Quote from: ibogdan on June 07, 2011, 02:32

I'm sorry for being a little off-topic but what's the lowest commission for a large sale? I sold a large sized image today (10 credits) for only $1.2. Usually all my large sales were in the range of 2-2.6$ as far as I remember.
Thank you!

it depends on the buyer... I had a XS for 0.07$ the other day.. which means I would get 0.7$ for a L 

If you questioned Support about really low value sales, they used to always click on the pat answer that these were old credits from about 2004. Now, though, it's an open secret that some buyers can buy credits far lower than advertised ('as low as �0.66 per credit' is the UK default), I believe 47c has been mooted.
Someone with a lot of spare money and time they don't know what to do with could no doubt take out some case against iStock inasmuch as these tiny credit prices are not made clear to contributors when they sign up ('false pretences'? 'full disclosure'). I'm not that person, though. 

Wow interesting.  I just had my post deleted what I said was "Remember they can always go up." in response to Juanmonio saying that the targets aren't as bad as he was expecting.  Lobo had said just that so I'm not sure why the post was deleted?

Here is what lobo said: "The likeliness that RC targets will be raised is infinitesimal."
 
To me that sounds like they can go up.  Guess I'll have to stick to posting here before I get banned again for comments like this.

Hmmmm. Wonder if Lobo knows that the chance that sales on the site will improve are infinitessimal. 

My June is off to a disheartening start.  Is this the beginning of the much talked about Summer Slowdown?

In previous years, my Summer slump * hasn't started until July, but as they say, the seasons are getting earlier.  
* Ha! I typed S followed by S first, and the system lengthened it to Shutterstock.

Well I liked it too. Thanks for resurrecting it here.

Did you get a note as to why this wasn't acceptable for the forums or did your post just get "disappeared"?

Lobo wan't brought up on the premise of "Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil"

They might even start playing rugby, the way real man do, not like a bunch of girls using all that armor and helmets (yes I mean American football)

Ooooh, Sexism alert. Women rugby players don't wear armour and helmets:
http://tinyurl.com/6f6taue
Neither do primary schoolgirls when they play rounders, which the USians call baseball. 

Me too. A great example that illustrates the difference is Top Gear (TV show) and Top Gear US. The latter is just so "watered down", boring, dull, just because they're are a nation so trembling of potential lawsuits. So much political correctness, that it makes you sick. And so sensitive. That is offensive! You hurt my feelings! LOL! Top Gear wouldn't be what it is without the sarcasm, without being offensive and edgy. Do you imagine the presenter in any US show calling someone an idiot directly in his face for not agreeing with him (it was meant as a joke and it was taken as such). Do you imagine calling it what it is and even exaggerating? For instance saying it's an appallingly looking car, total rubbish. And at the end of the show they do get sometimes lawsuit threats, but of course nobody files them, because GB (and Europe) truly has a freedom of speech and tolerance (the tolerance for someone being a bit intolerant if it's meant as a joke).

Actually, the reason is quite different. The UK is also ridden with the desire to be politically correct. Before the heady days of Smart Boards, my weans would come into S1 (first year high school) and scream at me for referring to the blackboard or the whiteboard, their primary teachers had told them to say 'chalk board' or 'dry wipe board', and even that I couldn't refer to 'coloured pencils', their primary teacher (that seemed to be only one teacher in one of our feeder primaries) had told them to call them 'rainbow pencils'. I kid you not.
Back to Top Gear. The reason Clarkson et al get off with all the tongue in cheek stuff is that the prog is put out by the Beeb, who don't have advertisers to sook up to. If it were on e.g. ITV, they would no doubt be aiming at car advertisers and would have to tone down their comments and criticisms accordingly. Anyway, in the UK, we're far more interested in Clarkson's (alleged) adulteries.

Wasn�t it Paul Klein that said that and wasn�t it technically correct as a financial term during a shareholder meeting? In the sense of "artists are our greatest financial responsibility"? I think Paul Cowan had info on that.

The Kelly Thompson I met, albeit briefly, is a very decent person. Also the rest of the HQ team are highly dedicated to the community. They don�t run around in crocodile leather outfits and I didn�t see them lighting cigars with 100 dollar bills.

But crowd sourcing communication is obviously not Kellys forte and it is obvious that istock is under pressure to lower royalties to artists from Getty. They only pay 20% and they have photographers begging them to join, so why shouldn�t they think this is an acceptable standard??

We will see how it plays out, every player in this business has to do his or her calculations to see what fits best for them.

I will remain exclusive, but will probably devote more time to other income streams or finally get into video, because I don�t see how I can reach 150 000 credits with my "coffee production" studio. I could try to make high quality wine, but I have invested over 30 000 dollars in what I have here and want to make the most of my investment.

FWIW, my new files sell, have views and get lightboxed so V/A doesn�t seem to be too much of a problem in my niche. Sales in general are of course very, very slow, but I don�t know if this is due to my lack of uploads in the last 18 months or general slowness because the site is losing buyers/dilution/etc...

I understood that 'liability' was a financial term, but so is 'asset'. And without his greatest 'liability' he'd have no 'assets' at all: the greatest programmers and marketers on the planet (!), and even the best masseuse are no use without content providers.
I'm guessing people queued up to get into Getty when the payments were so high that even 20% was a good income. Micro and dilution has eroded that, and I see that several (haven't a clue how many overall, but a fairly high number of those whose work I've admired) Getty togs have left Getty altogether, so work with smaller specialist agencies or to sell on their own sites. Of course, these are artists whose work is actively sought out by buyers.
Like you, my recent stuff is selling (unlike this time last year), but it's mostly not in areas where there are (m)any V/A files. If I were a horse photographer (for instance), I'd be dead in the water.

Well, the sculptor died in 1954, which means that I'm not yet at the 60 years point! I will put it on Alamy as well, and fill in the pieces about not having a property release,

IIRC, if you have no PR, it has to be RM at Alamy, so you should maybe reconsider whether you want to put it RM there or RF at any places which will accept it. Or it could be accepted as RF/editorial at e.g. iStock.

Oh, grief. I've just done my weekly stats. Worst week for downloads since week ending 2nd January and only one more dl than that week. Less than 50% of dls since the corresponding week last year, and I've increased my port by 20% since January alone. Probably only the big business buyers are left, wanting the commercial stuff.

Thanks for posting that Lisa. I couldn't believe I was reading what JB said. I guess he's all right, Jack.
Glad Lobo didn't delete your post. He deleted a previous one from another well-respected and very helpful in the forums contributor. I SMd her to check: she's hacked off with the forums (by which I inferred she meant Lobo) and pretty much finished with iStock. :-(

I know that we take risk of getting them online and agencies place that on our side.. 

The good thing about Alamy is that the agencies place the risk with the buyers, so long as we have honestly said that a PR is needed and we don't have one. (Trouble is, there's not an"almost certainly not" option, so I tend to err of the side of safety).
There are some 'commercial' uses which would almost certainly be OK, but wouldn't be allowed by e.g. iStock's editorial rules. E.g. take a general view of some tourist site - could be used in a guide book or travel article in a magazine, but technically not by a tourist board,, as that would be 'advertising' - but the chances of e.g. a shop objecting to being featured in a travel ad for a city are virtually nil.

I'm with click_click in general on this. Put up on Alamy and wait. But first check it out: I've sometimes found that even very obscure and localised subjects are well-represented on Alamy.
As for micros, I can only speak for iStock, but it's seems to be really hit and miss. I've had things rejected for editorial and told to 'submit them to the main collection', when I know that would be wrong, and things rejected for the main collection, even though I researched very carefully and gave all the relevant dates, the most important of which is the death of the artist - in the UK, a public artwork is always in the public domain 70 years after the death of the artist.
Once I scouted a carving above a door (the carving just happened to be above the door of a building, it wasn't a photo of the carving, but I researched it anyway) which had been rejected and got the obscure reply from Scout that 'it's not always only the date of the artist's death which is relevant', but as that wasn't explained, I'm none the wiser.