I actually don't find the prospect of some short term increase in volume at the "bargain bin" of macro stock to be appealing at all. Even if they don't allow 250 DLs a day (Steve said no, but wouldn't say how many), once the fire sale is over, where are we left? Where is SS after Photos.com undercuts both their prices and our commissions (i.e. SS price to buyers and commission to me is higher than this proposal from Jupiter)?

If IS assigns one of my images to the dollar bin I deactiviate it immediately - why sell for a discount there when it's selling at regular prices elsewhere?

I agree with Lisa that the ELs for 30 cents commission is unacceptable too, but so is the idea that we're so short-sighted about our business interests that we'll agree to undersell our own work like this.

Quote from: lisafx on July 30, 2008, 17:01

Quote from: graficallyminded on July 30, 2008, 13:11
When I read the email from StockXpert about the merger/conglomeration I was jumping with joy!  I'm predicting a lot more sales starting early next month.

I agree your description of the volume on Photos.com is encouraging.  I am all for the extra exposure and downloads and will even put up with the .30 subscriptions royalty for now.

But honestly, you are excited about gutting your EL sales on other sites by offering them for .30??!!

That's one pill I am just NOT willing to swallow. 

My sentiments exactly. 

SS introduced ELs as a way of offering expanded usage rights after contributors complained about their images being printed on coffee cups and mouse pads.  The other sites followed suit.  This move would set back the progress we've made towards the proper licensing of and compensation for our images. 

Just got $28 EL at SS. What a wonderful feeling.

It is a great feeling. Today was a bonanza with one EL from DT ($25) and one from IS ($21.85 plus the 3.75 regular license). There have been 2 each earlier in the month from FT and SS. Somehow 30 cents x 6 doesn't seem as interesting

And I have made my first sale at Alamy today. Net $58.

I agree, selling EL for 0.30 is not acceptable.

As a fairly new contributor to StockXpert I am wondering if from now on I should only upload smallest allowed sizes. But even then, on SS I could get for them $20 per EL.

I guess time will tell, based on StockXpert final decision I will make my own decision.

Just did a quick calculation on my -- admittedly tiny -- portfolio on SS and in the year I have been there ELs account for over 20% of my earnings.

If this is typical can't see why anyone would go for the StockXpert "offer".

c h e e r s
fred

Quote from: steve-oh on July 29, 2008, 21:32
Hi guys,

We're inviting you to participate in a conference call on Thursday 7/31 at 2pm Easter to discuss these changes further. We want to be as open as we can about this.

This conference is today, but why a conference call. It would be much easier to only read what peoples think in the different forums. This way to reach people seem to me a little ridiculous. My phones are out of batteries after 10 minutes LOL

Quote from: Vonkara on July 31, 2008, 14:05

Quote from: steve-oh on July 29, 2008, 21:32
Hi guys,

We're inviting you to participate in a conference call on Thursday 7/31 at 2pm Easter to discuss these changes further. We want to be as open as we can about this.

This conference is today, but why a conference call. It would be much easier to only read what peoples think in the different forums. This way to reach people seem to me a little ridiculous. My phones are out of batteries after 10 minutes LOL

I disagree.
To deal with a problem it's much easier to put all the people in a room, or in a phone call, and discuss the issues directly rather than going back and forth through emails or in 2 or 3 different forums...

Kudos for StockXpert for setting that up.  The call is in 45 minutes now.  If you can please call in!

Joann is my hero!  She's doing an excellent job articulating our concerns. 

Quote from: Karimala on July 31, 2008, 19:25
Joann is my hero!  She's doing an excellent job articulating our concerns. 

Agreed!

I wish some of the big players (Andres, Yuri, iofoto, ...) had participated and  give their concerns/comments/inputs...

Do you guys can make a resume

How ironic? With the whole photos.com controversy where our images might be available for $0.30/download with licensing similar to an EL license, yesterday and today I had a total of 5 EL-sales on StockXpert. I could not believe it. They earned me a whopping $162.50 (1x$50.00, 1x37.50 and 3x$25.00).  At a 50% commission rate StockXpert earned the same amount from these transactions. This brings my total number of EL-sales across all sites for this month to 12, confirming the importance of EL-sales. Now StockXpert want to compromise this source of revenue. I surely hope sanity will prevail today at the conference.

Maybe these EL-sales were meant to be a strong reminder that I will NEVER, EVER make any of my images available for subscription downloads under the current licensing conditions of Photos.com. Let's all keep our fingers crossed and hope for a solution that will be in the interest of us all. I don't know who is participating in the conference today, but I would like to thank them for taking the time to debate our concerns. StockXpert is important to many of us and I am anxiously awaiting the result. 

Heavens! I can't leap any buildings, tall or otherwise

We are to expect something in writing by Monday from them with updates on what they will be doing and when. They did promise that they will not remove the ability for us to delete our portfolio between now and then

The good news was that the Photos.com plus is limited to 750 DLs per month, but they didn't say what the buyer price would be (working on it).

I don't know how well they were listening to the extended license arguments - I heard Patty Vargas say twice that it wasn't any loss as very few ELs were sold via StockXpert although it's the revenue from elsewhere that I'm worried about retaining. 30% of a higher PPD sale ($49 to $299) as a soother for lost extended license revenue (i.e. they argue that it will typically be a larger size and thus PPD not subs) is less appealing when you consider that 30% of $49 is much less commission than $28 from SS or the $25 I from DT (for an extended print run license).

They are apparently looking anew at the StockXpert subs setup (I asked about limiting sizes and vectors). They are willing to consider including our names in the image info - right now it would be Copyright 2008 Jupiter Imges & its licensors. I pointed out that while they said they thought the big revenue opportunity for us was the subscription commissions, 30 cents was the lowest out there, more so when you consider the higher amounts you can earn with more sales at several sites.

Patty said they were just exploring this as a new business and would revisit the commission issue as they learned more. In part that sounded disingenuous given all the Jupiter offerings, but perhaps it's dealing with a gaggle of individual copyright holders that's new - lots of their stuff is wholly owned.

They said they would notify us before any new partner arrangement went live - so we wouldn't find out after the fact

Of concern to those who sell the rights via DT or who are thinking they might go exclusive somewhere: they have up to 90 days to delete images, so they would try to do it quickly but they don't have to. Photos.com plus would be updated once a week from StockXpert, so you'd have to wait up to a week before deleted images would be removed there.

They did stress that electronic distribution was not permitted via the Photos.com EULA. That still leaves print run and physical items ELs (which is still a big deal IMO).

Patty made a pitch that we should remember they had our best interests at heart and were looking for ways to earn us revenue. I pointed out that this was fine as long as they remembered we were partners, and that assuming we'd take everything on just their say-so and go along wasn't a viable way to operate. She repeated the apology that Steve-oh had made at the beginning that they hadn't handled this whole thing well.

Hi guys,

It was very nice talking with you today. Thanks for calling in and participating!

Jo Ann, just want to clear up one point: We never were going to prevent you from deleting your portfolio. You always will be able to delete your portfolio at any time.

Thanks!
-Steve

Quote from: steve-oh on July 31, 2008, 20:14
Jo Ann, just want to clear up one point: We never were going to prevent you from deleting your portfolio. You always will be able to delete your portfolio at any time.

Steve, I knew you had never said that you would, but this was just a way of highlighting for those who still are not happy that taking a few days to assess where we are should have zero consequences as everything possible today would still be possible on Monday.

Quote from: steve-oh on July 31, 2008, 20:14
We never were going to prevent you from deleting your portfolio. You always will be able to delete your portfolio at any time.

Thanks!
-Steve

I'm still pretty underwhelmed by the proposed partnership and the removal of opt-outs to be honest.

Without the ability to opt-out I will be deleting my portfolio at StockXpert in order to preserve the value of my port and my earnings at other sites. As far as I'm concerned this is just another attempt to undermine the established sites by giving our images away for less and less and I don't want to be a part of that.

Can I suggest that you make a provision to temporarily suspend portfolios at the contributor's request rather than going all the way down the road of deleting them? There's no way the revenue from StockXpert would justify the hassle of re-uploading my port if you subsequently changed the TOS back to more reasonable terms __ and I think you underestimate the strength of feelings from many of your top contributors on this.

I am surprised none of the big guys (like Yuri etc)haven't expressed their view on the matter.may be I am wrong  I might have missed something?

Quote from: stokfoto on July 31, 2008, 21:28
I am surprised none of the big guys (like Yuri etc)haven't expressed their view on the matter.may be I am wrong  I might have missed something?

Maybe VIP accounts have differents TOS.

I also strongly disagree with Patty regarding the occurrence of EL sales.
I guess she might be looking at StockXpert data only (I never had an EL sale with StockXpert, unlike all other micros agencies).

I'm getting on average at least 2 EL sales per month with IS and SS, which is roughly 10% of my revenue with them,  that's not huge but substantial enough.

When SS customers who buy EL sub packages will find out they can buy the same picture for $0.30, they will leave SS to buy a sub package with Photos.com and we will obviously lose money.

Also Patty is wrong when she states that you would need an XL or XXL version to print on T-shirt or mug, an L size is more than sufficient.  I have even seen L sizes blown up on billboards.  And if like she said most customer don't buy to resale, why would that be such a big deal to have a more restrictive EULA with photo plus, especially given that they will go from 350000 medium to low quality pictures to 2 millions plus extra high quality content?

Quote from: cphoto on July 31, 2008, 22:35
....Also Patty is wrong when she states that you would need an XL or XXL version to print on T-shirt or mug, an L size is more than sufficient.....

It is a shame that they don't know basic things like this already.  It does make me wonder if they really understand what they are doing?

The best scenario for StockXpert is the worst scenario for microstock photographers. Imagine they get a hefty slice of another sites customers. "Another sites", if seeing they sales drop dramatically would end competing too in price. That's the way that comes back to the 0.10 dollars/download.
Acepting this deal, microstock photographer's would hurt the businnes and they own interest.
At the end, it seems that just SS and IS cares for their business and for their contributors.

Quote from: sharpshot on July 31, 2008, 22:57
It is a shame that they don't know basic things like this already.  It does make me wonder if they really understand what they are doing?

Exactly. I've lost a huge amount of confidence in StockXpert/JI over this. I'm really not sure they know what they're doing either.

Funnily enough the stock market seems to reflect our thoughts too as their stock today is worth about 20% what is was a year ago. Hmmm __ it might just be time to cut and run now to limit the damage they might do to the industry or at least your own port.

How can selling EL's for 30c benefit anyone at all __ apart from the buyer who will scarcely believe their luck of course?

If this goes ahead I am seriously thinking of buying a Photo.com sub for a month just so that I can download 750 of your very best images and then be flogging them on eBay as prints, mugs, t-shirts, etc for many, many years to come. Wish me luck and enjoy your 30c EL sales!

If I understand this correctly, I'm supposed to be thrilled that I get .30 for what equates to a $28 sale on SS and a $25 sale on DT. Add in the claim that the volume will be amazing and I still need almost 100 sales through photos.com to come close what I would be paid elsewhere for the same use of my image.

I'll join the ranks...I have no idea why I should be excited about this.

StockXpert, I've always liked you, but this seems simply insulting to your submitters. We've done the math. We're unimpressed. In fact, some of us seem baffled at your excitement.

So tell us...unless we're from the school of "I'm just tickled-pink to get any money for my photos"...why should we stick around?

Quote from: hd on August 01, 2008, 00:14

So tell us...unless we're from the school of "I'm just tickled-pink to get any money for my photos"...why should we stick around?

No, no no __ please stick around, at least for a month or two anyway, to enable me to grab EL licenses on all your most saleable images.

You know where I'm heading first of course? That's right __ Yuri's port!

Can you believe that I will be able to just help myself to all of Yuri's best selling stuff (and everyone else of course) that  I can then sell forever on eBay merchandise as well as lots of other marketplaces. Hey __ $99 for 750 EL licenses is a bet you simply cannot lose on. This is very good for me.