Gostwyck, what you are missing is that not all files are equal.
Yes, some files will sell many times over and make more money as microstock/subs. Others will sell much less often but can command a higher price. The trick is to work out which is which.
I know IS didn't always get it right with Vetta/Agency, but they had the right idea. It was very worthwhile to have those V/A files, especially in the early days when they seemed to have the pricing right.
As I seem to keep on saying, it's a pity they wrecked it.

We are not selling art (when it's sold, it's sold), we're are selling the right to use a copy for a specified purpose and can do it over and over again - like cd's / music downloads, cinema tickets, books, videos etc and, like these other commodities, there may be inate difference in quality (whatever that means subjectively) but that is NOT reflected in the unit price.

I have conditioned myself not to be surprise what iStockphoto does but i'm shocked to learned Sean is being terminated. It's really sad to see this crap happen to you. 

[snip]
I'm hoping that someone at Getty will have enough sense to get around the table with Sean over the remaining 25 days, discuss it properly, and resolve the issue to the benefit of both parties. What has happened is madness.

I'd be very surprised if this actually happened. I'm becoming more and more convinced this is just another step in the assimilation of iStock into Getty. Removing Opt-Out choices, forced participation in partner programs, firing employees at iStock and integrating resources, Google deals made by Getty without iStock management buy-in (apparently), and now taking out the strong voices of iStock apologists. Just another step.

I have continued to hope that iStock crowd sourcing of old would be able to make a comeback. I'd hoped the recent visit from Rebecca was really the start of better communication and a new turn of the ship. True, a few good discussions have taken hold at low levels in the forums but I figure Rebecca no longer has any credibility to face the contributors after the Google deal, even if she wanted, due to decisions made above her.  She and iStock are just another cog in the gears of the Getty operation. I've held to my hope for as long as I can (longer than many, as I certainly observe) and my hope continues the downward slope.

Just my honest opinion.

Quote from: MichaelJayFoto on February 11, 2013, 16:32

Quote from: EmberMike on February 11, 2013, 15:12

Was Sean's name on the previously public facebook list of Stocksy members?

There is no Stocksy member list. There is a Facebook group of people interested in Stocksy. There were more than 100 people on that list but almost none of them have actually been involved in Stocksy in any ways. It can't be a reason for someone to be in a Facebook list to terminate his account.

Hey Michael. Read his blog post again, it sounds like he was helping them beta test their system.

Do you really believe that there are no istock's admins involved in stocksy ?
how can istock know something without any spies there
be smart...if stocksy was been the really cause of sean's termination many people will be cutted in a near future.

Quote from: Travelling-light on February 12, 2013, 10:56

Gostwyck, what you are missing is that not all files are equal.
Yes, some files will sell many times over and make more money as microstock/subs. Others will sell much less often but can command a higher price. The trick is to work out which is which.
I know IS didn't always get it right with Vetta/Agency, but they had the right idea. It was very worthwhile to have those V/A files, especially in the early days when they seemed to have the pricing right.
As I seem to keep on saying, it's a pity they wrecked it.

No, I'm not missing that. I just don't think that it really applies to Sean's port. In your case yes, in that you have wonderful landscapes that can take a ridiculous amount of patience and time to capture (not to mention the travel costs) and cannot be easily copied. Those sort of images, especially if they are likely to be low in demand, do deserve a premium. When you were exclusive it was perfectly obvious why certain of your images had been selected for Vetta.

Sean doesn't do that sort of stuff at all. When I look at his port, without the Vetta or Agency indicators, I wouldn't be able to guess which images were priced 5-6x more than others or why. That's one of the cock-ups that IS made. If you're going to charge 5-6x more for one product over another then it should be obvious why that differential exists.

Not that this has anything to do with 'microstock' anyway. We've always had the option of selling images at other higher-priced outlets, including RM even if you were exclusive. It's never been mandatory to determine all images 'equal' and send your entire port to microstock. Sean has been selling RM at Alamy for years for example.

And yet I feel certain that Sean has made a lot more money from his V/A files, than we have from our landscapes.
And yes, you can put your files on other agencies, and we do, but the micros have the traffic.
IS almost had it right, but they wrecked it.

Quote from: Travelling-light on February 12, 2013, 10:56

Gostwyck, what you are missing is that not all files are equal.
Yes, some files will sell many times over and make more money as microstock/subs. Others will sell much less often but can command a higher price. The trick is to work out which is which.
I know IS didn't always get it right with Vetta/Agency, but they had the right idea. It was very worthwhile to have those V/A files, especially in the early days when they seemed to have the pricing right.
As I seem to keep on saying, it's a pity they wrecked it.

We are not selling art (when it's sold, it's sold), we're are selling the right to use a copy for a specified purpose and can do it over and over again - like cd's / music downloads, cinema tickets, books, videos etc and, like these other commodities, there may be inate difference in quality (whatever that means subjectively) but that is NOT reflected in the unit price.

You've completely missed my point.

You've completely missed my point.

Is your point not that some files should attract a higher price because they are somehow better or because they would generally not be mainstream MS subjects and, thus, sell less often?

   Just came across this thread after being busy lately. It's shocking ,I guess, to the microstock community, but it's really just business as usual. The photographer in question has done very well for himself at Istock, and he should have been more in sensitive to the reaction his actions would elicit from Istock.
   A big mistake that the entire microstock community makes is the assumption that the world began with Bruce, and if things could just go back there everything would be okay. But the fact is that the crowdsourcing genie is out of the bottle, and now you can only deal with the world as it is, not as you wish it would be, or what your idea of a perfect world entails.
   A second mistake that any photographer can make, and i don't exclude myself from this, is the idea that you are so unique that no one can do what you do. That is simply not true, and this photographer's files will be, and are already, replicated many times over. Nothing is unique in stock, or any other form of communication, and no one is irreplaceable.
    So what's my point? SImply that you should never have only one client. And yes, Istock is a client. If you don't like that client, then don't work with them. But don't kid yourselves that you have any ownership in that company, or any control over what they do. The people who paid the money for Istock own it. They can do what they want with it. End of story. So, tying yourself to one client is just a bad business decision. I could give you endless examples over my time as a photographer of why this always ends badly, but the biggest reason it happens is that the world changes, and if you don't change with it, then you will end up with a bad situation.
    He should have thought it through a bit more, but i suspect the deference he was accorded in the forums and here by other photographers was intoxicating, and hard to walk away from. But if you only have one client, and that client tells you in no uncertain terms to shut up, then you shut up.
And look for other clients.

Thats what I said all the time:
Istock is the pyramid game and getty is the nigerian scam.
The istock rc sceme suggests they had come to the end of the pyramid, the google deal is a simple scam and theft.

More subtle analogies could be found in the animal kingdom among Trematoda and Hirudinea.

Quote from: heywoody on February 12, 2013, 13:52

Quote from: Travelling-light on February 12, 2013, 12:41

You've completely missed my point.

Is your point not that some files should attract a higher price because they are somehow better or because they would generally not be mainstream MS subjects and, thus, sell less often?

Maybe both? or either? As I said, the trick is to work out which is which.
I know when Vetta was first introduced I didn't choose any myself because I didn't think I had any good enough. IS made the choices to get the system started, and it seemed to work. I was surprised how much money they made,  but that reduced significantly when they raised prices and reduced commissions.
Apparently less people were willing to pay the higher prices for my files, so that told me what was the best price for those files, unfortunately we weren't given a choice in how much to charge.
I've got a few ex Vettas on SS now and I can tell you for sure they don't make as much money.
I've also got files on SS which were zero sellers on IS and yet have sold quite well on SS.
It's just working out which is which

Have you posted your conclusions or thoughts about dropping exclusivity anywhere?

It appears Sean wrote a script to help a lot of his competition remove themselves from his game.

Sadly for him that act of trying to be clever backfired and blew up in his face and then ended up earning him a microstock Darwin Award instead.

I guess he is a bit shocked by it all because he was just trying to help, right?

There is something to be said for keeping your head down, not stoking the fire, nor pissing off your boss if you still want to keep your job.

That is an interesting pont of view. To really give your opinion weight it would be nice if we could see who you were, or not were.

There is something to be said for keeping your head down, not stoking the fire, nor pissing off your boss if you still want to keep your job.

In this case it's not an employee-employer relationship, but the agency is representing the artist's work, is not employing him.