MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: gostwyck on January 29, 2010, 15:28
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With Istock taking the lead in marching microstock prices upwards, at least for exclusive images, how much is our industry and our income being undermined by agencies that sell cheap subscriptions? Can it really be in our long term interest to support such agencies?
When Shutterstock opened it's doors to independent photographers, in Oct 2004, each sale generated 20c commission to the contributor __ the same as a Medium sale on Istock at the time.
Nowadays the maximum paid per subscription DL at SS is just 38c whilst a Medium sale at IS has increased to between $1.26-1.80. If you're a Diamond-level exclusive a Medium sale can pay as much as $6 __ that's the equivalent of more than 15 sales at SS.
Prices for subscription packages have not kept pace with PPD prices and the differential is becoming dangerously wide. With 100K new uploads being accepted at SS every week how much longer will significant image buyers bother with PPD agencies?
Should we campaign for a more realistic commission for all subscription downloads? I would suggest that a minimum commission of $1 per DL is necessary just to get close to where we were 5 years ago. It'll be up to the individual agencies to decide how they want to re-price subscription packages but we need to look after our own interests.
Any thoughts?
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I just calculated it, I would need about 260 suscription sales to match my last 20 exclusive sales (not counting Vetta, nor EL) at Istock.
I think SS should assume its leadership role at the suscription segment, as Istock does with PAYG, and raise prices and comissions without fear. In the mid long term, that's the only way for them to go on being leaders in that segment. In my opinion.
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I think SS should assume its leadership role at the suscription segment, as Istock does with PAYG, and raise prices and comissions without fear. In the mid long term, that's the only way for them to go on being leaders in that segment. In my opinion.
I'd agree. Unlike any other agency subscriptions are SS's primary business and with 10M images on-line, even if they had to double prices, it would still offer excellent value.
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gostwyck,
I have no data to back my opinion, but I think that subs prices have been frozen for more than two years, unlike credit prices. So, for intensive users, subs in fact got cheaper (considering inflation). For casual users, subs probably are not yet an interesting choice. But for someone who buys several images a month, the cost of these credits may well be equivalent (or almost) to a subs package, so I suppose many of these buyers may have migrated to subs for the flexibilty.
How much 20 L images cost in FT? US$140
How much 1 month regular subs cost in FT? US$200 (25 dld/d)
How much 20 XL images cost in FT? US$160
How much 1 month premium subs cost in FT? US$250 (25 dld/d)
How much 20 XL images cost in DT? US$157 (level 2)
How much 1 month subs cost in DT? US$129 (10 dld/d)
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Comparing SS to IS, I get quite some sales at 0.19$ at IS, and never a sale under 0.36$ at SS. I'm not concerned with what the buyer has to pay for the image, nor what an exclusive would get. All I care for is that 0.36$ is almost the double of 0.19$ and I'm not sure that "subscription" is that bad at all.
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I probably represent the lower level of submitters who make it hard for contributors to stick together. I'm new there and thrilled with my results at SS. That occasional $1.88 sale is a big thrill.
I know the newness will wear off soon but right now, my SS sales are blowing all my other agencies out of the water. This reminds me of my conversion from Republican to Democratic politics. As those big money days turned to crap so did my opinion of a Republican Administration.
I hated anything to do with Microstock until the old ways (film days) vanished. Now, I resist the Corporate Culture with a vengance but can't seem to separate personal gain from good for the group. :o
Does that make any sense?
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I hated anything to do with Microstock until the old ways (film days) vanished. Now, I resist the Corporate Culture with a vengance but can't seem to separate personal gain from good for the group. :o
Does that make any sense?
Ah, the old Egoism vs Utilitarianism dilemma. ::)
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Comparing SS to IS, I get quite some sales at 0.19$ at IS, and never a sale under 0.36$ at SS. I'm not concerned with what the buyer has to pay for the image, nor what an exclusive would get. All I care for is that 0.36$ is almost the double of 0.19$ and I'm not sure that "subscription" is that bad at all.
What do you mean "quite some sales at 0.19$"? They do exist but they are extremely rare and anyway are only for XS-sized images, not full-sized ones, so it is hardly a reasonable comparison. Obviously if you think your full-sized images are only worth 36c then I can understand why you are happy.
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I believe that cheap subscriptions are not good in the long term for contributors, SS's great track record notwithstanding. The two biggest problem areas IMO are vectors and very large images. I'm not the only one with a 5DII and the notion that at SS the 21MP full size image goes for the same price as a blog size seems crazy.
I always uploaded the same size to all sites, but increasingly I think it'd be worth thinking about giving SS a 6MP image and keeping the full size version for sites that pay for it.
Vectors are the same story - large complex vectors sell for a pretty hefty premium at IS but at the sub sites it's still the 30-38 cents regardless of complexity. I only uploaded JPEGs of those vectors to SS as I didn't mind that so much. While there is some great vector stuff at SS, the bulk of it is very low quality - quick and dirty - which probably works better given the low commissions.
I doubt you could get any consensus to downsize images among a large enough group of contributors to make it have any effect - I'm guessing that with 100K+ images per week coming in to SS they must have some content factories in a cheap labor market feeding them. It can't all be Yuri, productive as he is :)
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What do you mean "quite some sales at 0.19$"? They do exist but they are extremely rare and anyway are only for XS-sized images, not full-sized ones, so it is hardly a reasonable comparison. Obviously if you think your full-sized images are only worth 36c then I can understand why you are happy.
A grab in 4 recent sales at IS, 2 with only 1 download (the images are new).
Img (http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=11532800) - Saturday January 23, 2010, 09:52 PM XSmall Regular 0.19 (sub)
Img (http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=11589666) - Tuesday January 26, 2010, 11:52 AM XSmall Regular 0.29 (payg)
img (http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=11670712) - Sunday January 24, 2010, 08:10 PM XSmall Regular 0.30 (payg)
img (http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=10373264) - Sunday January 24, 2010, 06:08 PM XSmall Regular 0.26 (payg)
As to img (http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=11670712), it was already downloaded several times on SS the past 2 weeks, and every time it made 0.36$, even if subscription only. None of the 3 non-sub (payg) sales above on IS were subscription. None even reached the minimum of 0.36$ at SS.
I just wanted to address your point that subscription per se is damaging our to our income. You objected that it is comparing apples to melons, since the sizes differ. But SS as the prime sub site played a clever game, only offering one size. The buyer is forced to buy a larger size. Most people (and me) just offer a reduced size there anyways.
To add another thing to think about: level 3 and up images on DT yield double the minimum (0.35$):
01/26/2010 chinese factory (http://www.dreamstime.com/chinese-sweatshop-interior-image4185261) This is a level 4 image subscription $0.70 large (Editorial)
and level > 1 images make by definition most of the revenue.
As to the size issue, me feels that "size" is over-emphasized at IS. You don't buy pixels by the number like you would buy beans at the market. The main thing you buy is a concept, even at XS, so the size should actually play for only part of the price.
This is no critique towards iStock, but just a thought (as you asked) about subscription. Not all subscriptions are created equal. It will also depend on the type of contributor you are. DT will reward more based on an image per image base, FT and IS reward according to contributor's general sales. There is no simple answer to your question.
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The two biggest problem areas IMO are vectors and very large images. I'm not the only one with a 5DII and the notion that at SS the 21MP full size image goes for the same price as a blog size seems crazy.
You are totally right. A vector person is underpayed at SS (or subscription) since it takes much more time and skill to make a vector than a photo. There should be a different pricing scale for both. Of course, vectors get downloaded much more than photos, so that might ease the pain.
But you can do something against it. I have no clue about vectors, but why don't vector people just don't upload a small raster version to SS? As a photographer, I only upload my 5DII images on SS at 6MP. I started doing this when I had too many rejections for noise on lesser (10MP) cams, and I keep doing it now.
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...it takes much more time and skill to make a vector than a photo.
As a blanket statement, that is certainly not true. Does it take more time and skill to make an apple, or an orange?
I could turn out dumb, simplistic vector images by the hundreds, every day. No one would want them.
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I could turn out dumb, simplistic vector images by the hundreds, every day. No one would want them.
Correction: salable illustrations.
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What do you mean "quite some sales at 0.19$"? They do exist but they are extremely rare and anyway are only for XS-sized images, not full-sized ones, so it is hardly a reasonable comparison. Obviously if you think your full-sized images are only worth 36c then I can understand why you are happy.
A grab in 4 recent sales at IS, 2 with only 1 download (the images are new).
...XSmall Regular 0.19 (sub) XSmall Regular 0.29 (payg) XSmall Regular 0.30 (payg) XSmall Regular 0.26 (payg)...
Just to give you some comparison data I grabbed one image (uploaded July 2009) that sold 7 times last week (1 large, the other 6 medium or smaller) for $23.41 royalty (at the 35% rate) - that would be $13.37 at the 20% rate vs. $2.52 for 7 SS sales at 36 cents.
That image has sold 158 times since July for a total of $421.34 which averages out to $2.66 per sale (at 35%) - $1.52 per sale at 20%. That's more than 4 times the SS commission even at the non-exclusive 20% royalty rate.
Obviously, I don't think I'm harmed by the IS prices :)
And in case you're thinking this is some special image, it's a photogenic piece of driftwood (http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=9919216).
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istock have increased PPD prices but I hope people haven't forgotten that they also reduced non-exclusive subs with photos.com to a measly $0.25. That could damage our earnings far more than SS. Why would the other sites pay us $1 for subs when istock are getting away with just 25% of that? I have stopped supplying subs sites that only offer $0.25. I would like to see other sites introduce different levels, like SS have, so we make more if we get more downloads.
I would like to see the sites raising subs commissions but I would also like to be paid a fixed percentage, like the PPD sites do. I still have no idea how much the subs sites are paying me.
I don't think we will have any negotiating power if people opt in to photos.com and any other Getty/istock site that pays just $0.25.
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Obviously, I don't think I'm harmed by the IS prices :)
Could you, by any chance (I beg your majesty pardon), bear a splendid iCrown? ;)
Not that I care that much, but I have to do my own accounting. My RPD at IS is simply lower than at SS, given the not too infrequent ELs that SS throws in my undeserving wallet. They happen to be 28$ for a squeezed down image. Oooo, how do I feel guilty it's only worth 6MP of pixels, while IS is offered 12MP generously, but fails to sell that quantity most miserably. Blessed be iStock, since iStock is a honorable site.
Probably it's because I shoot crap, no doubt. I'm just happy and humbled that SS takes my crap and sells it. If that's "subscription", hail subscription. And if I'm not mistaken, that was the question of the OP: does subscription kill us? If so, it's a sweet death in the arms (disambiguated: human body parts instruments to afflicht harm) of SS.
My recent stuff doesn't sell at all at IS. Just my old subpar images do, and I don't grasp why (we amateur shrimps have tiny brains). Probably they escaped the well-tuned best match that giveth and taketh. Should I join rating clubs or throw some clever hail IS posts on the forum? Should I reciprocate ratings? Should I send one of their short-sighted reviewers (that can't read the fonts well on their own f*ng MRFs) some reading glasses? No clue. No time to wonder too. The minimum at the damned crap-swallowing subscription site is 0.36$ (or 0.35$ on DT) and on IS it's a whopping 0.19$. And that makes me wonder, as a simple promiscuous slave that fails to see the benefits of IS's marvelous chastity, why PayAsYouGo Xs on God's gift to Stock should ruin the business less than subscriptions on the swallow-all site.
Accept, oh crowned head, my humble answer to the OP's musings. :P
As to cheap subscriptions, why did Getty (but Getty is a honorable company) took away the 0.30$ photos.com JIU subs at StockXpert and offers them, most generously, for just 0.25$ at one of their new serf-sites? Ain't that cheap?
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Being istock exclusive is not always a bed of roses. I had a total of 7 sales last week. I've only had one sale from my last 100 accepted uploads. Perhaps a bunch of subs on SS would be better for me.
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As much as I agree with the sentiments in the OP's question I'm not sure that SS or anyone else could support a $1 commission to contributors for subscription downloads because they'd have to raise the package prices too much to be economically attractive to the bulk number of buyers, which in turn would see the buyers going to other sites for PPD - now that would be great for most of us but the vast number of people that submit to SS rely on that 'stock pile' buying approach otherwise they'd never sell anything.
I'd love to see the figures for how many image on SS actually sell beyond the first week or indeed how many of the 10m have actually sold.
Personally I'd like to see any subscription package on any site magically disappear overnight.
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Being istock exclusive is not always a bed of roses. I had a total of 7 sales last week. I've only had one sale from my last 100 accepted uploads. Perhaps a bunch of subs on SS would be better for me.
That's not good hey. Have you tried changing tactics? Sometimes, in fact often, images do take a while to kick off - when you get one that starts to fly you wont regret being with IS
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Must be the only industry where the wholesale price is so absurdly out of whack with the retail price.
Especially considering that the buyer can download those L files for the same price(effectively) as XS, M etc.
I'm most surprised that whoever started the subsclub, started with such an exceptionally good deal for the buyers and such a rotten one for the contributors (although contributor rewards have never figured much in the calculations of some sites). Offering an immediate discount of 90%+ for forward payment is not exactly common practice in industry generally.
As to whether contributors can do much about it, I don't know. Sometimes after getting a subs sale from a new image, I get some downloads of the same image for regular rates (XL) which dissuades me from removing my contributions to subs. Do subs act as badly paid advertising for an image? Don't know that either. I agree that the minimum reward for a subs sale should be more in the region of $1, rather than the 30 cents it is now. On the other hand, if the buyer were only able to download to "M" as a maximum size in subs, I think that this may encourage more PPD's for the larger sizes from the same subs buyers.
Ideally, subs would disappear overnight but lacking that option (which is unrealistic), I could live with a system in which subs were limited to M max and, that should the subscription customer require a larger file for download, they could do this at a not too substantial discount to the PPD rate.
But as I'm fairly new to all this WTHDIK.
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Must be the only industry where the wholesale price is so absurdly out of whack with the retail price.
Especially considering that the buyer can download those L files for the same price(effectively) as XS, M etc.
I'm most surprised that whoever started the subsclub, started with such an exceptionally good deal for the buyers and such a rotten one for the contributors (although contributor rewards have never figured much in the calculations of some sites). Offering an immediate discount of 90%+ for forward payment is not exactly common practice in industry generally.
As to whether contributors can do much about it, I don't know. Sometimes after getting a subs sale from a new image, I get some downloads of the same image for regular rates (XL) which dissuades me from removing my contributions to subs. Do subs act as badly paid advertising for an image? Don't know that either. I agree that the minimum reward for a subs sale should be more in the region of $1, rather than the 30 cents it is now. On the other hand, if the buyer were only able to download to "M" as a maximum size in subs, I think that this may encourage more PPD's for the larger sizes from the same subs buyers.
Ideally, subs would disappear overnight but lacking that option (which is unrealistic), I could live with a system in which subs were limited to M max and, that should the subscription customer require a larger file for download, they could do this at a not too substantial discount to the PPD rate.
But as I'm fairly new to all this WTHDIK.
I agree that subs should be limited to M. I also believe that subs sales should pay a minimum of 50 cents. Are these 25 cent subs payouts bad for the industry? Absolutely!
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I just can't understand why the subscription sites can't have different prices for different sizes?
Instead of "25 images a day" they could have "50 credits a day". 50 credits could for example mean 50 tiny web images or 5 XL images.
The current situation where a thumbnail costs the same as 20 megapixel image is just insane.
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@FD, Sharpshot,
Opted out at IS. Opted out at STX.
In my case it's not so much the 0.5 cent difference. It's the way they did it.
I thought it was cheap and it bothered me. It still does.
Just let me know if there's anything else I should do.
No Getty subscription site will ever succeed unless heavily backed up by independents.
At their current offering I hope that's not going to happen.
@Jsnover,
a few months ago I read one of your posts on IS forum.
I thought it was very interesting and thank you for sharing the info with us.
It took you, successful Gold Level Exclusive, 1 year and 4 months + hundreds of new, (I assume better, 5DII) photos added to your portfolio to reach the same amount of dollars per month you used to have as independent.
1 year and 4 months. Continuous uploading.
There must be something to IS Exclusivity that I can't yet figure out. And it seems it's not financial.
Nice to hear it's working out for you though,
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I'm not concerned with what the buyer has to pay for the image, nor what an exclusive would get. All I care for is that 0.36$ is almost the double of 0.19$ and I'm not sure that "subscription" is that bad at all.
But this - how much we earn - is not the point in this thread (unless I understood the OP incorrectly). This is about how/if cheap prices from subs damage the microstock industry. The buyer also doesn't care how much we make, he wants to buy images as cheap as he can, and by offering cheap subscription packages while raising credit prices from time to time, the agencies probably make a certain group of buyers to prefer subs packages (see my maths in an earlier post).
PS: my RPD in IS is 91c this month. It's not a number I normally control, however.
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@Jsnover,
a few months ago I read one of your posts on IS forum.
I thought it was very interesting and thank you for sharing the info with us.
It took you, successful Gold Level Exclusive, 1 year and 4 months + hundreds of new, (I assume better, 5DII) photos added to your portfolio to reach the same amount of dollars per month you used to have as independent.
1 year and 4 months. Continuous uploading.
There must be something to IS Exclusivity that I can't yet figure out. And it seems it's not financial.
Nice to hear it's working out for you though,
I don't know which post(s) you are referring to, but I did recently post that I had beaten my previous high water mark (by quite a lot) after a rather dire period in the fall of 2008 (right after I went exclusive) while they were fiddling around with changing the best match. My best month of the year has always been November with October and December close behind it. The turnaround happened in the late Spring 2009, not 1 year and 4 months later. I had beaten my numbers for the quieter months earlier, but this was only my second November as an IS exclusive.
I'm not out to proselytize about becoming exclusive or the benefits of same and I can't see how this is in any way related to the discussion about the impact of subscriptions on microstock contributors.
If your point was that I'm an exclusive, I assume everyone knows that by now.
How does my data about the sales of an image - where I quoted what it would have earned at an independent royalty rate to remove the extra earnings that came from being exclusive - at SS vs. IS connect to your comments about what a disaster exclusivity is?
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I just can't understand why the subscription sites can't have different prices for different sizes?
Instead of "25 images a day" they could have "50 credits a day". 50 credits could for example mean 50 tiny web images or 5 XL images.
The current situation where a thumbnail costs the same as 20 megapixel image is just insane.
Agree. I just checked at FT to see what you get for the basic subs package: $199 buys you 750 downloads/month, single user and max 'L'
format. If used fully, that $199 buys you (depending on the contributor level) a minimum of $5,250 worth of 'L' files at $7 PPD. Should contributor be slightly higher in the pecking order then your advantage as subs buyer becomes a multiple, 2x or 3x of that amount.
Dunno if it works in the same way with other RF sites but where else in the world can you get 5K, 10K or 15K worth of goods/services for 200 bucks?
What I also haven't figured out is why FT in particular would sell subs to a buyer at $0.27/download and give the contributor a minimum of $0.30 for that same download. Obviously, not all subs buyers extract to the max otherwise subs would be a real loss leader even at the present low rates paid to the contributor. For the present, though, it is no doubt profitable but always at the expense of the contributor.
It seems to me that the only way to get better prices for subs would be for many major contributors to opt out of subs at every agency they are at (don't know whether that is possible). Only when subs buyers were faced with a such a depleted stock of the most popular images, the agencies could have their hand forced and have to recognise their contributors for what they are really worth and get a deal which would be less lob sided than the present one.
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Since I'm exclusive, the worst I get is around 0.48$ for subs, and 0.76$ for a XS image. I even got some 2.40$ subs for medium sizes and the list goes on. Do I lost sales elsewhere? Personally I don't care about those 30 cents sales.
Yes subs hurt me last years. FT and StockXpert started subs and DT started to earn me 70% of subscriptions. I have already a low production budget and earning/file have to cover what I invested plus my time.
It definitely made it harder to buy objects that I will probably never use, except to shoot as stock. I hope that exclusivity at Istock will help, as only one download at higher size, can give me 5$ and more...
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The recording industry certainly saw the original Napster as a threat. But the RIAA was able to knock it down because they were big, rich and had legal muscle, and Napster was small. So today, we pay $1 for a downloadable track, almost the same as a CD. In the stock photo world, instead of about 4 big contributors unified behind an army of lawyers, we have thousands of essentially powerless small contributors. The situation is reversed. So what should we expect to happen?
Subscriptions are a big part of a race to the bottom, and a growing consensus that stock images should cost pennies, and probably eventually be free for most uses. Stock sites will make their real money from "value-added" search, resizing, archiving and delivery capabilities, not from sales of the actual image per se.
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@Jsnover,
I never said IS exclusivity is a disaster. It is obviously not, since it works so well for so many people. Please don't put words into my mouth.
I can have a look for your post and show it to you.
1 year and 4 months (3 ?) to beat your previous independent/monthly record.
It is my impression that it can take some time to level the earnings.
But you're right, this is off topic.
I'll end it here.
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sub sites will always be here and growing,that's where all the buyer do most of their shopping. The economy is down and will be for awhile.
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sub sites will always be here and growing,that's where all the buyer do most of their shopping. The economy is down and will be for awhile.
You wouldn't know it from my sales. 40% of my sales still come from IS, which doesn't have an "all you can eat" type subscription model at all.
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my sales are the opposite,most from sub
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The economy is down and will be for awhile.
It's not the case in something like 85% of the world. And buying images is probably 5% of a project budget.
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sub sites will always be here and growing,that's where all the buyer do most of their shopping. The economy is down and will be for awhile.
You wouldn't know it from my sales. 40% of my sales still come from IS, which doesn't have an "all you can eat" type subscription model at all.
Thanks. I just looked at the IS credits subs system and it it much less generous to the buyer than the 'all you can eat system' of FT. Effectively, you buy credits in bulk and 3 months in advance at a discount of 70% but you have to use your number of credits each day or they turn into pumpkins at midnight. ;) If a buyer with subscription buys a 10 credit image of yours, how much do you get as contributor?
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If a buyer with subscription buys a 10 credit image of yours, how much do you get as contributor?
You get your percentage of 10 $.96 credits, at the minimum.
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And you can get even more, if the buyer has not used his full quota.
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sub sites will always be here and growing,that's where all the buyer do most of their shopping. The economy is down and will be for awhile.
You wouldn't know it from my sales. 40% of my sales still come from IS, which doesn't have an "all you can eat" type subscription model at all.
Thanks. I just looked at the IS credits subs system and it it much less generous to the buyer than the 'all you can eat system' of FT. Effectively, you buy credits in bulk and 3 months in advance at a discount of 70% but you have to use your number of credits each day or they turn into pumpkins at midnight. ;) If a buyer with subscription buys a 10 credit image of yours, how much do you get as contributor?
From my own experience and hearsay from my CN and forums, the subscription scheme hasn't been a great success. The last time I saw iStock print ads (around 6 months ago) they weren't even mentioning the possibility of subs. Anyone know if that's changed? It really isn't a good deal for buyers, who need to remember to download images over weekends and holidays if they are to get their money's worth.
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It really isn't a good deal for buyers, who need to remember to download images over weekends and holidays if they are to get their money's worth.
Well that's how the stock agencies make money. If all the buyers would be using their full quota, SS would probably be bankrupt. Not that I'm defending subs, but we may get some downloads from buyers that download the images just so they use their quota or a bigger part of it even if they never use it. I know I would(Yeah, yeah, I'm a cheapskate).
I think one of the best resolves would be to make more license types, to separate more groups of buyers. This works for PPD too. That way the occasional blogger, can buy his image for a buck, while the big guys who spend 1000$ on coffee in their meetings should pay much more. Atleast that's how I see it. Problem is that will probably cause more misuse of license. Another possible solution would be tiering the sizes like Getty does(only at a lower start point) with really really small sizes for the small priced downloads and much bigger for the full sizes.
If that's not going to work, there should be tiers for subscriptions, like 35c for small, 65c for medium, 1,10$ for large&vector.
Oh well at least that's what my limited microstock experience tells me.
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The recording industry certainly saw the original Napster as a threat. But the RIAA was able to knock it down because they were big, rich and had legal muscle, and Napster was small. So today, we pay $1 for a downloadable track, almost the same as a CD. In the stock photo world, instead of about 4 big contributors unified behind an army of lawyers, we have thousands of essentially powerless small contributors. The situation is reversed. So what should we expect to happen?
Subscriptions are a big part of a race to the bottom, and a growing consensus that stock images should cost pennies, and probably eventually be free for most uses. Stock sites will make their real money from "value-added" search, resizing, archiving and delivery capabilities, not from sales of the actual image per se.
So how do you explain most of the sites raising their pay-per-download prices substantially the past few years? It doesn't fit in with your argument at all. I think the low subs prices are partly to gain market share. The sites will also see what they can get away with but at some point there will be a rebellion. Istock want to dominate the market and the other sites are frightened of raising subs prices and seeing their buyers go elsewhere. I am sure there are enough of us that don't want to work just for istock and there will be big innovations in the future that let us sell directly to buyers with less money being taken by a middle man.
Consumers will always want MP3's as cheap as possible or free but microstock is a commercial market, I don't see any comparison at all. Napster going legal didn't make any difference to illegal MP3 file sharing, it is bigger than ever. This is from the UK but I am sure it applies worldwide. http://www.bpi.co.uk/press-area/news-amp3b-press-release/article/growing-threat-from-illegal-web-downloads.aspx (http://www.bpi.co.uk/press-area/news-amp3b-press-release/article/growing-threat-from-illegal-web-downloads.aspx)
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It really isn't a good deal for buyers, who need to remember to download images over weekends and holidays if they are to get their money's worth.
Well that's how the stock agencies make money. If all the buyers would be using their full quota, SS would probably be bankrupt. Not that I'm defending subs, but we may get some downloads from buyers that download the images just so they use their quota or a bigger part of it even if they never use it. I know I would(Yeah, yeah, I'm a cheapskate).
I think one of the best resolves would be to make more license types, to separate more groups of buyers. This works for PPD too. That way the occasional blogger, can buy his image for a buck, while the big guys who spend 1000$ on coffee in their meetings should pay much more. Atleast that's how I see it. Problem is that will probably cause more misuse of license.
While that appeals to my general philosophy, it wouldn't work, for the reason that companies would be making their employees download from home. The bigger the company, the more employees they could have doing it and the less easy it would be to discover.
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I am sure there are enough of us that don't want to work just for istock and there will be big innovations in the future that let us sell directly to buyers with less money being taken by a middle man.
Well obviously I hope you're right, but I don't share your optimism. What we all want is a way to get some control over our prices but so far, alternatives like CutCaster have yet to gain any traction.
Google could do it - by creating GoogleStock, and giving us a well-defined way to be indexed by it. Some future descendant of Ebay could do it. We could actually be selling images on Ebay today, but their search interface isn't up to the task, and they have no way to automatically deliver downloadable content - and there would have to be a way to ensure quality, some sort of paid inspection service. Those things are doable however. There is already Ebay Motors, a somewhat specialized version of Ebay. Why not Ebay Images?
I agree that the future is seldom really predictable.
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I always uploaded the same size to all sites, but increasingly I think it'd be worth thinking about giving SS a 6MP image and keeping the full size version for sites that pay for it.
Heck, I do it because my bandwidth is not great and it would take forever to send full size files and I'm only shooting with a 12MP camera. I only send full size images to IS and downsize everything else. But I'm on the countdown to go exclusive with IS. I've always done better there and with the exclusive increases in royalties, prices and uploads I'll break even or even earn more than sending to multiple sites.
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If a buyer with subscription buys a 10 credit image of yours, how much do you get as contributor?
You get your percentage of 10 $.96 credits, at the minimum.
Thanks. That seems a decent system for the contributor.
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It seems to me that the intent of subscriptions is to shift the focus of the "product" and reduce the need for the agency to pay commissions in order to make money. The idea of a subscription is that many buyers will never fully utilize it - in other words they're pre-paying for images they may never actually download, and until an image is downloaded, no comission is paid.
Does that hurt us? I'm not sure. My instinct is that in the long run, it does, by eroding the perceived value of an image. Subscriptions are a way to further detach the buyer from the idea that he's buying an image from a photographer.