globally present content at really low prices but also great exclusive content at higher prices. That is a great value for clients and hardly any other site has something similar to offer.