Comments on: Non-exclusivity has its benefits

By: Nikita Buida

Nikita Buida — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:03:31 +0000

Very interesting read, Yuri!
My own way is to become exclusive at iStock for the period of initial growth of portfolio. With small portfolio one has almost nothing to earn at most microstock sites. Again non-exclusives with small canister level (and portfolio) have very low upload limit at istock. So it is istock exclusivity for me at first and non-exclusivity after.

By: Peter Gaszynski

Peter Gaszynski — Mon, 04 May 2009 11:48:15 +0000

Great blog Yuri. Afters several years in film, I am now going back to photography try to make some money from microstock. I have started shooting in my studio, and have a couple of hundred pics with releases and everything. I´ll try to submit pictures next week, and I have one question that seems very difficult for me:
how do you keep track of your pictures? If you submit the same or similar pics to different agencies, what do you do to know which ones have been submitted and where…
I really hope there is some smart way of doing this, or else I´ll be totally swamped in paperwork…
Thanks again for sharing your work and experience with us all. Peter Gaszynski from Stockholm, Sweden.

By: Ralf Hettler

Ralf Hettler — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:14:54 +0000

Hi Yuri !
Let me throw another argument into the discussion – Loyalty …
I worked many years as a publicity photographer and from time to time I had the idea to put some images of my “private” work into some imagebanks – In these times – 1990′s – all was still made with diapositives and for a “normal” photographer it was nearly impossible to get a foot into that business. Then the digital area and iStockphoto came up.
Suddenly I had an access to clients I never had imagined – Thanks to that great guy called Bruce Livingstone
I thought about loading up my portfolio into different places and not going to be exclusive on iStock – but one big issue was my laziness to do all that stuff many times – having different ways to upload – to get your money – to control your portfolio …
So I went exclusive – The final reason was also because I wanted to show this kind of loyalty to the company which gave me this unique opportunity to get into this market and made it possible for me to live this great and funny experience which I would never have imagined a few years ago !
Greetings to Denmark

By: Sue!

Sue! — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:34:42 +0000

Hi Yuri just found this and you have so echoed my views on Exclusivity. And yes must admit I was getting so fed up with iStocks constant ‘Go Exclusive’ drive and it’s attitude towards Independent contributers, did not begrudge the perks for Exclusives as goodness knows they deserve something extra for giving up their freedom however I was becoming increasingly disillusioned with my more creative Images/concepts with a proven selling track record being met with the dreaded ‘over filtered’ email not to mention the way the search results were so biased against independents files….

Lets face it few views = few sales leaving you to rely on customers returning to ones Portfolio once they found something they liked. Was lucky and surprised to appear on the very first Hot Shot page but a Gal can only live off that for so long lol Think things have got better there lately with a more level playing field

Sue

By: Daniel Mouritsen

Daniel Mouritsen — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 02:21:54 +0000

First off, cheers for an interesting read, where some really interesting points are made. But I’m curious about one thing, you mention that we’ll be able to negotiate prices, commissions etc. What makes you think that? It seems to me that people just takes what’s offered and doesn’t really think twice about it. Why do you think the big players involvement is going to change that?

ps. jeg haaber vejret er bedre i Danmark end det er her ovre i London, hvor det ikke bliver til megen udendoers fotografering for tiden

By: Mat Hayward

Mat Hayward — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 05:10:42 +0000

In my opinion there is an intangible negative effect that in the long run will bite the micro-stock photographers in the butt which is that most people saturate the market with their images and upload the exact same photo’s everywhere they can.

This forces the sites to compete with each other for the same buyers to sell the exact same images which of course drives the price down. I don’t contribute to I-Stock but I admire their stance on rewarding loyal contributors. Those that upload their images to anyone that will take them should not be given prominent placement in the search engines in my opinion.

That’s just my .02 which is only worth about .0001 in American dollars right now

Mat

By: Yuri Arcurs

Yuri Arcurs — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 23:36:46 +0000

Hail Rahul. Thank you for your comment. I was just about to send you an email.

By: Walter Arce

Walter Arce — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:54:09 +0000

Hi Yuri,

What do you consider the top five – ten agencies to send to? Right now, sending to Dreamstime, they make it so easy but I’m about to cancel my non-exclusive arrangement with them.

By: Rahul Pathak

Rahul Pathak — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:10:35 +0000

Great point about the unaccepted images effectively being exclusive to other sites, Yuri. I hadn’t thought about it that way before.

By: Yuri Arcurs

Yuri Arcurs — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:11:39 +0000

Hi Demid. The point here is that in a sense all the images that Istock never accept are in fact exclusive to the non-exclusive agencies. In series, with better search options. This gives Istock’s competitors a massive edge. This does not mean that Istock does not have a great collection of exclusive material, because they really do, it just means that so do the non-exclusive agencies as opposed to istock.