you get paid 2 months late every time, missing out on interest, plus you have to cash the  checks as well, costing you time and probably petrol, plus you have to invest time to manage multiple payment streams, you will have more layers in your administration, all adding cost, which you dont consider.

i think if you properly calculate all the cost of receiving  checks, you will probably find that the cost are higher than using paypal,

not sure how that works for your principals, you want to incur higher cost, because paypal is too expensive, doesnt make sense. you cut of your nose to spite your face. paypal is a widely accepted payment processor, making my life and business so much easier,

quick calculation shows you would probably lose out on 0.25% interest alone over your 100K, and surely you can deduct the paypal fees from your earnings in canada as well.

Oh sweet! Unsolicited financial advice on the internet. How did I get so lucky?

You don't get paid 2 months late every month, you are simply deferring payments. This can actually work in your favour if, say, your income was dropping in the next year (not unheard of in microstock terms). You could be deferring income to the next year when you will pay lower amount of income tax.

Cashing a cheque is easy. I often going to my bank anyway (I walk there, so no petrol or fuel costs), and these days you can send a photo of your cheque to the bank and they will process it. That takes no longer than processing a Paypal payment. It might even be faster because you don't have to look up rates to be sure Paypal is gouging you a full 4%!

"you will have more layers in your administration, all adding cost, which you dont consider."

Are you mental? Why would I not consider administrative costs? Well, to answer that "argument," no, I do factor in all admin costs, and they aren't that costly. I have 3 stock photo accounts. Two of which used to be funded through Paypal, and one via cheques. There is no real difference in time or energy or admin costs between the two, except for the much lower exchange rate that I get from processing cheques.

My bank actually offers me a +1.6% exchange rate, so that's a difference of 2%, or $2000 on every $100k earned, or 20k over a period of 10 years. It is VERY worth it for me, I just couldn't defer payments until recently.

"you want to incur higher cost, because paypal is too expensive, doesnt make sense. you cut of your nose to spite your face. paypal is a widely accepted payment processor, making my life and business so much easier"

Thanks for the advice, I'm glad that works for you, but stop projecting your ill informed advice towards me. Enjoy paying $1000's more to Paypal for a negligible convenience.

I loathe paypal for their exorbitant fees.

They seem to charge exactly 3.6% to convert USD > CAD. Someone mentioned they aren't adjusting their rates in real time, so yeah, you could get a slightly better rate. I believe their 3.6% is to compensate for that difference.

No financial institution wouldn't charge a currency conversion rate. If you are getting 2.5%, I'd be happy with that. Credit cards usually charge 3%.

If you are converting USD > CAD at 3.6% and then CAD > USD at 3%, like if you are visiting USA or driving through south to Mexico, you're literally losing 6.6% on the exchange rate. Brutal. I've had it where I get paid in USD > CAD at 3.6%, convert that to Kenyan Schillings (KES), for example, and there they want KES > USD, so you're looking at 9.6%. Brutal. I know there are options out there, but these things take a lot of effort to set up.

On the other hand, if I can get a cheque, the bank gives me a 2% rate, so a lot better. Say you earned $100k / year, you could save $1500 that way.

Also, not sure about your individual countries, but you should be able to writeoff the conversion loss as 'banking fees' or something to that effect. Mind you, I'm no accountant, so don't take my word for it.

Wow! Sorry that this thread was trolled so badly and that I wasted so much time trying to get through the pointless banter.

Sounds interesting. I've always wanted to host my own database but any time I've tried Wordpress I just gave up because it always felt bloated.

What I'm primarily interested in is a clean, ultra search engine friendly site to host thumbnails / previews to drive customers to an agency using a referral code.

Anyone working towards a stronger photography community should be encouraged, not trolled.

I think you'll find most people would be very satisfied with $1 per clip/month. I fall shot of that however I'm fairly sure I'm well above the average of what contributors make per clip/month. I have almost 4000 clips of large variety so have plenty of figures to go off.

Most people also take a quantity over quality approach. That usually doesn't end well.

I think he is just being smart making the most of his photos...

Making the most of his photos, absolutely. Being smart, no.

It's like rice, it's good if you are hungry and want 2000 of something.

"I think the market will and is turning. Stocksy grew 600% this year"

Where did you read this? I couldn't find anything via internet search.

Right.  I have no idea where I'd be today as an exclusive, because Agency from IS and Getty brought in a lot for me.  I'd probably be lower than I am right now as a non-exclusive with no IS.

I had a lot of V/A images, and last September, when they stopped selling higher priced images based on merit, execution and scarcity, I lost about 50% overnight. Then sub sales have been growing, accounting for about 10%. So getting the boot GI may have been a really nice blessing.

I'm not a member of Stocksy, primarily because I'm iStock exclusive. But two years of plummeting sales has me thinking about greener pastures. This is after 12 years of loyalty to iStock. I'm a big believer in what Stocksy is doing and I'm sure I could become a member because their philosophies regarding that fine line between art and business seem to be inline with my own. I prefer creating images in a very focused way with an emphasis on quality over quantity.

Yes, they are quite exclusive. One common complaint I've heard from my designer friends is that they love everything about Stocksy except they can't find the images they need. I also believe that Stocksy's management wants to keep their collection pristine and beautiful, which comes at the cost of limiting content. On the other hand, after witnessing iStock's stellar management for the first 10 years of it's existence, I do feel that they will find a better balance over time. Over 10 years, iStock grew from a freebie site, to invent microstock, and then find it's way to midstock which developed the perfect balance between high quality content and high volume of sales. They had a nice little niche and a lot of artists became successful. 

Does anyone here remember iStockPro? I think it was a failed experiment because it took iStock's focus away from who they really were and were really just mimicking the more traditional agencies out there. On the other hand, I believe that from a business growth perspective, Stocksy will open the doors a little wider in the future and even come up with a Stocksy-Lite version that will offer high quality generic stock at a more competitive price. That will act as a separate entity so it doesn't dilute their existing highly curated collection. But we may be talking 3-5 years here.

If any of us here felt like it was a good idea to start up an agency, we would have done it a long time ago before there was 44+ pre-existing agencies. Does anyone have a couple million dollars to invest in a startup agency? Probably not, and even then that would be a lot of work and a lot of risk. What we should be doing is supporting these guys at Stocksy and petitioning them to make a bigger play for generic imagery as well.

I don't understand how being exclusive works so well anymore. sure you may be placed higher in the search, but thanks to the price sliders buyers can simply remove your stuff and still have cheap and high quality offerings.

Gillian, exclusivity only works if there is a dominant industry leader, which iStock was when it was under good management (up until 2011). I've been with the agency for 12 years, and have amassed about 300,000 sales, but iStock needs to perform an extremely dramatic turnaround if I'm going to maintain my exclusivity in 2014 / 2015. At this point, I'm sure a lot of artists, myself included, are just riding out the last little bit of sales and looking forward to a more healthier way of marketing our work.

Besides, money isn't everything, right?

Hah!

The thing that gets me all gushy inside is that there is a sense of excitement and a sense of potential that many of us experienced 8 - 10 years ago with iStock. That is the kind of energy that will push photographers to new heights, and the same energy that GI head office thinks they need to suppress.

Given that for me - and I think many/most of us - the primary goal is to produce work we can license, I'm not inclined to spend more time than necessary on other tasks.

Agreed. I was thinking of a much more simple tumblr account or something that everyone can look upon to see the quality of work that has been deactivated.

A visual approach is clearly the best.

I've got black diamond status, but it doesn't really mean much these. Gold members can easily outsell black diamonds. The canister program is now out of date and for the most part irrelevant.

Actual sales figures are a different story, and by the look of it, it looks like this month could be 20 - 25% less in sales then expected. That is a lot. I try not to complain. Last year my sales dropped in October by 20% and that was the first time ever. Prior to that, I always saw constant growth. So I was a little bummed out, but 2011 looked to be recovering. Not anymore.

My guess has always been that declining sales was a result of overly aggressive pricing for Agency files (250 credits) and Vetta files (150 credits). This suggests that iStock has lost sight of it's values as being a simple, good value image market.

Also, more recently, and this was based on the survey results (obviously), the newer files were given more room up front in the searches. This hurt a lot of seasoned artists and benefitted the newer ones. But now, even the newer artists are suffering from less sales.

I'm really curious to see how the management will respond...