I commend those who will stop uploading to iStock because they are making good business sense and enhancing their offerings.  Eventually you will have only 3 sites to submit to.  But at the same time, these are the same people that were compelled to upload to winners such as Albumo, Crestock, CanStockPhoto and other 'big winners'.

Its called consolidation, it sometimes happens when companies can be bought at good prices to reduce competition.  It also happens for many other reasons.  And there will be more of it. 

Best of luck.  I'm not sure what your strategy is, but I'm sure you will make the appropriate adaptions to make it work for you.

The other consideration is if this image is bringing buyers to your portfolio across the agencies, is it part of a 'download set' or a lightbox and is often downloaded with another image or couple of images from your own portfolio.

David

good point, didn't think of that

Quote from: ichiro17 on July 09, 2009, 13:21

Well I've tripled my IS income after exclusivity, which makes up for anything I might have lost so far as non-exclusive.  I have no issues with that, which is why the question isn't so easy and why its not so clear cut.

That sounds great and all, but everyone has to examine their own stats - and obviously we all have completely different content.  If I tripled my avg istock monthly earnings, I'd still only be making around 1/4 of my total income from stock.  Heck - it's a pain in the butt to submit to a lot of sites.  If iStock was 50% of my income, and I could triple it by going exclusive, then some might want to consider it.  BUT, the thing is, I'm not too keen as to put all of my eggs in the same basket as others have already mentioned.

I get that.  I said that earlier.  But gostwyck can't read well.  I explained it worked for me.  For you, you also only have a few photos on iStock from what I remember seeing.  So given that you don't have many accepted or you don't submti a lot, then its not good for you.  However, you aren't an abrasive idiot about it, you said your piece and you justify your decision.  I never tried to force exclusivity on anyone, I just said it works for me and tried to back it up with numbers.  Unfortunately, the math skills of some members isn't up to par

Gostwyck, you are a moron (so this post is for you):

Lets do simple math (since you can't) and you can't read either.  

Lets say I used to make $1 a month with all my sites.  If I averaged 35% (low end) of that as IS income before exclusive, I would make 35 cents from iStock

Since going exclusive, my income has tripled (as I have stated already but since you can't read you wouldn't get that).  Therefore, I make .35 x 3 (3 is the number you would use if you triple something).  I'll give you a few minutes to use a calculator to catch up.


....wait for it



....wait for it...


Anyways, I don't know if you've caught up with technology and learned how to use that calculator, but .35 x 3 is $1.05, which, if you were wondering, is greater than $1.  Therefore, dumbass, I haven't lost anything or if I have, not much at all accounting for any ebb/flows.

Now, since your country's school system wasn't that good to you, I hope you can find the mental capacity to leave my posts alone so that I can share my experiences with others on this forum in a calm manner.  I hope you can find someone else to harass on another forum that encourages bad math, poor reading skills and unsubstantiated arrogance.  I don't know why you have something against people at iStock (me, or Stacey Newman or whoever) (by the way, since you are so awesome, why don't you post a portfolio link?) can you please go away.  I'm sick of you, and I'm sure a lot of other people are, although they are much more polite and they don't say it.

about average as an exclusive, can't complain, especially with 2 major summer holidays (1 in Canada and 1 in the US)

Definitely a big risk.  Is it worth it? Not for me to decide that for you

Just a quick math problem for you guys

If I was to drop exclusivity, I would only upload to: 

Bigstock because I like the mgmt and they were regular in sales (not sure about upload limits)
FT because they are of the big 4 and you can't not, even though they will reject everything because they feel like it (no limits, just reject everything quickly)
DT (has a limit, but say 1000 photos at 50 pics per day, 20 days of uploading)
SS (Can be beneficial to do it slowly)

Here's the big question - is the time you save with iStock over time as an exclusive equal to the time you will spend in the future uploading to these sites?  All hypothetical though

Quote from: ichiro17 on July 09, 2009, 08:20

To counter your points: 
If the situation is that bad or getting bad, going back to independent won't be so difficult. 

Uploading files to all the other sites could be considered a big task.

You guys are all over the board in terms of opinions

From some not caring about uploading everywhere (I've done it, and I love not having to do it) to guys who hate iStock's upload process so much that they'd rather upload everywhere instead.

I would never be exclusive. Years ago I was exclusive with IS, but then I thought that I could make more by submitting also to other sites, and I was right. I believe that it's not a good thing to have "all eggs in one basket". Businesses grow and businesses die, and it may happen quite fast. What would IS exclusives think if IS sales dropped by 50% (that is a very possible scenario).

Submitting to many sites makes my monthly earnings much more stable.

Not necessarily more stable, but it spreads the risk.  With that I agree.  I have had no issues with stability with my iStock portfolio, but maybe thats just my portfolio and it doesn't apply to others.  The biggest logical hole I can poke into your argument is that if iStock dies, your exclusivity agreement is useless and you can run away if you want.  You can then submit to all the sites (not that I would want to submit to more than 5 or 6 because its a gigantic waste in my opinion) and you may or may not be any further behind, depending on the situation. 

The all the eggs in one basket cliche is becoming the most annoying phrase in this business.  There are many people with these proverbial eggs in iStock's basket and many of them are doing great.  You have the few disgruntled exclusive submitters who just comlpain the majority of the time, but they are going to be everywhere.

My advice is:  Do your research, educate yourselves and then make a well-informed decision on estimates you can derive from first- and secondhand- opinions.  There is no other way to do it.  If you listen to everyone else, you will just get more confused.

Oh yes, I hadn't noticed that.  What I meant was no non-exclusives at all.  However, I realize thats unrealistic and possibly a very bad business model.  But that checkbox works for me.

What I think all the new site operators need are Deloreans, that way they can go back 10 years and start up in this industry when it made more sense

I have Extreme III, Ultra IIs and some Kingstons.  Kingstons are painfully slow to write and read, while I have zero complaints about the Sandisk cards.  I wouldn't go to any other maker than Sandisk after trying the Extremes.

Edited because I don't feel like publicly saying things to gostwyck.  I'm sick of his attitude, but I guess you attract those types of "people" when you have a popular forum.  Its just one of the things you need to live with (unfortunately)