In case you have been living under a rock the last couple of days, iStock announced that they were changing their royalty structure for 2011. The new structure will be based on total credits used to purchase your images in the previous year instead of lifetime downloads and canister levels. Here’s the breakdown of the levels for Illustrators:

These are just the levels for illustrators, you can find the levels for photos, video and flash here. As you can see this new policy affects everyone, not just exclusives.The previous flat 20% that non-exclusives used to receive is now the maximum. For exclusives, iStock claims that 76% won’t drop their royalty rate. That sounds like a high number, but when you take into account that only 20% of contributors are exclusive, you begin to understand how many contributors this affects negatively. Also, this doesn’t account for all the exclusive contributors that were close to a royalty raise that feel cheated out of that.

With that explained, cue the angry mob. Posts on blogs and forums have been largely negative and pretty foul mouthed in response to the changes. You’re welcome to sift through some of the angry tirades on the iStock forums here or on MSG. There have been a lot of decisions by the different micros over the years that have raised the ire of contributors, but this one seems to have struck a nerve. It may be because 20% royalty, an industry low, was a barrier that wasn’t supposed to be crossed or that iStock was fairly beloved and being cheated by them hurt even more. Whatever the reason, contributors are madder than I’ve ever seen them.

So, what happens now? That’s a good question. There doesn’t seem to be any backtracking on iStock’s end, so I don’t think a compromise is in the works. Many contributors are talking about stopping their uploads. Some are going to stop being exclusives. Others are saying they will close their accounts. Some are even making predictions that this will be the moment in time remembered for iStock’s downfall. I can’t say what will happen come January, but squeezing your suppliers for more money couldn’t have been worth all the turmoil they’ve caused.

This post was written on IllustrationInfo.com. Content copyright 2010 Cory Thoman. This post contains affiliate links. Please read the About & Policies for more information.

Well, it was better than last month, but still pretty slow. I’m just not getting an increase in sales from the growth in my portfolio. Hopefully, all the hard work pays off down the road with more sales. On a positive note, congrats to ClipArtOf for jumping past Fotolia and Dreamstime.

Here’s the breakdown:

I hit 3000 images at a few agencies. That was supposed to be the mark for making it to $3000 a month, but my royalty per image has been dropping like a rock. I’ve been mulling over changing up the kind of images I’m uploading at the agencies this year, and my slump has convinced me that that is a good idea. I’m hoping things pick up in September too.

As usual, feel free to post a link to your results in the comments.

This post was written on IllustrationInfo.com. Content copyright 2010 Cory Thoman. This post contains affiliate links. Please read the About & Policies for more information.