I posted this in another thread but this is what I personally I think is going on is they are getting ready to set up iStock as a mid stock company. iStock is a brand name and a lot of buyers now it. With them implementing the increase in cost for the Vetta and bringing in the Agency stuff for higher prices and inviting exclusives to particpate it looks to me like this is where they are going. I then believe they will basically say....if you're not exclusive then you are being moved to ThinkStock which is our subscription site. There is a reason they started up Thinkstock and this may very well be why.

I posted this in another thread but this is what I personally I think is going on is they are getting ready to set up iStock as a mid stock company.

why would you want microstockers to not accept these terms? i'm sure many will be joining you in rm competition very soon if you instigate them any further.

I think Vetta will become a lot more important.  The ones in the Vetta club will do well, the ones who aren't will have to struggle on. 

Quote from: lisafx on September 11, 2010, 18:41

Quote from: hiddenstock on September 11, 2010, 18:22

I think Vetta will become a lot more important.  The ones in the Vetta club will do well, the ones who aren't will have to struggle on. 

Is that the same "Vetta Club" that is taking something like a 10% cut in royalties? 

Prices are going up though, and many will have access to The Agency. Financially they'll be better off, and will accept that. They don't really have much choice.

I think Istock will decline from here on. Come january 1., many smaller and midsized independents will leave together with smaller exclusives,  because the paydrops and the trouble uploading to IS, it's no longer worth while.

As they go, they remove linkes to IS, refer clients to oter sites, and stop buying at IS. Many of the smaller contrinuters to IS, are often also big buyers - IS forget to include this in their calculations.

As the word spreds further, traffic will decline further. Those who leave take with them some (not all) unique content, so buyers will have trouble finding what they want at IS.

And so on, and so on, and so on. IS has startet a negative ongoing downwards spiral.
Each time they lose a selling picture, they have to make extra sales to make up for that.
Each time a parttimer leave and take whith him his spending at IS, the will have to find new buyers to compenate for that.
With diminishing traffic, it will be very hard to attract new buyers, and with lower pay it will become morediifcult fo find new talent.

I simply cant see how they with rising prices, market saturation, and less unique material, can make up for the losses.

The most frustrating thing is that Getty don't even seem to be able to see how terribly bad they are at running things.
They failed to run the rest of their collections with any sort of profit even with massive commission percentages, then they buy a profitable company and think they can make it more profitable by running it the same way as their other, poorly performing, collections what

I think istock will do remarkably well out of its new direction. The NUMBER of contributors and buyers leaving is not a very useful measure. All members are equal but some are more equal than others. As long as their most prolific contributors and biggest buyers are happy, especially if they get more prolific contributors (Getty pros) and bigger buyers (agencies who want only macro quality) they won't care. And they'll still be offering micro, whether it be branded as istock or Thinkstock doesn't really matter much. Many independents will stay - how much is a sub sale on SS worth?

The only thing I would take issue with is what I have read over and over in the IS forums, that this action is the "beginning of the end".  No, that was when Getty bought Istock, or perhaps when H&F bought Getty, or when they began to relentlessly jack up prices in a worldwide economic depression, and almost certainly when Getty created Thinkstock and started herding IS buyers there.  This is not the beginning of the end at all.  This is just another BIG step down an already established path of self-destruction.

I wonder about this because the majority of contributors are small contributors. They have a lot less to lose by pulling out, and most of them were insulted the most with a 25% cut in their earnings. A mass exodus of small contributors could really deal a major blow.

I disagree. I of course am thinking of my bottom line, but for me, sometimes it is not always about money, especially when we will be talking about so little, once the changes at IS take place. This has a lot more, for me, to do with not wanting to do business with deceitful, greedy people and when the time is right for me and I choose, I will not want to contribute one single penny to their bottom line. Everyone does what they need to, but I value my self-worth. I am not an abused wife, willing to stay around, take another hit, and say "they didn't really mean it."

They're going the way of Microsoft - they'll still be big, but all the new action and 'buzz' will increasingly be elsewhere from now on.  New agencies, with new approaches, will steadily eat into their business.  The best people will leave.   And what will be left will be corporate marketing flacks and cookbook managers, working an increasingly tired formula until someone at the top decides it's time to pack it up.

It's a classic example of how big corporations try to 'grow' by acquisitions: they find something that's working really well, they buy it, then they set about pumping it up, streaming out hype, and jerking things around until it doesn't work anymore.

For me, a lot more than ThinkStock. If my port moves to TS, I will not be staying.

I pulled 100 pictures. My yearly income on those was about 200$ -> IS made 800 $. (fairly medicore folio)

But if 100 photographers pull the same amount is 80.000 dollars - a good salery for a year.

To keep equal - bring in 80.000 - to grow bring in more.  So many samller contributers rapedly sum up.
And remember  - these missing money will show directly on the bottom line, as all the expences was payed long ago.

So - if many pictures are pulles, they really have to bring in a lot more than the useual amount of new material, just to stay even, and yet more to grow.

I appreciate your motivation and your action but unfortunately there is an obvious flaw. By removing your images does not necessarily mean that Istock will lose the revenue __ the buyer will simply chose a different image to fulfill their needs. Istock still gets their money but the commission you would have earned goes to another contributor. It's the buyers themselves we need to move away from Istock.

Quote from: Nordlys on September 12, 2010, 13:13

I pulled 100 pictures. My yearly income on those was about 200$ -> IS made 800 $. (fairly medicore folio)

But if 100 photographers pull the same amount is 80.000 dollars - a good salery for a year.

To keep equal - bring in 80.000 - to grow bring in more.  So many samller contributers rapedly sum up.
And remember  - these missing money will show directly on the bottom line, as all the expences was payed long ago.

So - if many pictures are pulles, they really have to bring in a lot more than the useual amount of new material, just to stay even, and yet more to grow.

True - if my port was laptops isolated on wite etc. pics - which it was not - so it depends of the kind og content removed and if it easely substituted - right - but many smaller contributers supply more diversifed material, thatn just the mainstream, and than mean that IS will loose some of the more exiting stuff, thus not providing the same broard content...
But we have to see - theres also the question of the Getty collections.
I appreciate your motivation and your action but unfortunately there is an obvious flaw. By removing your images does not necessarily mean that Istock will lose the revenue __ the buyer will simply chose a different image to fulfill their needs. Istock still gets their money but the commission you would have earned goes to another contributor. It's the buyers themselves we need to move away from Istock.

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Vlad - I can see, that you are not able to follow my line of reasonening and/ or arguments

Someone else pointed out the flaw in your thinking. Pulling an image doesn't mean IS lose a sale, a buyer will just choose different sellers images on IS so they lose nothing.

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Vlad - I can see, that you are not able to follow my line of reasonening and/ or arguments

Someone else pointed out the flaw in your thinking. Pulling an image doesn't mean IS lose a sale, a buyer will just choose different sellers images on IS so they lose nothing.

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they can't hold a candle to Shutterstock's quality by anyone's measure.

You are kidding? Well vector-wise IS has always been the best , admittedly SS has improved but IS is better without doubt IMHO.

I think istock will do remarkably well out of its new direction. The NUMBER of contributors and buyers leaving is not a very useful measure. All members are equal but some are more equal than others. As long as their most prolific contributors and biggest buyers are happy, especially if they get more prolific contributors (Getty pros) and bigger buyers (agencies who want only macro quality) they won't care. And they'll still be offering micro, whether it be branded as istock or Thinkstock doesn't really matter much. Many independents will stay - how much is a sub sale on SS worth?

Shutterstock pays 25 cents per sub sale. According my math that's 15 more cents than IS will be paying me for a non-sub sale under the new program.