There should be a rule ... "No Images Can Be Sold for Less Than at Thinkstock."   

Quote from: WarrenPrice on July 08, 2012, 01:40
There should be a rule ... "No Images Can Be Sold for Less Than at Thinkstock."  

Sounds reasonable.
 
I still wonder about the legality of selling images for prices below that indicated on the site, i.e. so that contributors don't have 'informed consent' about the price they might get for their images unless they happen to trawl round this site or iStock's forums to find out about the heavy discounts, especially the hidden ones given to big buyers.
At the moment, the Royalty Schedule page you are taken to from the page Sell Stock says:
"The royalty is based on the net price of iStock credits used to license a file. iStock credit prices vary depending on when they were purchased (as our prices change over time) and how many were purchased at once (as we discount bulk packages)"
Then if you click on the 'View Credit Prices" you see a minimum price of $1.04 per credit for a bundle of 30000 credits. So you could 'reasonably' assume from that that you would never get less than 15c per credit.

I agree! (but I just had a XXL for 6.4$ (photo+))

All that will encourage them to do is drop the royalties paid to independents at Thinkstock, so I'm not sure that rule is "sustainable"

Yesterday I had an XXXL for $7.28 (also P+) which balances out the 10 cent XS sales and is the reason the monthly tallies at IS stay reasonable

Warren I agree with you.  I also had an eight center this week.  Not very encouraging when my production costs for that particular image was substantially more.

How can you get 8 cents for a photo? I thought it was a bug or something. I would stop submitting altogether if the commission was  8 cent. For how much is that photo sold? 40 cents or what?

Quote from: Poncke on July 08, 2012, 23:55
How can you get 8 cents for a photo? I thought it was a bug or something. I would stop submitting altogether if the commission was  8 cent. For how much is that photo sold? 40 cents or what?

Please do your research.  The explanation is old credit packages.  No bug. Please stop submitting.  Commissions are, sometimes, .08 cents.

Quote from: Poncke on July 08, 2012, 23:55
How can you get 8 cents for a photo? I thought it was a bug or something. I would stop submitting altogether if the commission was  8 cent. For how much is that photo sold? 40 cents or what?

Apparently, there are loads of credits going around from early days at iStock.
There are discounts given for different reasons, e.g. if the site goes down, and the discount codes are very quickly disseminated all over the web.
There are apparently huge discounts given for people who buy way over the 30,000 credits, not mentioned on the buy credits page.
There are subscription sales, again with huge discounts available, which are indicated by a butterfly rather than a leaf  symbol on your downloads page.
Any combination of the above, e.g. a 25% discount combined with a huge number of credits bought.

Ironic as I'd just been thinking about submitting to IS again - I stopped last year.   Then I saw this thread, and looked back over my recent sales and saw all the ones for 21 cents, and decided to forget about it.  I'm not supporting any agency, large or small, that thinks they can pay me 8 cents for a use of an image.  And they can just stuff all that "old credits" and "special discounts" BS.    End of discussion.

Quote from: ShadySue on July 09, 2012, 00:07

Quote from: Poncke on July 08, 2012, 23:55
How can you get 8 cents for a photo? I thought it was a bug or something. I would stop submitting altogether if the commission was  8 cent. For how much is that photo sold? 40 cents or what?

Apparently, there are loads of credits going around from early days at iStock.
There are discounts given for different reasons, e.g. if the site goes down, and the discount codes are very quickly disseminated all over the web.
There are apparently huge discounts given for people who buy way over the 30,000 credits, not mentioned on the buy credits page.
There are subscription sales, again with huge discounts available, which are indicated by a butterfly rather than a leaf  symbol on your downloads page.
Any combination of the above, e.g. a 25% discount combined with a huge number of credits bought.

So the discounts given by the agency, are paid by the agency and the contributor? SMH... starting to sound much like slave labour or prisoner labour. Should be illegal for agencies to transfer discounts to the contributor.

Quote from: Poncke on July 09, 2012, 08:23
So the discounts given by the agency, are paid by the agency and the contributor? SMH... starting to sound much like slave labour or prisoner labour. Should be illegal for agencies to transfer discounts to the contributor.

on iStock, yes, even if the discount was given because of the site being down. I have no idea if the IT wallahs have their salaries docked by 15% if they give a 15% discount, or whether they only penalise the innocent.

This is a really irritating feature of IS and DT.  On SS and even FT, the commissions are transparent and consistent so, for a certain size with a certain licence, you always get the same commission. 

The downside of the fixed payout system is that when the site is collecting income in other currencies, they are sometimes making out like bandits by paying you the fixed amount.

I think the percentage model works as long as marketing expenses - promotional and "I'm sorry" discounts are paid for by the site and as long as there's no games being played. In IS's case, one of the games I suspect happened was that they gave out huge discounts to large angry customers who weren't happy about Vetta/Agency/E+ price hikes. The problem was those cheapo credits then got spent on regular files as well.

There's no automatic "win" for contributors with either system - an ethical, honest and fair agency is the only way we win.

Quote from: jsnover on July 09, 2012, 14:59
In IS's case, one of the games I suspect happened was that they gave out huge discounts to large angry customers who weren't happy about Vetta/Agency/E+ price hikes. The problem was those cheapo credits then got spent on regular files as well.

I hadn't thought of that, but yes, it seems extremely likely, now that you point it out

Quote
There's automatic "win" for contributors with either system - an ethical, honest and fair agency is the only way we win.

Yeah, but the 'new kind of trust' doesn't necessarily cover 'ethical', 'honest' or 'fair'.
I suspect that any agency trying to be ethical and fair to its contributors, unless it has unique niche images, with a proven market that no-one else provides (as if!), would just find their customers voting with their feet.
But there's a big gap between what we have just now and an ideal scenario. Surely we could narrow the gap, at least.

I left out the "no" in "no automatic win" - I've edited to fix my goof.

I think it's simple to make things fair for contributors and have the agency make a profit - all of the current micros used to come pretty close before they started cutting percentages for contributors, jacking up prices for buyers, etc. Both sides can be profitable and offer buyers a fair deal. We can't generate enough cash to (a) support "dividends" for the vulture capital firms (H&F and I assume KKR will do the same to Fotolia) or (b) prop up other parts of a business that aren't making as much money.

I don't think you have to be a niche or even have unique images to succeed. Good choice, fair prices, great search engine, working site with little/no downtime and simple, straightforward purchase systems.

I joined the "8 Cent Club" today!

Quote from: stockastic on July 13, 2012, 15:30
I joined the "8 Cent Club" today!

Congrats.  Now go enjoy that jellybean.

Quote from: stockastic on July 13, 2012, 15:30
I joined the "8 Cent Club" today!

Me too.  I don't usually look at the price an image sells for but as it was the first sale on new upload which is a favourite image of mine I had a look only to find it had sold for 8c. I wish that I hadn't looked now!!!

Quote from: stockastic on July 13, 2012, 15:30
I joined the "8 Cent Club" today!

Yesterday

$2.70 for Big Web footage today - usually I get at least more than double for that... 

On the other hand I've got 39 $ for a big E+, and I have a 250 $ personal record for an EL.

Quote from: fotografer on July 24, 2012, 12:41

Quote from: stockastic on July 13, 2012, 15:30
I joined the "8 Cent Club" today!

Me too.  I don't usually look at the price an image sells for but as it was the first sale on new upload which is a favourite image of mine I had a look only to find it had sold for 8c. I wish that I hadn't looked now!!!

How can this be?  Look like diamond level from the dial, possibly even exclusive.  Surely you must be on a higher %.  Does this mean us lowly peons can look forward getting even less than 8c? 

Quote from: heywoody on July 24, 2012, 18:14

Quote from: fotografer on July 24, 2012, 12:41

Quote from: stockastic on July 13, 2012, 15:30
I joined the "8 Cent Club" today!

Me too.  I don't usually look at the price an image sells for but as it was the first sale on new upload which is a favourite image of mine I had a look only to find it had sold for 8c. I wish that I hadn't looked now!!!

How can this be?  Look like diamond level from the dial, possibly even exclusive.  Surely you must be on a higher %.  Does this mean us lowly peons can look forward getting even less than 8c? 

I'm pretty sure the lowest royalty for a base level exclusive is 46 cents and 6 or 7 cents for independents depending on how the numbers are rounded.

Quote from: traveler1116 on July 24, 2012, 18:36

Quote from: heywoody on July 24, 2012, 18:14

Quote from: fotografer on July 24, 2012, 12:41

Quote from: stockastic on July 13, 2012, 15:30
I joined the "8 Cent Club" today!

Me too.  I don't usually look at the price an image sells for but as it was the first sale on new upload which is a favourite image of mine I had a look only to find it had sold for 8c. I wish that I hadn't looked now!!!

How can this be?  Look like diamond level from the dial, possibly even exclusive.  Surely you must be on a higher %.  Does this mean us lowly peons can look forward getting even less than 8c? 

I'm pretty sure the lowest royalty for a base level exclusive is 46 cents and 6 or 7 cents for independents depending on how the numbers are rounded.

Do we know the actual 'lowest credit value'?

Quote from: ShadySue on July 24, 2012, 19:31

Quote from: traveler1116 on July 24, 2012, 18:36

Quote from: heywoody on July 24, 2012, 18:14

Quote from: fotografer on July 24, 2012, 12:41

Quote from: stockastic on July 13, 2012, 15:30
I joined the "8 Cent Club" today!

Me too.  I don't usually look at the price an image sells for but as it was the first sale on new upload which is a favourite image of mine I had a look only to find it had sold for 8c. I wish that I hadn't looked now!!!

How can this be?  Look like diamond level from the dial, possibly even exclusive.  Surely you must be on a higher %.  Does this mean us lowly peons can look forward getting even less than 8c?  

I'm pretty sure the lowest royalty for a base level exclusive is 46 cents and 6 or 7 cents for independents depending on how the numbers are rounded.

Do we know the actual 'lowest credit value'?

Not for sure but that's the lowest I've heard of.  Looking through my lowest sales for the last 30 days I found about 4 sales for 65 or 66 cents per credit but nothing lower.