MicrostockGroup

I feel like we will loose many sales just because the XS prices from Yuri Arcurs' images have dropped from 4 to 3 credits and thus get sold more often... :-)

Why are all your images identical to his?

^^ +2

Well stated Dan.

I fully agree that the treatment of contributors as partners seems to be a low priority for both these agencies. And that this contributes a lot to the negative sentiment is obvious.

But in the Istock threads a lot of people argue about how bad it is to have different prices for similar images on one site and that it drives customers away. Nobody really mentioned that the same existed at other agencies as well.
Now that Fotolia is moving towards a smaller price band and removing these perceived unfairness against customers, almost all voices are negative again.

And the question was not completely rethorical, what would people really prefer?
A simple pricing scheme, same for all images? Special collections with higher prices as Istock offers (but maybe with stricter control to not allow similars with different prices)? The ability to set your own prices (as Fotolia still offers, just a bit more restrictive)? A image-level system as DT offers?

What I see here is different agencies trying to raise average prices using different methods. These different pricing schemes are competing on the market, and it looks like FT fears that their scheme was not competitive enough.

I personally would not be able to predict what's the best way to maximise prices without driving customers away. In the ideal world these different schemes would be open for participation for all (including independant) contributors, this way everybody could find his/her own strategy. Unfortunately this is not the case, it's only for exclusives and/or higher level contributors, so for myself these changes have no practical impact.

I agree. The DT level system seems to work ok, and more importantly, it has been that way since I can remember. Consistency. Something that IS lacks big time. Seems like every week/month, some new scheme is introduced.

I'd hardly hold DT's pricing architecture as a shining light judging by overall sales. My earnings have barely risen there in 3 years and they appear to have been steadily losing market share against other agencies over the same timescale. One image can still be 9x more expensive than another simply by virtue of it being old enough to have sold 50 times. There's images at IS that sell more than that every week.

In fact I was comparing DT with FT, regarding the original discussion, as there were some posts agreeing with FT strategy.

I have to agree. I like the fact that iStock is moving away from being a pure micro agency. The possibility of higher prices for higher quality image motivates me to improve my work and aim at higher goals.

All good points, that does make a difference.

But at FT there still is the infamous "Infinity Collection" with different price tags, sometimes starting at 55 credits for an XS. And they are also mixed into every search page, not as prominent as on Istock but still this looks a lot like an effort to promote that collections. Even if you sort by downloads these images appear on the first pages, and I very much doubt that their real download numbers (which are not visible) are taken into account.

So there is intransparency to a certain degree on all these sites.

Exclusivity has been good for me too, up to now.

What you need to bear in mind is that although download numbers no longer matter, neither do dollars, at least as far as what you get for the following year's royalty percentage.

So if IS wants to manipulate contributor royalty rates further, they can increase credit prices and decrease the number of credits paid for each size or image type. If the buyer doesn't see much more than the expected annual price increase, what would they care about the credit total? But the contributor could be seriously hosed the following year when they don't meet their expected redeemed credit target.

IS is sweetening the pot for the recent changes by having increased Vetta & Agency prices and promising (at some point) to sell Vetta & Agency via Getty Images (with a flat 20% royalty and no redeemed credits getting added to your total). But as contributors we need to keep our eye on the ball that matters for us.

Support's reply to your query re-confirms my suspicion that it consists of no more than HAL9000 operating out of somewhere on the Indian sub-continent. Wondered why THE CHAD had been hanging around the FT forum for a couple of days answering 'little' questions like, "What does the green 's' mean next to my image?" He was really there to capture the blow-back (or lack of it) from this 'little,' unannounced major change