Sounds like good news. Should give some balance to the subscription sales from April.

Exclusives really deserve better treatment, so I am glad to see they are doing something.

Sri, I fully understand the feeling that you gave a huge amount of work into istock and then saw it all destroyed and slipping away. I also put endless hours into the project and was confident I was building something longterm for myself and other artists. But unlike you I came to the conclusion that Getty is to blame for what happened, because as long as Bruce was there, my business was going well. Most of all I don�t understand why they decided to destroy istock the way they did, because it didn�t even make any sense commercially. istock was the dominant and growing market force. Why did Getty decide to kill it off and hand all advantages to Shutterstock???

In hindsight, or if we could turn back the wheels of time, I am sure Bruce wouldn�t make that mistake again. But initially istock also did benefit from the Getty takeover. Suddenly a huge network of international offices and a sales team with contacts to big industry became available to sell large istock credit packagaes. The Getty CV was introduced which made all our content easily avialbale in many languages, Vetta was introduced and mirrored to getty, giving high quality files exposure on the macro market. All istock exclusives who wanted one were offered a Getty contract. If you didn�t go for it, your decisions. I was happy to get my House contract and really enjoyed getting directly into the macro world and learning about it. I don�t think I would have had the chance to get in otherwise.

People keep forgetting that in the beginning the deal with getty also brought a lot of advantages.

And then...Bruce left, in 2009, he stayed for 3 years, which I think is fair enough...and then Getty "really" took over. And made a big mess of things.

Today we know the deal with Getty was a mistake. But I don�t think it was so easy to see that in 2006.

But overall I do not regret having been exclusive to istock. I do not regret having met all those wonderful people. istock changed my life, this will never go away.

Today I have moved on, I am an indepedent artist working with many agencies. stocksy is one of them. Maybe in time it will become one of my biggest earners, maybe it will be one of two or three equally weighted income streams, I don�t know. But it will certainly be a great place to be inspired and to meet interesting people.

However, I will always try to make sure that my income is spread over different agencies and different mediums. And of course this means I can never blame one single individual if my income goes down. I might have started out doing stock in a company run by Bruce, but the success of my stock business is entirely up to me. Always was.

I think 50% royalty plus 100% on extended licenses plus 90% of all coop profits paid out to artists is a very beautiful contract.

But you can never please them all...

Quote from: bokehgal on May 06, 2014, 20:09

That tells me that she should be able to replace 50% of her previous exclusive income by uploading all her images to one Indy site. And hopefully the other 50% can be made up from uploading all 3,600 images to Dreamstime, Fotolia, and 123RF.

Not if she uploaded only her top sellers. 80% of my sales come from about 20% of my photos.

This is where it gets interesting - my top sellers from istock are rarely top sellers on the new agencies. Dreamstime customers seem to like my traditional istock style most. On SS only two files that were regular sellers, but not my bestsellers made it into the current top 20.

I did upload a mix of what I hope are very nice/useful files from what I usually do - mostly seasonal images, lots of objects on white and some people shots. People didn�t sell that well for me on istock, but they sell very well on SS. But not so much on Fotolia. I have lots of people shots I never processed, because the series never took of on istock. So maybe now they can start a new life on SS.

Hopefully all my files get their day in the sun by being spread over different agencies.

I don�t know if 3600 files will give me 50% of my old istock exclusive earnings just from SS. But if the exclusive income keeps dropping and I keep uploading slowly and steadily, then maybe yes, they will.

Personally I believe that it is a combination of having your files in a good position in best match and your files in as many lightboxes as possible that give you the best steady income. Again a reason why I don�t throw everything up in one week. It takes time to get noticed and bookmarked, so the steady weekly stream is necessary to keep attracting customers to my portfolio.

But I would definetly recommend to focus on SS first from the micros. I neglected them for a long time, because I thought they sell only subs. They don�t.

Overall I think I will need around 3000 nice files (mix of old and new) to get close to my old exclusive income, keeping in mind that in 2012 my income was quite low because I had not been uploading regularly in a while. This will include video.

For full time living I would probably need 6-8000 like everyone else. But I still do other things, so my old 2012 istock exclusive income is my current target.

I will also be doing more lifestyle, because this is what is interesting for macro and what seems to sell best in my portfolio on SS.

And the week after that, what do you do tickstock? Or a month later, or a year later? When the best match of the different agencies favors files from other weeks,other months,other years?

In total I have over 5000 files on my hard drives (I still have tons of older stuff I never uploaded to istock). And I am still producing new work on a low level every month.

Again, I am not in a race to upload as many files as possible. I want to make as much money as possible in a reliable,steady way longterm. Uploading "everything everywhere" will not take me there. I need to understand the different agencies and what sells on their individual markets first. I also need to understand their individual yearly cycles and many other things. I also had to apply to stocksy and westend61, I needed to hear about imagebrief and try it, learn about the video sites etc...

With just 300-700 files (plus istock) I am earning 35-50% of what I had before. I think I am doing extremely well. I see enough people with larger portfolios than me earning less.

But to each his own. I am sure there are others who upload all their files in the first week and are happy with their results as well.

Maybe it is best to just ignore my path and focus on what Michael did. If you ever went indie, you would probably want to follow his path. But then, you will never go indie, so it doesn�t really matter what we do anyway. the more exclusives leave, the less competition you will have.

You forgot to mention the Microstock deal, the Getty Google deal, the new subs plan without RC credits on istock, the cancellation of choosing 20% for Getty, the unlimited flood of mediocre images coming in, the risk of getting kicked out with just 30 days notice if you are too vocal or ask too many questions, etc... etc ...in short all sites, including istock and Getty have problems and dramas. Except maybe SS, the drama factor there seems to be very low.

I understand that some people are reluctant to exchange the devil they know for many unknown other hounds of terror...but for me the freedom was worth it. Unless they all mess up at the same time, which I believe is unlikely, it is much easier for me to just focus on my work.

Michael also mentioned that in his article, that upon going indie his stress level dropped remarkably. And for me stress blocks creativity.

Again, if you prefer to be fully artist exclusive good for you. I certainly enjoyed being exclusive for many years.

But from what I have learned and seen on all the new sites, I would never go artist exclusive again. Exclusive images, yes please. And if istock offered this as a third option, I would send them exclusive content as well. Just like for westend,stocksy or Fotolia.

But then maybe you should focus on Michael�s results. He did it in 6 months. So I suppose, so can others.

Hi Craig,

if you look around you will find many people reporting their story going indie. I think Michael was one of the fastest to have regained his full istock income, he did it in six months. But Michael was very well prepared and is in general an extremely well organized man and hard worker. You can find his blog here:

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

He was blogging his monthly income on a regular basis and just stopped doing that recently after proving he had reached his goals, so if you go back over that blog, you�ll get a good idea of what happened.

I went indie after the Getty Google deal last year and also terminated my Getty House contract at the same time. But this doesn�t mean I am not interested in macro as well as micro. I have been blogging in short comments on my facebook page about my journey, but my info is not as complete or interesting as what Michael did.

I took a whole year to understand the market and didn�t upload that much. So I only have betweenn 300 - 800 files on the new agencies. But I am glad that I took my time, because it helped me to understand what sells. I find that there are big differences in what kind of files become bestsellers, it is usually not the files that were bestsellers on istock.

Overall you have to remember the world out there is not waiting for you or your content. The indies have tremendously good artist who have been building large portfolios for years and have top search positions for their files. Your portfolio is coming in new so you have to fight your way in.

However, even with the small portfolio I have I am now overall at between 35% - 50% a month of my former exclusive earnings. This includes income from photos, videos and of course my indie income from 3600 files on istock.

So for such small portfolios, I think I am doing quite well and I am very glad I went indie. You have a lot more balance. There can be wild differences in monthly earnings, especially on sites like SS that offer a mix of very low subs income and very high extended license incomes (80 dollars, 28 dollars etc...) but the mix of different sites balances it all out.

I am also a member of stocksy and Westend61 and imagebrief, agencies that follow a higher price model. I also sell videos,mostly on pond5 and SS.

The most difficult thing to learn is what kind of content will sell where - high price or low price, high volume site or specialist niche etc...

The most important agencies for me are Shutterstock, stocksy, pond5,fotolia,dreamstime. On Westend I am too new to see results. And of course I still upload to istock.

I am also uploading to many of the smaller players, but the agencies mentioned are the most important for me. If anything, I would recommend to upload very regularly to SS and maybe to bundle the uploads into larger batches,instead of uploading 2 images a day.

And of course I would recommend applying to stocksy, if you are ready to work with an edited collection.

Good luck with your journey. You are not alone, there will be many more people going indie this year.

Quote from: EmberMike on May 03, 2014, 12:13

I don't know if it is commonly known, but there are a number of micro sites that will close your account if they find out you work for another agency. 

I didn't know this until I was asked to be a reviewer at one site, and during my probationary period, I was contacted by several others who knew somehow that I was reviewing for this one site, and I was told that I would be thrown off some very lucrative sites if I continued "working for" this site I was reviewing for. It didn't even matter that I was an independent contractor and not an employee.   I had to stop reviewing before the probationary period was up because I needed the micro income more. 

Perhaps in the future it might be a good idea for agency employees who are also micro contributors to join under a different name, and get the agency badge from Leaf, but remain anonymous as to who they are as contributors.

Since I went indie I have been contacted by several agencies to work for them as either an image reviewer or community builder. I have always declined even if some projects sounded very interesting. I know that some agencies will consider you as "working for the enemy/competition" even if you are just checking releases and looking for sensor spots.

For me it is important to stay independent. If I ever was going to be on any agency payroll, I would probably withdraw my portfolio from others or at least I would contact them in advance to avoid misunderstandings.

Back on topic. what I think we have been seeing this year is more and more agencies using their apis to transfer our content to other sites where they set up new business models that we never agreed to. Deposit with their 30 dollar 30 cent api deals, getty who are building an advertising network on the back of very high quality contributor content for free and DPC that offers content that was sent to Fotolia in a new unlimited  1 dollar plan. If they had just opened a new agency and asked for content, they could only be offering the lower value files that the low value agencies are able to attract.

We really need to keep our networking skills very sharp and favor the agencies that communicate at eye level and run their business with longterm vision.

I wish Fotolia had invested their energy and money into improving their main site. There is a lot that can be done to make Fotolia itself more attractive.

Apart from confidential information about royalty percentages in contracts I think a major difference in working with a macro distributor is that files that come in via blend,,spaces or westend61 can be ranked much higher in best match than the files of an individual artists.

And again, these placements and rankings will be confidential as well, but as an artist you can just do a search and see where files from a macro agency show up in a respective best match.

I understand that it is frustrating that I cannot see the actual contract, but by sending files and looking at the results, I can get an idea if the results are acceptable. And because I was directly with Getty before  i can compare.

 in addition you get the income from any direct sales made, which especially on extended licenses can be a huge sum.

I only have few files on westend and am still in the early stages of building my portfolio, but because they are the best known German macro house I am very confident that I will like the longterm results.

There will be a mix of direct sales, plus distribituion and my files can go to every player in the market - corbis, getty and also offset. If the agencies select my files of course,  i don't think they take everything.

And then there is the more personal feedback when working with a small agency.

Not everyone can get into stocksy and maybe spaces will also take styles that wouldn't fit the stocksy style guide. For instance on westend they will also take people and objects on white.

So I think spacesimages is an interesting additional opportunity for artists who would like to try macro.

After reading here and other places and thinking about it, I have decided I will opt out my files from DPC.

In the end it comes down to one question: if this was a new agency that had invited me to supply them with files - would I submit content with the business model they are offering? No, I wouldn't.

I am uploading my files to Fotolia on the basis of what Fotolia offers as an agency: a good mix of subs and credit sales, an established business with a known track record.

If Fotolia had written to me that they are looking for content for new projects, asking me to include my portfolio and promising me a bonus or better ranking if I do, I probably would have seriously considered it. Alamy gives artists the option to include their files in Novel Use projects. That is upfront, honest and transparent. Everyone can decide wether they want to join.

Fotolia could have done the same and with a bonus payment on all earnings I am sure they would have received lots of content.

But to just go behind our backs and include all my files in a new business model without asking me....this is not right.

I won't delete files, but I will opt out and wait with new uploads until this issue is resolved in a sensible manner.

I hope all the agencies are reading here. Please think of a positive way to engage us if you want to go into a new direction. Don't just take our content without our consent.

We work hard for our files and we are the ones who decide the price points we want to offer files for, not you.

I am very impressed with the strength and passion of the Russian language initiative. I understand if people are disappointed by the slower reaction here. But I think this might just reflect that Fotolia is not such a strong agency in the English speaking world. If you just make 20 dollars a month with Fotolia, you will not give it that much attention.

Fotolia is a very strong agency in Europe/Russia, but has little market share in North America.

The German fotolia board has a very frank discussion, and lots of respect for the initiative. Without the protest the changes announced in the last two days wouldn�t have happened.

That sounds great, I got the invite as well. Too far for me, but I wish I could be there!