Okay..started to test the waters and upload a portion of my port, then i saw that you're only offering  20% for stock (at which point i declined to upload). What about a higher payout since you're new to this arena?

Quote from: KB on December 01, 2009, 16:23

I might know why. At least, the reason I removed my images from a startup after about 6 months and 1 sale: It seemed pretty obvious that I would never reach payout, and my concern was the Lucky Oliver scenario, where the site goes bankrupt and the money disappears. I don't think that is likely to happen with a long-running, established site such as The 3D Studio. So I also don't understand people doing that here.

But we got paid out from Lucky Oliver even though they closed the doors.

Quote from: anonymous on December 01, 2009, 17:38

Quote from: KB on December 01, 2009, 17:35

Quote from: anonymous on December 01, 2009, 17:32

Okay..started to test the waters and upload a portion of my port, then i saw that you're only offering  20% for stock (at which point i declined to upload). What about a higher payout since you're new to this arena?

They pay more than any site I know of:
The3dStudio.com pays a 60% royalty on all product sales:
http://www.the3dstudio.com/help.aspx?id_help=9

not what it says on my page:

Active - Affiliate ID: xxxxxx Members referred: 0  Commission sales rate: 20% 

Yeah, that page needs to be re-worked, IMO.

That 20% commission rate is for referral sales. That is, if you refer a buyer, and they buy something, you get 20%. You get 20%, the contributor gets 60%, and poor 3DS gets the tiny 20% left over. No other site like that!

Anon...as already mentioned, the 20% if an affiliate commission if you refer a buyer to us. If you refer a seller then you get 5% as a referral fee for life. Our standard royalty rate for a sale is 60%...it goes as high as 70% if you join our non-exclusive loyalty program. and you are right, it's very confusing and our page layout there is crap. It's all changing soon though

In this case I don't get the point "I may never reach a payout" since they pay you each month no matter what you made, in other words there is no minimum needed for a payout.

Somebody just asked me to comment here so I figured I would...

Our stock photo section took off like wildfire in just the last couple of months and we've had more submissions than we expected in such a short period. That's a good thing and we know many of these new images are from the members here on this forum. So, let me say thank you to those that are getting in on the ground floor with us...we appreciate your early support.

Now, the big question everyone has is on sales, or lack of in some cases, right? Just like we said from the start a couple of months ago, stock photos are new to The3dStudio.com and we never intended to be an istock overnight. We don't intend to ever be an istock for that matter, it's just not what we are about here, but I think our stock sales will see some great increases in the next few months as we ramp up our advertising campaigns.

In the past few weeks we've seen great increases in stock sales and we are very pleased with that trend but that doesn't always translate into 1000 sales for every single seller every month. Part of that is just simple supply and demand and our supply shot up almost overnight and now we are starting to focus on increasing the demand. I can sell 100 images in the next hour but that doesn�t mean every photographer will get 10 sales or even 1 from that simply because we have a very large library from many contributors so the sales are more spread out than they worth 1-2 months ago.

Our intent from the start was to focus mainly on getting new contributors at The3dStudio.com for the last few months of 2009. We have been doing that while we continue to improve our stock upload tools, categories, search features, and so on. We�ve also added our �x-small� 400 pixel size for a $2 purchase along with an Extended License option that we think is an industry best and offers something other sites do not. Next up is a very major site design upgrade and this is very much focused on the custom side of the site as we continue to improve their experience�I can�t give away too much yet but it will be a much cleaner design, will be wider, and will have increased thumbnail sizes. It�s all coming soon.
From there our plan has always been to focus 2010 on bringing in customers and that plan is still 100% on track. We have some various advertising campaigns that will be starting then (some have already started) and this will help us bring in more customers.
I know some people like to �wait and see� and either won�t add any images until they hear of increased sales or maybe they only had a small percentage of their collection until they see an increase. While I understand the logic behind that, the flip side is that the more images we have the larger we become and the faster we can bring in customers. If you have images to add then we would love to get them added, it�s a very fast process and once you�ve done that you don�t ever have to touch them again. You have nothing to lose but a little bit of your time, and a very small bit at that.

So, I will end this overly long reply with a thank you to those who continue to support us. It will be worth your time in the long run but we aren�t here to compete against istock, shutter, or any other stock site. We�re doing things differently and different can be good if you give it a chance.

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