I think Getty has scored one of the most amazing own goals, and that they are right now left with very few options.

I've had a couple of conversations with analysts over the last couple of years where they've been trying to sanity check Getty's "it's all fixed now" claims. I think Getty has all the credibility of Melissa Meyer saying that Yahoo's on the road back to market dominance. Getty doesn't understand why they've had troubles so they keep "fixing" things that don't address the reasons customers have gone elsewhere. IMO.

There are a couple of notes on your history section. iStock has had two cracks at subscriptions, the second of which was in 2014. The first was in 2008:

http://www.stockphototalk.com/phototalk/2008/04/istockphoto.html

It had many good points but it was too complicated for buyers and never really went anywhere.

Another big issue was Getty not understanding that many iStock buyers were also contributors. They largely destroyed the relationship with small design firms and anyone left probably departed when they effectively jacked up the price of small size images by having one price for everything.

The web site has been in such a bad state of repair for so long - often as various "improvements" were deployed in broken states - that it was much easier to do business almost anywhere else

Another big issue about pricing is that it is impossible to comprehend why some images are three times the price of others. Bog standard stock images (and some of the Getty leftovers pushed to iStock would never have been approved prior to this) are overpriced. I think that leaves buyers feeling it's a hard place to shop for images - and Shutterstock has certainly harped on about a single price for everything (even though their corporate buyers pay different prices).

When Vetta was introduced, the tightly curated collection at a higher price was something almost anyone could grasp. Whether you agreed with the curation decisions or not, it was clear that there was some reasoning behind. After that, things really unraveled, starting with the Agency Collection.

For a while, Getty's message about iStock was effectively "don't shop there". On the iStock site, buyers were referred to Getty for more images. On Getty, they were referred to Thinkstock and vice versa. None of the Getty properties referred buyers back to iStock. There was a story from a contributor who worked at a design firm of a visit from Getty sales reps to his company where they told the company not to buy from iStock because it wasn't legally safe to use their images! Jonathan Klein was frequently snide about user-generated content on iStock.

It's possibly a small thing, but iStock used to be a place where the customers and the contributors could interact in the forums (there was a Request forum; designers could showcase designs which linked to the illustrations or photos used; there were Steel Cage matches and so on). Getty killed that all way before they closed the iStock forums. It's not possible to put a number on how much business that might have cost them, but I think this was part of the process of rendering iStock just one more stock site versus the buyer's first choice place to look.

If you add up the many little things done to drive buyers away over time, I think you see that once buyers moved to somewhere else as their first place to look and they were getting what they needed, you can't get them back by saying "Look! I'm not as bad as I used to be". Why would they switch if they're happy where they are?

Getty's best hope is for Shutterstock to really p*ss off its buyers somehow so they start looking for an alternative. I don't think the odds are good.

I have a small number of photos at Pond5 (don't have more because the sales are so low and their upload process so cumbersome) but I found out today, totally by chance, that if I don't upload an ID my work can't be sold there.

I don't remember getting any e-mail from Pond5 about this, but thought I should post here in case anyone else (like me) didn't upload an ID when originally creating my account and didn't know about this new requirement.

I received e-mail today asking me to fill out a survey telling them what they could improve. At the end, it asked me for my Pond5 user name and account e-mail address. I logged in (which I haven't done for over 6 months) to find out because I had no clue. The upload page had the following alert:

"Welcome! To protect you and your work, we ask all contributing artists to confirm their identity. Your files will not be able to be sold until a valid photo of your ID is uploaded. The accepted types of identification are a passport, drivers license, or other government-issued ID."

There was a note somewhere else on the page that they were urging contributors to complete this step by Jan 1 2016...

I made a JPEG of my driver's license with all the ID numbers pixelated and uploaded it. The response message was:

"Please wait about 7 days for the ID review process to complete. Meanwhile, feel free to upload and prepare your content for the curatorial process.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us."

Sales are so slow there (for photos) that it doesn't matter, but if I had a large portfolio which suddenly wasn't for sale because of a new ID requirement they never told me about, I'd be pretty ticked. Shame I can't go back to the survey and add mishandling this requirement to my list of how they could improve

It's still a complicated question - distribution deals often mean there are multiple parties involved, each taking a cut. At Alamy, you get 50% of a sale Alamy makes but if it's a distribution sale , you get 30% (the distributor gets 40%, Alamy get's 30% and you get 30%).

With Shutterstock, the answer is different for subscription sales from OD, SOD and ELs, and for several categories there are different buyer price levels even though the payouts to the contributor don't vary (ELs as one example)

Why do you want to know this? If the details matter, it's really complicated. If they don't, what's the point?

You can see the gross agency cut just by looking at the royalties they pay us, but profit (meaning what they earn after their costs are deducted) is something you can only see for a public company - Shutterstock is the only one right now. They have links to their financial filings on their investor pages

http://investor.shutterstock.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=251362&p=irol-irhome

Everybody is entitled to his opinion.
However, waiting until many others have joined and pushed it, and have reported frequent sales is basically the laziest and most cowardly attitude anyone can have toward a new enterprise.
Well, that was my opinion.

You're right, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. My opinion is that I deeply resent your characterization of those who aren't ready to participate in this venture as having "...the laziest and most cowardly attitude anyone can have toward a new enterprise"

I won't repeat my list of concerns, but so far I've heard only peppy marketing talk and insults to address those concerns.

There's an old expression that you'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. If you're trying to draw people to the new endeavor, I don't think this is a good way to go about it.

I have no idea what the guidelines for 1099s require (you can read them below, but I really don't know if what Envato's doing is OK).

Someone would have to challenge what they are doing in court to get them to change it. Given the costs of doing that, who earns enough there to want to spend the money on lawyers?

https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1099msc/

Potential contributors to Symzio should note a few key terms

1. Content is licensed under Symzio's license - contributors do not get to set their own license terms (see Business Practices/your contract)

http://www.symzio.com/support

And the license

http://www.symzio.com/licensing

2. The contributor terms allow Symzio to close accounts for any or no reason. This is standard for stock agencies, but seems odd considering the tag line on Symzio's home page "Welcome to Symzio, the first completely contributor controlled stock photo, vector and video licensing agency"

http://www.symzio.com/terms

There are other references to closure for violation contributor guidelines, but also the following:

"Symzio may, at its own discretion, for any reason whatsoever, close a Contributor's account without notice. If the Contributor's account is closed for a breach of any of our terms, any outstanding royalties will be forfeited.

Symzio may, at its own discretion, reinstate Contributor accounts. In this case, Symzio may charge Contributors $250 for reinstatement."

They close the account and then charge $250 to allow it to be opened again? Really?

3. The contributor FAQ talks about the importance of accurate tagging and ensuring editorial content is tagged as such - absolutely reasonable. But it then follows up with a rather vaguely worded condition that you'll have to cough up $250 to get your account back if some audit determines you've made mistakes too often:

"Our team regularly peruses the Symzio engine and if an image that appears to be editorial is found to be missing the tag, we will flag it. If your images are found to be missing editorial tags more than once, your contributor account will be temporarily disabled and you will have to pay the re-inclusion fee for reinstatement."

And who gets to decide if the editorial tag should be there? If there are to be such draconian penalties, there need to be detailed guidelines as to what the Symzio agency's standards are for requiring an editorial tag. Vague handwaving about "appears to be editorial" just doesn't cut it.

Using "contributor controlled" as a marketing gimmick and having terms like most agencies that leave the contributor largely powerless seems to me to be contradictory.

Read the agreements very carefully to be sure you can live with them before participating.

I could be wrong, but I think the community that was iStock just doesn't exist any more - anywhere. There are some facebook groups of iStock contributors; Shutterstock has its own forums, but I always found those had a terrible signal to noise ratio

You say you were exclusive - meaning you're planning to contribute to other sites now? Shutterstock will (right now) probably be your best source for a good monthly income, but even there you'll find problems (read the thread here on image spam; more than just idle complaints, it speaks to the ability of new work to find its feet and gain good search position). Lots of people have hopes that Adobe will bring a big boost to Fotolia, but there's not a lot of evidence of sales growth mentioned here - so far anyway.

Shutterstock was organizing get togethers of contributors - ShutterWalk - but I don't know how active this is

If you plan to contribute to public forums, be aware that some agencies will close your account if they don't like what you say - that's why many people are anonymous.

As far as visual trends, I have no clues to offer, but some searches on stock sites (include Stocksy as an example of an agency that wants to project a distinctive style and Shutterstock as the big box store with something of just about everything) should help.

Good luck

Mine also says I have 7,000 uploads left this week. I don't think it can have anything to do with database exposure or portfolio exposure as mine are both tiny - 0.05% and 0.47%

I would guess it has to do with something copyrighted (or which they are concerned might be) in your submission. Compliance is the name of the branch of Shutterstock support that handles claims about copyright infringement

I haven't received one, but I only received a card once or twice in the past, so I've never known exactly how these things were handled

Is this the new business model? Photographers lending money to agency and clients?

Any thoughts on this?

As others have pointed out, it's not new. It is one way Alamy can justify higher prices there versus at other sites which don't give these generous credit terms. Long time between download and payment is an element of their business model.