Quote from: cclapper on November 04, 2010, 12:03

Has it backfired? The people who are done with istock aren't going to enter anyway. The people for whom these contests were created, exclusives, "club members", and cheerleading woo-yayers, are going to participate. Mission accomplished. Does it change anything for me? I was disgusted a long time ago, this just goes on top of the pile of stupid pet tricks. But then they don't give a rats ass if I participate anyway.

I don't know, Cathy. You could get your entry printed on a ceramic mug, take it there personally and hit someone over the head with it!

I've been a graphic designer for 24 years. When buying print (these days it's increasingly common for clients to buy their own print) I've never had a print run exceed 50,000, yet alone 500,000.

Think about the terms for the requirement of iStock's extended licenses (they clearly didn't):

A start-up cottage industry printing 200 greetings cards requires an 'items for resale' license while the world's largest firm of accountants can print 499,999 (they're more likely to print 2,000-10,000) annual reports using an image that costs a few dollars.

I've bought extended licenses though I very much doubt that I've ever actually needed to. (The clients buy the print and we don't know the print runs. We know they're likely to be high but doubt they'd ever stretch to 500,000.)

If we didn't buy those licenses, you'd spot your work in print and contact iStock who would then contact us. All we'd have to say is the print run is below 500,000. What are they going to do? Count them? We're giving them several thousand pounds worth of business every year (at least we were until they started playing silly buggers with the royalties). Are they going to call us liars? No.

Extended license = 500,000 impressions = the biggest oversight in the history of microstock. Knock a zero (or two) off that one, Kelly, and you can have your Christmas bonus and pay everyone 45% royalties.

Okay, I'll just add a bit more. (We all want Mr. T to read this and get his bonus, don't we.  .) As you know a lot of print work has now moved to the web, so to make sure all those who can afford it pay for it, the extended license also needs to cover 'for use on web sites with more than XXX,000 visitors per month'. That'd make a difference in the right direction to everyone's bottom line, wouldn't it?

Oh and the multi-seat license that CC mentioned. I've always thought that one was an impossible thing to police. We'd just say yes we do have XX workstations but we all use the same chair! Seriously, I doubt that one gets sold very often. Perhaps, a multi-use license would work better?

Quote from: Juning44 on November 04, 2010, 04:45

Microstock made me a great photographer. I've been reading discussions here and this helped me a lot. Thanks a lot Microstock. 

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Shakeology Review | Shakeology Scam | Shakeology

It's certainly made you delusional. Thanks microstock!

If you're called Pottery Barn and have an online catalogue selling bookshelves you do, of course, have to show images of the actual products your selling. These cannot be sourced from a stock library so how can his article have any credibility when he uses that example to illustrate why you're better off commissioning your own shoot?

What a plonker!

Quote from: Equus on November 02, 2010, 20:19

Quote from: MarkFGD on November 02, 2010, 19:02

I don't want to see them do anything other than fail. They've insulted every single contributor with their announcement of 15% royalties and the empty b*llocks that went with it. If it's business as usual for them after January 1st, it's an open invitation for Fotolia to cut it's royalties, Dreamstime will follow and then you'll be back here this time next year moaning that iStock is now only offering you 10%.

The other sites would be crazy to reduce commissions. There must be dozens of exclusives waiting to see what happens. IS has done nothing but shoot itself in the foot recently.

Any sign of the others following IS will just persuade those thinking of jumping ship, that they may as well stay where they are.

If everyone keeps uploading and all the exclusives stay where they are, that sends out a very clear message to all the other stock libraries. It says we're okay with 15-19%. Why wouldn't they see that as an invitation to reduce their royalties too?

Too right. If iStock was a dick you wouldn't want to take it with you on your honeymoon! 

Quote from: rubyroo on November 02, 2010, 09:14

Are there any other business that do this?

Microstocking is the only area of my working life where I've been a supplier of goods.  I'm finding it hard to imagine that a supplier of, say, DIY items to a DIY shop would accept receiving lower remuneration whenever the DIY shop decides to discount their items in the shop window.

As far as I'm aware, in most industries the supplier is paid for his goods when the retailer receives them. There is a recommended retail price and a trade price. The retailer may be able to get a discount on the trade price by buying in sufficient quantities.

If the retailer reduces the recommended retail price (as in rubyroo's DIY example above) it doesn't affect the price he's already paid the supplier, it just means he's likely to be able to sell the goods faster and still make a profit but less overall profit than he could have done in the long term.

There is another less common model called sale-or-return where the supplier isn't paid until the retailer sells the goods and if the goods don't sell, they are returned to the supplier. This is probably a little closer to the microstock model.

I realise this is a very simplistic description and I know I've missed out distribution and middle men and all that but to answer your question: If the retailer chooses to discount his goods it usually comes out of his pocket and not the suppliers.

I'd be willing to bet today's royalties that they refer to us as 'the sheep' during their board meetings.

I have learned not too push a file to extremes that induce �artifacts� even for the purpose of artistic expression.

That sentence means microstock has taught you how to be a better technician and a worse photographer, in my opinion. Content, communication and composition trump technical excellence. The count-the-blades-of-grass-on-the-pitch-rather-than-watch-the-match mentality that the iStock Pixel Police promote does not make you better photographers.

For what it's worth, I've got twenty years' experience with Photoshop and very few rejections. I'd trade all that in a heartbeat to be able to 'see' through a camera like some of you can. I'm not talking about art versus commercial here, I'm talking about the ability to react to what's in front of you and around you (whether in the studio or out in the field), and being able to get it down in a meaningful way.

 

There is a community at istock. I'm part of a group of 60 odd contributors who encourage each other through friendly competition and support to achieve goals it would be very hard for most of us to reach working on our own. Perhaps  there isn't much in it for you pros, but I suspect quite a few successful istock contributors (and probably similar for other sites) have found community support invaluable. Now, for how much the management supports/is involved in/uses the community, that's another question, and the answer varies over time and from individual to individual within the business.

I think the point Molka is trying to make is that while you are making a little money out of your photography, someone else is making a great deal more for doing a hell of a lot less, and you are more willing to accept this because you believe you're part of a community.

Getty, Klein, Evans-Lombe, Calvert, Catalane, Gurke, Heck, Lapham, Martin, Murrell, Peters, Rockafellar and Teaster are the biggest earners on iStock. None of them have had an image accepted or communicated with an iStock contributer. iStock is not a community.

I can't believe the mentality of contributors on that thread. They give away the lion's share of the income from their photographic endeavours and then queue up to do Getty/iStock's public relations for them.

I assume Getty introduced the 20% royalty when they started buying every photo library they could get their hands on in the 1990s. Back then they would have been receiving transparencies from photographers and would have had to drum scan, catalogue and keyword them, etc., to earn their massive 80% take. Now they want 85% and all they seem prepared to do for it is raise their head out of the sand occasionally to count the money. They can't even be bothered to enter into dialogues with their own confused and unhappy customers anymore. What's going on?

You are indeed correct, Sean. He could have chosen his words more carefully and you were totally right to point this out to him at the time. However, the mud slinging that's occurred in subsequent posts is, in my opinion, totally uncalled for. I, for one, value the contributions Jonathan Ross makes to this forum in the same way that I'd miss your posts, if you were hounded off this site.