whether I'm "dirt" or double-black-diamond, I still get the same commission.  

Oh, but you forget the invaluable honor to be represented by the World's oldest and most prestigious Microstock Agency! You don't seem to realize what a competitive advantage that gives you, when it comes to free downloads on Flickr! 

Getting screwed with the cannisters, just like with fotolia. I see a lot of people getting frustrated on this one. I wonder how the prices are gonna affect the downloads. Maybe non exclusives will get more downloads now that exclusive prices will be higher (problably not, let's see if they'll tweak best match to show a bit more of exclusive files infront).

JJRD confirmed this one.

Of course the 'strongest talent' they'd really like to snare would be a certain Mr Arcurs and his mighty portfolio.

Except that he can't and they know he can't, he's in the same boat as me and many others who sell RF via Macro agencies and distribution partners, were tied in to contracts for 3 years or more, which is why I mentioned the possibility they may be thinking of image exclusivity, it makes sense for them money and marketing wise and at the end of the day that's the only thing they and all other agencies are interested in, as are we.

There is a huge talent base in macro RF that at the moment are not interested in microstock because of the low commission subscription services the majority of the main sites have, if iStock introduced an exclusive image scheme and collection I guarantee they'd attract some of these people because they are used to the "Getty" way of doing business and from a macro RF photographers point of view iStock is the only microstock agency worth dealing with.

Quote from: ShadySue on December 08, 2009, 17:38

Quote from: LostOne on December 08, 2009, 16:10

Getting screwed with the cannisters, just like with fotolia.

Oh, h*ll, it's a cartel. 

that is probably the most surprising change in the whole announcement.  They are essentially cutting exclusive commissions by somewhere between 12.5%-20% depending on your canister level (@5% increase for each canister level, if you are at 25% commission level (bronze) and now won't move up to 30% (silver) you receive a 5/25=20% cut in earnings)

Admittedly I have not read past the first page at iStock, but I'm confused by this statement. If current canisters are being grandfathered in, how does that translate into a lowering of exclusive commissions. And what do you mean "and now won't move up to 30% (silver)" ... why wouldn't someone move up? (though it will take longer) and how is it a pay cut if they never had it?


Back in my day, we had to have 500 downloads to be exclusive. I was exclusive when they dropped the requirement to 250 and I remember being ticked about that. I wonder what percentage of relative newbies that signed up at 250 are now going to be stuck at bronze for a very very long time. I also wonder how many of that 125,000 monthly new members are becoming contributors.

I'm curious to see how it plays out with the tiered pricing, especially since I've heard that it's pretty common to see images fairly similar to top selling exclusives popping up at other sites. As a buyer I'm happy to see the lowering of the large size price, because even though I do search a couple of other sites, I almost always end up purchasing from istock because that is where I most often find what I need. I recently was given 10 free credits at another site. After about 2 weeks of starting every image search there and not finding what I needed, I finally was able to use half of my credits last night.

Slightly off-topic but related: as Editorial doesn't sell well at micro (with some exceptions) and I stopped uploading at SS for their fancy rules that define Editorial more as "News" (leaving only DT - I stepped out of YAY), I decided to upload most Editorial to Macro RF.

Now would that rule me out as an iStock exclusive, even if iStock doesn't have Editorial yet? What do exclusives do with their Editorial shots? Just let them gather dust at their HD?

they sell them as editorial RM. 
Where are selling your editorial shots as RF.  I think Alamy only allows editorial as RM. 

I'm only doing commercial RF now on Alamy. I wasn't aware they only have commercial RF and not Editorial RF. It was just a plan for now.

Quote from: leaf on December 09, 2009, 09:12

they sell them as editorial RM. 
Where are selling your editorial shots as RF.  I think Alamy only allows editorial as RM. 

I'm only doing commercial RF now on Alamy. I wasn't aware they only have commercial RF and not Editorial RF. It was just a plan for now.

Or perhaps more specifically any image with people in it that isn't released HAS to be uploaded as RM on Alamy.  You could have pictures of say, a volcano erupting that would be editorial, but could still be uploaded as RF because it has no unreleased people in it.

Let's say we have an exclusive contributer with 2000 downloads right now - lets call him Thor.   Thor is currently a Bronze contributor earning 25% comissions.  Thor won't make it to silver before February when they change the system.  In March Thor reaches 2500 downloads.  With the new system however, he stays at Bronze canister level 25% comission instead of getting silver and 30% comission.  So from march 2010 onwards, iStock is getting 5% more of Thor's earnings than they would have without the change.  that 5% would have been a 20% increase in earnings for Thor (5/20 = 20%). 

make sense?  iStock are taking a higher percentage of the sale whenever someone SHOULD have reached the next canister but didn't because of the change.

Yeah, thats the way it is. You can also think about it this way: IS will grab 5% from all the downloads from your current canister level till you reach diamond with the new canister levels. So for a gold exclusive member who won't reach diamond by Feb 24th it means 5% of earnings from 25000 downloads! And for a newbie just starting its 5% out of his 50000 downloads (assuming he will someday reach that many downloads). The numbers are only worse when you consider the numbers like Leaf did.

Admittedly I have not read past the first page at iStock, but I'm confused by this statement. If current canisters are being grandfathered in, how does that translate into a lowering of exclusive commissions. And what do you mean "and now won't move up to 30% (silver)" ... why wouldn't someone move up? (though it will take longer) and how is it a pay cut if they never had it?

Back in my day[/i], we had to have 500 downloads to be exclusive. I was exclusive when they dropped the requirement to 250 and I remember being ticked about that. I wonder what percentage of relative newbies that signed up at 250 are now going to be stuck at bronze for a very very long time. I also wonder how many of that 125,000 monthly new members are becoming contributors.

You were ticked when others got a raise but taking away something that was promised (and written in your agreement) seems just fine? Don't you understand that you had the raise waiting there for you but it has been taken further? You think that changing agreement like that is fine? What if the next thing is to lower the caninsters by a level, would that also be fine?

Hopefully we will make it up in volume as the more cost-conscious buyers choose the cheaper non-exclusive files over exclusive ones.  

This may be the case. In August of 2007, iStock raised prices and again in January of 2008 (at least for vectors). Before these raises, I was averaging about twice as many downloads per month in 2007 versus 2008. Downloads dropped off, but I was also making more with the raise. I don't know if it is price conscious or if companies have a fixed budget for images or maybe all the price savvy buyers just left iStock. Whatever the case, downloads were definitely affected by price in the past. I make more with iStock almost every month, but I'm still way below my most downloads month ever of 2007.

Also, I'm never going to get those precious 5 more uploads for gold. Maybe, iStock should use all their new wealth in 2010 and hire some f'n reviewers.

With new cannister levels they dont need to employ additional reviewers, maybe even kick few of them and keep they money in own pocket 

If you get buried under lots of new exclusives your sales will drop. Being non-exclusive does not remove you from this problem.

This is exactly my concern.  There has always been a bias toward exclusive files in the best match, but up to now IS has had some incentive to keep non-exclusive content visible because they make more $ on it. 

Now, by more than doubling the price of exclusive content, they stand to make more profit on it.   There is now NO incentive for them to give any kind of decent search placement to non-exclusive content at all. 

If they plan to jerry rig the best match against non-exclusive content then we can all kiss the volume of our sales at Istock goodbye. 

Kelly Thompson is promising significant dollar increases to exclusives under the new deal.

There is one thing I want our exclusives to take away from this. We are confident that with the new Exclusive prices, you'll have the chance to see some significant increases in your payouts � more than enough to counterbalance any delay in your next 5% canister increase.

How many independents might now consider going exclusive on istock?