MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Dreamstime.com => Topic started by: madelaide on November 06, 2011, 09:14
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I got a DT subs earning me 33c yesterday. Anything new? It's not the 30% tax they take, that gives me 25 or 49c net.
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I got a DT subs earning me 33c yesterday. Anything new?
Probably. I got those too recently. Should we start a thread on the DT forum?
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I'm still waiting on an answer to my support ticket from 10/25 about a 28 cent subs sale. A query on MSG about it had some people mentioning subs through distributors as the likely reason. I'll be posting here when (if) DT replies to me.
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I'm still waiting on an answer to my support ticket from 10/25 about a 28 cent subs sale. A query on MSG about it had some people mentioning subs through distributors as the likely reason. I'll be posting here when (if) DT replies to me.
With DT, if they haven't replied by this time, it means they won't be replying, although they might with u now cos you've posted here. They do answer most emails and within a few days. But I think they prioritise more (like with a lot of the big sites) on handling emails about specific problems, rather than query emails.
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A query on MSG about it had some people mentioning subs through distributors as the likely reason.
Well they had partners before but this phenomenon is new, so something (unannounced?) must have been changed.
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Very possible i had a sub with $0.26 and the tax for me is 10%
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Just started a thread
http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_29407 (http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_29407)
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I got a level 4 sub - .52 instead of the promised .70
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The official answer, from Achilles is -
These royalties may be generated via the referral/alliance program where a share is awarded to the partner. With the weekly subscription no longer available, we expect the number of sub downloads to diminish.
Even though we removed this type of subscription for the time being, we consider them to be a real succes. The number of downloads they generated helped a lot of the images to reach a higher level and allowed the "level 0" price increase with little negative impact. This equals higher price and better royalties. We will continue to watch this in the next months and will decide whether it makes sense or not to bring them back.
However, someone stated on the forums that they were opted out of referral/alliance program and still got the reduced payment. So I expect this isn't the end of it....
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However, someone stated on the forums that they were opted out of referral/alliance program and still got the reduced payment. So I expect this isn't the end of it....
The answer of the boss was a bit evading. Something has changed. He will be back ;)
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ok, this is it (from the boss) -
The referral share is calculated taking into account the percentage awarded to the referral. Some of the partners in the alliance program will send users to our site, as they don't have access to subscriptions but still need access to this product. Their share is taken into account just as we take it into account for referrals, in fact they become referrals in this part, because the buyer is sent to Dreamstime. Dreamstime was supporting the entire fee until a while ago, this is actually what changed. We corrected that and probably missed to announce it.
Hope this clarifies it.
Reaction on the forums so far is not pretty...
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ok, this is it (from the boss) -
The referral share is calculated taking into account the percentage awarded to the referral. Some of the partners in the alliance program will send users to our site, as they don't have access to subscriptions but still need access to this product. Their share is taken into account just as we take it into account for referrals, in fact they become referrals in this part, because the buyer is sent to Dreamstime. Dreamstime was supporting the entire fee until a while ago, this is actually what changed. We corrected that and probably missed to announce it.
Hope this clarifies it.
Yes, I just read this on the DT board. They cut commissions and just forgot to tell people. They will no doubt spin it into some kind of "it's not a commission cut" but the bottom line is less money per sale so you decide what to call it. Everyone talks about how Dreamstime looks out for it's contributors and treats them fairly, I've defended them myself but this puts them down in the gutter with every other sideways dealing agency. To forget to tell your contributors that they're going to make less money from each sale is low.
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ok, this is it (from the boss) -
The referral share is calculated taking into account the percentage awarded to the referral. Some of the partners in the alliance program will send users to our site, as they don't have access to subscriptions but still need access to this product. Their share is taken into account just as we take it into account for referrals, in fact they become referrals in this part, because the buyer is sent to Dreamstime. Dreamstime was supporting the entire fee until a while ago, this is actually what changed. We corrected that and probably missed to announce it.
Hope this clarifies it.
Yes, I just read this on the DT board. They cut commissions and just forgot to tell people. They will no doubt spin it into some kind of "it's not a commission cut" but the bottom line is less money per sale so you decide what to call it. Everyone talks about how Dreamstime looks out for it's contributors and treats them fairly, I've defended them myself but this puts them down in the gutter with every other sideways dealing agency. To forget to tell your contributors that they're going to make less money from each sale is low.
I'm in a spin; love is the spin I'm in ... that Old Black Magic ... call Commission Cut.... LOL
God, I crack me up.
;D ;D
Serban, You're the greatest. Are you into politics? ::)
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I always loved DT for their transparency but now i'm really ticked off; I have to pay as much as 20% of my sub royalty for referrals from a program i'm not even enrolled in?! And they "forgot" to announce it?
Bah!
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I think the thing that pi33es me off the most is the "we probably forgot" to announce it. He either announced it and can point to where that happened, or didn't.
As I posted on their forums, there's also my unanswered support ticket from October 25th - two weeks to tell me a simple piece of information?
They need to spell out this latest takeback from an agency on their page with all the royalty amounts so it's transparent.
The shame about this is that it does appear to be a small minority of subscription sales that are at the reduced rate. So they lose trust by being so slow to own up to this change over something that would have been fairly easy to swallow had they just been straightforward about it.
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I think the thing that pi33es me off the most is the "we probably forgot" to announce it. He either announced it and can point to where that happened, or didn't.
As I posted on their forums, there's also my unanswered support ticket from October 25th - two weeks to tell me a simple piece of information?
They need to spell this latest takeback from an agency on their page with all the royalty amounts so it's transparent.
The shame about this is that it does appear to be a small minority of subscription sales that are at the reduced rate. So they lose trust by being so slow to own up to this change over something that would have been fairly easy to swallow had they just be straightforward about it.
That's true but how small a minority of sales is also something no one knows. I think I see which sales are partners and which are DT but I don't know for sure because they don't make it clear. As far as I see it's going to effect a good percentage of sales for me. Even so, it's definitely the "probably missed to announce it" that is the real betrayal. Of course it's not like anyone counts on revenue from microstock, we're all millionaires and just just do this for giggles.
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It is strange to me that this cut in subs due to partners seems to be new (am I wrong?). Either they did not cut this from our share before, or a partner selling subs is something new. In credit sales, it is impossible to know what happens, either taxes or partners get mixed with the earnings we see.
Are we allowed to opt out from partners?
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Yes, you can opt out from partners and alliances. Go to your management area and click on the Alliances icon.
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I got $0.24 subscription sale on Dreamstime yesterday.
And $0.23 for the sale of Level 0 image. Which works out to about 24% commission even with max number of credits bought. And they are supposed to be so much better than PD?
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Yes, you can opt out from partners and alliances. Go to your management area and click on the Alliances icon.
My understanding was that being opted out doesn't matter. If one of the Partner Referrals buys your image directly from DT, the Referring Partner gets a cut. YOU still lose a portion of the commission.
Did I read that wrong?
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That's exactely how i understood it too Warren.
I'm opted out and got the cut.
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Yep. The cut also applies to the referral program (not just alliances and partners) -
Your earnings for credits awarded the same dynamic rates via the referral program. It's the same thing, since in this case your content remains only available on Dreamstime.
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Anyway, this is something new, right? Achilles' reply seems to imply it is not, but I don't remember ever having a subs with any cut other than the 30% USA tax.
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If I get his meaning correctly, he's saying that it was supposed to work this way from the beginning, but it didn't. A bug/mistake was recently corrected which means they now take the cut form our royalties.
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And $0.23 for the sale of Level 0 image. Which works out to about 24% commission even with max number of credits bought. And they are supposed to be so much better than PD?
Yes, since level 0 is about the very first sale. After that the image goes automatically to level 1 (you don't need to be Emerald for that) and the buyer needs to spend 3 credits at least for the smallest size. Does PD has a level system or is it an eternal-level-0 site? It's rather unfair to compare the worst case scenario on DT with the typical scenario on PD.
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Post by Achilles on DT forum:
http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_29407 (http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_29407)
''The referral share is calculated taking into account the percentage awarded to the referral. Some of the partners in the alliance program will send users to our site, as they don't have access to subscriptions but still need access to this product. Their share is taken into account just as we take it into account for referrals, in fact they become referrals in this part, because the buyer is sent to Dreamstime. Dreamstime was supporting the entire fee until a while ago, this is actually what changed. We corrected that and probably missed to announce it.''
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Paying for referrals is essentially nothing else but marketing costs - money spent to reach new customers. That should never come from our share.
These marketing costs are the main reason why we pay agencies such high commissions. If they can't cover their costs with their 50+% of the sales price, then there is something fundamentally wrong.
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After posting on the DT forums about this issue, Serban asked for the ticket number for the unanswered support message from 2 weeks ago about my unusual sub sale. He followed up with me and said that when someone asked for clarification before answering, the ticket fell through the cracks when the answer didn't come. He apologized and acknowledged it shouldn't have happened.
I suggested that it'd be good to have an internal flagging system for tickets that aren't answered after a certain time to catch such slip ups, but that in general I've had good experience with DT support.
Edited to add that I received a very apologetic and straightforward e-mail from the customer service rep who got the original support ticket. I've often felt that how an organization handles mistakes is in some ways more important than the fact that they occasionally make them. I'm really impressed with DT's handling of this goof. They were forthright and apologetic. Very refreshing and commendable.
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After posting on the DT forums about this issue, Serban asked for the ticket number for the unanswered support message from 2 weeks ago about my unusual sub sale. He followed up with me and said that when someone asked for clarification before answering, the ticket fell through the cracks when the answer didn't come. He apologized and acknowledged it shouldn't have happened.
I suggested that it'd be good to have an internal flagging system for tickets that aren't answered after a certain time to catch such slip ups, but that in general I've had good experience with DT support.
Edited to add that I received a very apologetic and straightforward e-mail from the customer service rep who got the original support ticket. I've often felt that how an organization handles mistakes is in some ways more important than the fact that they occasionally make them. I'm really impressed with DT's handling of this goof. They were forthright and apologetic. Very refreshing and commendable.
In dealing with a support ticket that got misplaced I guess it is commendable. However, in offhandedly remarking that they missed announcing a "correction" in commissions to contributors it is not commendable. Every contributor shouldn't be required to submit a support ticket to find out something so important. It shows a lack of respect for the people that supply them with the very product they sell. They're not redeemed in my book.
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"Dreamstime was supporting the entire fee until a while ago, this is actually what changed. We corrected that and probably missed to announce it.''
A mistake. I see.
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As our race to the bottom proceeds full-steam ahead, there comes a point at which it's no longer profitable for contributors to continue - either with a particular site or perhaps with microstock overall. Seems like that point is just around the next curve. :(
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I got a reply from support after they asked about the image number. They were somewhat vague but said that it could be a partner or a referral. I replied that the page listing our returns only listed .35, .70, and 1.05 for indy subs. I was told that that page represents the maximum value. When I said that page should show the range I was told that the ranges were too complex but that they would update it.
Basically it looks like for whatever reason our commissions are being cut again by DT. frustrating. Last time they dropped our commissions my earnings there took about a year to recover.
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This sounds almost identical to Alamy's partner program. Any time someone buys an image through one of Alamy's partners, my commission drops from 60% to 40% (while Alamy's drops from 40% to 20%), and the partner is paid 40%. I don't see anything wrong with paying a partner to facilitate a sale, so long as my commission is high enough to start with and I'm aware of the details. Alamy keeps it simple, like SS, while most of the other sites just keep us guessing.
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This should come out of Dreamstime's large percentage share of the sale.
The agency could set up their own partner sites that "refer" to their own agency and then skim another 10-20% off the top.
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Paying for referrals is essentially nothing else but marketing costs - money spent to reach new customers. That should never come from our share.
These marketing costs are the main reason why we pay agencies such high commissions. If they can't cover their costs with their 50+% of the sales price, then there is something fundamentally wrong.
I don't have any referrals and I am opted out of the PP. I must be dense because I am still not getting why I got a .32 sub commission on a maximum size image, when there should have been no referral cost or partner payment associated with that image. Or does the referral mean that anytime anyone is referred from somewhere else and they purchase my image, I pay out of my pocket? If that's true, then this commission cut isn't referring specifically to the Referral Program some may be participating in, but the word referral being used in a broader sense, relative to DTs business associations.
And I agree, dirkr, these are DTs marketing costs, not ours.
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Karimala,
Alamy at least already takes the smallest bite, unlike micros. What is more annoying in DT's new policy is
- changes were not announced
- they make it sound like this should have always been like this, so that this is not actually a change
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They stopped/paused weekly subscriptions shortly before the referral change/correction. Timing is everything.
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I wasn't happy to start the new year off at DT with a 49 cent subscription sale for a level 3 image - what would once have been a 70 cent sale.
I've been keeping track of subs (which haven't been all that numerous, thankfully) and there have been seven (including the above) that were below 35 cents or 70 cents. The lowest until today was 28 cents for a 35 cent subs - i.e. getting 80% of what I expected. but 49 cents on a 70 cent sale is getting only 70% of the 70 cents I expected. That's a huge chunk for a referral bonus and why is it a bigger percentage than the others?
Has anyone else been keeping track of the discounted subs and how much we're losing?
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I've sort of been keeping an eye out for them but at this point they seem pretty rare. I still think it is pretty underhanded and lame both in implementation/communication and the way it is. As long as it is a tiny % I suppose there are bigger things to be annoyed about (like the drop from 50% to as low as 25%). If this becomes the future for subs at DT, that would be bad.
My worst was a sub that should have been .70 but was instead .52, so I suppose you "win" there.
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I wasn't happy to start the new year off at DT with a 49 cent subscription sale for a level 3 image - what would once have been a 70 cent sale.
I've been keeping track of subs (which haven't been all that numerous, thankfully) and there have been seven (including the above) that were below 35 cents or 70 cents. The lowest until today was 28 cents for a 35 cent subs - i.e. getting 80% of what I expected. but 49 cents on a 70 cent sale is getting only 70% of the 70 cents I expected. That's a huge chunk for a referral bonus and why is it a bigger percentage than the others?
Has anyone else been keeping track of the discounted subs and how much we're losing?
I've got a few subs sales that are down 30% on what they should be too....
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I've had many 49c but I've always assumed those were USA purchases, as I am cut in 30% of such sales and as DT doen't show which sales are USA-based.
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I'm in the US, so there are no tax-related deductions from my numbers.
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None of the commission rates on DT make sense to me to be perfectly honest. I have yet to see a simple explanation of what I am getting paid for sales. Right now I am looking at a 1 credit sale I was paid .23 for, just below it a 1 credit sale I'm paid .25 for, next a 5 credit sale I received .91 (18%).
All those were level 0 sales. All paid at different rates all within a short period of time for each other.
On the topic at hand I've got a level 4 sub sale at .70, a level 1 at .35, a level 5 at $1.05.
How does anyone make any sense of it?
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None of the commission rates on DT make sense to me to be perfectly honest. I have yet to see a simple explanation of what I am getting paid for sales. Right now I am looking at a 1 credit sale I was paid .23 for, just below it a 1 credit sale I'm paid .25 for, next a 5 credit sale I received .91 (18%).
All those were level 0 sales. All paid at different rates all within a short period of time for each other.
On the topic at hand I've got a level 4 sub sale at .70, a level 1 at .35, a level 5 at $1.05.
How does anyone make any sense of it?
I think you aren't really supposed to make sense of it.
The percentage you make is based on the level of the image (24 to 50%). The actual amount per credit depends on the package and any discounts the buyer might have used. I don't know the lowest there, but it can vary quite a bit. The Number of credits also depends on size and the level of the file.
for subs it is a little simpler except when they make it lower for some reason or other (like to reward a referral and taking the $ out of your sale).
In any case, having higher level files can really make a big difference in RPI.
You can see their explanation here:
http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_26512 (http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_26512)