Author Topic: 100MB sale for $11.58 wow (Read 24717 times)

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #50 on:** October 04, 2012, 09:38 »

Alex is correct - I received a reply from support this morning. The purchase was made with 45 cent credits - "From time to time, we do give large discounts to loyal and consistent clients who buy large amount of credits in bulk and the discount is given at the discretion of our Sales and Marketing director."

So I guess luissantos84 and I were both blessed by purchases from one of these loyal and consistent clients.

Pixart · « **Reply #51 on:** October 24, 2012, 13:10 »

Quote from: alex123rf on October 04, 2012, 09:19

Hi Everyone,

Please allow me to address the issue on promotional credits.

1. We do give out promotional credits.
2. These credits are free.
3. We often give this out to prospective clients to test drive 123RF so that they'll search and look for content.
4. In the event that these clients use the credits to download content, 123RF is committed to pay 20 cents per credit to our contributors.
5. These payments come out from our allocated Advertising and Promotion budget.

I hope you will find this explanation satisfactory. We DO NOT DEDUCT payment from you when these credits are present.

Thank you very much,

Alex.

Wow, you pay more per credit for freebies than you do for the super-duper-we-are-so-lucky-you-offer-it-upsizing service. Nice to see an $8 sale until you see the real price - .053 per credit for a 150 credit sale!!! Less than 6 cents per credit! Congratulations, you have managed to surpass Istock. None of us thought it was possible.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #52 on:** November 13, 2012, 12:24 »

So this note about royalties will feel a little upside down compared to most. Today I checked my sales and among them were two XL images, one of which had a $1.20 royalty and the other $6.50

XL is 4 credits, so is it really the case that a buyer paid $3.25 a credit? I did double check that the "Downloads" column showed only one sale today for that image - it isn't multiple royalties added together. I can contact support, but thought I'd see if there's some sort of partner deal I don't know about that pays more than the typical amounts.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #53 on:** November 27, 2012, 11:08 »

This morning's check had an XL sale (5 credits) with 31 cents royalty to me. At 50% that means the buyer paid 12.4 cents a credit! I assume it's one of their recent promotions - but those are ridiculous numbers. I make more for an XS at PhotoDune (often talked about as a low price site) than I did for an XL here. Even a sub at 123rf would have made 36 cents.

It's a good month (BME) there, but virtually giving away my XL images just ticks me off. They can pay for promotional expenses from their 50%, not mine.

Bah humbug!

gillian vann · « **Reply #54 on:** November 27, 2012, 19:59 »

doesn't the taking our jpegs and turning them into TIFFs kinda fly in the face of image quality? Why not ask us to upsize our own files and provide them in whatever format they want?

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #55 on:** November 27, 2012, 20:42 »

Quote from: vannphoto on November 27, 2012, 19:59

doesn't the taking our jpegs and turning them into TIFFs kinda fly in the face of image quality? Why not ask us to upsize our own files and provide them in whatever format they want?

You'd think, but SS, DT and 123rf all do it. I think it's that some of the old fashioned buyers think they want TIFFs and rather than argue the toss with them, the sites give them what they want. Logistically, contacting us for custom items wouldn't work well, IMO.

Once, having us upload TIFFs would have been impossible given bandwidth and speed issues. Today it wouldn't be such a problem and I wouldn't mind doing it if sites offered the option.

And on the cheap credits issue I mentioned above, 123rf contacted me via email to confirm which file I was talking about and said they'll look into it. I'll post when they let me know the story.

gillian vann · « **Reply #56 on:** November 28, 2012, 16:55 »

well how weird, sold my first XXL tiff yesterday.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #57 on:** December 05, 2012, 11:15 »

I didn't hear back from 123rf support, so I sent them an e-mal yesterday asking what they found out when they looked at the XXL with a 31 cent royalty.

The reply was that it was an error and I actually earned $1.55. I'm glad they fixed it, but the reason they gave is rather worrying as I wonder how many more of these there might be:

"This occurs because our system miscalculate the earning from one of our partner's site. All error had been checked and fixed.
Thank you for notifying us about the error, and do not hesitate to let us know if any irregularity occurs."

I don't check the details of every sale out - I just happened to notice it because it was such a small amount and not a small. How many other "miscalculations" have been happening that I didn't notice? Really unnerving.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #58 on:** December 10, 2012, 21:48 »

I sent a note to support this afternoon because I had an XXL sale today with an 87.5 cent royalty. That means the buyer paid 35 cents a credit. I looked back over November and December XXL (JPEG) sales and they were all within the $1.50 to $2.50 range.

I'll post when I get a reply, but you might want to check out any abnormally low numbers on XXL sales in your own records. I find it hard to imagine that the error they found and fixed last time is the only such error.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #59 on:** December 19, 2012, 03:11 »

After one week with no reply to my most recent support ticket (the 87.5 cent royalty, above), I sent them a reminder e-mail asking if they'd found anything out.

I just received an e-mail back saying that they had fixed the amount to be $1.00 with the following explanation:

"These earnings are from the image sold on API account for a large Credit purchase.
The previous cases were caused by a minor glitch on the earning calculation system and thanks to your prompt notification,
we already get it fix.
As promised , earning shall never go below 20 cent per credit from now onwards."

(Bold italics are mine)

I'm not thrilled that this is a second "minor glitch" - they told me it was fixed last time I contacted them. However, the promise of no royalty lower than 20 cents per credit is something I haven't heard before - and I assume what they mean is that the price per credit for calculating the royalty will never be lower than 40 cents - after January, the percentages for contributors will no longer be 50% across the board.

40 cents a credit is still dirt cheap - below even iStock's bargain basement amounts - and could result in very small earnings for those on the minimum royalty rate.

How hard can it be to keep a decent set of books? I'm assuming if I really combed through things there would be tons more errors, but they're relying on us just not having the time to do this...

grafix04 · « **Reply #60 on:** December 19, 2012, 08:45 »

Quote from: jsnover on December 19, 2012, 03:11

After one week with no reply to my most recent support ticket (the 87.5 cent royalty, above), I sent them a reminder e-mail asking if they'd found anything out.

I just received an e-mail back saying that they had fixed the amount to be $1.00 with the following explanation:

"These earnings are from the image sold on API account for a large Credit purchase.
The previous cases were caused by a minor glitch on the earning calculation system and thanks to your prompt notification,
we already get it fix.
As promised , earning shall never go below 20 cent per credit from now onwards."

(Bold italics are mine)

I'm not thrilled that this is a second "minor glitch" - they told me it was fixed last time I contacted them. However, the promise of no royalty lower than 20 cents per credit is something I haven't heard before - and I assume what they mean is that the price per credit for calculating the royalty will never be lower than 40 cents - after January, the percentages for contributors will no longer be 50% across the board.

40 cents a credit is still dirt cheap - below even iStock's bargain basement amounts - and could result in very small earnings for those on the minimum royalty rate.

How hard can it be to keep a decent set of books? I'm assuming if I really combed through things there would be tons more errors, but they're relying on us just not having the time to do this...

Yet I got told off for calling them unprofessional.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #61 on:** December 27, 2012, 13:56 »

$4.80 royalty for a 100MB TIFF sale - so the buyer paid 48 cents a credit (20 credits is the royalty basis for that 150 credit sale).

I guess I should be happy I'm above (just) the 20 cents royalty per credit thresshold... In the last week a 20 credit TIFF sale at DT (on a level 2 image) paid me $6.46.

I'm amazed that buyers are paying anyone anything to upsize their images, but that's a separate topic

pancaketom · « **Reply #62 on:** December 30, 2012, 20:33 »

Quote from: jsnover on December 19, 2012, 03:11

After one week with no reply to my most recent support ticket (the 87.5 cent royalty, above), I sent them a reminder e-mail asking if they'd found anything out.

I just received an e-mail back saying that they had fixed the amount to be $1.00 with the following explanation:

"These earnings are from the image sold on API account for a large Credit purchase.
The previous cases were caused by a minor glitch on the earning calculation system and thanks to your prompt notification,
we already get it fix.
As promised , earning shall never go below 20 cent per credit from now onwards."

(Bold italics are mine)

I'm not thrilled that this is a second "minor glitch" - they told me it was fixed last time I contacted them. However, the promise of no royalty lower than 20 cents per credit is something I haven't heard before - and I assume what they mean is that the price per credit for calculating the royalty will never be lower than 40 cents - after January, the percentages for contributors will no longer be 50% across the board.

40 cents a credit is still dirt cheap - below even iStock's bargain basement amounts - and could result in very small earnings for those on the minimum royalty rate.

How hard can it be to keep a decent set of books? I'm assuming if I really combed through things there would be tons more errors, but they're relying on us just not having the time to do this...

So I guess the .60 L sales I got recently are legit then at .40/credit. It is still somewhat painful, but I guess more than I the bottom that I am used to per credit from DT and IS - Of course there images can sell for more credits too so even if I get .17 (or .08) for a credit it usually isn't that bad for the total sale.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #63 on:** December 31, 2012, 11:19 »

5 credits for an XXL - or in your case 3 for a large - is a lot less than either IS or DT, so yes, 20 cents royalty per credit as a floor is nothing to get excited about.

In looking at sales over the last few days I saw an XXL (JPEG) sale, 5 credits, for a larger amount than if they bought the most expensive credits from the site - my royalty was $3.125, meaning the buyer paid $1.25 a credit. I assume a partner site sale.

I think the highest royalty per credit that I've noticed was one in November - $6.50 for an XL (4 credit) sale, which meant the buyer paid $3.25 a credit. I assume it's a partner site, but we have no information on 123rf about which sales are partner sales. Perhaps I should be happy there's a partner that's selling at higher prices than 123rf does, but I can't check accuracy on anything when I have no idea about who's selling it and what the prices to the buyer are.

We need at a minimum indication that it's a partner sale in the stats. It'd be preferable to see the site (a code for each perhaps) and a sale price.

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Author Topic: 100MB sale for $11.58 wow (Read 24717 times)

Jo Ann Snover

Pixart

Jo Ann Snover

Jo Ann Snover

gillian vann

Jo Ann Snover

gillian vann

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Jo Ann Snover

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grafix04

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pancaketom

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