MicrostockGroup

"it's not the $71.9 million in revenue we generated last year (although that is really, really exciting). The amazing thing is that we paid out $20.9 million to contributors last year. That's one h*ck of a lot of money, and doesn't include the $110,000 we gave out on Punctum Day. We are now selling an image every 1.4 seconds through this industry changing marketplace. It even gives us pause every time we look at these stats."

from:
this thread

just so you know, that number works out to 29% - they kept 71% to run the biz.

The 'vast majority' 
Check your math!

No inside information on specific breakdowns are needed.  If all the sales were made by diamond exclusives the maximum %age payout to contributors could only be as high as 40%. A 50/50 split between exclusives and non exclusives  would give a %age  payout of 30%. But as most exclusives are not diamonds at 40% royalty the 29% in the provided figures would imply that more than 50% of the sales had come from exclusives, and certainly not the vast majority from non exclusives.

The point you may want to make is the levels of royalty being too low, but that is not the point I am correcting.

I agree with this analysis 100%. And I am amazed that exclusives contribute to more than 50% of the sales. I would guess that they contribute to about 60-70%. That is not really good news for us (non-exclusives) since it shows that we are not as importnant as we thought.

If that is true, that would be another reason to become exclusive (which I think iStock wants, if everyone would be exclusive, they would dominate the market).

Another piece of math to consider is what happens when prices go up with a split that gives less than 50% to the contributor, as the monetary difference between what is retained by the company and given to the contributor increases!

The subscription sites make money on the subs whether or not the clients download their full monthly quotas of images. They pay a fixed amount and we therefore have no idea what percentage of the income is being paid back to the contributors.

The greater the advertised monthly subscription image quota ... so the more generous the stock site seems to its contributors.

But unless we know how many images have been downloaded and how much money has been paid in subscriptions it is impossible to know the average price which the buyers are paying for images. And therefore the percentages paid to the contributors.

Example  - if a subscription site were to increase the size of the monthly quotas by, say, 200 .... it would make their images seem even cheaper than they are already .... making them seem like even better value. And it would make their payout to the contributors seem even more generous. A win - win for the stock site (assuming - and we can assume this - that there is a mathematical model aimed at finding the ultimate sub price / monthly quota / payout combinations .... and which will be based on actually knowing the extent to which the monthly download quotas go un used.)

iStock is much more transparent. Old credits don't expire - therefore most are probably used in the end. The contributors get a percentage of the credit price paid. This seems much more transparent to me.

The only thing that matters to me is how much the site makes for me.

In the early days of Shutterstock Jon said that he aimed to pay 35 - 40% of the net.

I assumed that he meant 35 - 40% of the total amount of subscription money received. Just recently, I've been wondering what exactly is meant by "net".  I would think of the total money received as the gross. Maybe net means what's left over after everything else has been paid. Can anyone enlighten me? What does "net" mean in an American company?

Of course I don't know if he changed his mind, or found it impossible, along the way

I appreciate being enlightened on the math. 

Checked with my husband who is the math wiz in the family and he concurred with Mike that the 29% paid out does imply more sales of exclusive images, although without more data it is impossible to know the breakdown for sure. 

Whether istock, shutterstock, or anyone else should be paying more to contributors would appear to be a separate discussion.   

The last official numbers I saw (a few months ago) were that only 28% of photographers are exclusive and 38% of content.

I imagine those percentages are a little higher now; perhaps 40/42% of content is now exclusive.

It appears (rough calculations) that the exclusive 40% content generates approximately 63% of contributor commission.

This simply isn't true.  As has been pointed out in other threads, just look at the monthly earnings breakdowns from the last several months.  Many of the largest contributors on this board rank either Fotolia or Shutterstock as #1 in earnings.  For me, Shutterstock blows iStock away for bottom line earnings.  I love iStock, but their dominance is overstated.

Right Freezing,

But the question comes down to earnings power.  You have to take all factors into account, and that includes higher prices for images at DT and FT as more sales are made. 

well put.