I closed my Istock account in 2019.

15% to me is an insult.

1000 $ earned: 850 $ to Istock and 150 $ to photographers.

I am a full time stock photographer and prefer more commissioned work (that i don't like) than helping these greed agencies.

And if the few big sales on SS run out, I'll close their account as well.

That's the scary thing about SS....what if the "big sales" do run out. Photog's earnings would really plummet.

Where or how do "connect" sales show up in the spreadsheet?

The pattern that is emerging from where I sit is that SS used to be the clear $$$ leader. They seem to be fading and moving into a neck and neck position with AS and iS. And this is with SS having the  broadest range of acceptance (Commercial, full range editorial with and without people).

Quote from: wds on April 08, 2022, 12:38

I believe so, you can always try it and see. As I understand it, the only Editorial they won't accept are photos with people in them.....unfortunately.

I keep hearing this, but my experience is a very different one: I can hardly get any editorial images accepted on Adobe at all. The only ones that always go through are the strict illustrative editorial ones, whith a product placed on a white background for example. As for everything else, like street shots, fabric buildings (without any people!) I always get the the image is against the " Illustrative Editorial Guidelines" rejection.  I could never figure out why this seems to work for other people on Adobe, but not for me.

Maybe Matt can weigh in on this one?

P5 may feel that since they sell so few images, they want to scale back review resources etc.. as a way to keep their costs down perhaps?

I am surprised that Adobe doesn't remove that type of metadata from the file.

The things that made SS great (in the good ole days) were volume and the occasional big SOD and/or EL. Starting 2022 it seems to me that all these factors have gone. For me the volume has dropped off a cliff and any days when there is a little volume it's all ten and teen cents when it used to be 38 cents. Haven't had a decent SOD or EL so far this year and only made payout in Feb because the sales were cumulative from Jan when I didn't make minimum payout.

On AS, I get less sales in numbers but for the majority of sales the minimum amount is $0.35 and I have many for $1.00 for which I need 8-10 sales at SS to make the same money.

Yes, the 10 centers are demotivating. The scary part is how will the ratio of SOD/EL sales to "10 centers" change? I wonder if the ratio of "SOD/EL"s to "10 centers" is as crucial to SS success as it is to contributors success.

Quote from: SVH on February 19, 2022, 16:20

The good thing with AS is that with every normal sale it will outweigh SS by factor 3.3, 6.6 or 9.9. So one sale at AS of 99 cents you will need ten sales at SS to cover it.

The problem is that AS rarely has big sales. It seems they don't do extended licenses or just don't promote it. And then one good EL at SS will make up for all the lousy ten cents sales.

So what is better? If you don't go for both?

both, definitely - i don't recall anyone reporting an RPD of < 10c for SS

 i don't need 10 SS sales for each AS sale since SS continues to have more EL, SOD; so, my SS RPD averages 40-50c while AS averages 90c over the last year. and since SS sales are about 1/3 of SS, SS generates 2x the income compared to AS

ymmv

My concern is what happens if the SS bigger sales start to go away, then SS earnings will plummet. One could have a nightmare about endless 10 cent commissions!

Yes, it is interesting he left iS exclusive. I would imagine he is in a very good position to judge exclusivity vs. non-exclusivity.

Quote from: wds on February 16, 2022, 09:26

Quote from: Wilm on February 16, 2022, 08:55

Quote from: wds on February 16, 2022, 07:51

I still don't understand why the agencies don't try a pricing model where an image's price increases as its download numbers increase. They will make more, the contributor will make more.

This is exactly what dreamstime does.

Level 1 = 0 downloads
Level 2 = 1+ download
Level 3 = 5+ downloads
Level 4 = 10+ downloads
Level 5 = 25+ downloads

And, yes, I love this model.

Nevertheless, it has to be said that you can't earn big money at dreamstime because not enough sales come in. I have not even managed 3,500 downloads in the 10 years. Even if the RPD is good there, hardly anything comes in.

Interesting! I am not on Dreamstime and had no idea. How does it end up "dollars and cents"wise? What do you actually earn for a download of a "level 1" image vs. a "level 5" image?

...When this was introduced (many years ago) I had high hopes, but it has not worked out well at all. In the beginning, high level images sold via subscription netted a 70 cent royalty versus 35 cents and part of the "bait" when persuading contributors that subscriptions were a good thing (Dreamstime had previously been credits only) was that increasing subscription sales would boost your images' level and thus increase your earnings when credit sales happened.

But subscriptions canibalized credit sales, the higher subscription royalties went away and I now earn much less at Dreamstime per year than I did. As an example of the rare credit sale, last September I had a level 5 image sold for $7.82 royalty (18 credits) but that is the exception

I see your point. I guess in the world of subs, the "graduated scale" would have to have steep curve. Instead of "70 cent vs. 35 cent" it would have to be more like an order of magnitude for a top level image...more like "$3.50 vs. 35 cent" the customer would have to be willing to use "10 subs worth" for one image I guess.

I still don't understand why the agencies don't try a pricing model where an image's price increases as its download numbers increase. They will make more, the contributor will make more. I don't see a downside....but apparently the agencies do?

Matt, can you look into whether or not Adobe will accept the new iStock model releases that don't require a witness?

Thanks!

Looks like iStock has a new model release that does not require a witness signature.
The policy of agencies in the past has been to accept model releases from other agencies.
I wonder if AS, SS etc. will accept the new "witness not required" release from Getty/iStock?

Also, will the other agencies drop "witnesses" from their future release requirements?