Some people were excited about PD for a while, and I started submtting there, but it went nowhere.   Their prices and commissions are just too low, so I'm wondering why I bothered, and thinking I'll close that account. ...

I still submit to PD - started in late November, made my first payout in April (only just got it May 15 which I don't like) and am just over 1/3 of the way to my next payout. When I compare that to $23.50 from StockFresh since last June or July, and a RPD of just under $1, I think it's still worth uploading to.

Deposit Photos isn't for me. Low commissions and some business practices I don't think are OK.

On another note, I see helix7 left rather abruptly. I don't at all agree that people in the forums are all just looking for things to be bad. Some of us have just had a rough few years with agencies who have gone from treating us like partners - valuable partners in some cases - to an irritating cost of doing business to be looted and plundered where possible.

I used one of my images to find my "portfolio" at Profimedia and it shows 2,307 images. That can't be Veer as I have only 800+ images uploaded. It can't be 123rf as I have only 1,795 uploaded.

Best guess is CanStock - I have 2,471 images there, but perhaps they don't update all the time?

Did other contributors to DT get (e-mail) a May newsletter today?

It's May 17th and the most recent item in the "News" section is May 12th - the other two items are from April.

The picture is of a family in wooly hats blowing snow.

The only other items are listing the current "On Assignment" and featured contributor - some stats are at the bottom. One interesting thing is that DT lists 47,558 images are pending while iStock lists only 35,459 (although that's up from about 20K a couple of weeks back).

What's the point of a newsletter with no current news? wouldn't something about the price and royalty changes have been a good idea?

Veer is in a very weak position (IMO) at the moment. Their sales aren't all that great, the big hoo-ha over the introduction of subscriptions - and the fact that it worked out that a huge majority of the small volume of subs sales were at 25 cents, something they said wouldn't be the case - a clunky upload process, tiny weekly upload limit, very slow review times....

It would be very easy to just drop them (although I'm 71 cents away from the next payout, so I'd like to get that first).

I don't even have an RF portfolio at Alamy to protect - just a small pile of RM images from 2008 when I went exclusive with IS and could only do RM elsewhere. But I've considered uploading my files to Alamy and in spite of their tedious upload process would rather do that and keep the extra cash than let Veer have it. It just p!sses me off that there's such awful communications with contributors and such readiness even from an also-ran agency to rip us off.

Your "addressment" needs to be pretty darn good Veer, 'cause you don't have a lot of residual goodwill.

Quote from: jsnover on May 17, 2012, 09:30

...I appreciate your initiative, but with such pitiful results so far, I'm not as enthusiastic about them as you are. I'm not removing my portfolio - it'd be nice to live long enough to get a payout - but that's as far as I go unless I see some sales.

I understand the concern about the lack of sales, but I'm suggesting that we do something here that isn't motivated strictly by what's on the table right now. This is a bet on potential. ...

Fair enough, but what is the owner doing to promote, market and build the site? I heard that with enough images there'd be a marketing campaign, and since then calls for patience. Perhaps he is doing something, but there's no newsletter to contributors or blog where that's been communicated to us (if there is anything).

I could be persuaded to overlook past poor performance, and possibly the sale to Jupiter of StockXpert as well,  if there were some sort of push from the owner, but as far as I can see nothing at all is happening their end. If he doesn't care, what good could we do that would overcome that?

Quote from: ShadySue on May 05, 2012, 05:03

...Also, on at least two CR replies I've had recently, it's suggested that I should post my question in the forums, which are 'a wonderful source of information', even though I can't.   (Yeah, I know, it's that cookie-cutter response choice again.)

On Friday I decided I'd open a support ticket to ask about my forum ban. It was for one sarcastic (no profanity; no rudeness to any individual) post in early September 2011 and Lobo site mailed me that I should take a little break from the forums. The support ticket asked if my ban was in fact permanent, and if not, when would I get my forum privileges back.

It'll be interesting to see what, if any, response I get. ...

So far, no response - Opened May 4th, it's now May 15th. I realize this isn't a time-critical issue, but when you're looking at a yes-no answer, I think that 9 days is plenty of time. Apparently they could serve us better via the ticket system - if this is "better", I hate to think what worse is.

So I don't see any of my (800 or so) Veer Images on Alamy - are they only moving over some?

I have sales recorded for the 1st through the 20th.

For me personally, I am fairly certain that to drop the crown will mean a long term revenue decrease. However, I like to be in control of my own destiny, and feel there is huge value in that alone. There may come a point in time, where I can no longer withstand the emotional brutality. Regardless of revenue to be lost, that will be the day I remove my crown.

I think that there is no such thing as the "typical exclusive" mentioned a few posts back.

There's a large number of contributors who don't have very large portfolios, don't submit a lot and whose sales got them over the hurdle to be exclusive but not much more. It's essentially a hobby.

Then there are a small number of very active exclusives with large portfolios, some of whom do stock full time, and who aim to have shots in the Vetta/Agency collection and on Getty. We've never had any data from iStock, but from DT (in the past, before they took away the stats that gave access to this) a huge portion of the total sales on the site came from a very small percentage of the contributors. I'm assuming the same is true for this small group of active & successful exclusives.

Then there's what I used to be part of - the iStock middle class. Successful, but not a star; active but part time. Sales are solid and regular (or they were before H&F started looting and pillaging).

I dropped my crown in June 2011 because I'd seen things decline for me - 2010 was a wonderful year for me and I was looking at 2011 go downhill with the anticipation of further declines. So I was looking at not only spreading the risk but taking the income hit sooner rather than later so I could work on rebuilding my presence on other sites. Even though I knew my income would drop as an independent, that was contrasted with drops instead of growth as an exclusive, so it made the medicine a little easier to take.

I should also mention that I'm married and my husband's income means that even if my stock income went to zero overnight, my kids would still eat, so it made the decision to leave easier for me than for those earning a full time income from iStock.

Quote from: traveler1116 on May 11, 2012, 12:04

...with the changes in pricing for exclusive vs. nonexclusive the differences have been enhanced a lot.  You would probably make a minimum of 4x what you make on IS as a nonexclusive, plus more for Vetta/Agency files, plus I think about 50% more for TS and the PP, plus mirrored Getty Images sales, and now the new E+ mirroring which on the face sounds good (we'll have to see how that plays out, I don't know if anything sells there but to me the E+ collection looks better than the Stockbyte collection). 

I have to admit, with DT falling off a cliff, 123RF mainly subs, I dropped FT, stockfresh is dead in the water, veer seems a crock...I'm seriously thinking exclusive is the way to go for me - SS has never exceeded IS for me by any real margin, so these benefits are enticing...just so hard to get my head around submitting only to a company that i regard as incompotent and so bloody greedy

It was a very appealing proposition at one time - at least to me (I was exclusive from 2008 to 2011). I had thought/hoped it would take Getty longer to dismantle everything that was good about iStock for an exclusive than it did.

They are currently on a long march to 20% maximum for everyone on Getty - the latest fun there is moving exclusive plus to Getty in the Stockbyte collection (and possibly into Thinkstock as well given that a portion of Stockbyte is already there) and all of Stockbyte to iStock. The latter further dilutes earnings for real iStock contributors and the former pays you a flat 20% with no RCs (in other words all your sales there decrease your ability to earn a higher percentage for your sales on iStock). I won't reiterate the long list of things that has changed in the last two years that have materially altered the picture for exclusives, but I think the big problem with your plan is that what you sign up for today won't be the same in 6 months, 1 year, and on out. Very likely even if the business grows, the payouts to contributors will continue to shrink (as a percentage of the take). The bite from that will really be apparent as the continuing decline in volume of sales can't be made up for by jacking up prices yet again.

Having just made the transition back to independent from exclusive (June 2011 to now; I was previously independent from 2004 to 2008) I would just note that it's not an easy transition to make. Possible, but hard.

... but I've never heard anyone selling more at IS than at SS.

More downloads, never. More money, often - the last two months, IS outsold SS by quite a bit for me. Two months before that the other way around

"more images from professional photographers"

That's kind of a weird thing to say.  "individual contributors" vs. "professional photographers"?  Wth is that supposed to mean?

This is the crowdsourced amateur vs. polished professional crap again. People like you - who made a full time business from microstock - don't really fit the question. The question harks back to the old days when the trad agency contributors were "professionals" and the microstock contributors were viewed by them with disdain. They're trying to avoid using words like amateur.

Given that I believe many of those no longer buying at iStock are buying at other agencies whose collections are largely filled by the same "individual contributors", and, if you want more EdStock, Hulton Archive, et al. you can get it via Getty, I can't think why they bothered with this survey question.

They could replace it with some questions about site stability and malfunctions (forget making it easier to find "unique" or "interesting" content; there were a number of times when finding anything wasn't working); pricing? price stability?

DT had been between 12% and 14% of my monthly total income. Last month, and so far this month, it's at 7%.

That's not because all the other sites are having some great bonanza but because DT sales have dropped off - and a few sales at higher prices don't make up for the (a) lower volume or (b) 25 to 35 cent subs (the lower amounts are when they take away for referral bonuses). I don't care about a higher RPD if the monthly totals are lower, and jury's still out, but I think DT hasn't helped things with this massively complex level system masking a price hike.