Quote from: MichaelJayFoto on August 02, 2015, 05:44

...To me the whole thing was the change from someone with an entrepreneurial mindset at the top towards people with calculators and spreadsheets leading the company that was the main cause for all that has developed from then on.

Nail on the head.  Once the guy with vision is replaced by bean counters companies tend to go into a downward spiral.

All my best years were 2006 and later.

Only a  relative detail but somethig else which doesn't help is that anything a tad unusual, technical or sometimes even creative then often lacks the vocabulary to even keyword it properly....
There needs to be a quick route to get new words added....

Even unusual place names suffer the same fate and I hate that I have to hyphenate double barrel names that are common in Australia, like Gin Gin, Wagga Wagga and hundreds more, in the titles and  of course are not in the CV at all.

I think there's a curse on iStock, going from the somewhere deep inside...

It's incompetent management, with maybe a touch of malice.

Quote from: Holmes on August 01, 2015, 14:43

...what do you think of the current state of IS/getty and future prospects. it appears the futzing has stabilized for the moment. (did i really say that?)

I think that they have one big problem they haven't figured out. 3 credits versus 1 credit for essentially the same content -search for orange slice, woman gym, new home and you can't see any reason that one image is three times the price of another.

And they still have the should-have-been-rejected content that came from off site and flooded the collection with rubbish - two examples (no surprise they haven't sold since 2013):

http://www.istockphoto.com/photo/close-up-of-orange-slice-25406435
http://www.istockphoto.com/photo/juicy-green-apple-25406521

There are smaller problems - the site regularly not working well and some really odd choices with the "new" interface versus the "classic"; inspection standards that I hear let just about anything in (when they used to have some of the most exacting standards, at least for technical excellence); no inexpensive sizes for blog or web use any more.

Why would you shop at iStock if you were a buyer? You have so many other choices that are a whole lot easier to deal with.

All the points mentioned about the mistakes iStock has made over the years thus, leading us to this low point are all spot on. But the mention above of the "3 credits versus 1 credit for essentially the same content" is really the key to why the bloodletting still continues and never stops.

Basically iStock decided if content is exclusive to their site then it gives them the right to charge buyers more for it. But what they don't understand is that most buyers who are looking for micro/mid stock priced content don't see the value in paying triple the price simply because an image is offered for rent on only one site.

Then you have to ask yourself, "Why is iStock really charging more for exclusive content, is it actually better or more valuable?" The answer is no of course on the issue of better and very debatable on the matter or more valuable.

So when the photo buyer doesn't want to pay 3 credits for an image they don't usually bite the bullet and pay the higher price anyway just because they can't buy the exact same image elsewhere. No, they find another solution.

First the buyer might try and find what he/she is looking for in the 1 credit category on iStock, and, if they can't, then they simply move onto lower cost pastures to get their content elsewhere, and then usually they never come back. 

But what actually drives all this as always is the fact that iStock is simply looking for a way to make more money from their images by splitting them into multiple price categories.

Though if you want to charge buyers more for certain images then the images really need to be more valuable. And since they are not, what iStock should be doing instead (to achieve their goal of making more money out of certain content) is not penalize the buyers, as their current 3 credits versus 1 credit structure does, but penalize the non-exclusives instead by raising prices on non-exclusive content (content where iStock keeps a bigger piece of the pie) and up all non-exclusive content to the same price as exclusive content.

Then this current problem of wrongly penalizing the buyers is easily solved by splitting the present pricing down the middle and making all content only 2 credits. This would completely simplify their pricing and no longer raise questions from buyers about why some pictures are 3 credits and others are 1 credit for virtually the same quality picture.

Do that to the pricing, and maybe Getty has a chance of selling more total pictures again than before and saving iStock. Well, maybe not saving iStock, but perhaps stopping the bloodletting from continuing until the dead horse starts rotting even more.

I agree with iFlop, the price difference between non-exclusive and exclusive photos doesn't make any sense to me. If people are buying images from micro stock sites, they're really are not worried about if an image is exclusive to one site or not. I've worked at several companies that buy a lot of stock images and the price difference between non-exclusive and exclusive for roughly the same quality of images causes a lot of confusion.

In many cases, even almost identical (or copycated) images don't serve the same purpose in the same way. Besides being a photographer I'm a buyer, and it's when you are buying and choosing when you realize that.

All IS exclusives should stop being IS exclusives. They will make more money

Not always true

and protect themselves against market fluctuations, after spreading their eggs in multiple baskets.
Hopefully, this will drive the IS customers towards agencies that pay better their contributors (= all the other major agencies).

Which micros pay their contributors better than iS pays their exclusives?

Quote

and protect themselves against market fluctuations, after spreading their eggs in multiple baskets.
Hopefully, this will drive the IS customers towards agencies that pay better their contributors (= all the other major agencies).

Which micros pay their contributors better than iS pays their exclusives?

as I've been trying since 2 years, new uploads does not bring any significant revenue from istock, I dont any new upload to istock, because that is completely waste of time, but the other microstock sites give us the more you upload, the more you earn, this system better than istock's more upload, less earn system.

Michael, spreading into macros is clearly a good way to go. Though IMO profitability is far more important than mere return per download or per image, and generally (with exceptions) expenses for taking Macro images would be more.

However, this is a micro group, and ZeroTalent said nothing to imply that he was talking about macros in his suggestion, and that is all I was replying to.
All I'm saying is that s/he made a sweeping statement, which is not universally applicable.

iS is on the way down, down, deeper 'n' down with no safety net. But Zero's suggestion of how to cope with this is not the only answer. (Flipping burgers, literally, might be a better moneyearner for some.) Also, s/he has forgotten to factor in that if everyone spread their ports, income at the other agencies would be spread thinner, given that rpd on the other micros often isn't high to start with. It's not like iS has all that many buyers to spread around.

Everyone has to make their own decisions about where they will put their work based on how acceptable they find the terms and conditions (and contracts allow 'them' to change on a whim). Years of reading msg don't make me think any other micro would be acceptable (to me). If I was starting now, I wouldn't. 

(I just calculated and FWIW my iS rpd is down to $2.96 this year to the end of July, but falling rapidly because of subs. I'd expect a lot of exclusives to get getting more than that because of their higher percentage rate and because I have very few images on Getty. I read here that at least some exclusives do well from Getty - a fair proportion of my Getty sales are lower value than my regular iS sales. Also I'm not in the PP, so some exclusives who are in the PP may have a lower rpd still, but a higher overall income.)

Quote from: loop on August 03, 2015, 17:15

... so it'ts natural giving it a higher price.

Only if there are no essentially identical images available elsewhere.

Lots of the exclusive content on iStock (from real iStock exclusive contributors) is just generic stock with lots of readily available substitutes.

There is some stunning imagery that really is different and that would command a higher price, but lots of fruits, veggies and handshakes that are technically exclusive but easily purchased anywhere.

Yes Yes Yes... only high quality contributors are making good amount of money. If a contributor shot self isolated expressives portraits or generic stock, the sales willl continue decreasing...

Today with generic content exclusivity has no sense... because of this only sites with high quality-different content like offset, stocksy, westend61 or fotolia infinite are succes

But September is coming...let�s see what new and exciting changes and announcements they have for us.

Oh, I wish you hadn't reminded us. 

jjneff, I�ll vote for you!

Just make it 30% for video, that should be the lowest anywhere.