Quote from: luissantos84 on September 09, 2010, 16:44

Quote from: traveler1116 on September 09, 2010, 16:43

I'm in the it will stay the same for a few months then I hit gold and it will be a drop, so I voted for drop to 30%.

what a nice portfolio you have, travel photography! wanna do the same

you deserve a lot more for sure, but IS dont care, actually I dont see which contributors they want..

Thanks that's kind, I have been feeling I deserve more too(I'll have to let the market decide that), so I will try for the next three months to only submit my travel stuff to Alamy as RM and see what happens.

In the most basic terms that means that iStock becomes less profitable with increased success.

I've never heard that any company can become less profitable with increased success...

Quote from: Elenathewise on September 09, 2010, 12:05

Quote from: anc on September 09, 2010, 10:00

Istock posted a second "Explanation" to its contributors - the link is here:http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=252322This is the bit that irritates me:"Since roughly 2005 we've been aware of a basic problem with how our business works. As the company grows, the overall percentage we pay out to contributing artists increases. In the most basic terms that means that iStock becomes less profitable with increased success. As a business model, it�s simply unsustainable: businesses should get more profitable as they grow. This is a long-term problem that needs to be addressed."

Wow. This is a biggest piece of BS I ever heard. Obviously, whoever wrote this has trouble with basic math, or counting on us to have failed math in 4th grade. How is it even possible that "overall percentage" increases when they always paid contributors 20% of the sale??? Did they increase our percentage without telling us somehow in the last years? Well of course not. The percentage remained the same. The amount of money they paid to contributors increased, but so did their profits, correspondingly! in the 20:80 ratio. If they used to pay contributors 2 million, they were making 8. If now they their payouts are 20 million, they are making 80! How is that becoming less profitable with increased success? And why making millions and millions of dollars a year is not enough for them?

You are thinking only about non-exclusives. Given enough time with the old model, say 20 years as an example, even exclusives who uploaded 100 images their first month and then quit could go from 20% to a 40% diamond just from total downloads over time. I get what they're saying. Over time their average profit decreases as more people move up canisters. Which every exclusive eventually will. I understand what they're getting at but don't agree with the goals they've set. I think their estimates are off. We'll see if they change them.

Quote from: anc on September 09, 2010, 10:00

Istock posted a second "Explanation" to its contributors - the link is here:

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=252322

This is the bit that irritates me:

"Since roughly 2005 we've been aware of a basic problem with how our business works. As the company grows, the overall percentage we pay out to contributing artists increases. In the most basic terms that means that iStock becomes less profitable with increased success. As a business model, it�s simply unsustainable: businesses should get more profitable as they grow. This is a long-term problem that needs to be addressed."

Wow. This is a biggest piece of BS I ever heard. Obviously, whoever wrote this has trouble with basic math, or counting on us to have failed math in 4th grade. How is it even possible that "overall percentage" increases when they always paid contributors 20% of the sale??? Did they increase our percentage without telling us somehow in the last years? Well of course not. The percentage remained the same. The amount of money they paid to contributors increased, but so did their profits, correspondingly! in the 20:80 ratio. If they used to pay contributors 2 million, they were making 8. If now they their payouts are 20 million, they are making 80! How is that becoming less profitable with increased success? And why making millions and millions of dollars a year is not enough for them?

had signed it.

Quote from: luissantos84 on September 09, 2010, 10:28

Hello guys! I have created minutes ago this petition, I am wondering if there are any contributors happy with this change...

Please sign if you DONT agree with the royalties changes for 2011..

http://www.petitiononline.com/istock11/petition.html

Who can predict the outcome of this?

Quote from: luissantos84 on September 09, 2010, 08:42

I agree with Walnuts but actually not even Yuri will get the 1.4Million, so who are the good performers??

how can you make these statements? you don't know how much he sells and at what sizes, so you don't know if he does or doesn't.  

if he averages 10 credits per sale, and sells 140,000 photos in a year, then its completely plausible.  And thats only 12,000 photos per month for a stock photo machine that is legendary for being prolific - its completely plausible if I average 10 credits per image.

.....and the second one has blown highlights, and the map hand has grubby nails, and the map won't fly on IStock because of copyright, and.....

Thanks btw, I only noticed noise on the third one in the shadow of the hand, but as much as I tried, I could not get rid of it. Is selective blurring allowed?
I was at a great photogenic area in hellfire pass, and the all of my railroad pictures were oof, what a waste

Quote from: hoi ha on September 09, 2010, 04:07

Actually the more I think about it the more I am convinced that Istock/Getty/Hellerman know exactly what they are doing and they have structured this change to create exactly the result they want. The people who are talking about leaving are exactly they people they want gone. They are changing the structure of who they are and the vast majority of people contributing to the site they no longer want or feel they need. Thinkstock is the old istock - the new istock is going to be something different.

I'd agree with this. They've had nine months to carefully craft this program. It's getting the exact response and results they expected. It's pretty clear they want people who constantly produce a high volume of fresh highly sellable exclusive images. In other words, the good performers.  It's probably safe to say the people most negatively affected aren't what they now consider good perfomers so if they protest or complain it doesn't matter. They probably don't want those people anyway.

Another thing that just hit me is that this is just the beginning of the weeding-out process. They will probably continue weeding-out the poor or even average performers who decided to stay anyway. These people will see rejection rates will go higher from tougher inspections. Eventually, if not already, your Redeemed Credit performance will affect your search placement further pushing down poor performers. They will continue to discourage people they don't want.