Should we not also take into account the sheer number of photographers now in the ms game?

most of you veterans have a strong dislike of newbies (don't deny it, we all feel it), and I wonder how many more of us are jumping into ms to help supplement our income?  I'm not a huge threat on my own; I only have a small port that I grown in tiny steps as I take more stocky shots on my various jobs in the real world. But there are more of us who do this and are we also not having an impact?

it's in every genre. The magazine I work for continually seek out newbies who work for free. Family portraiture is a joke nowadays, with some offering shoots for under $100.

Income for photography work is on a downward trend everywhere.

most of you veterans have a strong dislike of newbies (don't deny it, we all feel it), and I wonder how many more of us are jumping into ms to help supplement our income?  I'm not a huge threat on my own; I only have a small port that I grown in tiny steps as I take more stocky shots on my various jobs in the real world. But there are more of us who do this and are we also not having an impact?

Genuine 'newbies' concern me a lot less than established players, basically because their work isn't usually good enough or at least stock-oriented enough to be much of a threat. I think producing stock images, that are good enough to compete with the best in their genre, is genuinely difficult and takes most of us years to learn (unless your name happens to be Yuri or Sean). Let's say you happened to have the best-selling image of a 'widget-pin' on the various agencies. Who would you rather have uploading new 'widget-pin' images __ a newbie or an established contributor with 100K+ sales? I know which I'd rather have.

I'm incredibly grateful that I stumbled upon microstock just as it was really starting and was able to learn in the days when pretty much any image sold, enough to make it worthwhile, provided it was technically adequate to pass inspection. When I started SS had fewer than 35K images (of which 30K were Jon's own portfolio) and, if I remember correctly, IS had just over 60K images. Lise Gagne had just passed the staggering figure of 25K sales and become Istock's first ever 'Diamond' contributor. It was a year before Yuri even picked up a camera and it took the best part of another year before he learned what to do with it. Heady days indeed!

If I was starting microstock now, with the level of skill and the understanding of stock that I had back then, I can't imagine that I'd get very far. I'm sure I'd find that the level of sales would not be enough to be motivating, that's assuming I could get my stuff accepted in the first place. Nope, I feel genuinely sorry for today's newbies and admire their persistence in attempting to compete against the 20M+ images that weren't there when I started. Good luck to them! We 'veterans' were just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.

Vannphoto, I'm 100% with Gostwyck on this. The inspections are so tough and the sales per file so low today that I actually doubt whether more than a handful of newbies will stick around long enough to affect sales for the old timers. I wrote a couple of blogs two years back about how to do microstock, with the aim of picking up some referral earnings, but then I stopped because I reached the conclusion that it was just wasting people's time to encourage them to join. I've got a couple of dozen referred photographers on Shutterstock and only one of them has got a portfolio online there and that only sells anything once in a blue moon - one sale last month, I think.

Heady days indeed!

If I was starting microstock now, with the level of skill and the understanding of stock that I had back then, I can't imagine that I'd get very far. I'm sure I'd find that the level of sales would not be enough to be motivating, that's assuming I could get my stuff accepted in the first place. Nope, I feel genuinely sorry for today's newbies and admire their persistence in attempting to compete against the 20M+ images that weren't there when I started. Good luck to them! We 'veterans' were just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.

great post.

Although Rebecca (?) did say there are too many contributors/too many files compared to buyer numbers?

Quote from: vannphoto on December 12, 2012, 20:09

Although Rebecca (?) did say there are too many contributors/too many files compared to buyer numbers?

That's bollocks __ not you, but what Rebecca said. Honestly, there's still loads of opportunities, but only if you're good enough to take advantage of them. That's where the 'veterans' still have a huge advantage.

It's difficult to explain but it seems to me that every 18 months or so, or thereabouts, I suddenly seem to produce better images than I did before. It's as if I can suddenly 'see' better, at least in terms of commercial worth, and my work improves markedly for no obvious reason other than ... it does. Improvement seems to come in step-changes, rather than in gradual, almost imperceptible, increases as you might reasonably expect. Even 8 years in to 'my journey', if you'll pardon such a vomit-inducing expression, it is still happening. It's f*cking weird but I'm convinced, and the sales confirm it, that I'm suddenly producing better work now than I was only 6 months or so ago. That's why newbies don't worry me at all!

this post is a beauty

I agree with every word of it, but I will focus on your first sentence..

Rebecca is so "lying in public" she should be punished for that.. she lies at absurd levels it's not even funny..

istock is screwed and they know it.. They just CAN'T admit it.. YET!

who here were expecting her to say "yes, we are screwed, just hand in your crowns already, there is no hope for the company"?

Come on now I said it before, most contributors are too good, they will believe anything..

We have read that people report incredible drops in income, in as little as 1 month.. I am sorry but newcomers and their mostly subpar content just don't "double" in such a short period where it will impact sales all that much..

It's mostly that the new best match favors their wholly owned content but they still have to lose money because their agency images are the crappiest I have seen in microstock industry and they are overpriced..

They ARE going down guys.. just don't let them fool you..

That's very sad. I feel your pain. I wish I could rename this thread I started to "The Fall Of The Man On The Street" because in the end Getty will still stand.

Only the people doing the hard labor to create content, and trying to continue to make a living from a business model they were all lead to believe had a stable platform, are now being left to fall with no safety net.

We only have ourselves to blame I guess when we assumed a company wasn't capable of destroying a good business purely out of greed and mismanagement.

One day people will look back at iStock as a case study on how a multimillion dollar Internet company painfully destroyed itself in the course of a few of years.

What a pity.

That's very sad. I feel your pain. I wish I could rename this thread I started to "The Fall Of The Man On The Street" because in the end Getty will still stand.

Only the people doing the hard labor to create content, and trying to continue to make a living from a business model they were all lead to believe had a stable platform, are now being left to fall with no safety net.

We only have ourselves to blame I guess when we assumed a company wasn't capable of destroying a good business purely out of greed and mismanagement.

One day people will look back at iStock as a case study on how a multimillion dollar Internet company painfully destroyed itself in the course of a few of years.

What a pity.

In a way it's not a pity. Quite the reverse in fact.

There is another microstock agency who have never reduced contributors' commissions, have never lied to their contributors, that have kept their site working pretty much 100% despite numerous upgrades, do not load currency exchanges with a 20% 'hedge' surcharge that contributors don't benefit from, have never clawed back commissions due to supposed 'credit card fraud' or whatever, do have a track record of 8 years of rising sales, have only introduced 3 price rises to customers in their history, do not reduce commissions when they give discounts to customers, do treat all contributors the same with no favour given in the sort-order ... etc, etc, etc.

Who would you want to become the dominant force in microstock? The nameless, greedy, lying f*cks at Istock/Getty or the honourable Mr Oringer, who publishes his financial accounts every quarter?

F*ck Istock. They gained a position of power and they abused it comprehensively to both contributors and customers alike. Now they are paying for it. Good.

Who would you want to become the dominant force in microstock? The nameless, greedy, lying f*cks at Istock/Getty or the honourable Mr Oringer, who publishes his financial accounts every quarter?

F*ck Istock. They gained a position of power and they abused it comprehensively to both contributors and customers alike. Now they are paying for it. Good.

Couldn't agree more.

Sigh!  talk about being repetative and living in a fools paradise. Yeah all that was also said about IS a year before the big freeze.

I am a bit surprise that YOU of all is so easily bought and by what? a few BMEs?  well we have all had that, no big deal at all.

+1

One minor disagreement/correction.  You use the word commission to refer to the payments we receive.  The correct term is royalty.  Commissions are what agents get for services rendered on our behalf, not what they pay us.

You're right! Thanks for that. 'Royalty' it is. I wonder how we got talking about 'commission' all this time without anybody pointing out the error before?

Quote from: gostwyck on December 13, 2012, 08:58

Who would you want to become the dominant force in microstock? The nameless, greedy, lying f*cks at Istock/Getty or the honourable Mr Oringer, who publishes his financial accounts every quarter?

I'm going to go with neither. I actually don't think there should be a dominant agency at all. If nothing else, this iStock lesson should teach us that you want an agency that actually represents you and not some crowd-sourced juggernaut.

Exactly. I couldn`t agree more.

Quote from: gostwyck on December 13, 2012, 08:58

Who would you want to become the dominant force in microstock? The nameless, greedy, lying f*cks at Istock/Getty or the honourable Mr Oringer, who publishes his financial accounts every quarter?

I'm going to go with neither. I actually don't think there should be a dominant agency at all. If nothing else, this iStock lesson should teach us that you want an agency that actually represents you and not some crowd-sourced juggernaut.

Indeed, they're all fighting for the same market share, and when they can't get that the only option left to grow that business is higher prices and reduced royalties. iStock is a fable for the industry as a whole.