Isn't 10% royalty the new record?

I wouldn't expect such insulting royalty scheme from an agency generating mere 3% of my microstock revenues.

I was just thinking about uploading some videos to Canstock. Not going to happen, if all the big sellers are paying more for 4K.

I had two "exciting" years with Canstock (It took me that long to reach my first payout). Than I closed my account and never looked back!

Selling prints is different to selling an image license.  If you sell those high priced products on zazzle, you might put a 20% profit on them.  If you were doing it through a third party site like CanStockPhoto, they take their cut.  So maybe this isn't quite as bad as it looks?  And the fact is, they are unlikely to sell many anyway, as other sites have failed dismally at this.  So I'm not doing anything at the moment.

They sell so little video that it isn't worth the time uploading and they will never get my 4k clips if they charge that little for them.

Just took a look and that deal is already live, our images are already there and free prints are available.

Just realised that if they start selling 4K footage for $100, at 20% royalty, that makes $20 for us.

$20 for 4K video!!!

You can actually see the number of downloads by each video and the best selling aerial video has been downloaded 7 times in 6 years!!! Go to page 2 and you already see 0 sales on all videos. I can probably sell more aerials through my grandma

All I see is that they charge $50 for 4K videos. Search for "4K" and select footage on the left. The videos have a 4K icon. Click on one and you see $50 for the "HD" option which has a resolution of 4096x2160 pixels. Go figure.

If I understand correctly, the 10% on prints is meant to be 10% of the finished end product (including material and printing), so it's not just 10% of the license cost.
Depending on the pricing of those products that might be ok.
But giving away prints for free is not ok, that is just devaluing our assets.
There's a thread on the CS forum now, I asked for the opt out there.
Let's see if there will be an opt out, they're too small to force such changes on us, it's just too easy to delete our accounts there.

It seams to me that it is not 10% of the end product, am I wrong? Here is a quote from the new TOS:

Any payments to Supplier that result from the license or sublicense of a Data File or the purchase of a Product shall be calculated based on the net revenue actually received for such licenses, sublicenses, or purchases (�Net Receipts�). Net Receipts shall not include shipping and handling charges, promotions, taxes, interest, charges for other items or services sold with the Data Files or Products (e.g. frames, mats, editing, etc), and other fees or charges, or any returned or credited items,

Also, deleting files is not so easy either:

Within thirty (30) business days after receiving written notice from Supplier to remove any Data Files, Company shall use reasonable efforts to remove such Data Files from the Site, and shall use reasonable efforts......

UPDATE: SOMEONE POINTED OUT THAT I MADE A MISTAKE. Freeart is NOT run by Pablo Blanes. I must have mistakenly typed "freepik" into the registration search while meaning to type "freeart" early this morning. I apologize profusely. While Blanes is responsible for freepik.com, flaticon.com, photaki and a Spanish version of Freepik, he has nothing to do with freeart.com.

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I'm telling you in a year or 2 our images will be sold for 5 cents. I really see this happening. We will continue to get "exciting news" emails with lower and lower commissions every couple of months.

I just went through my canstock port and deleted all the good images and left the really old ones - from 2008-2009!
I make about $50 a month from them so it won't kill my income. I value my work more than what they see it as.

Hi folks,

I wanted to pop in and hopefully clear up some confusion, as it sounds like there is a lot of unintentional misinformation in this thread. Big thanks to the contributors who emailed the link to ask for clarification.

Below is an update I posted on our forums, to address some of the misunderstandings:

Quote

(Re: confusion on 4K commission & price)
Certainly happy to clarify that is not the case. If you check out the Payout Schedule linked in the email, you�ll see the commission for 4k clips is $50 � regardless of if they were purchased with credits or not. That is how much you receive. The retail pricing is not finalized yet, but will likely be $100-$150. For clips larger than 4k you receive a $75 commission, again regardless of if they were purchased by credits or not, and they will likely retail for $150-250. I�m giving a retail price range since they are new products and we�ll be testing to find the optimum price point.


Regarding the FreeArt offer, I should clarify a few things:

Firstly, everyone should keep in mind that these are referring exclusively to physical prints in which there is labor and very real production costs. Of course coming from the microstock world we�re not used to thinking in that way, since digital downloads are delivered automatically with very little per-transaction costs. But of course when we�re talking about a physical metal print (for example), there are very significant production costs for that order.

So I definitely understand how someone might be surprised by a 10% commission for the non-paper prints, but do keep in mind that this is reflective of the fact that they are extremely expensive items to produce, and unlike digital downloads a significant chunk of the sale price is taken up by the physical costs.

Regarding FreeArt specifically, I should clarify that despite its marking-oriented name, the end goal is to drive sales of higher priced products and sizes, for which everyone makes far more money. It should probably go without saying that a business won�t last if it only produces free physical prints. Anyone who is familiar with VistaPrint will appreciate how wildly successful a business can be by offering a �free� price tier to attract customers, who then upgrade to paid tiers.

Regarding the $0.25 minimum commission, while this of course is not a big amount of money, it�s also very much in line with what people sell their high resolution digital images for every day in the microstock industry. Both through us and up to the largest agency. And while in those cases your images can be used for marketing campaigns and printed up to 500k times, for the print offering we�re talking about a single 8x10� printed photo. And of course for which there are of course physical costs to make, yet the image itself is sold for nothing.

The business model is doing something innovative, by focusing on physical prints and products, which is largely a new area for microstock contributors and represents a new revenue stream. The business is also trying a unique approach for marketing itself, which is needed in this day of age � and if it works out and takes off, would be very lucrative for CanStockPhoto contributors. So we are genuinely excited and hope it does well. I think the vast majority of contributors feel the same way too.

With that said, if you don�t want your images to be part of FreeArt, then no problem, you can opt-out from FreeArt by submitting a ticket. But do just keep in mind that you�ll be opting out of the entire site, and will forgo any of the high commission print offerings. I hope people will give it some time before opting to do that, but it�s of course totally your decision.

Regards,
Duncan

Lee Torrens posted his own independent summary here, which echoes much of the above.

Also, on a serious note, someone here incorrectly stated that FreeArt is associated with someone who the author states is known for ripping off artist's work. This is absolutely not true. FreeArt has no affiliation whatsoever with this individual, and is no-way connected. The commenter here references a WHOIS showing this, but must have accidentally looked up the wrong domain name, as WHOIS search for freeart.com clearly shows that is not the case. In fact, a keen observer will notice that FreeArt is run by the same people that run Fotosearch - which many contributors know is a highly creditable and agency that has been operating for almost 20 years.

I would hope and expect that people would be outraged if we partnered with someone that has a history of stealing artist's images - but thankfully that is not the case here. We take that very seriously, as I know you all rightfully expect us to.

Regards,
Duncan

Thanks Duncan, I will stay opted in and see how it goes.  Not sure about uploading 4k files but if my HD clips sell more, I will do.

a lot of sense Duncan. thanks