I am only thinking of removing files from searches that don�t sell (after 3,4,5, years) Just like you suggested to purge old portfolios. These would be automatically transformed into nearly 100% "personal portfolios".

The artist can then return if he wants to and add new content.

Maybe even have the possibility to add an old file to the main collection if suddenly it starts to sell again. 

"I like the idea of an agency having both public and private collections although I'm not sure how I'd actually make use of it.  "

Well, for instance all the artists that shoot "lifestyle" or business. every year they have to create similar images of business teams, families having dinner, just to make sure the models are dressed in the latest style of clothes, hairstyle, home design and using the latest electronic gadgets.

Some images maybe so generic that they hav a very long shelf life (teenagers in jeans and T shirt sitting in a group and chatting) but other will look very dated after 3 years (mobile phones that look like bricks).

So when they stop selling you can still have them in your portfolio if you want them. Maybe a customer needs an older style (80ties revival party, insurance targeting seniors). If the buyer is loyal to you or likes how you shoot they will want to look at all your files first.

On the other side there are specialists, for instance someone who collects images from all the butterfly species of the world. With correct terminology, description etc...They would always just have a percentage of their files in the main collection (maybe the most beautiful, eye catching butterflies) but they wcertainly attract loyal buyers. If their slow selling files are removed their portofilio is weakened. Some very exotic, rare butterfly may only be bought once every 10 years. But the specialist will have it, the customer is happy he can find a real expert.

This also works for someone who shots landscapes or specializes in images from a certain region (traditional clothing, food, houses). They can happily shoot their region in all seasons, have images from all the festival (editorial, even video) but only a part of the portfolio will be in the main search. But over many years the personal portfolio can be properly developed with a lot of attention to detail. A large personal portfolio encourages to develop your own style, it will be less generic.

The agency then has more specialized, regional content they can add to galleries and lightboxes to promote to different customer groups.

etc...

Hi Stacey,

just wanted to add one more thing about the PP Programm. Of course, It only makes sense if the pp Program focusses on subscriptions.

I just remembered that some people heard that the PP programm was a good place for the buyers who want cheap files to go and that by focussing istock on the high quality content V/A they knew they would have to sacrifice "cheap" buyers. If this means they are promoting PP sites for Pay as you go and hoping customers who don�t like the high prices on istock will go to PP - that makes no sense whatever. Why on earth would you want to lose traffic from istock??

When customers are not happy with istock - where will they go? The competition of course. Shutterstock, Dreamstime, Fotolia. These sites are well established and have a good market presence. PP sites are new, making them known internationally will take years and cost a lot of money. If this is the intent, then I am not suprised that the agency needs more money. Promoting and marketing many different sites and brands running parallel must be very expensive. At the same time the competition is not diluting their efforts and focus on mainly one (or two) sites.

 http://siteanalytics.compete.com/istockphoto.com+shutterstock.com+dreamstime.com/

Looking at the stats customers left istock and proportionally and in the same time frame signed up with other well known sites.

Now that Shutterstock has overtaken istock, what is going to stop them from offering a V/A programm of their own?

Usually on the internet companies strive to become the total 800 pound gorilla (amazon, itunes, ebay). Amazon offers a lot more products than we have files on istock. There must be other things you can do with the user interface to manage the rising number of files. Moving low sellers to a subscription site makes sense, but encouraging pay as go customers to leave istock and split the traffic - this I don�t understand. Customers want a one stop shop. Two payment models, two sites. They could probably ad a "getty" area on istock showcasing selected high quality collections, like they have for video and vectors and it would work well. It would all be on the same site. Focussing on a small buyer group makes you very vulnerable.

if they want to get rid of the low sellers and unclog the search they could also just remove them from the general search but offer to keep them in the artists portfolio if the artist wants them there. The main collection could be more a showcase for the most successful work, the artists webshop however could have more files including outtakes from the series.

This would be an easy way to keep the main collection fresh, while giving the artist the control over his own portfolio and helping him to develop his own group of buyers who like his or her style.


I hope the price slider and best match changes bring our customers back. If Dreamstime and Fotolia overtake us...that would be sad.

But istock is a very dynamic company, they experiment and try things and learn. Over the years they�ve tried so many different strategies and they always corrected their mistakes. As an exclusive I hope they take their dominant position in the market back.

"The good news is that Istockphoto are planning an overhaul of the upload system.The present one is too slow."

Really? I use DeepMeta and uploading is a breeze. (Deepmeta is a free program that helps you keyword and upload files).

What are they going to change? Do you have a link?

The landscape with the hot air ballon is the only one with a real commercial value IMO.

Stock is not about what you like, but what the customers need and will pay money for. How is a car dealer going to advertise with these images? Or a bakery? Or an insurance company?

You can collect ads in newspapers to see what commercial images look like.

Because stock is very competitive you need very good equipment and professional skill set to make money. If there is a photography school near you, I suggest you take as many classes as you can in studio lighting, portrait, photoshop. Ideally enroll in a program for commercial photographers.

Also if you know photographers volunteer to assist in as many shootings as you can. Weddings are good to practise professional lighting under very difficult conditions. In the beginning you will only be allowed to hold the reflector, but maybe they let you take some additional shots.

The skills you learn while assisting will help you when you set up your own shootings.

The biggest difference between stock and photography as a hobby is that a stock image is preplanned and intentionally composed. You don't walk around with a camera and just shot what you see.

It starts with researching what images are already available in a subject you are interested in. Then you have to find a niche or a series of images that you think is missing in that field. You can make drawings of an image series, to get a first idea about useful image composition.

Then you scout the location, decide on the best time of day to shoot. Maybe take test shoots to check the light. You think about how much artifial light you want to bring to the set, reflecters, light formers, speed lights or strobes...You have to find the models, decide on the clothes and style they should were, how to do the make up. What props will you need? Chairs, table, Food, books, computer?

And then what is the best way to arrange all that?

What aperture do you need? Which lens? Maybe a lens baby or special filter? How many assistants to help you with the shoot?

Then you shoot.

Then you pack it all up, thank the models, put the furniture back, go home.

Next day: download images to your computer. Identify usable files for a series. Postprocess for a few days or two days...and then...keywording, uploading and any on site descriptions, lightboxing, image links...

And so on.

Commercial photography is very hard work.

Even if you don't shoot lifestyle and just want to do landscapes or food, or flowers, there is a lot to thtink about, to prepare, to organize, to learn.

I love doing it, it is fun. But it isn't for everyone.

So good luck with your journey :-)

Hi Stacey,

I may be a former inspector and moderator but I never had any insight into marketing plans, best match secrets etc...on that front I had to make my own educated guesses, just like all other members...however, because I see how hard people are working on the different admins teams, I maybe have more trust in their actions than the average contributor.

What happens when all content is duplicated on the PP, which is a different site than istock? Well what about the independents spreading their files over all the different stock sites?? If subscription and cheap files was all the buyers wanted, all pay as you go sites would have folded a long time ago. IMO.

I think the key lies in the istock marketing. If they promote pp sites more than istock and add an attractive pay as you go package, then pp becomes a threat. But why should they do that?? It is expensive to move traffic, if the buyers are on istock, why should they encourage them to leave?

The day I feel that pp is threatening my income, I will pull my files, that�s for sure. For now I don�t see it, also because different files are bestsellers there. Many files that never had a sale on istock or were slow on istock are selling on pp. Just like some files "awoke" in the dollar bin and now have flames.

I think having several sites and moving content around is a good way to deal with the oversupply of files. For instance I can think of some kind of time based program to move content. Something like: what doesn�t sell on getty as RM even once - goes to getty RF. What doesn�t sell on getty RF even once goes to istock (or jupiterimages or punchstock) . What doesn�t sell on istock in 3-5 years even once goes to pp...or the dollar bin.

Of course I would prefer if the contributor always had the choice in that. But when files don�t sell over a really long time, they might do better on a different site. How much time? That will depend on many things.

I already deleted many files from istock when I put them into PP and even when I upload new files I might decide to put some weaker images or outtakes straight into PP.

So for me it is a useful system. At least in principle.

I do see a risk that because the contributors get a lower percentage on pp than on istock, that there is a possibility that the agency may benefit more than the contributor if a customer signs up there instead of istock.

But the pp sites don�t have the V/A content. And I think these files are extremely valuable in boosting revenue.
So I think marketing will always try to bring customers to istock or Getty first (where the prices are even higher).

I am not against having "luxury collections" or different price points on istock. I just have a problem with the way they were dominating best match if they have no sales.

I thought it was very bad for business and if I look at what happened to the traffic, it looks like my nightmares came true. Especially because the low sales were predictable IMO (because of the style, not the price). Putting them all in front will of course boost their sales in general, but wine is not coffee, those coming in for coffee and finding 60% wine on the first three pages will obviously go elsewhere. Plus you frustrate the "coffee producing contributors" who have time and money invested in developing very generic files for high volume sales.

Again, all of the above is my own conjecture. No crystal ball involved.

Obviously the ideal would be if the best match is not just dynamic but also intelligent, i.e. it learns the buying habits of the customers, adds regional info and then every customer will see a different best match depending on his or her buying behaviour, location.

If a customer always buys the cheapest files, why offer him search results with 50% Vetta? And a customer that is not budget concious will appreciate a result dominated by the more exclusive V/A with low downloads, so the risk is low that their client will find the same image in use by a competitor. It isn�t RM, but can be better than using files with thousands of downloads.

Thanks for the info. I�ll need to find a different laptop for my next shoot.

Photographers/Creative artists are a dime a dozen. We create digital products that can be sold worldwide at lightspeed.

They can source artists from all over the world and with istock�s excellent feedback system/forums/Lypses they will always have enough creative talent to find the few gems they need who will become contributors for the high end collections and getty. istock is an excellent talent scout. I know, I�ve received fantastic feedback and I will always be grateful.

I think what I am trying to say, that hopefully things are not as bleak for exclusives or "coffee artists" like me. But my income will become  spread over several sites, not just istock.

I sincerly hope what is happening is part of a careful strategy.

My worst nightmare is that there is some internal power struggle with different people pulling directions to different buyer groups. Or best match changes that come from panic and bad predictions. Somebody has to be clearly in charge of the "big picture". You can�t have different parts of a company work independently from each other or even fight each other. You need clear leadership to keep everyone focussed, every employee, contributor, even the cleaning staff need to know their place and what their role is. Ideally they should absoluetly love what they do and be so passionate about it that you have to force them to take a break or a holiday.

A company is not a democracy, it needs benovelent dictatorship and good communication. Think of Apple Computer. Or a well oiled machine.

At the moment many contributors are confused and frustrated and probably quite a few buyers as well. So this machine isn�t working at optimal performance. And it needs more than just an oil change.

By the way, one major disadvantage of focussing on a small buyer group, is that it becomes a lot easier for your competition to take the market away from you....

I think she is counting the number of files with a one or two point rating in her column. So the normal collection, not e+, vetta or agency. At least that is the way I understand it.

Looks like V/A content in search results is going back up. If this is what the buyers want, fine, but I see so many files with few sales. There must be a really huge margin for them to make it worthwhile to lose the volume sales.

If they really go public this will be important to watch, especially for us istockers.

It all depends how much of a percentage of the company they float. The current owners can decide to keep a majority share, then the stock holders influence is limited.

The main goal of an IPO is to collect money, usually to expand and grow the business aggressively. The owners will be tied into long term contracts otherwise why would you buy the shares? Preparing an IPO, going on the roadshow is expensive and needs a lot of attention.

Unfortunately I cannot see any advantage for istock if they go through with it :-(

I am thinking - maybe they want to see more images done in a studio? To prove that you understand professional lighting technique?

Did you ask for feedback on the istockforums? The admins there will be more familiar with what they are looking for.

Have you tried getting feedback from the istock Critique forum? Especially your final selection I would submit it there for Peer review before uploading.

Here is an example:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=330680&page=1

My favorites are the owlman, strawberrycakes and the woman in the pool with the hat. But this is my personal taste, I have no idea, if this will satisfy the reviewers.