Very true, but a very big "if", too. I'd be happy if Self-Hosted on the right would rise into the numbers and then into the middle tier region within a couple years. And I think THAT is quite possible.

I vote for it with my numbers every month.

Calculate your RPI (royalty per image) for each agency per month by dividing your income by the number of images online. You might want to take an average over several months to get a more accurate number. Add all the agencies together, then divide that by your financial goal. That will be the number of images you need. That number may change along the way, so reevaluate occasionally.

And try to have some fun too. 

I picked 4, but I'm more of an illustrator that sometimes does graphic design.

Yes, I have been contacted by people of various nationalities, people looking for purchasing of my photos and graphics. Most of them usually had no problem with further communication in English, through as I mentioned, they initially looked for images in search engine using their own mother tongue.

Good to know. Thanks.

Nice advice. Your descriptions sound kind of long. You would probably be better served to put that as regular text and not as a meta description (if that is what you meant). I do like the translation idea. I'm not sure how I'd implement that, but I'll have to keep it in mind. I guess my concern with that would be an obligation to provide support in those languages. Have you received any questions/emails in other languages?

SS seems to be the only place where Yuri has no longer files which must have been the main request by Getty (all other its fine), that shows their fear of SS and the desperation of selling

interesting to see how exclusives can't have a single file anywhere (except RM), believe they must be very happy about this different treatment

I would imagine that it is the easiest place to remove files. You just hit the off switch. That and if his issue was with subs, then it's the biggest target too.

Quote from: SNP on May 18, 2013, 11:15

other than reading other peoples' opinions about Yuri, I've had very few of my own about him. I don't know him. but this move speaks volumes, about the industry, about Getty and about greed versus principle.

Yuri, this seems like kind of a "screw you rest of the industry, now I'm the king of the playground". to each his own I guess.

I think it's a business decision, he thinks he can make more money with Getty than on the sub sites.  Why does it have to be more complicated than that?  It would be pretty crazy for him to choose to make less money so he can say "screw you rest of the industry, now I'm the king of the playground".

And what's this talk about principle?  Is it more principled to license your work through 50 different agencies including Istock and Getty rather than just through Istock and Getty.

I agree. It is hard to say what the deal was and if any of us wouldn't have made the same deal if it was offered to us. I can't blame anybody for making decisions that they think are in the best interests of their own business.

And maybe, just a hint of maybe, this will help wake up the micros (some of them, anyway) to look at more fair commissions.  I know I am probably dreaming, but it can be one tiny phase in a changing, evolving model.

That is my hope as well.

It's a 20% increase, I would say that's a lot.

It's more, but I wouldn't say it's a lot. I wouldn't go back for 30% even as a non-exclusive.

It's about 2 years too late for me, but I'm glad to see something moving in a positive direction.

@ dirkr

Buyers doesn't care where the most artist will send their work, so random agencies won't sell more just if they reach 20M photos. It's not nearly enough just to stop send to one place and start send to other.

This is about marketing, and marketing costs (unless there is a lot of buzz on the internet). If those agencies can't or won't put their effort in marketing, somebody has to...

Actually... As someone that does this, I can say it does have results. Not in every case, but I've had success with limiting my new files to a few agencies. I'm over 2 years in on this little experiment, and it is going well.

The problem with this approach though is I'm still competing with everyone else that is still uploading everywhere else. Not that I expect everyone to jump ship and do what I'm doing. But, I know that their efforts do work against mine for moving traffic to the better paying agencies.

You're wrong on a couple of points there. Firstly SS's gain, over the last 2-3 years, has not been on subscription sales but mainly on OD's, EL's and SOD's. Sub sales have actually been relatively stable.

It really depends on your perspective. SS really stopped growing for me several years ago. Sub sales were replaced with On Demand sales with a marginal net gain. Then things stalled out, and I backed away to explore other opportunities. Maybe that is an alien view on things, but they really weren't growing for me.

Secondly, SS are somewhat unique in that they haven't actually reduced royalties to contributors (barring the recent reduction to the absurdly over-generous historical referral scheme) since they started.

Despite all that, they were still 6 times less than my RPD on IS and even more on other sites. I know that is apples to oranges, but the bottom line wasn't that much more impressive either.

I don't think SS are a 'genius of the market' either. I'm just utterly gob-smacked how utterly stupid most of their competitors have behaved. SS quite literally didn't have do anything other than concentrate efforts on their customers' experience ... to win the game outright in an almost embarrassingly short amount of time. In a crowded, competitive market that should have been the obvious thing to do. Somehow all their competitors concentrated their efforts on maximising the bottom-line of the next quarter rather than the next 5 years. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I think that is my issue. I'm not overly impressed with SS's domination of the competition. Especially on the vector side, SS is a wasteland of poor review standards and copyright free-for-all. I've also seen several small sites quickly rival my  earnings with SS in a matter of years. Like I said, I'm sure my experience is rare, but it still exists.

SS understands the market and what they are really selling. IS, DT and FT simply don't __ and that's why they are being taken to the cleaners by SS. You may not like the implications of that but it is what's actually happening.

I'm not sure that is true. IS was doing quite well until they started burning the place down. I think the fundamental model of IS is still sound. I know I modeled my own personal site off of parts of it. It's just that the royalty percentages were garbage, so it didn't seem like a stable place to be.

It is very interesting news for independents and maybe people with very special content can now make deals with getty to have their content placed even higher than before.

I'm wondering if that is the real future. As contributors pull away, will these sites have to invite them back through side deals? If so, my phone is available for calls.