Hi all,

Recently I'm writing to all the agencies I'm working with to allow us to share royalties with other contributors who collaborate on specific projects.
Revostock already has this feature and calls it "Royalty split".

According to Revostock, "The Royalty Split feature will allow you to share your earnings from a particular file with another RevoStock Producer. This is useful if you work together with another producer on a media file. You will need to designate which producer to share earnings with when you upload your media.�

Basically, to date contributors are very limited when collaborating with each other on a single shoot or a series of projects. It happened to me many times to refuse a collaboration for just a reason: ACCOUNTING and TAX ISSUES!
Sharing royalties with 2 or more co-authors is not an easy task as you have to either create new accounts for each different collaboration, or publishing co-produced contents under the account of one of the authors and rely on his good faith when he tells you how much you earned. Not to mention that if you work internationally, you should deal with complex tax issues when your co-authors leave in a Country which has not the same "withholding rate" with the US as yours.

The Revostock feature is just brilliant. No accounting problems, no math, no annoyance.

Why do I need to collaborate with other people?
Well, after 8 years in microstock, I believe that we are at a point where the return per image on simple and low budget shoots has diminished too much. I think it's better to partner with other people for sharing creativity, techniques, equipment, models and resources to finance complex and highly rewarding shoots.

If you think that this feature would help you as well, please feel free to copy and paste this message below and send it to the agencies you work with. The more we are the better.

"Hi,

I'm writing you because I would like you to consider a very convenient feature for contributors.
It's called "Royalty split feature" and has been already implemented by Revostock.

According to Revostock, "The Royalty Split feature will allow you to share your earnings from a particular file with another RevoStock Producer. This is useful if you work together with another producer on a media file. You will need to designate which producer to share earnings with when you upload your media.�

I think this would be very simple to implement on your side because it's just a matter of sharing the royalties generated from a file between two or more contributors that are already registered on your website.
On the other hand, it would dramatically simplify our life, as we wouldn't be anymore involved in many issues, such as time-consuming reviews of our sales to make sure that any co-producer gets the right share, tax issues, creating different accounts for any "creative" partnership we want to carry on, etc.

I hope you got the general idea of this feature and to see it available in the near future.
I'm confident that many people would appreciate your effort and consider it very welcome.

Thanks for your kind attention.
Best regards."

I don't know...I think it's an interesting idea. An illustrator could team up with a photographer and add text or drawn images to a photo. If they were from the same country the tax situation should be OK. The person with the higher royalty rate could submit the images.

Thanks for your replies.

Sean, I'll try to make it more clear.
Let's assume that I'm planning a very complex shoot with many models involved, permissions to be obtained, equipment to be rented. I don't want to bear all the costs and I know a talented photographer that may add creative value to the shoot and share the costs.

Why don't partner with him on that shoot? Two brains and 2 cameras working creatively together may come up with great ideas and definitely have more fun. A contract would also help to make things clear from the start

Instead of creating a new account on 10 agencies starting from scratch, waiting for the application process, struggling with reviewers pixel peeping your images because you're a "new contributor", I'd rather prefer to upload contents under my account. I have a high rank and 99% approval rate.
I think this would give more visibility to these new pictures as well, since many buyers follow my work.

Let's say that I and my fellow photographer produced 100 pictures and agreed a 60%/40% share of revenues. Every time a licence is sold, the royalty would be automatically split by the agency with the percentage that we agreed. I would get my 60%, him his 40%.
If he lives in a Country which doesn't have a tax treaty with the US, he would get his royalty with the 30% withholding rate, as it would be withhold by the agency itself.

Jo, you're right when you say that I can work with someone on a project without get the agency involved. I've been doing it in the past on Cultura (now Imagesource) and Blend. But it's a pain. That's why I'm writing this post. Because I've been spending a lot of time reviewing sales, calculating shares, sending a statement to the other photographer (blurring and masking my own sales for privacy), making bank transfers, etc.

I wish I could do more teamwork, I do believe it's better than working on my own. But I think that photographers should focus on pictures, agencies on accounting issues.

I hope it sounds clearer now and apologize for my English as it's not my native language.

All the best,
Diego
 

"Let's say that I and my fellow photographer produced 100 pictures and agreed a 60%/40% share of revenues"

How about you submit and keep the money from the images you shoot and he does the same?