I just had one of my bizarre thoughts regarding falling sales, which most people who've been in the game for a couple of years or more are reporting.

Isn't the RF model part of the problem? Buyers who have been buying RF for years have built up their own personal stock library, which they can use again and again. If they're smart, they'll have keyworded and catalogued them according to their own needs and workflow. In many cases, they don't really have need to buy new images, they can repurpose old ones, swapping details around between photos etc.

Against this thought: time is money, it might be worth looking for a new image that more exactly fits the purpose, especially where there's a backlog of work building up. On the other hand, many uses of stock images are heavily altered and combined anyway.
For the thought: if work is quiet and there isn't a queue of clients beating down the door, the staff have to be paid anyway, and at least 'some' money could be saved by repurposing existing images.

Obviously there will be new concepts/topics coming out all the time, which will sell; and trends (clothes, specs, technolgoy, hairstyles) will change, dating some older photos in the more popular categories, like business; but in general, I think my depressing argument holds.

Thoughts?

This was not intended as a stock photo. I'm doing a photojournalism class and we had to find events over the weekend and shoot them. "We need photos not excuses" is emphasised, and weather/light is definitely not an excuse.
So I found out that there was a charity abseil from a huge landmark crane and set off, but of course, there was a heavy drizzle. The tutor had told us that 800 ISO was perfectly standard in Scotland for pjs to use most of the year, and I'm not scared of using high ISO anyway. So as I needed to freeze movement from the abseiling, I set the ISO at 800, and this shot was 1/800 with 800 iso.
Is this what rain looks like at that speed? I doubt I've ever photographed rain at 1/800 before!
This is a full size crop, with only a bit of fill and clarity added in post, no other processing:
http://www.lizworld.com/ExhibitB.jpg
TIA

I make no comment on the premise of the site, just that the 60 images are watermarked with a large variety of stock libraries from Getty to thinkstock.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/60-completely-unusable-stock-photos
(Very first photo: I remember way back when I was a student seeing a poster campaign featuring a 'pregnant man' with the slogan, "If you could get pregnant, you'd use contraception' or similar.)

Reported via the forums. It seems that all whose images have been stolen have been contacted directly.
Interesting that this theft has been done via legitimate log-ins.
http://www.photoarchivenews.com

I thought we'd maybe reached the bottom at iStock. I had one download yesterday and two today. This is grim beyond belief for weekdays.
However, my total just dropped $16.50.
In the absence of an email (so far) I hopped onto the forum, and it turns out they're clawing back the money that was fraudulently taken from us.
I didn't even think any of my downloads fitted any of the profiles suggested, so I'd expect some will be losing much, much more. I'm sorry for me, but much more sorry for those of you who are suffering huge losses.
Don't worry. They're letting us keep the RCs.
According to RM, "Due to the nature of our online business, all of our credit transactions are what's known as 'card not present transactions'. When fraud is reported in this kind of transaction, iStock � not Visa/Amex/MasterCard - is responsible for returning the money to the credit card owner."
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=299222&page=1
Sorry again to those who will suffer huge losses.

Just up.
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=289922&page=1

"As 2010 wound down, our data gave us a more and more complete picture of how the year went. We've now been able to crunch everything down and examine how performance matched up against our predictions.

And I must say, thank you to everyone for helping iStock with an exceptional year. With your hard work, we continue to meet and exceed our goals. We were almost exactly right on our credit burn targets, but the distribution was a little different from what we expected. We�ve adjusted the credit targets to better reflect that. Some targets have stayed the same, some down--none up. So good news."

So.
We "contiune to met and exceed our goals", but we're still unsustainable.
What's wrong with these people?
At least he knows who's doing the hard work. And shafting us anyway.

Somehow I managed to miss the announcement of this and any discussion of it both here and on iStock's forums.
I see that on Agency and Vetta files, the extended licences are on the files' page as add-ons, so that it's clear that they're needed for certain purposes.

But my question, which I can't ask on the iStock site, and everyone's 'home for the holidays' anyway, is:
Why aren't these 'add-on' options on the file page for each file? I'm perfectly sure that many ELs are missed, either because people are in a hurry, and just don't know, or because they won't be caught. Why don't iStock want to maximise their income, and by extension ours, on every file, not just Vettas and Agency files?
If this has already been discussed here or there, please point me to the link. Tx.

This came up in relation to that EL fiasco, but it's worth a new thread.
In that EL fiasco thread¹, a contributer got this in a reply from Contributer Support:

"Apparently what happened with our (at least my) really small EL download royalties is that they were purchased from a buyer who bought credits in huge bulk to the tune of 70�/credit. I wasn't aware that you were able to get credits that cheap as on the "Buy Stock" page it says credits as low as 95�/credit. I was told that this is a standard practice with huge corporate buyers. It's a little frustrating that we have been mislead about this. I also did not realize that subscription credits go as low as 24�/credit. Did Kelly make mistake when he wrote "we are adjusting the minimum value of the subscription credit from $0.95 to $0.65"? Did he mean to say "pay-as-you-go credits"? In which case it is already almost that low."
Clearly, that would mean that an XS image bought by one of these Huge Buyers would net a non-exclusive as much as 14c, and even a (Black) Diamond would earn 28p.

Surely that is totally unsustainable for contributers and iStock. No wonder they keep it a 'dirty little secret'.

¹ Reference: http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=269152&page=1, about half-way down page 2.

Yesterday, i was photographing at my local Cattle Show, mainly for practice though I'll probably send some to Alamy, not that last year's batch have done me any good! A few different people (officials) asked if I was shooting for Scottish Farmer magazine. http://www.thescottishfarmer.co.uk (I guess it was the 5DMk2!).
A farmer asked me particularly to photograph his cow and calf. In fact, I'd noticed them earlier and had taken several photos. At the end of the Champion of Champions round, he held back for a few seconds (the Grand Parade was about to start so it was literally a few seconds). He asked for my card (lucky I've got an iStock Moo card, though a bit irrelevant) and gave me his email addy.
So I processed the photos and shoved them some on my website http://www.lizworld.com/General/CattleShow.html and emailled him. I assumed he might want to buy a couple of prints, and had no idea of how much to charge. (Photographers go out of business within a year or two round about here, whether they charge a little or a lot - can't get enough people willing to pay anything.)
Turns out he's the bloke who writes the report for the Scottish Farmer, and he's emailled them and suggested they use one of my photos of his cattle. (What's the point of writing the report if you can't feature your own winners?!). He's not sure whether or not they'll use a picture, and I guess if they do, my rubric is "... at your usual rate."

He has also asked about gettting prints, and said specifically that he "didn't want big ones" I fobbed him off for a bit - I haven't a clue how much to charge, especially as I'll be submitting to Alamy. In other circs, I could exchange them for MRs for iStock, but I can't imagine there would be any interest on iStock, and anyway most of the pics have other people in the background, or objects which would need PRs.
I could do inkjet prints (I've got an Epson 1400), but thought I'd use Photobox, which I've used about three years ago. An 8x6 costs 37p there +p&p, so I thought �3 + p&p.
I know all you USian photogs wouldn't get out of your bed for under �100, but this is rural Scotland.
TIA
After I wrote the above, I thought that IF Scottish Farmer use one of my photos and IF the fee is good (which is by no means certain; I haven't located any info about fees on their website yet) I should send him the small prints free for the contact.