Istock has a post on their front page blog about 2009 and their plans for 2010. A couple of things jumped out at me, all of which bode well for microstock in the months to come. The first (and perhaps most important) – continued growth on the buyer side:

For those who foolishly insist microstock isn’t an expanding market, we point to the 125,000 new members iStock adds each month. 10 years ago when we started, there were barely that many stock buyers in North America, let alone added to one company in a month. And these are often new buyers to the stock image market. There is very little cross-over between Getty Images’ ‘classic’ customer base and our own.

And, the second, the emergence of additional tiers at different price points. Essentially, the microstock industry is finding ways to deliver imagery to buyers at different price points according to their requirements. I think this is a good thing and a sign of the maturation of the market into one that serves all levels of buyers.

One other point that will affect contributors is adjusting the canister requirements upwards. Although existing users will be grandfathered in to their current levels, newer contributors will see higher hurdles. As you might expect, this change is causing quite a bit of activity on their forum.

Base: 1 – 499
Bronze:     500 – 4,999
Silver:     5,000 – 19,000
Gold:     20,000 – 49,000
Diamond:     50,000 – 399,000
Black Diamond:    400,000 +

These changes will take place on Feb 24, 2010, according to the post.

The microstock market is a dynamic one and it will be exciting to see how things evolve over the next year.