Is there anything to stop a group of independents getting together and forming a company to use for istock?  We could eventually then get the highest exclusive commission, get in to all the higher priced collections and Getty.  The admin might be a bit complicated but it shouldn't be too difficult to have a database and split earnings up.  Seems like a better option than being stuck with less than 20% commission and having bad image placement in the search.

How does the Istock exclusivity concept work in that case? With Istock it's contributor exclusivity, not image exclusivity. Is a company a valid "contributor" in that regard? Independent of who contributes there?
In my mind it would automatically mean every contributor to the company will become exclusive to Istock according to their terms (no other RF business outside Getty). So joining such a company is equal to applying for exclusivity plus the added bonus of the highest commission level...

None deactivated so far.
As the lowered commissions kick in next year, I will start deactivating then, not before.

It will be interesting to see what happens in January, as I assume many independents who plan to delete their portfolios will wait until then. Only then we will see if that will lead to a significant number of images disappearing from Istock or not.

same here, very annoying...

Quote from: dirkr on September 22, 2010, 07:38

Quote from: whatalife on September 22, 2010, 07:25

Quote from: vlad_the_imp on September 21, 2010, 10:17

My download numbers have dropped over the years but my sales have increased. As long as this continues I'm OK with it.

The problem is that now, as the prices increase and the download numbers decrease, so do the redeemable credits. The total amount of sales dollars may be greater, but it will become harder and harder to earn a higher percentage of them.

That depends on whether a price increase is achieved by increasing credit prices or by increasing number of credits needed to by an image.

True. Based on your previous experience, which do you think will be the more likely scenario?

Both. IIRC (those with a better memory of the Istock history may correct me) prices of credit packages did change more often, but numbers of credits to buy an image have been changed with the introduction of Vetta, E+ and the recent price reduction of non-exclusive images.
The general concept seems to be using different credit prices to give discounts to bigger buyers and using different credit numbers to set the prices for different content.
I would expect them to play with both parameters, but the number of credits having a bigger effect.

The prices to buyers have ballooned enormously. Six years ago the average price a buyer paid per file was 96c. Today for non-exclusive it is about $3.85 and for exclusives probably about $6. That is a price increase of 300% to 500% in just six years (hand up all those who have managed to quadruple their own pay in that time).

Now, there is no doubt that the product was selling at a steep discount to its true value back in 2004 and that the value has been further enhanced by improved quality in the intervening years. However, it is obvious that istock cannot continue on the path to ever-higher pricing at the same rate. If it did, the average sale price of exclusive files six years from now would need to be something like $36 and in 12 years it would have to be $200.

As prices rise, so will resistance to further increases. From a low base, a 50% increase will simply be swallowed and will give an almost 50% increase in turnover. But when prices get significantly higher, putting them up by half might lose you a third of your customers leaving you with no benefit at all (150% x 0.66 = 100%) and if you lose half your customers then the 50% price increase costs you money (25% fall in turnover). I suspect that is where iStock has got to and the idea of exclusive+ and Vetta is to wave goodies at the limited number of customers who are not price sensitive without alienating those who are. At the same time, Thinkstock is meant to be a safety net to recapture value from those customers who are being driven out of the basic collection.

But if increasing prices by any significant amount has become counterproductive, then profits are going to hit a plateau instead of continuing their upward spiral. The one thing that was truly, literally unsustainable in the policies put in place in 2005 was the principle of annual 50% or thereabouts price hikes. That strategy was only abandoned this year, when - for I think the first time - price cuts were added to the mix and everything was made far more complicated with various special premium pricing levels (exclusive, exclusive-+, Vetta and now Agency) being introduced.

I think it is unlikely that they will try to screw any more out of the base-level buyers. Instead, they will probably try to further increase the price differential between the base collection and the premium collections next year and maybe try to market iStock directly to traditional buyers who are used to paying higher prices.

The presence of non-exclusives could undermine this strategy by offering Vetta-quality files at low-end prices. So they may go further in their efforts to push us out, while trying to get all the best exclusive files into the higher-priced collections, leaving only the lowest-quality material available at base prices.

Maybe.

Great post.

Assuming that Istock's strategy is what you describe, I see two fundamental flaws in that (Istock's, not yours) thinking:

1: Although it seems reasonable that selling different quality material at different price points can be successfully achieved, they are making the wrong decision as to what constitutes "quality". They are are making the cut based on the fact if something is exclusive to them or not. But that does not necessarily mean it's of different quality. They should try to find a way to include (current) non-exclusive material in their higher priced collections.

2: They are not acting in a total vacuum. If (following point 1) they decide (as you have written) that high quality non-exclusive content is a danger to their strategy and thus try to minimize that content, they will most likely not have an impact on this content being offered for lower prices via their competition. (at least I have not read many comments of independents planning to go exclusive due to the announced changes).

There would be a cure to these two problems: Image exclusivity.
It would allow Istock to offer exclusive material at higher prices while at the same time have a base collection to compete against the other micro sites. And that without forcing every contributor to decide on "all or nothing" with regards to Istock.

I personally think their move from rewarding life-time achievement (the existing cannister system) to near-time achievements (via measuring last years sales) could have been a success - if they had left out the part of lowering the already industry-lowest non-exclusive commissions and opened up their exclusive scheme to allow for image exclusivity.

I understand the argument that everyone has the right to complain about changes and everyone deserves a fair commission, etc.  Which I 100% agree with.  There's a faction here that says downloads don't matter, and there's a faction that says that past performance does matter in judging the validity of the argument.  I do believe that DLs and tenure do matter because the statistical reference point that a person that has 38 downloads over 1 year or 500 downloads over 5 years carries much less weight than someone who is at 12000 dls over 3 years or something like that.  Experience is a huge player in almost any job and this is obviously no different.  

I'm not saying that people with crappy ports or low dls do not have valid arguments, and in a lot of cases they do, what I'm saying is that when people who are predicting the future from a such a small reference sample its hard to take that prediction seriously given the lack of data/experience to back up claims.

Then there's always those that just go off the deep end anyways....whatever it is...this off topic reply is just to try to incorporate the idea that dls and experience and portfolio exposure do matter a bit more than many peopel here are willing to admit.

You are right, the size of a portfolio and the number of sales is a reasonable metric for past experience in the microstock market.

Whether it is sufficient to give you any indication about things happening in the future after the recently announced changes (for which you have no equivalent data points in your past history, however successful you are) is a completely different questions.
My personal belief is that these changes are fundamentally different than any of the other changes in the past (e.g. price increases) that have been mentioned in this and other threads. Therefore extrapolating past experiences into the future might lead to wrong results.

On the other hand (as I have been on the receiving side of such comments as well I feel the need to comment) most of the times when the port size or sales numbers of member here have been brought up it was not in the context of how much experience was needed to take part in the discussion - mostly it seems to me that making such statements is nothing else but the attempt to attack the reputation of a person out of the lack of real arguments.

Over time, it might be best to upload to lots of sites.  I am currently on 10.  But since 90% of my earnings come from the big four, it may be a more realistic goal for departing Istock exclusives to just focus on getting their portfolios on FT, DT, and SS.  Once they are getting steady earnings there, then they would have time to explore the other sites. 

It might be a good idea to support those sites that actually pay fair commissions as well (if time permits), even if they currently don't provide a big portion of sales. If they don't have our portfolios, they never will be big sellers - and the other big sites will have it easier following Istock and lowering our commissions.

Some of those agencies have been listed here.

Did anybody expect any changes?

But they clearly describe why it is in the interest of every independent contributor to remove his / her portfolio from Istock:
They cut our share to have more money. They want to use this money for more marketing. To lure buyers away from sites that pay us higher commissions. So in the end we are financing the marketing campaign that will cost us twice - once by buyers leaving higher paying sites and second by accepting lower commissions from the place where they end up.
Not a good plan.

If I have say $2000.00 per year, and I spend all that at istock, its a safe bet that about 20-35% will go to the artists. So if I'm trying to support the artists first, I'm better to spend that money at stockfresh of another place where the contributor gets paid more.

At least for independents Istock has always been the place paying the lowest commissions. Many people accepted that due to their high sales volumes. But from a "fair trade" standpoint Istock has never been the perfect place to buy from.
But the really outrageous thing is that they now even want to lower the already lowest commission further.

I can only applaud you for your actions and for your motivation to do so. If enough buyers would follow, in the end a bigger part of the money spent ends up in artists' pockets, that can only be a positive move for the whole industry.

And, as you are referring to Stockfresh, there are more sites out there paying 50% or more to contributors:

Yaymicro, GraphicLeftovers, Clipdealer, Zoonar, The3dStudio, Alamy to mention the few that come to my mind.
Many of these are low earners for the most of us right now, but that doesn't mean they should stay unmentioned. They deserve our support as well.

In the coffee world, the farmers yelled and screamed for more money, but it wasn't until people started to realized the benefits of fair trade that the farmers started to get paid fairly for there work. Art buyers are mostly socially conscience people, I think the industry should start a movement for fair trade royalties. Maybe that just crazy I don't know, just trying help and give a different perspective.

I don't think that's crazy, a "fair trade seal" for stock sites has been discussed elsewhere on this board. I think it would be a good thing to have, but it will need work to get it going...

Because they automatically go there after a period of time with no sales.

Anybody knows what that period of time is exactly?

Quote from: jamirae on September 14, 2010, 22:48

actually I calculated it out.  and with the lower credit costs for non-exculsive images at iStock, iStock will actually be making LESS off my images when I cancel exclusivity.
...

Yes, that's known by anyone who's taken the time to examine the ins-and-outs of iStock. I think it's even been mentioned a few times on this forum - guess not everyone was paying attention.

But what everybody leaves out of the equation: This is only true if you assume the same number of images is bought irrespective of price.
If, OTOH, image buyers are working on a fixed budget it looks different - they may buy more for cheaper prices.

As Istock has mentioned themselves in the announcements (or what I read out of it), their concern is the average commission paid out for the total sum of sales they are making. In that respect, cancelling exclusivity (but leaving the portfolio for sale on Istock) is 100% in line with Istock's goals.

I see from this thread, that Ss bought BS.

Are my SS pictures then also automaticaly shown on BigStock?

Anynone know about this?

No. Submission processes have stayed completely separate.