A fair amount of this months news comes from istockphoto [3], the most important being their lunch of photo+ for their non-exclusive members. The system allows contributors to 'promote' a portion of their portfolio (percentage depends on acceptance ratio) to be offered at the same prices as exclusive photographers standard images. It seems at present there is no best match or search engine boost associated with opting photos into photo+ (regardless of discussion on weather this is in istocks best interest to farm high priced sales). Photos are locked into photos plus for 6 months (not sure why). I'm a little hazy on commission rates also with some sellers reporting images sold for 66% more revenue (you would expect 50 or less if the photo was being sold at the same commission rate). The system none-the-less allows you to charge more for your most popular photos in a similar way as dreamstime does automatically, or istock exclusive photographers can already do with "exclusive+". Full details on the istock forum [4]. I can't help but feel that buyers now have an even more mesmerizing array of price points in their search results, the 'filter campaign' (sort price / image collection) lobby group seems to be growing more vocal...
istock announced [5] their planned vetta high end video collection, a list of vetta video requierements [6] are posted in the forum.
istock also started their 'sale' with 20% off their larger size images more on that from sean locke's blog [7]
Continuing the istock theme, a thread on MSG regarding tweaks to best match [8], particularly interesting are jsnover's charts, changes timed to fall across holiday weekends in US and UK. This presumably tested the revenue from increased sales of higher profit-margin non-exclusive shots vs sales of more expensive lower profit-margin exclusive and premium images.
Yaymiro launched a reseller api [9] offering 50% of revenue from partner sites. Currently three resellers are available including pixmac, each reseller can be opted out individually yaymicro users can control their status at http://yaymicro.com/api-details.action [10].
Shutterstock darkroom is now showing photographers the keywords that were used to find images that were purchased.
Other things that caught my eye in May:
Interesting that niltomil matt [11] and others have also seen some growth at 123RF.
picniche [12] took a look at tips for the beginning microstock contributor.
crestock [13] image editors comment on blacklists and image acceptance.
Yuri interview on petapixel [14] (from late april).
Microstockdiaries profile of monkey business images [15]
It's quiet in here!