This site...stocktal...is the justice we need to change everything. It forces other dictators into line and if it doesn't...it makes sense. 78%

A high royalty percentage is a fine thing, but by itself it's irrelevant.  A high percentage of nothing is nothing, and unless there's something that compels buyers as well as suppliers, nothing good will happen.  A new agency that brings in few purchases won't force anybody else to do anything.  Besides, I fear that such a high royalty is (and here comes that word) unsustainable; it leaves the agency with insufficient revenue to fund development and marketing, both of which are required to create a viable business.

I've thrown a few images at Stocktal; if any of them sell, I'll add more.  I've seen too many agencies go nowhere to put in a major effort on mere faith.  But go ahead; I was about to say that your mileage may vary, but I don't believe it will.

True but SS could have worked with IS to raise pricing. But SS did not. Now SS owners are millionaires and the industry is forced to play on their terms.

Collusion perhaps but at least it was an attempt to get fairer pricing for our work.

SS raised subscription prices and royalties several times.  Granted, the last time was in 2008, before the financial meltdown.  After that they just created more download products that produced more revenue for themselves and for us.  They were just a lot more careful about it, not wanting to push customers away with too aggressive pricing or too many complicated offerings.  iStock went for aggressive and complicated, and look what it's done for them.

And there's no perhaps about collusion.  It's illegal, and would have been a bad move on Shutterstock's part even if it wasn't.  iStock/Getty has a long history of abusing its partners and suppliers.  Last thing I want is for another agency to get into bed with them.

August was slow, but September is doing very well for me.  Things can always fall apart in the second half, but right now I'm on track for a BME.  11% ahead of my previous best month.

If you're getting batches mostly rejected and others mostly accepted, I'd say that you really do have lighting problems.  Those sort of results indicate images on the line, where one reviewer will go (mostly) one way and another (mostly) the other way.  Take a careful look at your processing, maybe try to improve contrast, brightness, white balance, clarity or some combination.

When I get those kinds of seemingly random combinations of rejection and acceptance, it's generally because shooting conditions weren't ideal.  Shooting outdoors on a low contrast day, or a moving platform (like a scenic railroad a couple of weeks ago), compensation partially by a higher ISO.  Or shooting indoors where the lighting was hard and my effort to improve contrast was only partially successful.  In both cases I'm happy to get *something* approved, and may go back and rework some of the rejections in hope of improving my ratio.  By contrast, when I have more control over conditions, I generally get close to 100% acceptance.

If rejections really were random, we wouldn't be able to do much about it.  I don't see those random rejections and don't believe they happen nearly as often as gets claimed.

I've only had a few payouts, but they all came within four days of my requesting the money.  Not bad at all; if only they were able to generate sales.

How?

I've asked before and no one answers. What power and control do contributors have over agencies that will "end subscriptions"? Writing messages in forums and complaining to like minded people who are also underpaid for their work? Whoopee, it does nothing.

Quote from: shudderstok on August 30, 2014, 09:46

Contributors should band together to end subscription sales. It has killed the industry for suppliers and made agencies millions all the while completely devaluing the perceived value of images for stock usage.

Makes me think of the threat of a philosopher's strike in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  "Who will that inconvenience?," asks Deep Thought.

Ignoring the futility of such a gesture, to me it's misguided.  I like subscriptions; they bring me a lot more sales than I'd get if credit sales were the only option.  I've had most of my success with subscription customers, and I'm happy to supply them.  Yes, I'd love more money per sale, but I expect that the model that does the best for me will combine subscription and one-off sales.

Subscriptions won't go away no matter how much a few suppliers want it.  First there's the inertia of the vast majority of suppliers.  And then there are people like me who think that would be a bad idea, at least for a lot of us.

I imagine you're uploading regularly, so yeah they're losing market share.

Nope, or at least not possible to derive from my data.  It may well be true that I'm losing market share on DT or overall, but that says nothing about DT's share of the microstock market, and nothing about their revenues or profitability.  The former could shrink without affecting the latter, and the former could easily be growing while the results of individual suppliers decline.

I've had few rejections lately from DT, and even similars (same model in different poses) have been approved.  Year over year I'm up 25%; not awful, although still in an unimpressive 6th place.

I'm tired with unsubstantiated claims like Nikovsk's "I'm glad they're going under."  They aren't, at least as far as I can tell.  Other sites are doing better for me, but I see no indication that DT's sales have fallen apart or that their profitability is in jeopardy.  If someone else has real data, I'd like to see it.  Otherwise it's just nonsense posing as fact.

So, in sum, isn't it the same? I am wrong?

No, it's not remotely the same.  SS gives a subscription customer 25 download slots each day; whatever they don't use, they lose, which encourages them to download lots of extra images.  That means lots of extra sales for us.

DPC on the other hand sells image packs that they call a subscription.  The packs are small and cheap.  Unlike a subscription, the rights to download don't expire.  So use one or two, and the rest are waiting for whenever they're needed.  That means a customer can download just one or two images (much cheaper than an equivalent image pack at Shutterstock) and save the others for another time.  Nothing to encourage extra downloads; no "use it or lose it".  So the customer gets low prices per download and no incentive to download more.

For me it was all cons.  The only reason not to opt out immediately was that it also meant opting out of Fotolia.  Once they offered an opt out specifically for DPC, that argument evaporated.

As for the cons, it helps to consider why subscription sales are good for suppliers.  In essence, a customer is buying more than he or she needs.  Once they've downloaded what they require, either they use some or all of their remaining downloads or they lose them.  So customers download a lot more than they need, and suppliers get more sales as a result.  Yes, each sale is for a small amount.  But if we get enough of them, they add up nicely.

I can see this "might as well DL; I've paid for it" attitude in my own sales.  I upload many images from my people shoots, and I often see five, ten, or a lot more downloads at the same time.  I assume those are from individual customers who use their extra DL slots because they like my subjects.  They don't need them, but they can download them for free.  So they do.

Customers have two purchase models: subscriptions where they pay very little per download but need to download a lot to get the value; and individual purchases for a lot more per purchase.  (Credit packages are individual purchases with a volume discount; the customer gets a price break but still pays a lot more per image than a subscription offers.)  As suppliers, we get a combination of lots of small sales (subscription) and fewer large sales (one off/on demand/credit sales).

What DPC offers is per-image pricing that's close to subscriptions but without the benefit of lots of sales.  It's the worst of both worlds for suppliers.  And that's before we consider Fotolia's history of reducing supplier royalties.  Whatever pittance they pay us now will likely be reduced the next time their accountants decide they need more profit.  And if they succeed in closing down sales at other agencies with their low low prices and minimal commitment, why wouldn't they reduce royalties to the bone?  Fear for alienating their suppliers?  Not likely.

"Good artists copy, but great artists steal." - Pablo Picasso

I blame fashion magazines as well.  Where else do photographers fund entire shoots and then submit them in hope of publication, their only reward seeing their name credited (and of course the hope that someone will see it and offer them paying work).

I was approached by a men's magazine in another part of the world.  They had very specific ideas of what they wanted, and of course they wanted exclusive use of the images.  They were cagy about payment and wanted me to name a figure.  So I named one.  And they came back with one less than half of mine, for 30 images involving six different models and a three month exclusive.  So I said thanks but no.  They'd already wasted more of my time than they were willing to pay for.  But I'm sure they'll find someone who's willing.