I think Yuri has earned his fame and his clients. He is a hard worker.  And in any interview it is very easy to sound like a pompous deity which may or may not be the intention.

I have seen the evolution of his work over the years and he has upped the level considerably.  I used to find severe flaws in the isolation and other aspects of the images but now its just consistent quality. Thant shows drive and passion not a resting on his laurels approach.  Overhead aside I find him as a role model of this business, same as sjlocke and lise.

You can call Yuri many things but not lazy or untalented.

Something he touched on is the commissions which as we know are pretty terrible on Microstock and probably will continue downward.  What I would like to see is a sense of respect for us artists and our work but accepting low commissions is not helping the cause.

For Yuri Peopleimages.com is probably an escape pod for when the business becomes completely unsustainable for the individual.  Being an agency or selling direct will be the only way to survive in the future without a gargantuan effort of producing images like a factory.

Interesting interview and opinions.

Anyone could create a big company, but I still wonder why anyone would want to. I'd much rather have Sean's business than Yuri's. Low overhead, small operation, high profitability.

I don't agree that anyone could create a big company. Most would fail before the first hurdle.
And if it hadn't been for some entrepreneurial people creating companies, Sean wouldn't have his current business and this forum wouldn't exist.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, "We can't all be heroes. Some people have to stand at the side at the road and cheer."
Or carp, ATCMB.

Questioning business decisions is not always born of envy as a motive.  If istock had yuri as an exclusive it would have been better for istock, yuri and  exclusives.  The other sites may not have made it.  It would solitified istocks positioning.  Yuri agency and vetta sales would have been amazing.  He could had mad on average 10 times what he makes now per sale.  Believe that!!  Look at the top selling vetta photo and do the math.  Yuri would have sold 100's of those amounts.  He also could have slowed down on the need to upload and streched it out over years lowering his overhead to sean's 5% model.  It was a short term plan by the owners of istock to maximize the company bottom lines to get the most money in a sale.  It has muddied the microstock waters even for istock.

It is curious that not liking or rooting for getty or h&f is not envious even though they both have  a guy like yuri at the helm making decisions like yuri is making which is the best for yuri and not you.  Yuri taking money from you good, Getty taking money from you bad!  When does yuri become an evil getty.  When you decide he is too big and successful!  Steve Jobs cut his college roommate out of stock options.  A guy who helped him from the begging.  Is he good or bad.  Odd on this forum who is applauded and disliked. 

 

It depends on how you quantify "way higher" and "in sight".

With 100 staff he probably also pays 3.000.000 $$ per year on salaries.

Quote from: anc on July 16, 2012, 17:52

Quote from: luissantos84 on July 16, 2012, 17:43

10 years? you are so weak with numbers, at least prepare what you are going to say

80K images

10 years = 3560 days

80K divided by 3560 = 22.47

Dude check your own numbers before you attack someone else

Theres 365 days in a year not 356!

And you forgot the leap years (and leap seconds aswell)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second

From what I see, Yuri's goal is not just producing stock photos, he wants to build the next iStock. That is why he invests so much into the growth of his business instead of taking the returns. For someone like him, to be exclusive with any agency only limits his sky.

he's doing something NEW, nobody pushed micro RF production so far in such an industrial and massive scale.

however it turns out in the worst scenario he will live as a millionaire and sub-licence his whole collection to Getty & others or sell the whole
company for 10-20 millions cash or in getty stocks (as soon as they go back to Nasdaq).

that's what i keep saying since the very beginning ... quantity in the end is the real factor, not just quality alone.

he's doing both, and nobody else can keep up with him at the moment.

launching his own agency is the first milestone, next step will be maybe to launch its own generic micro agency and compete directly with the big 4 but he will need millions for that, not just to run the company i mean but for the advertising, sales, and marketing.

if he succeeds in his mission, well the sky could be really the only limit.
otherwise, he did an amazing job anyway, and unlike many others who are just whining he tried to do something new and pushed the boundaries.

30 months to break even.  a bit longer than I'd would have thought would be a target for a full time microstock machine.

I should say so. 30 months is a ridiculously long payback for an 'investment' as unpredictable as a stock shoot. What's worse is that that timescale has probably been steadily lengthening too. Yuri appears to be spending more and more on ever-more-perfect shoots, in ever-more-exotic locations to be added to an ever-more-crowded market. Sooner or later he may have to reassess and scale back expenditure. Of course, in common with most of us, many of his best-selling and highest earning images are amongst the simplest and probably the cheapest he has shot.

It seems to me that it is now more of a game than a business to Yuri. Having a bigger presence, astronomic sales and 'legend' status is presumeably more important to him than quietly optimising profit. I guess the game is relatively risk free though in that his cash flow will be excellent and he can stop spending at any time, confident in the knowledge that his future is already secure.

Ironically the harder he works and the more images he produces per week/month/year the faster the day will come when it will be no longer worth doing so. Of course that applies to all of us to some degree so I guess Peopleimages.com is about the best insurance policy he could have in that regard.

In contrast I remember Ron Chapple (Iofoto) dipping his toe into microstock a few years ago. Having sunk a huge chunk of money producing 15K images for microstock, with apparent considerable success judging by his sales, he came to the conclusion that the returns were not worth his effort. The business wasn't sufficiently scalable and the barriers to entry were so low (i.e. anyone with a camera) that microstock was never going to be either profitable enough or secure enough to warrant his investment. He ended up specialising in helicopter aerial video work instead.

I was wondering why nobody has brought up iofoto yet.   It would seem like something that is applicable to the situation at hand.

Well, yes it is ... and no it isn't ... I suppose! I'm not sure you can adequately compare and contrast the two. Ron's a hard-headed businessman, continually crunching the numbers and opting for the best investment of his time and money, which is fair enough. Yuri, on the other hand, is like  some sort of 'extreme hobbyist'. His main interest appears to be pushing the boundaries of what he does, always getting better, with only enough concern for the financial side to ensure that it is sustainable for the immediate future. Those are surely the qualities of a true artist. Warhol had factories with workers producing tons of 'his' work and fully enjoyed the money and the show-biz lifestyle that came with it __ but nobody questions his abilities or influence as a true artist.

She means he got three fan threads posted here today, with no effort of his own.

Nice picture in the private jet with the hot swimsuit model and the large camera, lol.

If you can get us a swimsuit model and a private jet, I will be happy to interview you and take pictures. Where should we go?   

I was wondering why nobody has brought up iofoto yet.   It would seem like something that is applicable to the situation at hand.

IOfoto were big spenders and then complained they couldn't sustain the production costs, they also went overboard with expensive aerial shoots.