Quote from: RT on June 13, 2011, 06:37

I have no doubt that were only seeing stage 2 in what I think is iStock/Getty's plan:

Stage 1 - Launch the editorial section, only allow non news/celebrity images

Result: They get hundreds of isolated iPhone/pod/pad images, a few sell and the Getty editorial shooters are happy because it doesn't appear to be a threat.

Stage 2 - Introduce some real editorial shots from Getty but exclude the regular iStock contributors from submitting

Result: They hoodwink the main Getty guys telling them they're just testing the waters to see if proper editorial stuff would sell, Getty still get their editorial submissions from the full timers.

Stage 3 - If things take off allow iStock contributors to submit local news and events shots

Result: The Getty guys start to wise up, but they're told it's so they can concentrate on the main news events, baffle them with some marketing speak.

Stage 4 - The editorial collection is a hit with the publishing industry around the world, iStock allows anybody to submit editorial shots

Result: The old adage of 'F8 and be there' still exists except now Getty no longer have to pay for the 'be there' element, the whole world is a crowd sourced editorial team of free photographers, Getty get their editorial shots, it's cost them nothing, all they can do is profit.

Without any disrespect to any editorial photographers the whole basis about editorial photography is not technical quality, it's about someone being at an event with a camera (hence the F8 and be there saying), nowadays half the worlds population has a camera suitable for editorial publications and an internet connection to upload them to the agency, there'll still be a requirement for the 'instant news/sports events' photographer but for everything else I'm guessing Getty are going to approach editorial along the same lines that microstock attacked the commercial world of photography.

This makes a lot of sense.  It could be argued this is a good think for Istock contributors ITLR.  Although if I were a Getty editorial contributor, I would be worried about my livelihood.  Especially if/when stage 4 kicks in. 

Talking about Alamy, how are they able to take sports events with out 'all the complexity'. There must be local sports without 'all the complexity' - I guess my local football team wouldn't have 'all the complexity'. How come can you take a local sports event for the main collection if you have model releases and clone out all logos, sponsorship etc, but not for the editorial collection?

Quote from: gostwyck on May 13, 2011, 09:39

Of course the P+ collection is really just a desperate measure to address the embarrassing issue with the 2011 RC targets. It probably means that they will be able to increase RC targets for independents whilst 'generously' lowering them for exclusives. It's little more than a fig leaf to provide cover (and replace profits)for the falling sales. I reckon they'll watch how P+ performs for the rest of May and then announce the 2011 RC targets in early June.

Nice guess. This popped up on the Help forum sticky just 10 minutes ago:

"Redeemed Credit Targets: I know that we promised these awhile ago and we have not lived up to that promise. This time, we will. Redeemed credit targets will be announced in three weeks. "

So your supposition seems to be bang on target. (There is some other stuff in the update, too, but nothing terribly important)

My sales over the last 3 days, since I bumped about 500 of my best-selling images to P+, have resulted in an RPD of $1.69. That's almost a 50% increase over my previous RPD which averaged $1.13. Very nice indeed.

I'd label that a fail. You can barely see the '+'. Couldn't they have picked a little lighter color?

that's what I dont get.  is it my imagination or don't they usually announce these things a little farther ahead of time and tell us when it's going live and what we need to do to get ready? 

I don't frequent the IS forums much these days at all but didn't this just get announced the day it launched?   weird.

Hmm, I wonder how much 3 hours of KKT's time is worth, for such dubious publicity. How much traditional advertising could that have bought - and I know it worked.

Quote from: retrorocket on May 05, 2011, 10:46

If or when my sales drop below a certain point, I will drop the crown but I don't have high expectations for independence. I think the best options, unfortunately, are outside of microstock.

I agree with you on that. Nothing wrong with keeping what one has going on microstock, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to find other avenues to make money with one's photography.

I just haven't had the time.  I was pretty naive in that I started my stock career with iStock and never bothered to learn about metadata as I always just added keywords and descriptions either through the web interface or deepmeta. Now that I am submitting to other sites, I have to go through my portfolio and add all the metadata. Had I been doing that all along it would be a lot easier and I'd have a lot more images on the other sites. I work a fulltime job ...

Really, for those of you who think that uploading to numerous sites is a pain - if you have the metadata all set, it's really not that much more work.

by risamay May 5, 2011 2:01 PM PDT
Expansion has been tough for the company, though, because of a contributor payment system that the company judged financially unsustainable. A switch last year to a performance-based compensation scheme was painful, but in the end, only about 0.1 percent of the more than 100,000 contributors were dramatically affected, Thompson said.

"It didn't really affect most people," Thompson said. "Everyone sort of settled down."

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I don't know if Kelly's numbers are accurate, but what I do know is that I trust him or iStock to be honest and do right by its contributors very little. After our experiences of the last year, it's crystal clear that the company does not have our best interests at heart.

Further, while we may have "sort of" settled down, that's sort of a line of BS because many of the contributors and threads in the iStock forums where "everyone" voiced their displeasure have been either banned (contributors) or deleted (threads). With that kind of censorship, yeah. It would appear that "everyone" has "sort of" settled down.

Is it any wonder why everyone would still be so unhappy?

While "everyone" isn't a posting member, many of us continue to discuss our displeasure and frustrations with the company on the Microstockgroup Forums where, thankfully, Kelly & Co. can't censor us.

http://www.microstockgroup.com/istockphoto-com/

Posted By KW400:
I think this is what happens when you take a simple concept like selling stock photography at a good price and then, make it as complicated as humanly possible by a large number of price points and a horrible search.