I also want to apologize to the employee at iStock that I have been feeding and clothing for the last couple of years. I won't be able to pay your salary next year. You'll have to find someone else to adopt you. 

Maybe it's gone? All I get is a blank page. On the other hand, maybe you should leave one photo, that won't sell, so you can potentially have an account should things change?

One that doesn't show seems appropriate? 

No, it's still there it's the only one that shows up in my upload section. The others say this file has been deactivated when you go to their pages, so I guess it's just a hiccup. I left on file at FT when I left there, and in hindsight, I wish I'd just deleted them all. Oh well, I'm off to support.

I'm surprised he doesn't have a deal too. And since most (if not all) of the employees at istock seem to be contributors, no way that little tidbit could be kept secret. A good argument for NOT allowing employees to be contributors (seems like it would be a conflict of interest anyway, but even Bruce was a contributor. Guess that's what set the precedent.)

I guess the prevailing opinion that he would need a deal at all tells you something about how the place is run. Unless, not setting up a ton of roadblocks is considered a deal now.  

Wow. Lot's of comments on this one. I am surprised that no one mentions the economic state we are in. Our internal speculations in my department on this matter are mostly related to the crisis and the fact that agencies are not raising prices.

That's a good theory, but I'm skeptical of this. I've found my freelance business and stock income have been pretty stable over the last few years. The distribution among various agencies of those stock sales though has changed drastically. I think the stock field is just volatile. Buyers jump around and sites change. It's hard to track buyers and even if they jump between two agencies your on, it's not necessarily a 1 to 1 ratio. Does an iStock buyer that moves to DT start buying small sub packages instead of credit sales? That can make a big difference in profit.

It seems it might actually be a good idea to restrict where I sell to make sure I'm always making a decent profit from each sale. That's my theory recently anyway. If not, then I'll probably end up trying (and failing) to maintain some ridiculously massive volume of sales at some pathetic RPD while fending off millions of new contributors. At that point, I think I might as well take a professional job catching falling swords.

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but I don't think it should be free.

You don't think healthcare should be free? Why is that? I'd consider it a basic right, along with education. But of course we're all commies here in Europeland ;-)

It does make you wonder about the LIFE part in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I don't mind paying for my health care. I just wish it was a little more reasonably priced and a lot less corrupt.

Absolutely, it's a shame there isn't one.

I get an average of $5+ for an XL, $4+ for Large and $3 for Medium downloads on iStockphoto, Shutterstock pays me $2.85 (or for 80% of my sales there 38c ) for an XXL download, Dreamstime have a sliding scale but the average is way lower than iS.

As soon as a site comes along that pays better commissions and has the number of sales that iStock does, I'll take suggestions like yours seriously.

I agree, but when you start averaging in subs from Thinkstock and Photos.com, that's going to bring that average way down. Then, they are just another agency with a poor RPD and a pathetic royalty rate.

I didn't bother trying to limit it. I knew that between the micros and freelance that there was no way to keep under that. I'm just going to pay my taxes as usual. Which reminds me... it's quarterly time again. Spend it wisely Uncle Sam.  

We will have this feature shortly, but it'll be optional, so any contributor will be able to disable this "copy creation" feature. To start this feature will be disabled for any older files previously on Cutcaster, and enabled by default for all new.  You will start to see this feature by the end of the month.

Good to hear it will be optional.

Since screaming NO like I'm being mauled by a bear probably isn't very helpful, I'll elaborate. 

iStock never sold sizes for vectors, and they were (probably still are) one of the best earners for vector contributors. I regularly had the same number of sales on IS as I did at DT, but I would make about 3 times more (even at 20% royalty) on IS because DT has subs and sells smaller sizes. If iStock would have paid me 50% like DT did at one time, they would have easily equaled the earnings of all the other agencies combined while selling a much smaller amount.  I just think selling smaller sizes vastly undercuts earnings.

From a buyers perspective as well, I regularly would buy the smallest size I need when purchasing images for clients. If all they offered was the largest size, then I would buy that for my client instead. So, contributors lost out on the price difference because there was one.

Yes, you could argue that you might miss out on sales for more budget conscious clients, but I think they don't necessarily help your earnings as much as they hurt them. In the end, if you offer someone the option to save money, they'll take it. Even if they don't care or it doesn't matter to them.

There's some good info at www.illustrationinfo.com, Cory Thoman's site. It covers microstock basics and has some basic illustrator tutorials - may be a good place to start. A lot of microstock methodology and workflow is trial and error - and sometimes best to find out for yourself on subjects like exclusivity, subject matter, return per image, etc. Everyone's situation, talent, and lived experience is a bit different.

Thanks. I try to occasionally be useful.   

iStock has a big thread of tutorials and resources too:

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=38649&page=1

Nice site! Clean, simple, love it - bookmarked and next time I need an illustration I'll be sure to visit.

Great! Thanks. Just let me know if you need any help finding anything or have any questions.

Quote from: cthoman on September 06, 2011, 12:35

I did think of something they could improve. A nice artist info page would helpful. I get a lot of walk-in freelance traffic from the micros, but it's rare that I get it from Shutterstock.

Great idea.  I've had customer comments and requests from iStock, Dreamstime and Deposit, but not Shutterstock.  Have you made the suggestion there?

I haven't. Feel free to.