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Messages - dgilder
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176
« on: September 11, 2010, 23:02 »
Good catch Massman! I hope David won't mind my quoting it here:
Not at all, but for clarity, that was something I posted for a friend anonymously, not a personal experience. One of the other contributors got flustered with me over there about it.
177
« on: September 11, 2010, 15:26 »
I am not a top contributor, I'm only putting ~$1,800 a month into their pockets after they give me my current slice. What I am is a person who signed back up under their false pretense of locking in a 40% royalty next year (when I should reach diamond). I would have appreciated some kind of contact to discuss this, but never heard a peep.
179
« on: September 10, 2010, 17:19 »
Most will get between 15% and 18%, just like most exclusives will get between 25% and 35%.
180
« on: September 10, 2010, 16:30 »
Some one earlier was asking about where to find this. I don't know if anyone posted it yet or not, but if they didn't here it is. Its the contributor charts at iStock. It will tell you how many of what canister level there is.
http://istockcharts.multimedia.de/
One problem there is that they do not list the split out between cannister level's for the exclusives. I wrote to the person who runs that site and they sent me the exclusive split out below. I also confirmed that this is all inclusive. If someone asks them to remove them from the list, they only make the entry anonymous by removing the name. So the numbers here are accurate: We've got 5531 exclusive contributors in our contributor charts:
base contributors 105 ( 1.9%)
bronze contributors 2417 (43.7%)
silver contributors 1647 (29.8%)
gold contributors 760 (13.7%)
diamond contributors 574 (10.4%)
blackdiamond contributors 28 ( 0.5%)
181
« on: September 10, 2010, 13:23 »
I had 2000+ images spread wide. I made 30% more when I switched to being an exclusive at iStock in February.
182
« on: September 10, 2010, 12:50 »
Not cool, Ariel.
183
« on: September 10, 2010, 11:09 »
iStock was about 45% of my income as a non-exclusive. When I went exclusive in February, my income nearly quadrupled in March compared to January. Its backed off now and has been pretty steady at tripple my average monthly income at iStock. In terms of overall microstock, I'm still making nearly 30% more as an iStock exclusive than I was earning overall from all microstock combined. Next year I will automatically be making 15% less than I am now, and 25% less than I should have been, as I'm nearly to diamond.
If I drop exclusivity, I will be removing my port entirely. I will eat a significant loss, but I have ethical difficulties being in bed with a company as exploitative as it appears iStock is about to become. I will probably have to shutter my studio for awhile and go back to on location stock shoots only while I build income back up.
Fortunately this is not my primary source of income. I feel very sorry for those who need iStock to put food on their tables.
184
« on: September 10, 2010, 08:12 »
Here is something that makes me angry. The iStockcharts folks emailed this to me this morning.
We've got 5531 exclusive contributors in our contributor charts:
base contributors 105 ( 1.9%)
bronze contributors 2417 (43.7%)
silver contributors 1647 (29.8%)
gold contributors 760 (13.7%)
diamond contributors 574 (10.4%)
blackdiamond contributors 28 ( 0.5%)
Kelly says 76% of exclusives will not take a hit. 43.7% of them won't because they are bronze. Another 29.8% are silver, and stand a fairly good chance of hitting that low 2000 credit target. Add in the 1.9% base contributors that are guaranteed to go up. That is 75.4% of exclusives. iStock is gunning for your royalties golds and diamonds, I guess we now know why the silver target was set so comparatively low. It makes it easier for them to say that 76% of people will not see a change.
185
« on: September 10, 2010, 01:33 »
Just a note to myself somewhere I can find it in the morning. That thread is up to page 138 now.
186
« on: September 09, 2010, 23:07 »
Yeah, the admins in general have been getting a raw deal from a lot of people. People like Rob really can't do much other than commiserate, and even that would probably be frowned upon by some.
187
« on: September 09, 2010, 17:43 »
The second iStock "back and forth discussion" thread seems to be winding down a bit now. You can actually step away for awhile and have a reasonable hope of catching back up. Its on page 128 now.
188
« on: September 09, 2010, 16:43 »
True, but if what you are implying, that only the really angry people were responding, then the rate would be skewed more to the "I'm leaving" than it already is.
189
« on: September 09, 2010, 16:11 »
Doesn't matter much if they are really about to lose 37% of their contributors. I think the cases you mention might fall under the "No I just have to take it" category.
191
« on: September 09, 2010, 15:32 »
I've never had much contact with her before, so apologies for the gender misstatement 
192
« on: September 09, 2010, 15:18 »
I posted this over there, but I'm sure its lost by now: 27.1% of my 2,166 images in my port were uploaded this year. I also went exclusive in February of this year. I am a little over 3,000 downloads from hitting diamond, and if I double my credits redeemed by the end of the year, I will still not have enough to keep the 35% I now have as a gold exclusive, let alone hit the 40% I was promised (when I hit 25K) in exchange for my exclusivity at the start of the year.
I have already uploaded more than I uploaded during the entire last year, and last year I had almost doubled what I had uploaded in any of the 6 years I have been with iStock.
I have been producing more content, like iStock is hoping to encourage, and practically everything I have uploaded this year has been XXXL. I am not going to have enough redeemed credits to even keep the 35% I currently get, let alone the 40% iStock guaranteed I would be locked into when I agreed to remove my files from other sites. So if I have more credits redeemed, better search rankings, etc as a fresh exclusive, AND increased the size of my portfolio by 37% in that same time period, yet still cannot reach even the minimum level to simply keep 35% royalties, what kind of contributors are they expecting to see maintain their current levels or increase?
193
« on: September 09, 2010, 15:06 »
In fairness though, DNY59 disagreed with Sean on this issue and felt the 1.4m threshold was attainable. It's buried somewhere in the first thread. FWIW I agree with Sean that it is unattainable, but DNY59 is amazingly talented and if he thinks he can do it, then I am not going to doubt him.
He was talking with me in part of that, and he very specifically said he himself could NOT make that target.
195
« on: September 08, 2010, 16:49 »
That would be worse than what is proposed. The new and up-coming talents should be rewarded, and should not be banned from advancement.
Well, they can * have it.
196
« on: September 08, 2010, 16:47 »
Just some numbers to think about.
Unsustainable: 40%.
Assuming that everyone who qualifies for exclusivity became exclusive:
There are a total of 738 people who qualify for the 40% royalties. That is only 2.4% of all contributors. They are the only ones who can get the 40% commission.
There are 1056 people who qualify for 35% royalties, only 3.5% of contributors. Combined, there are only 5.9% of all iStock contributors who qualify for 35% and up. Many of these people have had accounts on iStock for over 6 years just to get to this level.
This is unsustainable? Lets say that triples in the next six years, so roughly 18% of iStock contributors qualify for more than 35% royalties. Unsustainable?
197
« on: September 08, 2010, 14:44 »
Using the creative network won't work, they will just delete it and remove you from the site. They have made no secret that they can read your site mail whenever they want.
Ask Paul Cowan, he's been down that road before.
198
« on: September 08, 2010, 01:54 »
Um, except any increased traffic is offset by exclusives images dropping in the best match results due to a flood of new 'high quality' images.
Crap!! what new high quality images?? you mean the same old isolations on whites or the young business man?
No, I mean the Getty collections they are dumping into iStock search pool. You know, older, middle aged business guys who actually look like managers, isolated images that actually contain clipping paths, released crowd scenes, etc.
199
« on: September 08, 2010, 01:05 »
Um, except any increased traffic is offset by exclusives images dropping in the best match results due to a flood of new 'high quality' images.
200
« on: September 08, 2010, 00:02 »
Yeah, no one is going to really know what is going to happen until they drop those other collections into the iStock main catalog best match sort.
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