MicrostockGroup

Leaf, you did the right thing by locking the other thread.. Anyway, I seriously thought I made some points on the other thread and I would like someone from Crestock, probably Josh, to kindly answer this serious question..

@ anyone from crestock...
what is your thoughts of 0.25c subs commission?! do you ever consider increasing them in the next 20 years? (this is no sarcasm)

Because everybody did, don't you feel like it is your turn? Same for StockXpert.. They need to increase their 0.30c too..

Crestock has been paying the same 0.25c since the first time I saw your site.. In the meantime, dollar sank, + every expense of life got more expensive while your commission remains the same..

My point is to discuss the low subs commissions of crestock.. I am expecting an answer from someone from crestock just as they knew to kindly tell me in another thread that all the websites have a minimum payout..

if we are gonna take other websites as examples, ALL THE WEBSITES PAY MORE SUBS COMMISSIONS THAN CRESTOCK as well.. This is a fact..

Please share your thoughts?

yes, no more excuses like marketing.. serious answers please.. I really don't see why the contributors have to pay for marketing..

let's see;
- contributors provide the high quality products..
- contributors pay for marketing..

what does crestock do? 0.25c commission has no excuse!

you should come with somethin original..

It looks simple from out point of view: "25 cents is lower than the market! Raise it! Sacrifice a little short term profit to attract more contributors so you can attract more buyers!"

The term "gross oversimplification" comes to mind. If it was that simple to build a successful agency then we'd all be doing it and succeeding. Give these agencies some credit. It takes a fair amount of money to do what Crestock have done so far, and you don't get to be in control of that amount of money if you're not very smart. Look at all the low-budget agencies that have failed!

Crestock don't need to answer to you. They will listen more to their portfolio growth rates than what contributors write on a forum. They'll read it to understand their metrics and acknowledge it for the sake of good public relations, but in reality you will only have any influence by voting with your portfolio. If the agency doesn't inspire you, don't contribute.

Also, top agencies are accepting up to 50,000 new photos per week! Unless you're shooting something nobody else can shoot or you're famous enough to command a brand premium, you're participating in a commodity market. In commodity markets there's little use focusing on medium or long term gains. Get what you can for your product now. In microstock this means look at how much money the agency is putting into your PayPal account at the end of the month. Commission rates mean nothing because buyers will sooner buy from another photographer than switch agency to get 'your' image.

(Crestock advertise on my blog, but my comments are the same for any agency)

just to keep clear up this 'detail'
I said I get a payout every three months... meaning $100  I don't keep track of what is the minimum payout on each site,  I just collect my payouts at the beginning of each month if they are over $100.
so i make around $35-$40 a month on crestock.

Good points, and all true.  I earned more on Crestock than BigStock last month and it's the same for this month so far.  Two months is hardly a firm trend, but I see Crestock 'out and about' a lot more than BigStock.  I think Crestock are aiming a lot higher.

Some people don't do well with bigstock.  There doesn't seem to be an obvious reason why.  I have done much better with them than crestock every month.  The poll results here show crestock stuck in 7th place.  I can see snapvillage overtaking them, if they get it together.

I believe, Crestock is open for this kind of subjects.

In the past I opened a topic at the Crestock forum about the payout of 20% after a per-photo sale and they raised the comission to 30% after somebody sells 100 photos. Thank you, again, Crestock!

Meantime I agree, the 0.25 cent revenue after a subscription sale is very low. Apparently it can be good to have low prices for the buyers but as I see, at the more expensive micros there are more many buyers as 0.30$ sales grow to a considerable amount.

I suggest to be on the level of the other agencies, regarding the prices.

However, me and my wife, we stopped uploading to Crestock, several months ago. This can sound stupid, because without more uploads we can't have more revenues but there is another thing in our mind: if the agency doesn't support us with decent commissions and with a good number of downloads per month, then we cannot support the agency with fresh images IN FAVOR OF other agencies where we upload regularly and we earn regularly.

Also there is an open question in my mind: do agencies bring new buyers or they share the given amount of buyers between them?

I never uploaded to them because of the above reasons nevertheless i have to say that their editing is far superior to most other micros. With these kind of editing you could aim customers which are able and willing to pay much much higher prices.
But instead to do a marketing in this direction they play the bottom-feeder.
I agree if nothing changing radically at crestock its best for us to let them failure.