Interesting to see how little of the money goes to American suppliers, and also to UK and Germany.  By inference by far the largest portion goes to Russia, Baltic States, ex Eastern Bloc, where we know that many of the high volume producers, factories live.

Those Countries have seen their currencies plunge by 20% to 30% against the Dollar over the past year, effectively giving them a 20% to 30% pay rise in local currency.  Those guys probably have massive smiles on their faces as they are earning 20% to 30% more than last year.  They won't be joining in the call for a raise from Shutterstock, because they are already creaming in the dough.

Just use the white dropper in Photoshop - click on what is meant to be the brightest and cleanest white, and hey presto.

Hmm... that's one helluvva drop at Shutterstock.

Yes, Jo Ann, I applied to Deposit and got that same email - special treatment, priority search placement etc etc.  Sounded a bit fishy to me.

But what about the Poll over on the right?  Are people saying that DP's position there isn't real, that it's been manipulated in some way?

Is DP just a 'front' for a business that sends images to countless third party agencies in Russia, Eastern Bloc etc, taking the lion's share of the income and then just paying out subs to suppliers?  It's owned by a Russian guy isn't it?  Or is it a genuine agency with potential?

Well, another bad day at Shutterstock, as if all my work is invisible.  Even new uploads seem to be disappearing into a black hole of invisibility.

I know I've only been non-exclusive for just over a month, but I know what's commercial and attractive, and I know what sells.  At other agencies I'm making good progress, but at Shutterstock it seems that those same files get uploaded and just disappear without even a single download.  For me, SS just seems to be a place where I upload and files die.  There's clearly something wrong, but what that is I've no idea.

Have you checked to make sure your images show up in a search? A while back they had some bug where if you searched and ordered by Newest first, the new files ended up on the last page (which clearly didn't help sales!). Support is generally pretty responsive if you have to report a problem.

Yes, I saw that bug when I first started uploading - all my files at the back of the search.  Didn't give me much inspiration to upload more work, I must say.  Problem seems to have been solved at the moment.

Well, my apologies to all.  I now see that I've actually had a small flurry of sales.  I had been mistakenly expecting the 'balance' shown in the top right of the page to change to reflect sales, but now realise that balance is for buying customers only.  It seems that to actually see sales, one has to go to the downloads section of the supplier dashboard.  My mistake, and glad to see some sales.

I've been uploading to a number of agencies since becoming non-exclusive on Feb 1st, 123RF amongst them.  I've uploaded a couple hundred files, some of which have been good sellers in the past.  So far not a single sale.  Not one.  Not even a 25c sub sale.  I realise that 200 files isn't much, but with proven sales in the past I'm somewhat surprised at how dead 123RF feels.  I know that others here have a solid experience at 123RF.  Is it one of those agencies where it just takes time for things to fall into place?

They've still got Sean on the front page as 'Featured Photographer'.  But nothing in his Bio, and nothing in his portfolio.

A click on the Education category reveals just three images.

Looks like a dead duck to me.

It looks soft to me, in other words not tack sharp.  There's sensor noise all over the sky, more so in the darker areas of course.  You can get rid of that noise by selecting the blue channel and applying noise reduction or a gaussian blur.

LCV means Low Commercial Value.  This is just a snapshot of some uninteresting dome somewhere.  There's no copyspace - the dome is just sitting there slap bang in the middle of the picture.  Nothing to identify what it is or where it is.  Very unlikely to sell, hence LCV.

To be fair, if this was a HCV pic, it might get accepted despite the technical shortcomings (a designer can always get rid of the noise and/or sharpen it).

If you want a further opinion, perhaps JSnover will have a look - she's the photoshop and image expert around here.

If you want to produce lots of highly saleable and technically good stock photos, get rid of your small sensor camera and buy one that has at least an APS-C sensor.  I suspect that your Sony is going to be a source of tremendous frustration for stock photography.  That doesn't mean it's not a good camera for general use.  Standards have gone up, particularly at Shutterstock, with thousands of high quality photos being submitted every day.  The inspectors don't need to accept second best, and they'll just reject unless the picture is unique or has seriously high commercial value.

I think this situation looks bad for Getty.  The bond market is suggesting insolvency, possibly bankruptcy in the years ahead.  The 7% bonds trade at 63c giving an interest yield of 11.3%.  That's junk status and implies 'very high risk of losing your money'.

It's okay at the moment.  But crunch the numbers.  There's $2.6 billion of debt, all of which needs refinancing during the next five years.  If all of that has to be refinanced at junk levels of 11.3%, that would produce an annual interest payments liability of $293 million.  Getty's 4th quarter EBITDA was $67 million.  That annualises at $268 million.  Potential debt liability is greater than annualised EBITDA.  And remember what KK said - 50% of sales are made in the last quarter of the year, so that annualised revenue figure might be optimistic.

They have to sell some assets to reduce debt at some point in the next couple of years.  OR, they will have to renegotiate current debt.  OR default.  If they cannot renegotiate they might opt for Chapter 11 to protect themselves from creditors while they restructure the business.

None of this will happen now, but the bond market is pricing in the likelihood of it happening in the years ahead.  It seems to me that the bonds are massively overpriced even at 63c.

As suppliers we can only hope that they manage to reduce the debt and get the business back onto a growth track.  I suspect that in order to achieve that, the current owners will ask the CEO to fall on his sword, and they'll bring in a turnaround or restructuring specialist.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-25/carlyle-s-getty-images-said-to-run-tight-on-cash-as-profit-drops

Doesn't look good for Getty.  Bonds have declined to junk status.  Istock declining.  Cash running out.

This situation was predictable - it's just a question of simple maths.  In September they reduced the prices of all the E+, S+ and Vetta files by up to 80%.  Before, customers were happily paying high prices for those files.  After September they could get those same files for just 20% of the price.  This wasn't a reason for customers to buy more files - they just continued buying but at vastly reduced prices.  Anyone could have forseen what that would mean for iStock's gross revenue.

Non-exclusive file prices were increased slightly, but that just wasn't enough to compensate for the massive price reductions in the exclusive collection.

At the same time customers were being encouraged to switch to subscriptions.  Now, instead of paying up to $100 for a Vetta, that entire Vetta collection is now available at subscription prices.

This combination of events, coupled with lack of marketing, has resulted in iStock's annual gross revenue falling by up to $50 million.  Moody's had already reported that iStock's gross revenue fell 7% over the twelve months to October 2014, amounting to circa $20 million.  So the changes implemented over the past couple of years have basically reduced iStock's gross revenue by circa $70 million (educated guesswork).  This at a time when Shutterstock's gross revenue has been increasing by 40% per annum.

Now the ratings agencies will be seriously considering cutting Getty's debt to junk status, putting tremendous pressure on Getty to somehow recover the lost revenue.  They won't so that by increased marketing spend, because that will further damage profits in the short term.  The only other alternative is to continue to reduce costs and payments to suppliers.  This does not bode well for exclusives because the obvious place to cut is the 30% and 40% exclusive commissions.  And the $2.50 subscription payments for the old E+, S+ and Vetta files.  With deteriorating financials, it cannot be justified to pay out $2.50 to a supplier when a perfectly good non-exclusive image pays only $0.28 (ten times less).

Further best match changes to give greater exposure to non-exclusive files should be expected.

Despite all these things, iStock and Thinkstock still generate gross revenue in the $250 to $300 million range, which makes them a significant force in the industry, second to Shutterstock at $350 million.  I think the outlook for non-exclusives is quite good, with the probability of rising sales (and income) over the next couple of years, not from expansion of the business but from best match shifts and increased subscription exposure.  At the same time the outlook for exclusives seems to be dire.

I handed in my crown at the turn of the year.  I had an excellent run at istock over several years as an exclusive, but I think the best opportunities there will be as a non-exclusive in the future.