Last month I got lots of good feedback about posting up some stats and updates, so here goes again!

Things Going Well!

• Sales continue to grow. In July (private beta) we had 1700, in August we had 4200 and in September we posted up 7200 sales! I'm sure the big guys will still get a chuckle out of our numbers, but I must admit I'm pretty excited! And we've had a lot of good feedback from our buyers about the quality of images which is great!
• Last month we had 150 authors with at least 1 sale, this month we've almost doubled that number up to 265 authors who've had a sale!
• New items per day have swelled up into the thousands, and should increase more (see below about the rate limit change!)
• Last month I noted reviewing as something that needed more work. Well thanks to the hard work of Jarel our review manager and his fantastic team at MicrostockSolutions (MSS), we have really amped up our review capabilities and team size, and are now getting through three times as many files a day.
• We seem to be establishing some early trends on what our buying audience is interested in. Check out our Popular Files (http://photodune.net/page/top_sellers) page. Solarseven really seems to have nailed our market, and image for image outsells everyone on PhotoDune by an enormous margin! He ranks #10 on our Top Authors for PhotoDune (http://photodune.net/author/top_authors), despite having a portfolio of just 235 images! A good lesson on how to do well on PhotoDune it would appear!

Things We Need to Work/Think On!

• Uploading with Model Releases - We've had some complaints about our upload process when model releases are involved. We've fixed a few bugs, but there are some underlying differences in how we do things on PhotoDune. I need to figure out if it's a case of getting out better info about our process, or changing it. Either ways - it needs work! :-)
• We've had quite a bit of discussion about our non-exclusive rates here on MSG, and that's still something on the discussion table over here, so no word just yet!

... And Two Big Changes:

(1) Extended License pricing increase
Here on Microstockgroup we've had a lot of people voice their concern about our Extended License pricing. This is a combination of a low pricing multiple, and a different approach to ext. licensing. Along with that feedback, we contacted a number of top authors to gauge their input before further reviewing it.

As you may have realised we offer extended licenses of different image sizes. This is different from most marketplaces which offer just the largest size with an extended license. Personally I think it's kind of neat to have many tiers because different customers have different needs. Someone wanting to sell the photo on a postcard for instance needs a large print-ready resolution photo. Whereas someone making an iPhone app will just need a 640x960 size.

For our extended license pricing we apply a multiple to the regular image price. Previously that multiple was 5x, we've now revised it upwards to 8x.

This means if you need an extended license on the largest size we offer you are paying around $72 - which is fairly standard for the industry. However if you are a buyer looking for just the small size you are paying upwards of just $8. Of course for that price you get a *tiny* sized image!

I think that some photographers may still groan at offering *any* sort of extended license for $8, and of course we still have a simple opt-out for extended licensing. However personally I think with this revision it fits better into the industry standards while continuing to offer something new to buyers.

As you will find, we're big fans of gathering information and then making decisions. So we will continue to gauge this new price point to see how it performs, and then will revisit the decision in a couple of months.

(2) Increasing from 50 submissions p/day to 250 p/day

We previously had an artificial submission limit of 50 photos per day to ensure we didn't crumble under the load of resources and reviewing. Two months in and we're feeling more confident and we've now increased that limit way up to 250 images per day. I imagine this is going to yield a much faster library growth, and of course is a bit more pleasant for photographers as an upload experience!

Of course this also means we are opening the floodgates to some extent, so we'll be watching closely our review times to make sure we don't move the bottleneck somewhere new :-)


And Next Month �

Next month we kick off a really cool GraphicRiver/PhotoDune bundle which will feature a lot of our current photographers. As you may know we share revenue on our bundles at a 50-50 split regardless of exclusivity. Bundles are very popular with our buyers and have sold up to $200,000 worth in a matter of days. But primarily they are a way for us to drive new buyers to check out contributor content. So I'm pretty excited about this bundle as it will showcase some of the best PhotoDune content to our massive pool of buyers!

Onwards and upwards!

Hope you all had a good month as well!

Until you raise commissions, I really can't get the motivation to upload my portfolio.  The $18 for EL's is only if they want the biggest size, that really isn't enough.  I'm sure lots of buyers can make do with smaller sizes and I would really get a bad deal then.  Isn't the industry standard for EL's closer to $100?  I don't want a new site that pays 25% commissions and I would have to opt out of EL's.

If anyone is getting sales now, I'm sure they will be much less frequent when the majority of contributors upload their portfolios.  I will stick with the long list of sites I'm already with for now.  If you raise commissions and make EL's more lucrative, I will give you a go.

I suggest you read the rave reviews Veer got after listening the posters here, regarding ELs.
http://www.microstockgroup.com/veer-marketplace/veer-subscription-royalties-update/

"How refreshing to hear a stock site (Veer) listening to the contributors and adjusting things accordingly.  There are a few other sites that could take a lesson from you and I wish you all the luck in the world to take you to the top."

Hey guys, Thanks for the feedback!

I was very impressed with how Veer handled things, and the post that Aaron put up was great! Really well written. Certainly they went up in my estimation too

Then why don't you act like them?

You are obviously seeing the issues many contributors have, but it looks like you're trying to make the smallest possible steps towards them. You are defining "industry standard" as "a little better than the worst sites out there". That's not enough.

Move your commission up to 50% and EL prices to 100$. That would be a bold move and get you massive support.

hi Collis

thanks for the conmunications, it's refreshing.

My main focus is editorial stock.  Are you intending to accept such imaging?  If so, I'd be interested.

Regards

Ken

Hi collis,

thanks for your stats & updates for September. Are there any Stats & updates for past month (October)? 

I appreciate those informations. 

Thanks
Gunnar :-)