Thanks for all the comments everyone.  Is it really the case that CanStock only pays 25c for subs?  How extraordinary.

Has that changed?  I thought Emerald used to be 50,000.

A rising tide floats all boats.  A waning tide sinks all boats.  iStock appears to be a sinking business.  Look for agencies where the tide is rising.  Put all your effort into those agencies, and don't bother with those where the boats are sinking.

I see from the Poll on the right that CanStock is showing results similar to BigStock.  Does this reflect reality for most people?  Is CanStock worth uploading to, or are the numbers misleading like Deposit?  Has there been any improvement and/or progress at CanStock since they were integrated into Fotosearch?

I searched for all the details on this deal and in doing so came across a Moodys credit report that had a headline in September that Getty had warned of continuing deterioration in its mid-stock business.  Unfortunately I couldn't access the full report, but the headline suggests a further warning of reduced or stagnant revenues.

It seems to me that Carlyle has abandoned Getty as a viable investment.  They have billions under their control, and usually if a business has a temporary hiccup and needs extra cash, the major shareholder will contribute further equity.  Indeed, this was the recommendation of Moodys, but it's clear that Carlyle didn't want to, so it forced Getty to raise cash in the junk bond market.  The fact that Carlyle didn't come to the rescue speaks volumes.  They've passed the buck onto investors who are prepared to consider higher risk investments.  And the higher risk is compensated somewhat by the high 10% coupon.

And what junk this is: it seems they had to come to an arrangement with existing bondholders to repay those bonds at only 65% of face value, hence the 'partial default' flagged by Moodys.  Those Bonds were actually trading at only 30c, so it's an improvement on market price, but still represents a loss of 35% on par.  They replaced those Bonds with a new issue, paying 10% interest and issued them at 95% of par.  Most extraordinary was the huge fee of 2.5% they had to pay the middleman to place those Bonds.  Make no mistake - this is a junk Bond issue.

If they have to go to such extraordinary lengths just to refinance a relatively small Bond, imagine what will happen when the $1.9 billion Bond expires in a few years.  That Bond is currently trading at only 60c on the Dollar, suggesting that the Bond market doubts that the Bond will ever be repaid at par.

Of course these fun and games can carry on for years and years.  Eventually it will come to a head, particularly if Getty/iStocks's gross revenue continues to deteriorate, but the climax is likely to be years away.

I went to the Getty web site and, using the RF Collection filter, I was able to select the Eyeem and Eyeem Premium collections.  Total of 734,771 files are shown.

According to this article by Lee, Adobe is launching extended licences priced at $79.99.  The terms will be the same as for Fotolia extended licences:

http://www.microstockdiaries.com/adobe-stock-adds-deeper-integration-video-and-extended-licenses.html

There was recently some discussion about the 'correct' price for extended licences at Fotolia, with many people arguing for $100 and Mat suggesting $60 based on his long term experience there.  Clearly Adobe's research suggests $79.99 to be the optimum price.

I imagine that in due course there will be pricing changes at Fotolia, perhaps introducing the EL at a standard price, but for the time being I'm going to price all my files at the same $79.99 for ELs.

On the other hand they also seem to accept quite a lot of poor quality stuff.  Looking through the latest uploads I see lots of pictures that are dull, poor lighting, poor composition, LCV.  Even looking at some searches by 'relevance' shows work of questionable quality.

I like Dreamstime because they are honest and trustworthy.  However, the management haven't got the entrepreneur spirit that Istock, Shutterstock and Fotolia had, and Dreamstime simply failed to make the same growth as the others during those years when the market was hot.  Now they appear to be copying the others by going for massive portfolio growth.  But without customer growth all that will happen is massive dilution of every portfolio and incomes will decline for everyone.

Those advertised amounts are in Pounds Sterling.  The non-exclusive plan works out at about $40, from which they will pay non-exclusives ten subs of 28c each, or $2.80.

That works out at a commission rate of 7%.  Or, to describe it differently, they get to keep 93% and pay their suppliers 7%.

The Exclusive numbers are a little better.  However the actual cash differences comparing credit sales and subs sales are substantial.  At the moment I believe Exclusives get between $8 and $14 for a sale.  If these subs replace credit sales (which appears to be the intention), then the maximum payment will be $2.50 per sale, and more like $1.25 on average.  So, ten sales that currently make $80 to $140 will reduce to somewhere in the range $12.50 to $25.00.

Just look at the eyeem collection on getty:

http://www.gettyimages.com/search/2/image?family=creative&license=rf&excludenudity=false&collections=EYM&Language=en-US

That's a very nice collection from eyeem.  I can see why Getty has pushed that collection to the front of the search results.

Yes, something happened a week or ten days ago.  My sales dropped by about 30% overnight and have stayed at the lower level ever since.  Most likely a search change, but of course it might be a seasonal thing.  I suspect a search change.  I don't mind search changes because generally they are swings and roundabouts and usually the situation recovers.  However, this time I've noticed that since the change new uploads don't seem to be getting the sales like before.

I plan to start to make stock videos from the beginning of next year, and feel that I should go straight to 4K.

My 5Dii only does HD I believe, so for 4K I'll have to invest in new equipment.

What equipment do people here use to produce high quality 4K?  What's the best to buy in terms of the best balance of budget and results?