Xmas ruined.

Gettyimages relation with contributors has always been based on abuse. There are people that want to be abused even if prevented again and again. But like personal toxic relationships the abuse always escalates. It does not stop or go backwards. Only the victim is responsible for saying stop and walk away.

In the case of business relationships, sure. But victim blaming is not right when it comes to personal relationships. Those situations can be a lot more emotional and complex, and walking away from abuse is sometimes easier said than done. Especially when violent threats are involved, or kids.

Royalty targets should be gradually lowered every year to allow to be competitive in an ever growing collection.

If the size of the collection grows by 30% in a year, the visibilty of your files drops drastically if you always produce the same volume, for instance 2000 files a year.

You simply cannot outshoot the flood, artists cannot produce 30% more every year.

You can look for niches and up your quality, but even for that you have limits.

^^^ Yebbut that's talking about being fair to contributors. When was that ever Getty's modus operandi, or indeed any of the other micros?

You wonder how far exclusive contributors can be pushed before they just walk away from exclusivity in significant numbers.

If you can't walk away now then you have no reason to complain! So happy I did!!!

I left iStock almost 3 years ago. Their history is like the boiling frog experiment unfolding in real life. I have no sympathy for those who accept such a despicable treatment.

�Intellectual Property is the oil of the 21st Century� (Mark Getty)

I left iStock almost 3 years ago. Their history is like the boiling frog experiment unfolding in real life. I have no sympathy for those who accept such a despicable treatment.

Yes I don't expect one tear for my choice to stay with IS. On the other hand I do have sympathy for the loyal exclusives who keep working for the small advantage and gains over us 15%ers. While every year Getty cuts and nips a little more from the exclusives.

Quote from: thx9000 on December 18, 2019, 11:31

I left iStock almost 3 years ago. Their history is like the boiling frog experiment unfolding in real life. I have no sympathy for those who accept such a despicable treatment.

So, I get 30% from iS. I understand that's about the same as the average at SS. I don't know about Adobe, can anyone enlighten me?
Getty is a bunch of foetid dingoes' kidneys, but the rest aren't much better; and I probably get a higher average rpd than most on SS and Adobe also. That isn't saying much, my sales are way down and my rpd way, waaaaaay down from a few years back, but I don't see that I'd do better elsewhere.

Percentages aren't the only way to look at earnings, in fact, they might be one of the worst. You can't spend a percentage. 

Hypothetical: You drop Exclusive on IS, and upload everything to SS, AS and Alamy. Yes I know you already do some on Alamy, but just for example. Just using the poll from here, you'll make estimated,  double what you do now on IS. That's money in the bank, not a pretty sounding percentage number. Volume does matter?

I don't know what SS pays "percentage" we don't get that personal information very clearly. I do know my RPD is currently lifetime 75�, and Adobe is 89�, and Alamy is RPD $51 Net and probably going down (only made $225 there this year, so money not RPD would make more sense?) My point is, SS and AS have more volume for me, than IS and SS makes much more than AS because I have nearly ten times more images.

Maybe another way from my results. I make far more a month on SS, than I do on IS, without even doing the math. But that's absurd and I make more in one day on SS sometimes than I do a month at IS. My case is an extreme, and pretty lame as a statistical example.

Here's my final answer  Ask Sean how he feels about the differences in return. I know he was one of the top ten for years on IS, but now that he's off there and working the non-exclusive sites, maybe he can tell you what you might expect? I know we all have different images and markets, yours vs yours?

And maybe you are better off staying exclusive, less work for the peanuts we get for our effort? I don't claim to know anyone else's finances nor would I say, I know what you should do. Just looking at ideas and differences. No way to promise or predict if your same images will sell better or worse on other sites? What's your current and lifetime RPD on IS? (ask yourself, I'm not prying into your finances) That might tell you something.

My RPD on SS and AS are mostly subs, it's not like I get all kinds of ELs or others that pump up the numbers. So mine are base numbers for some pretty average images.

The recent Seattle Times article said Getty isn�t really seeing revenue growth any longer. But if they increase the royalty targets for iStock exclusives by 25% then they will probably increase their own revenue by at least 20% on the iStock collection. So if they can�t grow revenue from buyers anymore it seems they are happy to take it from the contributors instead in order to show their investors there is still some (perceived) areas of growth in their business.

^^^ Yebbut that's talking about being fair to contributors. When was that ever Getty's modus operandi, or indeed any of the other micros?

Sue, you mentioned checking out Adobe and here's some info you may find of interest:

Adobe's blog https://medium.com/adobetech/evaluating-addressing-position-bias-in-adobe-stock-search-9807b11ee268 about how they are changing things to account for how placement on the page in addition to what page your image lands on effects how it is seen and taking that into consideration in ranking images (i.e. "position bias"). It shows an appreciation for how new images and even older images are fighting for position and an interest in opening things up so that more than just the "top sellers" get seen. Sure, their primary focus is to give buyers more diversity in what they see, but it also helps contributors. And it shows they are adapting to the realities of the market.

Mat, their contributor liaison here, answers questions and replies to messages, so you have a real person to deal with consistently.

Adobe had a different kind of target this year (and last), which I think shows what a difference there is between the companies' attitudes toward their contributors. I'm a very small fish at Adobe, but I qualified for the free Adobe CC Photography program (PS & LR subscription) for a year by getting 300 images accepted in 2019. It was a bit of a challenge because I shoot a lot of editorial, which they don't take, and I didn't read about it until October, so I uploaded most of the files in the past 10 weeks. But it was a realistic goal even for small contributors like me, and was open to everyone, not just the big fish.  (Except Illustrators aren't getting what they need - Illustrator or the full program- so they need to make that right).

I'd encourage you and others who are thinking about it to check out Adobe. I do better sales wise on SS and even on Alamy, but I had fewer than 200 images on Adobe until this year, so it is not a fair comparison. I'm hoping now that I have more than doubled my portfolio there I'll see better results. There are plenty of big fish here to give you advice.