Quote from:  link=topic=7001.msg82893#msg82893 date=1233841711

I just wish iStock would stop pretending they actually cared about the buyers. Every time I see a post on their forum that acts like they have the best interests of the buyers at heart (like that one in which they added credits to the smallest credit package, the "you asked and we listened" BS) it makes me want to puke.

Don't puke, please, but remember that thanks to istock, which created the concept of microstock, buyers can buy today photos and graphics for ten to fifty times less money that they used to cost 8-9 years ago before Bruce created istock. That is something that you seem to forget constantly.

If Bruce didn't do it, someone else would have. Oh, BTW, I was buying inexpensive photos and clipart on clipart.com (a subscription model) before I ever discovered iStock.

I think now, I'm going to use the new "ignore" feature. It's going to feel gooood. Thanks for your great customer service!

But anyone who really cares

Buyers don't care. The only people who care are the iStock cultists.  I think it's funny that so many have their knickers in a twist over that stupid article.

IStock *could* have been featured in that article, because it almost did beat a goliath...until it sold out to one.

Quote from: caspixel on February 02, 2009, 20:33

Quote from: loop on February 02, 2009, 19:45

The business of giving away images for free it's not a business, it's the reverse. Call it want you want but is not the point of microstock.

Oh, really? That WAS the original point of microstock......

interesting "point"
if i understood correctly - the point was -me to buy some 15K$ photo gear (little more, but let's stick to this 15 000$ that my gear is worth) - to educate myself, hard working to produce high quality images, and to give these images for free to designers - who wil sell designs, that sometimes have my photo as an essential part of it (photo, with no corrections + some text).
and you now are boo-hoo-hooing here that some 20-30$ is expensive for the image that fits your needs.
 you can always buy a cheep point'n'shot camera, (avialable from some 100$), and to make free designs?

from the other side - maybe you should look onto istock policy through the getty images policy? (getty has some other microstock sites too i believe)?

 on example i am banned from the DT forum for writing trouth on the forum.  from the other side these people are hipocrites - so my images are not going to be "banned" from the database. reason? - these people are not so stupid - they make money on my images, i am also not so stupid to give up - i make also money on my images.
 *what i am trying to say is that it is very good thing not to mix up emotions and busine$$.

You can complain all you want about how expensive your gear is, but the fact remains, iStock started out as a free photo sharing site and started the revolution of cheap photos (microstock). If the model bothers you so much because your gear is so expensive, stop. No designers are forcing you to sell your photos at that rate. But you can't blame designers for being pissed at having to pay 600% more for photos that were originally much much cheaper. Some of the SAME photos are on iStock as were there back when they were available for $1. What makes them more valuable now than they were back in 2004?

And I still don't get why people are blaming the buyers for being disgruntled about the price increases. We didn't create the business model or set the original low prices. If you aren't making enough money for your effort, maybe you should talk to your agent and see if you can't get more than a 20% commission. Or not sell your photos in the microstock model at all.

The business of giving away images for free it's not a business, it's the reverse. Call it want you want but is not the point of microstock.

Oh, really? That WAS the original point of microstock. And that is still the point at many of the microstock sites. From what I can see, Dreamstime and many of the others have not raised their prices at the rate that iStock has. IStock really isn't microstock anymore. It's moving more towards mid-stock...kind of like iStock Pro...oh, wait... that's not around anymore.

As far as how much equipment, etc costs, from what I understand from so many contributors, when they first started at microstock, is that they already had the gear and many of them were hobbyists who were thrilled to sell some of their photos. From there they turned it into a business. I could understand the argument about how costly things are getting and how difficult it is for contributors if so many were still not submitting and selling at the other microstock sites that have not raised their prices 600% in just a few short years. Take for example Dreamstime. They may offer free images, but they do, of course still sell them. And they must still be doing fine since they are still in business. I bet they've gotten a lot of iStock defectors in the past year.

And no, I don't necessarily want something for free, but I rarely need a photo which  requires a $400 session. I use a lot of textures for backgrounds. Why should I pay close to $20 for something like that?

This is as I expected though. You can accuse me of whatever you want and deny it as much as you want, but I don't just speak for myself when I tell you that buyers ARE disgruntled and HAVE left the site because the prices have gone up so drastically. Too bad if you don't like hearing it. It's the way it is.

IStock WILL eventually reach the limit of declining income as buyers look for more affordable imagery. That's the very reason iStock became such a success in the first place. It's imagery was affordable to EVERYONE. They are shutting out their bread and butter clients with these constant increases.

Don't you think that the sluggish world economy might be part of that equation as well?

I dunno. If so, though, the results of that poll on the right side of the screen seem to indicate that iStock is the only one of the Big 6 suffering from a downturn due to the economy then.