Possibly worth making some noise in the 500px forum and on Twitter. Whether or not it changes their minds, they should get a black eye publicly for being so cavalier about their relationship with their suppliers

https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/711989519671627777

https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/711988696254275584

Jasmin started the 500px thread. My reply to her request for thoughts was:

"Very few printable thoughts

I will stop uploading here for the moment (everything I uploaded was tagged for the Marketplace; that was my reason for joining).

I find the huge cut in royalty rate unconscionable and the explanation threadbare. I am less concerned about the price changes, although I think they'd do better to make a bigger difference between *pricing* on exclusive/non-exclusive content.

As far as financing expansion out of royalty cuts, that's a pseudo explanation that dissolves on contact. When there aren't very many sales and you need funds to build the business, you don't generate funds for expansion through a bigger slice of the still-small pie.

The fact that I've heard just about all these tales before without them coming true at any agency, ever, makes it hard to imagine how 500px Marketplace will be the first to make it happen. There are agencies that have grown and become successful, but they haven't done it by picking the pockets of their suppliers.

I could have understood a message about pricing changes to build the business in the current market. But why would anyone continue to contribute content to an agency that takes months to review images, has few sales and has so little respect for its contributors that it delivers this massive royalty cut message with no meaningful details on what 500px Marketplace is prepared to do for us. It's all about what we can do for them...."

One of your tweets features in this article: http://bokeh.digitalrev.com/article/500px-drops-royalty-rate

Does the artist get a share of that?

With all those huge images without a professional watermark...at 500 dollars a piece...nice little income stream.

Quote from: EmberMike on March 22, 2016, 13:33

Kelly, please, for the love of God, don't go looking for a job at Creative Market when you're done at 500px. Please.

Thank you.

And please feel free to go jump in the lake

Gracias

Don't forget the lead boots when you do

Quote from: cobalt on March 22, 2016, 10:05

Does the artist get a share of that?

With all those huge images without a professional watermark...at 500 dollars a piece...nice little income stream.

I very much doubt the artsist shares any of that. That actually explains huge image previews and no watermark and their resistance to change it. Tempt the thief to steal, then make him pay - "nice" business model! That also explains why they want people to go exclusive - easier to demand payments from thieves, since you don't have to prove it's been stolen from them. I like when things make sense. Even though I really dislike these "things".

Your thinking this is intentional? Chasing the legal fees instead of selling?

Is there that much money in that?

Maybe I should remove more files, this sounds scary.

I�ll definitely wait until they have a professional full frame watermark before uploading again.

And no exclusive images, not if my royalty rate can be changed so abruptly with 10 days notice.

So after investing in Corbis, the Visual China Group is now investing millions of dollars in 500px.
https://news.ontario.ca/opo/en/2016/03/tech-startup-500px-creating-high-value-jobs-in-ontario.html

Interesting. I thought 500px was a Russian-Canadian owned company originally.

Yes, the founders were 2 Russian guys living in Toronto, one of them was a stock photographer, not sure they are even still around..

I was debating whether to join 500px marketplace but was waiting to see if they sorted out the watermark issue. Now that they've chopped the royalty rate, I'm no longer interested, especially since I wouldn't have been willing to give them exclusive images in any event.

I do wonder, however, if there's any value in displaying small watermarked images in a free basic account. Do others who have done this ever generate any sales this way? Are you allowed to explicitly let viewers and potential buyers know they can contact you for direct sales? Flickr never allowed this, which was one reason I quit posting there.

I thought I read on this thread or another one a comment from someone who said 500px allows this but I can't find the reference right now. When I read their terms and conditions, it seems that they, like Flickr, don't permit it. I'd appreciate any feedback from people who know about this firsthand.

Of course, there's the larger question of whether uploading images would be worthwhile even if direct selling is allowed. Many people have been commenting on how poor the sales have been in the 500px marketplace, so perhaps there's no reason for optimism that images in the basic account will sell either.