Yeah, that would be really great

It is a great idea and would be a nice tool for the submitters. Someone just needs to figure out a way to get the microstock sites on board.

I doubt they would bother having more trouble just for our happiness.  I think it might be more feasible to pledge for smaller pay-outs.  BigStock's US$30 is quite reasonable, why can't bigger sites use that limit too?  IS and DT could also be more reasonable and at least reduce theirs to US$50 like StockXpert and FT.

Apart from having more cash in their hands, is there any technical difficulty is making smaller payouts?  I suppose all is handled automatically, even if someone has to click on a button before releasing the payout orders.  I don't believe that each time I request a payout they need three employees stamping a form and a dozen of carbon copies.   

Regards,
Adelaide

I can't imagine any reason they would do this.  Walmart doesn't get together with Target and Kmart to pay suppliers, ya know?

Exactly. Oh well, that's why it is just wishful thinking.

I think some sites (ahem.. Crestock) trade on the fact that many of their contributors will never reach payout and can have all that allocated cash sitting a savings account earning interest for them.

This way, the photographers with smaller portfolios, and those who participate in sites where sales are seldom, could get paid more often.

Another option is to grow your portfolio in order to get multiple payouts per month and remove your portfolio from low seller sites 

At least, YOU can do something here: it's not just wishful thinking.

I think some sites (ahem.. Crestock) trade on the fact that many of their contributors will never reach payout and can have all that allocated cash sitting a savings account earning interest for them.

I think probably they all do. The bigger paying sites also have a lot of contributors with one or two images or low selling ports that take ages to, or never, reach payout. Or perhaps get forgotten about by the contributor.

As Sean says, it doesn't make sense for them to cooperate in this way. They're competitors with each other and there's no financial or business benefit to do so.  They're less interested in small portfolios than the big ones.

An intermediary could do it. If they represented the portfolios of many contributors with small portfolios they could take payout reguarly and distribute the revenue for each contributors' combined earnings across agencies.  But then the intermediary would need to cover costs, which means taking a cut, which isn't in the interests of small contributors. 

On automation, the agencies have PayPal MassPay.  I don't have personal experience with it, but if it's anything like bank payroll systems, the agency just sends a secure file to PayPal listing all the accounts and amounts to pay and they're processed in batches.  Can you imagine having to manually pay 60,000 contributors, or even the portion that regularly make payout?

I have little doubt agencies use the unpaid royalties that acrue, even if just to generate or offset interest payments. This means more money for the agency, which for us is a good thing if they reinvest it in marketing, but indifferent if they take it out as profit.  So don't begrudge them for doing it - at least most agencies - as it can work in our favour.

The minimum payout threshhold makes sense for other reasons too. It's the micropayment concept.  They don't process a credit card transaction for $1 every time someone wants to buy a photo.  The transactions costs are prohibitively high for that.  So they make a minimum parcel of ~$10 so the transaction is worthwhile for them.  It's the same on the contributor side.  Rather than sending you a PayPal payment every time you earn a dollar or less in commission, they batch the payment.

I liked the LuckyOliver system where on one day of the year you could cashout your earnings regardless of the amount.  That was a generous idea. 

But Araminta is spot on.  Agencies are there to sell photos, so if you're not reaching payout, you're not selling photos.  I don't blame agencies for not being interested in such trivial problems for contributors with small or slow selling portfolios.  we were all in that position once and I agree with Araminta that it's a better use of your time to sell more photos than concern yourself with what agencies are doing with your $16.63.