Is it just me, or has there been an awful lot of blame and accusation going around this forum recently? 

I don't think it's just you. I think it's a mixture of several things though.

One is tougher times - people are struggling to keep their income growing. Standards at the micros have risen, management at a number of agencies have taken hard nosed approaches to dealing with contributors, the economy's been rocky.

Another is that we're no longer all newbies together - at one point everyone was a newbie at the micros. Now we have more constituencies in the group - the more established micro contributors, newbies to micros, old line trad agency contributors who've decided to contribute to micros and the influx of people wondering what all this is about who are looking at business prospects (blogs, referrals, services, advertising, etc.) rather than becoming a contributor.

There are a few people who have more posts here than images in their portfolios and for the most part I think the best way to deal with incivility from this group is just ignore them. If people don't have any stake in the game, why feed the trolls by arguing with them?

Anonymity is another problem, and by and large FT is to blame for that. Their vindictive behavior has led a number of people - entirely rationally - to remain anonymous to avoid having their accounts closed. Other than this unfortunate need for anonymity, I'd otherwise have suggested ignoring all anonymous posters without portfolio links. How can you have any sort of intelligent exchange when you have no idea who you're talking to?

Size is the other thing - micros have been successful and the group has become quite a bit larger. It's harder to know everyone when the group is large.

For the most part, most people most of the time have been civil and constructive. That's what has made this group a very useful resource.  It isn't that tough to disagree without getting into a personal slugfest with those who hold other points of view. I expect that things will simmer down again, and if they don't, perhaps some discussions with Leaf about having some sort of time out from posting for those who can't stay civil?

When extended licenses were a new thing at micros (and I was independent then) I initially decided to enable ELs at only the sites that paid a decent return to the ccontributor. The (clearly idiotic) idea was that I'd be able to drive EL business to those sites that paid me the best.

It didn't take long to realize that just isn't the way buyers work - they have one or two sites they buy from and you can't entice them elsewhere (in general; exceptional images might be different).

I cringe when I recall turning down an extended license at IS in 2006 because the buyer offered $300 for unlimited print run on a greeting card and $250 was the price then for some defined limit on cards - I thought the increase wasn't big enough and my $60 royalty too small.

I think if you have a side business selling prints or merchandise you should probably not compete with yourself. Otherwise I think there's not a lot of reason to turn down the additional income. When you can pick and choose license types to permit (like BigStock) it makes it easier to avoid the really bad deals (their unlimited options were too cheap so I used to exclude those). IS is all or nothing on license types but you can pick spedific images to exclude.

I received e-mail this afternoon of a Crestock offer of a 3 month subscription (or extension of an existing one) for $249.50. Offer good until Feb. 15th.

This has to mean some sort of trouble for the site - 50% off is what they're claiming and that's a very big discount to give. You get 20 images a day - that's 13 cents an image if you use the full 1,800...

I agree with Jonathan.

If Getty doesn't like you maybe you're just unworth it.

I don't care what Getty thinks of my work as long as they get the message loud and clear that they can't have it on the cheap. I don't want to submit to Getty, I just want to continue with a royalty structure at IS that is much more favorable (to me) than what Getty wants to put in its place.

This is all about not rolling over and playing dead because the schoolyard big boy says he wants half my lunch money.

This is not about any notion that I have that Getty proper is my rightful place - can't even figure out why you keep bringing that up. I'll stipulate that my place is with the micros if you stop going on about how none of us is any good for the macros anyway.

The discussion here is only about attempts to cut royalties by moving the business over to a low-royalty newbie site Getty has cooked up.

I love how quickly the group of contributors here exposed a total scam - and who says that forums such as this are just for venting and such?

I'm fine with the iStock subscription plan but can you be in that and not the other 'cheapo give em away for nothing schemes'

When the introduced the partner opt out/in they discontinued the opt out/in for iStock subscriptions. IOW all iStock contributors participate in the on-site subs plan whether they want to or not. In practical terms it doesn't matter because the sales have been so meager - but then if you don't promote it because you're promoting Getty's cheapo options, then that shouldn't be surprising.

One thing the iStock subs plan - which is effectively a huge credit bundle at lower prices but with additional restrictions - has going for it is that you can get at Vetta (and Exclusive+) which you can't with the Thinkstock plans.

I suspect that the partner program appealed most to those exclusives who'd never been independent - or who were independent a long time ago. They just don't understand the damage they can do to their income (and everyone else's) by opting in. They also don't care to listen to anyone who tells them otherwise - it's not as though a number of us who don't support the partner program have been silent about the problems with it...

...Anyway, despite the resentment it creates, I don't care much about the threats or insults as long as they pay me the right percentage of the actual sale price of each file. The only relationship I want between them and me is that I send them images and they Paypal me the agreed commission without undue delay. Then I can shut up again and concentrate on creating images.

I completely understand the anonymity thing even though I don't like it much. I don't blame you, however, but FT whose repeated underworld-like behavior has necessitated this sort of thing. They threatened me too a while ago for speaking up and organizing on an independent forum on one of their earlier lets-hose-our-contributors-and-hope-they-don't-notice/fuss maneuvers.

I think the long term problem exists with agencies like FT even if you get some sort of resolution on the current issue. They've repeatedly pulled stunts, it gets noticed, there's a big fuss, they make some changes and then things go quiet for a bit. I was hoping that when Patrick Lor joined them things might improve, but I guess culture trickles down from the top of the organization and nothing much has changed.

Forums like this one have time and again been the point for people to find out what's going on and try to organize and fix things. Having to deal with one another anonymously instead of openly (where we can see people's portfolios and tell the newbie who's uploaded 50 images from the person who's been around for years and has thousands of images) makes things much more difficult.

I don't have a direct stake in this tussle any more, but I'm sure Getty's watching this and I think it's better for all of us that FT not be able to succeed in a stealth royalty cut because that will encourage copycats.

I wish we could just get on with creating stuff, but I guess a cost of doing business for contributors is the ongoing struggle for fair and straightforward dealings with our agents.

Quote from: arquiplay77 on February 03, 2010, 17:35

I�m a contributor from Spain, and i get paid in dollars from fotolia and from anyother site. I wish 1 credit would be 1 euro though that is not true.

If you live in Spain how come you're not paid in Euros? I see they've got an office/website in your country.

The plot thickens!

I seem to remember some old discussions about this. Depending on when someone signed up - and I think in some cases where from (IP address) - FT assigned each contributor a 'home'. In the early days FT had fewer sites.

People had asked in the past to get moved to somewhere more appropriate - generally to get a more favorable exchange rate. AFAIK the answer was always "no". I can see why they wouldn't want someone switching weekly trying to play currency trading games, but if someone moves from the US to Spain, or UK to US, it would seem reasonable to let them switch. Then they get paid in local currency.

Of course, when the Euro was less than the US Dollar, people were happy to be paid in dollars, but these days, not so much

I don't know if it's worthless, but lots of people have tried it and been told "no".

You could always try and see if you get a different answer...

You should scream for sure but I doubt they will hear anything. Until people, in large numbers, begin to pull images off the site, diddly will happen. I mean actually take the images and remove them, not just stop submitting. ...

Actually, withholding uploads is a pretty effective technique for any site that sells a lot of subscriptions. Subscription buyers want new stuff each month. If there isn't any, they fuss (you should have read the Jupiter forums about Photos.com plus before the StockXpert content went up there; they were mad that there wasn't anything new getting uploaded).

Pulling a portfolio is really an end-of-the-line sort of move - putting it back entails a ton of work on the contributor's part plus all the reviewing all over again on the agency's part. I can't imagine any serious (i.e. large portfolio) contributor would do something like this as a negotiating tactic.

Funnily enough, the one site that has the easy ability to disable the whole portfolio with one command is the one site that has in general behaved fairly reasonably with contributors - SS. It'd be great if other sites had that feature so you could just turn off the sales if you weren't happy but turn them back on once the dispute was resolved. Given FT's track record, I can't imagine them implementing that feature.

The major problem is that there are a few very large contributors that just don't get involved in any way with the smaller folks. It'd be a huge help if they did, but I think they figure they don't have anything in common with the non-factory contributors. If anyone knows any of them and can approach them offline to see if they'll weigh in, that'd certainly be worth trying.

In the movie business people want a percentage of the gross as their bonus - when it was a percentage of profits the studios ensured that the way the books were kept there never was any "profit" to get a percentage of. It seems to me FT is playing this game - if they control the definition of what contributors get a percentage of and it's independent of the price a buyer pays then they can keep reducing royalties by changing the definition of a credit.

Seems reminiscent of boxes of cereal, tissues, crackers, etc. that stay the same size while reducing the weight/count of product, hoping the buyer won't notice it's a price increase. And that's a scummy practice too!

Quote from: gostwyck on January 29, 2010, 16:48

What do you mean "quite some sales at 0.19$"? They do exist but they are extremely rare and anyway are only for XS-sized images, not full-sized ones, so it is hardly a reasonable comparison. Obviously if you think your full-sized images are only worth 36c then I can understand why you are happy.

A grab in 4 recent sales at IS, 2 with only 1 download (the images are new).

...XSmall Regular 0.19 (sub)  XSmall Regular 0.29 (payg)  XSmall Regular 0.30 (payg) XSmall Regular 0.26 (payg)...

Just to give you some comparison data I grabbed one image (uploaded July 2009) that sold 7 times last week (1 large, the other 6 medium or smaller) for $23.41 royalty (at the 35% rate) - that would be $13.37 at the 20% rate vs. $2.52 for 7 SS sales at 36 cents.

That image has sold 158 times since July for a total of $421.34 which averages out to $2.66 per sale (at 35%) - $1.52 per sale at 20%. That's more than 4 times the SS commission even at the non-exclusive 20% royalty rate.

Obviously, I don't think I'm harmed by the IS prices

And in case you're thinking this is some special image, it's a photogenic piece of driftwood.

Quote from: RT on January 28, 2010, 14:51

If more sites take the same approach as Alamy software like SpiderPic will not be an issue.
http://www.fastmediamagazine.com/?p=3705

That puts a much different light on the value or effectiveness of SpiderPic or any of the "find-it-cheaper" sites.  It seems you get what you pay for.  

That's true, but if you don't want or need the additional rights that Alamy offers in their license, you're much better off buying at a micro where you can unbundle the components and pay for those portions you actually can use.

Given the number of existing price comparison sites on the web for all sorts of products and services, I can't see why stock imagery should be a special case and publicizing prices be a no-no. I can't see Alamy having more than the proverbial snowball's chance in h#*l of succeeding with a lawsuit.