MicrostockGroup

It's not a bad idea by itself, but looking at worsening situation, who's going to be willing to listen or even take it under consideration?

Or you could drop those agencies and negotiate with the others?

Never mind what you like, you have to go with the selling power, put personal feelings aside and think dollars.

I think I'm more likely to go exclusive with istock   Even if you can negotiate better terms with FT, will they stand by them?  I really don't trust a site that has had so many commission cuts.  This strategy doesn't appeal to me at all.  I'm out.

Negotiate with IS ?  are you kidding me?  they wouldnt give you a penny for anything,  have you forgotten they are migrating to TS?  the biggest cheap-skate agency existing. You would be better off negotiating with Scrooge.

What are you talking about?  catch22 ? I have created a bloody good deal for myself and thats free to anybody to do,  BUT, you do have to have a cosiderable port or unique material, otherwise  its pointless. This I did over a year back.

Thats OK,  yes I already have these deals.

Funnily enough as an exclusive you get more from Scrooge at 0.40 for subs downloads than non-exclusives get from SS. If you look at overall percentages that are paid out for licensing content, IS is also significantly higher than SS, because it pays exclusive percentages on about half the sales.

SS have been smart in finding a formula, and not changing it once it worked, but in percentage terms, they're still the lowest paying agency amongst the top 4, which is how its been since they started.

DT and FT are the agencies that started with the premise that they paid more than the competition, but both started whittling back the percentages once they had enough content. FT is known for cutting special deals on ranking with some contributors, and who knows DT might do something as well, but its unlikely to be for everyone who asks.

OK. I want 50% commission from Fotolia. That's my demand. Good for the industry. How about it then?

How do you work that out? I get about 30% from SS but only 18% from Istock. Istock are by far the lowest paying agency when compared directly to others on either exclusive or non-exclusive terms. The only difference with SS is that they don't have an exclusive option ... yet.

Instead of always trying to run down the competition to Istock you'd better start waking up to the fact that you've jumped on-board a sinking ship. They've run that ship into the rocks and my guess is that it won't be too much longer before you'll be begging SS & DT to rescue your portfolio earnings.

So what do you think "it averages out to" then? What information are you basing your guess on?

Back in 2004/5, when SS had been going for a few months, Oringer stated on the forum that SS were paying out between 36-40% in commissions on sub sales (if I remember the figures correctly). Don't forget that it was a relatively new business model and it relied on subscribers to not download their full entitlement to be profitable at all. It was a risk borne by SS. Since then SS has always had to tread the tightrope between paying high enough commissions to ensure contributors did not go exclusive with Istock whilst also remaining profitable.

Also remember that SS are probably paying out a 3c referral fee on most subscription sales in addition to the commission for the photographer. I only have one referral (my brother) who has a small portfolio but even so I've earned nearly $1K from his sales.

What about subscriber behaviour? To me it is conceivable that a subscriber might only download about 10 images a day, out of their allowance of 25, and probably few or none on weekends. Any fewer than that and the subscription would probably not be good value. All in all I'd guess that SS are probably averaging a bit more than 30% in commissions and referrals.

Holgs said "in percentage terms".