Well yes. Sales are few still, but regular and increasing. More than I expected. peopleimages.com will not be able to compete against the big buys in the marketplace. We are too specialized.
For the right kind of client we are perfect however. And we are starting to see that, because our customers are absolutely crazy about us. One actually sent me a pair of socks to my private adress, thanking me for finally giving them a "proper" workplace. There must be a pretty big built up pressure inside some of these designers.
Socks... Can you believe that!

Noteworthy sign-up and social media strategy. Good design.
Total fail in providing good content. Completely crap and even duplicate content.
I need to study more because if they have become as successful as they have at this level, then there are things to learn.
Will spend some time now. Probably days/nights. Crap.

peopleimages.com is up, up, up!!! hehehehe

I know full design studios that only have a subscription to SS and that is it. They would and could easily spend about 10 times more on stock images, but they don't need to, because they got most of their demand covered with their subscription. SS has lured the customers in on a simple "as is" kind of business model. Now it is time to make the real money. They are sitting on a gold mine. I predict that if SS opens the opportunity for exclusive content in a premium subscription package they just doubled their revenue in a year or two's time. And further more. I will bet a that this will happen. Anybody want to bet?

Best Y

Quote from: ruxpriencdiam on May 17, 2012, 04:09
Did a quick read and just want to say for everyone to remember this!

IPO is a "SALE"!

Quote from: ruxpriencdiamRudy said it already and they had it on the news this morning about what an IPO is because of Facebook going public and they said no matter what an IPO is a Sale.

First time offer to sell to the public.
Founders and Early investors are cashing out.
and it is a sale.

Here is what some of the investing companies from Wall Street say about IPO's.


Why does a company go public?

Companies issue stock to the public for many reasons including:

    Needing growth capital for the business
    Founding investors selling a portion of their original ownership

    Paying off debt
    Increasing exposure for the company
    Improving company's ability to recruit upper management through stock options
    Ability to issue further stock to facilitate takeovers using company stock

IPOs generally favor the brokerage firms that underwrite these issues and the companies that go public. A close second are institutional investors that buy the stock at its offering price and then sell it in the afternoon, profiting from the transaction. By pricing the shares below their real value, institutions are able to make a quick buck off unsuspecting individual investors. Unless you are a big institution, it's unlikely that you would be able to buy shares in an IPO even if you wanted to. Only those with the deepest pockets representing the widest interests get access to these opportunities. That's not such a bad thing for individual investors.

Sure, being in on the ground floor might mean a quick 15 to 20 percent return on your investment once it starts trading. However, studies have shown that many IPOs tend to trade below their offering price one year after going public. Investors might be better to focus on buying stocks that were IPOs a year earlier. Coca Cola went public in 1919 at $40 and was trading at $19 a year later. That is quite a difference.

IPOs do from time to time grow up to be extremely large companies and so, like any other investment vehicle, you should do careful research before investing. If it's a stock worth buying and holding for the long term, whether you buy it today or in a year is of little consequence in the end.







Why Go Public?
Going public raises cash, and usually a lot of it. Being publicly traded also opens many financial doors:

    Because of the increased scrutiny, public companies can usually get better rates when they issue debt.
    As long as there is market demand, a public company can always issue more stock. Thus, mergers and acquisitions are easier to do because stock can be issued as part of the deal.
    Trading in the open markets means liquidity. This makes it possible to implement things like employee stock ownership plans, which help to attract top talent.

Excellent info.

This will be a huge game changer. I have been in a few boards myself and know the effect that they can have on a company. I predict that a board would immediately push for differentiated subscription models (for higher the end customers that Istock is currently taking all the sales from) and exclusive content to differentiate against Istock. Basically all the things that Jon was against in the start (2005), but that is market reality today. This could make Shutterstock the absolut go-to agency over Istock in couple of years if they do these changes. If they also continued to acquire a few smaller agencies here and there to serve as a mass-distribution platform such as with bigstockphoto.com they are in for a true winner and would have the basis for a tempting exclusive offering (from the perspective of the photographer).

We can't have 400 mp on the site. The jpgs are in the range of 100mb. Too big and too few people are willing to pay for it. It fun however. To create something that will make even the most critical art director marvel!.

Here you can see the results. Had to downsize to fit on the site.

http://peopleimages.com/image/beach-beauty-beaches-seaside-seashore

You have to be logged in to see them. They are attached!

Say hallo to 400 megapixel:
We can do crazy things for crazy clients!!!

NO way it is not unrealistic! What do you think we spent the last year doing? Training like mad to be able to do these things. We have much more extreme examples too, that we actually removed because people would not believe them.

The stats I mentioned where unique visitors.
Our facebook campaign reached 17000 people. All those likes paid off after all.
Our customers will not come from the general trafic masses we are brining in now. This is just a result of curiosity and other photographers checking out our direct sales platform. We do not expect a whole lot of sales at this point and have seen little. So don't be too worried. All the trafic is great for testing our servers and our capacity. Even with 250 users online at the same time, our servers where only at about 15% of their max capacity. This means we can host about 1500 users simultaneously with a little overcapacity and still have a fast site. NICE
Anyway. I'm loving every moment of this launch. I have only sleept for about 15 hours this last week and had to go on Danish live TV at 0600 in the morning with 4 hours of "airplane sleep" - and off cause with all the stress i fell sick the day before the TV spot. Madness.
I know you probably don't understand Danish, but here you can watch the interview: http://go.tv2.dk/morgentv/id-50107240.html
So. My conclusion is: IT launches are hardcore! Madness, crazy workhours and insanely interesting at the same time.

I do not like it one bit. Messy, lot's of small print. Much fewer nice images. Hard read.
Bad choices. I will bet they will change this over time.

Congrats on the IPO however.

I can't talk about sales. But here are some facts:
Day 1: 900 visitors (not launched)
Day 2: 1200 visitors (not launched)
Day 3: 3600 visitors (launched)
Day 4: 5900 visitors so far (launched) Today

Do the math!

Best Y

Lot's of interest that is for sure. We just had over 1000 visitors in one hour and about 200+ visitors constantly on the site. Small numbers for big stock agencies, but it's still pretty nice.

Quote from: ppdd on May 02, 2012, 16:47
I must say, the more I look at this new site, the more impressed I am. For a new site, the attention to detail and the level of finish is remarkable.

Thank you! You will not believe all the small things I have been optimizing before launch. Re-keyworded about 30000+ images, re-titled about the same. Organized 1300 shoots, 700 models...Auto-suggestions based on beta-testers, manually input keyword suggestions for about 3000 top searches, color corrected about 10000 files. Re-developed old shoots so they would look better.
Our current ticket tracker system reads 3500 in issue number, which means that to get the site to where it is now we have fixed or added 3500 bugs or features.
For the critical comments: Remember that this is a version 1.0 - it still introduces two new inventions that no other site has: Time-exclusivity and custom retouching. And both features work, at launch!
Imagine what version 2.0 will look like, with SEO, referral and social media integration. 100000+ images! 
Keep in mind the bigger picture. That's what I always do.

Best Regards Yuri Arcurs

Ok. It leaked. Danish Media is posting it on the front page of online tabloids currently and we are already getting bombarded. It's midnight, so hmmm.

Crazy video. I did not know about this. I have to be honest and say that I am not super happy about it because I do not think this video does justice to Jesper's character. I do not like that I was not contacted prior to the creation of it, because had the creator contacted me, I could have told him that Jesper is, in fact, not the most downloaded man in the world. He's far from, actually. Because of this, the video becomes a strange person's quest to make a youtube hit, for the sole purpose of self promotion, as we clearly see in the end of the video. Having Jesper read out loud a well-scripted statement about where to go if you want quality images, is in my eyes.... Well I probably should not say that here. The fact that Jesper is not the most downloaded male model unfortunately intrudes on the pride of some of my other models, which actually are the most downloaded in the world. We are in the process of filing for a Guinness World Record on behalf of our top female and male model, and when this goes through it will make this video seem a little silly and not very well researched. I also do not like that they got a hold of Jesper's personal contact information without my consent. This means that at least one of our distribution partners has broken our privacy policy, which we now have to spend time following up on.

There is a lot in the works. The next two months will be fun!

Firstly. Please show a good tone in this thread. I know this is a forum, but don't drag this thread down to the lowest level. You may feel this is a threat or that somebody is getting chances you never got, but again.... How many educational programs for young people offer them three years of photography education, traveling the world and to get paid while doing it...? This is unique and it deserves to be acknowledged.
Travel expenses will be paid fully - all three years. The idea is that the candidates we choose will be able to pay 50% for the education through work with real clients and on real shoots. This will off cause not be the case at first where we will have a lot of expenses on this (first year or so). In my eyes, the best practice is in doing. In my opinion, schools have a tendency to become very distant to the real world practice of the subject they are teaching. I spent five years studying psychology and found that i knew nothing of what it meant to be a good psychologist. In this program we try to break with this.

I will address some questions.
Q. Will I be Offered a job after graduation? After graduation of the boot camp or after graduation of the three years? Is the "job" paid?
A. There are two questions here. Yes and yes. The education program is set up in such a way that if you pass the bootcamp you get offered a student position which will be paid (very low). We can pay you because you quite fast will have to work with real clients and real projects.

Q. Is there a specific place we have to stay while we're in Cape Town?
A. You can stay anywhere in Cape Town. You must just be able to show up at our headquarter every day for classes. The headquarter is located at 79 Roeland Street.

Q. I'd be totally cool with traveling for half the year, but how would the six months be divided? Would it allow for us to have a part-time job for the time we're not traveling?
A. At LEAST half a year. And those six months you might be in Denmark for three of them, in Australia for two, in Japan for one, etc. But you will be all over the place and must be able to do this.

Q. How many people do you expect to sign up for the boot camp?! 10 or 100? Is there a cap on how many you will let into the boot camp?
A. We expect about 500 applications and will select 100 for bootcamp. Out of those we expect 10-20 to pass for the class. This is elite. Only the best of the best, but don't let this stop you. The adventure of the bootcamp will be a thing in itself.

Q. It's a 3 years course with no dates defined? Being one semester of classes per year all in random events?
A. This is full time. About 4 weeks of vacation each year. Classes and exams are not ordered in semesters. Some take four weeks, some take a year..some require you to be in another country and do a project.

Q. Will we be shooting stock photography only?
A. Absolutely not. You will be shooting for clients and work on other projects when you are ready.

Seems this post has gone a little off topic.
I remember the John Lund interview and I actually agree with my own statements made at that time. It was a wake-up call and needed at that time, and it did work somewhat. However, I don't like forum posts that are direct and opinionated without knowing who I am talking to and that that somebody will put their name on what they are saying. The possibility to say what you want and hide away and not be held responsible on forums tends to make people much more aggressive and argumentative than they would have been in real life. So. I listen when people are not smurfs, trolls as they are called.
I still believe that Istock is doing very well. I must say, hands down, they are exceptionally good at what they do. I say this even dough there are so many things with Istock I would very much like to see changed. The fact that they only host about 6000 of my 65000 images makes them a rather small playing in my financial monthly statement, so as a business partner (offer, etc.) I really have very little to do with them.
Istock's business model is certainly not buying or acquiring good collections anymore. They have gone completely away from that. Back four five years ago, Getty would buy a new fancy collection every second month or so. How many such collections has Istock/G bought the last two years? Not any really. Jupiter you might think, but that was before the change in management. I believe that Getty's plan is simple: Be superb at distributing and managing user generated content, Maximize profit, cut out anyone that does not want to go this direction, minimize or camouflage commissions through complex systems while still keeping the carrot right in front of the photographer - but making the leap to get it longer and longer. Then I think it also involves stopping potential threats in the industry while they are small, such as Picscouts little hidden gem/ace (which was public but very few saw the implications of - now sold to Getty). And as a shocker: I think the ambition is to sell Getty/Istock with-in two years from now and make a huge profit for the initial buyers. Now with a much higher revenue and profit it would sell higher.
So. I think that the major attempts we have seen from macro stock photographers to enter micro with huge collections has had that very intention - getting bought by Getty. They might just have to settle for royalties now, there are no such attempts in the works because it is not Getty's focus anymore. A big profit to show off, rendering a higher sale tag (short term) is however.
So the way I see it, we are in it for the long howl. That's why economy matters and that's why I asked about it in this forum, to get a reference.

Quote from: lthn on September 19, 2011, 12:50
I remember Yuri saying in a recent interview that other agencies have been check-mated by istock years ago, that IS just does everything better, they are way ahead, and ceos' of other agencies are just amateur photogs... quite outspoken which is much appriciated imho. How does all that look now?

I personally don't think it's the economic situation yet. (it will be) Altho it's heading for a collapse, it works in weird way (thats one of the reasons it's likely to be a total collapse): despite being buried in debt, the western, developed world still has money to burn, loans on top of loans, untill everything implodes. The empty space from entities that have gone bankrupt and stopped buying, is likely getting filled up by the ones who are only on their way to becoming bankrupt and seek cheaper alternatives... so imho it's oversupply, maybe for different reasons. Oversupply on IS because they lost customers. Oversupply un SS simply because they have so much stuff, and they have a lot more high volume, high rate contributors. Almost 17 million shots as I remeber? vs. IS with about 10 mill.

Please don't hide. Tell us who you are especially when making such bold quotes on my behalf.

Quote from: Microbius on September 19, 2011, 08:29
I think the "IStock especially" part could have something to do with the huge amount of bad will at the moment. I know I've stopped buying from them, and recommending them, and judging from the visits stats for the site I'm not the only one.

And there will be much more of that. When you start pushing commissions down to 15% that's when people really start uprising. I have about 300 direct/regular buyers and they all say the same when we have talks and they get to know that the commissions are that low: "wow, I did not know that, I will stop buying from them". When all platforms are offering the same images (more or less) fairness matters.

Quote from: lagereek on September 19, 2011, 08:01
At the moment I think IS,  is having such vast internal and external politics problems, its overshadowing everything else and business has become secondary. Theyre busy holding on to already existing buyers and contributors for that matter.
The constant best match tweaking is proof of serious instabillity.
For any buyers just visiting IS, maybe once or twice a month, its a nightmare of an interface with collections all over the place, copy-cats images everywhere at all differant price levels, price-sliders and all.

The SS policy of just keeping it simple,  is just paying off all the way. SS, is way up for me and so is DT and FT.  IS,  is pretty much on par but nowhere near what it used to be.

I agree. I think that their design upgrade was a major downgrade. I now have five years of experience with Microstock and I still find it hard to do the most simple searches on Istock. And if I find it hard, try to put yourself in the shoes of the buyers visiting for the first time.... overwhelming...

Wow. Lot's of comments on this one. I am surprised that no one mentions the economic state we are in. Our internal speculations in my department on this matter are mostly related to the crisis and the fact that agencies are not raising prices. For example the model agencies that we work with regularly are seeing a massive drop in bookings and jobs for their models. Much more than we are seeing a drop in sales in microstock. A couple of years ago, right after the beginning of the crisis they saw no change, then a little drop last year and a totally devastating year this year - according to a couple of CEOs. I think this downfall in sales has to do with the economy in general, restructuring budgets and priorities changing.
In regards to copy-cats I completely agree with Lisa. I too was able to tell my images apart up to about two years ago. I don't think these individuals (copy-cat's if you will) came to where they are because of a  of advice I may have given on blog posts etc. I believe that the transparency of microstock, that it is so easy to see what to shoot to be successful makes it relatively easy to copy me and others. I have even had cases with people not only copying my images completely, but even copy-pasting the same title, keywords and description. Bold, but nevertheless effective.
In regards to sharing vs not sharing. I keep some things to myself. Off cause, but I also understand the time we live in. When asked, I will refer to the "knowledge restriction" or "sharing paranoia" that some photographers express as an old fashioned, conservative and very outdated way of thinking. The major overlooked aspect in this view is that you almost always gain, from sharing. When you enter a space with a mindset saying "ask me anything and I will try my best to answer you" and you genuinely try to help, you get so much back. This sounds soft, but it is actually not, it very concrete. I have always, and i really mean always, gained more from such situations than I felt I gave away. You never know what comes your way, but by keeping an open mind and a helpful mindset, people simply help back. And...it's generally a good way to be around other people.

Surprisingly it looks like that my income for Sep this year will be below my Mar sales this year. This is the first time in five years of production and certainly not due to me not uploading enough images. I have asked around and the trend seems to be the same for most contributors, especially Istock exclusives. Istock seems very affected in both sales and overall income.
Shutterstock has gone up it seems but has the same low "per-item" commission. Fotolia is about equal and DT seems to go a little below (Probably because of the upload limit they have there)
What are your experiences..And explanations...