Press release from Yuri Acurs and iStock:

http://www.sys-con.com/node/2737094

My Exclusive sales have crashed too, far more than the usual summer slump. It's getting close to sell the house and get a job time.

Who knows? The quality of its inspections and the resulting high standard of content was one of iStock's redeeming features.

Seems that's been chucked out of the window now.

Presumably someone higher up the food chain has said 'I don't care about quality, I want a gazillion images!'

The conspiracy theorist in me suggests it's a way to sell millions of files that thousands of artists will never reach payout on, thus allowing the greedy goats at the top to keep all the money for themselves. Surely not.

Sean wrote everything else useful on that site!

Ah, right, got it now.

Bet I don't get paid on Monday though like I usually would a week in arrears. It's not good however you look at it. If they sold some of my flipping photos for a change I'd be a lot more forgiving.

At the London iStockalypse Kelly said editors putting images in the collection of their choice was the long term goal, so presumably this has been in the works for a long time.

Did people get a different percentage from Vetta sales, compared with ordinary sales? Obviously, since vetta is a higher price point the return from it will be higher even if the percentage is the same.

I wonder if they are chopping 25% off Yuri's "exclusive" earnings.

They cut the Vetta rate to 28% a few years ago when they massively raised its prices, arguing that you'd get the same amount.

Wouldn't surprise me if this is the kind of image exclusive rates they've struck with Yuri and his mini-me's and are looking to roll out to the remaining exclusives shortly.

Getty hates photographers.

Yes. It's an effective way to chop Exclusives out of the search and most commonly used category, whilst paying out the minimum royalty.

Ah, my stuff seems to have sorted itself as expected beforehand.

I obviously jumped the gun on using the price filter to look at collections.

What those people have is talent and tenacity. That's the secret to their success, there's no 'mystery'.

Cheers, I'll check it out.

The fact that he was able to earn $500K+ in 2006 ... and now he is down to $100K ... just tells me he was being massively overpaid previously. The restricted entry to market and absurdly over-priced images worked nicely for those lucky enough to be in the club but badly for buyers and all other photographers.

When I say 'over-priced' images I'm talking about prices that bore absolutely no relationship whatsoever to either the cost of production, the skill involved or the scarcity of the image. All image licenses were very expensive ... just because they were.

Amazingly it was only in October 2005 that Jupiter Images paid $20M for Banana Stock, which basically consisted of 15K RM images and which have been languishing in the bargain-bin at TS for the last few years. That worked out at something like $1300 per image! What would they be worth now as a 'collection'? Would anyone pay more than $10 per image? I certainly wouldn't.

You can still earn $500K+ in microstock __ if you're good enough and work hard enough. You just have to have the extraordinary talent to justify such earnings.

Personally I doubt that the total sums earned in stock photography are any less than they used to be, it's just that the money is being more evenly spread to more photographers. Good.

Harsh, but true.