Berlin is one of the cheapest cities to live in in Germany. My home town Cologne, the cost for renting is already around 30% higher, so is the cost of going out etc...

All the major cities in West Germany are a lot more expensive than Berlin. Which is why so many stock artists and creatives that make their money on the internet are moving to Berlin. I would do that too, if I didn�t have family obligations here.

New schmoo - I preferred the vintage Istock of 2010/11 when my bestsellers were on page one of the best match and new work generated income. Bring it back please - but without the vintage site performance.

I don't know about Germany but living in England is damned expensive. My favourite Rich Tea biscuits have gone up 10% in Sainsburys.....10%!! Daylight robbery.

Dear IS,
I don't really care how many tweets you twitter, or new logos you roll out, or even how many matches you "freshen" up.  The fact remains that you have the stingiest royalty structure in the business and you will never get any more uploads from me until that changes.
Sincerely,
An X-Contributor

Spot on. Great post. The bigger problem though is the fact that in the past contributors were able to tolerate all the hindrances and road blocks iStock would throw up because people were still making good money and could partially turn another cheek to all the blasphemy. Back then the mantra of "Shoot, Upload, Repeat" would often help one overcome short term drops in income from continuing site crashes, huge charge-backs on fraud, price increases, royalty decreases, bad search results, a mish mash of collections, the failure to mirror images on Getty, etc.

Nowadays, shoot, upload, repeat only means dashed expectations and a waste of time and money to create quality imagery that never sells or even gets looked at before it just disappears into the iStock abyss. As you said, they can tweak the heck out of the site now and introduce all these great new features they are touting but they have already thrown out the baby with the bathwater. And with so many buyers having gone for good it doesn't matter what you do to try and win them back. As the old saying goes, "you can't polish a tu*d". 

^^^
you can't polish a tu*d

Are you sure?

http: // www. youtube.com/watch?v=yiJ9fy1qSFI

Breaking news - grilling burgers DOES pay better due to good old supply and demand.  The one (probably only) upside is that it's royalties not sales so work done in the past can continue to generate income.

I forgot to add that lowering already low prices is not the solution ... Saving designers "time" = more $$ for all

Quote from: B8 on September 29, 2013, 02:40

Nowadays, shoot, upload, repeat only means dashed expectations and a waste of time and money to create quality imagery that never sells or even gets looked at before it just disappears into the iStock abyss. As you said, they can tweak the heck out of the site now and introduce all these great new features they are touting but they have already thrown out the baby with the bathwater. And with so many buyers having gone for good it doesn't matter what you do to try and win them back. As the old saying goes, "you can't polish a tu*d". 

of course.

the microstock model for photographers is BROKEN due to oversupply and we're telling this since many years already but nobody want to listen.

if that matters also RM is partially broke for the same reason, try selling images of the Tour Eiffel and good luck ...

same sh-it if you shoot news, at any event you see 100 photographers but only 4-5 of them will end up published on the major newspapers with the major wire agencies and earn some money, the others will go in stock archives, social networks, local newspapers, and quickly buried and forgotten.

what they did for sport events is limiting the number of photographers allowed to shoot on prime locations and it's working.

either they do the same for stock or nobody will be able to stay in business apart the agencies.

and agencies have no reason to change the current situation, this was their business plan from the start, "crowdsourcing", doesn't matter if made up of a few image factories and a ton of small contributors of if just by a sh-itload of amateurs and part timers.

if you price your images at 1$ that's exactly how buyers will value your work, as a 1$/image photographer !

micro is heading to become just an expensive hobby for most of the contributors and one day they will make 2+2 and realize how much it's such a waste of time and money.

this is true, and i agree.

Quote from: JPSDK on September 29, 2013, 08:21

Quote from: Xanox on September 29, 2013, 04:00

Quote from: B8 on September 29, 2013, 02:40

Nowadays, shoot, upload, repeat only means dashed expectations and a waste of time and money to create quality imagery that never sells or even gets looked at before it just disappears into the iStock abyss. As you said, they can tweak the heck out of the site now and introduce all these great new features they are touting but they have already thrown out the baby with the bathwater. And with so many buyers having gone for good it doesn't matter what you do to try and win them back. As the old saying goes, "you can't polish a tu*d". 

of course.

the microstock model for photographers is BROKEN due to oversupply and we're telling this since many years already but nobody want to listen.

if that matters also RM is partially broke for the same reason, try selling images of the Tour Eiffel and good luck ...

same sh-it if you shoot news, at any event you see 100 photographers but only 4-5 of them will end up published on the major newspapers with the major wire agencies and earn some money, the others will go in stock archives, social networks, local newspapers, and quickly buried and forgotten.

what they did for sport events is limiting the number of photographers allowed to shoot on prime locations and it's working.

either they do the same for stock or nobody will be able to stay in business apart the agencies.

and agencies have no reason to change the current situation, this was their business plan from the start, "crowdsourcing", doesn't matter if made up of a few image factories and a ton of small contributors of if just by a sh-itload of amateurs and part timers.

if you price your images at 1$ that's exactly how buyers will value your work, as a 1$/image photographer !

micro is heading to become just an expensive hobby for most of the contributors and one day they will make 2+2 and realize how much it's such a waste of time and money.

this is true, and i agree.

sure, what is the solution then? will we arrange a date and jump off all together? or will we continue to collect and most of these theories will fade away? if microstock/macrostock was doing so poorly we wouldn't be here... but yep its dead!

we should, and we have done.
D-day had an impact on istock.
If we could unite in some way, our power would rise manifold, instead of us all competing against eachoter.

The way to do it is to align all contributors to a certain agency an demand that the agency negotiate with us.
Next step is to demand that only members of the union are allowed to contribute.
It works in real life, the system was introduced 100 years ago along with the coops. Society and everybody benifited much from it and the Nordic welfare states are founded on it.

I cannot see how it cannot be done in a global networking environment, I just dont know how.

sure, what is the solution then? will we arrange a date and jump off all together? or will we continue to collect and most of these theories will fade away? if microstock/macrostock was doing so poorly we wouldn't be here... but yep its dead!

there's no realistic solutions.

for most of the photographers stock will just become a side business rather than their core business.
for all the others just an expensive hobby.

image factories will survive, eventually cutting costs even further.

i mean it's the same scenario we can see in other industries like ebooks, music, and more.
nobody is making a living with ebooks unless they're either very talented and with the right connections or can produce a new book every month.

publishers make good money with ebooks, but not writers, writers do it as a side hobby, or for vanity, or whatever.
of course there's the odd writer making a million with one single book, but that's the exception to the rule.

music, even worse, but they can get good money with gigs, anybody else play in a band for fun and beer money, others DJ for free at parties or birthdays.

nobody from outside the industry will notice that photographers can no longer make a living with stock alone and
 many RM stockers have already left the industry years ago, do you see anybody missing them ? i don't, and they moved to greener pastured or started a new career elsewhere, that's life.

of course in a perfect world the top tier stockers would start a big collective and force the agencies to pay decent fees but it never happened so far, especially for wire agencies, and neither for art galleries, magazines, weddings .. the only thing i can remember is some unions in big newspapers setting minimum prices for assignments but that's all.

because, the breadwinner is all these industries is the one who finding the buyers and getting paid by the buyers, anybody else comes later and is seen as a cost, we're a cost not a resource, our products are dime a dozen in the actual scenario, any decent amateur can produce a few decent saleable stock images and that's a fact and the root of all evils.

in conclusion, joining an image factory is maybe the best option nowadays.

but we should all think if begging for money to such greedy agencies is what we want to achieve because there's no reason for the situation to improve anytime soon.

selling prints on your own web site doesn't make sense if what you sell is the average stock imagery that could be bought anywhere else, you're simply not adding any value, even Yuri is not getting rich with his own agency despite having 100,000+ images on sale and having invested millions on it.

there isn't a solution like you have said and even image factories will have decreased returns in the future as well, pretty much we are in this alone and will leave alone, nobody will join forces and fight against the evil, even if the evil decide to pay 50% royalties it won't help because that will drive even more contributors and instead of 200k files a week we will have 400k

I also don't think that iStock is doing poorly for the majority of indies and some exclusives because of the d-day, they still have fresh content entering their doors everyday, they just managed to lose buyers to competition perhaps due to their cool search or the super fast website

i want to be a true artist, selling prints and doing exhibitions, earning thousands a pop,

I thought true artists starved in garrets.

Seriously, though, I pretty much agree with you. Microstock has been a fabulous ride for those of us who got in early and made a significant effort - and it certainly taught me a hell of a lot about my hobby - I'll be pretty happy if it will continue to cover my living costs for the next four or five years but I have my doubts.

These days, I suppose that if a job keeps you going for 10 years or so before you have to move on then you can't complain too much - especially when it is pleasant and undemanding.

Good luck in fulfilling your ambitions.

You would think.. I could be getting the wrong pic but... "no pun :
" 8 out of 10 posts here about sales say their down (all agencies) that's where my info has come from and news and my own situation with my husbands 3yr pay freeze.