Yes, Premium Search Placement coming to an agency near you soon, from as little as a $1!

Not a fan of this move by SS!! Total crap if you ask me!

This is the kiss of death. Really, shame on SS and Oringer for letting this happen. HUGE contribution to the destruction of micro stock.

150 videos (a sub plan) for $89. Let's see... that's .59 cents each if all are downloaded.  With a 30% commission, that's a WHOLE, WHOPPING .18 cents for the contributor. Now lets do the same with the 1,000 a month plan for $140. That's an even better deal for our hard work.  .15 whole cents if all are downloaded and with a 30% commission that is worth .04 cents. I leave 4 cents in the change cup at the liquor store.

FORGET FUNKING THAT!!  ANYONE and I mean ANYONE who supports this is a GOSHD DAMDED fool.

I can say I am happy to be exclusive at this point. I can understand rewarding large buyers and I have seen that on Getty Images but nothing this low to the general public so far! If you submit to SS you should be screaming on the forums!

Yes. And luckily they are not "bridging" video to BigStock.

I just don't understand how any video contributor would agree to such a ridiculous deal....I just don't get it.

Quote from: jjneff on February 12, 2015, 17:00

I can say I am happy to be exclusive at this point.

Don't be too happy. I don't know if it will ever get to that point, but in theory if their collection gets big enough, they could begin to take away from your sales on iStock.

Every time I post on this subject, I have to end with my utter astonishment that there are contributors who (apparently) are willing to support this with their clips. Normally if someone wants to make a deal with the Devil, that's there own business. But in this case, it has ramifications that could easily affect all of us. 

Fully agree. And regarding your comment about collection size, this is a key element. The sad fact in my opinion is that contributors don't do enough research to understand what they are getting into when joining agencies and then when accepted do not take the time to educate themselves on current business practices of those agencies to aid them in making decisions. This is the 90 percent of contributors. 

If those 90% were aware of everything discuss here, we would be in control to the point where we have significant influence on MS agency decisions.  Sadly, it's the opposite.

You see people come to iStock because of exclusive files that can't be found all over not because of price! That is the position I like to be in.

If that were true, that IS is the place to be for video content, iStock wouldn't have slashed, pulverized, emaciated the prices for video. Sorry I don't believe your statement.

I'm glad I never submitted any video to BS. 

I wonder if those downloads will show under sales - if someone gets a lot of "sales" with no money to the contributor I imagine they would stop pretty quickly.  I suppose they are just given away and the contributor will never know.

It's very disturbing that SS tries out all of these bad plans on BS - RCs and now this - hopefully it is not a test to see how far they can push contributors and still make money.  If either of those ideas get to SS it will leave us all in a bind.

Shutterstock owes all their video contributors an explanation to these obscene video prices at Bigstock! What on earth is going on Shutterstock?

They already explained it in the original thread:
Bigstock is developing a small collection of videos to test how first-time and casual footage customers respond to different entry-level products. The contributors who are participating have all opted-in and all of the content is being appropriately licensed with their consent. The collection will be limited and these early packages represent some initial efforts to test and generate interest in footage among non-traditional buyers. We will continue to work with participating contributors as we learn more about this new market.

That's very similar to how Getty described subscriptions when they initially introduced them at iStock: The buyers are an entirely different market, so there is nothing to fear. And we have seen exactly how true this is. Do you know of anyone who has complained that credit sales have dropped at iStock since sub sales began?