Quote from: donding on June 02, 2009, 02:32

Quote from: Elena on June 02, 2009, 02:20

Quote from: donding on June 02, 2009, 02:11

Quote from: Elena on June 02, 2009, 02:09

Quote from: donding on June 02, 2009, 02:07
Now I've gone in under the regular way and did a few....then went in under the new way and tryed to submit as gold...well I put the number in and it says it belongs to a different author.

oops, give me the ref number... please

I2200184
Heh I'm trying hard....just can't seem to get it to work.

Ok, Ok,...
I need to change the wording...
This image has not accepted yet.
We are trying to "categorize" the published (obviously "accepted") images.

Thnaks..that explains it

I answered your question at:
http://www.featureimage.com/Forum/Default.aspx?g=posts&m=1928&#1928

Will ask our technical write to address this issue....
Thanks a lot!

Quote from: mantonino on June 02, 2009, 02:30

Quote from: Elena on June 02, 2009, 02:06
Nope!!!  You will be able to set YOUR OWN PRICE for mid-stock images ($30-$100).
But... if you are offering your images for $0.20 somewhere -
what is the point to price them more than $15 at FP?

I don't offer my images for .20 - think about how Dreamstime works.  I sell more and the rates go up.  I can have images priced over $10 for a buyer there pretty easily.  With FeaturePics I've always had to do my own marketing - so why not get more of the profit when I do much more of the work?

The only thing is - that's a more unique business model.  I guess we'll see how this plays out now.

"so why not get more of the profit when I do much more of the work?" - I believe it is an excellent point.
Let's think how we can "award" Authors for "more of the work".

I just want to be sure - you would like to set your own prices disregarding of "misro-stock" presense. Correct?
And you would like to do your own marketing to sell your images for the price you have listed.

It is possible...

Let's keep it in our "THINK"/"TODO" list.

I don't mind the fixed prices for microstock images, but I don't like the subscription at all.  They are considering setting a size limit for subs, but I still don't like it.  I hope they will keep the opt out option.

Quote from: madelaide on June 03, 2009, 00:24
I don't mind the fixed prices for microstock images, but I don't like the subscription at all.  They are considering setting a size limit for subs, but I still don't like it.  I hope they will keep the opt out option.

I really don't believe that opt-out button will be available from subscriptions... Maybe only some file size limit - but that also is questionable since subs are meant to be just an way to marketing (advertise) FP more than in passed times...

Millinz,

That would be disappointing, as in the past FP always let us opt out from changes - and subscription is a very dramatic change. 

Quote from: mantonino on June 02, 2009, 02:30With FeaturePics I've always had to do my own marketing - so why not get more of the profit when I do much more of the work?

I just don't grasp it all. With all these changes (SS included), I feel more and more like an accountant than as a photogapher. I built my site around FP too, with all links to FP. Now FP as we knew it is gone, apparently because the business model failed, it is just another stock site with subscription. I don't have time to go over all my port and re-price it so in effect, all my shots will fall back on 5$. The worst is I will have to redo my site and put all links to DT.

Flemish,

I believe that, if you ask Elena to set higher prices for your images, so they don't fall in the microstock range, she will do it.

Ok... What do you think about subscription per credit?

Look at veer marketplace how they solved that... Interesting solution ;-)

Quote from: madelaide on June 03, 2009, 17:08
Flemish,

I believe that, if you ask Elena to set higher prices for your images, so they don't fall in the microstock range, she will do it.

We have this discussion to make the right decisions.
If we don't care of Authors' opinion - we would release the version 3 days ago.
"another stock site with subscription." - wait a minute! We are making these changes to present mid-stock and gold in a better way. Now these images are lost!
And we are missleading clients with the prices. "Missleading" is a very soft word for the situation when we ask buyers to pay $50 for the images that they can buy for $0.20.
Do you think it is OK to continue to full clients?
We have many Authors who really don't want to sell on micro-stock (all images or some of them).
Do you think it is OK to list their images for the same price?
Do you think it is OK to continue the practice that doesn't work?

Quote from: Elena on June 03, 2009, 20:05

Quote from: madelaide on June 03, 2009, 17:08
Flemish,

I believe that, if you ask Elena to set higher prices for your images, so they don't fall in the microstock range, she will do it.

We have this discussion to make the right decisions.
If we don't care of Authors' opinion - we would release the version 3 days ago.
"another stock site with subscription." - wait a minute! We are making these changes to present mid-stock and gold in a better way. Now these images are lost!
And we are missleading clients with the prices. "Missleading" is a very soft word for the situation when we ask buyers to pay $50 for the images that they can buy for $0.20.
Do you think it is OK to continue to full clients?
We have many Authors who really don't want to sell on micro-stock (all images or some of them).
Do you think it is OK to list their images for the same price?
Do you think it is OK to continue the practice that doesn't work?

Elena,

These questions with answer are SPOT ON!

I'd like to see answers from fellow authors due to I support you 100%

Quote from: Milinz on June 03, 2009, 20:19

Quote from: Elena on June 03, 2009, 20:05

Quote from: madelaide on June 03, 2009, 17:08
Flemish,

I believe that, if you ask Elena to set higher prices for your images, so they don't fall in the microstock range, she will do it.

We have this discussion to make the right decisions.
If we don't care of Authors' opinion - we would release the version 3 days ago.
"another stock site with subscription." - wait a minute! We are making these changes to present mid-stock and gold in a better way. Now these images are lost!
And we are missleading clients with the prices. "Missleading" is a very soft word for the situation when we ask buyers to pay $50 for the images that they can buy for $0.20.
Do you think it is OK to continue to full clients?
We have many Authors who really don't want to sell on micro-stock (all images or some of them).
Do you think it is OK to list their images for the same price?
Do you think it is OK to continue the practice that doesn't work?

Elena,
These questions with answer are SPOT ON!
I'd like to see answers from fellow authors due to I support you 100%

Do not support "me", support "us".
Everybody who received at least one payment earned more than me.

Yes, we need to stop paying bank fees for very small transactions. They add "-" to FP earnings.
We need to give our clients very clear answer regarding prices.
We need to eliminate a lot of functions that distract everybody.
We need to stop "it doesn't work for me but I want the site as is".

subs - it is very easy to "eliminate". It would take 2 seconds.
But do we know the answer now?
Probably nobody will pay $1000 for a plan, but everybody will know that it is an option.

Quote from: Elena on June 03, 2009, 20:05

Quote from: madelaide on June 03, 2009, 17:08
Flemish,

I believe that, if you ask Elena to set higher prices for your images, so they don't fall in the microstock range, she will do it.

We have this discussion to make the right decisions.
If we don't care of Authors' opinion - we would release the version 3 days ago.
"another stock site with subscription." - wait a minute! We are making these changes to present mid-stock and gold in a better way. Now these images are lost!
And we are missleading clients with the prices. "Missleading" is a very soft word for the situation when we ask buyers to pay $50 for the images that they can buy for $0.20.
Do you think it is OK to continue to full clients?
We have many Authors who really don't want to sell on micro-stock (all images or some of them).
Do you think it is OK to list their images for the same price?
Do you think it is OK to continue the practice that doesn't work?

Elena, is this answer directed towards me?

Quote from: madelaide on June 03, 2009, 21:11

Quote from: Elena on June 03, 2009, 20:05

Quote from: madelaide on June 03, 2009, 17:08
Flemish,

I believe that, if you ask Elena to set higher prices for your images, so they don't fall in the microstock range, she will do it.

We have this discussion to make the right decisions.
If we don't care of Authors' opinion - we would release the version 3 days ago.
"another stock site with subscription." - wait a minute! We are making these changes to present mid-stock and gold in a better way. Now these images are lost!
And we are missleading clients with the prices. "Missleading" is a very soft word for the situation when we ask buyers to pay $50 for the images that they can buy for $0.20.
Do you think it is OK to continue to full clients?
We have many Authors who really don't want to sell on micro-stock (all images or some of them).
Do you think it is OK to list their images for the same price?
Do you think it is OK to continue the practice that doesn't work?

Elena, is this answer directed towards me?

Adelaide, no these questions are for everybody.
Sorry, if I clicked "Quote". I am trying to do 1000 things at once:)

Ok, Elena, it's just that I was confused. 

I posted the following on the FP forum, but I think it makes sense to include it here as well:


Elena,

I can't say I like what I see.
I recently joined FP because I wanted to support the site due to two facts:

- 70% commission. It is great when a agency cares for the authors and pays out a high percentage.
- Pricing. I do not care too much that I can set my own prices, but it allows me to NOT take part in any kind of price war.

With these announcements you are taking away those advantages of your site.

First: Why do you need to reduce commissions??? That is very very disappointing.
Second: The proposed pricing for "standard" would even be ok, but the sizes are looking strange. "Max Size 4800, 6400, 8000, 9600" What kind of pictures do you expect here? Like we all gonna buy Hasselblad from now on?
Third: I do not believe in the price sensitivity of customers as it is implied by this new scheme. The distinction between "standard" and "Mid-stock" is a bit strange - as well as asking authors to guarantee that they don't offer these images at "micros". What defines a microstock site in that context? Will you give a list of sites? Or a minimum price that must be achieved?
I believe that distinction is a very bad idea...

Last but not least: I don't think the industry needs another low-priced subscription site. All you will do is take away customers from existing subscription sites. Why should I support that?
Why not try a better subscription model? Educate buyers! A subscription is nothing else than a volume rebate with some special terms. So if you give buyers a subscription for e.g. 10 images a day for 500$ a month, that is less than 2$ per image. If you give them away full size, assuming a reasonable price of 10$ for a full size image, that would still be a discount of 80%. That is enough. And you could probably still pay contributors 2$ per sub download...

As said before, these changes as proposed are not what I wanted to see when I joined a few weeks ago.
It took me some time to upload my port here and I would be sorry if I had to remove it again.

Best Regards,
Dirk

Quote from: dirkr on June 04, 2009, 01:05
I posted the following on the FP forum, but I think it makes sense to include it here as well:


Elena,

I can't say I like what I see.
I recently joined FP because I wanted to support the site due to two facts:

- 70% commission. It is great when a agency cares for the authors and pays out a high percentage.
- Pricing. I do not care too much that I can set my own prices, but it allows me to NOT take part in any kind of price war.

With these announcements you are taking away those advantages of your site.

First: Why do you need to reduce commissions??? That is very very disappointing.
Second: The proposed pricing for "standard" would even be ok, but the sizes are looking strange. "Max Size 4800, 6400, 8000, 9600" What kind of pictures do you expect here? Like we all gonna buy Hasselblad from now on?
Third: I do not believe in the price sensitivity of customers as it is implied by this new scheme. The distinction between "standard" and "Mid-stock" is a bit strange - as well as asking authors to guarantee that they don't offer these images at "micros". What defines a microstock site in that context? Will you give a list of sites? Or a minimum price that must be achieved?
I believe that distinction is a very bad idea...

Last but not least: I don't think the industry needs another low-priced subscription site. All you will do is take away customers from existing subscription sites. Why should I support that?
Why not try a better subscription model? Educate buyers! A subscription is nothing else than a volume rebate with some special terms. So if you give buyers a subscription for e.g. 10 images a day for 500$ a month, that is less than 2$ per image. If you give them away full size, assuming a reasonable price of 10$ for a full size image, that would still be a discount of 80%. That is enough. And you could probably still pay contributors 2$ per sub download...

As said before, these changes as proposed are not what I wanted to see when I joined a few weeks ago.
It took me some time to upload my port here and I would be sorry if I had to remove it again.

Best Regards,
Dirk

Hello Dirk,
I have answered all questions at:
http://www.featureimage.com/Forum/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=513

Regarding the commission:

1. First of all we have referrals.
It is -3%.
27% for FP.

For each credit card transaction you are paying 30 cents+ percentage of the amount.
Let's say that after $1 purchase FP has a negative balance.
Approximately %15-%18 are our bank fees only (average per month)

2. Second:
we are offering buyers 25% discount behalf of FeturePics.
$1 - $0.70 - $0.25  -  bank fees =??? -  again, you have a negative balance of 10%

If we want to continue serving our FP community - we need to be sure we are able to do that.

Quote from: madelaide on June 03, 2009, 17:08I believe that, if you ask Elena to set higher prices for your images, so they don't fall in the microstock range, she will do it.

But she has a point: can you afford (morally and commercially) to offer your images with subscription prices on site A, and claim it's a gold image on another one? I never uploaded really to Alamy for the same reason, as it was the consensus a couple of years ago you shouldn't offer the same images on nanostock and on Alamy. Since then, I observed that consensus has been broken.

The second point is how to decide about "gold images". Often we observe that shots we didn't think high of ourselves become good sellers. My latest sale at FP was of an image I found rather documentary, and that was rejected at a few sites as LCV. The good thing about FP (amongst many others) was that it never rejected for LCV. This is a flaw of the LCV-thinking at the major stock sites. You will miss the customers of the long tail. So how to decide about "gold images"?

What FP has to do is think what kind of audience it wants to serve. Might it be that becoming a copy of the existing sites as to content is doomed to fail since that market has been taken already. The blonde beautiful overwhite girl in an IKEA kitchen, the glittery multi-ethnic business teams, those still are the majority of sales in general. Sites that wanted something different, like the Photoshelter collection, failed. Maybe there is no viable market for the long tail.

My feeling in this is that FP tries to play too much on the price competition level, and not enough on the content level, and that goes for many other sites too.

Quote from: FlemishDreams on June 04, 2009, 03:30

Quote from: madelaide on June 03, 2009, 17:08I believe that, if you ask Elena to set higher prices for your images, so they don't fall in the microstock range, she will do it.

But she has a point: can you afford (morally and commercially) to offer your images with subscription prices on site A, and claim it's a gold image on another one?

I hadn't observed when I replied to you that the midtsock and the gold collections were both for non-microstock images only.  I don't mix them either, and I even have two separate accounts in FP for that reason.

Quote from: FlemishDreams on June 04, 2009, 03:30
The blonde beautiful overwhite girl in an IKEA kitchen, the glittery multi-ethnic business teams, those still are the majority of sales in general. Sites that wanted something different, like the Photoshelter collection, failed. Maybe there is no viable market for the long tail....
My feeling in this is that FP tries to play too much on the price competition level, and not enough on the content level

"The blonde beautiful overwhite girl in an IKEA kitchen, the glittery multi-ethnic business teams"  - I don't see a lot of them in the "sold" list.
More illustrations...
A few projects "illustrations on demand" with very good results
"not enough on the content level" - I certanly agree with this one.

"not enough on the content level"
I want to follow this one.
It is a very common situation when "original content" images have terrible descriptions.
"What is up?"
"abstract"
"No!"
"above"
"my dream"
etc etc.
Authors who provide "multi-ethnic business teams" images - they understand the rules.

I will go against the stream here. I personally think the proposed changes is a positive move for FP. Based on my experience on FP for more than three years it is clear that the old model was a failure. In fact I still have to see a MS site where you can set your own prices that is a success. The reason is quite clear. A customer do a search and found images ranging in price from $1 to $30 or more on the same page with no apparent criteria to justify the difference in price. If I was a buyer this will frustrate and confuse me.

I also don't like subscriptions, but it seems like subscriptions is a fact of life for MS sites if they want to make it in this competitive industry. I just really wish every stock site will follow the example of Fotolia to limit the size of the images available for subscription download. Fotolia is the only stock site which offers subscriptions to which I upload my XXL images.  I downsize my images for all the other MS sites which allow maximum size downloads as subscriptions. In this way I miss out on the higher prices of large image sizes sold as per image sales.  The limited size of images available as subscriptions is also a good incentive for buyers to buy individual images at higher prices.

Please Elena. Can we have a limit on the size of images available as subscription downloads. If not I will have to remove all my XXL images from FP and replace them with down sized versions.    

We have been discussing ideas in FP forum.  There has been a suggestion of no subs and a bigger discount for big buyers instead.

I am ok with the volume plan they have now, which limits images to 1000pix.

Quote from: madelaide on June 04, 2009, 17:36
We have been discussing ideas in FP forum.  There has been a suggestion of no subs and a bigger discount for big buyers instead.

I am ok with the volume plan they have now, which limits images to 1000pix.

Well, I am NOT OK with such plan due to I NEED SALES - not peannuts!

Quote from: Elena on June 04, 2009, 04:03More illustrations...
A few projects "illustrations on demand" with very good results
"not enough on the content level" - I certanly agree with this one.

Well illustrations are a total different game. A photo is faster to make and to edit than a good illustration. An illustration is also more free as to concepts that can be pictured. If a contributor has a mixed port of illustrations and photos, the RPI of illustrations will almost always be much higher.

Quote from: madelaide on June 04, 2009, 17:36I am ok with the volume plan they have now, which limits images to 1000pix.

If only all (semi-) subscription sites would limit the size for subscription sales, it would be easier to live with subscriptions. One can ask what volume downloaders will do with many hundreds of maximal size pictures? Stockpiling or worse. 1000px images are large enough for banners, sidebars and articles, and even for moderate print.