it's simple from my point of view and also argumentative from other points of view...
don't submit to sites that pay you $0.38 as the top amount in a royalty. and if you do, then don't wine about sustainability as you are supporting the very thing you moan about. just sayin. you can draw your own conclusions.

i did not slam any site in particular, you drew your own conclusions.

but yes now that you do mention SS, if you support selling your work at such a pittance then there is no point in moaning that it is not sustainable cause it's not from a contributors point of view.

it's really that simple.

Yes, funny how that particular number came up and I erroneously came to that obvious conclusion. Especially from someone who names themselves as a takeoff on a site name. And then tries to deny their whole propose and intention?

Legally a, DUCK Thread.

I see that someone doesn't understand logic:

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's a duck

Quote from: shudderstok on April 10, 2014, 21:35

i did not slam any site in particular, you drew your own conclusions.

but yes now that you do mention SS, if you support selling your work at such a pittance then there is no point in moaning that it is not sustainable cause it's not from a contributors point of view.

it's really that simple.

You could say the same about any agency that pays you less than 38 cents for any sale.

Kinda sad reading this thread.  Seems as though our standards and expectations have dropped so low that getting 33 cents, or 38 cents, or 50% of $10 is (somewhat) acceptable. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm with SS and was with iStock so I'm participating in this devaluation of our work.  Wish it hadn't come to this. 

It will take a monumental effort on the part of photographers to turn this around to the point where we are getting an acceptable return on our time and investment.  Personally, I'm looking for a way out of this ( by self marketing, RM, being more agency selective, etc.) but am not having a lot of success doing so.   Will photogs as a group ever ban together and say 'no' to low royalties and prices?.....doubt it.

Is it too late? 

(Time to add a little something extra to my morning coffee).

I guess it depends really. MS for me has always been a place where I can sell stuff that takes me little time or effort to produce, or photos that have been paid for in other ways that I can now sell again. So I'm not losing on any investment dollars. So what is a good price for a photo that otherwise would sit on my hard drive and do nothing? I'm not being intentionally argumentative, but I firmly believe that MS should be where the effort going in is less than the result. If it isn't, well, I think people are doing it wrong. If it costs you money to produce, then the return must justify it. Sell it where you can get that return.

You mean 28 cents or 25 cents? 



Yes I can agree that the cost of production should be less, if the return is less. Unfortunately people keep raising the standards of quality to where a P&S might have made it, but a full frame DSLR is becoming the base equipment now.

Kinda sad reading this thread.  Seems as though our standards and expectations have dropped so low that getting 33 cents, or 38 cents, or 50% of $10 is (somewhat) acceptable. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm with SS and was with iStock so I'm participating in this devaluation of our work.  Wish it hadn't come to this. 

It will take a monumental effort on the part of photographers to turn this around to the point where we are getting an acceptable return on our time and investment.  Personally, I'm looking for a way out of this ( by self marketing, RM, being more agency selective, etc.) but am not having a lot of success doing so.   Will photogs as a group ever ban together and say 'no' to low royalties and prices?.....doubt it.

Is it too late? 

(Time to add a little something extra to my morning coffee).

Yes, I always felt that people were willing to work for too little and then say the answer was more agencies to make more money. It's counter productive.

glad to see at least one person who understood what i was aiming at.

as a group it will never be resolved as there are too many people that are happy with selling images for pennies on the dollar.

at the current direction it is going it is not sustainable.

That part I can agree with. But the finger pointing at one site, over and over, when another actually pays even less, does nothing to help the situation, or give even the slightest appearance of unity.

For the person who gave me a negative for my post, I could care less.  Glad you're happy making 33 cents per download.....

For the person who gave me a negative for my post, I could care less.  Glad you're happy making 33 cents per download.....

how many times do they keep having to tell you that it's not only 33 cents??? hard to believe they are so uppity on a few cents here or there. shall we all agree it is less than 50 cents???

BTW, your work is nice, and worth way more than what you get for it.

Quote from: shudderstok on April 11, 2014, 23:25

whether i point one site out or ten sites it matters not. the point being is that if you contribute images to a site like SS then you have no right to complain about how unsustainable microstock is. sure, you can take the approach of "i sell thousands of images a day to make $250" or "if it's not online and on my hard drive it's making nothing" etc. you can justify however you want that is your right. but i am very clear that i would never support a site like this. now unfortunately IS has gone this way to ensure the race to the bottom continues, so reluctantly i am forced into a strangle hold. IS is the original site that created this race to the bottom, and coming from a professional background of shooting stock for many many years, i was forced to sign up to IS because they were starting to cannibalize the RF stock industry buy cutting the average web usage over at GI from $75  to now selling the same usage for $1 or $2 and allowing everyone with a digital camera to join regardless of quality. all the likes of SS are doing is exactly the same thing IS did, undercut and work on volume.

the only winners at this game are the owners or major shareholders of each and every agency not the contributor. they have us all by the nuts, and they know it. it just depends to which level you will support them, and i draw the line where i do.

the writing on has been on the wall for years.

Well, you've helped to convince me of something I've been considering for the past several months.  Dropping iStock felt really good, now it's time to drop SS as well.  No more micros (subs) for me.

Practice what you preach, so they say.

not sure i helped convince you of dropping IS. i simply chose to remain exclusive as all i saw was a bunch of emotional impulsive dropping of exclusivity mainly by the "followers" of the "legend" who did not drop it by choice. not suggesting that was your motivator, but it was fuel for the longest time. there was a lot of emotion going on for a while. but that said, if it felt good for you then you made the right choice, the same for SS if you choose to drop it. your work is far too good for the abuse of pennies. it's interesting to note as well, by staying exclusive and weathering the storm, my sales are pretty much back to where they were and my income is about the same.

i have always said since microstock came along that stock photographers became more like day traders on the stock market, trading stock without really knowing what they are doing, albeit some did. instant this instant that. how quick can you make a quick buck on a flip? like stock trading, i know of very few people who made real lasting money on the stock day trade thing, but boring investors like me who just keep it in the dividend funds for years and years are doing more than okay.

i now find myself of being in a position of being a hypocrite in one sense - IS has now forced upon me to be involved in subscription sales. on that my only choice is to quit if i stick to my guns, but that would cost me more than a full time income, and simply put, i can't do that. again, i did not join IS as a supporter of subs, this has been forced upon me, i always opted out of subs and partner programs when i could.

subs are here to stay, that is a fact.
 

I don't get it. I never will. All photos are not equal and they never have been. Trad stock was about scarcity of product. Now anyone with a decent camera can produce a reasonably saleable picture in minutes and sell it basically to the world. How much should that be worth? The only niche these days is imagination and sometimes rarity of subjects.

My pictures are worth the 38 cents or whatever because I spent the appropriate amount of time/effort to justify that sale. If you truly think your photos are worth more, there are appropriate places to sell them for more.

Using words like "forced to" or "reluctantly" just make it possible for you to do what everyone else is doing yet still hold your high ground about how this is terrible and you told us so, etc, etc. Don't like it? Find a new job and stop your crying about it. Or better yet, innovate and do something others haven't done yet. This industry is dying for something new to come along.

You can do all that, but the competition won't go away. There will still be a mob of people and sites out there undercutting you. You can't really fix that.

Higher commission rates are worthless to me if there are no sales.

Quote from: farbled on April 12, 2014, 13:15

Yup, and that demonstrates what the actual value of an image is, doesn't it?

Actually, I'd say it is the exact opposite. The values images are sold for at most agencies are fairly arbitrary. The real value is much different, but it is much easier to put a inexpensive one price fits all styles price on things. Once you put that out there though, it's pretty hard to take it back and assign a real value to somebody's work.

Fair point, I see how that could be. In any event, the real issue is the prices are arbitrary for the whole range of images, best to worst. MS should've and could've been where photographers started, and worked their way up improving quality (and getting higher commissions) tier by tier.

The agencies could've done it in the beginning, have price points based on quality/scarcity/etc. And photographers could've done a better job by keeping their "high value" work out of MS. The fault is a blend in my opinion and now it simply is what it is.

We can bash all we want here (not directed at your comment, but the discussions in general) but at the end of the day, unless someone innovates something that skews it more towards the shooter, we have to adapt or quit. I hoped (and still hope) that various  Symbiostock-based networks will someday turn into coop-style marketplaces, but only time will tell.