]

]

Quote from: Ron on July 02, 2013, 13:05

Your trying to hard again Tickstock. Let it go. In your theory you can never issue a voucher without having to compensate the customer that bought an image prior to issuing the voucher.

Actually, that seems to be Sean's theory. At least for other people's sales.

You are correct, I was responding to the last part of that discussion when it was about Stocksy. My example of Blue Host actually supports tickstock's argument. I edited my comment.

Actually, those are not offering discounts if the vendor drops prices later on, they are guaranteeing to match any rival's (or a selected list of rivals') price, which is a totally different thing.

The fact you have chosen to use such irrelevant examples to support your case is evidence of how weak it is.

(I couldn't work out the point of the third link - but the first two were the "not knowingly undersold" sort of offer.)

Sorry, you'll have to read closer, as well as my example for Target ( or pretty much any other retailer ).

]

Quote from: mlwinphoto on July 02, 2013, 13:29

Quote from: tickstock on July 02, 2013, 13:13

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on July 02, 2013, 13:08

Quote from: Ron on July 02, 2013, 13:05

Your trying to hard again Tickstock. Let it go. In your theory you can never issue a voucher without having to compensate the customer that bought an image prior to issuing the voucher.

Actually, that seems to be Sean's theory. At least for other people's sales.

Yep, that's what I was pointing out.  Sean seems to think Istock should offer refunds when prices drop but for Stocksy no refunds with a  .

Stocksy's policy has always been to not offer refunds.  iStock's policy has been to offer refunds.  Buyers expect refunds from iStock and don't expect them from Stocksy.

Istock's policy has never been to offer refunds because of price changes AFAIK.

Where has iStock said that?  I may have missed it so please point me in the right direction.
They have said that refunds are 'discretionary' and, in that vein, that they want to 'provide a customer experience that encourages them to return.'
So, if a good customer is upset that a file they just purchased has suddenly dropped considerably in price you don't think iStock would issue at least a partial refund?  I don't really know if they would or not and neither do you.  They seem to consider them on a case by case basis.

.

Quote from: cthoman on July 02, 2013, 11:46

But, it's always been that way with the credits. Shouldn't this have been written like 5 years ago? I'm not a fan of credits, but I'm just not seeing the big revelation here.

Well, one the "minor" changes is that there seems to be no small credit packages anymore. There used to be 12 credits, for some time even 6 credits for $9.99 or something like that. Nowadays it's 30 credits for $49.99 - this is excluding a large number of buyers from buying through credit packages and having to buy single images.

That is on top of the huge discrepancy between credit price and single image price for the main collection files.

Both of them are very new.

I ahven't followed their advertising but it wouldn't surprise if they balance that by offering huge discounts or time limited entry packages. getty has a history of working with high list prices that they then lower drastically, especially when their sales team calls the client.

Without the high list prices it is probably very difficult for sales staff to sell direct.

I wonder if "consultations with customers and months of research" proved that buyers love to go through pages of crap to find one suitable image.
Looking at new images I feel like I visited MostPhotos by mistake.

Doesn't Getty make offers like "300 free credits" if you buy a thinkstock subscription?

Having a nominal high price for credits on the website, makes offers like these very attractive.

Does anyone know the value of those free credits for contributors? What do we earn, if the client gets the credits "free"?

I agree that they won't run after clients for a 50 dollar package, but they can litter the internet with first time buyer discount codes.

But I see this as a way to enourage small time buyers to go to photos.com.

http://de.photos.com/products?isource=viewplansHome

They have different plattforms, so they can push photos.com for the budget conscious intrnet customer. The problem here for me would be that I don't consider the ite by itself very competitive to the bigger agencies out there.

And of course contributors only get 20% or less royalty.

But they have an agency for every price point. Just personally I believe that fragmenting your marketing leads to overall lower brand value on the internet. Obviously they are all competing with themselves and against other agencies.

But I see this as a way to enourage small time buyers to go to photos.com.

http://de.photos.com/products?isource=viewplansHome

They have different plattforms, so they can push photos.com for the budget conscious intrnet customer. The problem here for me would be that I don't consider the ite by itself very competitive to the bigger agencies out there.

And of course contributors only get 20% or less royalty.

Exactly my thoughts, photos.com for small buyers. And now adding a lot of images (quality aside) makes them quite a bit more competitive in the mid term, all those non-exclusive files will hit photos.com

With regards to the 20%, we make less than that if iStock sells them directly. 

Quote from: cobalt on July 07, 2013, 03:28

Does anyone know the value of those free credits for contributors? What do we earn, if the client gets the credits "free"?

I am pretty sure that they are still valued at $1 like they used to be as long as I remember.

Thanks for that. I had assumed $1 less.

For me, DT changed to a funny pattern since their last price restructuring: I'll get lots of subscription sales (same as before), than I get a big one (say 4-5$)... What I hardly get anymore are $0.21 or $0.46 regular sales. The net effect of this is that DT remains on par in with previous years in my projections for 2013.

FT on the other hand is on the way to make me one sixth of what it made in 2010, my last sale there was not quite a month ago