Quote from: lisafx on September 09, 2010, 16:06
Since most of us appear to agree that changing buyer's behavior is the best response to Istock's unethical money grab, it would be great to read what buyers have to say. 

I know that some buyers have voiced plans to leave, but it's really hard to find their posts, buried as they are in all the justifiable contributor outrage. 

It would be nice to be able to read what buyers have to say here on MSG.  If you are a buyer who is going to leave Istock, or if you have found a post somewhere by a buyer who is leaving, or if any of the buyers you have contacted have responded, could you post it here?  It might have a stronger impact if we can see the buyer comments in one place.

FUCK !

how dumb you guys are ?

1 - newspapers
2 - all photo news sites (PDN, etc)
3 - photo blogs
4 - IT blogs (techcrunch, slashdot, etc)
5 - news aggregators
6 - TV (who knows)
7 - photo forums
8 - photo newslettes
9 - photo newsgroups on Usenet
10 - and the list goes ooooonnn......


now, you spend hours talkinh crap.
follow this focking 10 steps for once and you WILL see some results.

trolls knows it better.

LOGOFF ... forever.

farewell.

but then don't you think that anything which doesn't require only technical skills can still have a market ?

think about creative photos for instance, or concepts, the cost there is not about gear or whatever, it's plain down
the fact you've really to invent something buyers like and this has nothing to do with web or print or film or digital.

so, as these skills are hard to find in the ocean of crap sold in micros, WHY people is accepting such low fees for their works ?

i understand most of these works sell by the thousands and make good profits, but this is exactly the perversion of the micro business model that finally ruined the whole stock industry in my opinion.

it started with creatives selling their leftovers for a few bucks and now istock is making more profits alone than all the RM agencies combined !

i like your reply !

finally somebody here who knows what he's talking about.

Quote from: sharpshot on September 09, 2010, 13:00

Quote from: macrosaur on September 09, 2010, 12:52
the worst is still to come :

getty pays 20%, and now istock is getty owned, therefore the obvious conclusion will be that anyone including the top sellers will get 20% on istock before or later.

i think they'll announce it in january, wait and see !

But istock have exclusive contributors.  They wouldn't accept 20%, look at what is happening now.  I don't think they are that stupid but they have proved me wrong in the past.

people would migrate in droves only if getty disclosed their REAL plan : 20% for ALL exclusives, no matter if gold or uranium.

they're doing it step by step instead, in order to game the gullibles.

Quote from: sharpshot on September 09, 2010, 13:00

Quote from: macrosaur on September 09, 2010, 12:52
the worst is still to come :

getty pays 20%, and now istock is getty owned, therefore the obvious conclusion will be that anyone including the top sellers will get 20% on istock before or later.

i think they'll announce it in january, wait and see !

But istock have exclusive contributors.  They wouldn't accept 20%, look at what is happening now.  I don't think they are that stupid but they have proved me wrong in the past.

exactly because they're exclusives they're "locked in" or better "screwed in".

only 10% of the exclusives wrote in the forum, the remaining 90% doesn't give a crap apparently
and will eat the soon-to-come 20% royalty without making any fuss, after all they chose to
be exclusive to put their eggs in just one basket isnt it ?

leaving istock would take months and months of re-uploading somewhere else,
and months again to stabilize their biz in their new agencies, that means only 3 options
by the way : FT, DT, and SS, and they'll be at their mercy anyways so is the migration
really worth the hassle ? i don't think so and so will think most of the exclusives, wait and see
by yourself !

the worst is still to come :

getty pays 20%, and now istock is getty owned, therefore the obvious conclusion will be that anyone including the top sellers will get 20% on istock before or later.

i think they'll announce it in january, wait and see !

Quote from: FD-regular on September 08, 2010, 17:26
As a few people know here, I'm working on a stock guild site. The scripts aren't ready yet for easy upload. It won't be a direct sales site but merely present a link to existing agencies. The purpose is to catch random traffic from Google etc... I have some indications that this tactic can work.

Setting up a multi-photographer stock site is very easy to do actually, and with total financial transparency. The problem will be server load when it expands. The scripts I have don't account for server load.

The initial investment is under 500$, the hosting might be 2-300$ per year. Consider Photoshelter (330$) and Smugmug (150$) per year with commissions 9-15%. Did those do anybody any good? Overview here.

To get any substantial earnings from it (pricing at 20$), it needs exclusive content or picscout and other aps in the making will find out. Moreover, anybody running the site will be perceived as a competitor by the existing stock sites, and personally, I don't like to give up my earnings and karma at DT or SS. Because, they will retaliate (rightly so).

hosting tens of thousands of images for just 300$/year ? good luck, you'll need it.

i'm seeing the same pattern every day in real life too ... it's amazing how so much people is completely ignorant about even the basics of math ...

where i shop every day, a small mum and pop store, it's not unusual that the girl at the desk needs a calculator to make "10 + 12" and tell me how much i've to pay.

now, what the * !  and she's the co-owner ... how can they run a business ?

even in the istock forum there was a long diatribe about what 5% of something really translated in lost sales etc and plenty of people couldn't figure out the simple math ! astonishing.

nothing will change soon.

the IS exclusives are too much "locked in" to make any quick move elsewhere.

if something wil happens it will take months to get noticed and despite the people ranting on IS forum
are very vocal they only represent no more than 10% of the exclusives there, the remaining 90% either
don't give a sh-it or are even happy to hear other competitors are leaving....

the rich are getting richer, and the slaves are fighting each other ... how sad !

Quote from: microstockphoto.co.uk on September 09, 2010, 07:35

>You guys must admit i was right in any of my prophecies !

Yes

good !
it's a good start !

for anything else, i'm curious to see how the new "midstock" in istock will perform, because it could be very well
become an interesting market, crushing the cheap microstocks at the same time and raising prices for all including
RM ... we'll see ... we'll see .... give 'em 6 months.

you guys are all wrong :

we're selling a DIGITAL product !

if we look at the royalties paid in most of the Internet Marketing business i've never seen anyone getting more than 20% of the sale price for selling or re-selling or promoting someone else product on the web, and this is even more true for the biggest affiliate companies like Commission Junction, TradeDoubler, and Zanox who make millions of sales every day worldwide !

Getty pretending an 85% cut of the sale is just ... hahaha ... unbelievable and unthinkable even in their weirdest dreams, nowhere in the past history of stock an agency ever paid so low !

the real problem of microstock is that it started cheap and it started as a joke, and so it remained for the years to come, you can't expect a business like that goes up to premium prices and therefore premium payouts in a snap.

as a matter of fact the opposite happened, and i'm not the least surprised.

you're treated like monkeys now because YOU accepted these crazy low-payouts in the first place !

there's plenty of IT companies a lot bigger than istock who can pay all the operational costs and live just on advertising and that's advertising converting very bad by the way so we're talking of the bottom of the barrel and yet they make profits and they're in business, don't believe the getty hype ... Alamy pays 40% and no questions asked ... same for many other macros, all in the 30-40% range, only getty pays 20% but sales are going down.

The end of microstock ?

You guys must admit i was right in any of my prophecies !

Now feel free to move your portfolios on SS, FT, and DT, wait a few months and see them screwing
you up even more after january with the excuse of bad economy downturn and yadda yadda... (FT did it already
in the past).

What options do you have after all ?
Macrostock ? Forget it, it's in deep sh-it exactly because of you microstockers accepting getting paid a pittance.

You created a monster, and now you pay the consequences on your skin.
There's justice in this world after all.

Quote from: massman on September 08, 2010, 20:58
Here it is:

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=252322&page=1

hahahaha

you're screwed.

no no no you must send a press release to newspapers and TV and then to TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Slashdot, Register, and all the other IT/ICT websites.

as i see there's definetely something news-worthy :

"Angry Istock photographers rebels against new draconian paycuts and menace to leave out in droves feeling scammed by Getty"

... something like that.

Quote from: Zeus on September 08, 2010, 20:02

Quote from: macrosaur on September 08, 2010, 20:00


never say never ... i've read yesterday on TechCrunch that the users of Digg.com mounted a rebellion and left Digg in droves for their direct
competitor Reddit.com .. Digg now is dead and worth nothing, and all this in just one week !

What's Digg? Is that a shovel company?

www.digg.com

now is simply a sort of interactive RSS aggregator.

but until 2 years ago it was said to be worth 1 BILLION $ !

they had 30-40 million monthly users ... now i guess they're 1% of that ...
it was impressive how the rebels coordinated themselves and *removed coarse language* it up for real.

it gives us hope that people somehow can still change the world, i hope facebook
and myspace follow the same fate soon ....

Quote from: Vonkara on September 08, 2010, 19:48
From Sylvanworks (copy paste)...

OK, the folks at HQ have been reading the responses and have been putting together a reply. I'm going to lock this so everyone can catch their breath for a few minutes. I've been told the response will be posted within the next hour

never say never ... i've read yesterday on TechCrunch that the users of Digg.com mounted a rebellion and left Digg in droves for their direct
competitor Reddit.com .. Digg now is dead and worth nothing, and all this in just one week !

BLA BLA BLA BLA ....

nobody of you will leave iStock.
you invested too much time and resource on it and now you're "locked in".

i predicted all this a long time ago, and i'm sure the entry-level royalties
will be lowered again in the future ... 10% ?  5% ? why not ! there's a fool
born every minute isnt it ?

p.s.
if you sell a fine-art photo in an art gallery you never get less than 50% of the sale,
and these guys spend real money in order to make an exibition, calling people by phone,
sending printed invitations ... getty instead doesn't move a finger, it's all computer automated
and the product is a digital download and pretends a whopping 85% !

you better flip burgers at McDonalds than getting 15% of YOUR work.

Quote from: Phil on September 08, 2010, 12:29

I agree, unless they take away upload limits it is worse for new contributors.

indeed.
and that's why i've quit microstock in disgust.

15 uploads a week ? it's  a joke !
on macros i can upload 100 pics a day if my connection allows.

Quote from: XPTO on September 08, 2010, 11:42

Quote from: macrosaur on September 08, 2010, 11:33

the real value of IS are their loyal clients, not the millions of photos.
photos are just a commodity nowadays, that's why they rightfully
treat you guys iike crap.

That is why we, the photographers, must target our actions in informing Picture Buyers about the exploitive nature of IS and that there are other alternatives in the market. Show them the agencies that give us the better commissions which allow us to invest and create higher value images.

Picture buyers only hear about the marketing of agencies telling them they are the best. Maybe it's time that the content producers have a word near the buyers pointing the best alternatives to both and putting the exploitative middlemen in their places.

well, i could tell you that Hewlett Packard months ago slashed the salary of their 100.000 employees
by 20% while doubling the salaries of their top executives ... i've read in Germany the former
employess of EDS (now owned by HP) even went on strike a few days, but yet nothing changed,
her CEO has been fired recently because of a love affair and now he's VP of Oracle, running
out with 40 million $ in bonuses....

so goes this world, my friends !
and picture buyers will never give a crap ... nor they give a crap about HP and their crappy
printers, all they know is the price is fair and the product doesn't sucks so much.

20% fee ... it's a joke already, and now with just 15% it's a pittance .. better post the pics
on Flickr and see if some buyer sends an email ... or make a photo blog infested by
ads ....

what about launching a site called "GETTYSUCKS.com" ?

corporates hate these things....

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on September 08, 2010, 02:35
I wonder what would happen if the top istock contributors (like may the top 100 that probably make up over 10-20% of istock's revenue) set up their own site with mostly exclusive content.

nothing.
because the dirty work is getting clients and making sales,
and this will cost you millions in advertising especially if starting from scratch.

the real value of IS are their loyal clients, not the millions of photos.
photos are just a commodity nowadays, that's why they rightfully
treat you guys iike crap.

hahahaha ! hohohoho !! bwahahahahaha !!

i'm reading the +80 pages rants in the IS forum ... i think it will take a few hours but it's so funny i can't stop....

but what keeps surprising me is how many deluded contributors are out there, talking of BS and buzzwords
like "comunity" and yadda yadda ...

IS is a company, and worst of all it's owned by Getty ... their task is only one : making profits, and lot of them,
no matter if this means squeezing the balls of their photographers, they've so many of them they're probably glad
to see some of them leaving in droves for greener pastures.

community, canisters, gold, diamond, etc ... it's all rubbbish ... go to Flickr if you want this stuff.

the only thing a serious agency must do is provide the CLIENTS and make sales !

it's not facebook or myspace, it's a focking agency ... why crying and venting and ranting over and over ?

15% of a sale .. good deal ... at least for Getty

the new site design sucks big time... slow as a dog, confusing, bloated, full of shi, and the backend is even worse than before.

the home page takes forever to load as now they want to "impress" new visitors with full screen animation .. this looks sooooo '90s !

i'm not surprised of all the rejections ... they've millions of similar images, why should they add more and more ?

FT and SS look a lot better and faster and they've got ftp uploads.

as a buyer i would be frustrated using the new crappy design .. compare with the new Alamy instead .. very fast, solid, simple and barebone with lots of options in the sidebar, that's the way it shoudl be !

BWAHAHAHA !!!!!!

how many times i told you that micros will end up like this .... now enjoy your 15% entry-level payout ... you better move to Shutterstock and the rest of the gang ... as long as they don't follow istock's "grand strategy" to squeeze photogs even more.

beside, the only good thing was Vetta and now they pay only 20% ...

i'm laughing my ass off !