Hi everyone,

Kindly write in to [email protected] and we will exclude your portfolio from only Pixmac, not our entire Partnership Program.

Please note that the exclusion will take effect in about 2 weeks. However, we will do our best exclude your content within that timeframe.

Thanks for your understanding.



Cheers,
Anglee




 

Thanks Zager, and Merja for your detailed accounts of what's going on.  Hope you will attempt to understand the concerns of contributors.  We are given very little information about where and how our pictures are being represented, so we tend to be very wary. 

I won't rule out uploading directly to Pixmac myself, like Mantonino is planning.  Just want to do some more research and lay this issue to rest first. 

And Zager, you are right, it would be nice if the agencies who have stopped their partnerships with you would be straightforward about why so we have more than guesswork and rumors to base our decisions on.

Hi Lisa,

Just wanted to say I do understand your concerns. In Microstock there seems to be some strange manners which I have never seen in "traditional" stock photo industry. One of them is this hassle with using reps. It should be just ok as being local is a strength, and it is of benefit to the photographer,supplier, agency and rep. But it should be made openly. If these agencies have this opt-in/opt-out system, that should clearly list all the reps they are using, in that way the photographers would always see and know which channels are being used. And of course there should be no technical problems in that function either; if you choose to opt-out your status should stay like that and you should have no reason to do that more than once. Having said that, I am sure every single technical solution has some problems every now and then, and there always is a human person behind the technology, mistakes do happen. We should understand that, too.

The representation contracts should be transparent on agencies' website, too. The supplier should list the channels they are using (on special reps page) and the rep should list the suppliers on special "supplier/partner" site. It should be allowed to show the photographer's name and the supplier's name next to the previews on the website, too. Instead of just telling here some representation has been terminated, I feel there should be reason to come in and tell about the beginning of that relationship, too. Instead of letting you all to wonder how your images are on this and that website. it is not fair either to throw here some other statement, confuse you, make you worried, and then just disappear. All kind of accusations must be based on facts and when accusations are made, one must give details, too. If it does not work like that, I get suspicous. Making decisions based on rumours must be like hell to the photographers.

I do represent some local photographers too, not in microstock but in trad.RF. I see their distress about being able to make their living every single day. And I feel very sorry for them, the change in this industry has been rapid and quite unique. It has been a big change to me too; years back I was able to sell an image with 20 000 euros, next week when trad. RF showed up I was able to get only 600 euros for the same usage, now it might be 5 euros or less. It is obvious the budget prices will come to this industry, but there never was reason to go this low so my opinion is the pioneers in microstock made huge mistake. Now it is impossible to change that but we must make the best of the current system. With the low price level it is hard job for the agencies to cover the costs of technical solutions and salaries but still; offering commission of 20 % to the photographer is not fair and it is not justified ; there is no agency without images and photographers producing them so I fully understand the agony the photographers are having.

Have a nice weekend!

Seems like every few months something problem pops up about pixmac (do a search on 'pixmac'), trust takes a long time to rebuild especially when new problems keep coming up (although that's better than istock's almost daily issue LOL)

I don't know how iStock handles that, but we try to explain/fix that and avoid that in future. And yes Pixmac is related to a few problems, some were our mistake, some were not. But as we're connected with several agencies, it's more probable that we're involved. It's easy to mask anything if it's only one agency/authority. Pixmac is being watched by many eyes. I think that's good, but also brings in some challenges.

Commissions are different between the two docs you posted
You're T&C still talks exclusivity which you say in one of the docs is Exclusivity is something like DRM in music. It doesn�t work long term.
"We�re trying to become a true Open Company" good and thankfully you've got rid of the $0.02 commissions but "Subscription    30% ($0.25+)    40% ($0.25+)" implies that higher amounts are possible for subscription sales??, however based on your front page pricing, artists cannot recieve the more than the $0.25 minimum???
still have credits earned expire in 1 year so if you havent made payout too bad you lose your earnings.
etc etc

The exclusivity in ToC is going to be fixed soon. As for the share:

- we've removed expiration of credits earned by photographer (a while ago)
- we've removed the possibility to buy the smallest size in subscription so the revenue usually doesn't fall even close to $0.25 (same as SS)
- homepage was innacurate, that's being fixed
- what "etc" do you mean please?

Thank you for understanding.

Zager,

I think we all feel very uncomfortable about partners, because everything is so obscure to us, we feel uncertain there is enough control to guarantee the security of our images and the honesty in transactions - not to mention we often do not know who are these partners, it's an information often denied to us, or at least difficult to obtain.

As cclapper says, we are scattered around the world, connected by networks, not having any real idea of who are the people behind the nicknames here, and actually unable to take any legal action if we find ourselves frauded. And we've seen strange things happening even in the most respectable (in theory) sites.

My portfolio is still on pixmac... awaiting reply from Alex@123.

Patrick.