We all know that if you throw an object into the air it will come down, but does this apply to business too? If a business reaches the pinnacle of success can it continually be innovative, adapt to changing circumstances and stay on top of its game, or is it inevitable that a time will come where wrong decision making, increased competition or simply its own complacency will eventually lead to it falling.

If an object can achieve sufficient upward velocity though, the shackles of gravity can no longer restrain it and it can continue to rise. In businesses this would be to achieve continuous growth. It seems that most businesses, even those which seem out of reach to their competitors, can only do this for a certain duration.

Below are some recent articles which discuss this. Further below is some news on redundancies at iStockphoto, and at the end of this post there is a link to an article with some good news for microstockers.

Can a company live forever?

Excerpt: The past few years have seen previously unthinkable corporate behemoths – from financial firms such as Lehman Brothers to iconic car manufacturers such as Saab – felled by economic turmoil or by unforgiving customers and tough rivals….The average lifespan of a company listed in the S&P 500 index of leading US companies has decreased by more than 50 years in the last century, from 67 years in the 1920s to just 15 years today..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16611040

The last Kodak moment?

Excerpt: Unlike people, companies can in theory live for ever. But most die young, because the corporate world, unlike society at large, is a fight to the death. Fujifilm has mastered new tactics and survived …Kodak, along with many a great company before it, appears simply to have run its course. After 132 years it is poised, like an old photo, to fade away.

http://www.economist.com/node/21542796

Gone in a flash

Excerpt: Kodak’s fate ought to be a lesson for today’s technology powerhouses such as Google, Microsoft and Facebook. No firm, however strong, can count on continued success: market dominance is only a snapshot in time.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/01/kodak-files-bankruptcy-protection-1

Layoffs at iStockphoto

This week Getty Images announced that approximately 30 employees of iStockphoto will be made redundant in the coming months. The confirmation came after some of iStockphoto’s employees voiced their discontent on Twitter and Facebook. Coincidentally, Kelly Thompson the former Chief Operating Officer at iStockphoto, who a few months ago moved from Calgary to New York for a position at Getty Images will be leaving Getty today, “to pursue other interests”.

iStockphoto, which was once the darling of the microstock industry, at the time of announcing that royalties for contributors would begin at 15%, declared that their business model was “unsustainable”, a word that hardly breeds confidence. Since then many buyers and contributors have fallen out with the company and site traffic comparisons show that traffic, which largely consists of buyers, is shifting away from iStock whilst its main competitor Shutterstock is experiencing a rise. Can iStock remain at the top of its game? There are many who believe that it is already well past its heyday.

Good news for Microstockers

The Microstock concept has already surpassed 10 years, it still has a lot of opposition and many may want it to fall, but right now it is still in ascendancy and consistently increasing its share of the market. Here’s an interesting article by Jim Pickerell which discusses this and some differences between microstock and traditional sites.

Excerpt: More and more customers are going to the microstock sites to find most of the images they need. Microstock prices, while still low, are going up. Prices for RM images are going down as the sellers of these products try to compete with microstock. Many RM images are now being licensed for prices lower than microstock. The proportional share of images licensed as RM relative to the share licensed as microstock is declining steadily.

http://rising.blackstar.com/rights-licensing-is-all-about-visibility.html

Related posts:

1. iStockphoto makes all the wrong moves
2. Microstock agencies are like girlfriends

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A picture is worth a thousands words, but words can be inspiring too.

• A lot of photographers think that if they buy a better camera they’ll be able to take better photographs. A better camera won’t do a thing for you if you don’t have anything in your head or in your heart. – Arnold Newman

• Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory. – Diane Arbus

• Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph. – Matt Hardy

• Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera. – Yousuf Karsh

• Remember that the person you are photographing is 50% of the portrait and you are the other 50%. You need the model as much as he or she needs you. If they don’t want to help you, it will be a very dull picture. – Lord Patrick Lichfield

• I see something special and show it to the camera. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs. – Sam Abell

• When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. – Ansel Adams

• If you are out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you’re not out there, you’ll only hear about it. – Jay Maisel

• Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography. – George Eastman

• Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary. – Cecil Beaton

• When I was on trips I used to put Polaroid’s in a container with sea water, sand and pebbles. I’d swirl it all around to get scratches. It’s this random element that I call ‘the drip’. It’s the drip which might splash onto the other side of the canvas when you’re working on a painting and make you think ‘that is good’, possibly leading you to explore other things. My whole life is spent in search of the drip; it can change everything. – David Bailey

• If the photographer is interested in the people in front of his lens, and if he is compassionate, it’s already a lot. The instrument is not the camera but the photographer. – Eve Arnold

• Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion…the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate. – Dorothea Lange

• One doesn’t stop seeing. One doesn’t stop framing. It doesn’t turn off and turn on. It’s on all the time. – Annie Leibovitz

• Even though fixed in time, a photograph evokes as much feeling as that which comes from music or dance. Whatever the mode – from the snapshot to the decisive moment to multi-media montage – the intent and purpose of photography is to render in visual terms feelings and experiences that often elude the ability of words to describe. In any case, the eyes have it, and the imagination will always soar farther than was expected. – Ralph Gibson

• Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask ‘how’, while others of a more curious nature will ask ‘why’. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information. – Man Ray

• Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference. Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism. But criticism can come out of love. It is important to see what is invisible to others. – Robert Frank

• There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever. – Henri Cartier-Bresson

• A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective. – Irving Penn

• Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow. – Imogen Cunningham

If there are any other quotes that you like, feel free to add them to comments.

Related posts:

1. 16 Featured Artists
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For those who want to to know about what is happening anywhere in the world the internet is the best source to find information, far outstripping any other source. Tv stations and newspapers give us as much or as little information as they choose to, often highlighting parts which don’t exist to the same extent as they portray, not revealing parts which don’t fit their slant or show points of views which are mostly in line with their own political affiliations. On the internet you can find words, images and videos often in their raw form which truly enables us to be flies on walls in countries where we physically can’t be. The internet is the method of delivery and the devices used to write, record and send information is increasingly becoming the mobile phone. In the next few years the mobile is expected to overtake the PC as the most popular way to be on the Web. All of this can help us get a more accurate picture of our world, which helps us come to better informed conclusions and decision making.

This connectivity makes crowd forming easier than ever, what is written or what images and videos are uploaded can be read and watched by the masses. If something strikes a chord with someone, he passes it on, if a feeling is evoked by those he passed it on to they in turn pass the information on. Within hours a plan can be formed and followed. A physical crowd can grow in size or even originate due to connections in cyberspace.

The crowd is still seemingly most effective when it is seen physically, masses of people holding the same opinions but remaining dispersed across the globe are easier to ignore than crowds amassed in streets and squares. Today many businesses rely on “Crowdsourcing” for products they sell. It’s an unusual crowd because those who are part of it have usually never met or even know of each others existence, and they may be entirely unaware of how large a crowd they are apart of. This faceless crowd aren’t physically at the companies they receive revenue from. The companies’ owners never have to meet them or even know about them. They are not employees of the companies so they don’t have a great deal of rights, yet these companies can’t exist without them. The companies have legal obligations to the staff who work at their premises, and if the owners were to suddenly announce pay-cuts or change rules which staff regard as unfair, these employees can more easily act in unison and express their discontent.

However, companies which rely on “Crowdsourcing” have very few obligations to the thousands or even tens of thousands of people who provide the source from which the companies attain their revenues. This kind of freedom for those in charge, inevitably reduces the probability that a company will choose to act favourably to the crowd. Each individual in the crowd has the choice to discontinue from being the source, but it’s not that simple. Those who submit their work to gain a little extra cash may not be too concerned by decisions made which affect them but often made with disregard to them, but for those whose online revenue has become a large part of their entire income if not all of it, it is a concern. If a person has spent several years providing his products to a company and creating a regular income, the company then makes decisions which are less favourable for him, does the person withdraw his products out of principle (products which often took a while climbing the various ranks) or accept the new terms because of all the time and effort already spent, as well as not wanting to lose a source of revenue? They are likely to stay, albeit begrudgingly.

The faceless crowd can sometimes exercise its power too without ever being physically together. If enough individuals make the same decisions a mass movement can be created without it being planned, organised or coordinated, but as a result of enough people coming to the same conclusion after analysis of information received. A multitude of individual actions can unwittingly bring about change.

Only last week Godaddy chose to pacify a rebellion with an about-turn on its support for SOPA after losing tens of thousands domains in the space of a week. They now say, “GoDaddy will support it (SOPA) when and if the Internet community supports it.” It is often said that actions speak louder than words, in this age how you choose to click can speak volumes.

Dictators of countries have too much freedom and choices, while the citizens have very few, this kind of power is often misused and they end up being resented by the people. Businesses in democratic countries have a lot of freedom and choices too, but again if too much power is in the hands of too few this can be detrimental to many. The term ‘corporate greed’ doesn’t come from nowhere it comes because so many corporations become greedy, they are allowed to become greedy.

In 2011 people have showed more than ever before their discontent by forming crowds and protesting. The amount of people which had protests in their countries comes to 3 billion. I think we can safely say that we are living at a time of mass discontentment. In 2012 people in power need to learn how to make the crowd content. The crowd isn’t going away, but instead it’s getting larger, more informed and better connected, and those in power may find that it is mutually beneficial to look after the crowd.

Hope you have a happy and prosperous New Year!

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In the thread some of the contributors point out that up to half of their revenue now comes from non-subscription downloads. I’m not sure if  this will be the case for most contributors, but I would think certainly a sizeable portion of contributors earnings will now come from downloads other than subscriptions. My own stats show that just over one third of my revenue from Shutterstock comes from downloads which aren’t subscription downloads. So what does this mean? Well for a start it pushes revenue per download up, plus if a site has many ways of licensing images, this should help to attract the different types of buyers, maybe also buyers who’ve had enough of the antics at iStopped.

You sell your images for 25 cents, hahaha!

There are still people who dislike or don’t understand microstock. When they critisise it they are usually eager to mention Shutterstock’s lowest earning rate for a download which is 25 cents. They always either purposely don’t mention or are simply unaware that there are so many different other rates too, with the highest being $28 which comes from an extended license purchase.

Extended License Sales

Surprisingly ELs on Shutterstock when first introduced could only be bought via subscription packages, where buyers could download 25 a month. Shutterstock have since increased the prices of ELs and reduced the minimum amount that can be purchased to just 2, as well as reducing the royalty percentage given to contributors from 50% to as low as 28%. I’m sure there would be buyers who would like the option of buying one EL at a time also, as opposed to the minimum purchase of 2 at $199, especially given that it is now even possible to pay for a single image with a regular license, as long as you are lucky enough to be in a single download zone. $28 given to contributors for EL sales undoubtedly could be better and it is better on some other sites, the highest paying EL I’ve received to date was on 123rf which was $43. There is now a site however where contributors can receive less than $3 for an Extended License sale, they can receive higher amounts too but none of the rates are particularly attractive. The savvy contributors though are opting out of these Els, so as not to jeopardise their EL revenue elsewhere, after all buyers can easily find your images wherever they are. So although $28 for an Extended License sale on Shutterstock is by no means as good as it could be, it’s not a crazy low rate either and they are regular enough to add significantly to your overall earnings.

Volume

Subscriptions, for which earnings actually range from 25 cents to 38 cents per download, certainly account for the bulk of the downloads and I would still think the majority of most contributors earnings (maybe the poll will reveal this). When contributors first get accepted they immediately see sales, even from their initial 10 images and an image in a port can be downloaded by subscription purchases up to hundreds of times. I can’t say for certain, but I would imagine many images are even downloaded and never used. The subscription plans allows buyers to download 25 images a day, most people probably never need that much and it’s pretty easy for them to download a few alternative images for the ideas they have in mind, or just download images which they could potentially use in the future, whether they eventually end up using them or not.

With all the download sources on Shutterstock par Enhanced downloads, your pay increases as your total earnings increase. This is how it works for subscription downloads and the On Demand downloads that aren’t limited by size.

Check your stats

My revenue split on Shutterstock. Blue: Subscriptions, Yellow: On Demands, Red: Extended licenses

Pie chart automatically configured by Microstock Analytics

So just how much of your revenue comes from non-subscription downloads on Shutterstock? I’d like to get more of an idea, please take a couple of minutes to look at your Shutterstock stats and take part in the poll at the top of this post. Thank you

How to calculate: Total On Demand earnings + Total Single download earnings + Total Extended license earnings ÷ total lifetime earnings x 100

= percentage of non-subscription earnings.

Related posts:

1. Istock’s loss is Shutterstock’s gain
2. What goes up must come down?

Recently I was invited by ‘Stock Performer‘ to open an account before they officially launch at the Microstock Expo this Saturday. So here is a short review of what they offer.

This microstock analytics site gives a great overview of your important stats all in one place. Currently 4 microstock sites are included, Shutterstock, Dreamstime, iStockphoto and Fotolia. If you love to press the F5 button on the stat pages on these sites to see what has been sold, then Stock Performer may be something you would like. You can see all your recent downloads with thumbnail images of the images sold, you can also see in a graph the total amount of images you have online with these agencies, the amount of downloads you have and also your earnings, from the time you started microstock until the current day.

There is also a Top Sales section. Below is an example showing the first few Top Sales for my own images on Dreamstime for February and March.

By clicking on one of the images there is further analyses, as shown below.

You also have the ability to see analytics for any collection or lightbox that you have on any of these sites (data read is only for your images). Stock Performer does not require your passwords, it automatically retrieves your sales data when you log in to your agencies and updates every hour, or you can update the stats whenever you like.

Stock Performer will initially have a controlled launch and users will receive a free 14 day trial (actual prices not announced yet). If you would like to be included you can send an email to this address info@stockperformer.com However, as it is a controlled launch, initially they are not accepting everyone, but if you are reading this before their launch on November 5, then you’ve certainly got a better chance of being the first few to use Stock Performer. I’ve only had a short time to play around with this and my initial impression is that it is pretty useful, as well as seeing the basic stats that we all need, it is also a way of being able analyse image performance across the sites. I like the interface and ease of use, everything seems to be logically placed and its simplicity is very appealing. I currently don’t think it is as comprehensive as Microstock Analytics, which I reviewed in July, but Microstock Analytics has improved since it was launched and I’m sure Stock Performer will continually improve and increase its features too.

All in all though, it’s a great tool and I would recommend trying to secure your spot for the first few accounts, so you can try it out. Here’s the email again info@stockperformer.com

Related posts:

1. Discover Microstock Analytics
2. Istock’s loss is Shutterstock’s gain

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This is what the creator Tyler Card says about it.

“For Halloween 2011, I made a fully-functional camera costume. It comes complete with LCD display, built-in flash and shutter-release button. It is also capable of wirelessly triggering my Alienbees strobes, and winning any costume contest with the click of a button.”

The first video (22 seconds) shows the camera in action and the second video (2m 30s) shows a little of how it was built.

Related posts:

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It’s Halloween next week. Holidays and traditions are great opportunities for microstock contributors to get more sales, that is if they produce work specifically for these occasions. The images themselves are usually downloaded well in advance, as designers often plan and make their designs months before the events take place. So designers would have bought their Halloween images long ago, and many would have already bought the images they need for their Christmas and New Year designs too.

Tis the season of commercialization
Fa la la la la, la la la la
Buy these images with no hesitation
Fa la la la la, la la la la

Follow me in microstock measure
Fa la la la la, la la la la
I’ll tell you where there’s microstock treasure
Fa la la la la, la la la la

Sing we joyous, all together
Fa la la…..

Ok ok enough of that already. If there’s anyone still reading at this point, I hope I haven’t made you feel nauseous.

Seasonal sales should be a great boost for microstockers who produce the images needed, however given the economic downturn over the past few years, maybe these sales have not been as consistent as in years gone by. For those who produce this kind of work, how have your sales been so far this year?

Below are a couple of widgets containing Halloween and Christmas images, for next year’s designs maybe.

Leaf	Halloween Fire	Halloween Pumpkin	Halloween Background
Halloween stock images

Christmas Tags	Christmas Boy	Christmas Sale	New Year
Christmas stock images

Related posts:

1. Shutterstock’s Travel Photo Safari Contest
2. Become a microstock image reviewer

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“I am a photographer and since people are always looking for free shoots I assume that they must also do their job or provide their services, for free.

I am looking to hire all types of people to do all sorts of jobs for me, as long as I do not have to pay anything. Just think, you will gain more experience, and I will put the word out for you and let everyone know what wonderful work you do. This opportunity will bring you a ton of unpaid work, but everyone will love you. So if you have a job or service you provide, and will do it for free, please let me know, because I am sure I have work for you and will hire you in a second.

Feel free to email me with the service you can provide, when you can start, and please include references.

I look forward to your free service.

Thanks”

• Location: Atlanta
• Compensation: no pay

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This is on iStock’s Artist’s Suply Agreement (ASA) questions and answers page.

Q. How do I say no to the new ASA?
A. Contact artists@istockphoto.com to close your account.

On September 28 non-exclusive contributors of iStockphoto, will either have to accept the new ASA or leave. When the new ASA takes effect non-exclusive files are no longer allowed to be exempt from the ‘partner program’. I’ve read many comments of what people are doing or intending to do. Some will continue as normal, some are deactivating their files or their best selling files, some will keep their files online but won’t be sending new files, some will continue to upload but only several months after they have sent their stuff to competing agencies, some have already closed their accounts. Below are comments from several microstockers in regards to iStock’s new ASA, some are direct quotes for this blog, but most of the comments are from the forum Microstock Group (msg) with the permission of those who made the comments. The name Microstocker has been used for those who wished to remain anonymous.

The Reaction

“I’ll continue to delete my photos. I’ve been removing five a day since the assault on royalties, and this just encourages me to keep going. iStock represents 15% or my modest stock income over the past year, and is down to 13% this month. I’ll miss it, but I’d miss my dignity and sense of worth more.”
Hank Shiffman: Port on Shutterstock

“As soon as Bruce sold to Getty, I knew that at some point down the road I would not fit into their grand scheme. I just don’t ever see istock going back to the way it was before. As is most things nowadays, once it flipped over into a huge amount of money type of business, the fat cats rolled in and someone like me is crap out of luck. For me, it has pretty much run its course. I will leave my images up until they no longer earn anything, then will take them down.”
Microstocker

“After giving it a lot of thought, I decided to stay with istock and I accepted the new agreement. I’m not thrilled about having my work in the Partner Program, since obviously ThinkStock is designed to compete with Shutterstock and having my work on ThinkStock could potentially cannibalize my Shutterstock earnings. But right now I also don’t see ThinkStock posing any serious threat to Shutterstock. They don’t have anything significant enough to lure SS subscribers over to their site.

If that ever changes, and if I see increasing ThinkStock sales and decreasing Shutterstock sales, I’d have to reconsider my stance on the Partner Program. But for now, I’m not worried about it. Shutterstock is my top earning agency by a lot, and I’ll be careful to monitor how my earnings there look by comparison to ThinkStock, but right now I’m not convinced that ThinkStock is equipped to become any noticeable threat to my Shutterstock earnings.”
Mike McDonald: Port on Shutterstock

“I already left beginning of the year when the lowered royalties kicked in. These new changes don’t make me feel like I have to reconsider that decision.”
dirkr: Port on Zoonar

“I’m not happy but I’m staying. Too much of my income comes from iStock to leave (as I’m sure they realize). I won’t lift a finger to help them, but I’m not going to hurt my income any further by pulling out.

The less money they make me, the easier they make it to leave them, but at the moment, they haven’t cut my income enough to make it easy to walk away.

I just hope that like a good movie plot, at some future time all the bad karma will come back to bite Getty on the arse. Life doesn’t always oblige that way, but one can only hope.”
Jo Ann Snover: Port on Shutterstock

“A year ago I stopped uploading new images there. Now I’ve picked the images I’ll keep on there and I put them into p+ (if they weren’t already) – a mix of decent sellers that didn’t get accepted or never really sold much at other sites and smaller images and old crappy ones. As the 28th approaches I’ll start removing the rest. I’ll be sorry to lose all the work that it took to get them up and the shrinking income I still get there, but I am sick of their heavy handed approach and greedy ways. I have no reason to believe that things will get any better there, so I am going to make this move. I wish everyone would do the same, as it would make Getty and the others take notice, but I can understand why people don’t.”
Pancaketom: Port on Dreamstime

“So probably many of us will stay on IS… That may be OK for now. But we have to make plan on long period and on personal level, some kind of process through time how to bring customers on agencies with better deal for us.”
Sbotas: Port on 123rf

“I’m leaving – the only decision I have left to make now is whether I close my account completely, or disable most of my portfolio. I may leave a couple of old images active to keep my account open, just in case iStock management changes for the better someday (dream on). I expect that if I stay things will keep getting worse – earnings will continue to decrease over time, and the terms of the ASA will become even more unreasonable. I’m jumping off the sinking ship now, and plan on working very hard to create my best new images for iStock’s competitors. I see it as sacrificing short term gain for long term stability, both for myself and for the industry as a whole. The alternative is to give in to hopelessness and let iStock kick me around to the bitter end. Call me deluded, but I’m casting my vote in favor of hope.”
Microstocker

“I’ve joined a bunch of smaller sites I wouldn’t have bothered with a year or two ago as part of a strategy to maximize my earnings on my existing portfolio.

It’s all well and good for us to plan ahead and do what we can to support the industry for the long term, but developments in the last year have me questioning whether there is a long term for microstock – at least from the contributor perspective.”
Lisafx: Port on Dreamstime

It’s Just Business

“I know you non-exclusives are pissed and you should be.

You are getting F-ed again. How many ways does IS need to tell you  to piss off? Their business model does not include you.”
Microstocker

And he may be right. Or iStock may have determined that enough contributors will continue, no matter how many times they are hit or how much their revenue drops. As of January this year iStock reduced commissions for non-exclusive contributors to as low as 15%. The reason given was that their business model was “unsustainable” despite being one of the world’s most successful microstock agencies.

“When you start pushing commissions down to 15% that’s when people really start uprising. I have about 300 direct/regular buyers and they all say the same when we have talks and they get to know that the commissions are that low: “wow, I did not know that, I will stop buying from them”. When all platforms are offering the same images (more or less) fairness matters.”
Yuri Arcurs: Port on Shutterstock

Fairness should matter to both buyers and contributors. Many buyers are not aware of just how low commissions have become and for sure there will be buyers that will search for images elsewhere, if they know. If you bought something for your business from a business which has evidently questionable morals/tactics, this in turn could affect how your own business is seen. For contributors, most just see the dollars they receive and try not to think too much about what an agency has earned from their work, but a growing number of them, unable to stomach this fact any longer are dumping agencies like iStock, despite short term financial loss to their microstock income and some of them have quite large microstock incomes too.

An ‘unsustainable business model’, was the reason given for having to cut commissions, a far cry from what they were saying in April 2008:

“That our revenue and payouts have eclipsed those of many traditional stock photography companies confirms that microstock is a viable and profitable business model for contributors and clients. We wanted to share the sheer scale of how viable and profitable we’ve all become together. The supercharged growth we had in 2007 was orchestrated by an astounding management team that helped make iStockphoto the envy of the industry.”

iStock’s next step may well be to disallow exclusives from opting out of the partner program. Why not? If it’s now all about the bottom line, there are still many more possibilities I can think of. 15% commission isn’t 5% so there is still room for further adjustments. Shutterstock in comparison, keeps on doing what it’s always done, without changing anything and without upsetting the blood flow, and they seemingly go from strength to strength. Although, one noticeable thing is, although they haven’t decreased what they pay they’re not giving pay rises either, as they frequently did in the past. I guess when everyone around them are cutting contributor commissions, all they have to do is stand still and be seen as a knight in shining armour.

Sinking?

One person says in the quotes above, “I’m jumping off the sinking ship now..” There seems to be a lot of contributors who believe that iStock is sinking, these opinions may be because the percentage of contributors who are sinking is increasing (particularly non-exclusives), but iStock itself isn’t sinking. However, if current decision making is based on short term gain, this may not play well for long term prospects, which ultimately could be more of a worry for iStock exclusives. For now though, reports on decreasing revenues for non-exclusive contributors appear to be on the rise, and I’m not talking about those with small ports who can double their portfolio size in a short time. I’m talking about those that make a living, or at least a large part of their income coming from microstock. Only this week the world’s most successful microstock photographer started a thread on msg, stating that his sales were dropping and particularly for iStock.

Is ThinkStock A Threat?

For non-exclusive contributors who are used to travelling on several ships and are uploading as normal, and allowing their images to go in the partner program, in this particular case having one foot on one ship whilst at the same time having another foot on another, could potentially have negative consequences. Shutterstock has been virtually unrivalled in the subscription market ever since its inception, but with ThinkStock desiring to chip away at Shutterstock’s customer base and prospective customers, supporting another subscription model with the same files may well end up diminishing your revenue at Shutterstock, who never seem to take any severe measures in order to sustain a so called uhum, ‘unsustainable’ business for example. With credit package purchases, it’s easy to jump around from agency to agency and many buyers do. But for those who primarily buy large subscription packages, I’d imagine they would choose one or the other and one of the major factors in making this decision is the amount of choice available. Right now ThinkStock isn’t a threat to Shutterstock, but it could be easier for it to become a threat when all those who are sticking with iStock are no longer allowed to opt out of the partner program, and it could become more of a threat to Shutterstock, if one day iStock exclusives are told to either accept a new ASA or ‘contact artists@istockphoto.com to close your account’.

iStock may once have been the envy of the microstock industry, but all of them look at Shutterstock’s model and think, if only we thought of that first. Their leading position in the subs market though is of course not infallible.

Conclusion

iStock (or rather their owners) are continually trying to squeeze more and more out of the files they hold, in every conceivable way and seemingly focusing on short term gain, I’m not convinced that their decision making in the last few years will ultimately benefit them in the long term. Whatever the future holds for iStockphoto though, the glory days for so many of their contributors have long gone. And from looking at iStock’s traffic, it seems that many of their buyers have gone too. This still doesn’t mean that the company is making a loss, at the moment far from it, but the ever shortening tail made up buyers which was once very long could pose risks in long term prospects, especially if those falling off the tail are helping to make iStock’s competitors stronger.

Whatever you decide to do, to keep your head above water in the microstock industry is of course up to you, but with options continually diminishing and commissions diminishing too, there may be nothing you can do.

Related posts:

1. Istock’s loss is Shutterstock’s gain
2. Microstock agencies are like girlfriends

Related posts:

1. Money…Who Needs it?
2. Become a microstock image reviewer

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