Comments on: The Online Stock Photo Monopoly

By: Stan Kessanis

Stan Kessanis — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 01:21:10 +0000

The take-overs continue. Getty Images have acquired Photos.com and I do a 12 month subscription for $500-$600 depending on the time I spend holding off a renewal. Now I am being offered a 40% off deal to renew by Photos.com down to $840! When I acomplained to Photos.com I had a reply from Getty Images and it all made sense. What it has done to iStock is deplorable. I have looked at my iStock purchases over 5 years and the costs have gone up 8 fold! Bigstock is the last of the good independent microstock sites, so it will no doubt be torpedoed or acquired. Can anyone stop this Juggernaut? Is it an American legal issue. So much for Globalisation.

By: scott randall

scott randall — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 17:26:10 +0000

Greasy is right. We purchased an image from Getty – actually many over the years. The license expired. The cost to license the image for the elapsed time would be $855 (certainly more than it would have been three years ago). They want $875 as a “settlement” price and had this to say:

“To clarify on your point in regards to notifying companies of expiring licenses – we work on the basis that we do not have an obligation to send out email reminders…”

When I called to get the price for the exact same image, the representative did not tell me that there was an expired license. So it’s not just e-mails – they’re not going to tell you, period. They will just come after you for more money than they are due.

We’re going with other options – the monopoly thing isn’t working for us.

By: adam coulombe

adam coulombe — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:28:32 +0000

I don’t like the way Getty operates – they seem very greasy to me.

I despise iStock. Their search is terrible. You have to spend hours sifting through garbage images – which I wouldn’t have a problem doing if the images were cheap enough, but they have gotten way too expensive.

And if there are any big competitors that arise against iStock, getty will just buy them out and shut them down, just like SXP. Awful.

By: @tankianann, Blogopreneur.com

@tankianann, Blogopreneur.com — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 13:31:26 +0000

Interestingly I have an account with dreamstime.com but never used their photos. Maybe its time to use them!

By: Shi Heng Cheong

Shi Heng Cheong — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:20:08 +0000

I received the email from StockExpert and transferred my remaining credits. Anyway, I just sign up with http://www.dreamstime.com You can can lo-res photo $1 each when you buy 25 credits. Go check out the stock photos now.