I dropped my exclusivity and have no regrets and our colleague Michaeljay regained his full exclusive earnings in just 6 months.

http://www.michaeljayfoto.com/ideas-and-small-talk/the-second-year-has-started-a-look-back/

http://www.michaeljayfoto.com/talking-numbers/same-earnings-non-exclusive-from-istockphoto/#more-1095

But you won�t achieve that with just one agency only and you also need time to move up in the different ranking systems, i.e. if you were an exclusive gold or diamond contributor you need to move up to the appropriate levels at the new agencies.

So Michael is extremely successful, because he got his income back although he is not yet at 40% on Fotolia etc...

But I am sure for some people even with the ever falling sales on istock, it is more comfortable to stay exclusive and just make up for the missing income by doing something else.

And those that don�t like being indie, can always go back to exclusivity after just 3 months. It really isn�t a very difficult choice.

Well, stocksy can't be sold by the management, it is a coop owned by the artist. That is a major advantage.

I have read that 500pix offer 70%, but I personally don't know anyone getting regular sales there. Are they out of beta and offer a regular producer workflow?

stocksy also pays out all the profits to the artists and work team plus 100% of extended licenses.

I don't know any other place that does that.

If 500pix becomes a strong force in the industry it would be great.

Maybe someone can tell us more in the 500pix thread how things are going. Does anyone know their revneue? That could give people an idea how many artist they might be able to feed. And how many artists have been accepted etc...

 i am very impressed with the success of stocksy. They are selling images into a market that has a total oversupply of product, I think it is very difficult to do.

And yes, I certainly see stocksy as an extremely generous fair trade agency.

ETA: Congrats Mark

Well, maybe it will take a while before enough people share results with the community. It would be wonderful to see stocksy lead that list, so we can see that a fair trade business run by artist is immensely successful.

Might encourage more artists to get together to start their own stocksy if they can't make it in.

We certainly need more successful fair trade businesses.

I sincerly hope the visible success of stocksy can be the spark to inspire other artists to take the business into their own hands. Also being high up on the poll, plus the public announcement that stocksy is already profitable after just one year, can help those that want to aquire funds for starting a fair trade business.

http://www.vicnews.com/news/258039681.html

"�After a year of operating, we�re getting close to that magic number of $200,000 in royalty payments per month,� Livingstone says."

The inspiration of stocksy can go way beyond those that make it inside.

And it will be a reminder to the agencies that are trying to ripp us off that the artists have other options.

We are more than just mindless providers of endless image streams.

Interesting. At least there is serious financial muscle behind flickr.

So many new start ups, all calling themselves a marketplace. There is indeed a need for a large marketplace. Looks like the race is on.

Hi Desiren,

I was thinking of some official info, company name, exact address etc...you are a new business partner and if I have sales I cannot tell my accountant it came from a group in Australia

I'll send a few files to test your system. 50% is fair trade, so I'll have a look.

Do you have a proper business address somewhere on your website? Where are you located? And maybe something about who you are,your team,the experience of your management? Do you have proper funding or are we uploading to a garage office

Thank you.

fotolia is up for me as well this month and I am opted out of dpc. Maybe they have increased their marketing to prove they can still grow fotolia as well. Or maybe I am just lucky this month.

You should be producing and uploading christmas stock now, if you are seriously interested in getting money out of your files this season. Whatever you upload after August/September only has a chance with the sponateous buyers, but the many companies that plan in advanve for seasonal projects are selecting their files now.

To upload only in the most active buying season means you are ignoring a huge number of customers.

Same goes for other seasonal content.

I do still upload some files from the series in October - December, but this is just to always have some files present in the newest image stream series.

Anyway, have fun shooting. It is nearly 40 C here in cologne today but I'll be in the studio with artifial snow and christmas lights...

I like the last part from the Forbes article: " As Jane Friedman, former head of News Corp�s HarperCollins and founder of Open Road media, told me a few months back:   �You have to own the pipes, but if you don�t have anything flowing through it, what are the pipes going to do?�
"

I sincerly hope pond5 was able to find VC partners that actually are aware what is going on in the media industry and that understand that all the "crowd sourcing talk" is the hot air for marketing people.

If they do anything to damage the free and entrepreneurial business culture of pond5, if they destroy the fair trade 50/50 split, they will see pond5 suffer the way the other sites suffered that played games with us.

The video artists are even more deeply networked than the photographers. Removing content and sending it elsewhere can be done with a few mouse clicks.

On the other hand, pond5 has all the momentum behind them right now, because the artist community is ready to support a fair trade plattform that welcomes all styles and genres and gives the artist commercial control over their portfolios.

So if the VC money is used in a clever way to break into the photo market or to further expand their video revenue, they can turn it into a win win for everyone. The VC�s can cash out when pond5 goes public one day and the artists can benefit from more sales because there is more money to invest in marketing, pretty up the site, etc...

Shutterstock did very well because they always made sure they have a top notch reputation in the artistic community. They are a reliable partner to work with. Pond5 has an equally good reputation.

So please keep it this way.

Don�t do what Getty did to istock. It doesn�t work.

ETA: I really hope this is good news and that pond5 now can find a way to get into the photo market as well. There is a lot of great talent ready to push a reliable and honest plattform. Just don�t talk down to us like we are stupid children or try to micromanage our commercial interests. Meet us at eye level and you will be fine.

I was thinking maybe one of the fair trade sites might be interested to transform into a coop or work with one. Coop takes care of working with the artists and selecting content, fair trade site does the marketing. Or both together transform into a coop.

But at least people who are already running a small agency are clearly willing to do the business side of things, something many artists don't want to be bothered with.

You will anyway need to find investors, come up with a business plan etc....

I just thought it might be worth talking to several sites as well while you explore the options for the coop.

For most artists the coop will just be like an agency anyway. They just want to upload content and not worry about anything else. You see it with symbiostock when people say that 10 dollars a month is too much. But in a coop,even if you don't pay a monthly fee, you will have to invest time to help market the site. It needs active commitment.

So that is another reason to be selective when choosing people, not just the image style has to fit, but you are building an international team of people that you want to work together.

I think this could also be done with a good agency. Westend61 is not a coop, but has a great team spirit, the old istock had a fantastic team spirit and we certainly felt like it was our agency.

I am sure many of the smaller edited collections are great at community building as well.

I'd say having inspirational leadership and commitment is more important than the legal form of the agency.

Istock also served a huge number of artists with an open plattform that anyone could join. And to me it felt like home, team spirit was great.

It�s a nice looking app, not as sophisticated as the Shutterstock or Fotolia apps, but certainly an improvement. Although I didn�t see the option to sort files by price, only vetta and regular collection, including indies. You can also not click on the artists name to see the whole portfolio. 

Many agencies now have apps for browsing the collection on their tablets.

But now that the app is out, maybe the IT team can go and fix the video uploading issues...and perhaps marketing can be bothered to discover new photos for the image of the week...

You will probably see an uptick for thext 2-3 months, but it will drop fast. I think it is better to spread your uploads. If you had uploade 500 a month you would have had continuos exposure on the "newest" images search function. Then you could collect repeat customers every month.