Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 07, 2014, 02:46

They don't need to sustain the growth in the collection. If they stopped accepting images today they could probably still keep growing the business for years.

^ I believe that this is not necessarily the whole picture. As follows:

Shutterstock is clearly all about the revenues today. The revenues are without question impressive.

But in terms of the future of the stock - and apart from the revenues today ... it has some aspects in common with social networking stocks. Those sorts of tech stocks are invariably also partly valued on the number of active users and the extent of that activity. Partly because there is always the (flawed IMO) expectation that an active membership represents a future potential other business opportunity - when the business inevitably diversifies as it must if momentum is to be maintained.

Any analysis of the future direction of the stock is going to take in account data which relates to active engagement. The number of contributing members and the amount of content being contributed will be a relevant number (whether or not it really should be). There has to be the sense that SS is still the big thing.

The stock price is crucial. A company with a falling stock price quickly comes under pressure. The whole market has been kept afloat by QE for the past few years - and despite that being wound down the reality is that govt money will continue to flow for years via existing commitments.

(IMO - this thing about the amount of membership activity potentially affecting the price or future price is something which contributors often ignore when trying to work out, for example, why standards do not gradually get tighter).

I think you are somewhat flawed in this. From the point of view of 'data collection' and 'social engagement' it is not the contributors who might be valued but the customers. Contributors number in 10's of thousands whereas customers, who actually spend money, number in the millions. Not that your theory probably holds for this anyway.

Have you heard of Strava? Strava are a website that enables cyclists and runners to upload their rides or runs, recorded on a GPS device, that can then be compared to others who have ridden the same route or user-generated 'segment'. The basic service is free and, a bit like Facebook, Strava are trying to work out ways to monetise their success. One valuable asset they have is the details of millions of cyclists from all around the world who tend to be fairly well-off and who spend an average of $3K per year on cycling gear. A lot of businesses would pay dearly to access that data.

Would the email addresses of image buyers be equally valuable?

Quote from: gostwyck on November 07, 2014, 06:58

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 07, 2014, 06:46

Quote from: Hobostocker on November 07, 2014, 05:55

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on November 07, 2014, 02:46

They don't need to sustain the growth in the collection. If they stopped accepting images today they could probably still keep growing the business for years.

but the competitors would profit from that, they would push buyers into the "freshness" of their archive compared to SS's stale collection.

for what is worth, SS could be even bought by google or microsoft or apple, it's a realistic possibility.

I'm not proposing it as a policy for them, I'm just saying that the insane rate of growth in the collection isn't necessary, if they added a million or two images a year it would probably keep things fresh enough for the buyers to be happy.

Buyouts happen, look at what happened to Getty Images, but it's much easier to buy an ailing public company than one doing well.

It's probably just cheaper rather than 'easier' to buy an ailing public company. The current market capitalisation for SSTK is $2.69B. That would be loose change to Google or Apple. Apple is currently sitting on a cash mountain of $165B+.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/07/apple-iphone-6-cash-pile-tax-avoidance-us

I was thinking in terms of the optimism of existing shareholders. There's a price beyond which it isn't worth paying and if a large section of shareholders aren't willing to set their sights that low then a deal doesn't happen. If you want to get off a sinking ship, however, that is another thing altogether.
If you had SS shares and were offered 10% above last night's close by a potential purchaser, would you grab the cash or wait for something better?
Just now, Qatar's bid for Canary Wharf has been turned down, with the owners saying it is too low. Qatar could easily increase the offer, but will they think it's worth it?

Agreeing on a price is the easy bit. If you buy an ailing business then you are buying someone else's problems. Remember BMW buying Rover? It became known as 'The English Patient' and was a millstone around their neck until they finally managed to offload it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/679434.stm

Quote from: zstoimenov on November 07, 2014, 00:48

I can bet that in 2/3 of the times they used the 'New files' filter. It will not get any better, especially for people like me who missed the last six to ten years.

sure but ultimately this factor alone WILL kill the microstock model because they won't be able to keep the promise of selling cheap but selling many times, you'll barely sell only once and for half a dollar, thus making it impossible to sustain the production costs.

i'm the first saying in stock you need a big portfolio but once the leading agency is doubling or tripling the size of its whole archive every year you just can't stay afloat, sooner or later your portfolio will be irrilevant, a drop in the ocean.

A huge number of new images accepted are bizarrely LCV and have little or no chance of ever selling. I don't know why some contributors waste their time uploading vast numbers of similar images when they clearly don't understand 'stock'. Equally I don't understand why SS go to the expense of reviewing and storing so many pointless images. I'm surprised they don't at least impose upload limits based on the sales record of contributors.

I recently undertook some analysis of my own portfolio and was quite surprised by how much my revenue was affected by recent uploads. New images still get found on SS and still sell in worthwhile volume. The only thing that has changed from say 2-3 years ago is that new images do take somewhat longer to be noticed and climb the default sort-order. It used to be days or weeks but now it can take several months.

Every niche subject still has a market of a certain volume. You just need to make sure that you are uploading enough quality images of that market to ensure that you maintain (or grow) your share of it.

The success of SS is a somewhat double-edged sword in my view. The volume of images that they sell has given stability and predictability to my earnings far more than any other agency. However their dominance also gives me cause for concern. Last month (a BME on SS), together with earnings from BigStock, they generated over 65% of my total and my data indicates that their market-share is still growing strongly. At their current rate of growth (and with the continued decline of other agencies) SS could take their market-share to 80% over the next couple of years ... and that would be a significant cause for concern.

Looks like they had a good quarter.  I wonder why they are down nearly 10% after the announcement.  Might be a good time to buy?

Good results were anticipated. A classic case of "buy on the rumour, sell on the news". Always seems to happen when a business announces good news.

Wow! Sharp eyes Stvagna! Good catch.

Congratulations! Excellent capture too. Do you know where they bought the license from and how much you got paid for it?

It depends how long you've been uploading to microstock agencies. If it were less than 3 years for example then all your images are still 'new'. I reckon the average stock image to have a working life of about 5 years with peak earnings between years 2-3.

I've been doing microstock for exactly 10 years and, although my early stuff still sells (particularly niche subjects), I reckon 80%+ of my earnings is from images uploaded in the last 5 years. Of course your knowledge and skills improve with time so it is also the case that my newer images are generally much better than what I was producing several years ago. Just as well as there is literally 50x more competition, in terms of uploaded images, as there was say 8 years ago.

Well for me the main effect of the 'New Improved Istock' ... has been a new BME ... at Shutterstock.

Thanks Istock!

It's interesting that Istock is going after organic customers now.

Really? Organic customers? Istock actually want customers that haven't been sprayed with synthetic pesticides or chemical fertilisers?

I never knew that.

But titles and descriptions aren't part of the search, so messing with those won't directly affect buyer happiness while using the site.

I think you may be missing the point Sean. They're not talking about the internal Istock search but about the external search on Google (or other search engines). Google does use the image title and description to determine what the image may be of.

I know I was guilty in the early days of using puns or other light-hearted plays on words in my image titles but I now know that it's a bad thing to do! For example I once titled an image of UK Sterling banknotes as "Notes from a small island" ... obviously a reference to Bill Bryson's excellent book. It amused me at the time but I now realise that it wouldn't help my image be identified in a Google image search.

If you notice SS, IS and DT add the words "Stock Image" either before or after the image's title. I think they only started doing that a couple of years ago to promote the image in Google image searches.

They love to take surveys, but I don't ever remember them making any positive changes as a result.

I think they have done so, especially in the last couple of years. It seems that every time a new General Manager is appointed one of the first things they do is conduct 'a survey'. Of course it's partly an arse-covering exercise to explain why they are making the changes that they do ... in case they don't actually work out.

Unfortunately, when Istock management make a change to appease the interests of one set of customers ... it turns out to be exactly what another set of customers absolutely hate. This time they've massively simplified the pricing but have now lost all the web-blogger customers who only require small images.

At first I thought Istock were trying too hard to please everyone but I now think that they no longer have their own sense of direction and they've ended up as a muddled, wannabe-clone of Shutterstock. There's no leadership at Istock anymore. Does anyone even know the name of the person in charge of the place? Does even anyone care anymore?

What is with the extremely slow site?  Even clicking on the upload button took over 30 minutes to get to the upload screen. 

Upload button? Do they still have one? Why on earth would anyone want to click on it?

You'll get no significant further investment in IT infrastructure so you might as well get used to things as they are. Things will only speed up when more customers leave to reduce load on the servers.

My sales at Istock are continuing to slow as each week passes, possibly as existing credits are used up. Last October I had over 600 regular sales (not counting PP, etc). This month it will be fewer than 200.

In October 2009 I had 1300 sales. How things have changed in 5 years.