Quote from: Fran on July 10, 2013, 22:29

0.40$ for a L is getting pretty ridiculous.

The buyer therefore paid somewhere between $0.50 and $0.67 per credit depending on your royalty rate. That seems very low. Was it a subscription sale?

Quote from: MichaelJayFoto on July 11, 2013, 14:13

Quote from: tickstock on July 11, 2013, 13:28

The average for the lowest level contributor on Istock would be a bit over 80 cents for a Large image and around $1.50 for XXXL.  The averages seem very similar now that Istock has lowered the price of independents files, coincidence? 

Wrong. The highest you can get at the lowest royalty rate is 4 credits * $1.63 * 15% = $0.96. The list prices for Corporate Account are giving up to 40% discount for large packages. There are regular discounts of up to 20% etc. So your "bit over 80 cents" are very much on the optimistic end.

As I said, iStock does have a subscription program paying (in my case) $0.28 per download, for large or small ones. It's just elegantly hidden behind the name "Partner program" but it's not different. About two thirds of my downloads within "the total iStock deal" are coming from this PP, so the average across all iStock downloads is lowered far beyond your calculation.

And yes, there is an inherent difference between subscription sales and single image/image pack sales: If you have to pay separately for each single image, you are very likely to only download images that you are going to use; subscription buyers are far more indiscriminate to download more images than they are actually need because they paid for anyways. Be it for comping, mood boards, or potential future uses.

Wronger.  The last time averages were done for credit cost it was around $1.40/credit.   $1.4x.15x4=$.84, they go up to $4.75/credit for Large images if you look at cash prices.  Yes they have a sub program and to my point, a L image at Istock for $.40 is better than the Istock partner program and subs at shutterstock.  My response to Fran had nothing to do with averages because his post had nothing to do with averages, it's off topic.   The license is the relevant thing not whether or not some hypothetical buyer will actually use them, they still have the license which is what they paid for either way.

Let me just add, there is indeed a positive aspect I currently observe with the new prices: I rarely had downloads beyond the Large size in the past. Usually about 2-3% of my sales were XL or larger.

In July my XL+ sales are at 12% of my downloads. So even though it's a short period of time, my current assumption is that buyers are buying "rather too large than too small" at those low prices nowadays. So I could (like my assumption with lots of subs sales never going to use) also conclude that many of these downloads are "overpaid" in comparison to their actual use.

ETA: I just pulled the other end of the stats - usually I had 25-30% of my downloads in XS size, in July the number of XS downloads was just 10%. So indeed it seems more clients are going for higher resolutions than they did in the past. I like that trend.

No independent contributor now has any incentive to upload new content to IS unless royalties are increased substantially ... but IS won't be able to do that without also increasing exclusive rates ... which  Getty would never allow.

I'm really not sure how IS can drag themselves out of they hole they have dug. I can see them becoming a boutique 'exclusive only' agency at sometime in the future but more by the accident of independent contributors leaving (or starving them of new content) than by design.

I'm still getting more for my images at iStock than I do at SS. My last two sales at SS were 25 cents...at least the PP at iStock is 28 cent ;P. And my last image sale after the price change at IS was around 75 cents...it's all pathetic if you ask me

This link just got posted in the iStock forum:
http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=1560?esource=50407_iStock_ABC_Wave_2_RNB_EN_em&sp_rid=&sp_mid=5577078

sorry dingles but you still haven't even made 500$ at SS and you talking about IS performance? believe it is quite soon to make predictions no?