MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Shutterstock.com => Topic started by: hatman12 on February 25, 2008, 16:04
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Dear Submitters:
We wanted to let you know that we've been working hard on the details of your 2008 commission increase, and we think you'll be very pleased with the new terms. The final stage of this process is to test new price points for Shutterstock products, which we will do over the next two months. We will then evaluate the results of these price increases and finalize your raise. We expect to be able to announce the raise to you during the first two weeks of May. It will be effective immediately.
This year we will also be experimenting with some "starter" products that offer a less expensive entry point to account holders that have never purchased from us before. These new products will offer a brief trial of our user-friendly subscription model, so the account holder can experience first hand all of the benefits of being a paid Shutterstock customer. We're confident that by doing this we'll convert even more site users into happy -- and actively downloading -- customers.
We're proud that we have the best library in the industry and offer the best products, and we will continue to encourage you, our talented submitters, to submit your outstanding content. Thank you for letting us represent your work.
Best Regards,
Shutterstock
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Details are still pending, but everyone has started to make guesstimates.
You can read the fine print here:
http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33599
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Hmmm.
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Double hmmmmmm
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Thanks for posting the link!
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I'm looking forward to an increase! I could certainly use it! lol
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raise = cool!!
new products = ???
I like the thankyou for letting us represent your work. Kinda nice, sometimes I feel that agencies (both macro / micro) seem to be think I should be really grateful that will represent my work and it is nice to see the manners and attitude. hmm but then again, some of the rubbish I have put out, I probably should be thankful :):)
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Good to hear! If they go along with the price increase for the buyers, the new commission should be ~ 41 cents a raise by ~37 %. That would be a step in the right direction. Now it is time for DT ,StockXpert, Snapvillage to raise their subscription. Which agency will be next?
Of course also for Crestock, but there it does not sound as if they will raise it anytime soon.
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Hope that other subsciption site will follow the change. That will probably make me change my mind at Stockxpert about opting out.
But I'm quite sure it's not gone be a 100% increase (25 to 50). So it's have to be an other form of subsciption. Otherwise I don't care too much about the announcement :(
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I think SS is the only agency who could take a big step and make sub prices more decent I hope they will do that and others would follow them.
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waiting patiently for may to come ...
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well i'm more into waiting unpatiently ;D
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Anyway, I'm really hoping for a rather substantial increase (let's say 0.40) and not the obvious 5 cents raise to 0.35.
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they only do it not to offend photographers who see increases on other sites. and what they will do is to computer the average of those price increases and will get away with that.
Btw, what is the average of the other big5 price increases this year ?
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Hmm.. the average price increases..
I'm not really keeping a record but here's what i remember:
Stock expert will raise prices by about 40-50% this evening
DT lowered the required amount of download for an image to gain a level (and thus becoming more expensive = meaning more $)
Fotolia raised prices by changing the size of pics and their prices went up a little. Not sure how much.
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well no news on the price increases, but it sounds like there is going to be a number of tiers..
http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/abt36091.html
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I think their lawyers wasn't have anything to do ::) Do I'm wrong to say that this is the second time in 3 months that they change 3 words in big paragraphs - I was having an alert on my account lately but I don't remember why?
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well no news on the price increases, but it sounds like there is going to be a number of tiers..
[url]http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/abt36091.html[/url]
So it does.....
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It's a pretty safe bet that this is the most anticipated commission increase so far this year.
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I better keep contributing then. This month looks to be my best ever
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Let's understand something - SS announced its new prices to customers in March, and that announcement didn't include anything about different prices for different sizes. So unless SS wants to make yet another pricing change (unlikely) this commission review CANNOT include increased payment for larger sizes unless SS wants to fund that out of their own share (also unlikely).
So the only option is to increase the existing payments or introduce an additional tier.
Given the unhappiness expressed by Yuri and others on the SS forums, I should think it very likely indeed that SS will introduce a higher band for more prolific contributors. BUT, remember that these contributors are not the ones that make SS any profit; yes, they attract customers, but they are the least profitable for SS.
I'll be very surprised indeed if SS increases beyond 40c for upper tier contributors.
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well no news on the price increases, but it sounds like there is going to be a number of tiers..
[url]http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/abt36091.html[/url]
So it does.....
How are people jumping from "change in format" to adding a number of tiers. All they did was take the commission terms out of the TOS and put them in a table which they then incorporate by reference into the contract. The only change I see is that they made their TOS and rate tables look more like other agencies.
Leaf, how are you jumping from a simple change in format of a contract to a huge change in the way they do business? I agree with Vonkara on this one, it looks like the lawyers just wanted to make it easier to change commissions without changing the contract itself. "It's all about billable hours baby".
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well i took it from here
We're doing this in order to accommodate a new, separate Earnings Schedule page, wherein we show all the different earnings rates in an easy-to-read grid rather than in the text of the TOS itself. We hope you find this centralized schedule of rates useful and clear.
I bolded the text i wanted to highlight, text from here (http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/abt36091.html)
seeing as they said 'all the different earnings rates' that sounds like more than 2 tiers to me. if there was 2 I would have said both the earning rates....
By tiers I wasn't meaning different prices for different sized downloads, i was meaning different commission levels for how much you have allready earned on shutterstock.
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Given the unhappiness expressed by Yuri and others on the SS forums, I should think it very likely indeed that SS will introduce a higher band for more prolific contributors. BUT, remember that these contributors are not the ones that make SS any profit; yes, they attract customers, but they are the least profitable for SS.
I'll be very surprised indeed if SS increases beyond 40c for upper tier contributors.
it will be very interesting to see what shutterstock does. I agree with sharpley that this must be the most anticipated raise of the stock sites. Yuri wrote a very convincing post here (http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33599&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=50), I wonder what shutterstock will do to try and please the top contributors. I really don't think 40 cents will be enough to make too many Yuri and friends happy, when they stated that SS needed $1.00/download to compete with the likes of fotolia and SS
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Given the unhappiness expressed by Yuri and others on the SS forums, I should think it very likely indeed that SS will introduce a higher band for more prolific contributors. BUT, remember that these contributors are not the ones that make SS any profit; yes, they attract customers, but they are the least profitable for SS.
I'll be very surprised indeed if SS increases beyond 40c for upper tier contributors.
it will be very interesting to see what shutterstock does. I agree with sharpley that this must be the most anticipated raise of the stock sites. Yuri wrote a very convincing post here ([url]http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33599&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=50[/url]), I wonder what shutterstock will do to try and please the top contributors. I really don't think 40 cents will be enough to make too many Yuri and friends happy, when they stated that SS needed $1.00/download to compete with the likes of fotolia and SS
Yuri wrote another very convincing post here, at microstockgroup forum, about low subscription earning and opt-out at StockXpert. But he is still selling at StockXpert for $0.30 and Creastock for $0.25. People saying one thing and do another.
Do you think that all "angry" people will leave SS if rise is only $0.40 ? :-\
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If SS pay more than 40c I'll eat my hat.
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Given the unhappiness expressed by Yuri and others on the SS forums, I should think it very likely indeed that SS will introduce a higher band for more prolific contributors. BUT, remember that these contributors are not the ones that make SS any profit; yes, they attract customers, but they are the least profitable for SS.
I'll be very surprised indeed if SS increases beyond 40c for upper tier contributors.
it will be very interesting to see what shutterstock does. I agree with sharpley that this must be the most anticipated raise of the stock sites. Yuri wrote a very convincing post here ([url]http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33599&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=50[/url]), I wonder what shutterstock will do to try and please the top contributors. I really don't think 40 cents will be enough to make too many Yuri and friends happy, when they stated that SS needed $1.00/download to compete with the likes of fotolia and SS
Yuri wrote another very convincing post here, at microstockgroup forum, about low subscription earning and opt-out at StockXpert. But he is still selling at StockXpert for $0.30 and Creastock for $0.25. People saying one thing and do another.
Do you think that all "angry" people will leave SS if rise is only $0.40 ? :-\
well good point. Yuri makes .30 at shutterstock though (just to be technical), along with everyone else who has sold over $500 there.
I wouldn't be surprised if shutterstock goes up to 40 cents .. but more than that... i dunno. I am hoping to be pleasantly surprised!
I agree it would be foolish for any non-exclusive NOT to submit to shutterstock, even if we only got .25 cents, but the point Yuri made was that if shutterstock does not offer a decent increase in earnings istock may be become more and more attractive to new photographers gaining a larger and larger share of the market.
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That's the way I read it too. I don't see anyone just walking away from SS and remaining independent. But I could see a small exodus of contributors to IS as exclusives.
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I agree that SS will probably only do a .05 to .10 increase to .35 or .40, but it will probably be associated with another sales tier. For example, raise the current rates from .25/.30 to .30/.35, but then add another tier for .40 (possibly for sales over $1000). Sort of like this:
.30 - < $500 sales
.35 - < $1000 sales
.40 - > $1000 sales
They can't change anything drastically because they have already raised prices to customers and are basing their increase on that change in price.
If they do go over .40, then I believe that they will just be adding more sales tiers. For example:
.30 - < $500 sales
.35 - < $1000 sales
.40 - < $1500 sales
.45 - < $2500 sales
.50 - < $5000 sales
.55 - > $5000 sales
Or something like that.
I also don't think that they will raise prices as high as the $1 that Yuri suggests, because if they did it would show that they were making much more profit than they previously stated and then people would want to know why they were keeping so much profit previously.
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well as yuri notice, last time they increased prices by 70% while they increased commisions only 30%, so he was arguing they should increase commissions extra much to make up for the low raise last time.
I think it might looks something like this :)
.25 - < $500 sales
.30 - < $2000 sales
.35 - < $5000 sales
.40 - < $10000 sales
.50 - < $50000 sales
.60 - > $100000 sales
ahh it is so fun to guess, we could continue this forever ... we need may to come soon.
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well i took it from here
We're doing this in order to accommodate a new, separate Earnings Schedule page, wherein we show all the different earnings rates in an easy-to-read grid rather than in the text of the TOS itself. We hope you find this centralized schedule of rates useful and clear.
I bolded the text i wanted to highlight, text from here ([url]http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/abt36091.html[/url])
seeing as they said 'all the different earnings rates' that sounds like more than 2 tiers to me. if there was 2 I would have said both the earning rates....
By tiers I wasn't meaning different prices for different sized downloads, i was meaning different commission levels for how much you have allready earned on shutterstock.
They already have "different earnings rates" i.e. they have a rate for EL, affiliate sales, footage, imagery (2). Sure they could introduce more but my point is that the wording doesn't reveal anything.
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I'd love to see a $0.50 but realistically that won't happen. It would be a fair rate, but still not a realistic expectation.
I'm expecting the worst and hoping for the best on this one. Worst being $0.35 or less.
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I am thinking .40 sounds like the most likely.
You are right, .35 would be considerably below expectations and might benefit istock with some more exclusive contributors...
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well as yuri notice, last time they increased prices by 70% while they increased commisions only 30%, so he was arguing they should increase commissions extra much to make up for the low raise last time.
But even if they raised commissions 70% this time (which I highly doubt), that would still only bring royalties to .425 and 0.51, which is nowhere near the $1 that Yuri is asking for.
I think it might looks something like this :)
.25 - < $500 sales
.30 - < $2000 sales
.35 - < $5000 sales
.40 - < $10000 sales
.50 - < $50000 sales
.60 - > $100000 sales
That would mean that anyone with sales of < $2000 would not get a raise. I think that there would be a huge outcry from many submitters if that happened, since the majority of submitters don't come anywhere near that mark. To get to the $2000 mark, you would have had to have sold at least 7000 images!
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I think .35 is all we're gonna see. Particularly in view of all the competition offering subscription deals.
And as for a tiered structure, that would be complete suicide for them. Remember their whole business plan is based on their customers NOT downloading the full quota. Giving their biggest contributors an incentive to upload more photo's is not really going to help them at all.
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...You are right, .35 would be considerably below expectations and might benefit istock with some more exclusive contributors...
This should be SS's biggest concern. Sure a lot of people will always stay loyal to SS, and never consider exclusivity no matter what SS does. But more and more people might give exclusivity more consideration if the trend I'm seeing around the forums continues. IS seems to be outpacing SS in contributor profits growth. Given similar rates of upload, IS seems to pull even or ahead of SS over time, even for people who previously had SS as their landslide front-runner. What keeps many people away from istock exclusivity is the simple fact that they make more money being non-exclusive, largely the result of SS. But take SS out of the equation, or severly reduce the percentage of earnings that SS represents for a contributor, and istock exclusivty starts to make more sense.
SS needs to really up the ante with the commission raise if they expect to keep these contributors over the next few years. If the disproportionate growth continues, the numbers might align for more contributors to reconsider ditching SS for istock exclusively.
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I doubt that their largest contributers withhold much of anything from them, they would then have to find a way to take photos more efficiently to upload more since I suspect that their time is already maxed out. For the top level contributers, I highly doubt (and Yuri's post backs this up) that SS makes up a very significant portion of their income.
It will be interesting to see the aftermath of what becomes of IS's subscription plan. To my eyes they are leveling a two pronged all out assault on the market in a major power grab; a direct attack by offering a favorable pricing plan for the most lucrative customers in the industry, attempting to lure them away from the competition, and outflanking their competition by stealing some of their best photographers. Just like a battle, these two facets are mutually beneficial, more customers = more earnings for contributers, more earnings = more exclusives, more exclusives = competition's photo catalog hurt at the highest level (IS wouldn't be stealing noobs, they'd be stealing some of the best and most established photographers that contribute many of the premier photos in a collection), hurt the opponents photo catalog = more customers and the cycle continues.
IMO SS has to do something drastic, they will be harmed the most by IS's power grab, and I don't think that the tiered approach to payments is the answer, they have to find something else. It is not the super top level earners that are the problem, it is the step below. These guys I suspect is where the bulk of their broad quality comes from. Higher quality than the noobs, not quite as much a the super top guys, but there are lot more of them than the super top guys. These are the people that IS will be stealing. The problem for SS is that losing these people will spread the earnings,that was concentrated in these mid level guys to the lowest people, more than shifting it to the super top, their customer base is already established in their areas of expertise. This will make the ascension up the tiers more rapid for their lowest level contributers, who there are lot more of. At first it wouldn't be significant, probably good for them actually, but over time as more and more ascend up the ranks, the payout per file would increase.
For example (using wild guesses for #'s, just to illustrate my point):
Currently:
50% sold at higher rate
50% sold at lower rate
Lose a bunch to exclusives, even though they gave a good raise to the top group and the situation becomes:
40% sold at higher rate
60% sold at lower rate
Because of the nature of tiers, concentrating more money in the lower tiers will rapidly become:
60% sold at the highest rate
40% sold at the lowest rate
Now this is assuming that IS can steal a bunch of exclusives, but the nature of SS leads to the fact the they have to out do both whatever the increase at IS will be, plus the multiplier for going exclusive. As is (as I gather from all my reading here and elsewhere and personal experience), income growth at SS is rather stagnant, adding more is necessary just to maintain a level, which is not true elsewhere, adding more grows income. Now you can increase the submission rate to SS to grow income, but the midlevel guys in the crosshairs are probably maxed out in their submission rate, they have the time and experience that their shooting efficiency is at a peak. For these guys to see significant income growth at SS, the only way to accomplish it is via a big raise.
SS can only give so big of a raise to these mid level guys and remain solvent, they lack powerful financial backing unless they are currently running at a very excessive profit level. IS has the financial backing an corporate stability to operate strategically in or near the red for a short period of time in an effort to offer a more lucrative deal to these mid level guys. If income growth shows acceleration at IS, there will be takers for the exclusivity option, the more takers the worse the situation becomes over the long term for SS, as the acceleration up the tiers for their lowest level guys would begin.
Do I have an answer for what SS can do strategically? No, I can't see one. On a whole as a business their talent pool of photographers will swing increasingly more toward the beginners in the industry, and IS will steal some of their customers that follow the quality photos. In many ways SS today reminds me of AOL in the mid 90's. Their buisiness model allowed rapid ascension to near the top of the industry, but as both their customers and contributers grow into the young industry they find that there are better options available once established. At first AOL was the internet for everybody, but over time they increasingly became the internet for beginners, eventually there reached a point where there were no beginners left. I don't see that happening in this industry, there will always be beginners, but the dropping from a place for everybody to contribute to the place for beginners to contribute could very well happen, offering a tiered based raise would do little to solve this.
SS needs to find a way with their buisiness model to maintain linear or near linear earnings growth for a mature port with continued contributions, something that is not occurring, the models at other sites that create the near linear growth for mid sized ports become more and more lucrative over time, and SS does not have the financial ability to make up this difference with a tier based pay system, since they would have to continually raise prices, and continually give larger and larger raises to the mid level contributers just to keep up with the competition for their services.
If my thinking is correct and the power grab by IS is successful, the potential is strong for a major merger looming on the horizon between SS and one of the per photo big players like DT, offering a good exclusivity option of their own, forming a binary system of major players before IS can take over market dominance.
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And as for a tiered structure, that would be complete suicide for them. Remember their whole business plan is based on their customers NOT downloading the full quota. Giving their biggest contributors an incentive to upload more photo's is not really going to help them at all.
But the reasons buyers don't download their full quota is not (my guess, obviously I don't have any real data on this) because they run out of things to download.
The corporate folks aren't in on weekends and if things get busy, it isn't their #1 priority to donwload stuff today, so they skip days here and there. None of that changes if SS changes the commission structure for contributors.
If SS contributors look like DT (it's been a while, but when checking about a year ago it was a tiny percentage of contributors that had big portfolios and were making the bulk of the sales), it's true that only a small percentage of contributors will get the higher royalties, but those are the folks most likely matter to SS - the ones they don't want to pull their portfolios.
I think the numbers in leaf's chart are perhaps too low (for example, I'm not yet past the $10,000 mark and I think to go from 30 cents to 40 cents is OK, but doesn't feel like much of a "big hug' to me), but I think a tiered system of some sort makes a lot of sense.
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I doubt that their largest contributers withhold much of anything from them, they would then have to find a way to take photos more efficiently to upload more since I suspect that their time is already maxed out. For the top level contributers, I highly doubt (and Yuri's post backs this up) that SS makes up a very significant portion of their income.
It will be interesting to see the aftermath of what becomes of IS's subscription plan. To my eyes they are leveling a two pronged all out assault on the market in a major power grab; a direct attack by offering a favorable pricing plan for the most lucrative customers in the industry, attempting to lure them away from the competition, and outflanking their competition by stealing some of their best photographers. Just like a battle, these two facets are mutually beneficial, more customers = more earnings for contributers, more earnings = more exclusives, more exclusives = competition's photo catalog hurt at the highest level (IS wouldn't be stealing noobs, they'd be stealing some of the best and most established photographers that contribute many of the premier photos in a collection), hurt the opponents photo catalog = more customers and the cycle continues.
IMO SS has to do something drastic, they will be harmed the most by IS's power grab, and I don't think that the tiered approach to payments is the answer, they have to find something else. It is not the super top level earners that are the problem, it is the step below. These guys I suspect is where the bulk of their broad quality comes from. Higher quality than the noobs, not quite as much a the super top guys, but there are lot more of them than the super top guys. These are the people that IS will be stealing. The problem for SS is that losing these people will spread the earnings,that was concentrated in these mid level guys to the lowest people, more than shifting it to the super top, their customer base is already established in their areas of expertise. This will make the ascension up the tiers more rapid for their lowest level contributers, who there are lot more of. At first it wouldn't be significant, probably good for them actually, but over time as more and more ascend up the ranks, the payout per file would increase.
For example (using wild guesses for #'s, just to illustrate my point):
Currently:
50% sold at higher rate
50% sold at lower rate
Lose a bunch to exclusives, even though they gave a good raise to the top group and the situation becomes:
40% sold at higher rate
60% sold at lower rate
Because of the nature of tiers, concentrating more money in the lower tiers will rapidly become:
60% sold at the highest rate
40% sold at the lowest rate
Now this is assuming that IS can steal a bunch of exclusives, but the nature of SS leads to the fact the they have to out do both whatever the increase at IS will be, plus the multiplier for going exclusive. As is (as I gather from all my reading here and elsewhere and personal experience), income growth at SS is rather stagnant, adding more is necessary just to maintain a level, which is not true elsewhere, adding more grows income. Now you can increase the submission rate to SS to grow income, but the midlevel guys in the crosshairs are probably maxed out in their submission rate, they have the time and experience that their shooting efficiency is at a peak. For these guys to see significant income growth at SS, the only way to accomplish it is via a big raise.
SS can only give so big of a raise to these mid level guys and remain solvent, they lack powerful financial backing unless they are currently running at a very excessive profit level. IS has the financial backing an corporate stability to operate strategically in or near the red for a short period of time in an effort to offer a more lucrative deal to these mid level guys. If income growth shows acceleration at IS, there will be takers for the exclusivity option, the more takers the worse the situation becomes over the long term for SS, as the acceleration up the tiers for their lowest level guys would begin.
Do I have an answer for what SS can do strategically? No, I can't see one. On a whole as a business their talent pool of photographers will swing increasingly more toward the beginners in the industry, and IS will steal some of their customers that follow the quality photos. In many ways SS today reminds me of AOL in the mid 90's. Their buisiness model allowed rapid ascension to near the top of the industry, but as both their customers and contributers grow into the young industry they find that there are better options available once established. At first AOL was the internet for everybody, but over time they increasingly became the internet for beginners, eventually there reached a point where there were no beginners left. I don't see that happening in this industry, there will always be beginners, but the dropping from a place for everybody to contribute to the place for beginners to contribute could very well happen, offering a tiered based raise would do little to solve this.
SS needs to find a way with their buisiness model to maintain linear or near linear earnings growth for a mature port with continued contributions, something that is not occurring, the models at other sites that create the near linear growth for mid sized ports become more and more lucrative over time, and SS does not have the financial ability to make up this difference with a tier based pay system, since they would have to continually raise prices, and continually give larger and larger raises to the mid level contributers just to keep up with the competition for their services.
Waldo you should have a blog :) :)
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Waldo you should have a blog :) :)
But that would take away from the fun of interaction with everybody here.
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I'm the broken record that keeps saying SS will have to sell single photos just to keep in check with Istock. Evolve or die.
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...If my thinking is correct and the power grab by IS is successful, the potential is strong for a major merger looming on the horizon between SS and one of the per photo big players like DT, offering a good exclusivity option of their own, forming a binary system of major players before IS can take over market dominance.
Interesting thought. I hadn't really considered a merger before, and what that could mean for the industry. Could be cool to see how such a joining of companies could tip the scales.
I would love to see more if this sort of thing happening in microstock. So far, business dealings have been pretty mild in this industry, except for the istock acquisition. Mergers could shake things up in a good way. Maybe a company with good marketing muscle joins up with a lesser known company that has a massive collection.
Also on the contributor side I'd like to see some interesting dealings. Buying and selling of entire portfolios for re-distribution, more groups of artists and small businesses created around microstock, etc.
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A lot of industries, as they more from infancy to maturity, act very similar to the ways that star systems form. At first there is just a big pool of matter (customers), over time clumping points form (companies that cater to them) and the mass begins to collect. As these points begin to grow they develop gravity to attract more matter to them. As more and more matter is brought in to the system a collection of random mid-size bodies begins to take shape. This is a very unstable system so given more time and/or more mass it will morph into a stable system.
These stable systems follow 3 primary forms, single system can develop (like ours) with one large company and several smaller ones (video games in the 80's and 90's are a prime example). Binary systems can develop with large bodies and several smaller ones (Coke/Pepsi and GM/Ford prior to the 90's), or one body gets too large and it becomes a black hole and swallows up all matter (US Steel, Microsoft).
Once a market reaches a certain size and matures, almost surely a few of the top companies swallow up all of the competition, all that is left is a few minor players that are different enough from the giants to remain stable and separate.
The auto industry in America is a great example. Started with a bunch of different little companies, but then Ford made a market play that devoured customers. To combat a few of the other companies banded together and formed GM, it it became a very stable system for a long time. The few other auto makers that existed in America afterwards were very minor players compared to them. Global trade has changed the dynamic completely though and it is right now a fairly unstable system.
IS has begun their major power play, in the end IMO we will end up with either an IS centric system with a few other unique minor players, a system with IS and a conglomerate and a few minor players, or IS winning out and devouring everything. They are going to start * mass (customers/photographers) from the other companies with this move, the only way to stop them from from becoming overly dominant is for another big mass gobbler to step to the forefront, and this is typically done in the marketplace by the competition banding together.
Not yet, but if IS grows too much more this market is ripe for some investors to come in and merge a few companies into major competition for them. If IS steals too many customers, and profits elsewhere fall, owners would be much more willing to sell out to a major investor and cut and run with their profits. And we'd be left with a stable system of the big 2.
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You are right, .35 would be considerably below expectations and might benefit istock with some more exclusive contributors...
That sounds like a threat! :)
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...If my thinking is correct and the power grab by IS is successful, the potential is strong for a major merger looming on the horizon between SS and one of the per photo big players like DT, offering a good exclusivity option of their own, forming a binary system of major players before IS can take over market dominance.
Interesting thought. I hadn't really considered a merger before...Maybe a company with good marketing muscle joins up with a lesser known company that has a massive collection.
You mean like Corbis buying someone (instead of creating their own lets-condescend-to-the-little-amateurs homegrown effort)? But perhaps they don't qualify has having marketing muscle until they can turn a profit on their own business :)
Jupiter owns all or most of StockXpert; Inmagine owns 123rf; who is there who might be the marketing muscle side of that equation to buy up DT and SS (just for example) to rival iStock?
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Now this is assuming that IS can steal a bunch of exclusives, but the nature of SS leads to the fact the they have to out do both whatever the increase at IS will be, plus the multiplier for going exclusive. As is (as I gather from all my reading here and elsewhere and personal experience), income growth at SS is rather stagnant, adding more is necessary just to maintain a level, which is not true elsewhere, adding more grows income. Now you can increase the submission rate to SS to grow income, but the midlevel guys in the crosshairs are probably maxed out in their submission rate, they have the time and experience that their shooting efficiency is at a peak. For these guys to see significant income growth at SS, the only way to accomplish it is via a big raise.
Waldo, your posts are really interesting reading. You obviously understand economics and business very thoroughly. Would love to know what you do for your (other) day job... :)
I would like to point out that SS doesn't have to match Istock's income level plus exclusivity bonus by themselves. They do need to up the ante sufficiently that the income from their site plus the other 4 or so big six agencies besides IS will be higher than Istock income plus exclusivity bonus.
And since we are talking about mid to higher level contributors, it would be necessary to match or better the diamond level, double royalties on IS.
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Waldo, your posts are really interesting reading. You obviously understand economics and business very thoroughly. Would love to know what you do for your (other) day job.
Earlier, I was thinking the exact same thing!
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You mean like Corbis buying someone (instead of creating their own lets-condescend-to-the-little-amateurs homegrown effort)? But perhaps they don't qualify has having marketing muscle until they can turn a profit on their own business :)
Jupiter owns all or most of StockXpert; Inmagine owns 123rf; who is there who might be the marketing muscle side of that equation to buy up DT and SS (just for example) to rival iStock?
I'm not even saying that is has to be a stock company. Maybe some other company that is in a loosly related business could come in and acquire a mid-size microstock company, use their influence (be it marketing or whatever thing they do well) and make a well-funded entrance into stock that way.
Maybe it wouldn't even be much different than the companies you mentioned, where they do have good backing but still don't come close to rivaling istock. But at least that way we'd see some chake-up in the industry. Shake a few trees and see what flies out.
Something is going to happen. Not sure what, but i can see some movement taking place in the next few years. Even if only because of istock. Investors have taken notice, and will continue to take notice of that 5-year projection, and they may want to get involved in some microstock properties themselves.
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Waldo, your posts are really interesting reading. You obviously understand economics and business very thoroughly. Would love to know what you do for your (other) day job.
Earlier, I was thinking the exact same thing!
dido, well put waldo. Makes for some interesting reading.
->lisafx
the other 6 or so sites wouldn´t have to quite match istocks potential earnings because there is also the factor of time involved in uploading to 6-15+ sites. If a photog. had only one site to upload to they would save quite a bit of time that could be used for creating more pics... or in the big players case, save $$ paying people to upload their pictures to 10 different sites.
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Waldo, your posts are really interesting reading. You obviously understand economics and business very thoroughly. Would love to know what you do for your (other) day job.
Earlier, I was thinking the exact same thing!
I am a civil/structural/aviation engineer. Got my start as the on-site construction engineer for air traffic control towers (did the 3 big ones, ATL, MCO, MIA), now I design radio and visual Navaids for runways and airports, primary the VOR/DVORs that create the superhighways in the sky for commercial aircraft. I always wanted to engineer skyscrapers, got my fill with the towers, a very high stress and political environment (ATL is the pinnacle of tower construction, probably will never build one bigger in the western hemisphere), nowadays Navaids are much more laid back, the and the politics of it is completely changed. Though my job is almost 100% the implementation of what is commonly referred to as "pork" (all federal construction projects are). It is quite humorous to listen to political candidates talk about budget issues when you are directly connected to it and know how federal funding really works.
IMO the two companies that could benefit the most from a foray into MS are either Google or Yahoo. Google could tie a MS site catalogs into Google images and make boatloads of cash, they could more than double the customer base of the industry overnight, Yahoo could overhaul Flickr and have it loosely tied into a MS business. If they could prevent downloading of non-CC images at Flickr and direct people to an MS site and promote it at Flickr as well as on Yahoo, they too could completely change the industry and double the customer base. Right now google images and Flickr are a very primary source of blog photos, tapping that market and offering people images for a buck for their blogs at a very high traffic site would completely change everything.
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Waldo, your posts are really interesting reading. You obviously understand economics and business very thoroughly. Would love to know what you do for your (other) day job.
Earlier, I was thinking the exact same thing!
dido, well put waldo. Makes for some interesting reading.
->lisafx
the other 6 or so sites wouldn´t have to quite match istocks potential earnings because there is also the factor of time involved in uploading to 6-15+ sites. If a photog. had only one site to upload to they would save quite a bit of time that could be used for creating more pics... or in the big players case, save $$ paying people to upload their pictures to 10 different sites.
True, but it takes less time to upload to the other big 6 than to istock alone, my assistant spent the whole of yesterday uploading 35 images to istock, (merging releases, disambiguating, categorizing ......... making lightboxes etc ... )
Today he finished 51 images in all other sites in 2 and a half hours.
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I agree with Andres. The whole argument of "the time you spend uploading to multiple sites could be spent shooting" just doesn't wash with me either. I usually do my uploading late in the evening when I definitely wouldn't be shooting. With ftp uploading to all the other sites, it hardly takes any time at all and finishing the files can be done in evenings too.
The one site that does stop my creative process is iStockphoto - it also takes me about a day to get 35 images online and at the moment, I can't upload at all because I need to use ImageManager and it is not working properly.
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Waldo, your posts are really interesting reading. You obviously understand economics and business very thoroughly. Would love to know what you do for your (other) day job.
Earlier, I was thinking the exact same thing!
Waldo, thats why I said you should start your own blog. Sorry if you understood it the way that I do not want you here. Thats not the case, I just saw that you have potential :) Definately I did not mean that you should post less in this forum.
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I dont know about you guys but IS raise is heavily scaring me! Why?
1) Absolutely slow and user unfriendly upload and website combined with their incredibly low upload limit is deadly. In case you have now about 1000 pics to upload, you are out of business there - no chance to get it there in several months!
2) They refuse some pics for very disputable reasons and I really dont have time to waste and "fix" and reupload everything they reject. "Artifacts" which are visible at 200% magnification (thats about 6-7x larger then printing size with 300dpi!!!), "bad clipping path" with objects never clipped (just minimum level adjustment)... then if I fix that and reupload they find something else.
3) They clearly show their connection with Getty - brutal requirements to be IS exclusive photographer, you cant upload even refused files elsewhere, very small commision... simply doesnt look very much like fair business for me.
So I hope SS will find some way how to competete with them though I agree they must do serious steps and pretty fast. I can clearly see why is IS so attractive for some ppl with great portfolio already there. SS is not an ideal agency and we can also say alot critical things but I think we should wish for competition rather then fusion - fusion would probably result in lower commisions and more requirements, limits and corporate brutality just because theres no other agency.
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Waldo, your posts are really interesting reading. You obviously understand economics and business very thoroughly. Would love to know what you do for your (other) day job.
Earlier, I was thinking the exact same thing!
Waldo, thats why I said you should start your own blog. Sorry if you understood it the way that I do not want you here. Thats not the case, I just saw that you have potential :) Definately I did not mean that you should post less in this forum.
Don't worry I did not take it that way. My time is currently stretched to the max, something would have to give. Maybe a good rainy day I'll have the time to look in to it, my initial forays into it (myspace) though were rather poor however, but that was when I was still a relative noob to being online (being online and using online are two completely different things IMO, I used it, but didn't participate in it for a number of years. Is there any place out there that is superior to other sites for hosting a blog?
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If DT and SS merged, I think I'd go exclusive with them. They are my top 2 earners. Combining the sales of both along with a higher rate for being exclusive seems very worthwhile. I really wouldn't miss all the uploading nonsense at IS either!
It would be nice to see them merge AND add the ability for contributors to set their own prices on some images. Now that would be an awesome site!
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Last year the announcement of the new earnings schedule was on Apr 23.. perhaps it is coming soon...
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If DT and SS merged, I think I'd go exclusive with them. They are my top 2 earners. Combining the sales of both along with a higher rate for being exclusive seems very worthwhile. I really wouldn't miss all the uploading nonsense at IS either!
It would be nice to see them merge AND add the ability for contributors to set their own prices on some images. Now that would be an awesome site!
I have been of the mind that I would never consider exclusivity. However, that combination would get me thinking long and hard. ;)
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Last year the announcement of the new earnings schedule was on Apr 23.. perhaps it is coming soon...
Somebody is keen as mustard lol
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Last year the announcement of the new earnings schedule was on Apr 23.. perhaps it is coming soon...
Somebody is keen as mustard lol
yep... sitting an waiting i am :)
I wouldn't have known the date, but i found myself parousing the shutterstock forums and saw someone posted the announcement from last year for interest sake.
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That's the way I read it too. I don't see anyone just walking away from SS and remaining independent. But I could see a small exodus of contributors to IS as exclusives.
Yeah, I agree, you may see a small exodus on the move.
...on the other hand....
One thing I've learned in the business world in my 60 years on the planet... nobody is irreplaceable. I've seen it happen in too many instances to count. Folks who think they've got the world by the short ones, thinking they can't be replaced, thinking they can call the shots....
only to find themselves on the outside looking in.
You (I came back to modify this, when I read it I thought DanP might be thinking the 'you' was him, it's you as in a person in general-this comment agrees with DanP...now back to my comment).... you.. may be the top photog in the site, top in the industry, top in the world..... but there are hundreds(thousands) of young shark photogs two inches off your six with afterbuners on full ready to step in and take your place.
And any company worth its salt knows that. A photog that thinks his or her giant portfolio would be a leverage to force a site's hand, is playing in dangerous waters or at the very least wasting their time.
I have had to deal with this very thing in my day job for the last 34 years and I'm here to tell you, I (and my company) have never lost. There was/is always somebody else to take the last guy's place. And as good as I am in my job, I am under no false impressions that some clown can and will take my job some day. The power players never affect us..in these times of recession and downward economies... we're still turning record profits (no, I don't work for big oil). Any business that needs to submit to this sort of pressure isn't on stable foundation to begin with. Heck, today, even the UAW and Teamsters can't throw their weight around like they did in the last century.
If you think your portfolio being there or not will make a difference to SS or IS or a site of that quality.... you're wrong. There's plenty of people with cameras out there and each day, they shoot better images...
Just MHO. 8)=tom
p.s. this is not directed at anyone in particular... and does not mean I minimize the fantastic portfolios and abilities of mega-photogs. Just saying, there haven't been many people in history that were able to pull coups off.... successfully.
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LOL - Are you saying that if I leave SS they won't crumble? Insanity!
I totally agree with everything you are saying. To reiterate, I just don't see many people leaving despite the insinuations that they might if the raise isn't large enough. And even if a few huge players were to go exclusive at IS or FT, it would not affect SS the company.
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Entirely agree with you Tom.
SS now has 100,000 contributing photographers with more joining every day. As someone else pointed out, there are photographers in Russia and Eastern Europe now turning out Dolgachov replicas on an industrial basis. There are 20, 50, 100 photographers waiting to replace Yuri, Andres etc, already planning shoots to replicate their style and content.
However, iStock made an announcement several weeks ago that they will at some point introduce IP protection for their contributors, and said that photographers would be able to 'object' if they see work that appears to be a copy of their own.
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BTW, this problem isn't the 'fault' of the agencies - its something resulting from the 'visibility' of online catalogs.
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BTW, this problem isn't the 'fault' of the agencies - its something resulting from the 'visibility' of online catalogs.
All the more reason I'm for removing the "Top 50" list and other "Most Popular" lists from stock sites. They only serve to encourage replication.
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Geez they're taking their sweet time to announce this one, doesn't it go into effect in less than a week (next Thur)?
The SS raise.....the new 5D.....the IS sub start.....tis a time of waiting (doesn't help either that I've be giddily waiting for the NFL draft tomorrow and have reached near frenzied levels).
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Geez they're taking their sweet time to announce this one, doesn't it go into effect in less than a week (next Thur)?
They said that it will happen in the first two weeks of may. From the official thread:
We expect to be able to announce the raise to you during the first two weeks of May. It will be effective immediately.
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Geez they're taking their sweet time to announce this one, doesn't it go into effect in less than a week (next Thur)?
They said that it will happen in the first two weeks of may. From the official thread:
We expect to be able to announce the raise to you during the first two weeks of May. It will be effective immediately.
Meanwhile 100,000 contributors sit and wait... no pressure guys take your time!
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Meanwhile 100,000 contributors sit and wait... no pressure guys take your time!
:D Jus hope that it will be a great announcement and not like "all contributors will receive a 11% increase and will start in January 2009
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Geez they're taking their sweet time to announce this one, doesn't it go into effect in less than a week (next Thur)?
They said that it will happen in the first two weeks of may. From the official thread:
We expect to be able to announce the raise to you during the first two weeks of May. It will be effective immediately.
Meanwhile 100,000 contributors sit and wait... no pressure guys take your time!
lol!!!
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Oh crap, I saw the title of this thread and thought there might be news.
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It is human nature to be keen to deliver good news, and reluctant to announce news that might be disappointing........
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It is human nature to be keen to deliver good news, and reluctant to announce news that might be disappointing........
It is also fairly common, to shoot the messenger for delivering the bad news. ;D (or speaking the truth)
I'm waiting for a reason to go exclusive with SS and stop all the fooling around with different sizes, different forms to fill out, various upload methods, categories, and every websites individual idea of how my photos should be found, what's acceptable, and what their identity is in the stock market.
I know I won't because there is enough going on with other sites to encourage diversity and getting a variety of photos on a variety of websites.
I don't believe I'd want to be exclusive at a site that limits uploads as much as IS does, although this does stand up well for them, as their quality control over submissions is manageable, and more consistent, with lower upload volume.
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I don't believe I'd want to be exclusive at a site that limits uploads as much as IS does, although this does stand up well for them, as their quality control over submissions is manageable, and more consistent, with lower upload volume.
In fairness to istock, the restrictive upload limits are in place for non-exclusives. The exclusive limits are so high they should not be a problem for even the most prolific photographers.
BTW, why would you want to go exclusive with SS? Do they even offer an exclusivity bonus?
To my mind IS is the only site that makes exclusivity look remotely attractive.
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No exclusivity of images is offered at Shutterstock. If they did offer it, I would be most interested in testing the waters. Perhaps it will come one day?
Racephoto,
For what it is worth, there are many contributors who claim on the SS forums to contribute to SS, and SS only, despite the lack of exclusivity. I make too much elsewhere to give it up, but I can see why they do so. Shutterstock has fast (and imo very fair) reviews, the site is ultra-reliable, and sales are great. Plus there is no search engine hocus pocus going on...buyers simply sort by "Newest First," or "Most Popular," which is obviously just sales divided by time online. Anyone with 10 minutes and a calculator can verify this on their own portfolio rankings.
I absolutely love Shutterstock, and I have a lot of faith and hope that Jon will deliver the goods big time with the forthcoming raise.
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I don't believe I'd want to be exclusive at a site that limits uploads as much as IS does, although this does stand up well for them, as their quality control over submissions is manageable, and more consistent, with lower upload volume.
In fairness to istock, the restrictive upload limits are in place for non-exclusives. The exclusive limits are so high they should not be a problem for even the most prolific photographers.
BTW, why would you want to go exclusive with SS? Do they even offer an exclusivity bonus?
To my mind IS is the only site that makes exclusivity look remotely attractive.
Mostly my bad sense of humor. I think I threatened to go exclusive with Snap Village last month. (a place where I've never had one sale yet) ;D
I can't see how it's at all called fairness to limit non-exclusives to 15 photos a week. It's more like holding someones hand to a fire, and asking if the would like an ounce of water, but if they're exclusive they can have a bucket full.
It's a good way for iStock to encourage people to go exclusive. So are the increased payments and scales. The upload limits are just short of holding artists hostage if they want to market there?
However it's a good business move, and attracts serious contributors who want to optimize their time investment and photo efforts for the greatest profits. So I can't say is actually bad at all.
I'm not one to complain that anything needs to be fair, especially when it comes to business competition in a tough market. There is nothing unethical or wrong with the way iStock runs their program.
What I'm trying to say is I can see their side and I can also see from a non-exclusive contributors side, that it's not easy to get photos into their system, without going exclusive.
Facts of life. I can either go exclusive and reap the benefits or accept the rules and pay the consequences, trying to make up for the difference by diversifying with photos on the sites I choose. Each photographer has to make their own personal decision.
Either way, it's not going to stop me from whining about something I have no control over! :D
I agree with your point that they are about the only site that makes going exclusive attractive. It may be the only site that offers an exclusive program with any substantial rewards. That's part of the IS success. The way they run their programs.
I see SS as more of a traditional MicroStock design. Smaller payments per photo for higher volume subscription sales. More buyers because the subscription is a better value. If SS could come up with a significant exclusive program, they could capture a different segment of the market and slightly different set of photographers.
As more and more sites offer exclusive incentives, each will be building a team and identity. Hopefully his will also benefit photographers with better payments as the agencies compete for exclusives. The way it is now, only one agency making a serious move to lock in photographers, which denies the competition the same, potentially better, contributors.
I'd like to see the agencies fighting over us, with larger percentages, instead of us fighting to get into the agencies for minimal percentages of the profits.
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Can't argue with you about the frustration of IS upload limits for non-exclusives. I have complained about those both on istock's forums and these forums too.
As my productivity has improved, my backlog of images that are making me money on other sites but haven't been uploaded yet to istock continues to grow. It is, as you point out, their choice to have these regressive upload limits, but I feel they may be shooting themselves in the foot. Particularly with higher cannister members who have proven sales track records.
However my original point was that the upload limits should not be a disincentive to going exclusive because they no longer apply in that instance.
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Lisa, so how do you guys with good work habits submit to IS? Do you submit by your gut / in order / or do you watch how it does on other sites and push it to the top of the que?
Do customers know that if you have a fabulous collection at IS that you will have a bigger - more - fabulous collection at DT?
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Thanks for the compliment :)
I'm not one of the real big players, and until the past few months I limited myself to the 35/week istock limit across all sites, so although I have a couple hundred more (and growing) images on other sites, my istock portfolio is still pretty similar to the others. I just got tired of letting istock's restrictive limits define my workflow.
At the moment I am still trying to upload to istock pretty much in order. I should probably only upload a couple from each series, but you never know which ones will be the big sellers from site to site. And when I have a week that I don't have time to tweak anything new, I still upload to istock in an effort to catch up.
But then, I am just processing 50 or so images a week. Very small potatoes. I don't know how the big shots manage to process hundreds a week. But seems like some of the top diamond non-exclusives have many thousands more on other sites than on istock. Would be interested to know their selection process. Probably a lot more sophisticated than mine ;)
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i track my submissions on a spreadsheet with a column for each MS, so it's easy to add a new site. i rate each acceptance at existing sites, weighted by my subjective code - i rate an acceptance at IS or SS as much better than one at feature or albumo which take anything.
i can then easily find images that i should upload to IS. current portfolio at IS is 630 while its about 950 at SS
my sales/image dropped by 50% at IS about a year ago - pretty dramatic drop over 2 months, then steady since -- probably due to a change in search engine results since all other sites remained pretty constant.
steve
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when's this announcement coming? i wanna know what i'm getting paid :)
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each time someone posts in this thread i think that they are announcing what the increase will be!!! :(
They DID say though that they would announce it within the first 2 weeks of may, and that the increase would be effective immediately. Lets hope that means may 1st, :)
they sure are building this up though... er well... WE are sure building this up. But announcing it 2 months in advance doesn't help the situation... Over on the shutterstock board things are starting to get giddy. After all this waiting people are either going to explode with cheers and praises for the great raise, or go down with boo's and hisses :)
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no news on the increase yet?
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this thread hooks me everytime - and still no news! :'(
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Didn't they let us know on May 1st last year? Just checked and I was getting $0.30 on 1st May 2007. Why can't they do that this year?
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I am leaving for a little town in another provice this morning (he-he I'm going for my neices grad and my sister arranged 2 days of portrait sessions for me!). When I'm back next week and see this post for the next time there better be news, golly darn it!!! (edit - I had to put a cute word in there because I WAS CENSORED :) )
P.S. Leaf, I'll say hi to Saskatchewan for you.
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ahhh saskatchewan.. please do!
Yeah they made the announcement on apr 21 or so last year with it going into effect 1 may.
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My bet is it's gonna be a 5 cent increase. I will be pleasantly surprised if it is anything more.
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why don't we all agree that a new thread be opened when they really do announce something ? :)
i'm putting this thread on ignore LOL.
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sure ignore it..... and you'll miss the big news :)
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oh gosh, stop bumping this thread already, pweese
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My bet is it's gonna be a 5 cent increase. I will be pleasantly surprised if it is anything more.
Anything less than 40 cents/image would be a joke/insult to us.
After all they raised the price more than 40% 2 years in a row, so we should at least get 40%.
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Big news for everyone!!! My cat just have babies. I give them in two months to anybody interested ;D
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at last the news that everyone has been wait for...did you all see how much we got ;)
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Anything less than 40 cents/image would be a joke/insult to us.
...
I think you should prepare to be insulted. Sure, it would be nice to get a 33+% raise, and I'm all for it, but that would be too good to be true. And if it's too good to be true, it just isn't true.
They have a history of increasing commissions by 5c, and I think they'll continue that trend. The difference this year might be some sort of bonus based on monthly sales volume (e.g. 1000 DLs=+5%, 2000DLs=+10%, 4000DLs=+15%, 8000DLs=+20%).
A bonus system would place the onus in the hands of the contributor: you'll have to upload in-demand imagery if you want a better commission.
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I still haven't achieved the $500 for the 30 cent raise so I'm not expecting anything. I'm guessing we'll have to reach another milestone like $750 or $1000 before we get whatever the new raise will be.
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I don't think it's going to be a simple 5 cent raise to 0.35. That would only be.. umm.. something like 17% increase. If they really want to keep attracting the best submitters, a bigger increase should be on the way. Well, that's what i'm hoping for anyway ;D
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And how about a totally different earning system? The time it take only for the announcement is giving a good reason to say that it's probably not a simple canister earning improvement (I think)
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As said above, Im not yet above $500 so I dont expect anything. And if they do increase payments more then 5c I will be very surprised.
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Why don't we just wait and see. I'm optimistic. I am doing quite well there, so, anything above it will be excellent! :)
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looks like we may be waiting til the 14th :(
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looks like we may be waiting til the 14th :(
Can't say I'd blame them. Even if it's just a $0.05 raise, that's a 14% increase. In one day, the amount they pay out to contributors will jump by at least 14%. Why do that any sooner than you have to? Business-wise, it makes sense to put off the increase as long as possible to maximize the gains they made in raising subscription rates.
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looks like we may be waiting til the 14th :(
Can't say I'd blame them. Even if it's just a $0.05 raise, that's a 14% increase. In one day, the amount they pay out to contributors will jump by at least 14%. Why do that any sooner than you have to? Business-wise, it makes sense to put off the increase as long as possible to maximize the gains they made in raising subscription rates.
Helix will you ever shut up and stop putting ideas in their heads. It's hard enough to make any money in this business as it is without you giving us brain damage. ;)
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So how many people are holding off on their uploads until the raise is announced? I hope their reviewers are ready for this :-)
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So how many people are holding off on their uploads until the raise is announced? I hope their reviewers are ready for this :-)
I don't really understand the logic in holding off uploading because surely you will loose more sales than you will gain in rise by not having your images online...especially if other people have the same idea.
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So how many people are holding off on their uploads until the raise is announced? I hope their reviewers are ready for this :-)
I don't really understand the logic in holding off uploading because surely you will loose more sales than you will gain in rise by not having your images online...especially if other people have the same idea.
On a site like SS an average image has a limited life expectancy before it eventually drops of into the database void. I would like my 'average' images to have the benefit of an extra % in sales. To me it makes sense to hold off some uploads and stagger the rest out over the next two months after the increase.
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They have always been my favorite site but the poor deal we had last year and making us wait even longer this year is begging to bug me.
Why can't we get the raise on the day the prices go up, like the other sites do? Waiting 5 or 6 weeks is a joke. I know it is complicated with a subscription model but I don't see why it has to take this long.
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So how many people are holding off on their uploads until the raise is announced? I hope their reviewers are ready for this :-)
I'm not. I just upload whenever I get about 30 new files saved on the computer. That way I can review, keyword, have an upload party and get it all done at once.
I suppose you are right, that some people are holding photos for after the increase. If buyers already have credits, the pictures will still sell at the old rate, so there's no advantage in waiting in that case.
So here I am keeping the thread alive with nothing new to add. ;D
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So how many people are holding off on their uploads until the raise is announced? I hope their reviewers are ready for this :-)
I'm not. I just upload whenever I get about 30 new files saved on the computer. That way I can review, keyword, have an upload party and get it all done at once.
I suppose you are right, that some people are holding photos for after the increase. If buyers already have credits, the pictures will still sell at the old rate, so there's no advantage in waiting in that case.
So here I am keeping the thread alive with nothing new to add. ;D
No, I'm pretty sure that all of the downloads will be whatever the increased rate is. None of that old/new rate stuff. At least that was the case last year.
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No, I'm pretty sure that all of the downloads will be whatever the increased rate is. None of that old/new rate stuff. At least that was the case last year.
Then they would need to wait some time after any subscription/buyer increase, to balance out the increase that we would get as a result. Otherwise they are spending that percentage of their income without getting any return.
Using the hypothetical 14% increase, that would be a pretty big hit for the company and investors to take as they waited for the new subscription funds to start coming in.
I hope I'm making sense?
As far as the old credits and new credits with different values, not dealing with that sure makes the programming easier. :D
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No, I'm pretty sure that all of the downloads will be whatever the increased rate is. None of that old/new rate stuff. At least that was the case last year.
Then they would need to wait some time after any subscription/buyer increase, to balance out the increase that we would get as a result. Otherwise they are spending that percentage of their income without getting any return.
Using the hypothetical 14% increase, that would be a pretty big hit for the company and investors to take as they waited for the new subscription funds to start coming in.
I hope I'm making sense?
As far as the old credits and new credits with different values, not dealing with that sure makes the programming easier. :D
They inreased the prices for the buyers already and that's why they are holding off the raise for contributors as long as they can.
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Am I the only one who thinks they are holding out to see how badly istock's new subscription plan hits them?
That is the only reason I can see for dragging their feet like this....
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Am I the only one who thinks they are holding out to see how badly istock's new subscription plan hits them?
That is the only reason I can see for dragging their feet like this....
I don't remember exactly but I think that the SS announcement is for beginning of April while the IS subs is for the end of April. I don't think they are standing there for the IS subs, but it have been a good idea to wait
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.
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Am I the only one who thinks they are holding out to see how badly istock's new subscription plan hits them?
That is the only reason I can see for dragging their feet like this....
Could well be a factor, although I wouldn't think that the effect would be all that fast. I think they wanted to make an announcement early just to keep people interested, and will probably drag it out until the 2nd week of May...
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Am I the only one who thinks they are holding out to see how badly istock's new subscription plan hits them?
That is the only reason I can see for dragging their feet like this....
I think the same.
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Helix will you ever shut up and stop putting ideas in their heads. It's hard enough to make any money in this business as it is without you giving us brain damage. ;)
Sorry... I'll try not to encourage them. :)
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Am I the only one who thinks they are holding out to see how badly istock's new subscription plan hits them?
That is the only reason I can see for dragging their feet like this....
I think the same.
If that were the case then we will be waiting a lot longer than the 2nd week of May. So unless they want to piss off all their contributors with a delay then I think that has pretty much no chance of happening.
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Interesting point of view! ;D
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sorry to disappoint - no i don't think the commission increase has been announced yet... just thought i would say..
hurray today is the day! Looking forward to when they make the announcement.
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I feel quite disappointed with shutterstock with the way they have handled the pay rise situation. I don't understand why they gave us a two week window of when they might increase our money then leave it to nearly the last day. surely it would have been better to have just said it will be on the 13th and put us all of of our misery. I hope it will be worth the wait....I woke up this morning excitably turned on the computer and was greated with the usual .30 :(
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Yeeeeeeeeeeeeees!!!!!!!!!! 75 Cent much more than i expected ;D
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75 cents???!!! Really??? :D OMG! Wooohoooo! Great! SS I love you!!
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Yeeeeeeeeeeeeees!!!!!!!!!! 75 Cent much more than i expected ;D
you are joking right?
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??? ???
You know something more than we do?
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??? ???
You know something more than we do?
I just can't believe it... is this raise from .25 or .30?
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I think he is joking :)
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He must be, while i just sold 2 pic for .25 each...
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yes bad joke i know ;D But if Getty can announce the turnover of IS in 2012 it should be no problem for me to announce SS-Commissions of 2050 ;)
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I'm not the only one dying to hear the news than, "good";))
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I had a sale today and it was still at 0.30
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They said that new earnings will take in to effect AFTER the announcement will be made. And knowing SS, I bet 99% that the announcement will be made 1 minute before midnight (I wish I was wrong..) ...
Every minute with old prices for contributors means additional thousand to SS account.
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are you suggesting that shutterstock sells 10,000 photos/minute
600,000 photos/hour and 14,400,000 images/day. I like to think that shutterstock is too but I am afraid I don't think they are quite that successful.
Regardless of when they announce it, I don't think it will take effect until tomorrow anyhow!
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leaf, it was more symbolical than mathematical.
But thank you for correction as some could really understood it directly.
More rightly is IS earnings: $72 millions in revenue last year, that means ~$140/minute.
And J.K. Rowling earns $230 per minute... ;)
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I see this thread has 5,574 views. I feel like I have clicked on it that many times thinking the raise has been announced :)
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4 seasons
Revenue does not equal earnings ...
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NEW INCREASE ANNOUNCED --> http://submit.shutterstock.com/earnings_schedule.mhtml (http://submit.shutterstock.com/earnings_schedule.mhtml)
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Underwhelming is the word that comes to mind. I go from 30 cents to 36 cents (I'm not yet over $10K). Now that equals the subscription payout on 123rf.
No woo-yays from me.
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Hmm.. i'm qualifying for the 38 cents.. but still.. it's not quite what i expected. Especially those people who have not yet earned those 10k.. all in all i'm happy with the 38 cents, but it could have been a better deal.
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Pffff 36 cents.... :-\ ridiculous
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less than last years raise,I am simply disappointed!
now that seriously make think of going exclusive to IS
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WOW this sucks.
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very disappointing..... but good for IS guess
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It sucks big time.
For the beginners there is no raise at all.
And it took them so long to come up with this.
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disapointed. 0.33 is low. even 0.36 is low. disapointed totaly. boooo. EX licence should be at least 35 also.
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i hope the lack of sales activity for a lot of people over the last month is a signal that IS is going to take SS to the pooper the subscriptions aspect because this is bull
all depending on how it plays out with IS, i might want to go exclusive in 2 months or 3
EDITED for politeness
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disapointed. 0.33 is low. even 0.36 is low. disapointed totaly. boooo. EX licence should be at least 35 also.
Yeah, .38 is low too. I would have assumed at least .40 for high end earners. Will be interesting to read what the big guys have to say about this....
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wow.... that's bull.
Good for IS, I guess, which will probably see a lot of photogs going exclusive. Not competitive given inflation & changes in currency exchange rates. Not competitive given positive changes/pricing elsewhere. AND, they pissed off a lot of people in the process. SS is no longer the go-to place for many of us. Not for me, starting as of today, will be working to get over my IS uploading block as IS seems like the place that'll be making $ in the long haul.
Lack of a 'good' raise with all this building up may mean one thing - that SS can't afford anything bigger and has no other options but to announce this really low raise.
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they made my choices a lot easier.
I will keep my portfolio there for now, but as soon I am free from keeping my work at other places (that might take a few months though...) I'm going exclusive on IS.
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as much as i've complained about IS and their mistakes, they're earning me more money right now than SS and SS isn't going to catch up with this raise. Don't get me wrong, i always appreciate a raise no matter how low. But now that imageManager is back in business for IS, i'll be uploading more to IS first (tho it still bugs me to have to disambiguate!)
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I think we need anther 'No "Thank you"' thread, some people are actually satisfied with SS increasing their share of pie.
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Yeah, .38 is low too. I would have assumed at least .40 for high end earners. Will be interesting to read what the big guys have to say about this....
Yes, $10k is far too low for the highest tier.
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Yeah, .38 is low too. I would have assumed at least .40 for high end earners. Will be interesting to read what the big guys have to say about this....
Yes, $10k is far too low for the highest tier.
LOL i agree 10k is a joke even i fall in the highest tier and i didn't upload since two years because i don't support the subscription model anymore.
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Yeah, .38 is low too. I would have assumed at least .40 for high end earners. Will be interesting to read what the big guys have to say about this....
Yes, $10k is far too low for the highest tier.
LOL i agree 10k is a joke even i fall in the highest tier and i didn't upload since two years because i don't support the subscription model anymore.
You don't support the subscription model AND you still have your portfolio available for download?
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Wow, SS is the greatest, I love SS! Not only have my sales dropped by more than 50% this month, they've given me a fabulous 3 cent raise that doesn't even par with 123!!!
If they knew the raise was going to be so lousy, why did they hype it two months ago? It would have gone over much better if they would have just said one day "were giving you a 3 cent raise, and even more for top contributors."
Disappointing. Very disappointing.
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I'm not happy with 0.38. I expected at least 0.40 this time. Serve me right for getting my hopes up again.
It seems to me that the only way we will get a decent deal now is if we run our own site.
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Yeah, .38 is low too. I would have assumed at least .40 for high end earners. Will be interesting to read what the big guys have to say about this....
Yes, $10k is far too low for the highest tier.
LOL i agree 10k is a joke even i fall in the highest tier and i didn't upload since two years because i don't support the subscription model anymore.
You don't support the subscription model AND you still have your portfolio available for download?
yes and no i deleted my best stuff but left the stuff i don't care at all (and this stuff wouldn't probably get accepted nowadays)
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It seems to me that the only way we will get a decent deal now is if we run our own site.
Which won't help unless you get Andres, Yuri, Ron, Matka and Kirsty on board....
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now that imageManager is back in business for IS, i'll be uploading more to IS first (tho it still bugs me to have to disambiguate!)
Have you tried Deep Meta? Doooooo that if you haven't! It's awesome.
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They clearly revealed how much they value their contributors...
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Hey, SS is still a strong #2 for me in total revenue. Sometimes #1. I can't fault their reasoning on increases. What did you expect? All of us have the option of staying or leaving. I'm sticking there for my .36 ea. and hope my increasing downloads continue its trend.
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I was pessimistic in my expectations, but this just sucks.
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UNDER-WHELMING!!! It is among the lowest commission rate in the industry. I will start crunching the numbers on going exclusive at iStock. SS just shot themselves in the foot.
Here's my thoughts:
Starting with my next photoshoot, upload only to iStock and Mid-Stock sites;
be "exclusive" (as far as uploads go) for 6 months (or longer);
Then start uploading to lousy/cheap subscription sites - like SS.
That way customers interested in "new/fresh" images can go to real "partners", and the cheaper subscription models will get our stale images much later.
I'm just venting now!!!
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It will be fun to see what happens with this:
3,657,487 royalty-free stock photos
48,297 new stock photos added this week
101,338 photographers
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It will be fun to watch this drop:
3,657,436 royalty-free stock photos
On their home page.
I doubt there will be any drop. Quantity will never be the problem of SS but quality to hold their top-contributors in the long term the tier should have gone over 10k. On the other hand new Yuris popping up all the time so maybe there is no need to care for them.
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This has been a film with a bad end.
For me all is the same as I havent reach 500usd at the moment...
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The $US decreased 10% (compared to euro) during last 6 months... :-\
SS increased 10% for one year...
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Well I'm gonna say thanks to SS. That extra .8 cents has really made my day. NO THANKS! I mean thanks, no really thanks a bunch. And thanks to everyone who made this possible, and thank the lord I'm banned off that forum is all I can say. Yeah thanks a lot. Helix start another thank you thread. We need to thank people.
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Again , their part of the rise and our are two different worlds , and I'm sorry but numbers like 3 6 and 8 sound like an insult to me , if they are rising subs for 50% they should at least round the numbers to 5 and 0 , and still take nice part of our pies.
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With Istock another Large site about to eat into the subscription market, and enough clout to hurt SS, it is likely a good move for SS who will have a big battle on two fronts, first they will have to share some of thier market, and then the overheads of running SS will increase as the global squeeze tightens.
I was with SS and deleted all my portfolio at the beginning of May as IS was returning more revenue for 1/4 of the downloads, with the rates promised for subscription downloads over on Istock it should be a wise move but time will tell.
But the biggest problem with this raise which will hurt their reputation is the $0.00 for contributors <$500, they did promise a raise, not a raise for some contributors, with the devaluation of the dollar, credit squeeze they have in fact cut the value of a download for the lower end of the market, and if there is a year wait for the next raise, what will the $0.25 be worth then, this after raising the price to the buyer this year by 50%
Shame on them! :-[
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I wonder if they will do anything to their search system to push those earning .25 to the front of searches? More money in SS's pockets then.
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I wonder if they will do anything to their search system to push those earning .25 to the front of searches? More money in SS's pockets then.
No certainly not!
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Oh Dear!
I posted a reply over on the SS forum, about the way they have treated the <$500 contributors, rationalised post not naming other sites, and suggesting that the impact was in fact a reduction, and now I am banned.
Freedom of :-X
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Too much noise means rejection by SS !!! :D ;)
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Too much noise means rejection by SS !!! :D ;)
lol ;D
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now that imageManager is back in business for IS, i'll be uploading more to IS first (tho it still bugs me to have to disambiguate!)
Have you tried Deep Meta? Doooooo that if you haven't! It's awesome.
Thanks - have not tried it - I'm on OS X so guess i'll have to wait till they get that versionout
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I'm embarassed to have stated I felt SS would come through big time for contributors. This is a major disappointment. For the life of me, I cannot understand why they teased this raise 2 months ago with the "pleasantly surprised" promise.
The only thing I can think of which justifies this is the possibility that their sales have fallen through the floor since iStock announced subscriptions.
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From threads in the SS forums that is exactly what has happened. I think that they were hoping to be able to give a much larger raise.
The only thing I can think of which justifies this is the possibility that their sales have fallen through the floor since iStock announced subscriptions.
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You may be right.
The most disappointing part of all of this is, all of the other microstock sites will now be emboldened to keep their subcription commissions low. Heck, Shutterstock still pays less than 123RF per subscription commission, so why should anyone else raise?
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Firstly, as explained elsewhere, the subscription model doesn't 'work' in an industry of rising prices; its great when it's priced at $149 or $199, but at $249, $299 etc the model fails simply because the service is then priced above the reasonable level for thousands of small design firms (who will revert to single image buying).
To maintain profitability SS needs as many contributors as possible who fail to reach payout - this explains why they are allowing hundreds of new contributors to join each week and now have more than 102,000 photographers. Yet 123RF recently announced 'more than 2 million images from 5,000 photographers', so if we assume those same 5,000 are at SS it means SS has 97,000 photographers earning very low money or none at all.
SS isn't interested in Yuri or Andres because those people don't make them any money; they ARE interested in keeping them on board simply to attract customers. What SS really wants is as many up and coming Yuris as possible.
BUT, I'm interested in the fact that the 38c top tier is the same rate as iStock's minimum payment per subscription sale for diamond exclusives. I don't think this number is coincidence. SS appears to have deliberately matched the iStock model for higher earning photographers. Don't forget too that the payment per credit for non-exclusives is 19c.
SS couldn't change its size system because it had already announced pricing structure to customers in March. However the 38c is perhaps a hint that things will change next year. SS might need a year to implement a strategy change to charge more for higher rez images. The 38c is a 'clue' to the future.
So an interesting announcement. In fact almost exactly what one should have expected.
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.36 cents is disappointing
but when viewed as 20% it looks better :)
but then the US dollar has dropped, and inflation gone up. I think the amount per download is probably about the same as 12 months ago.
I dont see much follow on to other sites for subs increases.
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You may be right.
The most disappointing part of all of this is, all of the other microstock sites will now be emboldened to keep their subcription commissions low
Yes this is a major point. I would have loved to see more pressure on the subscription model in general as IS is the only site which can lead a major increase in single-photo model, SS is the only site which can lead a major increase in the subscription model.
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nice to see the raise has already kicked in. I see a few 'raised' downloads already.
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I put it nicely in the SS forum, but I'll be a little less political here.
This raise is crap. This was supposed to be the raise that sent SS flying to the front of the line for contributors who saw SS slide into 2nd or 3rd on their lists. Instead, it maybe just slowed the decline. For me, SS has been barely hanging onto the 2nd spot. In 6 months I can definitely see them slipping into 3rd, maybe even 4th at this rate. Even if they didn't jack the commissions up to $0.40 for everyone, there should have at least been a $0.40+ tier for upper level contributors.
Hell, $0.40 would have even been a little disappointing. After all the discussion about what a low percentage SS pays, how $0.50 would be more in the ballpark of a fair rate, etc., they low-ball us with this $0.33-$0.38 garbage. I'm extremely disappointed.
This sends a clear message as far as I'm concerned. SS is not interested in rebuilding their contributor relations. They are basically saying that they sleep fine at night knowing that contributors get the shaft, and they are not interested in doing anything about it.
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Re: What SS Tier Are You In?
« Reply #16 on: Today at 15:21 »
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I'll try to analyze this, hope you can understand it Cheesy
Shutterstock first decided to raise the prices of their images. This was due to:
- submitters wanting a raise, they (or should I say we) wouldn't wanna sell our images ofr 0.25/0.3 for ever
- their profit was becoming smaller due to the costs they have or they weren't on their projected plan for 2008 because of the costs(servers, reviewers, people reading forums, bandwidth all cost money). The costs are bigger and bigger as the number of photographers increases. It is true that more photographers bring more money but they will only cover the costs if the demad rises acordingly. Which in my opinion isn't true, that's why SS (and other agencies) take bigger and bigger piece of the pie and that's why (well add oversaturated market) the future may not be so bright for MS.
- because they could. Increasing prices means more money
So they increased prices. The waited a few months before doing a raise for submitters. Reasons for doing that:
- to see how the new prices will go with the buyers. After they saw how many they lost they could set the raise for us
- get a boost in their money
- so that the buyers wouldnt buy subs with the old price and buy images that need to be paid with the new price (this still happens though, because o the yearly and half yearly subscriptions, thats why they needed the money from the previous point)
So they analyzed the sales and set up a raise that is best for covering costs, paying us and also increasing their earnings. It probably is best what they could do (well of course they probably got more from it that us, they also need to cover increasing cost for the whole year ahead of us). Increasing the prices of images even further and giving us a bigger raise would make many buyers go away and we would be earning the same or even less, we would just get more for a download. Huh
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This sends a clear message as far as I'm concerned. SS is not interested in rebuilding their contributor relations. They are basically saying that they sleep fine at night knowing that contributors get the shaft, and they are not interested in doing anything about it.
It's a clear message that they want as many contributors as possible, not stars, just regular people who will hardly reach 500$. They will make the most from those. That's bad news for us. It's gonna be hard to keep up with so many images from other people around.
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So an interesting announcement. In fact almost exactly what one should have expected.
Interesting analysis but I'd be equally interested to hear your predictions over the short to medium term.
As I see it the market is in a steady state of decline with over-saturation looming on the horizon.
The SS subscription model relies too heavily on keeping content fresh and I can't see how they will continue to attract new customers at the level required to maintain earnings and still remain competitive.
It is one of the key reasons why uploads need to be maintained to keep this insatiable monster from imploding in on itself.
The istock model, in stark contrast, is ideal because they've maintained standards from the outset. SS, on the other hand, is still sitting on a mountain of detrius that needs to be flushed down the toilet but that's not going to happen either today or tomorrow.
With so many other competitors all selling virtually identical stock it can only lead to a price war which is why IS are pushing for exclusivity so heavily.
Let's face it, the arse is falling out of this business and if ever you needed evidence of that, look no further than the paltry raise provided by SS today.
For those of you who are relying upon this industry as your main source of income you need to diversify and you need to diversify quickly.
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I don't understand why SS didn't learn a lesson from all the fuzz from the previous raise! Same story; a lott of contributors pissed off because they where promised a raise, and didn't get any, because they where below the $500 marker.
Now they do it again! ???
Well at least Im past the 500, but 3 cents doesn't make me very happy!
It doesn't make much right with the current dollar rate.
And they charge European customers in Euro!
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I don't know if there will be saturation soon. alamy is doing fine with 12 million images so why should the microstock sites have problems at these relatively low levels? It seems that buyers always want new images. There are swarms of new contributors but what percentage are highly motivated and have the skill to succeed? Looking at my referrals on istock, there is still a balance between new contributors and buyers.
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I don't know if there will be saturation soon. alamy is doing fine with 12 million images so why should the microstock sites have problems at these relatively low levels? It seems that buyers always want new images. There are swarms of new contributors but what percentage are highly motivated and have the skill to succeed? Looking at my referrals on istock, there is still a balance between new contributors and buyers.
Agreed, but there are just too many other bit players coming into the arena and that also leads to over-saturation, thereby driving down pricing.
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I don't know if there will be saturation soon. alamy is doing fine with 12 million images so why should the microstock sites have problems at these relatively low levels? It seems that buyers always want new images. There are swarms of new contributors but what percentage are highly motivated and have the skill to succeed? Looking at my referrals on istock, there is still a balance between new contributors and buyers.
54,264 pictures were newly added to ss last week. At current pace there will be twice as much images online 1.3 years from today. And that approximation doesn't include any increase in the number of submitters. How long can you keep up the pace? And sure Alamy maybe doing fine, SS might also be doing fine with 12m images. How about us?
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Incredible. So, when Istock brought out subscriptions they didnt completely rip us off- as they could have done. They had the chance, but they didnt take it. The deal wasnt bad at all. But shutterstock did rip us off- the percentage we make is a lot lower now than it was before. So, who do you trust? Sounds like the time to go exclusive to me. Afterall, what's going to happen next? SS is clearly going to do something similar next time too. I bet in a year their prices will be raised 50-100 percent and our cut will go up 10-20 percent. This is a rip off.
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No raise 4 me :'(
Still under the $500 mark.... but if I WAS over the $500 point I would be furious!
I was feeding the beast for a while, but I am done.
I will wait out the remainder of the time that I am obliged to at DT and then I am pulling the plug everywhere except IS.
IS simply has the best business model IMHO, and their subs model is much more fair to the contributors.
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No raise 4 me :'(
Still under the $500 mark.... but if I WAS over the $500 point I would be furious!
I was feeding the beast for a while, but I am done.
I will wait out the remainder of the time that I am obliged to at DT and then I am pulling the plug everywhere except IS.
IS simply has the best business model IMHO, and their subs model is much more fair to the contributors.
Good for you.
And you know what would be good for contributors everywhere? If a lot of people ditched shutterstock and went exclusive with istock as a result of this. Those that stick around give the message that "you can pay us as little as you want". There has to be a negative result when they lower our cut or theyll just keep doing it.
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I don't know if there will be saturation soon. alamy is doing fine with 12 million images so why should the microstock sites have problems at these relatively low levels? It seems that buyers always want new images. There are swarms of new contributors but what percentage are highly motivated and have the skill to succeed? Looking at my referrals on istock, there is still a balance between new contributors and buyers.
54,264 pictures were newly added to ss last week. At current pace there will be twice as much images online 1.3 years from today. And that approximation doesn't include any increase in the number of submitters. How long can you keep up the pace? And sure Alamy maybe doing fine, SS might also be doing fine with 12m images. How about us?
I think people who put in the work and don't just repeat the typical microstock photos will do fine. People who upload 10 a week and don't seek out the gaps in the collection will have a hard time. Look in the various alamy forums and it seems there are still lots of people making a living from stock. There are also lots of people giving up after a few months when they don't get a sale.
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Ive been thinking about quality at shutterstock and their model. It just seems really bad to me.
1. They have no exclusivity agreement so their stuff can be found everywhere, meaning they dont have anything unique.
2. They deliberately give newest images far more strength than they should have, meaning that images which are more popular/more likely to sell are naturally put further back than they should be, lowering the quality of images the buyer sees. This also makes shutterstock work best for newbies who dont yet know what sells, and worse for people who have been doing this for years and know their stuff, giving those people more incentive to go exclusive with istock.
3. They give only a few cents per image, putting off a lot of macro photographers.
4. They just shafted contributors with a lousy raise, irritating everyone.
This means that of course, they have to be cheap. Because people who want quality will naturally go to istock or dreamstime.
It's really a race to the bottom with them. They also concentrate entirely on subscriptions at a time when all other sites are now going to sell both subscriptions and pay as you go. Doesnt seem very smart. It seems like theyre the only one with a gap now. I think shutterstock are destined to decline from here.
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2. They deliberately give newest images far more strength than they should have, meaning that images which are more popular/more likely to sell are naturally put further back than they should be, lowering the quality of images the buyer sees. This also makes shutterstock work best for newbies who dont yet know what sells, and worse for people who have been doing this for years and know their stuff, giving those people more incentive to go exclusive with istock.
3. They give only a few cents per image, putting off a lot of macro photographers.
Number 3 is the reason for number 2, I was with SS for a few months each upload would bring good downloads for the uploaded images then a decline, until the next upload.
I did stay until I got a payout at SS, other sites I left I have converted my low earnings to credits, so I can purchase images just to delete them, so someone else will benefit, and not the site.
SS have the buyers money, the buyer has a window in which to download, if they buy new contributors images SS may have to pay the contributor either $0.25 or $0.00 if they reach payout, if they buy non new contributors images they will have to payout $0.33+ per download which is a bit more per credit.
I.M.H.O. the new contributor are a big bonus to SS where you cannot convert your earnings if you leave.
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2. They deliberately give newest images far more strength than they should have, meaning that images which are more popular/more likely to sell are naturally put further back than they should be, lowering the quality of images the buyer sees. This also makes shutterstock work best for newbies who dont yet know what sells, and worse for people who have been doing this for years and know their stuff, giving those people more incentive to go exclusive with istock.
3. They give only a few cents per image, putting off a lot of macro photographers.
Number 3 is the reason for number 2, I was with SS for a few months each upload would bring good downloads for the uploaded images then a decline, until the next upload.
No it's not- what I mean is that SS pay somewhere around 30/40 cents per sale, which puts off macro photographers. Some people refuse to accept only being paid a few cents per sale, even if they have a large number of sales.
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I'm happy with the raise. I just got a 27% increase. How many employers would give you a 27% pay raise?
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Pay per sale up 20%.
Sales per image per month down 40%.
That's not what I call an increase. I call that a decrease.
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great salary raise !!!!
we are all complaining BUT
DOES ANY ONE NOTICE THAT
THE BIG GUYS DOES NOT COMPLAIN ????
THE 10.000 IS LOW
BUT THE GUYS WHO HAVE
A LOT MORE THAN 10.000 USD
ARE
OK!!!!!
seems to be a special deal for them???
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great salary raise !!!!
we are all complaining BUT
DOES ANY ONE NOTICE THAT
THE BIG GUYS DOES NOT COMPLAIN ????
THE 10.000 IS LOW
BUT THE GUYS WHO HAVE
A LOT MORE THAN 10.000 USD
ARE
OK!!!!!
seems to be a special deal for them???
Yuri (logos) is the best selling microstock photographer and he said in the SS forum that he is not satisfied with the raise.
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This has been a film with a bad end.
Suspense built like in a Hitchcock movie, but a Mickey-mouse ending.
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This has been a film with a bad end.
Suspense built like in a Hitchcock movie, but a Mickey-mouse ending.
:D
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C'mon, people, stop complaining so much. It's embarrassing. As elnur said in related thread, if you've been seriously working at this for any time longer than one year you really have no excuse for not getting a 27% boost in SS income.
As far as the casual people are concerned, this isn't a free ride; like anything else, what you'll get out of it is proportional the effort you put into it. If I was a part-timer/amateur/hobbiest it would be a no-brainer to go exclusive with IS - if you're that upset with SS, and stock money is used to supplement income from your day job, you should very seriously consider this route.
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C'mon, people, stop complaining so much. It's embarrassing. As elnur said in related thread, if you've been seriously working at this for any time longer than one year you really have no excuse for not getting a 27% boost in SS income.
As far as the casual people are concerned, this isn't a free ride; like anything else, what you'll get out of it is proportional the effort you put into it. If I was a part-timer/amateur/hobbiest it would be a no-brainer to go exclusive with IS - if you're that upset with SS, and stock money is used to supplement income from your day job, you should very seriously consider this route.
I don't think that just because someone is starting to contribute to SS that they are necessarily beginners or casual. It has little to do with a free ride. It has to do with being adequately compensated for their efforts. SS has chosen to increase prices without sharing these increases with individuals in the first tier. You can say that that is part of their long term strategy and that is fine. However I get the feeling that there are several people not all that happy with that strategy, and regardless of whether you like the increase or not this strategy hurts everyone. I'm sure there are many people leaping over to exclusive at IS. This gives the edge to IS; they will gather material that the other Micors will not. This will influence where buyers go and that will likely decrease the overall earnings for everyone else at SS et al. regardless of what percentage increase you received. It's my feeling that this decision is very short sighted. Gathering the best images is what matters.
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Anybody that takes this at all seriously can easily reach the 500$ payrise in a couple of months max.
I don't think that just because someone is starting to contribute to SS that they are necessarily beginners or casual. It has little to do with a free ride.
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... Gathering the best images is what matters.
Yes, and if you 'gather the best images', you will be in the top SS commission tier in short order. As I said before, nobody who's serious about shooting stock has an excuse for earning less than 36c per DL for more than a few months.
So you're unhappy getting 25c/33c/36c. What are you going to do about it? Complaining and whining won't help, uploading marketable images will. The ball is in your court.
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... Gathering the best images is what matters.
Yes, and if you 'gather the best images', you will be in the top SS commission tier in short order. As I said before, nobody who's serious about shooting stock has an excuse for earning less than 36c per DL for more than a few months.
So you're unhappy getting 25c/33c/36c. What are you going to do about it? Complaining and whining won't help, uploading marketable images will. The ball is in your court.
I'll do what I've always done: go where the money is. I'm not so stupid though to think I can influence where that is.
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In case you didn't see it, shutterstock wrote a nice message in response to all the comments they receive on their price increase. Their message is here
http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37831&start=465
and since it appears that their forum is public i thought i may just as well quote their message here
We'd like to make a few points in response to this thread before ending the discussion.
On the raise:
The goal of the new payout structure is to reward submitters who, according to the download stats, have contributed the images that our customers go on to license. Our customers appreciate the large total number of images in our library, but they vote every day on which of those images are most valuable to them. It's fair to say that this raise was structured as much by our customers' download histories as it was by Shutterstock management.
Prior to this raise, a new submitter could look forward to only a single 20% payout increase, whereas now they will enjoy a 32% initial increase, followed by the chance for two additional increases down the road. The new payout structure aims to continuously encourage all submitters to improve and enlarge their galleries. We want everyone to work their way up...
There are many ways to contribute to your lifetime earnings total. You can refer buyers or other submitters, you can sell Enhanced License downloads, and you can contribute footage to our growing footage library. The stock footage industry in particular has plenty of growth ahead, as mobile devices and digital advertising become more sophisticated and bandwidth becomes less expensive.
As has been pointed out, your own current earnings rate is not locked until next year. Our hope is that the larger initial raise and the two new subsequent raises will motivate every submitter to improve their quality and increase their gallery size throughout the year. You can earn more money by contributing more high quality content, and when you reach these thresholds, you will benefit from your content working harder for you. It's true that our library is massive and growing. But it's also true that quality content is quickly found and licensed by our growing list of customers. Our four search result sort orders -- Most Popular, Newest, Oldest, and Random -- are simple, have not changed in years, and are in combination very fair and effective. If your image is not being downloaded, it is because the image is not in demand right now, and not because the demand cannot find your image.
On the price increase:
While a few specific products in a few countries did go up quite a bit, we did not increase our overall prices by 50%, or even close to that. Our blended US and Euro price increases were about 26%, and our UK increase was about 36%. Above our core price of 249 USD or the equivalent, we charge higher amounts in some non-USD currencies to reflect the much higher costs of advertising in those markets. The UK is one example.
As some have pointed out, it's true that when a customer pays a higher price they will work harder to capture the value of their purchase. In our industry this means that, having paid a higher price for their subscription, they will go on to download more images.
We have a group of customers who lock in the lower rates with our rebilling program, so the price increase has no effect on the revenue we bring in from those customers. However, we still pay submitters the new higher payout rates when rebilled customers download.
The weak US dollar makes Shutterstock a low cost exporter to countries that have a stronger currency. While it's true that submitters in those strong currency countries are paid in USD, it's also true that a weak USD means our products are a tremendous value when compared to the locally available alternatives. The resulting increased demand for our products in those countries leads to increased downloads for all our submitters.
On the forums:
All submitters start off enjoying the benefits of forum participation, but this is a privilege, not a right. If you cannot act in a constructive and polite manner then we will remove your forum privileges.
Conclusion:
We look forward to seeing your new content and we appreciate your input. We're working very hard to continue the growth we have enjoyed over the last few years -- that is our primary objective. We hope you will all continue to let us represent your content as we move forward in this exciting industry.
Best Regards,
Shutterstock
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In case you didn't see it, shutterstock wrote a nice message in response to all the comments they receive on their price increase. Their message is here
[url]http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37831&start=465[/url]
and since it appears that their forum is public i thought i may just as well quote their message here
We'd like to make a few points in response to this thread before ending the discussion.
On the raise:
The goal of the new payout structure is to reward submitters who, according to the download stats, have contributed the images that our customers go on to license. Our customers appreciate the large total number of images in our library, but they vote every day on which of those images are most valuable to them. It's fair to say that this raise was structured as much by our customers' download histories as it was by Shutterstock management.
Prior to this raise, a new submitter could look forward to only a single 20% payout increase, whereas now they will enjoy a 32% initial increase, followed by the chance for two additional increases down the road. The new payout structure aims to continuously encourage all submitters to improve and enlarge their galleries. We want everyone to work their way up...
There are many ways to contribute to your lifetime earnings total. You can refer buyers or other submitters, you can sell Enhanced License downloads, and you can contribute footage to our growing footage library. The stock footage industry in particular has plenty of growth ahead, as mobile devices and digital advertising become more sophisticated and bandwidth becomes less expensive.
As has been pointed out, your own current earnings rate is not locked until next year. Our hope is that the larger initial raise and the two new subsequent raises will motivate every submitter to improve their quality and increase their gallery size throughout the year. You can earn more money by contributing more high quality content, and when you reach these thresholds, you will benefit from your content working harder for you. It's true that our library is massive and growing. But it's also true that quality content is quickly found and licensed by our growing list of customers. Our four search result sort orders -- Most Popular, Newest, Oldest, and Random -- are simple, have not changed in years, and are in combination very fair and effective. If your image is not being downloaded, it is because the image is not in demand right now, and not because the demand cannot find your image.
On the price increase:
While a few specific products in a few countries did go up quite a bit, we did not increase our overall prices by 50%, or even close to that. Our blended US and Euro price increases were about 26%, and our UK increase was about 36%. Above our core price of 249 USD or the equivalent, we charge higher amounts in some non-USD currencies to reflect the much higher costs of advertising in those markets. The UK is one example.
As some have pointed out, it's true that when a customer pays a higher price they will work harder to capture the value of their purchase. In our industry this means that, having paid a higher price for their subscription, they will go on to download more images.
We have a group of customers who lock in the lower rates with our rebilling program, so the price increase has no effect on the revenue we bring in from those customers. However, we still pay submitters the new higher payout rates when rebilled customers download.
The weak US dollar makes Shutterstock a low cost exporter to countries that have a stronger currency. While it's true that submitters in those strong currency countries are paid in USD, it's also true that a weak USD means our products are a tremendous value when compared to the locally available alternatives. The resulting increased demand for our products in those countries leads to increased downloads for all our submitters.
On the forums:
All submitters start off enjoying the benefits of forum participation, but this is a privilege, not a right. If you cannot act in a constructive and polite manner then we will remove your forum privileges.
Conclusion:
We look forward to seeing your new content and we appreciate your input. We're working very hard to continue the growth we have enjoyed over the last few years -- that is our primary objective. We hope you will all continue to let us represent your content as we move forward in this exciting industry.
Best Regards,
Shutterstock
That's a pretty balanced and well thought out reply. No response to that I'm afraid.