One of our files in action, sweet : )

Ours is the first take with a girl in a bathroom.

 

Here's the file in question.

So I am dropping my exclusivity, now what?

When you decide to go freelance, it will take some time to prepare your portfolio for transfer.

You kept all of your rendered footage? Good. You used PhotoJPEG 95%? Even better. This codec is accepted everywhere I submit my footage to. This means, no additional rendering, no additional work. Other codecs will probably work just as well, I am not sure they will work everywhere. Some agencies have file size limitations, if you footage is close to 30s and full of detail, you might have to compress it a little bit more. 

With my portfolio I had to re render one file in a hundred.

You kept all the thumbnails? You'll be needing those only if you decide to work with revostock. At some agencies you can not choose a thumbnail, at others you do it online after uploading your file.

What about your keywords? That is the tricky part. One Young Woman Only does not work exactly well outside iStock. What about Woman, Girl optimized to Women? This will not do any good either. Hopefully you backed your metadata up before optimizing at iStock. If you have, you are pretty much set. If not you need to redo you keywords. Maybe do not start from scratch as I tried to do, which is a bad idea. Just unoptimize it if you know what I mean.

Now it is time to prepare the csv. You create a spreadsheet with Excel or open office Calc (which is Free and works perfectly well) containing all of the metadata in the world. That is file name, file ID, title, description, keywords, model release name, thumbnail name, categories etc. The way I do it is, I keep data for all agencies in one file. Then I export specific agency columns, as a csv file, upload it, and it is done. No deepmeta, no optimizing, no wasting time copying and pasting over and over again. I love the simplicity of this csv solution. With some agencies like shutterstock you will need to adjust the keywords online but it does not take so much time as the entire process at iStock takes. If you need help with the metadata, send me a targoszstock gmail. I have a few files you may find useful.

Was dropping iStock exclusivity worth it? Final words.

Did it work for me? I think it did. Will it work for you? Well it depends.

Let's start with some general concepts that made me go freelance. If you work with only one agency, you keep all your eggs in one basket. I am sure you have heard it already. Your sales depend on how this agency is doing, not on how the entire microstock market is doing. At times this can be a good thing.
How much you make depends also on where your footage is placed in search results. Every agency has their own ways of determining what goes on top. Hopefully it is your footage. With best match algorithms being one of the most guarded microstock secrets, you have no way of positioning your files. There are some clues on how to do it, but you never know for sure. When working with many agencies you have a greater chance of doing it right at least in one place. For example one of my shutterstock top earners has like 40 views at iStock and no sales and it is sitting there for almost two years.

 

There may also be a general customer needs profile, different with every agency. I did not want to take any chance with this either.

In one of my previous blog posts you could reed how dropping iStock exclusivity affected my sales at iStock itself. I did not say if the other agencies made up for the loss. With microstock sales varying between the months it is sometimes hard to judge how is your portfolio doing in a bigger picture. The column graphs from my early posts tell the short term, monthly basis story. If you need perspective, my suggestion is to make a spreadsheet with your income for every given month since the beginning of your microstock adventure. Then make the calculation how much did you make for the past year out of each months point of view. This is how it looks for my iStock sales only.

What you do not see in the graph is that my overall income seems to be making up for the iStock loss. It is growing slowly but steadily, just as my portfolio is. This means, that over the last three years I was able to maintain pretty much a steady revenue per image per year. For me this is a good thing.

I hear mixed comments on iStock performance in 2013. I made a tough choice over a year ago. Even though today my portfolio is not doing very well at iStock, I am not bothered. I have others.


When you decide to register with other agencies, be sure to go there through referral links. If you found information on this blog useful, you can use mine by going through the small banners on the left side. Thank you for your support.

our latest uploads

under a microscope

tea time portrait

on her way

reading a book

boxer

twins in a bathroom

private plane cockpit

Déjà vu

2.079.140 video files online, and we hit Pond5 main page twice a week. Cool.

One of our files hit pond5 main page

Now let us see how many sales will it transfer to.

how does dropping iStock exclusivity affect your income?

First column features my last years income as an iStock exclusive videographer. Second column features first years income (iStock only) as a non exclusive contributor. Third column takes in to account the royalty rate change (drop from 25% to 16%) and compensates for it. This way you can see how did going freelance affect my sales at iStock, not my income.

The following is based on my own experience. It does not compensate for growth of my portfolio, and it did grew.

our latest uploads

autumn cyclists

lake at dawn

back in time

wheelchair obstacles

 car driver

our latest uploads

Click the picture to see other files form the video shoot

drowned woman

 vineyard

our latest uploads

Click the picture to see other files form the video shoot

twin boys at a playground

 

high altitude worker

Poland aerial footage

one of our files in action

It is not every day you get to see your footage being used in someones youtube advert. I could have skipped this ad after five seconds. I didn't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DfrdvSueik&feature=youtube_gdata_player

no more statistics for some time

I have decided not to post statistical data on monthly basis any more. I will keep you updated on my new uploads or anything interesting I have to share.

this ain't no april fools - march 2013 statistics

february 2013 statistics

istockphoto is dying...

our latest uploads

Click the picture to see other files form the video shoot

white cat

lens iris

determined footaballers

pixel

january 2013 statistics

As you can see my freelance sales are reasonably steady

our latest uploads got accepted in a batch

Click the picture to see other files form the video shoot


idea

cleaning lady

last will

broken display

two years of microstock statistics

What you may find interesting is, there was no major increase in my portfolio size prior to the second half of last year. There has however been a decent sized submission at the beginning of last year, which only helped keep my income steady.

At the end of January, when getty images statistics become available, I will post an updated chart, showing how much lower istockphoto sales actually are.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Tom Spota of shutterstock, Craig Lillard and Melissa I. of revostock, as well as the pond5 team for their support this year. These people are true professionals.

Thank you, and a Happy New Year!

updated post on fotolia

The main reason holding many contributors up, from considering fotolia as their footage reseller is the dreaded subscription sales. That usually means selling your work for scraps. Thus far you could opt out of subscription sales if you were an exclusive fotolia contributor. Like this was an option.

Fotolia has now changed their rules and allows everyone to opt out of such sales, making this agency worth considering. I do not mean they will sell a lot of your footage, I am just saying their current pricing policy makes it reasonable to consider working with them at all.

As you may read in my first blog post, there is a logic behind my pricing policy. The main rule is, no agency offers my footage for less, than I decided to offer it at pond5. A place where you can get any of my files at a flat $59 rate, of which I get about $30. An agency that gives me 50% of sales price deserves not to be challenged by those paying less.

With fotolia there is a problem here. Customers can purchase credit packs. If one chooses to spend $7000 on a credit pack, your file will be available for such person for as low as $55. One thing though. $7000 on a credit pack? We are talking of a dedicated fotolia customer that probably does not shop around. To me this is a gain, not a loss.

On the other hand I do not want to get a lower commission than istockphoto or shutterstock have to offer, that is not less than $20. How does fotolia fit into this?

They say they offer the traditional royalty rate structure. The more files you sell overall, the higher royalty rate you get, from $0.30 up to $0.42 a credit. The minimum payout for a full high definition footage license is $22.5. With time it can go up to $31.5. That's fine with me

I say fotolia is back on the table. Now lets hope their upload process is as streamlined as some say.



After a very long conversation with contributor relations, I am finally able to break down their royalty rate structure to pieces.

Your non exclusive base royalty actually is $0.30 for every credit the file cost. They say it is 30%, this however is 30% of credits, not of the price. No matter if a customer paid  $1.30 or $0.74 a credit, when you cash out, one credit is $1, of which you get 30%. Strange, huh?

In real live it means each time your footage is sold you get the same amount of money, but different percentage of what the customer actually paid. If he got his credits just for one fhd file download, you get 23% of what he actually paid. If he got his credits the cheapest, you get about 40% of what he actually paid. Even more, If you are at a diamond level contributor, you get roughly 60% with such transaction.

I really have no idea, why would any agency decide for such a complicated royalty structure. The bigger mystery is, potentially offering 60% to contributors and not advertizing it. Really strange.

Tell me what you think.

two months of freelance statistics

As you can see all is well. Few things may need further explanation though.

As an exclusive istocphoto contributor I had the 25% royalty rate applied to my sales, now it has dropped to 16%. It means I lost a lot, but I did not loose as much, as those with higher exclusive commission do when dropping their exclusivity.

My entire portfolio went live on other agencies, at the very beginning of October. There are only slight differences in its size with different stock houses. It has been uploaded, submitted, revived and waiting for my exclusive contract to expire.

I wanted to start licensing my content on many agencies, three or four months before the end of the year. To have It ready on time, as described in my previous post, I had to cut some corners with my metadata. This probably hurts my sales right now.