MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: leaf on October 28, 2013, 10:19
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I read a quote in the book "The 4-Hour Work Week" that I think summarizes our situation quite well.
..talking about why not to sell product through many distributors..
"It works like this: Reseller A sells the product for your recommended advertised price of $50, then reseller B sells it for $45 to compete with A, and then C sells it for $40 to compete with A and B .
In no time at all, no one is making profit from selling your product
and reorders disappear. Customers are now accustomed to the lower
pricing and the process is irreversible. The product is dead and you
need to create a new product. This is precisely the reason why so
many companies need to create new product after new product
month after month. It's a headache. "
Sound familiar?
It makes me think a site with exclusive content, which can control the price, certainly has a business edge over the other sites. It makes the Stocksy strategy (everything image has to be exclusive) seem very smart.
Thoughts?
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The reason we distribute is that the agencies have a huge divergence in succeeding to attract and hold onto customers.
Attracting customers is about a lot more than just price. And again stocksy is a great example,because they are a new site that is extremly successful and yet coming in at a much higher price point than regular micro agencies.
For contributors however, it is very difficult to predict which agency will be the most successful at growing market share. Success in business is often connected to great leadership, having the best and most qualified team of people in addition to excellence in internet/IT technology. Losing top level talent can destroy many companies and internet companies are extremly vulnerable because the customers can be gone with one click.
So if you know for sure which agency will be the most successful, then giving them exclusive files is a great strategy. But if you are not sure which site is going to make it and you want to spread your risk,then working with different agencies is a wise choice.
So I think exclusive files are a great strategy in addition to having a base level portfolio that is spread over several places (and sell from your own site as well...)
ETA: just to clarify - without overall great leadership and ideas i donīt think an agency will succeed just because they have high prices and few files. stocksy success involves a lot more than that and the site is still new,who knows where they will be in five years and what the competition will do.
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It makes sense, in some cases, but in microstock I don't think the proverbial "race to the bottom" is real. In fact, some of us have seen the opposite recently. Instead of the steadily declining pricing that Ferriss talks about we see a fluctuating market, where sometimes new distributors try to compete on lower pricing and some compete on other things, including collection quality, exclusivity, unique imagery, etc.
I recently started up with a company that lets me set my own prices, pays 70%, and generates daily sales (and no, I'm not saying which company, so don't ask). I'm setting all prices at $12-$18 and people still buy my stuff. So how could that be possible if customers are expecting lower and lower prices all the time?
And how could SS justify starting a company like Offset, or Bruce starting Stocksy, if our product is expected to be worth less and less? Exclusivity wouldn't matter if the perceived value of the product is already irreversibly damaged.
The idea is solid, I don't think Ferriss is wrong entirely. But I just don't think it completely applies to our business in the same way as it does others.
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This is going to be unpopular but there are no new products, just variations on the same products. Stocksy et al are probably good marketing initiatives but, like apple vs pc, they are not offering anything inherently better, just that perception.
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Tons of things, some very subjective and some less so. I'm not talking about individual images, I'm talking about product offerings and, with 10s of millions of images, there is nothing that unique or special and the only things that differentiate the agencies are price and perception. Using the example of Apple, there is a perception of quality but there are very few serious companies that have one of those on every desk.
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Tons of things, some very subjective and some less so. I'm not talking about individual images, I'm talking about product offerings and, with 10s of millions of images, there is nothing that unique or special and the only things that differentiate the agencies are price and perception. Using the example of Apple, there is a perception of quality but there are very few serious companies that have one of those on every desk.
In the case of Apple, perception matches reality. Their products *are* high quality. Almost all ad agencies and advertising production companies run on macs. I believe Apple is the world's most valuable brand right now...bigger than coca-cola.
I think there are two markets for stock art. One is small companies and bloggers, who don't really care if an image is exclusive as long as it looks good and is inexpensive. But large corporations and ad agencies are interested in exclusive images (and buyouts) because they're willing to pay more to stand out from their competition.
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I recently started up with a company that lets me set my own prices, pays 70%, and generates daily sales (and no, I'm not saying which company, so don't ask). I'm setting all prices at $12-$18 and people still buy my stuff. So how could that be possible if customers are expecting lower and lower prices all the time?
Creative Market (www.creativemarket.com (http://www.creativemarket.com)) feels very different from most stock site and sells itself as an online market-place where sellers open a little shop. Much more like Etsy really. Everything there (fonts, themes, vectors, renders etc) has a sort of handmade feel about it. It feels much more like a bunch of boutiques which is why I think higher pricing probably works there. I do not think that style of market place would suit stock photography.
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I haven't read 4HWW but I did buy Ferris's 'The 4-Hour Body' and, from reading it, I'd take anything he has to say with a large pinch of salt. Ferris is very good at self-marketing and making good money in supposedly providing simple solutions to all of life's problems. Unfortunately the real world is actually much more complex than he would have us believe and therefore his basic ideas often don't actually work.
This issue is a good illustration of how Ferris's theory breaks down when examined. We (i.e. microstock contributors) may consider the 'product' being sold by our distributors to be the content we create. SS however wouldn't agree. SS believe that what they are really selling is a service and it is their skill on handling data that allows them to provide a better service than anyone else.
Once again here's Oringer's blog explaining his thoughts on the issue;
http://jonoringer.com/2013/01/13/why-going-exclusive-as-a-microstock-photographer-doesnt-work/ (http://jonoringer.com/2013/01/13/why-going-exclusive-as-a-microstock-photographer-doesnt-work/)
Let's say I had a real tangible product to sell __ a really good homemade jam for example. Here in the UK we have the 'Big 4' supermarkets (a bit like we have the Big 4 agencies). Now I could do an exclusive deal with just one of those supermarkets. They would then be able to sell it at the optimum price and both they and I would achieve good margins for the product. However, if I sold my jam on a non-exclusive basis to all the supermarkets, then it might sell in 4x the volume. Price competition might mean that I made less margin on each sale however the greater volume might mean I made far more money.
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If that image is only available on one site doesn't that make the site and image 'inherently better'?
Not at all. I've taken thousands of awful photos in my lifetime. If I offered them exclusively on my own site, they'd still suck.
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This is going to be unpopular but there are no new products, just variations on the same products. Stocksy et al are probably good marketing initiatives but, like apple vs pc, they are not offering anything inherently better, just that perception.
Also, don't just look at "the product", or the image. Also look at "the experience" - everything that makes up the buying process.
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I haven't read 4HWW but I did buy Ferris's 'The 4-Hour Body' and, from reading it, I'd take anything he has to say with a large pinch of salt. Ferris is very good at self-marketing and making good money in supposedly providing simple solutions to all of life's problems. Unfortunately the real world is actually much more complex than he would have us believe and therefore his basic ideas often don't actually work.
This issue is a good illustration of how Ferris's theory breaks down when examined. We (i.e. microstock contributors) may consider the 'product' being sold by our distributors to be the content we create. SS however wouldn't agree. SS believe that what they are really selling is a service and it is their skill on handling data that allows them to provide a better service than anyone else.
Once again here's Oringer's blog explaining his thoughts on the issue;
[url]http://jonoringer.com/2013/01/13/why-going-exclusive-as-a-microstock-photographer-doesnt-work/[/url] ([url]http://jonoringer.com/2013/01/13/why-going-exclusive-as-a-microstock-photographer-doesnt-work/[/url])
Let's say I had a real tangible product to sell __ a really good homemade jam for example. Here in the UK we have the 'Big 4' supermarkets (a bit like we have the Big 4 agencies). Now I could do an exclusive deal with just one of those supermarkets. They would then be able to sell it at the optimum price and both they and I would achieve good margins for the product. However, if I sold my jam on a non-exclusive basis to all the supermarkets, then it might sell in 4x the volume. Price competition might mean that I made less margin on each sale however the greater volume might mean I made far more money.
The 4-hour workday reminds me of those pyramid schemes where someone trying to convince you to sign up tells you they're "retired." Um, no, you're not retired, you've just switched to working for a pyramid scheme company and spend all your work time trying to convince people to sign up. I'll bet Ferris works more than full time writing, making appearances, blogging, etc.etc.etc.
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The premiss fails because of its assumption that the customer moves effortlessly between outlets. That's not the real world. There's other stuff, too, but I can't be bothered
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Thanks for all the thoughts everyone. I remember Jon's post that Gostwyck linked to (http://jonoringer.com/2013/01/13/why-going-exclusive-as-a-microstock-photographer-doesnt-work/) and it is a great little read with lots of great points. That goes quite strongly with what Lee said in his latest post (http://www.microstockdiaries.com/visual-search-and-microstock.html) regarding how it's not longer really a competition on pricing but on the experience or services.. ie. how good the search works.
I do think that for some people the price does play a slight roll but from most people it probably doesn't.
I think colbalt made a good point (http://www.microstockgroup.com/21129/21129/msg350875/#msg350875) that it is wise to do a bit of both (another reason why istock exclusivity is a bad idea). Have some (or lots) exclusive images on a site you believe in (if it's advantageous) and spread a firm base of other images over several other sites.
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I think the sites should be competing more on the "experience" - mainly a search that returns what buyers are looking for as well as not having annoying sized credit packs and seemingly random different priced collections and so on. They should hire some people to start with the most common search terms and hammer the files that show up in it that are spam (possibly the entire ports - that will get spammer's attention) and maybe move down the images that aren't spam but don't belong there. Clean up the first 10 pages or so of the top 1000 search terms and the big buyers could be a lot happier. Of course when they hide my top selling images I'll be bummed.
Unfortunately the sites that appear to be trying to compete most on price, the Getty PP and Bigstock are linked to some of the most lucrative sites so it is hard to starve them of images.
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I think the sites should be competing more on the "experience" - mainly a search that returns what buyers are looking for as well as not having annoying sized credit packs and seemingly random different priced collections and so on. They should hire some people to start with the most common search terms and hammer the files that show up in it that are spam (possibly the entire ports - that will get spammer's attention) and maybe move down the images that aren't spam but don't belong there. Clean up the first 10 pages or so of the top 1000 search terms and the big buyers could be a lot happier. Of course when they hide my top selling images I'll be bummed.
Unfortunately the sites that appear to be trying to compete most on price, the Getty PP and Bigstock are linked to some of the most lucrative sites so it is hard to starve them of images.
Good point!! I'd go as far as to say that accurate keywording is probably more important than the images themselves at this stage - I get irritated looking at the spam and I'm not even a buyer.
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I'd go as far as to say that accurate keywording is probably more important than the images themselves at this stage - I get irritated looking at the spam and I'm not even a buyer.
Couldn't agree more, but the way sites are set up, spam can clog searches, giving a bad impression (sites may boost certain contributors, whose keywording is 'less than optimal', at least outwith their specialty) or the actual way the search engine on some sites work may map or combine words to make false search, not necessarily the fault of the contributor (many sites have any random whales or whale sharks in blue water, on a search for blue whale, or the much-loved site which seems to map 'Highlands' to Scotland, so random mountains show up in a search for Scotland).
It would be nice to have a site that you weren't embarrassed to show someone else the search results (content relevancy, not photo quality).
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"It works like this: Reseller A sells the product for your recommended advertised price of $50, then reseller B sells it for $45 to compete with A, and then C sells it for $40 to compete with A and B .
Even harder to compete if reseller D shares the image for free on social websites. Not surprised sales are so low.
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......talking about why not to sell product through many distributors..
"It works like this: Reseller A sells the product for your recommended advertised price of $50, then reseller B sells it for $45 to compete with A, and then C sells it for $40 to compete with A and B .
In no time at all, no one is making profit from selling your product
and reorders disappear.
........
Thoughts?
I don't think that model really describes the stock photo market - images now are a commodity, not a particular product like an ipad or a food processor - few distinct items.
the individual photographer isn't affected as much by the price at different sites, as they are by the millions of other images competing for views at all sites; there's some difference beteen sites with subs and those without, but when a buyer is looking for an image, they're not likely to shop around for the best price on an particular image,when they can find a dozen others that do just as well for teir needs
in the 80s ibm & apple found themselves in a similar position - they thought they had unique products, and apple in particular went the exclusive route. instead pc clones brushed them both out of the market when pcs became commodities - apple made a comeback when jons switched to different products like the ipod, ipad & iphone, but those too are increasingly under pressure from lower priced equivalents.
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Relevance of search results is a big opportunity for new agencies. Search results are lousy at the current agencies because they pushed all the keywording onto the contributors. An agency might have 20 million photos but doesn't know what's actually "in" any of them in terms of subject or quality.
To offer significantly better search they'd need to have reviewers tag each photo with a field describing the actual subject (i.e. this is a photo of an apple, not a picture of an Apple store) and some sort of subjective quality number. And yes that would have cost money.
Instead they crowdsourced not just the production of the photos, but the keywording too, and tried to substitute popularity-based ranking for subjective quality assessments by knowledgable people.
Imagine going into a huge hardware store and seeing millions of products randomly assorted and stacked on shelves. The employees don't know anything about hardware or what products they actually have. Instead you describe your need to them and they come back with carts full of items that were bought by other people who'd used some similar words in the past...
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Leaf....I like the thoughts in your initial post. The problem is, with relation to stock, even if we submit on an exclusive basis to ONE agency (and mark said images as exclusive to that agency), that agency will then turn around and market those images through 50+ other agencies through partnership agreements.
There is an agency not listed here on the poll results who's owner has mentioned that the agency cannot survive without also distributing through other agencies (including Getty and Corbis) and would like to push for exclusive submissions. What's the point of submitting on an exclusive basis if the that "exclusive" agent is going to submit your images non-exclusively to other agencies?
It contradicts the business model in "The 4-Hour Work Week"
I have not been paying attention to Stocksy....I don't know if they sub-distribute to other agencies....if they don't, they are one of the very few agencies out there that don't.
The issue in our case is that the market is so flooded that even the supplier cannot control it's own distribution outlets. Heck, even Alamy is licensing images for re-distribution as is mentioned by this contributor in this thread => http://discussion.alamy.com/index.php?/topic/1283-i-do-not-like-this-one-sorry-not-ctr/ (http://discussion.alamy.com/index.php?/topic/1283-i-do-not-like-this-one-sorry-not-ctr/)
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Not at all more profit. Your cost of goods and proiduction go way up. Your cost of distribution goes up. Your unit profit and value go way down. You may turn more dollars but you Do Not make far more money. In many cases companies that expand just like you have described, lose money and some go out of business.
Vlasic's gallon jar of pickles went into every Wal-Mart, some 3,000 stores, at $2.97, a price so low that Vlasic and Wal-Mart were making only a penny or two on a jar, if that. It was showcased on big pallets near the front of stores. It was an abundance of abundance. "It was selling 80 jars a week, on average, in every store," says Young. Doesn't sound like much, until you do the math: That's 240,000 gallons of pickles, just in gallon jars, just at Wal-Mart, every week. Whole fields of cucumbers were heading out the door.
For Vlasic, the gallon jar of pickles became what might be called a devastating success. "Quickly, it started cannibalizing our non-Wal-Mart business," says Young. "We saw consumers who used to buy the spears and the chips in supermarkets buying the Wal-Mart gallons. They'd eat a quarter of a jar and throw the thing away when they got moldy. A family can't eat them fast enough."
The gallon jar reshaped Vlasic's pickle business: It chewed up the profit margin of the business with Wal-Mart, and of pickles generally. Procurement had to scramble to find enough pickles to fill the gallons, but the volume gave Vlasic strong sales numbers, strong growth numbers, and a powerful place in the world of pickles at Wal-Mart. Which accounted for 30% of Vlasic's business. But the company's profits from pickles had shriveled 25% or more, Young says--millions of dollars.
The gallon was hoisting Vlasic and hurting it at the same time.
Young remembers begging Wal-Mart for relief. "They said, 'No way,' " says Young. "We said we'll increase the price"--even $3.49 would have helped tremendously--"and they said, 'If you do that, all the other products of yours we buy, we'll stop buying.' It was a clear threat." Hunn recalls things a little differently, if just as ominously: "They said, 'We want the $2.97 gallon of pickles. If you don't do it, we'll see if someone else might.' I knew our competitors were saying to Wal-Mart, 'We'll do the $2.97 gallons if you give us your other business.' " Wal-Mart's business was so indispensable to Vlasic, and the gallon so central to the Wal-Mart relationship, that decisions about the future of the gallon were made at the CEO level.
Finally, Wal-Mart let Vlasic up for air. "The Wal-Mart guy's response was classic," Young recalls. "He said, 'Well, we've done to pickles what we did to orange juice. We've killed it. We can back off.' " Vlasic got to take it down to just over half a gallon of pickles, for $2.79. Not long after that, in January 2001, Vlasic filed for bankruptcy.
The myth that selling at all the agencies and diluting the market, competing with oneself... which is supporting and feeding, the race to the bottom, which is very real. (why do people complain day after day, about dropping prices, commissions and sales, if things are just fine?)
I'm a distributor. One of the companies that would take anyone who wanted to sell their tools, for a $50 stocking order. And then these people would go in and sell for less and less, until the markup was theoretical and the real price was cents above cost.
Came out last year with a distributor agreement that said "I agree NOT discount more than 15% or I will lose my right to sell "XYZ" tools." Do you think they did that, because it was good business, having people sell based on discounting and devaluation of the apparent quality of the tools?
Same for your stock photos. Sell for less and less and make less commission and the apparent value, will be lower and lower.
Stop supporting the parasitic price cutting sites that do nothing for us and just take advantage of artists. It's like being an abused spouse/partner who won't leave a dangerous relationship. Break free of abusive agencies! The money you fear losing will come back in higher earnings from the friendly and nurturing agencies.
Let's say I had a real tangible product to sell __ a really good homemade jam for example. Here in the UK we have the 'Big 4' supermarkets (a bit like we have the Big 4 agencies). Now I could do an exclusive deal with just one of those supermarkets. They would then be able to sell it at the optimum price and both they and I would achieve good margins for the product. However, if I sold my jam on a non-exclusive basis to all the supermarkets, then it might sell in 4x the volume. Price competition might mean that I made less margin on each sale however the greater volume might mean I made far more money.
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Thank you bhr ;)
My Very Best :)
KimsCreativeHub.com
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The myth that selling at all the agencies and diluting the market, competing with oneself... which is supporting and feeding, the race to the bottom, which is very real. (why do people complain day after day, about dropping prices, commissions and sales, if things are just fine?)
I'm not picking on you, but I've always hated the whole "race to the bottom" talk. While it is true that some prices have lowered, others have raised significantly. I also think the slogan ignores other questions about contributor competition and volume of sales. I know I don't do the same volume in many agencies anymore. Also, a lot of my dissatisfaction has to to do more with my own changes in expectations than anything that happened within the industry. Sorry about my little rant.
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I haven't read 4HWW but I did buy Ferris's 'The 4-Hour Body' and, from reading it, I'd take anything he has to say with a large pinch of salt. Ferris is very good at self-marketing and making good money in supposedly providing simple solutions to all of life's problems. Unfortunately the real world is actually much more complex than he would have us believe and therefore his basic ideas often don't actually work.
This issue is a good illustration of how Ferris's theory breaks down when examined. We (i.e. microstock contributors) may consider the 'product' being sold by our distributors to be the content we create. SS however wouldn't agree. SS believe that what they are really selling is a service and it is their skill on handling data that allows them to provide a better service than anyone else.
Once again here's Oringer's blog explaining his thoughts on the issue;
[url]http://jonoringer.com/2013/01/13/why-going-exclusive-as-a-microstock-photographer-doesnt-work/[/url] ([url]http://jonoringer.com/2013/01/13/why-going-exclusive-as-a-microstock-photographer-doesnt-work/[/url])
Let's say I had a real tangible product to sell __ a really good homemade jam for example. Here in the UK we have the 'Big 4' supermarkets (a bit like we have the Big 4 agencies). Now I could do an exclusive deal with just one of those supermarkets. They would then be able to sell it at the optimum price and both they and I would achieve good margins for the product. However, if I sold my jam on a non-exclusive basis to all the supermarkets, then it might sell in 4x the volume. Price competition might mean that I made less margin on each sale however the greater volume might mean I made far more money.
If life was all about cost and volume then I would drink Watney's instead of Fuller's or Young's. Where do we draw the line? Are we all greedy pigs or does exclusivity offer hope?
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I think the bigger problem is the sites appear to be greedy pigs and the race to the bottom is more of a race to the lowest percentage paid to the artists.
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Leaf....I like the thoughts in your initial post. The problem is, with relation to stock, even if we submit on an exclusive basis to ONE agency (and mark said images as exclusive to that agency), that agency will then turn around and market those images through 50+ other agencies through partnership agreements.
There is an agency not listed here on the poll results who's owner has mentioned that the agency cannot survive without also distributing through other agencies (including Getty and Corbis) and would like to push for exclusive submissions. What's the point of submitting on an exclusive basis if the that "exclusive" agent is going to submit your images non-exclusively to other agencies?
It contradicts the business model in "The 4-Hour Work Week"
I have not been paying attention to Stocksy....I don't know if they sub-distribute to other agencies....if they don't, they are one of the very few agencies out there that don't.
The issue in our case is that the market is so flooded that even the supplier cannot control it's own distribution outlets. Heck, even Alamy is licensing images for re-distribution as is mentioned by this contributor in this thread => [url]http://discussion.alamy.com/index.php?/topic/1283-i-do-not-like-this-one-sorry-not-ctr/[/url] ([url]http://discussion.alamy.com/index.php?/topic/1283-i-do-not-like-this-one-sorry-not-ctr/[/url])
Yes, very good point. I don't see much good in distribution deals at all actually. At least not for the photographer. If I want my images on site X Y and Z I can put them there myself and collect the entire royalty. I don't need a site to send them there for me and take half the income. I'm almost certain some images go around in circles and get distributed 3 (or more) times so essentially nothing is left for the photographer. It also seems in our best interest to have less competing sites instead of more. It isn't good with a monopoly either, but 5-6 sites should be enough. If there was only that many sites we could pick and choose which site to upload to. When distribution happens, 50-100 sites can have a lot of images (the same images) and the ones who can't compete with clever UI and search end up competing on price. Price goes down, and the photographers royalties (through distribution deals) gets very very small.
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Ferris keeps bringing out new product and he distributes it through just about every retailer on the planet so clearly pays no attention to his own advice.
There are a lot of these guys out there making a lot of money from common sense and their blather is mostly distilled from older sources - including their Grandma.
Read Plato, Aristotle et al and this stuff (much like stock photography) has been done before and will be done again.
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This is going to be unpopular but there are no new products, just variations on the same products. Stocksy et al are probably good marketing initiatives but, like apple vs pc, they are not offering anything inherently better, just that perception.
Lots of new products just not being shot yet.
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PICK ALL YOU WANT, WE RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE. ;D
I didn't mention the proliferation of partners where many have lost any control over rights and distribution of their own images. That element is really scary! Most people don't know if these "partners" report back, or how to see what commission they pay, if at all. Or who they are? And the agencies aren't very forthcoming about who the partners are and what the terms are, under which they sell and license OUR WORK!
No I don't like competing with myself. The whole basic premise when Micro started was valid. Supply 25 agencies and make more sales on volume, maybe find buyers who don't go to the other sites. But at this point, the top six or so (pick a number that's comfortable. my number is TWO) have pretty well satisfied the market demands for search, supply and quality.
The rest after the six (or seven or ten or...) are parasites, or wannabees. IMHO. If they offer nothing but the same images at the same or lower prices, what service do they provide to the customers that the top sites don't? How do they benefit us, by cutting into the business? They have the same images, from the same active people, who are counting on distribution variety for more income. What's the only difference? Price.
Now if one of these came up with a better search, and policed keywords and gave good accurate results. That would be something. CV on iStock attempted to do that. Not sure it worked, because it's F'ed up sometimes that it doesn't work. :)
I'm enjoying my limited distribution and I'm not dependent on the income, which gives me a little leeway and freedom. I'm sure some people are deeply invested into Microstock, with time, effort, equipment and have in effect become trapped. It becomes a belief system as well, that makes for some interesting defensive positions.
One day complaining about income, agencies and returns, the next if challenged as to the real profitability and business aspects, will take a hard line, in defense of the Microstock potential and returns.
(http://s5.postimg.org/kfbc5rwbn/manhamp.gif) Right it's not a race to the bottom?
Some people do make good money and have worked very hard to get to the top. Some people make money on Amway and other MLMs. Most people don't. Here we are in the forum, trying to find the secrets, including all the mythology of the searches, tricks to game the system, how to get better views and rank.
Really?
It's not just about producing a creative, unique, product, that meets the needs of buyers? Is that too easy? :-*
The myth that selling at all the agencies and diluting the market, competing with oneself... which is supporting and feeding, the race to the bottom, which is very real. (why do people complain day after day, about dropping prices, commissions and sales, if things are just fine?)
I'm not picking on you, but I've always hated the whole "race to the bottom" talk. While it is true that some prices have lowered, others have raised significantly. I also think the slogan ignores other questions about contributor competition and volume of sales. I know I don't do the same volume in many agencies anymore. Also, a lot of my dissatisfaction has to to do more with my own changes in expectations than anything that happened within the industry. Sorry about my little rant.
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"It works like this: Reseller A sells the product for your recommended advertised price of $50, then reseller B sells it for $45 to compete with A, and then C sells it for $40 to compete with A and B .
Thoughts?
Once buyers find out they can get the same image from say site F why would they pay more for the same image from site A so rather then exclusivity just submit to site A only and then they have no choice but to get it from site A or look for a similar one from someone else on site F.
This in turn still gives you freedom from exclusivity.
Another older link.
http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1828&highlight=exclusivity#1828 (http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1828&highlight=exclusivity#1828)
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I guess I would like to know what you all think of the "time" factor. Is spreading out your work worth the time or is being exclusive and having more time to shoot instead of load and keyword a better road.
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I guess I would like to know what you all think of the "time" factor. Is spreading out your work worth the time or is being exclusive and having more time to shoot instead of load and keyword a better road.
a subject that was talked many times here, that said I am sure it is worth my time being indie, I would make much less being exclusive at iStock (thought number 1)
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Depends on which sites you submit to. If you only submit to sites that StockSubmitter supports auto-submit for, the time factor is negligible. You could submit to Dreamstime, Shutterstock, Depositphotos, Fotolia, Canstock, Alamy, 123RF (hopefully again) with no extra time input.
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I don't believe that there are many customers looking to make purchases from specific contributors. So even if you go exclusive to protect your own pricing, that doesn't stop customers from browsing for similar images at a cheaper outlet.
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Quality is very subjective but, at the end of the day when we are talking about high volume low cost product, it just means fit for purpose. Unique doesn't necessarily equate to commercial either which is why we see endless slight variations on the same old cliches over and over - it's what sells.
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True and I wouldn't suggest that Exclusive is for everyone or for most people. Just that shotgun, price cutting and market dilution, isn't the only answer either.
Everyone needs to evaluate what they create and how they want to manage their property. Also at what point are they finding diminishing returns on their investment and time. At what point is someone going to say, I value my work higher than making $20 a month on Site X or those below that.
I personally don't like the mystery partners at all.
Depends on which sites you submit to. If you only submit to sites that StockSubmitter supports auto-submit for, the time factor is negligible. You could submit to Dreamstime, Shutterstock, Depositphotos, Fotolia, Canstock, Alamy, 123RF (hopefully again) with no extra time input.
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Now if one of these came up with a better search, and policed keywords and gave good accurate results. That would be something. CV on iStock attempted to do that. Not sure it worked...
The CV represented recognition of the problem. But IS thought the way to solve it was to just force contributors to do even more work, while at the same time paying them less and less.
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Let's say I had a real tangible product to sell __ a really good homemade jam for example. Here in the UK we have the 'Big 4' supermarkets (a bit like we have the Big 4 agencies). Now I could do an exclusive deal with just one of those supermarkets. They would then be able to sell it at the optimum price and both they and I would achieve good margins for the product. However, if I sold my jam on a non-exclusive basis to all the supermarkets, then it might sell in 4x the volume. Price competition might mean that I made less margin on each sale however the greater volume might mean I made far more money.
Good analogy. However, not only would you get a lower price for each jar, but the total volume would add up to less than 4 times one-store-sales, since some shoppers are checking prices in multiple stores. And typically, they would buy the item in the store with the lowest price.
Some jam-makers are starting to sell their products at little exclusive stands and boutiques with a strawberry logo now where they keep all the sales profits.
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I don't believe that there are many customers looking to make purchases from specific contributors. So even if you go exclusive to protect your own pricing, that doesn't stop customers from browsing for similar images at a cheaper outlet.
This isn't an argument against exclusivity, it's an argument against producing images that already exist. Exclusive or not, everyone has to make images that are higher quality and/or unique in order to continue to make a living at this.
If you have something unique, don't submit it to iS at the moment. It won't be in the CV, non-CV words (certainly non-CV keyword phrases) don't stick through a database update and are therefore unsearchable (since the weekend, at least), so your unique images will never be seen.
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I have to wonder why you complain about keyword issues on this forum when you could have them fixed by dealing with istock, in what way is it better to complain rather than get things fixed?
I do send the same reports to CR.
I never hear back from them, or see evidence that they are passed on, or if they are, that anything is done about them.
I have said this several times on msg.
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You know CR isn't the correct place to send keywording issues to.
And you know I have no access to the 'correct place'. Anyway, look how often admin tell people to report concerns to CR. Once when I could access the forums, I asked a question and was told to take it to CR; when I did, I got the hit-button from CR to seek a solution in the forums - "a wonderful resource".
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You know CR isn't the correct place to send keywording issues to.
And you know I have no access to the 'correct place'. Anyway, look how often admin tell people to report concerns to CR. Once when I could access the forums, I asked a question and was told to take it to CR; when I did, I got the hit-button from CR to seek a solution in the forums - "a wonderful resource".
I've had no issues getting keywords added to the CV and have never been told to go through CR. Most of the issues you have affect very few contributors, some issues seem to be just yours (specific bird species), I can't understand why you wouldn't want to get those fixed even if it means asking to have your forum privileges reinstated? You keep saying you don't care but then you post all these issues you are having here, obviously you care and you could get them fixed but you've chosen not to.
When I had my SM privileges revoked, I was given a specific email address to contact for more details. I actually did that at the time (because that was my way of contacting Team Keywords), and received no reply of any sort, not even 'tough'.
But hey - things change. Just as I hit send for this, by coincidence I noticed an email had come in, an it's a pleasant reply from CR:
"Thanks for bringing this to our attention. It does not seem like the issue has been reported previously so I suspect it's relatively new. We've submitted a ticket to our development team.
I apologize for the inconvenience. "
I believe firmly it's a new bug, and think it only appeared Friday or Saturday.
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You know CR isn't the correct place to send keywording issues to.
And you know I have no access to the 'correct place'. Anyway, look how often admin tell people to report concerns to CR. Once when I could access the forums, I asked a question and was told to take it to CR; when I did, I got the hit-button from CR to seek a solution in the forums - "a wonderful resource".
I've had no issues getting keywords added to the CV and have never been told to go through CR. Most of the issues you have affect very few contributors, some issues seem to be just yours (specific bird species), I can't understand why you wouldn't want to get those fixed even if it means asking to have your forum privileges reinstated? You keep saying you don't care but then you post all these issues you are having here, obviously you care and you could get them fixed but you've chosen not to.
When I had my SM privileges revoked, I was given a specific email address to contact for more details. I actually did that at the time (because that was my way of contacting Team Keywords), and received no reply of any sort, not even 'tough'.
But hey - things change. Just as I hit send for this, by coincidence I noticed an email had come in, an it's a pleasant reply from CR:
"Thanks for bringing this to our attention. It does not seem like the issue has been reported previously so I suspect it's relatively new. We've submitted a ticket to our development team.
I apologize for the inconvenience. "
I believe firmly it's a new bug, and think it only appeared Friday or Saturday.
How interesting. Perhaps a direct result of this conversation?
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I've had no issues getting keywords added to the CV
But it's simply pointless. To work, the CV has to have every placename on the planet in it, it needs the scientific name of every species that has ever existed in it - otherwise, it is less efficient than simply letting people put their own keywords in. As a random example, google "plageostoma giganteum" and you immediately get text and images dealing with that particular fossil. The CV could never do what Google does because it is designed for the commonplace and nothing else.
Now they add words to it more or less at random, as people point out that they've got a picture from/of somewhere/something. That leads, for example, to minor placenames popping up as the sole option, when there is another (or many other) more important places with the same name. Take "Agia Triada", for example, which is a common place-name in Greece (Holy Trinity) - the CV offers one monastery of that name, but what about the Minoan palace at a completely different Ag Triada, which is of far more interest than the monastery?
Better still, take Agios Nikolaos. I pointed out to them that as well as the Ag Nik in the CV, there was another one on Crete. They took up my suggestion so enthusiastically that they deleted the other one and only leave the Cretan, Lasithi, version - which is not much use if you are shooting one of the scores of other Ag Niks scattered around Greece and Cyprus.
The CV is OK for translating a few thousand of the most common words into other languages, but it forces people to spam "Agia Triada" monastery, when they mean Ag Triada Minoan site, so it is no use at all for people who want to provide accurate keywords, it corrupts them.
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I have always maintained that they need to have the CV as well as a "not one of these" options. So if you put in Mt Helen and don't mean Mt St Helens or whatever their CV wants to map it to, you can still include it. Also when someone searches, they can click on "not one of these options". But they didn't do it that way, and in fact the way their search worked last time I tried to use it it actually encourages spamming since otherwise your images don't get seen even if someone tries to search for exactly what is in your image.
The CV is an attempt to solve a real problem, but like so many things at IS, its implementation is pretty poor.
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I think the bigger problem is the sites appear to be greedy pigs and the race to the bottom is more of a race to the lowest percentage paid to the artists.
This is just as non-existant as the pricing "race to the bottom". Who is cutting percentages recently? istock? They actually raised the percentage for vector artists, and I'm hopeful they'll follow suit for photographers eventually.
Meanwhile there are new sites popping up offering higher percentages than most of the old microstock standards offer.
And Shutterstock, the place where most of us make most of our money, while not giving us a pay raise in a long time also haven't cut rates or prices.
So where is this stuff coming from?
"Race to the bottom" is nothing more than a scare tactic, drumming up unfounded fear that the industry is participating in a collective effort to pay artists less and less every day. Do some companies try to do this? Sure. But overall, at many new companies and also at the biggest company in the business, it's not just happening.
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Shutterstock hasn't cut rates or prices? They did introduce the RC system (a very unrealistic one) at BS and they are paying less too...
True, but as far as we can tell, SS isn't actively trying to divert customers to Bigstock. I'm sure they're not upset if it happens organically, but currently SS is actually promoting Offset to existing customers, not BS. So in the context of a discussion about the "race to the bottom" theory, SS is actually pushing far harder upwards than down.
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I did that search and:
In the orange 'related ads' box at the top, it was DP, SS then DT.
In the right hand Ads column, it was Ft, iS, 123RF, Getty and StockLayouts.
First of the non-ad hits was SS, PhotoXrpress, Getty, ingimage.
I believe Google searches are geographically ordered, though it hardly makes a difference in this case.
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And Shutterstock, the place where most of us make most of our money, while not giving us a pay raise in a long time also haven't cut rates or prices.
Stay tuned.
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And Shutterstock, the place where most of us make most of our money, while not giving us a pay raise in a long time also haven't cut rates or prices.
which iStock did back in 2010
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ETA: I tried the search for 'subscription stock photos' again in a different browser that had the history cleared and BS was first on Google ads there too, surprisingly SS wasn't even on the list.
DT on ads and then SS, photoxpress, getty, thinstock
where is BigStock? number 41!
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I can see 1 below the search and 5 at the right
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8294845/stock%20subs.JPG)
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yep
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Your example doesn't make it seem simply pointless at all. On other sites when you type in "agia triada" you also get all the other 'spam' results, plus you get it with all other words.
You're completely missing the point (deliberately?). On other sites you get Agia Triada (Minoan) results, on iStock, you get no results unless someone has deliberately spammed because iS DOES NOT ALLOW the Minoan Agia Triada site.
That is the proof that the CV is broken and always has been. That flaw could easily have been corrected (see pancake tom's explanation), but they don't want to/can't be bothered to correct it.
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I am talking about the non-paid regular search position
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I just did a google search for "subscription stock photos", guess which site came up first in the google ads? I'll give you a hint it wasn't Shutterstock...
Well, it was for me. But those searches are heavily influenced by our personal browsing/searching history and patterns, so it means nothing really.
Not sure what this has to do with SS pricing and royalty rates, either.
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Your example doesn't make it seem simply pointless at all. On other sites when you type in "agia triada" you also get all the other 'spam' results, plus you get it with all other words.
You're completely missing the point (deliberately?). On other sites you get Agia Triada (Minoan) results, on iStock, you get no results unless someone has deliberately spammed because iS DOES NOT ALLOW the Minoan Agia Triada site.
That is the proof that the CV is broken and always has been. That flaw could easily have been corrected (see pancake tom's explanation), but they don't want to/can't be bothered to correct it.
One thing I found with the almost-inevitably helpful and always pleasant Team Keywords was that they were reluctant to add things if they thought there was only likely to be a few photos of that keyword, which was fair enough if there wasn't a different DA (e.g. place names), IF a buyer knows to try quotes if they don't get a result first time.
I think Google search (images) is usually pretty awful, all sorts of random images thrown in because the words might be nearby a totally unrelated picture.
But the CV does allow my over-used example Blue Whale to be a cleaner search on iS than the other micros/mids, because apart from some cocktails apparently called 'Blue Whale' and some misIDs / spam, the search doesn't throw up any random whale or whale shark in blue water or with a blue sky above, like most sites do (misID/spam is as bad on all the other micros/mid-stock sites I've looked at). Don't focus on the example, it's a problem with the method; that's just the example I use.
Neither method is perfect.
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Your example doesn't make it seem simply pointless at all. On other sites when you type in "agia triada" you also get all the other 'spam' results, plus you get it with all other words.
You're completely missing the point (deliberately?). On other sites you get Agia Triada (Minoan) results, on iStock, you get no results unless someone has deliberately spammed because iS DOES NOT ALLOW the Minoan Agia Triada site.
I understand what you're saying. The example is pretty obscure though even wikipedia barely has much information on it and calls it "Hagia Triada". A search on both Shutterstock and iStock shows maybe 10 images (maybe just 2 on iStock). You can type in 'agia triada' into the search without choosing a disambiguation and you can enter it into your keywords without selecting a specific meaning also. If you think about it when you type "agia triada" into a Shutterstock search you have in effect selected all of the meanings (ones you didn't want, the same when you enter it into keywords), I don't think it's too big a deal for some very obscure terms to have this problem. It can also be fixed if there is a real problem. This is where contributors and the site can work together to make it better or people can just whine and complain, I know what I chose to do.
Complain about SS?
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I have always maintained that they need to have the CV as well as a "not one of these" options. So if you put in Mt Helen and don't mean Mt St Helens or whatever their CV wants to map it to, you can still include it. Also when someone searches, they can click on "not one of these options". But they didn't do it that way, and in fact the way their search worked last time I tried to use it it actually encourages spamming since otherwise your images don't get seen even if someone tries to search for exactly what is in your image.
The CV is an attempt to solve a real problem, but like so many things at IS, its implementation is pretty poor.
It's a complex technical solution that just doesn't work very well - what does / did work was the better policing but that is pretty labour intensive. Too many keywords allowed is an invitation to spam and people accept that invitation.
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Subscription Stock Photos - metacrawler
http://www.metacrawler.com/search/web?fcoid=417&fcop=topnav&fpid=2&q=subscription+stock+photos&ql= (http://www.metacrawler.com/search/web?fcoid=417&fcop=topnav&fpid=2&q=subscription+stock+photos&ql=)
Bigstock is the last one on page one, which is #20. The rest are the usual suspects and a couple of the spam sites that pop up in searches for everything.
1-2-3 SS-DT-FT-spam info dot com - site info -PX-123--getty-is-ts-is-ss-cs-super-ss-dt-dt-investment- and finally BS.
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My results for that Google search...
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(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8294845/search.JPG)