Quote from: MetaStocker on October 07, 2012, 11:04

They should raise the prices A LOT, that's the only way out.
Competition will follow.

Less sales, more money.

I couldn't disagree more. The market is FLOODED and SATURATED. People are no longer willing to pay these prices, and imagery can always be had elsewhere. Price increases will only lead to iStock's downfall.  Getty doesn't seem to have learned that lesson way back when they felt threatened by iStock. Too much supply = low prices. It's simple economics.

Oh really ?

Getty Images has +80 million images on sale.
Haven't seen many discounts on their RM collection, no matter the oversupply, and same goes for Alamy having 30+ million images.

Saturation is a problem mainly felt in microstock but this is a non-issue as buyers hardly look after 5 or 10 pages of results, anything else just doesn't exist, it's sandboxed, as in a google search giving you millions of results.

People will always buy micro as long as it's cheaper than macro or assignments, that's exactly why micro exists in the first place.
Designers unwilling to invest 10$ in a picture they need for a commercial project should better get used paying more and billing their clients more or find another job.

And good luck finding the images you need somewhere else where most of the images are not keyworded properly or randomly tagged, try for yourself, big waste of time and time is money.

This whole fad is going to fade, people are going to realise they arent photographers.  But there are going to be billions and billions of bad photos online.  We are in white noise time, wading through all the crap to get to the good, people will eventually realise its not worth holding onto the crap.

Fully agree on this.
What will people do when the internet will be flooded by billions of shots done with Instagram all looking the same and screaming "doctored with Instagram on a phone" ?

And apart this, none of these images are properly keyworded so nobody will ever find them, so it's like if they don't exist and same for Flickr and other photo sharing sites.

Alamy have 32 million imgaes, when i do a search on one of my images it comes up with a handful of others, they all look like they were taken with a 3MP camera in 2002. Thats got to look bad for Alamy.

Have you ever searched editorial in other RM agencies ? They look exactly the same, unless they artificially pimp up the thumbnails in PHP or ASP (sharpened thumbs and adding a bit more contrast and saturation).

This look that you call "2002" is the same look book publishers like and buy.

It's micro images that are overprocessed, not RM images looking dull and washed out.
And indeed on Alamy there's plenty of scans from images shot on film in the'70, and they still sell.

They should raise the prices A LOT, that's the only way out.
Competition will follow.

Less sales, more money.

Istock falling down is a good news.
This agency is finally getting what it deserves.

http://imagery.gettyimages.com/AboutGettyImages/contributors/index.en-us.html

i submitted, they were kind enough to inform me to go to a different category.  i have stuff suitable for archive.  Not sure if theytll accept it, but i have a unique story noboy else in the world has done.

I think REX is a better agency for celebrities and archives.

I would love to do a couple of scientific illustrations for example, for some very rare subjects. I'm sure buyers would be willing to pay even a couple of hundred dollars for it, but with unusual subjects micro can't make up the low commission with bigger download numbers. I tried that and for some images which I know are the only ones available (so not much competition) I get 10 subs on Shutterstock. Not worth spending even a couple of hours on it.

Try SPL (Science Photo Library), it's a Getty partner, RF and RM, mostly illustrations, 3D, CGI, photoshopping.

http://www.sciencephoto.com/

I see their images used every day on BBC for instance.
No idea if you can get rich with SPL but it's probably the only agency doing sales in that field.

Corbis never answers to inquieries, it seems they refuse people even if you phone call their offices.
Getty rarely answers unless it's about news or if you have a scoop.

I suggest you sneak into getty or corbis joining one of their partner agencies but not all your photos will be accepted,it will take a long time to get your photos appear on the main getty collection, and the earnings will be lower.

Read this thread...

Correct me if i'm wrong but years ago Yuri has been accused from the start by RM photographers to do copycats of the best selling RM business and lifestyle images.