Quote from: gostwyck on April 03, 2011, 18:50

Quote from: caspixel on April 03, 2011, 09:21

The conference calls are lame. It's like suckering people into feeling they are important by giving them a title so you can take their attention off the fact that they wanted a raise.

Agreed. They've proved effective though, at least from Istock's point of view. The last one did nip almost all discussion in the bud about the security issues and the truly horrendous cash claw-back. Whatever discussion resulted was conveniently deflected in to the laps of the the contributor participants of the conference call. Istock never had to say another word after the call __ they just left it to the 'lucky' participants to say their words for them.

It will be interesting to see how many of the vector Vetta artists capitulate after Istock have indulged, smooched and massaged their egos in a nice little chat (whilst actually just thinking about how much money can be made out of said artists).

In this case the artists are not actually seeking 'a raise' but simply to maintain their commission rate.

Nail on the head, as usual, gostwyck.

haters are gonna hate

maybe that is part of the best match equation with its ebb and flow. Your ebbing... and then you disappear from search for a bit and you flow right back to the front of the searches. I sometimes feel like my portfolio gets turned off for periods of times.
However, this morning, i wake up to substantial dls from the european buyers and havent seen much action in the US market.

Quote from: VB inc on March 29, 2011, 23:18

My thinking is pictures with lighter backgrounds sell more as a whole than the darker ones since these pics blend better on lighter/white backgrounds. Kind of like the characters really stand out as the light backgrounds recedes into the page.  Im not sure exactly what kind of work digitalexpressionsimages does, but the majority of the microstock images i see on ads online or print is usually the image itself just cropped and with text outside the image. I would likely bet that the majority of the images bought on microstock sites are just used as is or with a slight crop and plopped on some sort of a white or a light background with minimal design experience needed. Its also likely that dark texts are used more commonly than light text.

Oops, one more thought. For the record, light areas don't recede.

Please re-read what i said above... i said light areas recede into the page (the page that is right next to the image is usually a light color like the background color of this and many internet pages...) There is less contrast. You are talking about the image as a whole while i am talking about the image in regards to its environment it is inside of.

And for what its worth, i was talking about the creating for the volume business that is microstock. I should have been more clearer in my earlier post that while your points are valid, they are just a small part of the bigger microstock market. I was in no way referring to you when i said minimal design experience so im sorry if it somehow came across that way. I just know there are all kinds of buyers out there. Many of them have minimal design knowledge.

I feel genuinely bad for the people working at istock. Its pretty clear that they really have no say in what their company does when it comes down to maximizing profits at all costs.

wow... 8 cents... talk about micro royalties... i think time would be better spent going through trash and getting plastic bottles for recycling. In the US, at least u get like 5 cents per plastic bottle. 

I get pissed when i see $5 royalties when usually they earn me close to $8 on my vectors.

so whats the difference between a guild and a union?

Sneaky istock decided to put the post on the help forum instead of the discussion one knowing it will get read less. They know full well its gonna be filled with posts screaming about loss of downloads.

Quote from: jsnover on March 21, 2011, 13:49

The problem I see for the video and vector protesters is that IS will be keenly aware that if they gave an inch on rates they'd have a massive clamor from photographers to do the same for them.

Absotively.

video contributors can be like the Tunisia of istock rebellion

its ridiculous for getty to try to push down to 20% royalty. Getty really doesnt know how badly they are screwing this up with this ridiculous commission cut. It really is killing off the golden goose.

The only smart thing for every vector artist to do is to opt out. WE NEED TO MAKE A STAND. With the higher price and less commission, the file will get downloaded a lot less than as the regular collection. The vetta vector slowly loses its place on the best match do to slower sales. The agency probably knows this but they dont care since there are only so many slots that will be up front for those images and they will always make money off any contributor. The contributor loses out majority of the time. Win win for istock and lose lose for the contributors. Remember that these new collections will be in front of your best sellers which will slowly start to lose place in the best match line. Istock is accelerating the shrinking pie.

The internet is more social now so word spreads faster with twitter and facebook. Ironic that istock was able to harness that social energy early and now -- just as everyone else has caught up -- is tossing it out the window.

Im sure its Getty/H&F  that is calling the shot at istock. This was exactly the reason i didnt like about 9-5 job... the office BS politics.

i swear, every time they shift best match, i never seem to benefit from it. The downloads are 10-20% less from what i was making prior to the shift. Why cant i be included in this little club of theirs where it benefits me after the shift? Maybe its because i started to produce only three years ago. Grrr....

Quote from: VB inc on March 18, 2011, 10:33

best match shift is geared towards older files so successful files over 2 years old are showing up in front.

Not always. I tried a search where there were only 32 hits, and 5 of mine Ifilm scans from 2007) were the bottom 5. Then had a theory that scans must be at the back, but another search proved that not to be true.
Anyway, I had 1 DL yesterday, 1 so far today. Can't get much worse for me.

Well i guess i should have added in my case then. My earlier successful files from 2008 has been getting downloaded and i search the relevant keywords and they show right up at the front. Since the word "successful" is relative to each individual, I think any file with a 30-1 view to download ratio to be a pretty successful file.

Visibility of new uploads has been steadily declining for months now and i think the reason is that they are slowly showing older successful images more and more.

Demise of iStock?

My sales are up compared to the last two years. They may have cut the percentage but I'm making more money. I know, small time contributor but for some strange reason my sales are up. Maybe it's people pulling out and removing their images? I keep wondering if the whole negative vibe and attitude thing here is making things seem worse than they are? I mean, numbers are numbers, the rest of the sites, the forums, (I never was a fan of their forum) I don't care about the politics.

They change the plan at IS PP and give us more money. People found something wrong with that.

Some people are driving buyers elsewhere. People are pulling images. Exclusives are dropping that status. There's a general protest that's often self defeating, constantly fault finding and criticizing. Some advocate removing all links to harm IS. And there's more, no matter what Getty does, it's wrong. Then the same people turn around and say sales and income are down? Oh and yes, blame the Partner Program for all of the problems?

What demise? IS doesn't seem to be gone or suffering. Could be what others have said, an attempt to keep the high selling producers and drive away the hobby shooters and people with sub-standard images. Collateral damage is losing some of the fine people who counted on the best selling, best producing agency to keep supporting them. But in some ways IS is still the best around if it brings in more income than any of the others except Shutterstock?

Yeah the theft of images sucks, so they have a small panel to explain what's going on and there's an eight page thread of people nit picking everything from the NDA to who gets picked to participate, and missing the point, that IS could have said nothing as a private security issue. Doesn't matter what they do or how they try to communicate, it's going to get called a failure and picked apart for every tiny flaw including some that don't exist except in a critics negative and gloomy outlook.

No it's not perfect and there are flaws and people are unhappy that the income and sales that they had previously and expected to continue forever haven't. (seems some of us called that last year as stabilizing and leveling off.) There was easy money and like a gold rush, the early people in, profited, but now the market is flooded, many professional "image factories" have taken over.

The times and the market have changed!

Couldnt agree more. Im making more now than last year. and many times more than what i made 2 years ago. I am what you would say a newcomer shrinking that big piece of the pie. Theres more joining everyday and that brings me to a thought i had when i first started contributing 3 years ago. Is the open door policy of microstock really sustainable? Theres only so many buyers in the world.

Unfortunately, its human nature to be bitter and upset when the income you come to depend on slowly starts shrinking. At least this forum is around for people to vent their frustrations. But I do honestly get annoyed with some posters who constantly whine and complain about the same stuff over and over again in what seems like every post.

As far as Demise of istock... i think its all relative to who you ask. Im sure the newly ingested Agency photographers dont think its a demise at all. For all their recent f ups, it sure feels like it from where im standing too.