Mind you, I bet Yuri gets more than 40% - he almost certainly (I say with no empirical evidence) managed to negotiate a higher percentage along with his faux-exclusive deal.

Very, very unlikely. That's not how it works with Getty.

Instead they suck you in with fawning platitudes like "Professionals deal with professionals" __ and boy, did Yuri fall for that one or what!? Can't quite believe how naive he was. Bless!

maybe you need to join Yuri's team loop

he had 4k sales a day from 60k files at SS which is much less than 350 a day from 1000 files

anyway Yuri continues to be a funny guy, after reading his forecast I decided to quit SS and join iStock!

I think you'll find that BT's calculations for Yuri's port were based on 350/1000 sales per YEAR, not per day.

Quote from: ShadySue on June 03, 2014, 16:15

Quote from: Pickerell on June 03, 2014, 12:55

Yuri: "Give IS three months and see the changes for yourself."

Yikes, July, August, September ... we know what's often happened in previous Septembers.       

Hahaha so true.

It's bizarre that Yuri thinks he can just breeze in there and turn around 5 years worth of mismanagement, falling sales and declining customers ... in just 3 months. It isn't going to happen. The business model and reputation (with customers and contributors alike) is probably wrecked beyond repair. Talk about re-arranging the deck chairs ...

Sounds like he didn't see the increase in income that he was expecting and now wants to be more personally involved in the development of the site.

Looking at the recent problems istock has in just showing the sales data for the new subs, sending out wrong newsletters etc...the basics for the technology don't seem to be there. istock and getty are not technology companies, which is probably why he is pointing out that the top IT people are much better than the results we see in the way istock works.

So he is pushing them to become more competitive, which is probably good for istock.

If his income had taken of and he was making a lot more money by being exclusive he would have told us already, instead of promising us good results in a few months.

Yuri must have been absolutely delighted to have deliberately abandoned the 'subscription model' less than a year ago, on the basis that it didn't work for his business ... only to find that IS have started their own!

I asked Yuri if the higher fees from the Vetta and Signature collections is making up for the lost subscription sales from Shutterstock and all other agencies he was dealing with prior to going exclusive.

Yuri�s Response

While not answering my question directly, Yuri provided some interesting insights on what he feels is the future of Midstock.

�Having just spent 3 days at GI in New York and today in Seattle with the IT exes I believe that very interesting things are in the pipeline for IS. Did I have a say in the upcoming changes... Yes - for sure. That being said. The GI top exe dev guys are highly competent and more flexible and agile towards change that I would have imagined. We are working on a set of core site improvements that will dramatically improve user experience and ultimately sales. Only thing that I can say now: Give IS three months and see the changes for yourself.

�Shutterstock might be in for a bit more competition than they expected, especially if GI has me project managing the develoment team and we utilize the two things GI has that nobody else has: 1. The best images in the world. 2. The best editors in the world. The best images displays that the world has ever seen is just around the corner. Watch this space!�

Hmm. I'd say Yuri could probably have shortened his answer to "No". Interesting that he goes on to say SS "might be in for a bit more competition than they expected" which rather concedes that they haven't had much competition recently.

Why does he think that image buyers want "the best images in the world" (which he obviously thinks are his work) and are prepared to pay the vast premium for them? Personally I believe images that are easily 'good enough' for buyers' needs, at a much more reasonable price, are likely to be the choice of most. That's how 'microstock' started remember?

I won't be sitting on my hands in anticipation of a huge turnaround from the decline at IS. If it were ever to happen it would certainly take far longer than 3 months.

My own income from IS in May was barely more than half what it was in May 2013 ... about one third what it was in May 2012 ... and hardly more than one quarter what it was in May 2009. In contrast my income at SS has risen almost exactly to compensate for IS's decline. There's no way those customers are going to be running back to IS to buy Yuri's expensive images.

All SS would have to do Legally, is offer a Exclusive Option with a few cents more. I would accept. Time is money and If I stopped taking all the time it took to upload to 9 agencies. I would win based on that alone. Im sure that would kill FT.

Strewth. I just found myself actually agreeing with and Hearting a post from Mr Rinder.  Whatever next?

I think this announcement has officially backfired.

I've had 52 sales since the announcement and the "huge increase in subscription commissions" has so far totalled ... 41c.

Wowee! I'm just so happy.

Quote from: Ron on May 14, 2014, 09:03

Why is so hard to show both up and down votes? I see that on plenty of forums.

Personally, I don't care what up or down votes I get.  It doesn't hurt my feelings if people disagree with something.

Same here. Anyone that gets upset because 'someone on the internet disagrees with them' needs to get a life.

Quote from: gostwyck on May 07, 2014, 13:26

Also, do I detect a non-too-subtle change in the wording of what the photographer gets from Stocksy? I thought they originally got 50% of the revenue from image sales. Now apparently, they get 50% of the profit. There's a very big difference between those words.

That's probably a mistype by the author.  It's still the same - 50% of the royalty, 100% of the EL, and a share of the profit at year end.

Ok, fair enough.

Scott,

As I've said in a similar thread, there's a significant supply/demand gap that is inevitably widening. The growth in supply is massively outstripping the growth in demand. That's not going to be good for contributors and ultimately will probably hit the agencies too.

The emergence of DPC is evidence of just one potential threat to the incomes of both contributors and other agencies. It seems that FT themselves have effectively 'given up' on trying to grow the main Fotolia site and now want to 'disrupt' the microstock industry with a new lower-priced business model (which, if successful, will also kill their main brand).

If DPC succeeds, or even if it does not, then you can be sure that others will follow and introduce their own disruptive model. IS have become pretty desperate of late to breathe life into their ailing business. If the new subscription thing doesn't work for them, as it probably won't, then a mega-low priced model could be the next thing they'll try.

I'm a huge optimist by nature but I struggle to see much of a long-term future for microstock contributors who undertake it as their main occupation.

There won't be any 'default' or 'reset'. Microstock will increasingly become not worth producing new images for. In some niche categories we are already at that point. The world simply does not need any more images of some subjects. There are already enough and if you produce more of them then you will make very little money if any at all.

I wonder for how much longer agencies will continue to 'invest' in new content at the current rate. For example SS are approving new content at the rate of 300K per week. If each image costs say 10c to review and there is a 75% acceptance rate then they will be paying about $40K per week for reviewing those images. That's $2M per year. SS can certainly afford that but it might be of more concern for smaller agencies.

I'd assume that it will be the 'photo factories' that will be forced to scale down their operations before individual contributors. They tend to have much higher overheads and production costs. The return on capital invested in new shoots will surely lengthen to the point when it won't be worth doing so any more.

I guess one of the early indicators of such a crisis will be a reduction in SS's "new images approved this week". Currently that number is still increasing, which suggests the market is 'healthy'. When it starts to reduce it may mean that contributors are not finding it worthwhile to produce new content.

Quote from: Pixart on May 01, 2014, 13:24

For me there is one fact.  TWENTY FIVE CENTS.

I am a supplier.  I am supposed to set the prices.  What other wacked market lets the "stores" decide what they are going to pay their suppliers?  Do you think Walmart says "I'll pay you 25 cents for each pillowcase in the box" and then in 6 months say "I changed our arrangement - I've raised the price on the pillowcases, but I've actually cut your wholesale price to 10 cents".  And furthermore, they have not paid for my content so they should not be able to share it with their partners, take a cut, change licenses and make any decisions.

Rant over.

I think Walmart actually does things like this when they can get away with it, but that doesn't make it right.  In fact it's a good comparison - it shows what happens when a market becomes controlled by a small number of middlemen and producers have lost all leverage.

Unfortunately we, as contributors, have a real supply & demand issue that has been building for some time. SS are now up to nearly 300K new images approved each week and that number is still steadily increasing. Whenever there's a massive imbalance between supply and demand it usually results in the price changing.

You can bet the other agencies will be examining FT's move very carefully indeed. Judging by the monthly sales reports IS appear to have been haemorrhaging customers by the bucket-load for over 2 years now. At what point will they be tempted to try a 'new business model' if they have little left to lose with their existing model?

Quote from: SNP on April 30, 2014, 14:39

I'll be running this event in Toronto as a Canadian Community Leader. It is for Canadian contributors and primarily focused on Canadian content. But, as Scott said, there will be events like this happening around the world, in the US, and other parts of Canada too. Building the Shutterstock community, making information about creative briefs available, and helping new and existing contributors connect with meetups, workshops and events is the goal.

Anyone in the Toronto area, looking forward to seeing you there. Even if you're not a Canadian contributor, you're certainly welcome. The information will be relevant for all stills and video contributors.

Stacey, could you be more specific about the agenda and who the guest speakers will be?

Elena,

Do you realise that your 14k+ images are still available (full size, at $1 a pop) at the Dollar Photo Club?

See here;

http://www.dollarphotoclub.com/Search?creator_id=32101

Why haven't you opted out yet?