If it ever got to the stage where I wasn't able to make enough money through taking photos I'd start selling photography lessons.

lol, best post so far

remember when photos were 20cents they cost much cheaper to the customer.

I'd stop uploading

Here's what I would do...

As soon as I saw signs of this happening, I would try to protect the high prices my images sell for at the top agencies by removing my ports from the small new agencies that offer my images for a fraction of the price the big dogs offer, and thus push the "race to the bottom" forward.

Guess what... this has started already.  The signs are all around us... wheels are already in motion to reduce our take to something like .20 per image.  So I'm taking action now... removing my port from the smaller sites that sell my images for too cheap.  I have to protect my high prices (and commissions) at the top sites.

And guess what else... this is what FT asked me to do.  And after being enraged about it for a few days, I now see that they're right.  Maybe your RPD is low at FT and my story is different (I'm getting a good RPD at FT because I'm Emerald and get 37% and can double my image price)... but the principle is the same.  If you want to protect your returns from SS, IT, DT and any other site you really like... STOP jumping on board every low-cost agency that pops up.  By supporting the bargain basement sites, YOU'RE driving your returns down to .20 per image.  

If you want to protect your returns from SS, IT, DT and any other site you really like... STOP jumping on board every low-cost agency that pops up.  By supporting the bargain basement sites, YOU'RE driving your returns down to .20 per image.  

I agree in principle that people should stop uploading to every new agency purely for the reason it's new and they desperately want another source of revenue, but you were right in that folks are "supporting" these agencies, meanwhile these agencies do absolutely nothing to market the images and take commission off contributors.

Can anybody here tell me what marketing (other than the odd google ad) any of the agencies in the 'low tier' or even some in the 'middle tier' actively do to sell your images?

The next question would be 'why do you upload there then'?

I even wonder if some people understand the principles of selling via an agency.

If it ever got to the stage where I wasn't able to make enough money through taking photos I'd start selling photography lessons.

Bingo!

It's clearly a hypothetical scenario but should anything like that happen then we would collectively remove our ports and set up our own agency. At that point we would simply have nothing to lose by doing so. The microstock market is currently worth about $500M annually, maybe more, the vast majority of which is probably earned from the portfolios of about 1000-2000 contributors. The number of full-time microstockers, who currently earn the majority of their living from microstock, is quite possibly fewer than 500. That's not too many to organise.

The fact that the "New images approved this week" on SS has almost halved over the last 18 months essentially proves that as the incentive/reward reduces (mainly through increased competition) then the motivation to submit new content also reduces. Increased competition alone will almost certainly ensure that the number of 'active contributors' will actually reduce in the future.

So you would go, give up all alternatives and actually help the ones who are really greedy and make a lot on photos and clearly signalled that they intend to give next to nothing if possible, get as close to monopoly as possible. Just genial. With such geniuses around, no wonder these agencies can just freakin' shaft subbmitters to freakin' death.

I rose to the level at FT that they allowed me to double the price of my images, and they elevated my commissions at the same time.  My RPD is high there.  SS treats me very well... and they must have done something recently to encourage EL sales because I'm getting 3-6 of them everyday.  DT has always been great, especially with the tiered pricing based on number of downloads.  I have tons of high level images and get a great RPD there.  The only Tier Tier agency I'm disappointed with is IS.  I still get a good RPD, but I don't like their recent policies, so I've stopped uploading.

So given how well the Top Tier (and even Middle Tier) have done for me (except maybe for IS) why would I stab them in the back and undercut my own RPDs by jumping on board every fly-by-night upstart that wants to steal market share from them?  You have to admit that's pretty stupid in principle.

I think the .20 originally paid in the early days of microstock was accepted by contributors because it was literally for found snapshots "sitting on your hard drive". 
If sites went back to that, then the ms pros who spend thousands yearly on equipment and production costs would all leave en masse. 

Almost certainly there would be sites cropping up that paid and charged a more reasonable amount for professional quality work.  Those sites would get the best selling artists, and shortly after, the customers too.  The top micros are not likely to be stupid enough to try such a drastic move. 

I don't understand how people think the smaller sites aren't worth uploading to, because they have so few sales but at the same time they are a threat to the big sites?  Some of the big sites will use any excuse to lower commissions.  If there were less sites, do people really think we would be better off?  They would just think of a different excuse to lower commissions whenever they want to.

I don't understand why this is so difficult to grasp.

I sell my widgets through 4 stores that do great volume, sell at good prices, and give me a fair commission.

When a bunch of new stores open up in the same neighborhood wanting to sell my widgets at a fraction of the price of the established stores, should I:

a) blindly say "Yes indeed, anything to get more sales!!!"
b) realize this would steal business from the stores selling a great deal of my widgets at good prices, and ultimately be a big blow to my own bottom line.

Everyone keeps saying this is about commissions.  Based on Chad's posts here and all my recent emails with people at FT, I believe them when they say it's about image pricing.  Just do the math.  An Emerald's pics at FT will sell for as little as 1/6th the price at a site like DP.   If I were FT, I would be shaking my head and wondering why on God's green earth my suppliers would want to undercut their own sales.

Quote from: sharpshot on October 06, 2011, 11:08

I don't understand how people think the smaller sites aren't worth uploading to, because they have so few sales but at the same time they are a threat to the big sites?  Some of the big sites will use any excuse to lower commissions.  If there were less sites, do people really think we would be better off?  They would just think of a different excuse to lower commissions whenever they want to.

I don't understand why this is so difficult to grasp.

I sell my widgets through 4 stores that do great volume, sell at good prices, and give me a fair commission.

I don't understand why it's so difficult for you to grasp that most people are uploading to smaller sites after the big ones repeatedly dropped our "fair commissions"(this is not just directed at fotolia, BTW).  If everyone was still making the commissions rates we originally signed up for at 3 of the top 4 sites, then the smaller sites would probably be starved for content. 

I get it, you don't agree with uploading to the smaller sites.  Fair enough,  but you don't have to be so hostile and insulting to people who see things differently to you.

I don't understand why this is so difficult to grasp.

Believe it or not but FT was once a 'small newcomer site' too. Being a lazy person I didn't bother to upload to them until they had proved themselves. I was quite happy with being on SS, IS, DT and CanStockPhoto at the time. I only actually bothered to upload to FT when a friend told me that they were paying out money for each image accepted and by then I had a big enough port for that to appear attractive. As it happens my delay in uploading has cost me $K's mainly because I just missed out on getting to Emerald before they changed the rankings.  Not only that but early images on a new site often gain sales that can ensure a top spot in the search order rankings for many years to come __ so I didn't make as much of that opportunity as I could have either.

If you have a crystal ball and can tell us all which will be the significant microstock sites in say 5 or 10 years time then maybe we could take notice of your advice.

I don't understand why this is so difficult to grasp.

I sell my widgets through 4 stores that do great volume, sell at good prices, and give me a fair commission.

When a bunch of new stores open up in the same neighborhood wanting to sell my widgets at a fraction of the price of the established stores, should I:

a) blindly say "Yes indeed, anything to get more sales!!!"
b) realize this would steal business from the stores selling a great deal of my widgets at good prices, and ultimately be a big blow to my own bottom line.

Everyone keeps saying this is about commissions.  Based on Chad's posts here and all my recent emails with people at FT, I believe them when they say it's about image pricing.  Just do the math.  An Emerald's pics at FT will sell for as little as 1/6th the price at a site like DP.   If I were FT, I would be shaking my head and wondering why on God's green earth my suppliers would want to undercut their own sales.

The reason this is so difficult to grasp is because this is how business is done.  You set up a store and your role is to cater to your customers.  Your role is to differentiate your store from other stores.  Coca Cola does not place it's product in a store based on what that store sells Coca Cola for - it places it's product in the store to sell it's product.  You can buy a Coke at a Baseball game for $4 or you can buy the same Coke at McDonalds for $1.50.  At a grocery store, you can buy a liter of Coke for $1.29.  Does the baseball park tell coca Cola it won't sell it's product because the grocery store chooses to sell it for $1.29?  No - the Baseball Park is selling an experience to it's customers...and pricing the product it sells accordingly.

Do you really think that Coca Cola would listen if the ball park told them not to sell coke products to the street vendor outside of the park on the corner?

I believe someone posted something similar to this in the forum at Fotolia.  This is the difficulty.

I also remember when Fotolia first started - and was paying selected contributors to upload images to their site.  This REALLY upset some of the big players - who still don't contribute to the agency.

Do you remember the good old days when iStock was popular?  It was a COMMUNITY.  The contributors were also picture buyers - a community of designers.  iStock's revenue has decreased according to many since the acquisition by Getty.  The community has faultered - iStock has recognized this (obvious through the latest survey).  Were they just selling images or were they selling an experience?

The reason this is so difficult to grasp is because this is how business is done.  You set up a store and your role is to cater to your customers.  Your role is to differentiate your store from other stores.  Coca Cola does not place it's product in a store based on what that store sells Coca Cola for - it places it's product in the store to sell it's product.  You can buy a Coke at a Baseball game for $4 or you can buy the same Coke at McDonalds for $1.50.  At a grocery store, you can buy a liter of Coke for $1.29.  Does the baseball park tell coca Cola it won't sell it's product because the Baseball Park chooses to sell it for $4.00?  No - the Baseball Park is selling an experience to it's customers...and pricing the product it sells accordingly.

With all due respect that's not how it works, Coca Cola sells it's product to the retailer who then decides what mark up to make and they price it accordingly, Coca Cola can sell it's product to a larger retailer or wholesaler at a lower price than a smaller one because of volume, most small retailers will buy Coca Cola from a wholesaler. Coca Cola has determined the value of it's product no matter how much or how little the retailer then sells that product on for.

We do not sell our product to an agency, we use them to sell our product on our behalf in return for a percentage of the sale price.

Two different types of business practice completely.

Quote from: sharpshot on October 06, 2011, 11:08

I don't understand how people think the smaller sites aren't worth uploading to, because they have so few sales but at the same time they are a threat to the big sites?  Some of the big sites will use any excuse to lower commissions.  If there were less sites, do people really think we would be better off?  They would just think of a different excuse to lower commissions whenever they want to.

I don't understand why this is so difficult to grasp.

I sell my widgets through 4 stores that do great volume, sell at good prices, and give me a fair commission.

When a bunch of new stores open up in the same neighborhood wanting to sell my widgets at a fraction of the price of the established stores, should I:

a) blindly say "Yes indeed, anything to get more sales!!!"
b) realize this would steal business from the stores selling a great deal of my widgets at good prices, and ultimately be a big blow to my own bottom line.

Everyone keeps saying this is about commissions.  Based on Chad's posts here and all my recent emails with people at FT, I believe them when they say it's about image pricing.  Just do the math.  An Emerald's pics at FT will sell for as little as 1/6th the price at a site like DP.   If I were FT, I would be shaking my head and wondering why on God's green earth my suppliers would want to undercut their own sales.

That wasn't really the point I was making.  The price differences has been dealt with in the other thread, I don't think that's the only reason people think small sites are a threat.  The fact is that for most of us, FT have reduced subs commissions below some of the smaller sites and if there is a difference in pay per download prices, we don't see much of a difference in commission because they have reduced it so many times.  They have made it almost impossible for most contributors to reach the higher levels and raise their prices to get that big price differential.  There are also sites that have prices far higher than FT and they don't threaten to reduce prices or commissions.