The same number of sales, but higher royalties.

if the deal with greece fails and the euro falls, you might all be glad you get paid in dollars...the exchange rate is not fixed, right now it might be a benefit to get euros, but this could easily change.

As a European contributor, the falling Euro has its advantages. Due to the fact that dollar payments (from other agencies) have to be converted to Euros, we'll gain a little more because of the currency exchange rate.

Last year, European contributors received €75 for every $100 cashout, right now it's €87 for the same $100. Perhaps if the Euro falls, it might be €105 for every $100. (Although we'd be feeling the effects of a falling European economy then, so in the end it's looking very dire for Europe).

Economy 101 teaches us that when the demand grows, you increase your prices. But no, Shutterstock uses flawed logic in their e-mail: "4K is going to be strong, so we'll be lowering our prices!"

At least they could've tried less sugarcoating and simply say: "we can't compete on price with (most of) our competitors, so we'll be lowering prices and you'll be getting lower royalties, suck it up."

From a business point of view, I do understand their move in the long term. After all, 4K is going to become a commodity anyway, so sooner or later, a price drop was unavoidable. I just didn't expect it so soon.

There are multiple factors to consider when determining a good price:

- How well is the image doing for you? What do you expect to earn in a lifetime? (taking into account shelf life: 3 yrs, 5 yrs... perhaps more?)
- Is it a unique image or a very common one?
- Who is the potential buyer: a small start up business or a large corporation? (Which you probably don't know.)

I consider $300 way too low for the full rights, especially if you get only 50% of that price.
I once asked a price of about $650. It wasn't a particularly well performing image. They accepted. It was a direct request by e-mail so I got to keep the full 100% on that sale. Afterwards I got the feeling I could have asked more.

I've had another image sale (via an agency) which netted me more than that. The agency did the negotiations and asked a few thousand dollars. I was baffled to hear they accepted, but it goes to show there are buyers who are willing to pay.

Sure, most buyers will be scared off, but if you're going too low you're leaving money on the table. The way you value your images may be different than the way they value them. So don't be too scared to negotiate and don't undervalue your work.

Quote from: danr13 on June 15, 2015, 15:12

So.. a month later - the same question - did anyone receive his payout?

Me - still not.

I did but Paypal has reversed the payment as suspicious and required me to go to their resolution center to put in my explanation of the payment.

I noticed I had Paypal notification about that too, but it seemed to have been resolved the same day without any necessary action on my part. How about you?

In my case, very few OD's in the first half of the month, but the second half they're picking up again.

The OP's theory is flawed.

and not have to pay for any they downloaded until an image is actually used in a project.

This goes for any agency. Besides, Adobe only makes it easier to use comp images, which might drive sales because of the lower treshold.

They download extra images that they use in the design stage of their projects, or maybe just to have on hand in case they might be used in a project in the future. Because it is all part of the subscription price that allows them 750 downloads per month there is no additional charge for downloading these extra images.

They've paid for those images, and they're not using all of them. You could even call that a win for the contributor; your image is not being used, yet you still get paid.
But no, in reality, it's irrelevant whether the sold images are being used or not; a sale is a sale.

Finally, some good news!

Glad to see something that's looking positive for a change. I noticed I've jumped to Silver status overnight and I had my first Adobe Stock On Demand sale for 3.30 Cr., so we're off to a nice start.

Questions:
1. Do I understand correctly that the royalty percentage for subscriptions and Adobe Stock sales will from now on be 33%, and credit sales will still be according to rank percentage (25% at Silver)?
2. I have video subscriptions disabled at the moment (because the returns were too low), but I noticed that video subscriptions are now 35% royalty, with a minimum of 17.50 for HD? So that means video subscriptions are now worth it to opt in?

I didn't downvote you either, but I kind of consider threads like "This weekend was the worst ever, is agency X dying?!" and "Look at me, 7 EL's on a holiday!" a bit useless.

Anyhow, congrats on your Sunday (so that's where all the sales went!). But I think posting in an existing thread would have been sufficient. Otherwise it becomes a list of useless threads without any discussion value.

Quote from: Noedelhap on June 08, 2015, 12:31

I had over $100 in earnings before the end of May, but the amount has not yet been removed from my balance. I thought it was supposed to happen on the 5th day of the month?

And you expected iStock computer systems to work efficiently why, exactly?

To the contrary, I'm so wary of them effin' up that I was already starting to worry.

I had over $100 in earnings before the end of May, but the amount has not yet been removed from my balance. I thought it was supposed to happen on the 5th day of the month?

I believe one of my images has been downloaded via DPC, is this correct?

I have received the following royalties (bronze):

Subscription V All sizes 0.27 Credits (for the initial download on 2015-05-26)

Standard XXL All sizes 2.76 Credits (on 2015-06-01)

My video uploads still don't appear in the Ready to Submit section...even though everything appears to be up and running. Does anyone else experience the same thing?