This looks ok from what Sean posted.  We get paid for the 5 free images at $1/credit correct?  It doesn't seem at all like the google deal.

This is only when the customers wants to access more images then the 25 000 available for free.

For the 25k the artists should probably get an extended license fee for electronic template or something. But how high should a license be that offers free distribution to millions of customers?

Is it another 6 Dollar deal?

Well there is one piece of good news in this: the deal is with istock and not with Thinkstock...

The 1&1 advertising says that 25 000 images can be used free of charge and another 5 Million can be accessed for very low prices.

Maybe someone with a 1&1 contract can tell us more. My contract is with domainfactory, the competition.

Have the artists been paid for the "free" images? Is exifdata available in the downloads? How much do the other 5 Million images cost?

1&1 is very popular with probably millions of customers, many of them commercial users.

In fact the package they are promoting is directed at small to medium businesses.

I see stocksy as a wake up call and encouragement to the community to focus more on self marketing, wether you do it alone or in a group. Doesn't Photoshelter allow virtual agencies, where people can pool their files together?

Of course all of these things take time to grow, but in the end this might be the only sustainable solution.

Yuri had the opportunity to start his own stocksy and with a sensible price model he could have attracted tons of high quality content from artists across the globe.

And with his brand name he could have also lobbied the big walled gardens - the Apple Store, Android, Microsoft, Amazon to open them up for regular artists, not just musicians and app writers. It is easy for them to expand their stores, the customers are already there and with 70% they could pick and choose from the best content available.

It would take him 2-3 years to build, but he would have made a lot more money and could have even gone public.

Which is probably why Getty paid him a handsome amount of money NOT to do it.

Obviously, his choice and depending on how much money was involved, who can blame him?

But the reason he is getting so much flak is because he decided to join Getty, a company that is simply not seen as a visionary and reliable partner for many after the google drive disaster etc...and for the exclusives the news and changes this year have all been bad.

If he had made the agreement with Alamy, Masterfile or Corbis - would he get the same amount of resentment? Probably not.

I don't really understand his investment in scoopshot or how it will make him a bigger return on his investment than if he had put all his energy into peopleimages.

The disruption of microstock came from the combination of internet + cheap DSLR, i.e. the entrance barrier in equipment cost became low and the customers can be reached worldwide directly with a few mouseklicks. And the photographers didn't have to go round begging the old boys network to be accepted in their supersecret societies. Microstock provided an open, transparent plattform for talent to grow, rise and shine.

Before, the agencies controlled the access to the customers.

it is very difficult for a single artist to reach customers worldwide if marketing and distribution relies on catalogues, print ads and slides that are physically sent.

With scooptshot maybe there is a niche market for company product placement. I saw a newspaper asking for images of holiday images with people reading their paper from across the globe. But these assignemnts can be fulfilled with any camera. And any agency can offer an additional area for assignment work...

Anyway, I am sure he has thought about it, but I simply don't see the market that he sees.

Am I worried of an army of mobile phone shooters taking away my downloads? No, I am not. The camera is just a tool. With a pen you can write your grocery list or the next Harry Potter, but the pen is not the one creating the content.

Will I use a mobile phone to shoot stock? Sure. Why not.  But I won't sell more unless the image is good.

IMO, the companies that have the best potential for growth are the ones with strong online community skills. The ones, where the management gets personally involved, gets in here, throws out ideas to the community and carefully evaluates siggestions and criticism. There is a lot of business talent and entrepreneurship in the international community. The ones who can harvest the best of the commercial skills in the community, will be the ones that move forward successfully. I think if we look at how the agencies have been developping in the last 3 years, it is easy to see who knows how to do that and who doesn't.

So only ultra generic stuff will be supplied and all the agencies will look exactly the same...

Unfortunately I cannot place the trust in Getty that Yuri has done, even though they are my agent. Their actions towards their exclusive photographers have never been positive since they bought iStock, from the Vetta royalty rate cut, the RC system that's designed to limit the number of artists receiving semi-reasonable royalties, destruction of the referral system, flooding the library with wholly owned content and making new uploads worthless by skewing best match.

I guess Yuri may have negotiated a deal that overcomes some of these obstacles to success there, so good luck to him.

The real problem in this industry is low royalty percentages, they should be up at the 70-80% mark as they are in the Apple App Store to make a sustainable, healthy business and profits for everyone, agencies and copyright owners alike.

I am puzzled as well. The way he speaks of getty/istock is like he is talking about a completly different company than the one we experienced first hand. He reminds me how excited Bruce was in 2006 when he made the deal with Getty. He came on the forums reassuring us that Getty "get�s it" and really understands his vision for istockphoto. Yet the only vision they understood was how to kill the place off as quickly as possible as soon as Bruce was gone.

Maybe Getty is a rite of passage for him. A step in the industry he has to pass through, before he moves back out and grows peopleimages.com to it�s full potential.

If he really could drag Getty into the 21 century and make them the professional company he suggests they are, this would be good for everyone as well. But I sincerely doubt it will happen. The companies DNA is not based on the internet, technology or online transparent community leadership skills. And this is what it takes these days...

If the Apple store would open it�s doors to artists and allow us to sell at 70%, this would be the best thing that has ever happened to the industry. It would bring immediate balance in favor of the artist. If anyone understands what it feels like to have their ideas stolen and see others profit from their hard creative work it is Apple.

Doesn�t anyone here have the telephone number of Tim Cook?

How many spelling mistakes do I have Ron?

Sorry, with your observing avatar it just looked like you are checking my post.

I have a simple question for Yuri:

Do you believe that photographers should go artist exclusive with istock/Getty?

Do you have the impression the company has a successful future and growth ahead of it?

Thanks!

Competition has it's antennas out there. Pretty much all microsites that have launched since 2005 have been a duplicate of each other. PeopleImages.com is not.
[/quote]

Which is why I am confused you are working with Getty too. Would they really allow you to grow people images.com and become a competitor?

I mean, I am sure you have a plan, not expecting you to share it. I just am surprised you have so much faith in them if their track record of the last few years is not very encouraging. You must have seen that as well.

On the German fotolia home page they now have this text:

http://de.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors/ImagesPricing

Bitte beachten Sie, dass bei Werken, die sich innerhalb von 6 Monaten nicht verkauft haben, der Verkaufspreis automatisch auf 1 Credit (XS), 2 Credits (S), 3 Credits (M), 4 Credits (L), 5 Credits (XL) sowie 6 Credits (XXL) gesetzt wird. Wenn sich ein solches Werk anschlie�end 3 Mal verkauft hat, wird die Preis automatisch auf den minmalen Verkaufspreis gesetzt.

Diese Staffelung ist Gegenstand der Regelung zur Anpassung der Preisgestaltung.

i.e. prices drop von 1-6 credits if there are no sales after 6 months. When the file sells 3 times, it gets moved to the lowest price level.

Now do the 3 sales have to be in a certain time frame?

sorry.

It has people posting examples of files that sold for 3 credits yesterday and higher credits today.

But apparently also files that are bestsellers with over 500 downloads, that didn�t have a sale in the last 6 month, have been lowered in price.

No official communication from fotolia, the moderators don�t know more than the contributors (where did I hear that before...)

It�s in the thread of the German fotolia forum:

http://de.fotolia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=43451&p=6

Lots of confused people there and apparently not everyone gets the newsletter.

Well there are all these smaller agents that take exclusive content, prefilter it and then send it off to the macro agencies. istock used to do it direct with the exclusive content.

SS could easily open up a portal for more specialized content and let contributors submit exclusive series. Instead of sourcing from external agents, they could have their own "blend collection".

Exclusive images is a useful idea. It doesn�t tie the artist down the way artist exclusivity does and the artist is free to work with different companies, especially if they have different styles.

Fotolia could probably do a lot more with their exclusive content, or just invest in a better search experience to help the customers find more unusal images. There are many things they can do bevor they just drop the price.

But of course, you don�t know what is really going. Maybe in the last 10 days fotolia has already lost a lot of customers to istock and their half price campaign. Or just enough to make them panic and so they come up with these extreme systems.

I believe there is a good market there for edited midstock and high end content. I would have thought that to give the customer the best possible search experience and choices from well edited lightboxes and collections is more important than the lowest price.

But maybe the agency owners read this and think we are incredibly naive and price trumps everything, I don�t know.