After two years of agony with that minor microstock site with wannabe most quality standards and first who present sales of Hi qw images for 0.25c I finally conclude that dont have any sense especially when I find this...

http://m.mystockphoto.org/masterfile-launches-5050-stock-photo-subscription/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mystockphotoorg+%28My+Stock+Photography%29&utm_content=FaceBook

I dont want to wandering that ex macro masterfile stock is ruin they reputation and now they are without they ex macro photographers who moved to other agencies, and now they only fresh feed is from they purchased one man microstock CreStock.
Any how I dont even want to think that they are selling my images in hundredth range while give me/us filthy mostly 0.25c or 5$.
Next month for me will be
fcking pay out me an see you latter alligator in the after life.

Thank you for the info. Just when I wondered there for one tiny moment if I should not reconsider contributing again after a year's no upload.

I'm not quitting them yet, but I certainly would not recommend resuming uploading if you stopped.  Sales have not improved. 

I deactivated my portfolio at one time because of the low subs sales but after istock and FT cutting commissions and being forced in to Thinkstock, I asked for it to be reactivated.  They couldn't do that, so I started uploading again.  The reviews took weeks, so I gave up.  Looked yesterday and I've had a few sales, so I started uploading again but now there's a 10 a week limit.  A site like this needs all the content it can get.  Limiting to 10 uploads a week gives all their competitors a huge advantage.  My rejection rate is quite good there but most people report that they're more strict than the other sites and I can't see them bothering to upload with this silly limit.

They need some big changes.  Get more reviewers and pay us more commission.  They want higher quality but pay us less and make it almost impossible to upload a big portfolio.  How is that a good strategy?

@Lisafx. After that advice, do not expect to find any of your images on any search on this site again... 

Quote from: sharpshot on October 11, 2012, 02:59

I deactivated my portfolio at one time because of the low subs sales but after istock and FT cutting commissions and being forced in to Thinkstock, I asked for it to be reactivated.  They couldn't do that, so I started uploading again.  The reviews took weeks, so I gave up.  Looked yesterday and I've had a few sales, so I started uploading again but now there's a 10 a week limit.  A site like this needs all the content it can get.  Limiting to 10 uploads a week gives all their competitors a huge advantage.  My rejection rate is quite good there but most people report that they're more strict than the other sites and I can't see them bothering to upload with this silly limit.

They need some big changes.  Get more reviewers and pay us more commission.  They want higher quality but pay us less and make it almost impossible to upload a big portfolio.  How is that a good strategy?

Sharpshot, I would advise you not to bother uploading there with a 10/week limit.   You are wasting your time.   I have my complete port there, 7k images, and they continue to be a tiny fraction of a % of my income.  Takes me several months just to get a $50 payout there.

I wont bother.  It's probably a temporary limit and I'll wait and see if earnings pick up.  Still haven't completely given up on them but I think they need to make some changes to be taken seriously.  They've damaged their reputation with contributors and haven't done much to fix that yet.  Might as well wait and see if they acknowledge that and make some sensible changes, or they're going to sink to the bottom of the earnings list.

@Lisafx. After that advice, do not expect to find any of your images on any search on this site again... 

Oh darn.  What will I do without that $10-$20/month? 

I have never uploaded there, so my interest is theoretical. Lisa, I've used one of your lovely images as an example as it's on all the sites.

How is it that Masterfile expects to sell an RF image from $10 to $35 (if you buy without a subscription) when for $50 they will sell you 50 images that would otherwise cost you $35 each? The only thing I can imagine is that sales are so low at the "regular" price  they feel they have little to lose.

When you consider BigStock's prices - $2.99 to $12.99 - or CanStock's - $2.50 to $6.00 - or PhotoDune - $1 to $7 - asking $10 to $35 (which is iStock pricing, if it's P+ - $4 to $34) seems insane.

Fotolia doesn't do cash sales, but they say about $1 to $10. 123rf doesn't do cash either but 1 to 5 credits is about $1 to $5

Given all of these deals, Thinkstock offers 5 images for $100 - you do get a year and get a wider choice of images than Masterfile's 1.7 million images and one month, but still, it's a huge gap.

I'm not sure what to make of this huge disparity, but it seems that the smaller agencies aren't able to do much with their price cutting ways to boost themselves up the rankings for earnings for us. So perhaps that's good news for contributors???

Shutterstock offers:
- 1 on demand image for $19
- 5 on demand images for $49 = $9.80 per image
- 750 images (a month) for $249 = $0.33 per high resolution image

I don't see what Crestock does different than Shutterstock besides doing a terrible job at marketing their collection amongst potential buyers.

SS, IS and all other agencies have the craziest, weirdest pricing schemes and subscription schedules, it's almost like finding the right cell phone contract between 10 cellular networks.

Sure, the 25 cents per subscription payout is low but what can or what will you do about it?

Are we back to dropping "agencies that don't treat us right"?

I need to feed a family, I do also have some pride in my work. But if the entire industry is racing to the bottom, I can't stop them from doing that. It's either with them or look for a job (no thank you).

Crestock pays for a few tanks of gas within a year. That's better than nothing. I barely spend any time on their site.

I feel worse about Envato and their marketplace. Their pricing is atrocious. XL, XXL payouts are an insult. Canstock is also quite bad in terms of large file royalties.

We all have to take the good with the bad at the same time. Not one agency is perfect.

I just look at it that way:

If I don't really have to do much (maybe 1 hour a year of work) to get a few payouts a year from Crestock, why would I throw that money out the window by leaving them?

Does that make any sense to anyone? 

Shutterstock offers:
- 1 on demand image for $19
- 5 on demand images for $49 = $9.80 per image
- 750 images (a month) for $249 = $0.33 per high resolution image

I don't see what Crestock does different than Shutterstock besides doing a terrible job at marketing their collection amongst potential buyers.

Leaving the rest of your points to one side for a minute, the difference here is that SS has a higher price subscription that requires a commitment. They offer you a lower price - 5 images for $49 if you don't want to cough up $249. Given the price per image of the on demand images, they're not really undercutting their subscriptions

Masterfile is offering images at up to the maximum size at $1 each, undercutting their apparent attempt to sell images for from $10 to $35 based on size. I'm not arguing with offering buyers a bargain, but in this case with what seems like a completely backwards set of incentives.

It's not great, but it's reasonable (for contributors) to offer a low per-image price if you commit to a decent volume of sales - the purchase of a monthly subscription, essentially.

On your other issues, I'm just trying to reassess where it makes sense to sell. All the agencies treat us less than optimally, even SS, so no, I'm not advocating leaving those that don't treat us right. I do think it's worth looking at whether cutting off the bottom feeders (and it's easier to do that than the agencies that make a bunch each month) might make sense.

... I was only responding to Sharpshot's dilemma as to whether it is worth struggling to re-upload his entire portfolio, presumably thousands of files, at 10/day.  By most accounts that would be a PITA with little to no compensation. 

I am in a similar situation having pulled my port from Veer a few years back.  Now with their upload limits I have spent the better part of two years re-uploading my port.  It's a lot of work, and only worthwhile because Veer is showing some decent sales.  With about 2/3 of my portfolio, they're managing to produce a payout or better a month.   

Re-uploading is tough, no doubt.

I'm not sure if sharpshot tried to contact Masterfile's president to get this sorted out. Steve Pigeon is a friendly guy who really wants to help contributors out. I can hardly believe that Crestock/Masterfile wouldn't open a separate  VIP door for high volume, long standing contributors to add great quality content in a fast lane.

The 10 files per day or whatever it is, I presume, to keep low quality, high volume uploaders from clogging the review queue which is heavily overloaded to begin with.

The relationships with our agents I think is closer than we feel about them. Without our content they won't make money. So thy not start some communication with the higher ups (especially when you have a high quality portfolio with a good size) to sort stuff out.

I had pretty good experiences that way and my port isn't even that big (or maybe not even that great...).

Quote from: lisafx on October 12, 2012, 14:06

... I was only responding to Sharpshot's dilemma as to whether it is worth struggling to re-upload his entire portfolio, presumably thousands of files, at 10/day.  By most accounts that would be a PITA with little to no compensation. 

I am in a similar situation having pulled my port from Veer a few years back.  Now with their upload limits I have spent the better part of two years re-uploading my port.  It's a lot of work, and only worthwhile because Veer is showing some decent sales.  With about 2/3 of my portfolio, they're managing to produce a payout or better a month.   

Re-uploading is tough, no doubt.

I'm not sure if sharpshot tried to contact Masterfile's president to get this sorted out. Steve Pigeon is a friendly guy who really wants to help contributors out. I can hardly believe that Crestock/Masterfile wouldn't open a separate  VIP door for high volume, long standing contributors to add great quality content in a fast lane.

The 10 files per day or whatever it is, I presume, to keep low quality, high volume uploaders from clogging the review queue which is heavily overloaded to begin with.

The relationships with our agents I think is closer than we feel about them. Without our content they won't make money. So thy not start some communication with the higher ups (especially when you have a high quality portfolio with a good size) to sort stuff out.

I had pretty good experiences that way and my port isn't even that big (or maybe not even that great...).

They did give me a big upload limit to start with but with their notorious reviews, I didn't want to upload my portfolio all in one go.  It took so long for the reviews that I had almost forgotten about them and then I read that sales were still slow, so it wasn't worth spending time uploading lots there.  But 10 per week is madness.  I'll leave them for a while and see if they can get their act together.

crestock is such a waste of time. it's much of a better idea to spend that time creating new stuff. i stopped uploading there long ago