c'mon guys, Yuri's press release if of course a funny PR stunt but i've seen a lot worse in other industries.

i don't have the feeling Yuri reached the point where he's believing his own sh-it, he's just having a laugh on micro agencies and SS in particular, guess he still has a chip on the shoulder with them ?

you're all angry because Yuri was the living proof it was possible to make a living with microstock alone and now you're shocked and despaired to be told by the king himself that you better go back to macro agencies as micro is financially unsustainable as it is today.

so you feel betrayed and rejected by the guy you idolized for so long but seriously i can't see any mind control tricks in his statements, just common marketing BS you can read in any other press release, i think he was just in a happy mood drinking a couple beers and wanting to have fun on you guys.

He's having a laugh and you're having a laugh but it doesn't make me angry, I find it funny.  Yuri is a factory, has nothing at all in common with the cheap way the vast majority of microstockers work.  It looks like he's been paid off by Getty, good for him.  I'll carry on doing what I want to do and not taking advice from people that know nothing about working with very low expenses.  I don't want to be the owner of a big business or have to work only with Getty.  I'm quite happy as a sole trader.  There's problems with microstock but there's also problems with the traditional sites and we all have to deal with them in our own way. 

It's a shame we can't all get together and work on the real problem, sites that are making huge profits while reducing the commission they pay us.  They always seem to get the last laugh.  Imagine how funny they find these threads with stock contributors bickering when it takes the attention away from what they're doing.

I�m late to this party, but I love playing the speculation game. Here�s my uneducated guess.

First,  go back to what happened after the Getty Images/istock fiasco with Google Drive. Contributors pulled their images (some their entire portfolios),  and it raised so much of a stink that the Carlyle Group suddenly took notice. In a single day istock lost thousands of images and each of those images has a value on the istock books. My rough guess is about $700,000 worth. And suddenly with blogs, articles and voices talking about �istock and Google Drive� it was one ugly mark that was raised. Not to mention Mr. Sean Locke was forced out of istock as a result, which I�m guessing was a Carlyle decision. (and a dumb one at that) Um, did I mention the creation of Stocksy by former istock founder Bruce? He�s appearing with open arms to exiting contributors. Now people from the Carlyle Group are taking a closer look at things, istock has fallen to number two compared to Shutterstock, and Shutterstock has many more images in it�s inventory - 25 million compared to 13 million. Since Shutterstock has placed a value of about $18 per image, you can all do the math. For the spring of 2013 was a swift kick to the nads for istock.

And Yuri was also making news, creating his own website, peopleimages.com.  It takes millions of dollars to get that up and running, dedicate people full time to the enterprise, not to mention marketing dollars. Unfortunately, Yuri was now between a rock and a hard place - devote yourself full-time to your own website and make 100% royalties? Or continue to supply the mircostock sites who in the long run are eroding your industry with the sub model? What Yuri needs now is �insurance�, a way to get a special locked in royalty rate from one or more mirocstock sites. I�m sure several one on one meetings took place with all the CEO�s/owners of the micro sites. There was no way Shutterstock could do any deals, their margins are too tight and they�d have to make the details public to shareholders. But Getty? Oh yes, they were interested.... madam, may I have this dance?

Remember, after the spring of 2013, istockphoto lost value by losing those images. Which is why upload limits were removed as well as restrictions. They needed contributors to submit more and lots. As well as Getty Images importing more content. Sales might be falling but if you can get more images added to your books (value) it will please your corporate owners. So Getty made Yuri �a deal he couldn�t refuse.� Yuri would become an istock exclusive in exchange for: A lump sum cash payment (well over six figures) as a �signing bonus�, a locked in royalty rate, a preferred �bump up� in search engine results, and many promotional deals with istock in the future. (look for articles on Yuri in the istock website as well as see his images on every istock homepage and promotions-use CSA images as your clue)

For istock, it means they acquire one of the leaders of microstock and guarantee of more new content. What istock has been loosing in sales they can make up with adding more images (and value) to the website. I wouldn�t be surprised if Getty uses a baseball reference when doing the annual report with Carlyle �We just signed the Mickey Mantel of microstock!� Cheers all around.

And Yuri gets a nice cash infusion, keeps his website (and his images) to himself and has a dedicated worldwide distributor of those images at a set royalty rate. That�s market insurance right there. As well as promise not to raise a stink about the Google Drive deal. For him it�s the best of both worlds. Apparently, Yuri is now invested a million+ in Scoopshot.com. And why not? If you had the ability to get in on the ground floor of an �instangram� start-up business, it would make sense to do a little gambling. Congrats to you sir!

Unfortunately Yuri�s public statement does have a lot of spin to it. To state that the fall in Shutterstock�s share price occurred on July 16 because of Yuri�s decisions is just silly.  Adobe and IMAX also have some big dips on July 16, I guess Yuri had a big impact on the world market that day. It�s just spin folks, and there�s more to come...

sit n spin