Author Topic: They are not our agents (Read 3360 times)

rene · « **on:** September 15, 2009, 04:54 »

I don’t want to start new social movement, just give you an advice.
Be suspicious, be vigilant and don’t trust every advice and information microstock agencies give you. Be selfish, do what is good for you. They are not our agents, this is not win-win relation.
We have not common interests, worst, our interests are opposite. What’s good for us is bad for them. They sell credits and subscriptions, we sell images. For each credit plan or subscription the site get money. We get nothing. For each downloaded picture we get money and the site lose money. They love to have our images (that’s what makes clients put money in their pockets) but they don’t like sell them.
Who is the best client for microstock site? The guy who paid for 1 year subscription (2400$) and had a car crash 10 minutes later.
I wish a very long life to all our buyers.

Adeptris · « **Reply #1 on:** September 15, 2009, 05:07 »

Quote from: rene on September 15, 2009, 04:54

<...
>...
They love to have our images (that’s what makes clients put money in their pockets) but they don’t like sell them.
Who is the best client for microstock site? The guy who paid for 1 year subscription (2400$) and had a car crash 10 minutes later.
I wish a very long life to all our buyers.

We are 'asset suppliers or vendors', they are 'resellers of asset licenses' not agencies and not merchants in the real term, the subscription websites want buyers that will buy a subscription each time it expires more than just buy a subscription once only, all the business models want repeat business for the longer term benefit to them and thier suppliers, long term business not short term gain.

Most websites however do not work as they really should and forget who owns the asset, once a sale has taken place your commission should be unconditionally yours and paid out whenever due, they should remove your assets from sale unconditionally if requested, commission rates should stay with each asset at the rate on the date of upload any changes should be from that date and for new assets only, and not applied to older assets retrospective.

This is the way The3dStudio.com are working and also allow your own prices!

David

bittersweet · « **Reply #2 on:** September 15, 2009, 10:00 »

stockastic · « **Reply #3 on:** September 15, 2009, 10:43 »

The microstocks are just dot-com-boom startups that happened to be in the right place at the right time, and made some quick money. They were probably surprised by their initial success. Sustainable busines model? Contributor satisfaction? Well. they've been making it all up as they went along, and at this point I think they've found that they've sort of painted themselves into a corner and don't know which way to go next.

They now have huge archives containing a high percentage of junk which they can't afford to clean up; and they've driven prices down to the floor with subscription plans that give them steady income but have turned off a lot of contributors.

The crowdsourcing model means you don't worry about individual contributors because there are always new ones lining up at your door.

It all works, for a while. We'll see what the future brings.

sharpshot · « **Reply #4 on:** September 15, 2009, 11:45 »

^^^Why do you ignore the fact that there is still a strong pay per download market and that prices have gone up a lot since microstock started? I just don't see everyone switching to subscriptions, it doesn't suit a lot of buyers. Subs should be priced higher and that might happen when all the sites have established themselves.

Haven't subs prices gone up since shutterstock started? I am sure they used to pay $0.20 a few years ago and it was probably less than that when they started.

stockastic · « **Reply #5 on:** September 15, 2009, 12:50 »

I've only been in this since January so I don't know the history. But what I see is that the proportion of subscription sales keeps going up so the overall payback is going down. That's my experience anyway. When I started at SS, I got some OD sales but since the start of August it's been 100.0% subs.

Pre-paid subscription plans are pure opium to any vendor, no matter what they're selling.

sharpshot · « **Reply #6 on:** September 15, 2009, 15:06 »

My SS on demand sales are doing well. They make more than my 5th highest earning site. Some buyers might be moving to subs but there are still a good proportion using pay per download and I don't see that changing.

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Author Topic: They are not our agents (Read 3360 times)

rene

Adeptris

bittersweet

stockastic

sharpshot

stockastic

sharpshot

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