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Messages - gostwyck

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451
iStockPhoto.com / Re: What Is Midstock?
« on: October 07, 2013, 15:26 »
Jim,

My view is that the term 'Midstock', in the context that Getty are using it, includes Istock, Thinkstock and Photos.com. Jupiter Images is probably allocated to Premium stock.

My guessitmate at the time was that Istock probably peaked at something like $300M-$350M in 2010. It was the introduction of the RC system in Sept 2010, together with countless price increases (when they were being 'harvested' by H&F), that finally broke the dam. It's all been downhill ever since IMHO ... and rapidly too. They're now on their 3rd boss in little more than 2 years.

Before the price reduction in June the buyers of my images at Istock were paying just under $10 per download. Now that figure is down to about $4.20.

452
Shutterstock.com / Re: SS partners with Facebook
« on: October 06, 2013, 16:35 »
I was  bit taken aback the other day to see a facebook ad for a local real estate company featuring my house!

The image is one I sell as stock and has never been on Facebook in my account (i.e. it's not one of those ads that pulls from your own images). I haven't seen anything on SS that I can identify as a sale to FB.

Here's the screenshot

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12956972/FB-ad-house.png

And this is the image it is using

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=77565013

It'd be nice to know how these show up (and it is of course possible this was an image purchased elsewhere in the "normal" way)


I think most likely in this case that the advertiser simply bought it as a conventional stock image. I don't think the FB scheme is fully operational yet anyway.

You have a very nice house btw!

453
iStockPhoto.com / Re: What Is Midstock?
« on: October 06, 2013, 16:29 »
"Midstock" is the term used for a stock pricing policy that causes agencies to fail.

Whahaaay!

454
iStockPhoto.com / Re: What Is Midstock?
« on: October 06, 2013, 16:24 »
You're wildly underestimating TS/PP, Jim. It's now on a par with IS for non-exclusives and they have a huge mountain of wholly owned stuff in there as well.

I'd agree. My income from TS/PP is about 12-15% of what I earn from SS (and I have a somewhat smaller port on TS due to IS's hopeless 'connector').

Taking into account that TS/PP also pay smaller royalties than SS I think that TS/PP revenue could be as much as 20-25% that of SS. That would put them in the region of $40-50M annual sales.

455
Shutterstock.com / Re: ???????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
« on: October 05, 2013, 11:45 »
This thread needs a properly descriptive title.

456
iStockPhoto.com / Re: What Is Midstock?
« on: October 05, 2013, 05:36 »
Jim,

that is a very interesting analysis thank you. If anything I would believe that the volume of sales of non exclusive content is on the rise, at least 30% more, like gostwyck suggests. These sales might increase in the coming months as more and more customers realise that independent content has been dropped so drastically in price.

They are probably hoping to attract more buyers and might make up part of the loss by pushing more of their wholly owned content on which they pay no royalties.

Other than that I dont know how they will make up for the loss in revenue unless they really believe that lowering the prices on indie content is enough to draw back buyers from SS and Fotolia. However, price was only one part of the attraction of those sites.

You still have the problem of exclusive content series being spread over 3 different price points (vetta,s+ and main for images from the series) which is very confusing for the customers and the strange choices for "automated" editors pick which puts even objects on white in higher price collections.

Unless the customers can really see a difference in quality between the different price points, I guess many will prefer to look at the cheap content first.

Anyway, at least something is finally being done with istock. I hope the new logo comes with more money for marketing so my friends who are still exclusive will finally see some growth. They deserve it, they work really hard.

As an indie the price cut was a dissapointement, but already fotolia and SS combined have overtaken istock for me (with only 530 files online), so I understand that for indies istock now plays a minor role in their attention.

I am still a long way from recovering my old income, but at least now when I upload my files I get views and sales, so at least I see a connection between work and income again.

Great points Jasmine. In my view the greatest obstacles that Istock faces, in competition with SS in particular, is the speed of the site, the accuracy of the search results and the simplicity of the pricing architecture.

'All images same price' is always going to beat 'half price images forever' especially when confronted by 'multiple collections' no matter how simple or effective the 'price slider' becomes.

I'd have very happily invested in SS stock (before the price went ballistic) but I wouldn't dream of buying IS stock were it available.

457
iStockPhoto.com / Re: What Is Midstock?
« on: October 04, 2013, 17:28 »
Personally I think it is extremely feasible that the top 200 contributors were responsible for 20% of total sales ... I'm almost surprised that it's not higher.

How can you tell who the top 200 contributors are today when so much of the best quality content is from collections which were not represented even 18 months ago ?

Either way, it's feasible. But it's a guess. As is more or less everything else here. There is no data. Building a calculation out of guesses is pointless because anything multiplied by guess = an unknown. And the unknown gets bigger at every iteration.

Also - there is nothing here about strategy.

Those new collections might be significant in terms of revenue today but certainly not in terms of sales compared to the past. I think in their peak years Lise was selling north of 20K per MONTH and Yuri up to 30K.

458
iStockPhoto.com / Re: What Is Midstock?
« on: October 04, 2013, 16:45 »
2.
Based on my analysis of the downloads of 192 of iStocks leading contributors with almost 33 million total download (about 20% of iStocks total downloads since its founding)

I am very dubious of this metric as a starting point because I believe that  imported exclusive content (much of it very high quality) now likely accounts for a very significant proportion of sales. I do not believe that the time-served leading contributors and iStock members are taking nearly such a big share of the total. That is not to say that they are not still doing very well - only that much of the work in the imported collections is probably doing very well also.

I do not believe that you can extrapolate from 192 accounts.

3. I am not convinced that it is possible to draw a useful picture from a calculation put together from so many guesstimates, ifs and maybes - the uncertainty compounded and the possible accuracy diminished at every if ?

Don't forget Jim is talking about downloads not revenue on those 192 accounts. Also, we all sold far more images in the past than we do today so the totals are somewhat skewed by sales from years ago. Personally I think it is extremely feasible that the top 200 contributors were responsible for 20% of total sales ... I'm almost surprised that it's not higher.

459
iStockPhoto.com / Re: What Is Midstock?
« on: October 04, 2013, 16:35 »
"Getty Images is finally declaring iStock a Midstock brand given how high they have pushed the prices of iStocks exclusive imagery."

Are you saying they've slapped a label on it somewhere?

Well, there is the new logo ...

460
iStockPhoto.com / Re: What Is Midstock?
« on: October 04, 2013, 16:34 »
Excellent analysis Jim.

As an non-exclusive contributor I can tell you that, since the price decrease, my downloads have actually increased by about 30% whilst my average royalty has been slashed from about $2 down to 70-80c. I'm on the 18% royalty rate.

The net result is that my earnings at IS are down about 45% (and so is Istock's cut of my sales) when compared to the same month the previous year.

If my figures are anything to go by I think Q3 for Istock, when it finally gets reported, is going to be a lot worse than Q1 & Q2.

461
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Scout?
« on: October 03, 2013, 21:05 »
Do scout tickets actually get answered and, if so, after how long? 

You've lost me there. Scout? What for? I never even considered using 'Scout' back in the days when uploading stuff to Istock might actually make you some money. Nowadays I couldn't be arsed to upload there even if they paid me to do so.

Let's face it __ Istock are dead in the water. No amount of new logos or facetweets, or whatever they're called, is going to change that.

462
Shutterstock.com / Re: Changes to the TOS at Shutterstock
« on: October 03, 2013, 19:46 »
... So buyers get more images, shutterstock pays out less, and contributors get paid less.

Whatever you think *ickstock is fine by me. All I know is I've scooped well over $200 on SOD's alone today and I'm enjoying a nice little drink. Thanks for asking!

Surely it must be time by now for you to pester Scott on some other microscopic issue than doesn't actually affect you? We're all sitting on our hands waiting. Any chance that one day you might even grow a pair and ask such a question on your beloved IS's forum?

463
General Stock Discussion / Re: Best Sales
« on: October 03, 2013, 15:55 »
It's actually somewhat irrelevant or at least auto-regulating to some degree.

The best-selling categories are by far the most competitive and also attract those with the most talent and the most money to spend on their shoots. As a newbie you will probably be out of your depth trying to take sales in such categories.

You need to shoot what interests you, what you have knowledge of and what you have relatively cheap access to. As Sean says you refine your work through experimentation and experience.

curiously saying "exactly" regarding experimenting got me a minus ;D

Zapped!

464
General Stock Discussion / Re: Best Sales
« on: October 03, 2013, 15:50 »
It's actually somewhat irrelevant or at least auto-regulating to some degree.

The best-selling categories are by far the most competitive and also attract those with the most talent and the most money to spend on their shoots. As a newbie you will probably be out of your depth trying to take sales in such categories.

You need to shoot what interests you, what you have knowledge of and what you have relatively cheap access to. As Sean says you refine your work through experimentation and experience.

465
Newbie Discussion / Re: Looking for cropping wisdom
« on: October 03, 2013, 15:35 »
It's easy. Crop one version for maximum impact at thumbnail size but also upload a wider version for more flexibility. I usually find the tight-cropped version outsells the wide one by about 3:1. The only exception is overhead shots which generally sell better wider.

466
Shutterstock.com / Re: Changes to the TOS at Shutterstock
« on: October 02, 2013, 20:47 »
Scott,
Thanks for the answers, it's good of you to explain it a little more even though it still looks like it's a good deal for Shutterstock and buyers at the expense of contributors.   Good to hear that you do pay contributors for all free images.

If you compare a two user plan to two separate single accounts:
Shutterstock makes $399 compared to $398 (2x$199) so Shutterstock stays even in revenue collected
Shutterstock pays out a max of 35 subs per day compared to 50 or 30% less cost.
Buyers pay $399 as opposed to $398 but get 35 unique images compared to 25 (2x25 since both parties would need to license the images)
Contributors get paid for 35 images as opposed to 50 images or 30% less.

So buyers get more images, shutterstock pays out less, and contributors get paid less.

... and Istock pays out as little as 15% ... quite possibly somewhat less after their currency exchange and discount shenanigans ... and that's only if we can actually believe their forever broken and slow shambles of a website.

What I don't understand *icstock, is why you are 'fighting the good fight' about things that don't actually affect you, whilst ignoring the much greater injustices that do affect you.

If you have a problem with how SS conducts it's business then how do you reconcile your support of IS without question to theirs? Indeed the opposite; you actually glorify IS/GI in your posts. Do they send you the Koolaid for free or what?

467
Shutterstock.com / Re: Changes to the TOS at Shutterstock
« on: October 02, 2013, 19:27 »
Hello Tickstock,

Theres a more accurate perspective on our team subscriptions.  Our multi-user products are often used by small businesses who represent a few individuals.  Take the example of one small business with (3) users.  They get a discounted rate and pay less to Shutterstock if they purchase a 3-person team subscription than if they had (3) users purchasing (3) individual standard subscriptions. However, Shutterstock still pays out the same amount on every download.  In both our standard subscriptions and in our team subscriptions, the images are being used by a single entity.

The licenses themselves allow very similar rights, with the exception of the 500k reproduction limit.  Our competitors offer the same (or more) reproductions with their standard licenses.  Lastly, were offering additional legal indemnification to the customer, which is a cost carried by Shutterstock.

In terms of free imagesas stated, its the practice of our marketing team to pay royalties for images used for marketing and promotion, even though were not obligated to do so.  When images are offered for free through our Free Photo of the Week program, we only do so with the permission of the contributor.   Customer and partner downloads generate paid licenses.   

Ive explained our Premier products separately. We provide unwatermarked comps to trusted, high-value customers such as large ad agencies, but those comps do not include usage licenses. Unwatermarked comps are very common in the stock image industry.  When a usage license is issued, contributors receive up to $120 or more in royalties.

Best,

Scott
VP of Content

C'mon *ickstock. As an Istock exclusive, surely you can find yet another angle to waste more of Scott's time with inane questions about issues that don't actually affect you?

You know the sort of questions ... they'll be the ones you wouldn't even dream of asking on Istock's own forum regarding their much murkier and less generous TOS.

468
this is a nice and often useful forum but that poll is worthless. a handful of ppl and they click in whatever they want. represents just 'bout nothing.

Nope. You can take from it want you want ... but there is undoubtedly a measure of truth in the relative incomes from each agency. 

469
Shutterstock.com / Re: Changes to the TOS at Shutterstock
« on: October 01, 2013, 20:40 »
I pay attention to issues at iStock. too, this happens to be a Shutterstock thread though.  So you don't care if Shutterstock is giving away your images for free?  You don't mind that they are charging 2 or 3 times more and paying you the regular subscription royalty?  Do you really believe these questions shouldn't be answered?  You would rather not know what you are getting paid?  Fighting this hard to keep yourself ignorant is mind boggling to me.

So let's see you 'fighting this hard' against IS/Getty ... the only fight you actually have a dog in. Funny how you are so silent when it comes to them. Get off this thread and leave it to those that have an actual interest in it.

470
Shutterstock.com / Re: Changes to the TOS at Shutterstock
« on: October 01, 2013, 20:20 »
Oh sorry!
It's cool but maybe you need to go to anger management classes?

I'm not angry, just a little tired of your incessant demands of SS employees when, unlike me, you are not paying their wages.

Maybe you should take some 'business focus' classes? You seem to spend most of your time focusing on every issue ... apart from those that actually affect you.

471
Shutterstock.com / Re: Changes to the TOS at Shutterstock
« on: October 01, 2013, 19:15 »
Thanks for the answer.  I would think if you are charging more for letting more people use the image (along with increased reproductions which used to get the contributor an EL) the contributor would be paid more as well.

About the free images you said it is your "general practice", does that mean there are cases when images are given away without compensation for contributors?

* *insult removed* __ as an Istock's exclusive you're not even a contributor to SS! Why should Scott spend his time answering your inane, nonsensical questions forever?
*insult removed*, you're as clever as 3rd grader aren't you.  Well I guess I'll tell you again why I'm asking questions:
1.  I have thousands of images disabled on Shutterstock.
2.  I have referred friends, family, and others to submit at Shutterstock and don't pay too much attention to what's going on.
3.  I may contribute to Shutterstock again in the future.
4.  I think some people might be interested in knowing what they are getting paid, obviously you don't care but others might.

I don't know why I bother responding to you, you've shown over and over again that you are nothing but a pathetic, sad, loser.  Oh well if this is what makes you happy, carry on.

ETA: I can't believe you think it's nonsensical to ask what you are getting paid or question why Shutterstock has doubled prices and continued to pay you the same amount.

Oh sorry! I just thought, from your posts, that you were always happy to support whatever changes IS/Getty made against it's contributors without any questions at all. Strange that you need so much detail about any other agency in which you have no stake at all. Maybe it's because you know that IS/Getty would just ignore your questions and your concerns?

472
Shutterstock.com / Re: Changes to the TOS at Shutterstock
« on: October 01, 2013, 18:59 »
Thanks for the answer.  I would think if you are charging more for letting more people use the image (along with increased reproductions which used to get the contributor an EL) the contributor would be paid more as well.

About the free images you said it is your "general practice", does that mean there are cases when images are given away without compensation for contributors?

* *insult removed* __ as an Istock's exclusive you're not even a contributor to SS! Why should Scott spend his time answering your inane, nonsensical questions forever?

473
General Stock Discussion / Re: September 2013 Microstock Income
« on: October 01, 2013, 18:52 »
My September was dead even with a very disappointing August.  Not seeing a sales jump in September has never happened before in my 8 years of doing microstock. 

Continuing my trend of year on year losses, I am down 18% from September 2012.

Sorry to hear that Lisa. I guess you were more 'exposed' to Istock's demise than most of us due to your successful track-record there. A clear case of "you play ball with us ... and we'll shove the bat up your arse".

Strangely the usual seasonal factors, that we have come to assume were a 'given', have just not materialised this year. It's been pretty much flat for me.

474
General Photography Discussion / Re: UK Printing Companies
« on: October 01, 2013, 17:36 »
people above have said they use photobox and the quality is good. Now you have thrown a spanner in the works. The print I want is 35" x 20". Should I upload a TIff rather than a JPEG ?

I've got a feeling that they are only set up for JPEG. Either that or they'll simply convert a TIFF to a JPEG before printing. A JPEG is already way more detailed than most commercial printing processes can cope with at that size. Anyway, a print of that size is supposed to be viewed from some distance ... not from 4cm with an eyeglass.

475
General Stock Discussion / Re: September 2013 Microstock Income
« on: October 01, 2013, 15:24 »
Better than last September by 10-20% depending on Getty  and Thinkstock sales.  It is a little worrying that only one image uploaded in the last year has made more than $500 though.  I'm cautiously optimistic about the final few months of the year.

Have you been reading iStock's Sept sales thread?  Better make that very cautiously optimistic.   ;)

Hmm. I must admit the word 'optimistic' is not exactly the first one that springs to mind when it comes to Istock. There are however many other words, mostly utilising industrial language, that come to mind instead.

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