MicrostockGroup

Good news:) they will modify also  the image levels in a good way:)

level 1:  0-4 dls (0-4 in 2010)
level 2:  5-19 dls (5-9 in 2010)
level 3:  20-49 dls (10-24 in 2010)
level 4:  50-99 dls (25-49 in 2010)
level 5:  > 100 dls (>50 in 2010)

Indeed.

Higher prices on credit sales without any change in subscription terms will almost certainly mean only one thing: More subscription sales. 

I too had wondered if this was influenced by announcements at iStock.

Is this part of the increased prices and lower commissions that they announced a few months ago?

http://www.microstockgroup.com/dreamstime-com/royalties-subscriptions-and-sr-el-update-on-dreamstime/

A large part of the referenced thread was pointed toward going exclusive at DT.  I think that "exclusive" push will continue ... at several sites.

I think it's all about herding buyers onto subscription plans.  And the intent of a subscription is to get the buyer to either buy more than they actually need, or even better - never actually download all the images they're paying for.  Contributors only get paid for images actually downloaded. 

That's my fear too.  If they would only let me opt out...  I would happily live without that extra income.

I like this "merry christmas" part of the announcement. good stuff. Also the dropping of the levels is nice, esp. as it pertains to the level 3 and up sub sales. On a side note, today with a level 4 small sale (8 credits $3.30) I passed my total for last month (which was absolutely horrible).

I fear the other side of the shoe - the "happy new year" for DT will be more for them, less for us.  Still, at least maybe with the IS increase all the sites can increase their prices giving them a lot more and us a bit more.

Edit to change - what I meant about the other shoe is I fear that this means the further dropping of out % will now happen. Still, I like what they said this time.

As far as subscription sales go there has to be some factors we are missing that result in an increase in subscription sales because I always hear people complaining about them but subscriptions account for only a very small portion of my sales .. I just flicked back through my last 200 sales and only 25 of them were subscriptions .. so that's only 12%. I dont want to sit here and figure every single percentage up but at a glance I see mostly large-max sales .. followed by small-medium .. not to many extra small or subscription sales.

I don't have a massive amount of sales on DT, just over 6,000 total but the thought of those being 60-70% subscription sales would freak me out. So, my point is .. maybe people should try looking into why they get so many subscription sales and not just the fact that they are getting them.

Are there any patterns you can see in your subscription sales versus normal sales? There has to be a correlation somewhere that you're not seeing. I'm guessing it probably has something to do with subject matter in relation to portfolio size (too many generic shots with little diversity) or technical quality of the images in general.

Subs don't bother me too much, but I don't really see a pattern. I sell the whole spectrum small, max, additional and subscriptions. The only thing I notice about the subs is that people will buy multiple images in a series frequently. Which is weird because Dreamstime likes to reject images that are in a series. If you're reading Dreamstime, think about it. I'm just saying this because the customer is always right.

I totally agree with you

I don't have a pattern, but there were months when subs were over 50% of downloads.  They are normally below 20%, but I would anyway prefer not to have them.  I simply disagree with the philosophy of cheap subscriptions the way most sites handle them.  Microstock images are already too cheap.