I was a shareholder with Getty until about 6 months before they got taken out. The stock was climbing like mad until the last year before the buyout, but they started getting a lot of questions in the conference calls about RF taking away the RM share. At that time, Getty was trying to up the price of RF and got no where with that strategy. They came in with a couple of bad quarters and the stock fell through the floor. All this time, they kept saying that RF wouldn't hurt RM. Microstock wasn't an issue at that time, it was just declining revenue from RM. They didn't have an answer, so they just stopped taking questions. Most private equity firms try to turn a company in 3-5 years, after putting in new management and improving operations. That's the spin they will put on it for the roadshow- how they are positioned for growth with a profitable microstock model in a dominant position in the market. It's been off the analyst radar for so long they will only be able to judge the growth from getty's numbers. Anyone with an insight into the microstock business can see that Getty is sacrificing the future for the present jump in earnings, but no one on the street is going to say that, because Getty will sue them. ( it's happened to more than one analyst recently). The bottom line is that the present owners will cash out, and the new owners will wonder what happened in a few years. H&F knows they have to dump this company because it's a declining asset. It's just a question of waiting for the IPO market to heat up.

nice post. whether intentionally or not, it sums up and adresses number of things that I think are important.

 "All this time, they kept saying that RF wouldn't hurt RM." <->  "Microstock wasn't an issue at that time" <-> "just declining revenue from RM"

sure, there's no connection whatsoever. That's logical.

"sacrificing the future for the present jump in earnings"

That sums up micorstock. The "present jump" is exceptionally deceptive (if someone isn't very bright I guess) there becouse for most ppl getting involved it's an amazing jump: a jump from 0... or a jump from 'not even dreaming' that they could make money with their images. it's a bit amusing how those guys after being involved in it for a few years are complaining about dilution of sales value when they see trends like collages sold as one image... which is just a sub-scale repetition of what they started doing originally.

that's awful. But you guys alwasy look for a very rational explanation as if ppl worked that way. god knows what happened, someone at SS doing a secondary inspection with a lightyear long que might just be a bit too conservative, etc... BUT seeing the 'range' of pictures thriving on SS, this supposed to a some misunderstanding.

Hi-a little bit off the subject -  But I get a lot of rejections for " focus not wher we think it should be or the white balance is off" Now I can understand a "either or" rejection but not both together. If they can't tell which is which how can I? 

thanks for any help
Smiling Jack

They push buttons, and one ofthem says that : )

Nettiquette 101: Do not talk shite about another person, and certainly do not do it in a thread where he/she is not participating. Lobo might do a *** job, but he is a human being like any other. There is no need to get personal, and doing so only reflect badly on you.

How does insulting people with remarks on the forum and on sitemail, and then using your 'admin powers' banning them from both so they can't reply put up with your version of nettiquette? In case it's hard to comprehend: the latter is the real shaitty thing. He can go on trying to mock and insult people forever for all I care as long as they have their choice to retailate. He's gonna be pulled apart like warm bread in that case. There is a huge difference between what 'anyone' and payed(!) admin can and supposed to do. I personally think it's also worth noting: this happens on the forum of a site doing supposedly serious business, to the people doing business there. Threads are locked with an insult, about problems affecting people paying their bills. How about that, hmm?

You are a bit oversuspicuos there imho, it's simply the volume. Probably delivering the downloads is the absolute priority, so the rest may lag in all sorts of ways. What it may show is that they don't invest that much into infrastructure, which is not a great surprise from a microsite.

A lot of the arguments in this thread in favor of midstock pricing (equipment costs, production costs, travel costs, etc) sound an awful lot like the arguments in favor of RM and traditional RF pricing a bunch of years ago.

The trads must be laughing their asses off at us while we cry "Photos are too expensive to produce to sell them for just $1!"

it took something like 3 years for reality to pop up from behind the forced fanboy yipee attitude while getting totally ripped of. I saw how the bunch was prone to even lie about how things are going just keep the face, playing the  lameass wow-imkool-sellingmypicturz character even picking on people who bother with flickr and real citique community sites, when I first started to investigate them on a photography forum (not this one). It was a very tarnsparent act, wouldn't fool a blind 5 year old, and being the no bullscheise guy, when I did more than schratch the surcface they suddenly turned into hissy little vampire chimpunks in an instant, full of pent up frustration : ) It was kindergarten without the cuteness...

my husband is a mathematician. so what.

Is he running BI at large net business? I guess your definitosn of a pro shooter is someone who learned to get a good histogram or smthng like that : )

Quote from: molka on December 01, 2010, 09:14

Quote from: Perry on December 01, 2010, 09:12

Quote from: molka on December 01, 2010, 09:01

okay, estimate the cost of this:   (and effort? - what is that?)
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_fQ_dSgvRe_E/TPPpONUfCOI/AAAAAAAAAF4/HEJvnGM81rY/_MG_7541.jpg
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_fQ_dSgvRe_E/TPPo13gs9kI/AAAAAAAAAF0/hlDk1wl__PU/_MG_7540.jpg

"effort" is how much work, time, skill, patience, photoshop work is needed for creating the shot.

I'd say your images may be in the highest category (at least in the medium category); released model, outdoor location with lighting and a classic car. Requires scheduling, planning and time.

that's your cost estimate?

it's cost and effort. It may not have cost you $$$ if the model is your friend and the car is yours. But it clearly has taken you much more time and effort to create these images than shooting an isolated apple.

It's also very much about perceived cost/effort. "How much money/work would be required if I shot a similar image myself?".

I  only wanted to address cost, because affort... honestly I can't even comprehend that. F.e.: I remember once i wanted to shoot some christmas baubles because other than a few packshots at work, I hardly done any object shots, I wanted a little training for myself. It was very hard, became a total mess with the setup, trying to hang stuff, akward reflections.... It got me totally pissed and I gave up. : )) Compared to that, this was easy. See? If you had that job of setting an initial price upon inspection, you'd be the most hated person on earth : ) If you had a phone line ppl would be screaming at you 24/7 "do you know how * hard it is to set this up??" : ))

Quote from: molka on December 01, 2010, 08:35

how do you estimate cost / effort looking at an image?? artistic quality... there are probably a handful of people in any city who can judge that (or none)

It's easy. It doesn't have to be anything too exact, just for example three categories:
3=expensive/hard (a group of people in a location)
2=medium (decently lit objects, one person in studio etc.)
1=cheap/easy (brick wall in available light)

Artistic quality is a bit more difficult... also the "needed images" factor is a bit difficult.

Artistic quality could be as following:
3=high (a "stopper", an image that looks interesting, images with emotion, creative images)
2=medium (more elaborate object shots, good solid people shots)
1=low (isolated on white objects, basic people shots)

But the main point was that the that's only the starting price, the price will go up or down depending on the demand. Of course the system could work without a special starting price, but it might take an unnecessary long time for the image to hit the "sweet spot" because the system would only allow relatively slow price movements.

My fluctuating price system would be very rewarding for images that are in high demand and punish bad stuff. It would encourage people to submit quality instead of quantity. If you hit a jackpot with your image you could have an image that both sells well and sells at a high price.

okay, estimate the cost of this:   (and effort? - what is that?)
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_fQ_dSgvRe_E/TPPpONUfCOI/AAAAAAAAAF4/HEJvnGM81rY/_MG_7541.jpg
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_fQ_dSgvRe_E/TPPo13gs9kI/AAAAAAAAAF0/hlDk1wl__PU/_MG_7540.jpg

Fotolia does smthng like that, don't they? you can increase your prices if you want after reaching a level. Yuri wrote increasing his prices a lot hardly effected sales. That shows the shots are too cheap. (doh, what a discovery).

My solution for the modern world where print is in decline: One price, one size (some sites are already trying this). Let's say $10 for a image, regardless of size. The big sizes gets cheaper and the small sizes more expensive. The current relation between size and price is just stupid. The sites should really give up the "cheap images from $1" thinking.

They are not trying, SS has been doing that for ages now... but with a very low price of course : ) The buyers love it, and SS makes a lot of money. The contributors... not so. As always.

"Ultimately, it's the perceived value of the image regardless of what it cost to create."

yep, and thats very apparent in micro galleries where you often see pretty hq setups used to create junk, thats what I was talking about. It would be pretty hard to convince higher class creatives -or anyone- that they should pay a lot for a shot with crap lighting, composition and confused looking semi ugly ppl because it's a 24 MP L lens shot with strobes. Costs? The guy spent money on creating junk? He (she) is a pest, who has, and uses resources to create even more visual litter, that's the last thing the world needs. I don't think we need more licencing schemes. Just raise prices, or get rid of RF. but... how do you do any of those??

Quote from: molka on November 30, 2010, 18:52

What you are wishing for is RM. Interesting how microstockers -which is based on RF- dream about RM in the name of fairness, after they underminded that licencing scheme and pricing. What a facepalm. : )

While it may be true that RF undermined RM, RF at trad agencies long predated microstock.

I think tightening up the licensing terms for a standard license (and reducing the print run limits a bit) makes sense, but you can't realistically do RM licensing on a mass-market scale. Extended licenses - as prepackaged RM rights - have worked well with microstock IMO.

"but you can't realistically do RM licensing on a mass-market scale."

getty and the like have millions of RM images. Extended license sucks for two reasons. It doesn't seem to cover some serious ATL print ad usage for example in most cases, if the print run is not large, altho it would be fair to ask a higher price for that stuff, like in RM. Second: almost nobody takes it seriuosly, because almost nobody takes the sites or it's contributors seriuosly, sadly. I garantuee you there many pictures purchased for EL type usage witout EL, because frankly, they dont give a fck, many don't even know about it. Tineye ain't gonna find you billboards in Hungary or south France. Actually tineye won't find you most of the stuff on the net.

SJLOCKE:

So, trying to raise prices to a mid level is bad... Micro pricing is bad...  What's the answer?

I think the answer is fair pricing for better images (Vetta), fair commission for the contributors AND a better licensing model.
A national magazine (Time) should not be able to get away with running a cover image and only paying a few pennies + extended license. Neither should a national or multi- national be able to put a model's image on a multi- million dollar product (Shampoo for instance) and only have to pay a few dollars + extended license. That is just highway robbery.

A cheap image for a blog is fine. A cheap image for a website that will be changed out in a few weeks, also fine.
We need to have a better license set up for the use of our imagery.

What you are wishing for is RM. Interesting how microstockers -which is based on RF- dream about RM in the name of fairness, after they underminded that licencing scheme and pricing. What a facepalm. : ) I was amused to see that Istock, as * dumb as they always are, even have this designer spotlight thing, where ppl can see their images used in maybe even multi million dollar campaigns, and ponder upon how they got 5 bucks for 'getting involved' : ) Epic fail.