MicrostockGroup

Aaaahhhh.... I think I'll put it in big red letters too 

SS and TS both give 0.25$ to starters, yes. At TS you will be a starter till hell freezes over. At SS, you have a growth path and with a decent port you'll be soon on 0.33$. I'm for a while on 0.36$.

Then, SS has regular ELs at 28$ and frequent ODs, giving an effective RPD of 0.60$ or so.
TS will give a maximum of 0.80$ on image pack sales, so even with 50% IP sales on TS, you'll still have a lower RPD.

Finally, since TS will only be accessible through IS, they'll throw your full sizes to the crocodiles, while at SS, most of us upload reduced sizes.

So true. Keep in mind I'm not saying that people should have a kind and warm feeling about ThinkStock, nor that they should embrace the "25c until Hell Freezes Over" payment program. Just pointing out that there are some contradictions in the logic against this change, and we haven't seen a full week of it's existence.

Hand wringing that StockXpert is gone, that income is lost. No it isn't! The buyers have to either go someplace else or suddenly stop buying photo licenses. Does anyone think that the customers from StockXpert are going out of business because StockXpert shut down? OK they will be buying at some other microstock site, the customers and sales have migrated. Some of that will be to ThinkStock.

Might as well add that we can scream until HFO and nothing is going to change with the photo dumping site. Which I'd call more politely a consolidation of many scattered, withering Getty owned sites. This is a good move for them to get all these orphans into one home. It should bring in buyers and sales.

If it was an option I'd go exclusive on SS. That's how much I like their sales based on volume, occasional .81 and $1.88 ODs and less frequent $28 ELs. IS is still my best Microstock RPD but there are less, so based on the one thing that matters, Bottom Line, Dollars earned, SS is still #1.

SS minimum is 4mp, IS is 2mp, StockXpert was 1mp, anyone want to guess what sizes will be the minimum on ThinkStock? I don't know. Best value for buyers is getting 4mp files from SS. Cheap subs on ThinkStock, what size? Good question? IS exclusives not joining, that's fine because ThinkStock isn't that kind of place. It's a big value priced collection not a modern highest quality stock photo offering.

StockXpert was getting old, with many small files. The fact that they accepted things that others didn't, points to lower acceptance standards, nothing else. Merging the StockXpert collection into one place with some other stale photos, on a single value priced site, makes perfect business sense. Adding the IS collection, especially exclusive content, at subscription prices, to that same site, doesn't make any sense.

Wait and see? That's what I've really been trying to say.

Actually, I think that is a bad choice in this case.  If you wait and see - i.e. leave your images on StockXpert to be sold on ThinkStock - you are helping them to succeed with this lower commission rate.   You would be competing with your own images wherever they are (SS, FT, BigStock, etc.) at lower prices.  Sounds like cutting your own throat to me.

Will be cashing out and deleting my port from StockXpert soon I think.
fred

Leaf needs to get my collection and add them.