Quote from: gostwyck on May 19, 2013, 18:11

(Shutterstock) .. is experiencing massive growth and probably has at least another decade of growth to come.

Where do you see this continuous growth coming from ?

If you read their financial reports SS consider themselves to currently have only a tiny proportion of a market that they believe to be worth about $5B worldwide (if I remember the figures correctly off the top of my head). They also believe that there's huge potential in video and obviously Offset will be targeting a sector of the market that will be new to them.

There is a huge market in all those countries where the economy is growing and small businesses are growing like mushrooms. As the middle class rises in india,south america, china,middle east..etc...so will the market for the agencies that can reach out to them. Most agencies are english centric, here in Germany for instance loads of small companies have never heard of a stock site, so over here alone, with over 100 million German speakers, this is still a growth market.

I don�t know if Getty is even interested in customers like these, they seem to prefer to make huge deals with large cooperations. But here in Germany 70% of the economy is carried by small - to medium sized business.

And this is probably true in many other countries.

So the US market might be over saturated, but the rest of the world is still wide open.

And in the US/Canada/UK there will always be the fight over market share. You can always take way market share from the competition so the landscape will be fluid as well.

It is harder work than growing into a new market, but if you fight, you win.

Have a look at google keyword trends and see where the different agencies are known. It is fascinating! You see that shutterstock is quite strong world wide, fotolia mostly local to europe, istock mostly NorthAmerica, etc...

Since the companies don�t release numbers, this is the easiest you can do to just get an idea of where they are active.

http://www.google.com/trends/

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=shutterstock%2C%20istock%2C%20fotolia%2C%20dreamstime%2C%20gettyimages&cmpt=q

There is a huge market in all those countries where the economy is growing and small businesses are growing like mushrooms. As the middle class rises in india,south america, china,middle east..etc...so will the market for the agencies that can reach out to them.

In several of these countries, they have specifically not been targetted because they have no fully-worked out copyright laws and/or expectation. Almost all of my Alamy image thefts and many iS thefts are on websites in Far Eastern orthographies. At micro pricing, there isn't the will to pursue these misuses, which IME spread very rapidly.
So it may be that the companies have already considered moving into some of these developing regions but decided that the cost/benefit ratio isn't likely to be favourable.

Or, as I'm useless at analysis and forecasting, watch out for an announcement near us soon. 

BTW, does anyone actually know how many agencies provide customer support in even just all their site languages?

Its like someone going to a Microsoft forum preaching about Apple and complaining Microsoft svcks. If you love RM, go to the RM forums. I am not sure why you banned from Alamy, because that is the type of crowd that would agree with you.

Quote from: shudderstok on May 19, 2013, 15:20

Quote from: sharpshot on May 19, 2013, 14:34

It seems inevitable that Xanox will get banned here one day, I just hope it's tomorrow   I don't mind people having different opinions but when they attack others and keep posting the same uninformed drivel, I don't see why we have to put up with them for so long here?

some of what Xanox posts here is pure drivel, albeit I do think the overall theme he is trying to convey is more accurate than many of you understand. The stock industry is in decline overall from a contributors point of view, and I sadly agree with Xanox that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Xanox obviously comes from an era when stock photography had value, way before the days of microstock and photographers jumping up and down with joy by selling a photo hundreds of times for 0.25c a crack and I totally agree with many of his posts, not all of them, but many of them.

I can't agree that the stock industry is in decline overall from a contributors point of view because in the good old days, I only received rejection letters.  Those that did get in might of made more money but how was that good for me?  It was a small club and I wasn't in it.  I'm not sure if we're any worse off than a few years ago, some sites have cut commissions but they've made little progress while SS has had a lot of growth.

I complain a lot about sites that cut commissions but I still think anyone that puts in the work and has a reasonable skill level can make a nice living from microstock.  A lot of the people that hate microstock have less than 200 images in their portfolios.  I saw one person with around 35 images that had made hundreds of posts about how poor their earnings were and that they couldn't accept $0.25.  If they had spent more time building up a decent portfolio, they would of found out that microstock can be quite lucrative.

Nobody knows the future and people like Xanox have been saying that microstock is dead for contributors since the day I started in 2006.  They've been wrong for 7 years so far and I think they'll be wrong for a few more.  Past that time, who really knows what will happen?

perhaps there is a bit of a misunderstanding here, and perhaps the points Xanox is trying to convey with a bungled delivery is this...
the stock industry is in trouble not just in microstock or RF or RM or Getty etc. This from what I think is an industry wide issue. Xanox seems to be a bit of a dinosaur in the stock industry just as I am. I had to adapt to the transition from film to digital - film being a true skill that you had to master, digital by comparison is too easy. I have had to adapt from RM to RF (the uproar at the time was loud) and now to microstock. The decline in valuation of photography has been slow and steady for the last 20 years with microstock being the catalyst the free fall in the valuation of images, particularly microstock subscription sites, which in my opinion are just plain stupid to support in any way by choice. It is also my observation in all of these years that getting into an agency of any sort required a hell of a lot more than passing a brainless multiple choice questionnaire and submitting three samples that the camera produces. to get into any agency back in the day required a skill that was beyond doubt, and notably film required a lot of skill - especially as agencies were only accepting transparencies. when shooting with the top end camera then you had to know what you were doing, it did not save you. today i have the top end camera and a monkey blind folded could shoot with it and have the work accepted to any microstock agency provided it was composed properly of course.  back in the day there was an editor who was ruthless in taking only your best work, often comprising of around 8-10% of  your best tightly edited image you submitted, and that was a good ration of acceptance. today there are no editors only inspectors and the acceptance rate is alarmingly high, too high in fact. microstock does have a lot of very very good work online, but it also has a lot of crap that simply should not be there. this new model of basically allowing anyone in, the technology, and the complete lack of editing process will be the demise of the industry - both micro and macro - as there are simply way too many shots diluting the profits of single contributors. there seems to be no stopping this the genie is out of the bottle.

the stock industry both microstock and macro will be profitable for many years to come for the agencies. but not for the suppliers. it used to be we got 50% royalties and now it's mainly a pathetic royalty rate from all of them. it used to be agencies that were owned by people - real people you could talk to, but they have all pretty much sold out to the corporate empire. agencies today are owned by bankers and also publicly traded. that in itself spells doom for contributors. the winners will be the bankers and the shareholders as that is what these greedy pricks demand, we as suppliers are nothing more than liabilities to the company, and there is an over supply of us, there is an over supply of images created by us. some of us might be a legend in our own mind, and have a following of groupies, but they too are expendable as has recently happened to one overly deified photographer - the absence of this photographer won't even put a bleep on the radar screen of profits to these agencies, even if we think it will.
i see this very clearly in the industry, i think Xanox sees this too, and from all the dinosaurs like me that i know we all see it very clearly, and frankly we are very concerned about the industry. it appears all the microstock crowd or shall i say newbies who only know the microstock thing are doing is bashing one agency or the other and self congratulating each other for being accepted to one agency or the other.
your generation might not see it coming, but i can say for certain the dinosaurs have seen the writing on the wall for years, and if i was to put my bet on anything, i'd say it is almost check mate for contributors as a whole micro or macro, i give it 5-7 years tops, then very very few of us will be making any money, regardless of where you park your images, but the publicly traded agencies and the corporate run agencies will be posting record profits for many years after that.

Quote from: shudderstok on May 20, 2013, 15:37

today i have the top end camera and a monkey blind folded could shoot with it and have the work accepted to any microstock agency

I'm not sure I'm covered for a blind-folded monkey assistant.  I'll have to ask my agent.

ahhh, but did your monkey pass the brainless ten question multiple choice test to be qualified professional assistant? i feed my monkey bananas, and pray to heavens above he will get used to eating peanuts. monkeys will need to adapt too 

perhaps there is a bit of a misunderstanding here, and perhaps the points Xanox is trying to convey with a bungled delivery is this...
the stock industry is in trouble not just in microstock or RF or RM or Getty etc. This from what I think is an industry wide issue. Xanox seems to be a bit of a dinosaur in the stock industry just as I am. I had to adapt to the transition from film to digital - film being a true skill that you had to master, digital by comparison is too easy. I have had to adapt from RM to RF (the uproar at the time was loud) and now to microstock. The decline in valuation of photography has been slow and steady for the last 20 years with microstock being the catalyst the free fall in the valuation of images, particularly microstock subscription sites, which in my opinion are just plain stupid to support in any way by choice. It is also my observation in all of these years that getting into an agency of any sort required a hell of a lot more than passing a brainless multiple choice questionnaire and submitting three samples that the camera produces. to get into any agency back in the day required a skill that was beyond doubt, and notably film required a lot of skill - especially as agencies were only accepting transparencies. when shooting with the top end camera then you had to know what you were doing, it did not save you. today i have the top end camera and a monkey blind folded could shoot with it and have the work accepted to any microstock agency provided it was composed properly of course.  back in the day there was an editor who was ruthless in taking only your best work, often comprising of around 8-10% of  your best tightly edited image you submitted, and that was a good ration of acceptance. today there are no editors only inspectors and the acceptance rate is alarmingly high, too high in fact. microstock does have a lot of very very good work online, but it also has a lot of crap that simply should not be there. this new model of basically allowing anyone in, the technology, and the complete lack of editing process will be the demise of the industry - both micro and macro - as there are simply way too many shots diluting the profits of single contributors. there seems to be no stopping this the genie is out of the bottle.

the stock industry both microstock and macro will be profitable for many years to come for the agencies. but not for the suppliers. it used to be we got 50% royalties and now it's mainly a pathetic royalty rate from all of them. it used to be agencies that were owned by people - real people you could talk to, but they have all pretty much sold out to the corporate empire. agencies today are owned by bankers and also publicly traded. that in itself spells doom for contributors. the winners will be the bankers and the shareholders as that is what these greedy pricks demand, we as suppliers are nothing more than liabilities to the company, and there is an over supply of us, there is an over supply of images created by us. some of us might be a legend in our own mind, and have a following of groupies, but they too are expendable as has recently happened to one overly deified photographer - the absence of this photographer won't even put a bleep on the radar screen of profits to these agencies, even if we think it will.
i see this very clearly in the industry, i think Xanox sees this too, and from all the dinosaurs like me that i know we all see it very clearly, and frankly we are very concerned about the industry. it appears all the microstock crowd or shall i say newbies who only know the microstock thing are doing is bashing one agency or the other and self congratulating each other for being accepted to one agency or the other.
your generation might not see it coming, but i can say for certain the dinosaurs have seen the writing on the wall for years, and if i was to put my bet on anything, i'd say it is almost check mate for contributors as a whole micro or macro, i give it 5-7 years tops, then very very few of us will be making any money, regardless of where you park your images, but the publicly traded agencies and the corporate run agencies will be posting record profits for many years after that.

Interesting thoughts. Of course all that is actually happening is basic supply and demand. However it's not the agencies or the contributors who have 'devalued' our product but the technology. As you have said yourself, it has never been easier or cheaper to produce quality images ... so that's exactly what people are doing.

I've no idea how long it is all going to last though. Ten years ago I'd never have believed I could earn a decent living with my camera, working from home, shooting what I want, when I feel like doing so and never even having clients to report to, or any complaints or invoices to chase up. Microstock is largely a true and fair meritocracy too __ your success and your earnings are directly related to your skills, how hard you work and, sometimes, how much you are prepared to risk financially to get unique or better shots.

If, in a few years time, it is 'only the agencies that can make any money' then that will probably be the time that a true microstock co-op will finally emerge. Right now there is not the motivation for it to happen and most contributors have too much to lose. Ultimately it is the contributors that own all the content though. Without them the agencies are nothing.

I think that there are small signs that the balance between agency and the contributor may be edging towards the latter. Istock notably have started to relax rules that they once held dear. Vector artists are actually getting a royalty increase. The emergence of Stocksy is a move in the right direction and Istock are certainly worried about it. Then there's Yuri's 'sweetheart deal' with Getty. There may well be more in the pipeline.

Quote from: sharpshot on May 20, 2013, 14:20

Quote from: Poncke v2 on May 20, 2013, 13:36

Its like someone going to a Microsoft forum preaching about Apple and complaining Microsoft svcks. If you love RM, go to the RM forums. I am not sure why you banned from Alamy, because that is the type of crowd that would agree with you.

He had a big fight with Christian in the alamy forum.  They were right to ban him.

Hmmm, thats weird, because they both support the RM model.

yeah, but Xanox is more consistent in that.
LR vacillates more than an oscillator.

"Interesting thoughts. Of course all that is actually happening is basic supply and demand. However it's not the agencies or the contributors who have 'devalued' our product but the technology. As you have said yourself, it has never been easier or cheaper to produce quality images ... so that's exactly what people are doing.

I've no idea how long it is all going to last though. Ten years ago I'd never have believed I could earn a decent living with my camera, working from home, shooting what I want, when I feel like doing so and never even having clients to report to, or any complaints or invoices to chase up. Microstock is largely a true and fair meritocracy too __ your success and your earnings are directly related to your skills, how hard you work and, sometimes, how much you are prepared to risk financially to get unique or better shots.

If, in a few years time, it is 'only the agencies that can make any money' then that will probably be the time that a true microstock co-op will finally emerge. Right now there is not the motivation for it to happen and most contributors have too much to lose. Ultimately it is the contributors that own all the content though. Without them the agencies are nothing.

I think that there are small signs that the balance between agency and the contributor may be edging towards the latter. Istock notably have started to relax rules that they once held dear. Vector artists are actually getting a royalty increase. The emergence of Stocksy is a move in the right direction and Istock are certainly worried about it. Then there's Yuri's 'sweetheart deal' with Getty. There may well be more in the pipeline."



yes agreed, it is without a doubt technology as well, but also the fact when getty came along and gobbled every agency up they dropped royalty rates to sustain the bankers and shareholders profits. we all ate it up albeit with a bit of complaining.

then microstock came along with this sell stupidly cheap idea and give stupid rates with crowns and you could work your way up. getty bought the premiere agency, and continued the reduction of rates for profits scheme. we all ate it up albeit with a bit of complaining.

then there are the schemes like SS who simply undersold images with abandon and paid really stupid royalty rates. many ate it up. why i will never know.

add the above to a bunch of tier sites that want a slice of the pie and generally do so with abandon, and you have an industry that is really messed up.

now you get brucey with his new found ideals forming a co-op. to little too late my friend. you had the chance to do that long ago, and you took the getty millions. in his various interviews he tends to contradict himself between the past and the new and improved version of brucey called stocksy. the one that sticks out is him saying something along the lines of "if you make less than 50% you are not getting your worth" and i seem to recall the highest you could ever aspire too was 45% on IS under his reign, but you also started at a shameful 20%. this has happened a few times in his interviews that i have read. i also don't predict you will get too many born again idealists like this coming down the pipes any time soon.

my money is still on the decline of individual income based on the microstock model, and yes it will affect the whole industry. and i still think it will happen in the next 5-7 years. the numbers don't add up anymore, and it's blatantly obvious if you have been around the industry for a while. and the scary part of this is that greedy empires like getty know this too. they know they can kick the crap out of us and control us and we are weak as a whole. as a group we might complain a lot, but getting anything going with a large group of photographers to teach "them" will never happen, it would be easier to herd cats.

I think that there are small signs that the balance between agency and the contributor may be edging towards the latter. Istock notably have started to relax rules that they once held dear. Vector artists are actually getting a royalty increase. The emergence of Stocksy is a move in the right direction and Istock are certainly worried about it. Then there's Yuri's 'sweetheart deal' with Getty. There may well be more in the pipeline.

Yep. It's a pretty basic strategy. Keep wringing contributors dry until it negatively affects the agency. Then slowly start backing off a little bit. Seems like this is where we're at now.

And no this is not the end of microstock, just a business model adjustment.

The main message I get from this news is "be prepared to change your old ways of thinking and doing things" Ride the wave, instead of being capsized by it.

not the "end", but it's indeed a strong signal !

it's the beginning of a domino effect that could get easily out of hand especially if Yuri will release some data about his sales and earnings on Getty.

the problem is, in the actual situation if something is going to change is for the worse, you're deluded if you hope agency have a single good reason to raise our fees.

yes, fees are going to get LOWER not higher !

and unless like Yuri you're an agency with a team of dozens of photographers nobody will take you seriously, photographers nowadays are dime a dozen in stock and especially in microstock.

there's hardly any "wave" to ride at this point, either you able to produce quantity with good enough quality or you will sink, just a matter of time, and probably you will sink anyways as if you do the math it will be harder and harder to feed the beast and stay afloat, you reach the point where it's just impossible to compete with such an avalanche of new images uploaded every day.

you stay afloat for a while because the search algorithms give a premium to images that had more views and zooms and sales, but this can change overnight, they can set to show new images on default, or default to whatever new collection, like now they do on Alamy with "creative" rather than the old Editorial.

which is the same we witnessed in web search engines like google or yahoo or bing .. when they have trillions of pages it's impossible to rank high, and they change the algo 2-3 times a year to further mess it up.

whatever we're selling now is doomed to be sandboxed and forgotten before or later ... and this is the key factor .. if now the shelf life of an image is up to 2 yrs in the future it can become 6 months or less and then the whole microstock concept will cease to exist apart for a small bunch of the very best seller images.

my opinion ? the days are numbered for microstock as a full time career for single photographers, only agencies, "factories", and co-ops will survive.

i give it no more than 3 yrs from now.
mark my words !

mark my words !

Why?  Strange as it may seem, many of us have far more important things to think about than whether your ego explodes in rapture in three years time.