I optioned out for Thinkstock but as they are now advertising thinkstock in the istock contact sheet I'm thinking of option in it is probably a good way to drive buyers away from istock and should be supported by independent photographers.

I completely disagree.  SS pay me $0.38, why on earth would they carry on raising commissions if I accept $0.25 from thinkstock?  If most independents opt in, we could end up with $0.25 being the top subs rate on all the sites.  This could also take customers away from the independent sites, please explain how that helps us?

I wont use thinkstock while they only offer $0.25.  Just imagine how much better that site would be if they paid us something reasonable, like $0.35.  CanStockPhoto have hardly any $0.25 sales, I get nearly as many $20 sales there.  I still wish they went to $0.35 though.

I don't think thinkstock will work but if it does and all we have is low subs sites, I will stop using microstock.  I already have a plan in place to move to RM, footage and selling from my own site.  There is no way I am going to be forced in to low commission subs that earn the sites a lot more than we do.

I am not for Thinkstock either. They have absolutely nothing interesting to offer. How do you guys get those $20 sales from CanStockPhoto? Been there three months now and none of those yet and I get lots of ELs elsewhere and good sales from Alamy. Denis  

Quote from: lisafx on February 05, 2010, 09:13

Quote from: grp_photo on February 05, 2010, 09:12

I optioned out for Thinkstock but as they are now advertising thinkstock in the istock contact sheet I'm thinking of option in it is probably a good way to drive buyers away from istock and should be supported by independent photographers.

Why would independent contributors want to drive business away from Istock where we average over a dollar a sale to a sub site where we will get only .25

Well istock killed one of the best site, my favorite microstocksite, so it's fair enough to make it harder for them.

 They are the same company!! Istock, thinkstock, getty.. They are the same, so your not driving anyone away just transfering them to another part of the same company.. and screwing yourself in the process..

I'm leaning heavily on removing everything and not participating in the Thinkstock transition. I'm not sure that I personally want to contribute any more than possible to the industries subscription-based trends.

In fact it would be nice if the agencies would come up with some type of opt-out option for sub sales.

Maybe an evolution of all these "free image" sections to "sub image" sections is in order. I would probably never donate images to the sub section just like I don't to the free sections now. However, I'm sure a lot of people still would. This would still allow buyers who work on pathetically cheap budgets to stay in the game .. they just wouldn't be getting access to premium images.

The agencies make more money .. we make more money ... the buyers will all still be there because we are dealing with a need industry and not a want industry ... sounds like a nice idea to me at least.

I have about the same number and they will go within a few days (still getting a few StockXpert sales). but $0.25 is too low and I wont support undercutting what I get paid elsewhere.
 

I also noticed that Andres Rodriguez has his files on thinkstock, the only one from the big guys I could find there. Yuri is not there.
Neither Sean Locke, if you can imagine 

Bear in mind a lot of people who were opted out have had their portfolios transferred to Thinkstock by mistake.  I don't know if that was what happened in Andres' case, but I wouldn't assume just because his images are there that he wanted them to be.

I'm leaning heavily on removing everything and not participating in the Thinkstock transition...

That's basically where I've landed. I was going to leave my stuff at StockXpert to transfer to ThinkStock, then realized that it's ridiculous to have 2 ThinkStock portfolios (one of old StockXpert stuff and another of anything new I wanted on ThinkStock via istock). So I figured I'd just delete my StockXpert portfolio and if I wanted to be on Thinkstock I'd do it through istock instead.

Then after giving it some more thought I think I'm just going to sit this one out and see what happens. I'll delete my StockXpert account and if things ever change at ThinkStock (meaning we see a proper pay rate) then I'll just opt in through istock instead.

But for now, I'm keeping my distance from ThinkStock.

@ Melastmohican: I think they are still migrating images, so hang in there, maybe they will show up.

@ Lisafx: See I have this dilemma. A lot of my older images that are on StockXpert are very unlikely to be accepted at Istock. Otherwise, I'd just upload everything at Istock and be on my way. I have probably around 30-50 on Thinkstock that came from Istock, but 300 or so from StockXpert.

In a similar situation myself ... 400+ at StockXpert and around 40+ or so at iStock. I did hear they are in Phase I of migration with Phase II, and Phase III still yet to come.

-Mark
http://markwpayne.wordpress.com
 

I've requested my final payment after having deleted all my files. Today I got a confirmatory message from StockXpert@istockphoto.com, asking me if I am sure that I want to close my account and if I knew that my files could be hosted on Thinkstock.com. Well, seeing as all my files are now gone from StockXpert (and I wouldn't want to have them on TS anyway), I couldn't answer in any other way than 'yes'

So long and thanks for all the fish, StockXpert...

Quote from: grp_photo on February 05, 2010, 09:12

I optioned out for Thinkstock but as they are now advertising thinkstock in the istock contact sheet I'm thinking of option in it is probably a good way to drive buyers away from istock and should be supported by independent photographers.

Why would independent contributors want to drive business away from Istock where we average over a dollar a sale to a sub site where we will get only .25

Why does anyone have photos on 123RF where they pay .22 for some subscriptions?

Quote from: RacePhoto on February 13, 2010, 23:09

Quote from: lisafx on February 05, 2010, 09:13

Quote from: grp_photo on February 05, 2010, 09:12

I optioned out for Thinkstock but as they are now advertising thinkstock in the istock contact sheet I'm thinking of option in it is probably a good way to drive buyers away from istock and should be supported by independent photographers.

Why would independent contributors want to drive business away from Istock where we average over a dollar a sale to a sub site where we will get only .25

Why does anyone have photos on 123RF where they pay .22 for some subscriptions?

I get $0.36 for subs there, can't find any $0.22.

Try this link for 20 cent sales. There was another about 22c sales. The answer from 123RF is "it depends on how much they paid for the credits."

http://forum.123rf.com/viewtopic.php?t=1181

Add that and the site taking away sales, disappearing accounting for sales that were made in 2009, the site being broken half the time, slow reviews, slow payment, no answers from support, strange rejections, and it makes me wonder why anyone bothers with them at all. But the point is, 22c and 20c sales, which is 50% of the price paid.

And if someone with a year subscription, pays 27c a photo on ThinkStock then the 25c commission is 92%. That's for people who like to argue commissions based on percentages which makes no sense. We get paid in cents, not Per-cents.
 
Then there's the argument that uploading to every new site that comes around, costs nothing, because we already have the photos. And I think that supporting the new price cutting start-ups. causes market weakness, which makes the big agencies have to cut prices to compete with the basement businesses that come and go every two years. The contradiction is that people are supporting all these new sink holes, but vowing that somehow ThinkStock is taking away customers and sales? WHAT?

The OP question was about losing StockXpert and royalties with ThinkStock. The dual standard is, dilution and selling on every wannabee startup (with low views and low sales) is fine, but somehow allowing files to be sold by the same site where they were, with big backing and migrating customers, for 5c less, is a problem.

Yeah, I still don't get it? People are overlooking similar problems and worse situations on multiple sites, but swearing off ThinkStock because they are angry at Getty for shutting down StockXpert. Great deal, put your photos up on "New Site X" for 20c, one time payment, and watch them languish, but gee whiz, it was an easy 20 cents. Yet repeat sales at 25c each, is too low? Site X is taking away sales from the good paying sites and drawing away good customers. ThinkStock is an extension, in house, of the site that people already work for.

Potentially the first 2000 sales on SS are at 25c!

Just too many apparent contradictions and double standards for me to comprehend the wave of complaints against ThinkStock, while other sites offering less and worse conditions, are acceptable?

Yes, I can appreciate the point of view that says no to all subs. It makes sense if that's what someone believes. Moving opted out files to the new site is a major screw up. In fact the whole process and transition has been pretty shabby with vague answers on top of no answers.

What confuses me is how one sub site is significantly different from any other sub site because of one crummy nickel. If I make six sales instead of five, because ThinkStock is bigger and has more customers, I'm making the same amount of money. If they make seven sales where I used to get five, now I got a raise. Why do so many people find that SS is their biggest earning site in dollars? Not because it has the highest return per download, or highest commissions. It's because they sell the most licenses.

Bottom line counts more than all the percentages and earnings formulas. Dollars and cents in the bank account trumps all the RPD, RPI, graphs and BMEs in the deck.

Until I see what happens with StinkySocks as far as the customers and sales, plus earnings in real money, I'm not deciding if this is a big bad deal, or if it is something that works out as good for artists.

StockXpert content hasn't been migrated, we don't know if all the IS files are moved, those mysterious phases aren't completed, we haven't had any indication of sales (or lack of) on ThinkStock yet, and many people have made up their minds that customers are already someplace else and gone forever. It hasn't been a week! StockXpert only shut down a few days back. We just don't know.