September is nearly upon us which means gracefully brace yourself for the next latest and greatest brain fart that iStock will be bestowing upon us to lower our already terrible DPD average down to a whole nother level of the new new.

Any predictions for this forthcoming manmade disaster?

Over the last 12 months, ever since they started the subs thing in May of 2014, I have watched my average dollar per download drop to about 20% of what it was 18 months ago as subs sales have increasingly cannibalized my credit and cash sales into being next to nothing. And since 2011, I have watched my total monthly income drop to about 15% of what it was at its peak.

Of course my total monthly downloads have gone up a bit again in the last year, but this just means that people are getting use of my images for a much lower cost. Does this make me happy? No, of course not. It devalues my work and means people are paying me less for my creative efforts now. As an artist that never feels good. But that's not really the most important issue here.

On a business level I can no longer afford to create quality imagery for stock photo purposes. The return per image just isn't there anymore based on the investment cost (money and time) of creating new content.

For the old imagery I put online 2-3 years ago, it has already paid for itself, so if I am now getting less per image but more downloads from it then it is still not OK, but I'm not actually losing money on those images, just making a lot less from them.

But if I am to create new imagery, and will get much less per image for the new stuff, and have my sales spread over a greater number of my images to make those sales, then the cost of creating new imagery just can't pay for itself anymore on a per image or even a per shoot basis.

So what do I do? I may snap something on the street, or here or there and upload it to iStock when I have a bit of extra time. Or I may not upload anything at all. But when I do,  the images I am uploading are stuff that requires almost no effort to shoot, thing's that cost me nothing to create, and things that I am not going to spend any time post processing or compositing like I did before. I also may upload some leftovers I have from a commercial shoot, basically the stuff nobody really needs or wants that wouldn't be used for anything else.

The result of this is iStock, and many of the other stock sites that have also raced to the bottom (to offer photo buyers who were still willing to pay a lot more for quality pictures until this race to offer the lowest prices started) are now being flooded with mainly shooter's garbage snaps again.

We have now gone full circle by going back to the days when photographers used to just give their leftover images to photo banks to try and sell for them while the togs mainly just concentrated on commercial assignments. So we are back to square one where nobody is really shooting quality stuff for stock anymore, nor have we really progressed in the last 10 years in terms of a more sustainable stock photo business model.

The one good thing is I can put up any leftover stuff I do have now without having to worry about painstaking inspection standards now that iStock opened the flood gates. So I am welcome to dump my garbage into my online portfolio as much as I want in the off-chance some subs buyer is willing to download it for a few dimes and quarters. Truth is I'm hardly doing myself a favor with that approach though (because the income from it is so nominal), nor am I really helping buyers either with my junky file uploads, but that's all that's left to do. So I'm just offering buyers low quality photos for low prices when what most of them really want is high quality stuff and would still be willing to pay more for it.

But are the buyers really unhappy knowing that there isn't much new high quality stock being created now? Probably they can't really tell the difference just yet because there is still so much good quality older stuff online that they can choose from at these lower prices. So they are having a field day for now and are the true winners in all of this. Neither the artists or the photo resellers are benefiting at all from this when they should be in some way. And for the photo buyers themselves, this just means more money left over to keep in their pockets with prices now being about 20% or less of what they were before. Nice one iStock!

Though when trends and styles start changing, as they do quite often, graphic artists and photo buyer's will start finding themselves having difficulty finding current, high quality, and relevant stock content they need in the future. Just like it was back in the day where much of the time you couldn't find relevant stock photos in photo banks and had to hire a professional to shoot what you really needed.

Also, it will reach a point where the quality stuff that is online for these cheap prices will have been seen and used so much already by the marketplace that image buyers may not want to keep using the same old stuff that everyone else has used already over and over again, regardless of its quality.

Maybe at that point some agency will emerge from the rubble charging prices again that makes it worthwhile for photographers to invest time and money to create quality content for stock once more and then buyers will return to paying the prices they were willing to pay before iStock went head to head with Shutterstock to try and win this game of who can sell the most downloads at any cost.

The irony in all this is that Getty will probably bankrupt themselves by racing to the bottom which will just prove to everyone that it was probably one of the worst business decisions ever made by a competing stock agency to try and copy Shuterstock's business model and cheapen the value of everyone's work even further to the point of capitulation.

OK, so we have a range now of 5 to 30 seconds. At least we've established a range rather than saying there is no ideal range. I think obviously for most commercial stock subjects a 5-10 minute clip for example would be far too long. So there is a range and there is a number and frankly if that number is from 5 up to 30 seconds then it is still a pretty narrow and finite range. So I'm satisfied with that knowing that clips can be as short as need be, depending on the subject, but probably less than 5 seconds is too short and anything above 30 seconds tends to be dragging on too much. Question answered.

What the average time length and/or most sellable time length period for stock video clips?

Is the sweet spot around 15 seconds?

Quote from: Semmick Photo on April 26, 2015, 03:41

Maybe it's a loss  for some that the forum will be gone but let's put in a prayer that they will get rid of that ubermuppet Lobo in the process.

I personally have never understood why they keep him. Even when he is attempting to be helpful he is still a snark. As far as I am concerned he does more damage than good.

I totally agree. I never understood his attitude and the whole unappealing "hammer-time" de moniker he exudes. Who needs it really? It's not cute or funny at all to me.

If iStock is going to have someone act as the face of iStock to interact with its thousands of contributors then you would think they would choose someone with the right interpersonal skills to be a positive representation of the company.

Well, I guess I need not wonder why iStock has hired the wrong guy for the job. Every corporate decision they have made since early 2012 has done nothing but damage the individual contributor on one level or another. So he just falls into a long line of bad corporate decision making. But hey, at least their consistent in their bad decisions because consistency seems to at least count for something.

I am glad I am not him though. It would bother me to know I am generally disliked by over 30,000 people. But I guess it pays the bills so...

I think everyone is reading the Getty message wrongly. The point is they don't want community anymore. Never did in fact. Those were left over warm fuzzy Brucie remnants. They were never Getty's thang. They were just slow to start tearing down the walls.

They have been dismantling it bit by bit, piece by piece for the last few years though. Haven't we all noticed?

No more about/blog pages on profiles, no more light box linking, no more iStock contributor friend following, no more descriptions, etc.

I think it's clear what they want. No visible human element to the buyer experience. No more old rants that buyers can pick through in forums posts dating back through 15 years. They want to shove all their sorry, dirty laundry under the bed and out of sight now for good.

What they want to be selling simply is the notion that a picture is worth a thousand words and that's it. See it, you like it, buy it, goodbye, but come back when you want another picture please.

Forums? Of course they don't want those or to preserve 15 years of contributor chatter history. Meaningless to someone who wants to buy a photo, no? And I'm not saying it's good or bad, but that's just how it is and will be.

Frankly, I can live without all of it though and I do. I never post anything on the iStock forums and hardly read them. It's as censored and full of fake high fives as reading a North Korean propaganda newspaper anyway.

So just show me the money Getty. That's all I want. But you can't even do that anymore.

Alas, let's not forget this one hit wonder: http://www.istockphoto.com/profile/rrockafellar?id=592029

Just when you thought it was safe to stop throwing up in your mouth, KelvinJ posts this about an hour ago:

I only joined in 2005, but it's hard to explain just what a profound and positive influence this place has been on my life and work over the last 10 years. The people I've met and the places I've been have been amazing. I can't wait to see what the future holds for all of us. Happy 15th Birthday iStock!

Wasn't there another guy (not Brad Ralph) who sent out some sort of rah-rah corporate communication to contributors a while back (within the last year), who also had claimed to be another mysterious co-founder, and then we never heard from him again?

Derek Snyder of Getty Images Speaking About iStock Photo On 22 April 2015 - For The iStock Photo 15 Year Anniversary - A video published on the Getty Images Contributor Community site on 22 April 2015 titled "Looking Ahead: An Update For Our Exclusive Contributors". Presented by Derek Snyder Sr. Director, Product and Ecommerce. Produced by Jacleen Boland Sr. Manager, Corporate Communications at Getty Images.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R12s2Acv_IQ