100% on this one - not having some tit in a suit telling me I have to "work on networking my personal brand" or having to sit in meetings and stare at a stale croissant, or pretending I care about mission statements, or listening to hours of gobbledygook at seminars, or having to watch my back constantly, or arriving sweaty and lost at some airport in the middle of nowhere at midnight is worth a million smackers to me.

Ironically, arriving sweaty and lost at an airport at midnight is how I avoid doing those other things which you despair about.

I've been at this for nearly 7 nears now, and I can tell you from my experience that this holiday season has been abysmal compared to previous years.  And the new year is starting out very slow.  For instance the post-New Year weekend this year is down about 40% for me compared to last, even though my port is now 25% larger.

I would expect things to get closer to normal by mid week.  Of course, that's the New Normal, which I expect to be down a depressing amount from last year.

If you've only been at this a year or two, you're probably still growing your port at a rate that beats the overall growth of the agencies, so you should still see decent growth over last year.  You'll hit the dreaded Wall when you can no longer grow your port by 35% a year, which is, roughly, the rate the big agencies are growing each year.  At that point you're losing ground to the competition, on average, and you'll start seeing year-over-year declines. 

Some will say you can beat this by finding niches, or beating your competition on quality, etc.  I can tell you, however, that I'm a high volume seller with a good number of HCV pics in many niches, with quality that has improved year over year, and there's little you or I can do to beat the Wall. 

This is my experience as well.

The true nature of the giant pyramid scheme that is stock is now revealing itself. It didn't start out that way, nor does it need to be arranged like that, but the agencies have embraced that model and we're stuck with it until its' inevitable collapse.

Had my Best Year Ever. Started in stock photography in 2007, but in the last years I had seen my income decline. In 2013 I joined Stocksy and it made all the difference. In 2014 I doubled my 2013 income with Stocksy bringing in 69% of my income. Sure, I am a small contributors but I find it stunning that even though my port on Stocksy is the smallest compared to all other agencies, it brings in the biggest return. Guess where I'll be focusing my efforts in 2015?

Your work is perfect fit with Stocksy, I'm not surprised you do well there.

This is great: http://www.stocksy.com/459280!

Probably about 2000 extra images, 30% down in royalties.

Back to Peter Lik.... I don't think it's worth $6.5 M, but to be able to understand in any way you really have to see his work displayed.  He prints on silver paper and mounts underneath a 1/2" sheet of plexi.  They will take you into a viewing room and display a piece you may want, lowering and raising the lights - and just something about the way they are mounted that the photo appears to be going from sunrise to midday.  We actually considered buying an aspen pine forest in fall (but then had a reality check).

That's true - I've seen his galleries in Key West and Las Vegas (I think) and the images do look absolutely fantastic the way they're displayed. It's a large part of the selling technique I imagine.

I can't quite imagine how he manages to get people to pay so much for his images, nice as they are, but fair play to the guy.

http://www.lik.com

A rather more bitter take on it here:

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/dec/10/most-expensive-photograph-ever-hackneyed-tasteless

It's usually a database refreshing / caching issue as noted above, but if not there's a discussion of the issue here:

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=362915&page=1

Best month ever!

Just kidding. Still waiting for the month to end and be put out of its misery here.

For clarity, as it's been intimated to me that I am misrepresenting my dilemma in my current hysteria, I am now on +$7, so I have made more than 0 this week.

Quote from: fotoVoyager on September 29, 2014, 14:39

I can't believe this day has come, but sales are so low for me that I now owe iStock money.

I've gone from $3000 dollars a week to $0 but I'm not allowed to discuss it on the iStock site.

Please excuse me whilst I tear my hair out in public here instead.

This is either the work of a genius at iStock to completely kill off all sales for Exclusives or the worst thought through plan ever. I can't decide which.

So in the heyday you made $3k a week and given a period of time (years) you make peanuts a week. Is that what you are saying? 

Yes.

I realise that was slightly unique because of the time and growth of the industry, but you'd think I'd still make enough now given I work continuously to earn enough to pay off refunds.

Downloads have gone from 150+ a day to just a handful or less.

Presumably those Exclusives still reporting good sales are people photographers where the saturation level has not quite drowned them because of the higher demand.

Quote from: fotoVoyager on September 29, 2014, 13:08

What FB group is this?

A closed exclusive group. I believe there are several Fb groups for iStockers.

How does one gain access to this group where questions are answered by iStock admins?

What FB group is this?

Just saw the Shutterstock ad on Facebook. More than 1,100 likes and hundreds of shares. Meanwhile, iStock's FB page collects more and more disgruntled posts, mostly from buyers. Time to buy shares of SSTK?

I think iStock have greatly underestimated how negatively it reflects on your brand and your company when you treat artists so poorly year after year, especially in the relatively tight knit creative community where there is considerable overlap between buyers and suppliers.