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Author Topic: Is it a good thing if Shutterstock stays #1?  (Read 24761 times)

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RacePhoto

« Reply #75 on: December 19, 2011, 03:11 »
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Did someone say RPD is a sucker statistic? Finally I get some people to agree with what I pointed out at least three years ago?


Weren't you batting on about RPI    :)

No doubt you are right, probably both. (and maybe some others like sales graphs every month) For someone who likes math and statistics, it's kind of strange.

Both or either are fine for personal measurements but for sharing data, they fall short, because different collections, on different sites, for different times, it's unrelated. That and as I'm sure you've seen people point out, if I want a higher RPI, I just delete the images that don't sell and never have. People do cuill images, so do sites,. it's not all stupid debate. So I remove 20% of my images, just the ones that don't sell and wow, my RPI Stats. go way up.

RPD can also be flawed. How many sales is more important. I'd be happy with that one download for $10,000 theory though.  8)

So bottom line is the bottom line, not percentages, not RPD, not RPI. Funny how few people report income, but how pretty much everyone will share RP? numbers or percentages.


« Reply #76 on: December 19, 2011, 03:29 »
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I'm in the gold level on Istockphoto (probably not after this month) and I make about $0.42 to something like $7.8 an image sale, but more like at least $3.5 a sale on average.  Shutterstock only pays like $0.25 to $0.38 a sale.  I know that the on-demand images pay more, but I don't know if they are anywhere as popular as the subscription sales.  It would take more than 10 times the sales that I have on Istockphoto for Shutterstock to match my exclusive Istockphoto sales, and I doubt even half of that is possible.  Is selling full size images for even $0.38 a sale a good thing?  I know there are other websites like Dreamstime that pay more (and especially in royalty rates) but for the photography I do, it doesn't look like Dreamstime has anywhere the level of sales volume compared to IS or SS.



I had the same thoughts when i was exclusive on DT. i had regular $4-5 sales and thought that i must have 10-15 sales to match one exclusive sale.... believe me is not like that. Now from SS i earn more than double that i was making on DT. i will never go exclusive whit one agency ever (  with the exception: if SS launches a exclusivity program).

« Reply #77 on: December 19, 2011, 03:38 »
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I hope someone will come up with a way to search and pay for images that we host on our own sites.  Then we can all have our own sites but buyers will only have to register and pay from one site.  I'm surprised that all these people starting new sites haven't worked out that we need something different.  Most of the new sites are a big waste of time and money but if someone can come up with a way to reduce the huge fees we pay the current sites and offer buyers a collection of millions of images, they could be on to a winner.  If we don't have to give sites 70 to 85% of our earnings, we could earn more and I'm sure that would motivate us to produce more high quality images.  Just think of all the time we would save complaining about low commissions and the latest shenanigans designed to take money away from us here.


That would be great and I wonder why no company made such an attempt yet. Sure years ago, any company tried to get as much as possible from their business (take as much as possible from us), but now a new agency don't stand a chance against the established big ones and someone trying that could just make it big time. And stock agencies would be a thing of the past (I'd really enjoy watching the fall of the greedy ones), we would be the ones keeping the vast majority of the money, double or even triple our earnings, how great is that? :)


http://www.microstockgroup.com/zymmetrical-com/zymmetrical-is-now-closed/

Zymmetrical closed

I liked Zymmetrical but that was very similar to all the other sites.  We had to upload our portfolio to their site.  I wish they were still around but they proved to me that the current way of selling images isn't going to benefit contributors.  The big sites have got away with low commissions and new sites that offer a better deal aren't able to compete with them.

I think there's another option.  We host our own individual sites, like many people are doing now.  The agent makes a universal search and payment system.  They don't have the expense of hosting the images.  They can charge a small transaction fee.  We have the costs of hosting our portfolio but get nearly all the money from selling images.  It wasn't my idea, it was mentioned here by someone else a few years ago but I though that it might of been a good solution to the problems we have with some of the big sites.  Unfortunately, all the new sites have followed the similar path that Zymmetrical took, not much different to the way istock started selling microstock images a decade ago.  They can make their sites as friendly to contributors as they want but it doesn't work, we need another option.  Perhaps this idea wouldn't work but I'm sure there's a more efficient way for contributors to sell images to buyers, enabling contributors to receive more from each sales transaction and buyers to have a huge collection of images.  Most of the new sites struggle to get a million images, why would buyers use them?

helix7

« Reply #78 on: December 19, 2011, 08:22 »
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Did someone say RPD is a sucker statistic? Finally I get some people to agree with what I pointed out at least three years ago?

Well I probably should have clarified that statement to say that it's a sucker's statistic if it is the primary statistic that anyone is using to decide which agencies to do business with. As a measure of the quality of the contributor agreement, it's a valid and useful statistic, especially as it relates to deciding where to refer buyers.

But as a measure of overall profitability, it's a foolish statistic to use. And I always thought that was common knowledge, but apparently it's not. It seems like RPD is a significant factor in why some people stay exclusive with istock. Or why DT is such a popular site with contributors and even has some of their own exclusive artists. But like I said before, RPD doesn't pay the bills if the sales volume isn't there. If this is just a hobby for someone, then maybe that warm and fuzzy feeling they get from only working with the high RPD agencies is enough for them and the money is secondary. For me, this is my job, and maximizing my income is what matters most.

Everyone (me included) blasted istock when they made that comment about "money isn't what is going to make you happy." But maybe they were right in saying that about some people. Maybe there are a good number of people who are happier with RPD than actual income, and that's why they continue to support istock. It seems like the bottom line doesn't matter for a lot of folks, as long as they feel like they're getting a good deal on each sale.

PaulieWalnuts

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« Reply #79 on: December 19, 2011, 08:35 »
0
Did someone say RPD is a sucker statistic? Finally I get some people to agree with what I pointed out at least three years ago?


Weren't you batting on about RPI    :)

No doubt you are right, probably both. (and maybe some others like sales graphs every month) For someone who likes math and statistics, it's kind of strange.

Both or either are fine for personal measurements but for sharing data, they fall short, because different collections, on different sites, for different times, it's unrelated. That and as I'm sure you've seen people point out, if I want a higher RPI, I just delete the images that don't sell and never have. People do cuill images, so do sites,. it's not all stupid debate. So I remove 20% of my images, just the ones that don't sell and wow, my RPI Stats. go way up.

RPD can also be flawed. How many sales is more important. I'd be happy with that one download for $10,000 theory though.  8)

So bottom line is the bottom line, not percentages, not RPD, not RPI. Funny how few people report income, but how pretty much everyone will share RP? numbers or percentages.

I deleted most of my images and now my RPI is awesome.

People should report income more often to show the fortunes to be made in microstock.  ;)

RacePhoto

« Reply #80 on: December 19, 2011, 22:38 »
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I deleted most of my images and now my RPI is awesome.

People should report income more often to show the fortunes to be made in microstock.  ;)

If I reported income, people would hurt themselves laughing. I'm not going to be responsible for injuries and spitting on monitors.

I don't want to go completely negative on RP?# but what people have pointed out is true.

The reason for IS exclusives is RPD and RPI but also ease and income. They aren't fools. Same for people who stick with DT, if you get 10 times a SS download, even if you get 1/24th of the downloads, it feels pretty good to get $3 instead of a 33c credit? Not hard to understand, that value.

I wanted to just leave the 12 images that sold well on ThinkStock from StockXpert. Then I could report some really hot RPI numbers and make it look impressive. Instead I just closed the account.

Quote from: helix7

Well I probably should have clarified that statement to say that it's a sucker's statistic if it is the primary statistic that anyone is using to decide which agencies to do business with.


Agreed. I'm a bottom line person. No fun, I just count money. If money doesn't make me happy, what it buys will!  :D

Statistics are a good measure After The Fact and since some can be manipulated and people have different numbers, photos, and agencies, they won't necessarily predict anything for anyone else. As both of you pointed out. Not even dollars per image per year, because one EL will throw that number off, for a year.

I couldn't even use income when I was on ten agencies, because they all had different ideas of what was suitable for Micro and what was acceptable. Different size images and if I had 500 on Snap Village and 100 on SS. SS still wiped them off the map. Just too many variable to make valid decisions.

I like the general idea. Send everything everywhere and see what sells. Stop MicroAnalyzing everything. How much did I spend last year making photos, that actually went online... I have 200,000 images in the last five years, that's what my backup drive says. 1% are on sale someplace. How much did I make as profit. That's the number that counts. Kind of an IRS viewpoint? LOL


 

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