I registered as a contributor just to see what the deal was and to be honest it doesnt look like they are ready. They accept WMV? MP4? the industry standard is MOV encoded with photojpeg plus there are no details about pricing, plus looks like a lot of people are complaing about their ftp. I shall most definetely hold off until they appear to be ready, but nice to see another middle tier player entering the video market.

If istock are indeed going through a heavy slump in sales do you think they will take an appropriate course of action?

A company such as istock which has been in this business from the begining and has seen exponential growth followed by a slump which we can clearly see ourselves. I mean, we all have our graphs so we can see whats going on. Do you think there is someone looking at the whole picture and saying - well, we were once like this and we had this much sales, now we are like this and now we have this much sales. For many contributors it's quite easy to see what's going wrong but do you think they really know the answer?

I'd like to point out that it is still feasible that they may not actually be getting hit hard financially because best match matches may simply be shifting searches through to other contributors that may not be active on any internet forums hence we really are left in the dark as to how good or bad their sales really are - i find this frustrating.

However by looking at the drastic slump in sales I myself have been experiencing this year, plus looking at the comments on istock forum and the comments here, as well as trafic stats (which as pointed out are not 100% accurate but give a good indication) leads me to believe that things really are going bad at istock.

If this is indeed true a huge loss of sales is a huge loss in sales no matter how you cut it and a company can only sustain it for so long before the staff at istock are forced to take a long hard look at their business model, and if need be make cut backs but not necessarily make changes for the better.

All of this is really frustrating for myself and i suspect that full-timers are really having to push the boat out to get any decent return in investment.

Good luck to all of you.

It's just dawned on me how badly istock is perfoming now and made me worry about their future and of course my subsequent income.

My story is since january 2011 my sales have been dropping month after month, i usually put these variations down to ebb and flow but my sales results are just speaking for themselves. That together with observing the opinions from other contributors both on the istock forums and here as well as site traffic info leads me to an educated guess that they really are losing ground rather rapidly and are displeasing buyers and which in turn is displeasing contributors.

Many have their theories and i think common sense will tell you what is going wrong over there like many have already stated. As to why istock staff cant see this is completely beyond me, but there you go.

I personally think the following are major contributing factors:

Site revamp. It's horrible and i dont like it, the search feels slow and clunky and competitors sites are very quick in comparison.

Vetta to the front of the search. I think this is putting off buyers, they probably dont even look to the left TBH at sliders etc. The average buyer does a search, glazes over the lovely colourful images that are presented on the first couple of pages then runs away after looking at the price while having lodged in their brain that istock is now expensive and they can no longer trust them. I believe that the bods at istock know this as well but do not want to admit it as they have probably spent too much time and money on the system to roll it back now.

Global downturn. Higher priced images are a 'nice to have' if the economy was in good shape however its not and buyers are quite happy to shop around if it meant saving $50 for a cheaper alternative which may also be better suited towards them. Also my sales on competitors sites have not gone down at all this year. Also when you look back at when the global recession first took its toll istock was still doing well and were letting everyone know this fact but its only since these big changes have taken place with the site-revamp and Vetta order within the search that i have witnessed a huge loss.

In short, buyers (designers and corporates) are being put off by this, buyers want simplicity and a slick, quick site that pulls up the images that they want at a good price from an already established brand that they trust - what more could you ask for? Think Google. And if their trusted bank of images changes the game, what are you going to do? Go elsewhere.

To me, this is a huge shame and i cant see the situation getting better, only worse. 2012 may indeed be a horrible year for istock.

Anyway, i needed to get that off my chest and i wish everyone the best.

Slightly off-topic but I recently had about 15 files (videos) deducted from my balance because of a declined credit card. A bit like the fiasco at istock - maybe the pirates are trying other sites now. Did this happen to anyone else? You may not have even noticed because fotolia doesnt send out refund email by the looks of things. Worth a check anyway.

A union has been discussed countless times in this and other forums. For many reasons, a union isn't realistic in this business and wouldn't accomplish anything.

The most significant reason being that agencies would be under no obligation to listen to a union any more than to individual contributors.

That and a union would never gain the kind of membership you'd expect. Most microstock contributors are not active in the forums, don't really care about the politics of the business, and are largely solitary in their microstock activities.

I think you've slightly missunderstood at what i was trying to put forward as an idea. I wasnt talking about a union in a traditional sense, more like a representation of a collective voice and through this we could all decide to take a certain course of action and vote whether or not to do it, we have many options as well. Like i said above:

"It may not change a lot because agencies are free to do what they want to do, we have to acknowledge this but at the same time we dont have to take it. At the very least it will show that we are united and we are watching agencies which may in turn force them to rethink certain policies.

I also completely understand that most microstock contributors are not active on the forums and dont really care about the politics, but if one member sitemails another member advertising the "union" and asks him to pass it on to one other person and so on and so on, it would go a long way. Plus put the word out on sites like microstockdiaries etc.

So in terms of getting a sizable amount of people interested i cant see it being a problem personally.

My personal opinion is that if this cannot be acheived then there simply is no way out of this, you cant sit on your butt and wait for a magical agency to appear that treats contributors fairly, you have to fight for your right and this is the best way to acheive exactly that.

Hope it comes into fruition and if it does i will be the 1st to join up. And on that note im dropping out of this discussion.

Good luck.

Its pretty hidden away and i think it may have been moved since they re-jigged the site:

Once logged in:

My Account -> My Dashboard
Account Information -> Edit -> then click on Contributor Parameters.

And then under Notification Preferences there are some checkboxes.

Yeah, the way i understood it was that HD video would no longer be available under the subscription plan but yesterday i received this:

Purchase Date: 2011-08-19 01:11:08
Purchase License: V_HD1080
Commission: 2.7

Which was a premium subsciption.

I must of not understood the changes correctly because i just earned $2.7 for subscription based HD purchase. It used to be a painful 3.5 but now this....I thought that HD files were no longer available under the subscription plan.

If this is indeed true i am opting out. This is becoming rediculous.

Im a videographer and the subscription removal for HD videos is a welcome change - i think. I was earning a whopping 3.7 dollars for videos that took more than a week to create. But now im unsure how this will affect buyers habits. I kinda imaged that the habit of subscription video buyers was to sift through HD videos on fotolia like they were apples on a tree, kinda like...hmm, i like that one, that one, that one, this one and oooh that one as well - adding them all to their cart. And now that they wont have that facility anymore, will they still purchase as frequently? will they only go for web sized?

Not sure if i will re-coup this revenue stream, only time will tell.

Anyway, back to all you photographers

I had this thought kicking around my head and thought that it might be interesting to hear your thoughts.

So we all know there are plenty of online stock imagery/video/vector agencies out there and many of you might say that the marketplace is already too saturated.

However if another one were to come along, what do think it would need to do or provide in terms of its customers and contributors in order to be successful. Kinda like what are the current agencies doing right and wrong and if a new angency were to start up, what would be a surefire way for them to succeed? eg. good community/contributor relations, exclusivity option etc.

And no i am not thinking of starting my own agency

Im already there and sales are good. I went with canstock because i saw that they are middle tier for photos at least and they incorporate fotosearch as well. I also tried clipdealer and ive had a few from their even though they are lower tier but nothing from canstock so far. Im guessing that maybe for video they are lower tier.

My experience with these smaller stock video agencies is that you tend to get a few sales within the first few weeks of uploading with for example a 100 video portfolio but the sales quickly dry up if you stop uploading. I have found this to be the case with clipcanvas.com (apart from the initial 2 sales within the first couple of months) and after a year of no sales i asked to be removed from their site. After that i tried clipdealer.com and i got more initial sales from them because i believe they are older and therefore have a bigger presence in the market but again the sales are not coming anymore - sound familiar?

My theory is that their search engines prioritises your newest uploads for a set period and then after that you go down in the rankings. Personally i dont like this type technique that they impoly within search engines. Other sites such as pond5, fotolia and istockphoto sales seem to keep coming and i didnt experience any tailing off with my sales with those sites based upon my frequency of uploading. It would appear that the smaller sites use a 'dangling the carrot' method to keep enticing you to upload.

Based upon my theory maybe it might be a good idea to upload in stages, maybe like 50 in one go just to get your presence in there and then 10 every week after that. In the grand scheme of things im not sure if they would want to you upload in that manner as a bigger portfolio for them in a shorter space of time would be more beneficial to them, but if their search engine treats you liek that then they leave me with no choice.

Of course these are just my theories based upon my own personal experience so others may well have a different opinion depending on their type/quality and size of their port.

I have also just finished uploading my entire port to canstockphoto and will report back with findings in the coming months. My inital findings are that their keywording and submitting process looks quick but insta-fail with the inability to choose thumbnail pic of your video, which for CG videographers such as myself can be the make or break of sales.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to add your experiences with the smaller agencies.

It appears that they have only been running for about a year and a half now which is very short for most agencies in this business. I also checked out their facebook and twitter pages and doesnt look like much has been going on there.

http://twitter.com/mediastock_ca

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mediastock/256312695352?v=wall&ref=search

I registered but i dont think i'll bother.