doesn't 123rf still pay a higher % than shutterstock?  Am I missing something? 

Yes you are missing something. Shutterstock pays me $0.38 per sub download and 123RF pays only $0.36.

Quote from: traveler1116 on December 19, 2012, 12:50

I realize cutting the royalty rate is no fun for anyone but doesn't 123rf still pay a higher % than shutterstock?  Am I missing something?  36 cents per sub is more than or about the same as SS and even the 35% royalty is higher than SS right?

Yes, you are missing something.

As of 1 Jan, anyone on 35% from Credits will be on .25 for a sub.

They are currently offering me .21 for a sub.

They can stuff it.

Ah they do hide that.  They are still advertising paying 36 cents for subs on the website.

Quote from: alex123rf on December 19, 2012, 05:59

Hi everyone,

We have made some changes to the calculations, here is a list of the changes:

1) 100MB TIFF - now 150, from 20
2) 200 MB TIFF - now 300, from 40
3) 300 MB TIFF - now 450, from 60
4) If the Contributor also submits content to the Footage or EVO collections, 123RF will recognize the credit count that we charge to our clients for the purpose of calculating Contributors' Levels.

Thank you very much,

Alex.

As someone else said, my credits are exactly the same as they were yesterday.  Should I not have had a jump from one of these 100 mb sales and no update from my credits from yesterday.

I guess it doesn't matter anyway because I too expect that delete button to appear at month end.

This was answered on the previous page

@fotografer - The total that you see now was generated using the new formula.

Thank you!

Alex.

The 23 cents from FT are lowest I know of, but I get a lot of credit sales there, and other subs are 27 cents. SS pays me 33 cents, but sell hundreds of dls a month, plus loads of ODDs

123 is going to pay me 25 cents on a really low volume. So they will actually earn me as much as DP and CanStockPhoto now. Meaning, race to the bottom.

Quote from: traveler1116 on December 19, 2012, 12:50

I realize cutting the royalty rate is no fun for anyone but doesn't 123rf still pay a higher % than shutterstock?  Am I missing something?  36 cents per sub is more than or about the same as SS and even the 35% royalty is higher than SS right?

Yes, you're missing a lot, in addition to what has been pointed out already.  At SS, we knew going in what the rates were and how much we would receive from what types of sale.  Those have never gone down as far as I know.  At SS, we made the choice to submit because the higher sales generates greater returns even though the % was lower than at 123.  Plus at SS, after earning $500 you go from 25 cent subs to 33 cents - a 32% raise.  This is a great incentive to new people.

At 123, starting Jan. 1st they will be paying a base rate of 21 cents for subs sales - the lowest in the business - and the royalty cuts will probably drop them into the low earners.  Paying higher royalty rates was a way to attract interest from contributors, but that will disappear in 13 days.  They don't have the sales volumes to pull off this kind of stunt.  Their scheme will keep the top people happy but everyone else will leave and no new people will come along to replace them.

Good summary!

I wonder how it will work for them (123) having mostly top people left in the contributor pool:  they thought they were handing out royalty cuts but they will likely find all they royalties they are paying are between 45 and 50%!

Quote from: traveler1116 on December 19, 2012, 12:50

I realize cutting the royalty rate is no fun for anyone but doesn't 123rf still pay a higher % than shutterstock?  Am I missing something?  36 cents per sub is more than or about the same as SS and even the 35% royalty is higher than SS right?

What you're missing is the monthly total earnings. If you're a super high volume site like SS, you can be a top earner with relatively modest royalty percentages or lots of subscriptions - IS was a top earner for lots of indies at 20% for a number of years.

If you're a low volume site, you need to offer a higher royalty percentage to make up for the crappy volume.

Even if 123rf now offers me 50% and 36 cent subs, I made nearly 7 times the money from SS in November as I did from 123rf.

123rf is a lower performer which is now lowering its rates even further. When IS tried it - from the top dog/close 2nd dog position - it backfired. And 123rf figures it'll work for them??

I know I'm going to get torn apart for saying this, but I will say it nonetheless as I'm interested to learn from the responses.

Is there not an argument that ss and IS were (past tense just for IS maybe) able to maintain and increase their top positions i.e. lots of sales, from giving lower royalties than those like 123rf. IS and ss started with low royalties i.e. much less than 50%, many of the others didn't. ss have played smart by simply not decreasing the royalties, IS already had low royalties but were foolish enough to decrease them from a rate where generally people didn't have much of an issue with, to a rate where people say they're unhappy with. I doubt that most buyers had any clue what royalty rate IS were giving before they decided to drop the rate. But the constant bad press about IS since they dropped the rate, I believe is certainly playing its part in their demise lack of growth. It's different for 123rf as it's not as well known, doesn't have as many contributors and not everyone is getting a rate cut.

I personally think that a company such as 123rf could grow even without any royalty changes, growth can come from many things such as initiatives and innovations. But say they don't have this ability, then a logical next step would be to try and get on a level playing field as companies such as ss and IS, which I assume for them means to take a percentage similar to the leaders of the industry. Actually thinking about it, are they even doing that? If we don't look at individual contributors, but look at the files, I'm guessing that a very large proportion of files would maintain 50% or go above 50% for the artists who own these files. None of these guys will be upset by this or remove their files or stop uploading because of the move 123rf are making, heck with the amount of files they have they wouldn't be likely to remove their files or stop uploading even if their royalty rates were reduced by 123rf.

Ok fire away. 

I think if 80% of the contributors stop uploading, remove images, stop linking to their site, send buyers elsewhere and post negative things about their commissions in forums and the social media sites, it does have an effect.  Is it a coincidence that sites that have cut commissions seem to be selling less relative to Shutterstock?

They don't have the sales volume to justify reducing commissions, unlike the top 4 sites that might get away with it because it hurts financially to leave them.

I know 80% wont leave, I didn't say that.  My own actions have slowed down my sales and lost them money and that's before the commission cut.  The cumulative effect of lots of us doing something does seem to make a difference, unless it's just a coincidence that the only site not to cut commissions in recent years is doing so much better than the others?  Perhaps new people get the sales the rest of us lose but are there enough new people just starting with microstock now and will they bother when they see how little some sites are paying?  It was worth doing a few years ago but starting now isn't as appealing.

80% won't leave for sure but many of these will be those who haven't even passed the exam on IS / SS.  I reckon quite a chunk of the 20% will be affected (the really top guys will be in the top 5% or less).  Generally, burning bridges is not a great move but many, many can stop uploading without noticable pain.  Sure the people who keep 50% should stay but that won't be any extra for the site.

One of the reason I can think for SS keeping all the images that haven't sold for years is that they might be making links to the site that help them in Google searches and bring new buyers in.  DT deleting lots of old images doesn't seem to of helped them.  All the people that left istock and FT or deleted images seems to of hit their site traffic.  Perhaps our old portfolios are more of an asset than some sites think?

Quote from: fotografer on December 20, 2012, 05:51

You are right.. It's said that the top 20% of contributors on most sites  have 80% of the sales so my guess is that the top 20% will either stay at the same % or even go up so will carry on uploading as normal.

Quote

Of course but 80% of contributors won't leave. I think that there are probably lots of small time contributors that won't even notice the difference.  The sites are able to do this because they know if they keep their top contributors happy then It really won't make a huge difference.  Of course some people will leave and others will join.  If this is a one off they will get away with it but if they start to mess around with the top contributors they will be in trouble.  IStocks biggest mistake was to mess around with exclusives and cut the percentage of top independent contributors.

You mean 20% of contributors with 80% of the sales won't leave. 

No I don't, the reality of it is that most people will do nothing about it.

Quote from: fotografer on December 20, 2012, 08:10

Quote from: grafix04 on December 20, 2012, 07:18

Quote from: fotografer on December 20, 2012, 05:51

You are right.. It's said that the top 20% of contributors on most sites  have 80% of the sales so my guess is that the top 20% will either stay at the same % or even go up so will carry on uploading as normal.

Quote

Of course but 80% of contributors won't leave. I think that there are probably lots of small time contributors that won't even notice the difference.  The sites are able to do this because they know if they keep their top contributors happy then It really won't make a huge difference.  Of course some people will leave and others will join.  If this is a one off they will get away with it but if they start to mess around with the top contributors they will be in trouble.  IStocks biggest mistake was to mess around with exclusives and cut the percentage of top independent contributors.

You mean 20% of contributors with 80% of the sales won't leave. 

No I don't, the reality of it is that most people will do nothing about it.

I don't agree.  This isn't SS or IS, or even FT.  This is 123rf we're talking about.  Why do you assume that people that have to take a cut of any already crappy deal will have an incentive to stay on?  The 14% (going by the vote) who are on level 5 and above will stay for sure.  The ones on level 4 will be split.  I'm on level 4, I'm leaving.  Most of the ones that are below level 4, which is more than half (going by the vote) are likely to tell them to shove it.

I think that a few will but I still think that the majority will just carry on as before. I don't think that any survey about it done here is a good representation of the contributors as  most people won't know the facts of it as well as those of us that read these forums.