Author Topic: SS forcing me to go Exclusive....?? (Read 5057 times)

perkmeup · « **on:** February 11, 2009, 06:00 »

I have been submitting to Microstock now for over three years. I haven’t posted a lot on the forums, as I rarely have the extra time, but I do cruise thru every few days and read up alittle, and occasionally post something. I have watched my income continually drop over the last 10 or so months and I don’t see it changing much in the future. Most of this is due to the subscription plans that most of the sites offer now and of course the huge number of new photos being submitted. I was never a big fan of subscription in the first place, but SS made up for the low .25 commission with huge download numbers, but nowadays the downloads are rapidly falling off, and the thought of selling my photos for pennies, is not appetizing. I use to sell around 200 photos a day on SS……now I’m lucky to get 70 or so. I’m not sure what to do……I never thought that I would ever consider going exclusive with IS, but now it is beginning to look pretty good. The income I generate from IS has been fairly constant…..except for the last 5 months…due to the Best Match which almost killed most nonexclusives……. The new Best match has brought my dls back up to what they were before….. If I could double my IS income (since I’m Diamond) and increase my dls alittle by the added exposure from being exclusive…….

Maybe it’s worth it?? What are your thoughts?

I know….all my eggs in one basket……..but I know a lot of you have thought about this too……………..

I do have a couple questions for those that have made this switch.
I have been checking on the procedures on deleting photos….I have over 3000 online. Which sites will delete the photos for you?

Any of them?? DS makes you wait 6 months…from the last upload, BS make you wait 3 months…..the rest don’t seem to have a time restriction. If I have to delete photos, One at a time from all the sites……………yikes………anybody want a part time job deleting my photos

gostwyck · « **Reply #1 on:** February 11, 2009, 07:09 »

I'm in a very similar position to you having been submitting over 4 years now.

Yes, IS is doing fantastically well for me this month and SS is very disappointing, but then FT are also maintaining their continual rise and I'm on target for a best match at DT too. (I reckon as of this morning we are roughly 1/3 of the way through the month for projection purposes).

Even so IS are still only 37.4% of my income so by going exclusive, assuming IS maintained the same pace, it is likely that my income would drop by 25% immediately. Even if IS were 50% (which they haven't been for nearly 3 years and I don't ever expect them to get anywhere close again) I'd be unwilling to put 'all my eggs in one basket'. It's just too risky when microstock is your main income.

IS have a history of wild swings of fortune for me whereas SS has been relatively stable overall. Although DL's are well down on SS this month, when compared to Feb 08, thanks to the higher royalties and on-demand sales I'm actually not that far behind on income. I'm not about to make an almost irreversible decision based on the last 2-3 months of results when 4 years of data suggests that what's happening now is likely to be seen as a 'blip' in the longer term.

IMHO this is still a young industry and it has a very long way to go before the winners and losers become clear.

michealo · « **Reply #2 on:** February 11, 2009, 08:51 »

Quote from: perkmeup on February 11, 2009, 06:00

I do have a couple questions for those that have made this switch.
I have been checking on the procedures on deleting photos….I have over 3000 online. Which sites will delete the photos for you? Any of them?? DS makes you wait 6 months…from the last upload, BS make you wait 3 months…..the rest don’t seem to have a time restriction. If I have to delete photos, One at a time from all the sites……………yikes………anybody want a part time job deleting my photos

BS will delete for you if you ask them nicely.
DT won't delete for you , you can delete a percentage straight away , that might reduce the lock in by some time (6 weeks in my case)
You could probably script it or one of the third party applications may be able to do it en masse - someone like Araminta would probably know a quick pro grammatical way of doing things.

As you are Diamond you would go to 75% straight away (double royalty from 20% to 40%)
And ELs are 50% so if you get a lot of these they could bump it up another percentage point or 2

You can also contribute to Getty if you aren't already doing so - not sure how much that is worth.

If you use the time that you would have spent uploading to other sites and shoot more upload more at IS I would imagine you could makeup that difference and more quite easily.

null · « **Reply #3 on:** February 11, 2009, 09:14 »

Quote from: perkmeup on February 11, 2009, 06:00

I use to sell around 200 photos a day on SS……now I’m lucky to get 70 or so.

I can well believe that since you have a fantastic portfolio. Doesn't SS make up for the diminished sub sales by more on demand and extended? For me it does since half of January. Of course the good times till June 2008 won't come back soon, not in this economy climate.

There is one thing you should consider, IMHO. The postprocessing wanted by IS is totally different from what SS accepts. Are you ready to reprocess all you shots? Since you have a very important port, you could take this issue up with IS and ask them a preview and how many of your port they would accept in advance. If not, you might land between two chairs...

e-person · « **Reply #4 on:** February 11, 2009, 11:00 »

I think once you are in, getting out is a loss.

Who can guarantee you that buyers of your photos on SS, will stop using them once you delete your portfolio? By contract they are allowed to use them for six months. The really nice ones will come back and give you some more downloads, but if you delete your port I suspect they will just download from their hard drives... :-)

RacePhoto · « **Reply #5 on:** February 11, 2009, 18:02 »

Quote from: michealo on February 11, 2009, 08:51

You can also contribute to Getty if you aren't already doing so - not sure how much that is worth.

You can? Tell me more about exclusives who can contribute to Getty. Maybe Sean will fill us in about how he's submitting to GETTY now. Not that there isn't some potential for sales, and money to be made. But if anything they select images that they put into the Photodisc collection. You don't submit photos to Getty because you are a silver or better IS exclusive.

This is a fallacy and people need to stop promoting the Getty connection to going exclusive.

A comparison would be that because we contribute to Snap Village or our photos are on Veer, we are contributing to Corbis. That's right. Upload to Snap Village and you are contributing to Corbis. It's always been that way. How come no one shouts about that as some kind of big deal?

vonkara · « **Reply #6 on:** February 11, 2009, 19:27 »

If Dreamstime wasn't there I would probably go fo IS as exclusive. FT is 30% subs for me. StockXpert is 95% subs. SS is subs. 123RF also. LOL I only started 1 year and a half and subs was only a rumor at this time.

sharpshot · « **Reply #7 on:** February 12, 2009, 04:35 »

SS has bounced back again for me. istock are still rejecting some of my best selling images as not suitable for stock and I would be crazy going exclusive there while they are doing that. I couldn't cope with the wild best match swings there and I am against the policy of making contributors exclusive. They should allow exclusive images, like lots of other sites do, there is no way I would agree to only contributing RF to one microstock site.

perkmeup · « **Reply #8 on:** February 12, 2009, 06:18 »

Quote

If Dreamstime wasn't there I would probably go fo IS as exclusive.

Ya....that's the ONLY reason that this is a hard decision. DS has been doing very well for me...and even though I get alot of subs there.......I also get many sales for over $4.

Quote

They should allow exclusive images

they should..........but they won't.........and ya it does scare me about thier best match swings.....what if they went thru another bad best match and my sales plummeted as before.....and I had all my eggs in that basket??? For this to work.......I need to get and increase in exposure from being exclusive....and I'm just not sure what kind of increase in DL's that will bring. My revenue will double...since I'm diamond, but that alone will not equal what I currently make.....I need added exposure.....I'm hoping I would get it.

Right now I'm going to get things set up so I can do this if I deciede too.. I have deleted or working on it.... a couple bad accounts that have never amounted to anything.........Crestock, Alblumo, Featurepics, and I have stopped uploading to DS...........until I can figure out if this is a good thing to do or not.

dbvirago · « **Reply #9 on:** February 12, 2009, 07:11 »

I can't imagine going exclusive with anyone, but I understand what you mean. SS sales have been dropping since October. They went from 40% of my MS income to 35, and now are around 24%. DT is now #1 and IS, SX, FT, and 123 are picking up the slack left by SS. Not going to go exclusive, buy I am putting more time into the other sites. With 70K images a week, and more and inconsistent rejections, SS isn't working for me like it used to.

helix7 · « **Reply #10 on:** February 12, 2009, 08:12 »

I got an email from a black diamond istock exclusive last week, asking me about non-exclusivity and how well I do selling images privately through my own website (he was considering doing the same, but would have to drop the crown first).

Then of course there are always these forum threads about dropping the other agencies and going exclusive with istock.

I think it's one of those classic "grass is always greener on the other side" dilemmas.

I try to keep the exclusive thing simple with math. Take what you make now at istock each month, and double that number. Would you be happy with that amount each month compared to what you make now at all of the microstock sites? And let that be how you decide.

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Author Topic: SS forcing me to go Exclusive....?? (Read 5057 times)

perkmeup

gostwyck

michealo

null

e-person

RacePhoto

vonkara

sharpshot

perkmeup

dbvirago

helix7

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