Quote from: john_woodcock on February 15, 2011, 19:05
OK, I was just curious on what your figures are based. I'd say the majority of top sellers are exclusive because the benefits are strong and most are happy with their income and, judging by the experience of those who've given up exclusivity, feel dropping exclusivity would not be a good move at the moment.

The majority of top sellers are not exclusive....Yuri and most of the other big names are all independents there are a few exceptions of course.

This really is a major de-railment to this thread. I made my decision to go independent based on the RPIs which have been posted many times in forums by exclusives from istock/fotolia as compared to independents.  Note: I have only been tracking photography numbers, vector artists will have significantly different numbers. What I have determined and the reason why most people who do stock photography are not exclusive (only 14% of istock is exclusive) is that if you submit to the top 9 micro sites (plus alamy) you will earn around twice the RPI (hence twice the overall earnings). for independents with 9 sites plus alamy it seems to be between $1-1.50 RPI (I earn $1.35) if you add up RPIs for all sites. If you are earning in that RPI range as exclusive after recent cuts than there is no reason to go independent, but most aren't. And after the recent cuts I am very happy i did not lock myself into an exclusive contract.  While I feel confident in the numbers I have been working with, as soon as leaf publishes a more complete breakdown of earnings for his 2010 survey we will once and for all have definitive RPI averages....that will be much more scientific than my piecing together of various peoples RPIs posted over the years. I look forward to seeing some real hard data. Perhaps I will just create an RPI poll myself, that might be interesting. I understand there are other reasons than the money to not go independent... some people simply don't want to spend the time to upload to 10 sites which is a totally valid argument.

Out of respect for the original poster I really am not trying to open up pandoras pox here in this thread. We can further this discussion in another thread if needed.

This is really a discussion for independent photographers...obviously you would be against it if you were exclusive, and I am not sure why anyone is still exclusive, we've seen the numbers comparisons so many times and you just don't make more money as exclusive but thats another discussion, people seem to get emotionally entrenched in a stock site not sure why but if you simply look at your spread sheets you would make better decisions if you only took into account the numbers. Thats what the OP did, simply stop promoting sites that cause you to lose money, it is simple basic business sense detached from how you feel about a company. Anyway it seems the negative comments are all from exclusive photographers, it is not even worth de-railing this very useful and constructive thread to explain to those Negative-Nancys the simple logic of why one would chose to tell a buyer to buy an image from a site where they would earn more money rather than sending buyers to a site you know you will earn less at.  I like to compare the exclusives and Wooyayers to Patty Hearst and the Stockholm Syndrome thing.  There is a real psychological disorder where people will begin protecting and befriending their captors, it's a mechanism to help us reduce the emotional pain from being stripped of our dignity (15% commisions) it makes us feel like we are in control of the situation.  Stop protecting sites that kidnap and abuse you...there is hope out there in the rest of the stock world and thankfully it has not been completely monopolized yet as long as there are choices for buyers we won't get totally screwed but as soon as only istock is left you can be sure our commission will drop to 5%. Support a competitive free market while it lasts.

Not sure why everyone is jumping all over the OP?

This makes perfectly logical sense...wouldn't you rather on the rare occasion that we can influence a buyer where to purchase that we should send them to sites that have the highest Return Per Download for us.  That is perfect business sense and I applaud your efforts to support sites with fair payouts for me it is not the percentage that matters but how much money I actually make per sale on average.   If I send a buyer to Dreamstime or canstock I get the highest Return for the download. If I send a client to fotolia, I get one of the lowest payments in the industry.  It makes perfect sense.  We don't need to drop all big sites, we just need to start directing our clients to the places that will pay us the most for the purchase.  

Not sure why everyone has a problem with such logical thinking.  The argument that the mid sites will become big and lower their commissions doesn't make any sense...what would likely happen is that the big sites will see that people are flocking to other sites and try and adjust their business model to be more like the competition.  

There is not a lot we can do to influence these sites but on the rare opportunity we have to direct someone we really should send them to places that benefit us the most...everyone needs to figure out there own statistics and do what works in their own best interest, Make a list of RPD and direct traffic to the site with the highest RPD.  Percentages of commissions don't mean a whole lot and neither does which site has the highest overall earnings. what matters is who pays the most per download.

Here are my numbers in order of highest pay per download, I use this as my guide to direct buyers where to go.

dreamstime  $1.69
canstock       $1.42
bigstock        $1.15
Istock           $0.92*
123rf            $0.65
Fotolia          $0.64*
Shutterstock  $0.55

*all numbers are an average of the past 12 months these are numbers not taking into account the recent commision cut since they just happened, so presumably fotolia and IS will have roughly 20% lower numbers in the coming year.

One of the first rules in sales is...don't think out of your own pocket think out of the buyers pocket.  That is to say, just because you are a poor starving artist and buy ramen noodles for dinner doesn't mean that you should project your own poverty on the person buying, you must do some acting and pretend what it would be like to have multiple millions,  do you think it is crazy to spend a million on a house....no you don't because it is an investment you say....when art sells in the higher ranges it is usually done knowing full well that in the past 50 years art has been the best investment one can make...there is not another way to invest that returns more money than popular art.  I purchased a photo for $1000 4 years ago form a very popular photographer, the edition of 40 has now sold out it is currently valued at 10,000 I would say earning 1000% on my money is a lot better than any investment I could have made, and I haven't sold it yet.  I will hang on to the photo and enjoy it until I want to sell it and buy a few other lower priced pieces and then sell those when I don't want them any more and so on and so on all the while feeling good about supporting up and coming artist while making a great investment. It is the best place to put your money as it will never go down in value if it is limited edition form a popular photographer.

Quote from: Phil on February 12, 2011, 10:24

Quote from: sweetgirll on February 12, 2011, 02:50
I just have a request...

The images in that portal appeared with the copyright next to my real name.

However at Veer and other microstock sites I use a pseudonym / alias....so I'd like the copyright to my "alias'.

Monica

how do you do that? I thought we were stuck at real names.

wow photogenica has a shocking search engine, try green tree frog or outer space  (you need hit english), if I was a customer it would be closed very quick.

Chelsey, do you if being able to redo keywords is on the future agenda for veer? (I have 1000-2000 almost dead images from snapvillage days, not sure whether to delete and reupload)

OMG yes this is long overdue, every site lets us edit keywords, All my snapvillage content is totally dead too as the keywords and desriptions have been dropped or severely messed up.  I was told the issue would automatically be corrected a year ago and it never has, can we please at least have the ability to correct bad or missing keywords please. And Since we just experienced massive copyright infringement at another site through partners re-distributing images without copyright info, you can not expect us to just trust you. There is no need for the word trust in business all that needs to happen is full transparency of how much images sell for and how much we get and the option to opt out of those programs in the event they turn out to be fraudulent like they have so many times in the past.

Not true...they did not pay prompt they didn't even have images reviewed until over a month later than they initially promised in their advertisement, with the excuse that they got more uploads then they expected, so rather than hire more reviewers to meet their advertised deadline they just decided to go back on their word and make everyone wait for an extra month to get paid. I know this is old news and most people simply forget these things but for some reason when a company says they are going to do something and then doesn't it always sticks in my mind as a big red flag of the way they do business, I knew from day one when they did the automatic file transfers from the other site in the beginning and screwed up the descriptions and keywords and said they would fix them all within the month, to this day I have files with no descriptions and many keywords never transferred over. A year later they have not been fixed. There is still no way to go back and edit once things are uploaded (standard at every other site) the ability to go back and edit is a necessity if those errors are ever to be corrected, I am not earning any sales on the images with messed up keywords. I do really wish they get it together I want to see the site succeed as there is a lot of potential there, but so many things need to be fixed....if the buyer side is as hard to navigate as the contributor side that explains why they are all the way down at number seven in earnings ratings on the right. that is an average of only $10 a month I believe form the way the polls are done here. 

I second that, the industry standard is to allow contributers to opt out and also report all partner sales, this is how almost every other stock site work, why is veer being so sneaky. This is very shady and while I don't suspect veer is doing anything malicious yet there have been plenty of other sites that have,so I can't just take their word for it anymore all trust has been lost and transparency is the only way to go forward...if veer starts partnering up with little sketchy sites without telling us we may have the same issues as when we had mass copyright infringement recently with the pixmac debacle and countless other situations.  This kind of sneaky stuff is really scary after all the nonsense due to lack of transparency. Veer, you absolutely have to be transparent when reselling our work this IS the only ethical/legal thing to do.

such a headache to navigate that site, I kin dof gave up on them after the highly offensive bait and switch called dash for cash!  They ran out of money for hte dash for cash program halfway through and just started rejecting about half the stuff, If you got in in the beginning 90% was getting accepted if you got in after they ran out of money you got about 50% or more rejection, I spent so many hours getting stuff ready for veer only to have most of that time be wasted, people have since been uploading the rejected dash for cash files only to have them all accepted. I really felt scammed, they knew they could get those images for free after the promotion as most people just re-uploaded them.

Quote from: madelaide on February 12, 2011, 18:43

Quote from: luissantos84 on February 12, 2011, 01:41

Quote from: madelaide on February 11, 2011, 23:53
I never understood what makes an artwork get so much value.

maybe http://www.peterlik.com/awards

Peter Lik Galleries are a work of art, in and of themselves—as you'll see upon entering. Designed and conceived by the artist, all fourteen galleries—from New York to Australia— exhibit an exquisite attention to detail, and reveal the essence of fine art. Come join us today and experience what makes Peter Lik the most important landscape photographer in the world.

Still, I don't understand why a piece of artwok can be valued so much.

This attitude is the reason photography isn't considered worthy of art purchases by many art collectors. There is a distinction between photography collectors (people who only collect photography) and art collectors who mostly collect oil paintings and perhaps drawings.  The gap needs to be bridged so collectors start considering fine art photography worthy of addition to their collections.

This price point is completely normal for rare works especially oil paintings....with paintings there are only ever one original.  When I worked at a high-end art gallery the biggest reason clients gave that they didn't buy photography was that most photographers didn't limit the editions or the editions were very large like 250.  When you are printing 250 of the same image you can not expect art buyers to be attracted to it.  I think it is wonderful that photography is slowly getting the clout and the money it has long deserved.  From my art sales experience I can tell you photography as art is a very hard sell. When someone wants to buy art for over the fireplace they usually consider oil paintings...it is only the rare and sophisticated buyer who will even consider photography for the coveted over-the-mantel position. I think the idea of high priced editions of one single image never to be reprinted again is the way photography needs to go if art buyers are going to take it seriously.  Most of the best selling photographer's works are limited to editions of 1 up to 40 but many stick around the 10 area.  Much of the fun of collecting anything is knowing that is is unique, that there aren't thousands of other people with the same thing. There has been much analysis of the psychology of collecting fine things. When something is rare enough and strikes a connection with the person who wants it money is no object. We have all made purchases of things we've wanted which are difficult to justify to others but have made us so happy.  I don't think we need to be questioning weather or not a photograph is worth a million dollars because obviously it is to some people, we need to be asking how can we learn from this sale and what types of circumstances lends itself to such a high price tag.  Looking on the website I see mostly very commercial landscapes of places that have been shot to death in the stock world...antelope canyon, arches national park, the Brooklyn bridge, etc etc. what is different is the limited edition and that he makes it fun for the buyer.  Psychologists have compared collecting art to the equivalent of playing for adults. Many wealthy people don't have the outlet or time to let go and play like a child but they can find that fun and joy through the process of purchasing art, this guy creates a unique and fun environment for adults to play before they make their purchase. that is a big part of what they are paying for. Many collectors chose to remain anonymous, once you buy a work like this, museums are all over you trying to get you to lend it to them for a year or the calls start coming in to get you to donate to this or that museum..they really can be like vultures once a purchase is considered "important" they all want to be the first to display it.

Oops sorry about the old link....I was trying to link to this more recent stroy http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12399648

John Paul Getty III has died....he was the first son who the father snubbed in the will, he gave the bulk of the family fortune to son number two instead, Mark, who from what I understand used the money to open Getty Images.  I just find this family history very interesting and complicated, the son was kidnapped and the father refused to pay the ransom and left his son for 5 months until they cut off his ear!  Pretty wild story.  I just always find it interesting who the personalities are behind starting such giant/successful corporations.

does the middle tier rating of 2.5 mean that they earn on average between >$5 a month or is that >$10 I forget which one is rating #2 .  I always wish the rating system would simply change to actual dollar amount would just make more sense to now what the average earnings are rather than a number that represents some range of earnings.

Doesn't sound worth the effort for $5 a month

Wow!! This is unbelievable!  I guess we need to be very careful about logging out everytime we are done at StockXpert

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12399648


edit: wrong outdated link

all silly answers aside....most people seem to average roughly $1-1.50 per image per month total. On average these numbers take into account that most people are on the top four plus about 4 other low earning sites. so if your portfolio is 800 and you actually get 800 images on about 8 sites you should earn $800 that is if you are earning $1 per month per image. I have mostly nature (no people) and earn $1.35 per month per image on average.

Quote from: luissantos84 on February 04, 2011, 17:01
Luis,

What you see under February 4, 2011 are your December earnings. Everything is now up to date. December 2010 and January 2011 sections will remain at 0.

Thank you.

Darek

iStockphoto Team

they don´t even know how to express/write

No it does not appear that everything is up to date!.....only subscription sales have been posted for me..Pay per download has not been posted yet...I can't imagine I didn't even have one pay per download since november!  Stll waiting for all my sales from November to show up.  Are other people seeing Pay-per-download earnings yet?

I don't understand what this means? can someone tell me straight up, I haven't done my taxes yet. Do I only need to report earnings from sites that paid me over $600, or do I need to report all sites?

Censorship like this is an admission to guilt! Istock would not be censoring people if they didn't feel that they were saying something that was correct.  I stock will most likely make millions off of this lawsuit...lets not forget that the penalty for copyright infringement is about $10,000 per infringement....multiply by how many images were stolen...that is millions...will the contributor see any of the settlement money?....Absolutely not! At any retail store I have ever worked in my life, Credit card companies are always responsible for stolen credit cards, it is never the merchants responsibility.  Why should it be different than how amazon or anyother online store works.  Something fishy is going on here.

the new microstocksubmitter software has a quick meta function for keywording.  if you only upload 50 images per site each month its free and pretty reasonably priced if you upload more I think we should be supporting this software it is actively being improved every day

"Checking to see if sales were entered correctly!!!!" If we didn't keep bitching would we have gotten the second payment? No we wouldn't have! We need to keep a very close eye on these guys and if anything happens like the repetition thing again we need to take our own screen shots of the sales before they delete them.  They can no longer be trusted to pay us correctly.

Quote from: jcpjr on February 01, 2011, 18:17
$2.50...I sure hope that's not it...did anyone get a reply from Joy?

never got a reply from joy!  I know I had more than 8 sales in november we could see how many sales we had for a day when that repetition thing happened! This is not just outrageous anymore, it has now become criminal! They have simply just stolen our money.

I have no idea how to make sense of the sales that are coming in on Stockxpert. It seems they are updating real time now?  I am still missing sales from Nov.1-January31 (three full months) I am showing $2 in sales for what looks like sales for one day, today, better not be $2 for three months as I know I made a lot more than than.  I really wish there was some admin-type person from getty or istock or thinkstock or stockxpert (or whoever is running the show) who could post here and explain to us what is going on.  So frustraing!

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on January 29, 2011, 10:09

Quote from: MatHayward on January 27, 2011, 06:24I believe the low prices and the low commissions are a direct reflection of the lack of any loyalty by photographers with the desire to spam the market with images everywhere that will take them.  If photogs picked their horse and stuck with it then the sites would be competing to get the best photographers.  As it is, they all have most of you and as a result buyers have the luxury of choosing a site based on price structure rather than the quality of the images.  They can get the exact same images pretty much everywhere!  As a result, the sites then must cannibalize each other to attract the buyers along with an increase in spending to recruit buyers they have to squeeze more out of contributors while charging less.  It's logical but it sucks none the less.  I don't foresee any drastic changes to the mindset of the masses here any time soon to change that so I can't help but think it's only going to get worse in the industry  Especially for non-exclusives.  

That's an interesting thought but the fact is that iStock has scr*wed most of its leading exclusives harder than anybody else. Exclusive benefits have become a weapon to use against them, because they have invested so much in iStock that they can't afford to change horses.

Yes I agree. What's with all of these Stockholm Syndrome - Patty-Hearst-type exclusives?  Actually sticking up for, and protecting your captor can not be healthy.  Yes, I see, it is my own fault my husband hits me, give me a break, as stated above being loyal didn't help anyone from getting screwed (with the exception of a few at the very top).  You can't seriously blame the photographers for these sites lowering commissions when exclusives are seeing cuts too.  Do you really think when sites have millions of images there is anyway for a particular agency to have unique images! There are so many photographers all clamoring to take photos of the same things, it makes good business sense to focus your energy on proven sellers Unless you are a small niche site with less than 100,000 images you are not going to have unique content ever.  I would go exclusive if any site offered better pay than I get by being with ten sites its very simple to run the numbers not an emotional decision purely numbers I do what makes me the most money. No agency has stepped up to the plate yet with a high enough percent to actually come out better by going exclusive.

sent an email also, perhaps we can flood this person with emails..someone needs to take on this project...I really am starting to think we have been scammed and are never going to see our cash.

I have gone back to re-order my keyword so that the first 5 are the most relevant. And when I check back they have all been automatically re-aranged? does anyone know how to get your keywords to stay in order?