I have a lot of Sony Gear and I am really excited. I love my little Nex5, and  the new Nex 7 looks very promising.

For studio work I have the alpha900 and I hope they follow up model will do video, just like the new 77.

I think the survey is important because this should give her the opinion of the overall mood of the contributors. She has no prior experience with istock, maybe she thinks that the forums are just for the "untalented whining artists" while the "real pros" are all superhappy and content and don�t bother with the forums at all.

That is why I believe  it is very, very important to make your voice heard and fill out the survey even if you just answer every question with just a half sentence.

Sounds like an overhip version of what istock was. Very strange.

Who is the target group? Students? Very young designers in their teens or early twenties?

I didn�t get an email for feast, but maybe this is a US thing.

ETA: just read about the mentorship programm, so it�s apparently aimed at students (17-22)

I am still waiting for mine. I think that they are sending out a survey to everyone is good.

They can always follow it up with interviews of a smaller group later. Certainly sounds interesting what Shutterstock did and that they paid the participants properly for their time shows how much they appreciate their input.

I hope that istock will do surveys like these every year. The contributors are paying the agency a lot of money for the service the agency offers. It is always good to get feedback from your customers.

Unless it gets tested in humans, I wouldn�t get too excited. This looks like very early stages and they are probably seeding stories to the press while trying to get more funding.

Interesting concept, though.

"Sorry to snip, but are you kidding? There's stock images in use everywhere in Germany, and I'm sure someone can correct me but its the biggest market outside the US for stock images. Mostly buyers are using Fotolia, but stock images are everywhere."

Stock images are in use everywhere when designers do the job. And obviously all the large advertising campaigns that you see are done by designers.

I am talking about small to medium businesses that make the backbone of the German economy. Again many of them will hire a designer, for instance when they do a website or have a large project.

But they rarely use a stock site directly - for instance when they do their routine power point presentations, small newsletter etc...I used to work on up to 12 trade shows a year that had mostly small businesses. All the small electricians, restaurants, pubs, clothes shops, doctors. All these people can use images. And of course all the machine and engineering related companies that noone has ever heard of but that are essentiel to German success in export.

But they are usually too stingy to hire a photographer so either they take their own pictures or just use text.

Small - medium businesses carry 70% of our economy, so that is a huge market to approach.

Like you say the designers seem to favor fotolia, at least that is the most common name I encounter if the webdesigners lists the image credits.

So over here istock can grow two ways: reach out direct to the smaller businesses and take away fotolias market share.

Germans are "do it yourself" people, paying for a designers work hour is considered expensive by many. So will enjoy working with a stock site if someone shows them how to use it.

I�ve been showing people how to use istock for years. Unfortuantely when best match was dominated by V/A without a price filter, even my own friends opened accounts on fotolia.

On some searches V/A was 70% of the first 200 images, especially for people who don�t use stock every day it appeared like istock had dramatically increased their prices.

So whatever market share istock has now, they can still grow for many years to come.

Michael wasn't "sent". When he became an admin he suggested to become an official liason/representaion whatever you want to call it. It was his idea and a good one.

Being an admin doesn't mean giving up your identity.

There is a group of istockers who like to belittle MSG as a place for the whining "beermoney crowd" and obviously they think that only people on istock are "real photographers".  I find it so sad every time I hear it. I love istock and will remain exclusive, but IMO a little humbleness is a sign of professionalism in doing business. After all, you never know who you might be making the next deal with.

However, if istock wanted to work on their reputation over here, they could easily appoint a staff member to be helpful and answer questions, just like other agencies do. My colleague MichaelJay used to do this very patiently and bravely on an outside German forum. I think he was quite successful at reaching out to those who were genuinely interested in istock.

But the best thing is to have the reputation of being the site that brings in the most money.

Preferably double or triple to any competitor. 

the contributors are paying the agency to bring in the customers. Very obviously istock has failed grow in the last months. Many top contributors are producing fantsatic content in high volume and see no growth. or even decline in sales.

The independents are reporting excellent growth at the competition and looking at webtraffic istock seems to have fallen to a the level of dreamstime. But 2 years ago it was the undisputable no 1 microstock site.

obviously everyone has to make their own business decisions, but in the future who will want to go exclusive with istock if it is notthe no 1?

so i hope that rebecca brings the customers back. after all that is the service that the contributors are paying for.

i also hope she encourages mixed media contributors to stay exclusive, because in my environment I already see what used to be die hard istock photogrPhers signing up with pond5 for video. the rc system discourages them from keeping all content with istock getty.  a photographer will never have enough time to produce enough video to rise up in the system.

I think it is a big mistake to encourage people to leave and spread their content to other sites. Just like it was a mistake to encourage the buyers to leave by refusing to install a price filter for many months.

Quote from: cobalt on August 05, 2011, 17:13

she will quickly understand the value of a strong crowd sourcing community. People are ready to work for free, what�s not to like?

Getty's crowd sourcing resource is Flickr, please don't get naive!

I don't see a huge flickr getty community. just getty picking images from a site with pictures.

The flickr photographers are not doing stock full time. And you are right, on getty they just have a forum, they are not using it as a tool to create a community of well networked artists totally dedicated to working with each other to create great content. Maybe they will in time. After all Bruce always pointed out how much cheaper istockers were producing high quality images by working together.

We don't need creative briefs. We reserach markets and niches before we shoot, we network with each other to keep production costs down.

We just need more simple things - statistic tools to help us optimize our portfolio etc...and obviously - make all the money count towards RC so that making money is the top focus.

If I consider doing video alongside photography, nothing should hold me back. If I plan a shoot and only do photos, because RC does not encourage me to do more than one media, then those videos will simply not be taken. But the customer would greatly benefit from having both photo and video from a set scene.

I am not looking for warm fuzzies, just good economics.

Great post jsnover!

Let�s see what Rebecca comes up with and what her plans are. She is holding two full time jobs. It is possible she is only there temporarily to get a feel for the place before she finds a new full time manager. Wouldn�t be anything wrong with that either.

But whatever she does, she must increase profit and I think now this means aggressive sales. So at the moment I am optimistic and will try to free up as much time for shooting as I can.

And whatever I upload now will at least go to my portfolio. Whatever the new system is, at least these files will be in.

Well said. But the success of istock is not just due to Kelly. We all worked on that.

I think it is entirely possible to be grateful how istock changed my life but to also point out that the dramatic loss in contributor trust and sales traffic isn�t good for istock.

Kelly moved into a position where he will probably do a lot more good for us than before and he doesn�t have to deal with a lot of day to day stuff.