@KB, those images slipped through, read my post in the other thread:
http://www.microstockgroup.com/dreamstime-com/more-than-usual-rejections-from-dreamtime/msg128148/?topicseen#new

As for subscriptions, credits are growing much faster than subscriptions. Portfolio with many similars will always have many sub downloads though.

Achilles, it 's good that you are responsive to clear the air on controversy such as this.
might i ask is there any other way for contributors who do not want their works to be "watered down
by subscribers " (to quote your words loosely)?   would it be wise to be able to opt out, or would it be damaging to both DT and contributors?

also, if subscription is such a bane, then perharps DT should be the first to show they prefer credits.
being different could spur more contributorship as no doubt every contributor prefer 1 dl with $2 commission , then 20 subs for the same bottom line. 

that being said, there are some, if not many, of us who would rather see less dls but more credit money. reason why some of us are choosing alternatives such as Alamy, 3d studio,etc..
could not DT provide the same thing in a micro framework?

I really won't mind the .70 sub sales now that so many of my photos have been elevated to level level 3 status (10 dls).

But there is something that I can understand. You said sales are growing but we see not only revenue decreasing but number of downloads to.
This forum has a lot of members and averge say so. Something must be wrong

It is great to see that sales are growing on any site, but that does not mean that contributor revenue is up and quite often it falls, or does it mean that the site is doing well, there is a cost for each upload and that cost comes from sales revenue and not from the number of uploads, if the sales are up by x% but the number of images submitted are up by xx% the operating costs are higher for the site and the RPI overall will be down.

As a contributor to any site, and for me to be up with the game I would need to be maintaining my share of the revenue pool, to do this I would need to increase my portfolio with good images at a rate that maintains my overall percentages of online images, I did do some general calculations last year that concluded I would need to double my portfolio year on year just to stay at a low level of return.

If the website revenue and number of downloads increase but is well below the number of new images and contributors then most will see a fall in thier revenue due to revenue dilution.

It is likely that the RPI on the sites is down year on year dispite any sales revenue increases, due to the increase in the number of images online growing faster than the number of increased sales, many complain about IS limiting the number of uploads but this has enabled them to manage costs and grow at a controlled rate.

David  

I really won't mind the .70 sub sales now that so many of my photos have been elevated to level level 3 status (10 dls).

They are nice, something that DT has done well and some of the other sites should be following their example.  Looking at the number of $0.70 subs sales, buyers don't mind paying a bit extra, the same as with pay per download.  I hope the subs sites that have kept our commissions low will realise it isn't a sensible strategy.

People did not like when all production was shifted to China but at the same time everybody expected goods to be cheap :-) All agencies got mostly same contributors and images how could they compete with each other?

I am experiencing very low sales this month at DT, just one sale! Same on 123RF.. what is going on?...

iam doing ok  on DT ,EL sale yesterday and regular sub dls every day .

I guess I will wait, you never know right?

Dreamstime will never favor portfolios. I've always said that we favor great images, never portfolios. Any amateur can produce a best seller and any pro can submit less-than-good images. As the buyer buys the image, they should be compensated according to the image!

In my experience at DT (since 2005) this is very true. It is one of my favorite things about DT and I hope it never changes. IMO all sites would be better to approach the business this way. Let every image compete equally on its merits.

But, I am experiencing something very strange there ... My subscriptions sales are higher than credit sales.  I have two subscription sales, each for 35 cents.  I have four credit sales, one for 26 cents, two for 29 cents ...I'm wondering how credit sales got so far below the subscriptions?
PS:  Thanks for posting about the slow down.  I was starting to think I was already on the "black list."   

Yes they silently went back to 30%, as they announced last year. I was surprised by an Xsmall 1credit sale of 0.28$ too. I never saw anything 2 there before, unlike at IS where I even have 0.19$. Makes you think better of subs on DT, at 0.35$. 

I like DT's pricing and structure. I was very surprised at a sale I had today. It was on a level 5 image, sold as small size, I received $6.35 (the buyer paid 11 credits using 2010 credits), the previous sale for the same image was a sub, I received $1.05. The image in question is a single tomato on white, nothing special. I think this is another demonstration that (some) buyers are not particularly price sensitive.

I took a quick look at my past 250 sales or so and none of them received a commission below $0.35, perhaps I've just been lucky. Whilst I'm not jumping for joy at receiving $0.35 as a commission, at least DT has a structure in place that allows popular images to return more to the contributor.

Quote from: gostwyck on January 04, 2010, 08:09

Six months isn't much of a commitment in the greater scheme of things. After all the agency does have to invest significant sums in the review process, etc and it is only natural for them to insist on a few months to recover those costs.

No comments! 

Well, shut my mouth :-)