Quote from: loop on June 06, 2011, 13:07

Quote from: lagereek on June 06, 2011, 12:56

With IS, everything is just leading up to one thing only. When our RM shots according to the new contract by Getty finally start arriving at TS, there will later be an incorporation of IS, into TS.
Its got to be this way. Pretty pointless and down out stupid to run two gigantic micro-outfits with pretty much the same exclusives, alongside each other, spending a fortune on advertising for TS and not a penny on IS.

The competition will be murderous, especially with all the RM stuff turned into micro and many IS exclusives will be totally outmanouvered. Not a nice situation at all.

It doesn't make sense. Having two brands in a saturated market is far better than having one. Specially if one of them has been the reference brand for years, and has been able to raise prices and go on selling. TS is there to compete with Shutterstock and other subs sites: the concept is totally different; simplicity (like Shutterstock), low maintenance cost and low prices that produce low benefits with each sale. Beggining with simplicity, all the rest is different at Istock.

No, IS, will cease to exist, its been a thorn in the side of Getty, since the very start. Competition is healthy, yes, but in this scenario, How does Getty eventually sell a business with two compeeting micros, same shots, same people, same exclusives??

The RM side needs looking after, its far, far more valuable then micros for pennies. As far as they are concerned.

The above scenario is what Getty have done ever since 93. Nothing new.

most unfortuantely.

Content between TS and IS barely overlaps at about 10%. And Getty owns another microsite,, photos.com. And finally, good or bad, RM is every day more marginal, dying an slow death.

BTW: Am I the only one having a crappy month so far ?

You're not alone I'm having pathetic sales, especially on IS

Wow interesting.  I just had my post deleted what I said was "Remember they can always go up." in response to Juanmonio saying that the targets aren't as bad as he was expecting.  Lobo had said just that so I'm not sure why the post was deleted?

Here is what lobo said: "The likeliness that RC targets will be raised is infinitesimal."
 
To me that sounds like they can go up.  Guess I'll have to stick to posting here before I get banned again for comments like this.

Remember what Kelly said:
"Expansion has been tough for the company, though, because of a contributor payment system that the company judged financially unsustainable. A switch last year to a performance-based compensation scheme was painful, but the company thinks it's through the difficulties now.
"It didn't really affect most people," Thompson said. "Everyone sort of settled down."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20059972-264.html#ixzz1LUkpWgur
I guess Lobo's got to make sure 'everyone sort of settles down' again.

hahaha excellent cartoon.

Wow interesting.  I just had my post deleted what I said was "Remember they can always go up." in response to Juanmonio saying that the targets aren't as bad as he was expecting.  Lobo had said just that so I'm not sure why the post was deleted?

Here is what lobo said: "The likeliness that RC targets will be raised is infinitesimal."
 
To me that sounds like they can go up.  Guess I'll have to stick to posting here before I get banned again for comments like this.

Hmmmm. Wonder if Lobo knows that the chance that sales on the site will improve are infinitessimal. 

oh and yesterday i posted a mex in the alamy forum, checked 1 hour later and it's disappeared ? what is wrong with these guys ?

sorry but I cannot stop SMILING, not laughing! you are truly the black sheep

Lobo ?? his actions and reactions, is that of someone who wants to keep his job, if he allowed all negative postings on the IS forum, boy! there would be no end to it.

yes I agree with Luis,  the best thing is to forget this IS business, its been dominating every micro forum to the point where it becomes ridiclulous and frankly its not worth it, its all negatives anyway. When you go into the IS forum and you see how they manipulate these poor neewbies, etc, its just sad.

I know this much and from experience. Just wait and see when the entire RM brigade comes into micro!!!  believe me, there will be many a big-mouthed IS-exclusive who wont be so cocky and happy go lucky.
Then they will come over here, seeking refuge and understanding.

the RM brigade is already switching to micro, or doing it 50/50 like me, but not for the reasons you may think.
the reality of RM is that prices are falling and if 2 yrs ago it was ok to get 100 or 200$ for an editorial photo
nowadays it's not unusual to get 50$ and as low as 5$, and yes this even with Getty RM, Alamy, and Corbis.

yes, 5$ for a web-sized RM image, we've come to this.

My point is, there are plenty of freaking BIG names within Image-Bank and Stones, names that in fact can out-shoot the lot at IS and then the competition will be neck-breaking.

Yes, some RM shooters are already there but the whole heap of the ones Im reffering to, have not yet made their images available for micro, not yet.

But why in the world would they want to jump on a sinking ship, that according to most people here (reporting dropping sales lately), MS is? So does this mean RM is in even more trouble, so much, that high end photogs are willing to sell photos for 1% of their current price?

Getty RM is still somewhat ok but what about the rest ?

read this from the Alamy forum for instance ...
http://www.alamy.com/forums/default.aspx?g=posts&t=10592

there's one guy in that discussion, i won't mention his name, he's got 10.000+ images and earned less than 1000$
last month and it's gross earning, so the net might be around 5-600$.

ok that's an extreme but the average 1 sale every 1000 images is going down to 1 sale every 1500 or 2000 ...
one of their biggest stockers with 70.000+ photos on sale makes around 6-7000$ per month gross.

in comparison a friend of mine has a portfolio of 5000 images on IS, he's exclusive and makes 2-3000 euro/month
NET, that's almost 4000$.

now make your math, ok alamy is not representative but i can tell it's much better than AGE, LPI, and other specialist agencies.

what if getty sink suddenly in a couple years ?
if it was for me microstock should die tomorrow but now it's too late, as much as i hate the idea of selling for volume and as alow as 1$ per photo thsi is where the industry is heading fast, RM or RF no matter.

but how much are those sales ? last one i had was for a distributor in russia, a whopping RM licence of 35$ that means a net profit of barely 10 euro for me.

of course there's the odd 500$ sale but it's no more the norm at alamy at least.

I can access it now:

http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=1090