I don't understand the graphs, but I have been keeping track of the major stock site's alexa rankings (global and US) roughly monthly since March. There's no big falloff in ranking numbers for iStock - it was 462 global on Sept 9th and 471 on October 18th. Its US ranking dropped from 265 to 323. Shutterstock was 197/192 in September and 198/223 in October

Here's the file:

March 4 2014

Site  Global/USA

IS  424 / 252
SS  216 / 194
Thinkstock  5,824 / 1,519
Getty 3,003 / 1,107
Fotolia 528 / (DE) 64
dreamstime 656 / 607
123rf  472 / 551
DepositPhotos 1,317 / 1,060
PhotoDune 2,886 / 2,018
Canstock 3,636 / 2,027
Alamy 16,001 / 12,010

May 28 2014

IS  447 / 270
SS  193 / 199
Thinkstock  4,413 / 1,240
Getty  2,091 / 854
Fotolia  511 / (DE) 67 (FR) 148 (US) 1,188
dreamstime 664 / 629
123rf 659 / 620
DepositPhotos 1,191 / 927
PhotoDune  2,662 / 1,662
Canstock  3,443 / 2,416
Alamy  14,293 / (GB) 1,517 (US) 15,090
DollarPhotoClub  5,086 / 1,700

June 30 2014

IS 450 / 272
SS  195 / 178
Thinkstock 4,408  / 1,284
Getty 2,374  / 1,090
Fotolia  511 / (DE) 68 (FR) 151 (US) 992
dreamstime 679 / 642
123rf 666 / 610
DepositPhotos 1,153 / 840
PhotoDune  2,572 / 1,504
Canstock  3,754 / 2,788
Alamy  14,168 / (GB) 1,577 (US) 15,159
DollarPhotoClub  3,516 / 1,472

July 28 2014

IS 454 / 299
SS  188 / 191
Thinkstock 4,493  / 1,499
Getty 2,418  / 975
Fotolia  515 / (DE) 63 (FR) 165 (US) 1,195
dreamstime 681 / 646
123rf 635 / 591
DepositPhotos 1,110 / 902
PhotoDune  2,524 / 1,663
Canstock  3,832 / 2,500
Alamy  13,166 / (GB) 1,590 (US) 11,383
DollarPhotoClub  2,766 / 1,395
Canva  3,436  /  1,138


Sept 9 2014

IS 462 / 265
SS  197 / 192
Thinkstock 5,220  / 1,493
Getty 2,490  / 929
Fotolia  524 / (DE) 69 (FR) 197 (US) 1,306
dreamstime 678 / 684
123rf 614 / 614
DepositPhotos 1,097 / 932
PhotoDune  2,472 / 1,655
Canstock  3,903 / 2,674
Alamy  12,448 / (GB) 1,351 (US) 12,991
DollarPhotoClub  2,368 / 1,258
Canva  2,378  /  964

Oct 18 2014

IS 471 / 323
SS  198 / 223
Thinkstock 5,275  / 1,545
Getty 2,447  / 850
Fotolia  567 / (DE) 74 (FR) 175 (US) 1,617
dreamstime 722 / 726
123rf 657 / 694
DepositPhotos 1,113 / 910
PhotoDune  2,684 / 2,227
Canstock  3,923 / 2,935
Alamy  11,845 / (GB) 1,996 (US) 11,726
DollarPhotoClub  2,215 / 1,186
Canva  2,196  /  1,059

Quote

If you're licensing content with iStock Credits, you can purchase an Extended License when initially licensing content or anytime afterward by calling Support.

http://www.istockphoto.com/help/licenses

Terms of original sale. Seems to me that contributors implicitly accept those terms (and the responsibility to the client) irrespective of deleting their content or later leaving.

The artist supply agreement clause on termination (section 12) states:

"(ii) notwithstanding termination, iStockphoto and its distribution partners shall have the right to continue licensing Accepted Content until it is removed from the Site or other sites where Accepted Content is distributed; "

That says to me that once the content is removed (and above that it talks about having 30 days to remove content) they no longer have that right.

The help text isn't part of the Content License Agreement which says "d) No terms or conditions may be added or deleted unless made in writing and either accepted in writing by an authorized representative of both parties or issued electronically by iStock and accepted in writing by your authorized representative." so you can't amend the agreement by what's written in the forums or the help or anywhere else.

The percentage is in the chart I linked to - 30% to start. So for a 5 credit sale, you get .30 x buyer's price per credit x 5

We have been told in the past that the minimum price per credit for the purposes of calculating royalties is 40 cents. So for you, that means the smallest amount you could get for a 5 credit sale would be 60 cents.

What is included in subscriptions is listed here:

http://www.123rf.com/islogin_globalv10.2.php

So TIFF can only be had via credit sales, but they can get XXL JPEG with a subscription.

I just completed a survey for Adobe's Customer Advisor Team about what types of stock subscriptions or single image purchases I'd consider buying from Adobe.

They may never get there (they've tried the stock route in the past, twice I think, and it's never worked, but that was pre-CC, so perhaps things have changed) but one interesting aspect was that they were considering subscriptions with monthly limits that had a rollover option and wanted to know if that would make me more likely to buy from them versus a competitor.

As a contributor, subscriptions with rollovers become massively cheap images (which I don't like); as a vendor, it's not clear how they can handle royalties if there's no cushion from the buyer not using their full allotment.

There was no discussion of the size of the library or content, just questions about price and options (monthly vs. daily limits); perhaps no one considers the content matters any more as the libraries are so large? I assume they'd partner with someone and use their library, but I wonder which of the existing agencies would let them have content with a rollover option (Deposit Photos comes to mind as they have no apparent ethical concerns over any business terms).

I can't see why there'd be any appeal from the buyer's side in doing business with Adobe vs. one of the agencies. As a supplier, the partner programs just mean more people other than me taking a cut of the buyer's money, so I can't see it as a good thing unless it expands the market in some way (which I can't see it doing; I'd assume anyone considering this would already be a customer of one or more other agencies).

The one file that isn't deactivated is one that only ever sold an extended license (in April 2010) - a multi-seat license (unlimited) where I netted $30.60. Friday's adjustment added $20.84 to that. If it's an unlimited number of seats, what's to add?

The other three files all sold unlimited multi-seat licenses - Jan 12, 2011, Jun 13, 2011 and Sep 21, 2011.

It's unclear why one of the four was 39 cents versus the other three $20.84...

If what they told you is accurate, I don't know why the e-mail said "The following file(s) were recently licensed to an iStock customer in a transaction that did not occur through the website"

I also don't know if they're in a position to grant more permissions or anything else when a file has been deactivated just because the buyer licensed it originally while it was active.

I'm not going to hire a lawyer over 60-something dollars, but I find their high-handed approach pretty outrageous, particularly because it was over their high-handed approach that I had to deactivate the files in the first place.

I thought this had to be a joke (I know you said you couldn't make this stuff up, but...)

It's real, and it's not new, although it's apparently (alexa ranking) very much an also-ran in the micro jobs sweepstakes.

The owner (Thomas De Vos) has a blog post on the site from April 2012, so it's been around at least that long.

fiverr has a global alexa rank of 134 versus 37,072 for fourerr.

I reported this offer to Shutterstock - perhaps they can get it shut down

http://fourerr.com/Graphics/22104/give-you-4-Shutterstock-images-of-your-choice

...
Or have I got it all wrong.....

Not all, but some

The only reason you'd offer a PNG to Canva is for a file with a transparent background - JPEG cannot have transparency. Not sure what subset of your portfolio would fall into that category, but it's a big win for the user to have objects with a transparent background ready to overlay on their design.

If i calculated an all-time RPD it would start in 2004 with subs at 20 cents each, which wouldn't really help anyone uploading today figure out what to expect.

This month (the day's not over yet, but...) my RPD is $1.00077; last month it was 96 cents.

YMMV

I'm going climbing in the Himalayas for a month next week so I'll try to ignore the coming calamity until I get back.

Lobo's promised to drop by later to join in the conversation.

Have a great time - I'm sure the calamity will be waiting for you upon your return

FWIW, $7 or $0 are statistically equal when comparing to your prior income to today, so I assume it's some attempt to mute the impact of a major, long-term contributor talking about woes.

So what are you planning to do?

I spent 3 years as an exclusive and decided that the Sept. 2010 changes were not sustainable for me, as an exclusive, and reverted to independence. Since then a number of exclusives have "talked" with me about the issues of leaving exclusivity and many had such large golden handcuffs that they felt they couldn't walk away.

Of late, even some who were still hanging on in the hope that something would turn around are beginning finally to take steps to leave. It's a truly wretched situation, but I honestly don't know why anyone would still believe that things will turn around in the short run.

Which leaves exclusives with two unpleasant alternatives - stay and accept whatever comes or do the work to get established on other sites as an independent. I guess a third would be to leave microstock completely.

You have a large proven portfolio that will sell wherever you choose to make it available. Perhaps we need a half way house for recovering exclusives?

I don't mean to make light of the decision to drop the crown, but what's holding you back?

I have no intention of submitting to a site that appears so random and changeable. If no one submits, perhaps they'll calm down enough to make the process decipherable

What possible reason is there to indulge such madness?  Reviewers could, if they wanted to, check out portfolios elsewhere, see that they've been in place for years, at multiple agencies, and avoid putting egg all over their own faces by all but accusing an established photographer of theft

The shoot first ask questions afterwards approach isn't being innovative and shouldn't be confused with such

I contacted Shutterstock March 24 2014 and got the standard "We take copyright infringement ... very seriously..." reply

I think Fiverr is just a very disreputable place, but the agencies don't seem to be all that aggressive in going after this stuff.