Until you are willing to leave microstock altogether, you will be forced to deal with lower and lower commissions.  Sorry, but microstock has no future for any but the highest end contributors who are (at this point) sheltered from the commission drops.  In a few years, only the fools will remain, slaving for a 10-20% commission because "a few dollars earned is better than none."

I'm going 100% with my own website and Alamy, and any other more traditional model with a reasonable commission percentage.  I have 6 more months of lock-in at DT.  Otherwise I am done with microstock.

A good start would be to get rid of the 'a few pennies is better than nothing' mentality.
I just finished my own website (still need to think of a business name, urgh) but i'll do my small part by setting up a section talking about 'fair trade' and 'to avoid' agencies. Maybe if more bloggers would do it google would pick up some of it. It definitely wont make much difference, but every customer away from the worst agencies is a minor victory in my book.
Edit: or someone far more eloquent could put such post on their blog and we could promote it on the social networks, though issue is the mixed interests. I can imagine istock exclusives (rightfully from their perspective) not being too happy with such initiative...

For me the fact is:

IS reduced my earnings by -20% and FT by -18% in this month...
I have to react somehow...

Also, in my case!

FT holds 77%  and IS 84% of image price just for agency job!!! Excellent!

There is nothing that can be done in the short term - like helix7 said, this is the reality.  

In the long term we can stop contributing to sites that don't pay realistic commissions.  That means we cut off the big sites and forgo that income, while waiting for a better business model to emerge.  It won't happen overnight, but slowly, buyers should become aware of new sites, stop reflexively going to IS for everything, and see new content on the new sites, and start seeing the current big sites as stale and dated.

Like I said - long term.

I did put my (very small) portfolio on GraphicLeftovers and it was a real breath of fresh air - at first.  Uploading was easy, they liked my stuff, and even put a lot of it in their "GL Collection"  I made some sales and got a payout early on, but they stopped in November and I haven't had one since.  

At this point - speaking only for myself - I've concluded microstock isn't worth doing.  I think if I started making sales at GL again I'd feel differently, but until then, I've put the whole thing on ice because I'm not seeing any future in it.  

[update]
Trying to come up with a positive suggestion - the only thing I can think of would be for all of us to start contributing to, and promoting, agencies that pay fair commissions, and really talk up those agencies in forums and blogs.  I don't know if any buyers ever read forums like this one, but maybe their are other ways we could get their attention and start making them aware that there's a new market getting started, outside of IS and SS.  

 

   The reality is that it is very expensive to drive sales online to any website. The established big microstock sites are grandfathered in from the time 3 or 4 years ago when their was little competition for keywords such as " stock photo". Now the prices are extremely high- $4.50 per click last time i looked. That's just to get someone to the website, not make a sale. Likewise, SEO is very difficult to master, and is still subordinated by paid search results. It's easy and cheap to set up a website, but  getting buyers to go, and buy, is not so easy. The only one who is making out like a bandit in all this is google. I'm sure they could create a search engine that could find RF images for sale at individual websites by keywords, but I doubt that they will do it, simply because the advertising war between these sites is a gold mine for them. Look at all the ads for Thinkstock- every time they get a paid click, it's $4.50 in the till. And they don't have to pay contributors!
  And for those who think macrostock is the answer, just this morning I got my statement from a very big ( real big) stock agency, where I noticed that one of my royalties was for 10 cents. 10 cents! Many of the royalties were for less than a dollar. This is the culmination of a long slow slide from well over a six figure income from macrostock for many years.
   Having said all that, the internet has a way of filling the holes in broken business models in a very surprising and creative way. I would not be surprised at all to find that someone has come up with a way to make an end run around all of these agencies and connect directly to the photographer in a way that preserves some of the agencies' functions without the bloated management layer. I can remember when the internet was AOL. Everyone thought that AOL would rule the online world forever. Ask Time-Warner how that worked out. Ask Rupert Murdoch how that purchase of Myspace is going. Istock could be the AOL of the stock world, or it may not even rise to that level, but it won't be around forever.

1. get 1000 photographers to threaten to delete account on fotolia


2. start a new way of image distribution.  cut off the middle man. maybe some kind of new image search engine where contributors can submit their own sites to.


 

buy IS and turn it into cooperative of artists. If you don�t contribute you cannot be shareholder.
You can contribute and as soon as you passed certain level of sales you can become a member. Pay $50,000 entrance fee and have share in profits
I know some Doctors cooperatives built in this way.

buy IS and turn it into cooperative of artists. If you don�t contribute you cannot be shareholder.
You can contribute and as soon as you passed certain level of sales you can become a member. Pay $50,000 entrance fee and have share in profits
I know some Doctors cooperatives built in this way.

At $2.4 billion ( the buyout price paid for Getty to go private), you would only need 48,000 contributors to pony up $50,000 each to buy it back. Better get started right away.

Quote from: xst on January 20, 2011, 20:48

buy IS and turn it into cooperative of artists. If you don�t contribute you cannot be shareholder.
You can contribute and as soon as you passed certain level of sales you can become a member. Pay $50,000 entrance fee and have share in profits
I know some Doctors cooperatives built in this way.

At $2.4 billion ( the buyout price paid for Getty to go private), you would only need 48,000 contributors to pony up $50,000 each to buy it back. Better get started right away.

you can open new site,
if you know how to market it

Alamy has 60% for their contributors...

Alamy is not Micro! I may like them and have most of my pictures and sales there, but they aren't the same as micro.

Don't sell out and submit to the new agencies with promises or that pay for uploads. They are never going to be anything but false hope and a waste of time. Too many people bought into the last one and only a few will admit, it didn't work and they have low or no sales there.

Honestly drop the agencies that screw us. I did and others have too. Yeah, I'm a quitter, I admit it.

I'm sorry if someone is an IS exclusive and can't quit. It's kind of like and abused wife who won't leave or keeps coming back. OK - some agencies keep changing the rules and cutting commissions, and people keep uploading and staying with them, because they are emotionally and financially dependent. They have invested years of work into making it on some agencies, and what they get back in return is abusive treatment, cuts in pay, and at some insulting rejections.

Anyone remember? "I'm Mad as Hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

Its like asking for a "friendly" bank manager, square thinking of profit and loss. Forget it.

All Micro agencies rely on turnover of contributors, if they loose one today they will gain ten new ones tomorrow and hopefully one will be able to supply some good material. They DONT really want established photographers simply because they cant be messed around too much but the little new guy can be bullied into oblivion and is prepared to swallow any old garbage.
As I have said before, we dont have to do anything, the Micro industry will kill off itself, not now but maybe in a few years time it will all be history, you can only squeeze an orange so much.

 Unless you rely on microstock for your wages (in which case you need to diversify),

I'm diversifying. Maybe if this forces me into gallery sales it will turn out to be a good thing. Depending on whether I sell or not, of course.