It's back down again. Will it be gone again quicker than a thread to Lobo's padlock?

It will all be web 3.0 soon, 2.0 is so yesterday   Hopefully there will be a nice web 3.0 site for us to sell our images without having to pay an enormous fee to greedy sites.  I wonder how much more productive we could all be if we weren't spending so much time debating the latest ways sites are grabbing more money from us?

Everyone, exclusive or independants, have more chance of selling a fridge to an eskimoe, then reaching their targets. Its a confidance-trick just to make you more productive.

Its a confidance-trick just to make you more productive.

Then it has completely backfired!   

software is following suit very quickly, thousands and thousands of "apps" sold in the Apple and Android stores for 1$ or even less ... and last week microsoft shown a preview of Windows 8 with the hint they're also bundling a sort of microsoft store to get cheap apps for tablet, mobiles, and windows itself !

now, all these business models are well tested at this point since more than 10 yrs.
where are we heading ? judging from the situation i don't see any improving in the pricing, quite the opposite
if we look at the Apps market the prices are going down due to cut-throat competition !!

It really ticks me off when contributors defend Getty's greed, incompetence, and mismanagement as some sort of business strategy.  Even more so when they blame the contributors.  Like this is all our fault.  As in this post:  
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=330116&messageid=6399846

Because I am concerned it will be deleted, I am cross posting my response here:

Sorry, James.  I think the "blame the victim" mentality is getting pretty old.  It is not the contributors' fault that the company has (IMHO) overreached.  The whole notion that business entities are not obligated to behave ethically is a relatively new conceit.

FWIW, it seems apparent to many of us that this recent squeezing of contributors and buyers through various means, in order to gin up short term profits, is in fact poor business.  It has demotivated a large number of top and mid level producers, and made it less worthwhile to invest in high production value shoots, thereby affecting the future quality of the collection.

Even more concerning, it has chased away a vast number of buyers.  There are a number of measures that will support the idea that buyers are leaving in droves.  There have been a growing and alarming number of buyers publicly expressing their displeasure and announcing plans to leave Istock.  While those are just anecdotal accounts, they are supported by a number of other measurements.  Among them are the universallly declining downloads reported in the monthly stats threads; the drop in traffic reported on sites (Alexa, etc.) that monitor such things; and the increase in sales at partner sites and the other micros.

I believe what is happening at Istock is not good business.  And it is not contributors' fault.  Most of us are helpless to do anything about it, although quite a few have tried.

Glad Lobo didn't delete your post. He deleted a previous one from another well-respected and very helpful in the forums contributor. I SMd her to check: she's hacked off with the forums (by which I inferred she meant Lobo) and pretty much finished with iStock. :-(

I am relieved too.  I know it isn't the popular opinion around here lately, but putting aside his acerbic style, I've always found Chris to be fair with me.

Oh, grief. I've just done my weekly stats. Worst week for downloads since week ending 2nd January and only one more dl than that week. Less than 50% of dls since the corresponding week last year, and I've increased my port by 20% since January alone. Probably only the big business buyers are left, wanting the commercial stuff.

excellent link, Lisa, thanks.

i'm surprised it hasn't been locked or deleted already.

It really ticks me off when contributors defend Getty's greed, incompetence, and mismanagement as some sort of business strategy.  Even more so when they blame the contributors.  Like this is all our fault...

...I believe what is happening at Istock is not good business.  And it is not contributors' fault.  Most of us are helpless to do anything about it, although quite a few have tried.

While I whole-heartedly agree that we're helpless to do anything to improve the situation, I'd have to disagree with the idea that some contributors aren't at fault. I'd fault the woo-yayers with contributing to the perception that enough people will go along with any greedy action by istock or any other microstock company. They're the minority of the contributor base these days, but there are still more than enough folks around who will praise these companies for anything and everything they do, even when those things are done strictly in the company's best interest and counter to contributor welfare. It's given these companies the wrong idea, that we're happy to just make a few pennies for each sale and we'll happily go along with any pricing scheme or poor royalty rate.

Look at the royalty cut thread (if it's even still available) in the istock forum. On the first page of that thread there were actually posts thanking istock and praising the rate change! Of course the tone quickly changed when they realized they were praising a pay cut. But it's the case with every change istock has ever made. There are always enough people who not only happily go along with the changes, but they actually thank the company for making those changes.

In addition to those people, there are the woo-yayers who preemptively woo-yay in the forums for no reason. And this phenomenon is not unique to istock. There's the 10,000 image idiot over at SS who starts threads just to say how wonderful SS is and how he's making so much money. And then we wonder why SS stopped giving contributors pay raises. Why should they? Looking at their forum you'd think that we're all just oh-so-happy with our current pay that we'd never want for anything more.

There are a lot of contributors around the forums who want to be paid like professionals but act like children when it comes to how they openly discuss their microstock business. They proudly confess their love for one microstock company or another, and then wonder why those companies suddenly take advantage of that loyalty and use it to further their own interests and profits. While I'd agree with Lisa that, on the whole, this mess is not the fault of contributors, I'd have to conditionally say that along with my opinion that there are some contributors who used their voices in the forums to give microstock companies the wrong idea about how we're doing collectively and how satisfied we are with current or previous levels of pay. While maybe not directly responsible, the woo-yayers do have a hand in giving too much power to these companies and leading them to some false impressions about how loyal we'd all be to any particular company.

While I whole-heartedly agree that we're helpless to do anything to improve the situation, I'd have to disagree with the idea that some contributors aren't at fault. I'd fault the woo-yayers with contributing to the perception that enough people will go along with any greedy action by istock or any other microstock company. They're the minority of the contributor base these days, but there are still more than enough folks around who will praise these companies for anything and everything they do...
(Snip)

Fair enough.  You're right - there are some idiots who will gladly swallow anything Istock or the other micros spew out, and that probably has emboldened them.

Guess I just don't like to see all contributors in general lumped in together that way.  And I don't think that absolves Getty of any obligation to run their business responsibly or treat their contributors fairly.  

Good post Lisa!  and they all know its true!  that James Bennet guy has always been a bit edgy, I dont know what he is trying to achieve exept trying to suck up to somebody.

From what I read here, there are many independents who are trying to sell stock from their own site but discovering that dealing with customers, running after payments etc...is very time consuming and driving traffic to your site quite expensive. I mean, why doesn�t yuri arcurs create his own site? He has so much content it should be very easy for him to do so (and he has the staff to handle the details).

That is the only thing that will shift the balance towards the artists -  if it becomes obvious that selling by yourself is so successful that you don�t have to work with an agency. Then agencies will have to offer better rates to attract the talent.

By the way, I am still in favor of the concept of the RC targets, it is just the height of levels and the dominance of V/A that bug me. The old system made it nearly impossible to reach diamond for a newbie and why should a file that brings in 100 dollars have the same value as a sale for 1 dollar?

If it was possible to carry over excess credits into the next year, there was a filter for V/A and the targets were announced on time in January with  levels that were clearly reasonably reachable for a pro stock artist I don�t think the spirit in the community would be so negative.

And of course if Kelly was able to inspire the community when he communicates online instead of demoralizing them...well at least they are aware of that and "better communication" has become a focus of attention.

With V/A I feel that I used to work as a supplier for a coffe shop and was one of many, many producers of special types of coffee. Then the owners realized some of us offer high quality wine and added a special section in the store for that. We all applauded, because this will draw in new customers, who will hopefully also buy coffee for their daily needs and we agree that high production and rare wine, deserves a higher price than our coffee. But suddenly we enter the store and we see that most of the shelves have been stacked with expensive wine and the coffee has been pushed to the back of the store.

And although there may be customers who love wine so much that they keep coming back to it, most of us feel we are losing our target market, the daily coffee buyers who spent a quick dollar and then went back to work.

Hopefully istock soon offers a filter option for price or collections. Or that the shop owner decides to just stack the top row with wine and fills up the rest with coffee again because he realizes that having reliable volume sales is better than highly shifting daily results from the small community of wine lovers.

I also don�t see how istock can expand into upcoming new markets like eastern Europe, India, China, Russia if buyers do a search and find most images they see start at 30 dollars. They have Gettyimages for that.

just my take on the situation