Following the sad demise of Stockxpert and in particular the extraordinary way Fotolia is treating it's contributors you may well now be considering the option of exclusivity with Istock.

Skim down to the bottom of this post now if you if you prefer to avoid the number-crunching and just want to see the final figures.

Before January's changes at IS working out how much you might expect to earn was easy enough by simply adding the exclusivity bonus, appropriate to your canister level, to your existing earnings. However since the Exclusive collection has been introduced, where images are sold at higher prices, it is not so easy to work out the likely effect.

Firstly you need to know the sizes/quantities in which your images are sold and then work out how many credits it would have cost to buy them using both sets of prices. The ratio between the two sums can then be applied to existing earnings and the exclusivity bonus added to reach a total earnings figure.

I've done this twice now firstly with a sample of 120 recent sales and then again with a further sample of 200 sales __ 320 sales in total. On both occasions the ratio of credits between the two price sets was 61%.

Of course there may be some buyers who on occasions will choose to buy a cheaper non-exclusive image over an exclusive image so we need to try and factor that into our calculations although it is always going to be a guess. For the sake of this exercise I've assumed that total sales will reduce by 7% giving a handy final ratio figure of 50%.

The increase in earnings offered by exclusivity, at the different canister levels, is therefore likely to be approximately as follows;

              Diamond - Multiply existing earnings by 3X

                    Gold - Multiply by 2.6X

                  Silver - Multiply by 2.25X

                 Bronze - Multiply by 1.9X

Obviously your mileage may vary but at least it is something to go on. As we all know sales vary on a daily/monthly/seasonal basis so trying to project future earnings can never be an exact science.

Of course I should also have mentioned that if you become exclusive you will also be eligible to submit files to the Vetta collection and, later in the year, the Exclusive Plus collection both of which should increase earnings further.

A big factor that is hard to predict is the influence of best match. Better placement of your images could have quite a big impact on earnings.

Very true but I keep an extremely close eye on the best match, by monitoring where my images appear in a number of my niche subjects, and I've seen no obvious changes for months __ other than the introduction of the Vetta collection of course.

I'd like to think that Istock has learned from the mistakes of the past when it introduced crude changes to the best match with all sorts of unintended consequences. Supposedly the dominant factor nowadays is the keywords actually used when an image is purchased, the sort-order effectively being controlled primarily by the buyers __ which is how it should be.

Yeah it has become more stable, however, I still believe it preferes exclusives. Also the time factor plays a role. Getting images online faster (due to faster review times) can also help an image. An image can shoot to the front if it gets a few downloads fast. Not to mention how Vetta was pushed infront (first page for popular searches is often filled with Vetta images).

Thanks for that info, Gostwyck. It is very helpful.

Informative post, thanks.

Supposedly the dominant factor nowadays is the keywords actually used when an image is purchased, the sort-order effectively being controlled primarily by the buyers __ which is how it should be.

Can you elaborate on this please?

If it was 4x I would be there like a shot but at 3x I will have to give it a lot of thought.
 I also have a lot of loyalty to Dreamstime so I will wait and see how Fotolia pan out as they are stll consistently my best earner and I really hope that they come up with a better offer for us.

My best guess, when eventually the Plus collection is introduced and perhaps with a few Vetta sales, is that a Diamond contributor will end up with roughly 4x non-exclusive earnings. All we know about Plus so far is that it will be introduced 'later', will be self-edited by the contributor, be up to 20% of a portfolio and be priced 'somewhere between Exclusive and Vetta'. Assuming you can select plenty of your best-selling images it should be quite a boost.

I too have loyalty to DT and SS as well but I am losing some confidence in their ability to grow our earnings.

Fotolia are by far my fastest growing agency for earnings but those earnings would been growing a lot faster if they hadn't pulled my next Ranking level 3 years out of reach when I was weeks away from it, then reduced my commission % and then, just to add insult to injury, increased prices to customers by up to 33% and passed none of it on to me. Not only that but they do it all usually without the courtesy of an announcement and follow it up with rude outbursts if anyone dares to query them. For the sake of my health and sanity I just don't think it is worth the cost of doing business with them. This isn't the end of the shenanigans at Fotolia either, this is just the start __ but more on that later.

Stop counting the numbers... Istock XL= 7.50$ XXL= 9.25$ XXXL= 11.20$   And that's only for a bronze canister

What you get elsewhere... 0.35$

The chances that Istock exclusivity give you what all other agencies give you are great. I know it does with me 

Informative post, thanks.

Quote from: gostwyck on February 04, 2010, 08:33

Supposedly the dominant factor nowadays is the keywords actually used when an image is purchased, the sort-order effectively being controlled primarily by the buyers __ which is how it should be.

Can you elaborate on this please?

Remember that the best match is made up of a number of factors and is subject to change. However, the implementation of BM2 had a factor built in which would auto-rerank keywords according to buyer popularity. So, say you had a bowl of apples. You keyword, bowl, apple, fruit. Someone buys it on a search for apple. Apple sort of 'gets a point' for buyer popularity. If the next time someone buys it on a search for bowl, apple, both of these words 'get a point'. If someone buys it on 'bowl fruit', these get a point. So now your first keyword is bowl, as that's been searched for twice.
Note that it's not as crude or as simple as that. Some think that there would be a negative rating for keywords not searched on, but they've never replied to my questions as to why they think that, and I don't think that's true, but WDIK?
It has the  good side effect of pushing spam further down. For instance, if you had spammed 'pear' - as I used to see a lot when I started on iStock - the word 'pear' should quickly get moved to the bottom and out of harm's way on buyer searches.
It's possible also that it would have an unfortunate bad side effect of buyer behaviour perhaps pushing a relevant search term down, for example if your first set of buyers bought on 'bowl' or 'fruit' or 'bowl fruit', your keyword 'apple', which is very relevant, would be pushed down and maybe wouldn't appear on the first page on a search for apples after a while.

This is all calculated on the NOW.  I'm wondering what will happen at iStock/Getty once they have the leverage to make changes without a concern for pissing off a bunch of exclusives.
Once they have the majority of BigNames in their exclusive ranks ... what happens when they change the requirements for the next level, or cut the commission, or change the meaning of "credits.?"

I think the only way to keep the agencies honest is diversity.  Why do you think DT is pushing so hard for exclusivity?  Or, why is iStock making it so much more lucrative?

All rules and calculations are subject to change.

Quote from: Vonkara on February 04, 2010, 11:46

Stop counting the numbers... Istock XL= 7.50$ XXL= 9.25$ XXXL= 11.20$   And that's only for a bronze canister

What you get elsewhere... 0.35$

The chances that Istock exclusivity give you what all other agencies give you are great. I know it does with me 

I sell very few at XL or above, but L at $6+ (Silver) is very nice.

I sell a lot of XL and even some XXL and once a while XXXL. That only started to happen since my portfolio is not available through subscription downloads. It may be only a coincidence, I don't know, but it feel GREAT to not see any 30-33-35 cents anywhere. Even for a XS I get 75 cents 

What you get elsewhere... 0.35$

I get quite some 0.19$ at iStock, and the least I have at DT is 0.35$.  But OK, as an exclusive that would be 0.40$. I almost never get L or above at IS. Thanks GW by the way for the analysis.

There is a point I never saw mentioned here, and that goes for all exclusivity. I couldn't live with the idea that part of my images, after all the work, would be buried forever. You can't even offer your rejects for free, and that excludes Flickr. Although lately I have 100% acceptance on my overwhite model shots on IS, there are some more deviant images that get rejected, not for technical reasons, but for concept.

An example that was rejected for concept on IS just today is here. Now this kind of image might sink into oblivion, or sell well, you'll never know in advance. But at least give it a chance. The SS buyers kindof liked it, the week that it has been online.

More important, some of my travel/landscape shots are part of myself and I couldn't bear that they would be darkened forever. This is not purely emotional, since some cities/places are amongst my best sellers both on DT and on SS. But I don't think those were accepted on IS for "distortion" (it was an OLY 300 cam). Of course, I could sell them as RM Editorial not cloning some distant faces out, but still.

I don't care if my studio shots are rejected. I can easily reshoot the concept with another model. I'm not emotionally connected with those shots. They feel more like "work".

There is a point I never saw mentioned here, and that goes for all exclusivity. I couldn't live with the idea that part of my images, after all the work, would be buried forever. You can't even offer your rejects for free, and that excludes Flickr. Although lately I have 100% acceptance on my overwhite model shots on IS, there are some more deviant images that get rejected, not for technical reasons, but for concept.

I don't care if my studio shots are rejected. I can easily reshoot the concept with another model. I'm not emotionally connected with those shots. They feel more like "work".

I also does a lot of concept myself. It still hurt me that Istock don't approve them. My vintage car all got rejected many times for bad isolation. Still they were approved at all other agencies I was submitting to. I know what the problem is. I didn't took those pics in studio but in the street. It was the longest photoshop job I ever done to isolate those vintage cars. Something like 2 hours each cars, plus some hard cloning job.

It's just harder and longer to do than what I can achieve. Lately I thought about paying a designer who is used to work with Istock images, to do the isolation job at least. But designers are busy people lol. Those pictures have been removed from SS 2 months ago when they removed most of the cars images. That was also a reason to go with IS, because they were in my best sellers on SS.

I didn't given up on those images yet, but yes I wish that Istock accept the collage/concept images. I have done a couple that goes through, but they never sold more than 10 times. Istock buyers really like untouched images I think.

thanks for this. very seriously crucnhing numbers and considering options. unfortunately just been told it is too late to ask to be 'grandfathered' for next cannister to be held, so diamond just became a long way off