.

I think people are mixing stock as in the stock market and stock as in stock images. The stock market stock price is mostly based on what people think other people will pay for something. Sure there is some long term investment and growth thinking, but mostly it is a sort of bubble mentality. If you think other people will be willing to pay more for it later, you buy. All it would take is one bad quarter or some other glitch in the group-think and SS stock could plummet. They already got a heap of cash out of the IPO though, so it wouldn't crush them unless they did something stupid to try to prop it up.

As far as the stock image market, I think it continues to grow, just not anywhere near as fast as the supply grows. So, the sites can continue to see growth even if individual contributors don't. A lot of the SS growth was based on buyers moving there from IS and other sites (mostly because of IS's blunders). That growth won't continue, but I don't think the market is maxed out.

If IS can poach a whole lot of top contributors with sweatheart deals (this means that the rest of us are subsidizing these heavy hitters), they might draw a few more buyers, but I think if you are looking for any type of image you will still be able to find a replacement at SS. If I was a real IS exclusive I'd be pretty pissed about the faux exclusive deals.

As far as the stock image market, I think it continues to grow

The stock image market is not a single market. For a while over the past decade microstock and especially subscription has eaten into higher priced stock. I doubt that the microstock market is now growing. Certainly sites can trade microstock and subscription customers between each other. But if one company's microstock or subscription offering gains share - today that probably means that another's has lost share.

I doubt today the wisdom of sites buying each other's brands with the same content and in the same markets - especially given the headaches of integration. Probably much easier to get their customers by competing on price. The reason to buy another site would be for unique access into a different market.

Quote from: luissantos84 on November 11, 2013, 17:30

Quote from: Ron on November 11, 2013, 17:21

So they lose 150k images, they add that back in half a week, and there are a ton of copycats. Maybe a few buyers buy the name, but I think the majority dont give a hoohaa on who shot the image. Not for stock. Art would be different.

right, both around 100k, like you just said half week of approvals at SS, there are 4 or 5 big "lifestyle" contributors at SS that will take care of their downloads, BTW they must be quite excited

Exactly. SS losing 100K images out of 30M will not be noticed. They'll add that many new images in about 4 days.

To be honest the 'photo factories' are pretty much going round in circles anyway. They are just shooting the same, relatively few themes, over and over. So are most of the rest of us too. There's precious little original in stock, especially nowadays, and any successful artist or image will rapidly be 'flattered' by an army of clones and similars.

I'd be a lot more concerned if we ever saw Monkeybusiness become 'exclusive' to Istock but I'm pretty sure that will never happen. Yeulet is a sharp business woman as she proved when she sold Bananastock to Jupiter for $20M. I'd trust her judgement in such matters over Yuri's all day long.

You guys can bash Yuri forever but you need to pay attention to who they are targeting for marketing spend.  If they were not worried about contributor poaching they would not have put out an industry ban on discussing income etc. and they would not have extended the time images need to remain on the site.

I think SS intends on using marketing spend to port enterprise sales to BS, if you don't shoot business you will not notice much of an uptick at BS.

Snip

Global sales and marketing expenses were $14.9 million or 25% of revenue, an increase of $1.6 million over the prior quarter. We continued to strengthen our regional marketing efforts, increasing spend in new marketing channels around the world and reducing spend in less productive channels.

Snip

Direct sales to enterprises continues to be one of the fastest growing parts of our business, roughly doubling year-over-year across agencies, publishers, media companies, large corporations, both the number and size of deals increased. Let me give you three examples of some of the larger deals we did in Q3.

Snip

While we�ve been traditionally more U.S. focused in this channel, we�re pleased with our recent progress outside the U.S. and we continue to expand enterprise sales efforts internationally. With the addition of London and Berlin office as well as new hires in several other markets. We�re really excited about our early progress there. In summary, we�re pleased with our performance in Q3 and with the foundation we�re laying for the year ahead.


Snip

Enterprise sales continue to accelerate and grow nicely and that obviously is also a combination of both a growing market and shift of share from other players. But I would tell you that ratio is probably not radically changed from the last several quarters.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1820992-shutterstocks-ceo-discusses-q3-2013-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single

Quote from: gbalex on November 11, 2013, 19:37

You guys can bash Yuri forever but you need to pay attention to who they are targeting for marketing spend.  If they were not worried about contributor poaching they would not have put out an industry ban on discussing income etc. and they would not have extended the time images need to remain on the site.

I think SS intends on using marketing spend to port enterprise sales to BS, if you don't shoot business you will not notice much of an uptick at BS.

Utter nonsense. SS are in robust good health. Forecasts for 2014 revenue are more than 50% up from the IPO barely more than a year ago. That's the truth. Your own sales, or apparently lack of, are a function of your own performance relative to competing portfolios __ not that of SS. No matter how many excuses or conspiracy theories you dream up, it will not change the facts.

When have I ever said that SS are not in robust good health.  In reality I have always stated that they are in good health and are making money. They will be in even better health "IF" they port a good portion of enterprise subs over to BS where they have put things nicely in place to pay less royalties.

RE Snip

Your own sales, or apparently lack of, are a function of your own performance relative to competing portfolios __ not that of SS.


This one always kills me, you make the brilliant leap that my sales are poor because I am reporting a downturn.  What makes you think your sales are better than mine?  Maybe your sales have not changed much because they were mediocre to begin with. If you did not have many files on first page searches,  I am sure the search changes did not impact you much. In fact you may have benefited from the changes.

.

Quote from: gostwyck on November 11, 2013, 17:43

I'd be a lot more concerned if we ever saw Monkeybusiness become 'exclusive' to Istock but I'm pretty sure that will never happen. Yeulet is a sharp business woman as she proved when she sold Bananastock to Jupiter for $20M. I'd trust her judgement in such matters over Yuri's all day long.

Uh oh.  Time to be concerned? 

Just saw this Tweet on Depositphotos.com's feed:  "more pressure to go exclusive than ever" (cathy yeulet, monkeybusiness images) #mexpo #microstock"

Going exclusive at Depositphotos?

.. hardly likely.  That tweet wasn't originally from deposit photos, they just retweeted what Robert had quoted
https://twitter.com/robertkneschke/statuses/401645889099661312

.

Quote from: tickstock on November 17, 2013, 00:35

Quote from: gostwyck on November 11, 2013, 17:43

I'd be a lot more concerned if we ever saw Monkeybusiness become 'exclusive' to Istock but I'm pretty sure that will never happen. Yeulet is a sharp business woman as she proved when she sold Bananastock to Jupiter for $20M. I'd trust her judgement in such matters over Yuri's all day long.

Uh oh.  Time to be concerned? 

Just saw this Tweet on Depositphotos.com's feed:  "more pressure to go exclusive than ever" (cathy yeulet, monkeybusiness images) #mexpo #microstock"

Yes, I saw that quote on the Mexpo thread. "Pressure"? Pressure from what or where exactly?

Personally I think there has never been a worse time to even consider exclusivity with Istock. They appear to have lost tons of customers, have been shedding staff, the website appears permanently broken with no ability to fix it and the mothership is under real financial pressure struggling under a mountain of debt.

Add to that the fact that new images hardly sell at all nowadays and everything is being swamped by millions of LCV images with apparently no QC at all. The only 'good thing' about Istock is the surprising and unexplained growth in the PP earnings but of course, if you went exclusive, you wouldn't benefit from the PP. Why on earth would anyone choose to go exclusive now?

a big fat cheque and a few cheques after also and of course a game plan