MicrostockGroup

I am hoping YES. Because sales are dragging

Per last e-mail:...

It's been a great year for Shutterstock®. We now have well over 1.5 million stock photos, illustrations, and vectors in our collection, which grows at the brisk pace of over 25,000 new premium images each week. Currently, we have over 50,000 contributing photographers worldwide making Shutterstock's image library one of the most extensive and diverse around. Our goal is to ensure that every search you perform turns up fresh results of the highest quality.

A reminder: Are you taking advantage of our Automatic Renewal Program? When you sign up, you lock in your current subscription rate for the next 15 months. It's the best way to guarantee your access to our image library; to sign up now, visit our Automatic Renewal page.

Now is a smart time to subscribe to Shutterstock and lock in current rates: in order to continue to grow our collection aggressively while offering the high level of service to which we're committed, we will be raising fees effective March 19, 2007. As of that date, a one-month subscription will cost $199. As always, the longer the subscription period, the better the value--please see below for the revised fee schedule. (Of course, if you are clever enough to sign up for Automatic Renewal between now and then, this will not apply to you!)

Subscription Period    Current Rates
(lock them in today)    New Rates
1 month    $159    $199
3 months    $449    $559
6 months    $849    $1,059
1 year    $1,599    $1,999

Thank you very much for your business. If you have any questions, please contact [email protected].

Sincerely,
Shutterstock Support

They're probably banking on the facts that ...

a)  Not many customers will use their full download of 750 images per month. How many people need that many images?

b)  Out of those 50'000 contributing photographers, I guess that a load will never reach their $100 payout limit.

c)  And there will also be a significant proportion of contributors who will give up on SS, because it takes them an age to reach $100, (or they'll die, or will have have marital bust-ups, or other major crises in their lives) and forget they have images online. But those forgotten images will continue to earn for SS.

I base those last two observations on personal experience. I went through a phase where I spread the word about SS as widely as I could to get referrals, and the tiny commission. Of the people who were accepted, not one became a regular contributor. They all have small static portfolios ranging from 5 to 100 or so images. I get a few cents every day from their sales, but I guess that hardly any of them have, personally, taken a payout.

Well, ever since I started looking at this microstock business a few months ago I have believed that prices and commissions would rise over the next two or three years.  The days of the 25c are numbered.  It is just a question of time.

Two comments in SS's release above are important.  One suggests that they are raising prices (and hence commissions) in order to continue to attract the best images.  That suggests a commission increase is indeed on the cards.

The other remark is their 'supply of fresh images in each search'.  This ties in with observations made on this board that once images stop being 'fresh' their sales die away.

On there forum they have said they will review the commission at the same time they did last year (april) when the price went from 20 to 25c.

A price increase seems to support they will  but maybe it is to avoid putting commissions down 

Note that 123rf pays out 50% for their commissions and it has been averaging about 33-34c. I am not sure how their pricing compares to SS though.