Each week since signing-up with iStockPhoto I've been receiving their e-mail tips, and I've noticed that they're becoming less focused on helpful advice and more focused on draining bank accounts. Well what a shock!

For instance, one e-mail offered a service for a "small fee" that will allow you to "re-download your carefully-crafted portfolio" in case you lose the originals of your uploaded images. The small fee ranges from $25 for less than 100 files to $75 for more than 500. Compare that to the wonderful, friendly, cuddly, fluffy Flickr, for example, where a $24.99 pro account gives you unlimited uploads and downloads. So iStock's prices are actually quite high, especially considering that they're already making money off your files.

And how about the e-mail recommending the Spyder monitor calibration system, which coincidentally iStock are now selling? Bizarrely for a product aimed at people who will be uploading files, iStock is offering it in a "special value bundle" which means you must also buy download credits. And how good is the offer? Well the Spyder3 Studio package, purchased from iStock, will set you back £383.56 which includes the obligatory £74.53 purchase of 115 download credits. But you can buy it elsewhere for £319.98 without having to buy iStock credits that you don't need.

(And incidentally, you'd be better off spending the money on a high-quality monitor and then calibrating just the gamma. Colour calibrators are a false economy, in my opinion, especially the high-priced suites with printer profilers.)

It won't come as any surprise that a microstock company would try to exploit its hard-working and under-paid contributors even more by offering them over-priced products and services and dressing them up as good value. The only surprise is that any photographers still want to join the iStock family, only to endure its special brand of domestic abuse in the hope of selling their valuable photos cheap.