MicrostockGroup

Hi!

We are going live with our API this week. I'm working on a newsletter with detailed information, but wanted to notify you in here as well. We'll provide you details of our payment, your share, what third party it is, and options for opting out. Hopefully we'll have the newsletter ready by tomorrow.

Is there any specific information we should include? And if you have any other general subjects you would like us to cover in this, or another, newsletter - please let me know. You can respond to this post, or e-mail me at [email protected]

Have a beautiful day!

Linda

Nice! 
Who are these 2 agencies, who will distribute our images via API?
Thanks!

Hi!

Yes, all contributors are included in our API. The two agencies implementing our API are Pixmac and India Pictures. We are working on adding more agencies.

Linda

Hi dirkr!

Let me try to answer your questions - and if you have any more, keep 'em coming!

Linda

Will the opt-out be specific per Partner?
I hope we'll be able to make it partner specific, and I'll know more next week. My experience with Pixmac is very positive, but we are aware of the issues with other agencies. We've discussed these issues directly with Pixmac, and we'll make sure to audit the agreement on a regular basis. Traditionally in the image industry agencies must depend on a high degree of trust in a business relationship. New technology makes it easier to monitor a relationship, together with frequent audits. I believe Pixmac will do their best to restore our and the industry's trust in them, as it's crucial for their survival in the long run.


You say "The commission is as it is on our site - you get 50% of what we get on all single image sales! "
But what do you get?  The full sale price? Or is the photographer cut in the end 50% of 50% or less?
We negotiate different terms for different providers, depending on anticipated volume of sales, market, and so on. We will give our photographers a 50% commission on the amount we get from our reseller. In some cases it might be a bit less than on our site - but not substantially, and in other cases it will be substantially higher. The price we get for a large image will never be below €7, giving you no lower than €3.50 for a large image. In on of the deals we're negotiation the price we get will be app. €40, and then you'll get a €20 for your large image sale. 

What are the price points of the partners?
This will differ from site to site. Due to confidentiality I cannot give you details about other parties, but you are free to ex. search your images at our API partner sites and take a look yourself.

Is further distribution allowed (if the partner has further partnerships)?
No, we do not allow sub-licencing on our API.

Hi leaf!

Does the % of sale you receive vary between partner?
Yes, in some agreement we don't have % but a fixed price. On both % and fixed price we split 50/50 with our photographers.  This makes it difficult to say how many % goes to API partner and how much to YAY, but in the deals we have now - when I look at the price for the images - I would estimate it to a 50/50 split between YAY and the partner. Still, the payment for the photographer might be more than if they sold the image directly on our API partner site

I know some might find it unfair to have their commission cut to what appears to be a 25% commission. And, even if I completely understand this, unfortunately I can't give a better answer than "that's the way it always been done (with sub-licensing)", and "it's better to get the sales with sub-licencing than not to". One agency can't reach all image customers, so API and sub-licencing gives agencies a possibility to reach a larger portion of the market. What we want to avoid in new agreements is further sub-licensing - we find that two-tier (YAY --> API Partner -->Customer) is sufficient.

I hope this helps explaining some of the reasons for why we do as we do, and feel free to continue asking questions!

Linda

Thanks for the clarification, but a fixed price arrangement is something that gets me a little worried, especially if your partners have extended license options.
If, for instance, your cut from the partner is a fixed €7 and they sell an "extended license" for €100 at their site, do you have an arrangement in place for this or do you still receive the agreed €7 and €3.5 goes to the photographer?

Thanks again

Hi Thomas!

The fixed price is on size and license, so a large image would have €7, a small image a smaller, and an extended license would have a higher fixed price. Currently we don't offer extended license through our API.

Linda

Great news!

Thank you dirkr for the comment. Our approach at Pixmac is to bring higher volume of sales to all YayMicro contributors instantly. Some of them prefer to spend time on uploading to many agencies, some just prefer one hub such as YayMicro. The time saved can be more valuable than the revenue split. That is why I hope the API partnership is beneficial for all parties. For us at Pixmac it saves time and we can focus more on marketing/selling the content.

As for the trust in the industry: Leaf and Linda are right. We'll make everything technically possible to make a perfect system and I advice you to watch/test us anytime too. In the end the amount of eyes might tune the system to perfection...

Higher volume of sales instantly? You're very optimistic. That can't be based on your past experience. You had my portfolio up both from DT and FT (yes, duplicates, your duplicate detection did not work) when they still had their partnership with you active.
Both of those portfolios sold exactly one file each over several months. I think that says enough.

not always.  I have seen my images distributed by a third party distributer.