One more question is I guess it is legal to work with istock as an exclusive PHOTOGRAPHER and non-exclusive VIDEOGRAPHER at the same time but still if anyone could confirm that would be great.

Yes it is.
In the old days, if you were exclusive in one media, you had to be in exclusive for them all.
However, once they went onto the RC scheme, they split the RCs across the media, and soon afterwards they had to admit that thereby they should split exclusivity also.
Just read your Exclusive ASA - Clause 1:
"Because iStock offers different categories of content, this agreement may differentiate among categories of content that you produce, such as still photography, which includes all raster files (for greater clarity, raster files include, but are not limited to, photographs, 3D renders, photographs of works of art that otherwise meet iStock standards and digital scans) (collectively, �Photo Content�), illustrations (for greater clarity, illustrations include all vector files) (�Illustration Content�), or video files, animations (�Video Content�) and related material produced by Supplier. Exclusivity with respect to one or more categories of Exclusive Content (as defined below) depends on your qualification under each such category, and to the selection of the chosen categories under the �Exclusivity� portion of the preferences panel in your account profile on the Site." - though they flatly refuse (deliberately IMO) to use Plain English in their agreements and it's a bit obtuse, to say the least. The red portion is your proof.

Quote from: kaanates on May 04, 2016, 10:13

One more question is I guess it is legal to work with istock as an exclusive PHOTOGRAPHER and non-exclusive VIDEOGRAPHER at the same time but still if anyone could confirm that would be great.

Yes it is.
In the old days, if you were exclusive in one media, you had to be in exclusive for them all.
However, once they went onto the RC scheme, they split the RCs across the media, and soon afterwards they had to admit that thereby they should split exclusivity also.
Just read your Exclusive ASA - Clause 1:
"Because iStock offers different categories of content, this agreement may differentiate among categories of content that you produce, such as still photography, which includes all raster files (for greater clarity, raster files include, but are not limited to, photographs, 3D renders, photographs of works of art that otherwise meet iStock standards and digital scans) (collectively, �Photo Content�), illustrations (for greater clarity, illustrations include all vector files) (�Illustration Content�), or video files, animations (�Video Content�) and related material produced by Supplier. Exclusivity with respect to one or more categories of Exclusive Content (as defined below) depends on your qualification under each such category, and to the selection of the chosen categories under the �Exclusivity� portion of the preferences panel in your account profile on the Site." - though they flatly refuse (deliberately IMO) to use Plain English in their agreements and it's a bit obtuse, to say the least. The red portion is your proof.

Thanks for the info. Do you have any other advices about my "which agencies" question?

Quote from: ShadySue on May 04, 2016, 10:22

Quote from: kaanates on May 04, 2016, 10:13

One more question is I guess it is legal to work with istock as an exclusive PHOTOGRAPHER and non-exclusive VIDEOGRAPHER at the same time but still if anyone could confirm that would be great.

Yes it is.
In the old days, if you were exclusive in one media, you had to be in exclusive for them all.
However, once they went onto the RC scheme, they split the RCs across the media, and soon afterwards they had to admit that thereby they should split exclusivity also.
Just read your Exclusive ASA - Clause 1:
"Because iStock offers different categories of content, this agreement may differentiate among categories of content that you produce, ..."  The red portion is your proof.

Thanks for the info. Do you have any other advices about my "which agencies" question?

I don't do video at all; I hear and read that iS is a poor agency for video unless you can make good sales at Getty.

Quote from: ccbcc on May 04, 2016, 11:51

Don't do istock. 

Honestly I am happy with istock as an exclusive photographer. My doubts are about video and I guess I will cancel my exclusive video contract with istock and go with many other but which ones? I guess pond5, videoblocks and shutterstock are top 3 but still not sure or should upload any others as well?

Everyone will have different results.

I am exclusive in both photos and video. For the most part I am happy with both results.

Exclusive video on Istock means you get better royalties and you upload once to Istock and it also sells on Getty. Half the work, twice the exposure. That said, I would not upload video at all if I was non-exclusive as they sell your work for a low price and pay the worst royalty rates going. < Food for thought.

I'd give it a go as an exclusive and build on that, then after a while decide whether to drop exclusivity or not.

I've just dropped exclusivity on istock after many years being exclusive and I must say uploading 1000's of clips to multiple sites is not an easy task. Also re-keywording and adding descriptions for all the files and saving them as a .csv file is the most boring thing I've ever done (and as summer jobs I've packed cheese in boxes coming off a conveyor belt's in 12 hour shifts).

I went non-exclusive as sales on istock were getting worse each month. My Getty sales were and have always been great but my istock sales have just been rubbish (to what I would expect).

I know signs are early but the selling power shutterstock has is just mind blowing. Royalties are a little lower but wow they sure sell in abundance!

To sum it up - I'm really going to miss Getty but the sites like Shutterstock and Pond5 - adobe(Fotolia) too although a little slower, have made a huge impact on my wellbeing as getting multiple daily downloads sure makes me feel better than a tiny triple from istock.

Copy your whole list of footage files from deep meta and paste it into excel. You get names of your files, keywords, description and categories. After that it's easy )

But be sure to tick only footage, active and others so it will list for you rejected, pending and online files. And also be sure to select all clips. It won't work on one clip only. And when you are pasting into excel or libre office use "import wizard" or something like that, I forgot how it's called. And then play with the columns and settings. It should be delimited with comma and text should be with " ". And next thing you wanna do is submit to pond5. When you do that, pond5 give you the ability to download your list of files in CSV with original filename and new one (the one you gave it). I had this problem where 99% of my clips had some moronic names like Nat01 (clip of windy trees etc). So I had to go and rename all of the files ) Also, there is a freeware program called Advanced Renamer or something like that... You can rename whole list of files in batches, you can give numbers, you can do a lot of things in that one. It helped me a lot with my audio port. The only downer for DM and IS is that it wont give you "original filename". So if you are organised as I was, you are in a week of bloody renaming and sorting things out

Anyways, make your master csv file and keep it updated. Afterwards, with a little or no tweaking at all, you can use it for Shutterstock, Canstock, Videoblocks, Motionelements, Dissolve, Depositphotos etc... Spreadsheets rules