I ditched BigStock and I don't contribute video anywhere, but this sort of half-answer bothers me a lot.

1) Cheap, high volume subscription pricing would appear to risk siphoning off buyers of higher quality content (as low priced photo subscriptions siphoned off buyers from macro agencies back when Shutterstock opened its doors). Granted, SS quality has increased massively since the beginning, but why wouldn't the same trajectory happen with video?

2) The fact that some contributors are OK with selling their work at very low prices (not just this BigStock video, but things like Fotolia's awful DPC) doesn't make it a good thing for contributors overall. What one group does has an effect on the whole contributor community, not just on the people willingly submitting.

3) I think that it's possible you won't increase the market for clips by cutting the price - there are all sorts of reasons to use photos or illustrations vs. video on lots of web sites, and price is only one part of the story. What that then means is you start conditioning the existing pool of buyers to expect lower prices.

High volume/low price can work - that's what allowed Shutterstock to be such a success. But low volume/low price is just awful for contributors - which is where subscriptions just about everywhere else have ended up. The other agencies want to have what SS does but they can't get the volume up.

It seems to me that SS might want to test things out at BigStock so that they can see if they can develop a market while avoiding having any impact on existing video sales at SS. The evolution of microstock from the traditional agencies - of which SS was a major part - suggests that this idea of keeping different parts separate so one doesn't affect the other is naive.

Just because it's "appropriately" licensed and contributors volunteered, doesn't make it a good thing for contributors as a whole.

I use Backblaze + offline disks for archiving. Even if I could use the Prime storage for photos, I'd still need Backblaze for everything else. Given that Backblaze is one price per computer for unlimited storage, I don't really have an incentive to switch.

Another photographer who looked at this said that the no commercial use limitation did apply, so I don't know what to make of conflicting answers on that aspect of the storage deal.

...Yes we are small at the moment but at least we are bigger than you Jo Ann Snover...

That's true, but it's not any way to measure the success of a stock agency. If you're inviting photographers to contribute (how this thread started), you're going to need to give them a reason to hand over their valuable intellectual property to you to license. Other than you being rather defensive when questions are asked, what have any of us learned about your site?

I took another look just now to see if anything had changed and it appears not. The recent uploads are more LCV shots that have awful keywording (not spam, just insufficient), for example:

http://www.i2istockphotos.com/store/stock-photo/pomegranates-12858.html

I can't see how a site like this will appeal to buyers or potential contributors. But that's just one person's opinion, and I'm am smaller than most

Of all the solo stock photographers contributing to microstock right now, even limiting it to full time producers (scenario 2), I wonder how many are earning the almost $70,000 a year that scenario 2 in this blog post talks about?

I'm not saying there aren't any, just that there are not that many who can do that. I don't think these numbers represent a typical or average full time microstock photographer.

I also don't think the amateur scenario is all that realistic - no one will get anywhere with a strategy of "Just upload everything on the card!", largely because that would only pass inspection at iStock You can be part time (which is what I think the writer really means by amateur) and zero cost but still more focused, skilled and purposeful than pet snapshots.

Most of us - certainly me - are such small fish in the SS universe that anything I report about my earnings is more a reflection of my portfolio than anything else. I can't see it of having any value to someone looking to profit via the stock market.

However, I did find Mr. Pickerell's lack of preparation on the topic he wants to report on - for pay - irritating in its laziness.

He wants us to give him information and he can't even be bothered to ask in terms that a contributor could provide. If he had even one contributor show him the interface we get to look at, he'd know that what he's asking for is impossible for us to answer. In which case he would do better by asking for specific information we do have - which people could then decide to provide or not as they see fit.

He also doesn't offer anything in return, which seems a bit entitled to me, especially as he expects to sell his intelligence.

SS doesn't report a category of Enterprise to contributors. There is SOD, Single and Other Downloads, which may be mostly corporate customers. My range there is 38 cents to $102 (the Facebook deal are the 38 cent items, I think). I'm not part of Offset

On Demand is higher volume than SOD, but fixed royalties of $1.24 and $2.85. I have no idea if those are part of Enterprise or not

The promotional video on YouTube is quite funny, talks about professional human translators of the keywords (no more of funny google translation from English to Arabic keywords), but in the video the voice seems to have been done on google translator. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTl6cX3E_zI

It's not just the voice, but the sentences are virtually pidgin they're so bad! At the end it says "Photographer? What you wait?" as but one example of the truly awful mangled English. Why do a video in English if you're trying to serve the arabic-speaking markets? And if you are planning to try and attract English speaking photographers, get someone to help you with the text.

http://www.123rf.com/myaccount_v2.php

The watermark is the same as the Value 10 collection on Inmagine (the stuff mirrored from 123rf)

http://dubistock.com/stock-photos/noblige130200007-17647244.html
http://www.inmagine.com/noblige1302/pro17647244-photo

My stuff isn't there (as it's now gone from Inmagine's mirroring now they've honored the opt out setting for their parent company)

I don't care any more, but I wonder if DubiStock takes a cut and then pays Inmagine a portion, then they take 40-50% and pass on the rest to 123rf from which pittance the contributor gets a royalty. How many bites of that apple make sense to anyone but the agencies grabbing a bit more of our cash?

Why couldn't 123rf do a deal directly with DubiStock instead? At least that would give the buyer what they want (assuming they want DubiStock) and more money would go to the contributor

http://www.123rf.com/photo_17647244_smiling-beautiful-woman-at-the-beach-with-her-son.html

I had been opted out of API sales for a long time. My images are now gone from Inmagine (I did a couple of searches and paged through the results to be sure they really were not there, even though the drop in numbers and absence from the first page suggested something had changed).

... I find it too hard to keep track of sales there to tell with my own files.

I nominated whatever my quota was back in 2011 when I returned from exclusivity. I haven't updated anything since (more uploads means more slots) in part because it's too hard to see what's sold in what numbers. 123rf doesn't sell enough to make it worth spending any time trying to figure this out.

A real test would be to nominate some of your worst files - things you think in retrospect no one in their right mind would buy. If those sell, then you know this promotion works. If it's just your bestsellers you nominate, who's to say they wouldn't be selling well because of the image, not your artificial boost in the rankings

I don't buy this - I understand it, but it's just not relevant to the royalties we should be paid. The fact that you weren't up front with this arrangement suggests something less than fair, reasonable and ethical - why wasn't this all spelled out in the royalty chart and contributor agreement?

I don't want to argue the details of the costs of the two sites because I don't have the data to do so, however I do not want to participate in these operations where one company gets two bites of the buyer's money before I get any. I want to opt my images out of this deal - I'm already opted out of the API partner deals.

I would suggest that you offer an opt out in the UI so that contributors can know what's going on and choose what to do. If you can't do that, I want my images removed in whatever way you can - I can remove them, but I'd rather not do that if there's something less drastic that can be done.

Switching away from a flat 50% royalty was the first profit-fattening move 123rf made. Now this secret arrangement to bypass the partner opt out and take two chunks out of the image price before paying contributors is a second profit-fattening move. I can see why you like it, but can't you see why the people who create what you sell feel shortchanged and abused by this?