I think Stacey has already answered your question with her observation that "there are too many small guys out there and the ROI just isn't there." You can't leave exclusive work at an agency if it is not generating adequate income.

Doesn't sound that way. Look at the right side a large list of agencies but only a few are worth the effort. I would say Stocksy is one of the few that is worth the effort.

I've dropped exclusivity too, and have two weeks to go on the ticker.  I'm hoping it'll at least help me get some motivation back.  The RC system was just a huge wet blanket on my ambition.  I've been partially non-exclusive (raster illustrations only) for a couple of years, so I'm not making a huge, sudden transition.

I hope you will keep us updated as to your experience. I think there would be quite a few people interested.

I strongly believe that contributors and agencies must work as a team.

I couldn't agree more...too bad certain agencies seem to have forgotten that.

Is iS the only agency where you can create a linked lightbox for customer's to look at?

You can create collections on Dreamstime which are equivalent to Istock's lightboxes, although I haven't done it personally. 

Lisa and Dirk,

But in the cases of Dreamstime and Shutterstock. Can you place links to these lightboxes as part of an image caption?

Lisa and Dirk,

But in the cases of Dreamstime and Shutterstock. Can you place links to these lightboxes as part of an image caption?

It's sometimes strange to notice things like that when you come from iStock. In a way, it's funny: iStock was never really capable to come up with a good solution to present "similar images", so they gave us photographers the tool to do it in our own ways. While it is a lot of freedom, unfortunately it also leads to outdated links and banners eventually.

Other agencies are much better in automatically linking to similar images. Most of the times your own, some times also to similar works by other artists. So in this context what is considered "normal" for cross promoting images at iStock is obsolete at other agencies because they have tools in place to do that.

Quote from: SNP on April 16, 2014, 15:04

I liked MichaelJay's comment about keeping his work with a hand-picked number of more reputable agencies (my words, not his, but paraphrasing). I have taken the same approach. there are too many small guys out there and the ROI just isn't there.

Ummm... I guess "there is no bad PR as long as they spell your name right". But I am just wondering where I might have said something like that. Not saying I didn't as I talk a lot.

Factually I started out with the big names ("reputable" is a different story) when I went non-exclusive. It's just quite bothersome to prepare your old images with new keywords, find the model releases, get used to the editing at other places etc. If someone asks me today for advice when quitting iStock exclusivity, I tell them to limit themselves to the top 4 listed on the right for the start. All others are "additional" at a later stage. Once you have your new workflows, you can easily add some of them.

But part of my advice usually also is to find places with higher prices for a subset of your images. If it's Stocksy, Offset, Getty, Alamy or some local agency. Putting everything from iStock across all microstock agencies is probably not paying off. There are just too many images that do well on iStock at higher price points and you won't make nearly enough money from Shutterstock & Co to replace the royalties earned with a good selling Vetta or S+ image.

Michael - my apologies. It is actually a quote from Sean's blog. I read his and yours back to back from Sean's earlier post. Following is the section I am in agreement with, and seems it is Sean's, and not your statement. Sorry to have attributed the quote to you.

"Since iStockphoto completely dropped my portfolio last April, I don�t have the �benefit� of that income stream.  All of my stock income comes from Stocksy United, and the several other agencies listed on my portfolio page.  I have kept my list of distributors small, as I don�t particularly trust all the smaller agencies, and I don�t have the time to maintain so many accounts."

Quote from: SNP on April 23, 2014, 16:05

Michael - my apologies. It is actually a quote from Sean's blog. I read his and yours back to back from Sean's earlier post. Following is the section I am in agreement with, and seems it is Sean's, and not your statement. Sorry to have attributed the quote to you.

No problem but thanks for clearing it up. I wasn't really sure. It didn't really sound like something I remembered saying. But you know, over time you can change opinions while learning new stuff...

Quite frankly, the "reputable" part made me wonder most. I have problems attributing this word to any of the microstock places these days. I don't trust any of them to actually be my "agent".

By reputable I mean: established, selling licenses, communicating with contributors, working with contributors openly and honestly, in a supportive manner.

Quote from: MichaelJayFoto on April 24, 2014, 01:27

Quote from: SNP on April 23, 2014, 16:05

Michael - my apologies. It is actually a quote from Sean's blog. I read his and yours back to back from Sean's earlier post. Following is the section I am in agreement with, and seems it is Sean's, and not your statement. Sorry to have attributed the quote to you.

No problem but thanks for clearing it up. I wasn't really sure. It didn't really sound like something I remembered saying. But you know, over time you can change opinions while learning new stuff...

Quite frankly, the "reputable" part made me wonder most. I have problems attributing this word to any of the microstock places these days. I don't trust any of them to actually be my "agent".

By reputable I mean: established, selling licenses, communicating with contributors, working with contributors openly and honestly, in a supportive manner.

Are you still in stocksy united?

By reputable I mean: established, selling licenses, communicating with contributors, working with contributors openly and honestly, in a supportive manner.

Yes, I would support that definition of reputable. And I am not convinced that I know a microstock agency that would fit that description. 

... I hope they'll develop more of the non-sub license sales, and I like Offset.

My experience with Shutterstock since returning to being independent (June 2011) is that the proportion of my monthly income that is not subs has been growing steadily. In August 2011, subscriptions were 48% of the monthly total and in March 2014 it was 36%.

In a way, yes. When it comes to "sympathy" in the context of microstock, Shutterstock is the first thing that comes to my mind. They seem to be open, listening, inventive, all very positive attributes. And they progressively have evolved from their "subscription, cheap images" model to attracting more buyers paying more than just a few cents.

Then again, because they were so successful with their model, they probably had even more impact in the "devaluation" of stock images than any other place. There is a lot of things I blame iStock/Getty to have done (and still do) wrong but at least they took some effort in taking that "images from $1" approach to move buyers into higher price levels. They did it in a wrong, sneaky way for both, customers and contributors. And that's why they are not my favorites these days.

But I don't see that effort from Shutterstock yet at all. And because they have been very successful with all the other stuff they do, they are the ones who put on the most pressure on other agencies to lower prices. So in a way... while my RPD with Shutter is growing consistently, I also partly blame them it's still at $0.50 or $0.60 rather than $2 or $4.

SS didn't 'devalue' microstock. When I joined them in 2004 they were paying 20c for a sub download which at the time was the same royalty I got from IS for a Medium sale. They were exactly in the middle of the market. SS then increased prices steadily but carefully (but not as quickly as IS) through until about 2008.

Unfortunately by then every other agency (apart from IS) tried to emulate and often undercut SS with their own subs packages. The market for subs became too competitive for any agency to dare increase prices. SS won from that point by simply offering a better service to the customer than the others. The other agencys' answer was mainly to prop up their profitability by reducing our royalties. Credit to SS for not doing the same.

I wouldn't however give much credit to IS/Getty for increasing prices. They weren't doing it for us __ it was all for themselves. It was also done in such a ham-fisted and greedy manner that it was bound to fail. And so it has proved. When IS/Getty decided we were earning too much money then they introduced the ridiculous RC system to grab yet more of the pie for themselves. Why pay the artists 20% when you might be able to get away with as little as 15%? Why pay exclusive diamonds 40% if you can get them down to say 30%? Whilst we're at it why not separate the RC totals for illustrators and photographers? That way we can reduce contributors' earnings even more.

SS are growing their business (and ours). The growth however isn't coming from subs but mainly from all the higher priced image products that they are selling instead. As Jo Ann has pointed out the subs part of SS is now only about 40% of the total. It seems to me that it is only on SS that RPD is consistently growing (and has been for some years now). Everywhere else it has been moving in the wrong direction __ especially at IS.