I was thinking about this subject lately and to be honest I, as the 'copyright producer', would actually be interested in selling rights for my video clips. It's still a hit and miss for me. Most footage I have uploaded doesn't sell at all, or gets 1 or 2 random downloads, so being payed upfront would make more sense. With pictures I think I'll take a chance and invest in my own work.

Quote from: janderson99 on September 01, 2012, 18:31I did find a company paying $50 per image, but that is for images not already producing revenue.

Care to elaborate a little more about this ? Seems like an interesting thing and I would love to know what conditions do they make.

Quote from: djpadavona on August 31, 2012, 13:40
I'm not trying to publicly embarrass anyone. I simply requested he post a link to his portfolio since he seemed to suggest that he wanted to be part of Warmpicture. Maybe I misinterpreted. You are free to do the same.

Just out of curiosity ... is this the official way to get accepted ? Posting links in a forum? I find it quite unusual. I would expect a good old e-mail with a link would do the trick.

Just had my first sale @ Pond5, but still no frickin views!
Not even for the one that got sold, so definitely a bug.

Just a quick question to people who have already uploaded images. Do you get any views ?
I've upload my 120 or so images as a test, but I didn't get even a single view on ANY of the files. Is this a bug, or are those the real stats?

Novel use is being phased out, but I got 2 sales this month - one for $ 7.63 and another one for $ 5.00. That's before the commission cut. So ... we're still in the microstock prices level however they're going to call it. 

Quote from: EmberMike on August 30, 2012, 02:47
I view SF as the best deal on the table, and probably the best deal we'll ever be offered by any new or current company that can actually drum up some sales in the foreseeable future.

I could name a few places that give 50-60% and allow you to set your own prices. I think the 'drum up some sales' part is crucial here.

I also sell 3d models and there is a site that charges nothing and you receive 100% from any sale (www.digitalelements.be if anyone is interested). Well ... 100% from 0 is still 0.

Does anyone know how often the contributor level will be updated? Once a month, once a year ?

Quote from: Simon Alvinge on August 25, 2012, 10:37
Hi!

Here in sweden, about 55 % of your income goes to the government if you are a microstocker and have started your own company. So to take the step to full-time microstocker from hobbyist means 55 % of your income "is no more".

I wonder how it is in different counties around the world. Can you tell me how much of your microstock earnings that end up in your pocket after the taxes are paid? I dont wanna hear stuff like, well i can withdraw tax from the equipment that i buy, that doest give you any more money in the pocket, its just a discount on photo-stuff which is till very expensive after tax discounts  aswell.

I am particually interested in in countries like US, Australia, Thailand, Asia.

So post your country and percentage left after tax. I dont wanna hear a bunch of technical tax-terms, give a rough estimate even if it is complicated.

Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and Latvia (to name a few) have pretty low rates for both companies and individuals. In the 10-20% range for companies.

Size does matter but it's never just a simple matter of double portfolio size => double the earnings.
If it was that simple I would be now a billionaire.

Quote from: Ed on August 23, 2012, 21:40
Leaf, I think you're over-thinking it.
The next question is...at what level are the majority of the contributors?

The truth is that the majority of contributors is responsible for the minority of income. I'm pretty sure that the top 10% makes more than the bottom 90%. So it's no point in looking at the payout rate of people who get sales occasionally. Most of the sales come from content provided by people in the 38 cents club and that's what Shutterstock needs to pay.
You can either calculate the average the way Leaf did it - check how big the whole pie is and how much out of the pie is given to contributors. Simple math and actually most precise in my opinion.
Or you can take the average gross income per download (the $2.05 figure) and compare it to the average RPD.
Mine is $0.59 so that means I'm getting ~28,8%. Someone still getting 25 cents for subs might get a lower rate, but the majority of people with significant sales get $0.5-$0.6 RPD. That would give us a range of 24.4%-28.8% That's more or less what both Leaf calculated and what Scott Braut posted. 

out of the big 4 only iStock. Non-exclusive rates are a joke and uploading is a nightmare. Silly rejections for not relevant keywords.

I don't think I'm going to continue uploading to Depositphotos, Veer and Zoonar. Bigstock is another non-seller and unless I get the bridge to big stock (or whatever it's called) you won't see my pictures there.

for any professional/commercial use this won't work imho. Also another outlet for all the stolen content.
It's a nice try and it would be nice to have less of an obstacle between sellers and buyers (or creators and users if you will), but this project might work for an indy band or something similar. Stock buyers won't "follow" anyone on tweeter because they are just dying to see your next tomato isolated on white.
We need 'something' that will help the buyer find what he needs, be absolutely certain that the copyright issues are taken care off, quality check etc. I don't even think Google image search could do that.

Quote from: aeonf on August 21, 2012, 16:23
Scott, can you please explain the term "net revenue" and is it any different then "gross revenue" ?
When you say "generally in the range of 25%-30%" does this mean that it does go down to sub 20% ?

My guess is that every transaction has it's own costs (credit card processing etc) so I'm assuming that's what makes the difference (couple of percent probably).

My guess is that the 25-30% number doesn't take into account the unused credits Yuri mentioned. I'm pretty sure Shutterstock thinks it's 100% their money, but you could argue we all contributed to it.
Maybe every year a small Christmas bonus for all users .. even 10% of the unused credits distributed proportionally to the number of downloads in a given year? It would help to go through the Christmas/New year sales slump. 

Quote from: Digital66 on August 22, 2012, 02:53
HAHAHA!   Now you are being ridiculous!   What a way to start an agency!  ROFL

You better watch where you poke your nose ...   



@OP. Seriously you shot your self in the foot with this one.  
You've got the exact same pictures on your 'agency site' and Shutterstock. The whole thread sounded a bit amateurish to me, but getting caught on a lie is not a good starting point for attracting contributors.

They do refunds.
First of all they refund video sales, which unfortunately I had a few. Sucks big time when your day starts with -$20 for example
I currently have a $0 SOD and that also might be a refund (currently trying to get some info from support).

try a polar bear during a snow storm. At least you won't need a release for a bear.

I hope you're right.
And yes. Everything I do is CGI.

slow site loading
slow sales
slow reviews ...

The whole site should be renamed to VEERy SLOW.

I've also contacted Getty video and what do you know ... they do answer quickly (within two days) AND they have an autoresponder as well .

As for images still no answer. 

Maybe someone here could advise me where to go with my stuff:
http://mopic.eu/

I'd like to get a different distribution channel. I'm a bit tired of micros' total lack of real protection from people who steal ideas. With illustrations often the unique concept is key and unfortunately it's sometime easy to copy it.
Also I have to admit I'm a bit clueless where my illustrations fit .. RF, RM?. So far I've been selling, apart from micros, on Alamy (my 3rd best site actually) and Zoonar (not much success).

Quote from: LagereekSure education is important, although I feel that 4 years of university, studies abroad counted for nothing compared to real life work experience. In my opinion attitude (i.e. positive, willingness to work hard etc.) and connections are the 2 most important factors for success.

I have a 7 year old son and I'm pretty sure by the time he grows up whatever we now think of as making a carrier, getting education etc. will completely change.
The good news is that access for education will be much better. Just look at all the new ideas poping up like Udacity. That is mainly good for people from developing nations and a bit less so for a small group of rich people living in western societies as the monopoly for access to good education ends.

The bad news is that the marketplace will change drastically. Lots of jobs in the next 20 years will be automated. Automated warehouses, cashiers etc. these are the things happening now and it's not only simple jobs, not only your "wall-mart greeters". After IBM build their supercomputer Watson (the one that won the Jeopardy game) they tested it in various other ways, for example with analyzing medical data, or finding legal cases relevant to a given subject. It outperformed most humans and that was 2010. That means that for many tasks we will have a machine doing 80-90% of the job and a few specialists taking on the more unusual cases and occasionally checking what the machines are doing . On one hand it'll mean for example better health care (as more basic services will get cheaper), but less work for mediocre specialists. The times where having a diploma meant you'll get a good paying job are over. No. You'll have to be exceptional to get a good job.

Obviously just like no one ever heard of a php-developer, or social media marketing specialist 20 years ago, just as well we can expect lots of new markets and jobs arise, but I don't think that all 7 billion people will be blogging about fashion tips, or selling their 3D printed hummus cupcakes via eBay. The age of the 'exceptionalists' is upon us and by definition everyone can't be exceptional.
We better teach our kids to be problem solvers, think creatively, learn to adapt to new challenges. Sending them to a university with a $100k a year tuition won't do the trick.

Quote from: drugal on June 08, 2012, 20:24
I'v been telling this to everyone since forever. Ppl either realize and live with the fact that this model itself is a copyright-killer because nobody in the effin universe is going to represent anyone for $1 infringements on confusing, near limitless usages - or they are naive. Of course as children usually do, they came up with an all-solving logical answer to this: I'm a dribbling evil troll : ) * sigh *

Sorry, but that's like saying that stealing $5 should be punished by giving back those $5 ... and occasionally an extra 2 minutes of jail time.
If someone was stupid or cheap enough to "save" him self a lousy $1 for a picture then he should pay all the costs involved.

Didn't get any response till now, so I guess I didn't qualify.

Quote from: Freedom on August 16, 2012, 21:51
I just want to pick up the previous discussion about Alamy. My observation is that, not only DLs, the prices have gone down drastically. One of my images was sold for a little over $100, but the print run is unlimited for both prints and e-book, the size is for 2-page spread.

I had a $ 7.63 sale on Alamy, which equals to earning  $4.58 (not a novel use one, a standard RF license) the same day I made $18 on Shutterstock for a single license dl. And occasionally people are getting even $120 on SS for a single dl. So I think the borderlines between, micro, mid and macro stock are getting more and more blurry, at least when it comes to RF.

And as for getting rich ... well I wouldn't call Yuri a guy that got wealthy on micro stock. He earned enough to open up a business and that allowed him to earn even more. No single person is in my humble opinion able to get beyond 'upper middle class' earnings in a western country. And hiring extra stuff to do keywording, helping with photoshoots etc. is making you a businessman. Not to mention hiring 100 people It also depends where you live. For example in most eastern european countries $3-4k a month is a very good wage (I'd guess top 5% or so in most cases). In US or western Europe as a photographer or a graphics artists one would easily make more.

I never really understood why is it so difficult to just response with a semi-automated e-mail "thanks, but no". It's not that hard. Also a fully automated autoresponder that would confirm one's email got through properly isn't too much to ask.