I canceled video exclusivity in 2010 and it was a great decision by any measure stopped uploading footage then aswell .  I remained exclusive in other media until now. If they make royalties 20% for exclusivity then I will become non exclusive on those other media also. 

Wonder how all of this will play out. It was so easy to fix back in 2007 when they still controlled most micro and macro but they decided to erode the contrinutors to the bone instead.   

Had two rejections for some coin videos due to intellectual property. These are not British pounds but other common currencies available wide spread on the Fotolia site and other sites. 

I contacted support and got this answer:

Our acceptance criteria is changing regarding currency.  I'm sorry but we cannot accept that content at this time.

Kind regards,
______________

Seems that they want no issues with any type of money woes.  Much like Photoshop rejects scanning money, Fotolia will become a currency-less stock site.  Seems that it is a blanket statement for all of these files. 

I can understand high resolution bills seen complete but in a video with motion and of coins?   Other sites have no problem with these videos.  Also of note is that Fotolia lists currency and money as a category in the pull-down menu when keywording.

Would love to know your opinion on this.

I made just shy of $600 from them in 2015 however I got paid over $800 from 2014 remaining balances.  So I declared the full payout amount 800+ which is what I received.  I filed it as other business income as royalties.

I cannot wait for them to get their act together with the forms this year. It is a tiny part of my return and holding would cost me in time and $.  My accountant said that if I did not receive a 1099 from them then declaring it as other business income is the way to go.   Taxed the same just different form. Maybe next year they will fix the way they file the forms.

Crazy, 1099 is for Miscellaneous income reporting including royalties.   In the worst case if we do not get a form we have to compute the exact deposits we got as earnings and file that as other income without a form 1099.

Lets hope they get it by March 10th. 

Just wanted to drop by and say that there are many who read these forums and don't post regularly including myself.  Thank you for the interesting and important discussions.

As a video only contributor to SS I can say that the trend at least for now is slightly up in sales for 2 years in a row.  It may be that there is still some growth left in video compared to photo.   

I am owed around $400 but hard to tell as they hold all of the stats now. I only have a rough estimate from my spreadsheet that gets near that.

I OCRd the Text Image placeholder at the site:

"Unfortunately, there is never a good time to end a business, especially one that has been around almost 10 years as RevoStock has. I started RevoStock in 2006, excited about bringing the microstock idea to the world of video. Along the way, Revo brought many firsts including the first site to succesfully offer both audio and video, the first site to sell After Effects Templates and the first site to offer FlexFile custom encoding. We stayed a small company but were able to grow fast in spite of the fact that we did not have any outside funding.

However, starting in 2012, our struggle with a Patent Troll (a company that buys or acquires broad patents they can use to sue as many companies as possible) was the beginning of a very difficult period our small company simply was not able to rebound from. While the lawsuit was dismissed after 2 years, the scars left from this struggle made it equally difficult to get the funding we needed to recover and thus continue growing and innovating. If you are not familiar with the unfair damage Patent Trolls are causing to small companies like ours, I encourage you to watch John Oliver's (HBO) recent piece unmasking the ways Patent Trolls kill small businesses and stifle innovation.

I am deeply grateful to our talented producers who, following this suit, gave us a chance at recovery and I am very sorry we were not able to see it through. Thank you so much for your talent. I know how much time, effort and trust you have put into me and RevoStock and while I labored until the end to deliver a solution, I deeply regret that it wasn't possible. I am also thankful to all of the customers who have supported us all these years and come to us for your stock media needs. Thank you so much for choosing us. It has been an honor to serve you and interact with you. The last few months have been rocky for us and I hope our reputation might stand on our previous nine years of service.

We are currently working on securing a partnership for both our RevoStock producers and customers with one of the many other quality media marketplaces that will honor your current relationship with RevoStock in the best way possible. We will be sending out an email to this effect as soon as there are more details to be had.

- Craig Lillard (Founder, RevoStock) "


It will be interesting what that partnership looks like and if we will have access to retroactive payments.  Our content has been used and clients were charged for it. They should have never used contributor payment as a means for sustainability.   This is a really awful situation and having complete site blackout is unnerving.    Maybe Revo will be absorbed by a bigger competitor and have it as a side collection. I highly doubt payments outstanding will be honored now.  My guess is that Craig is filing Chapter 11 as so to gain the protections it grants.

Sad state of affairs I feel bad for all involved as no real solution was found to keep it afloat. 

Just upload it at the original size. Buyers can scale up or down as they please.  You wouldn't sell a car cover for a pickup truck that only fits a VW beetle right?   Check the list at hispeedcams.com for cameras that shoot slow motion on a budget if you need higher resolution.

I think SS is still overvalued with a huge P/E Ratio. It still has a way to go to stabilize.  I would maybe buy at $25 http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=SSTK+Interactive#{"showArea":false,"showLine":false,"lineWidth":"2","showCandle":true,"lineType":"candle","range":"5y","allowChartStacking":true}

If you want to have a long term stock this is not the one. I am an owner in Oils at the moment as they are on multi year lows and pay huge dividends. Shell for example is paying 6.4% dividend now and it is at a 3 year low.

I don't see much enthusiasm for this GDI Media deal, wonder what the game plan is.

Got a sale in May and none in June but just got another sale Today.    I'm continuing to upload slowly but surely.  It makes sense to support people that are good to artists IMO.

On another note the way they have the site working is in my view one of the best stock sites ever for submitting content.  Right to the point and little hassle.  Whomever designed it knew well what he/she was doing in respects to uploading procedures.

I decided to give them a go and started uploading video today.  If the business model works out all for the better.   Wish them success!

The truth is somewhere between both articles.  However as junk bonds go Getty is in a bind because their assets are not really all that hard.  Sure they have millions of exclusively owned images but that market is small compared to the entire library and if the suppliers get cut even lower than 20% average then they will continue to leave for greener pastures further eroding the Getty library.

They should spin off iStock and let it go on it's own, I bet that would get a lot of cash in the process. However long term it doesn't make sense.  Getty and iStock are stronger together and the entire imaging stock market benefits from Getty surviving.   No player should get so big as to have all the cards when it comes to the futures of suppliers and Getty got mighty close but those ways need to change in order for it to regain market share.  That means lower prices for clients and better royalty % for suppliers.

In 2007 the full year revenue was $860m   for 2011  $945 million  $879 million for the 12 months that ended Sept. 30  for 2014.

Whatever they are doing is keeping them in the revenue range with decreasing but not off a cliff income.  It's not as if they are earning 50% less even when many suppliers are due to reductions in our cuts. 

It won't go out of business but these articles might help a new buyer get in on the cheap and absorb the debt for pennies.   The most money is done when there is blood in the streets and everything looks dire. That is when the sharks come in and scoop up the pieces and digest them to make a killing later on.

Layoffs and some continued reduced revenue will probably come but not at the cost of Getty the company disappearing.   Shutterstock's stock is way down from it's highs last year of $99.38 it is now $56.55 but it went up too fast for it's own good. It went down even when revenue is accelerating. Speculators have taken it for a ride. 

It will be an interesting year for sure on the direction of the entire stock business.     

SS will do better
IS Will Continue it's Gettyfication
Fotolia might surprise due to the Adobe integration! However who will benefit?
4k in Video will be emerging stronger.
The $ pie for all of us continues to decrease.
Many full timers will need to get a side job to make ends meet.