If you were at the 30% level you would have earned $4.35 for single On Demand sales.  2 images for $29 is $14.50 each and 30% of that is $4.35.  The old earnings schedule had "Single/Two Image On Demand & Any Products Not Listed" listed as 30% of sale price now it's been changed to say "Custom Image".
https://web.archive.org/web/20150728180651/https://submit.shutterstock.com/earnings_schedule.mhtml

I'm not 100% sure that Single On Demand sales aren't included in the Custom Image category but from the change of language I would guess they've changed categories which means a lower royalty rate. 

They actually did change.  Single On Demand sales used to be paid at a percentage, up to 30%.  30% of $9.99 would have been about $3 now it's $2.85.  By switching them from the Custom Image category to the On Demand category they lowered royalty rates.

This is from last month:  https://web.archive.org/web/20150728180651/https://submit.shutterstock.com/earnings_schedule.mhtml

Looks like Shutterstock dropped single image pricing from $29 for two images to $9.99 for one.  Anyone know if royalties are lowered too?  In the old earnings schedule single OD sales were a different category than other OD sales, do they now fall under On Demand or Custom sales? 

ETA:  I guess they would be lowered either way.  They used to get up to $4.35 per sale (30 percent of $14.50) now I guess you get $2.85 for those sales which also means your royalty rate was lowered from 30% to 28.5%.

Quote from: tickstock on August 23, 2015, 21:24

Quote from: pancaketom on August 23, 2015, 21:11

Quote from: tickstock on August 23, 2015, 21:08

Quote from: crispy on August 23, 2015, 20:21

Quote from: tickstock on August 23, 2015, 18:46

That's not exactly what's happening.

That is exactly what is happening, at least to my files. If it's not happening to your files then good for you but I and many others have complained about this in the iStock forums and we just get stone walled, being told it doesn't happen and everything is rosy in the garden and working as it should.
I got so fed up with this a while back that I raised a support ticket and was told that the popularity of keywords can affect the display order, which is absolutely crazy because you can put your four least relevant keywords last and have them immediately sent to the front because they happen to be popular in the searches, ruining the similars and best match relevancy.
The whole keywording system is so fundamentally flawed it's as if iStock are deliberately trying to lose sales.

Keywords move up as your file is downloaded, buyers should be determining the relevancy not an algorithm or some editor.

In my experience what SHOULD be happening and what IS happening at Istock are two very different things.

That is how it works.  When there is no data (sales or views) you get a boost in your first keywords set by the contributor.  Nothing is determined by an editor's subjective thoughts or an algorithm that guesses what the subject is.

Are you sure you don't work for iStock/Getty? I've read conspiracy posts from others who have suggested that, and always mentally belittled the idea. But now I am confronted with posts from you that seem 100% as if they were written by iStock staffers: Totally ignoring both the evidence that is clear to everyone else, as well as posts made by ShadySue, crispy, and hatman12 that clearly state what we all (but you) have seen.

I'm sorry, you can reiterate the company line ad infinitum (whether you are or are not staff is irrelevant), but that will not make the facts of what is actually happening any less true.

If you understand how the keywording works you'll be able to fix most of the issues you're having.  Not that the system works perfectly just that there are ways to get around it and make it work reasonably well.  While you guys are looking for things to complain about I try to figure out solutions.

Quote from: tickstock on August 23, 2015, 18:46

That's not exactly what's happening.

That is exactly what is happening, at least to my files. If it's not happening to your files then good for you but I and many others have complained about this in the iStock forums and we just get stone walled, being told it doesn't happen and everything is rosy in the garden and working as it should.
I got so fed up with this a while back that I raised a support ticket and was told that the popularity of keywords can affect the display order, which is absolutely crazy because you can put your four least relevant keywords last and have them immediately sent to the front because they happen to be popular in the searches, ruining the similars and best match relevancy.
The whole keywording system is so fundamentally flawed it's as if iStock are deliberately trying to lose sales.

Keywords move up as your file is downloaded, buyers should be determining the relevancy not an algorithm or some editor.

Yep that's how it works.  Until you get sales or maybe views the first keywords are given extra relevancy, you have to make sure to put the relevant ones first.

Quote from: sgoodwin4813 on August 23, 2015, 10:04

Quote from: izzikiorage on August 22, 2015, 23:00

And then there's the finance bit, if a company is taking 70% of the price then they have that much more money to spend on marketing, promotions, meetings with buyers etc. So its hard for a new company to retain less money and be more competitive unless we all realize that if we get more money we also have to shoulder some of the marketing responsibility (stocksy did this well, with all the contributors-owners sharing it heavily on social media) maybe we all can do the same for 500px or Pond5 or Canva or Alamy

One problem is that some of them are using their take for CEO bonuses and stock options while their market share decreases. 

Alamy and 123rf both gave us commission cuts with the promise that their extra take was going for increased marketing for better sales but I didn't notice an increase at either one.  At 123 I'm sure it was just for the owners.  Alamy gives most of their profits to charity, but it is a charity run by the family that runs the agency.  I have tried to find out what the charity supports and what percentage of their money goes to charitable operations versus administration but was not able to find out anything - it may be that the "charity" is mostly for the family and a way of hiding how much they are earning (it also may be perfectly legitimate, I was just surprised that I could find almost nothing about it outside of Alamy).

Maybe marketing costs are so high that it is impossible for an agency that charges less than 50% commission to survive - I don't know.  Pond5 and featurepics both pay 50%.  Featurepics is hanging in there but sales are slow.  Canva pays us 35% but they are increasing sales so that is OK - they are the one agency nowadays that really seems to be doing something different to increase customers.  I guess the Adobe deal at FT also is a new variant but it hasn't translated into much of an increase so far.  The others are mainly just competing on price.  Using commission cuts to advertise their low prices, which results in the need for more commission cuts is not a good use of resources IMO.

Exactly. You all make valid points, this is one that I align with more. Alamy is a great example. We're cutting your commissions but you should make more money through volume sales. That was an inverse statement. Where I was making 700-900 a month with Alamy (before split) they cut my commissions, reduced pricing and keep adding junk into their collection.  Last month I made $38 before my cut. To me the whole reasoning behind commission cuts was just another excuse to RETAIN the luxuries Alamy already enjoyed, but at our expenses. I know the argument will be that they still pay 50%, better than most agencies.  My response would be it was 70% and that argument won't satisfy the naysayers until it is perhaps below 30%. Either way, with the commission cuts and the promise of more revenue, I am down 95% from five years ago.

When so many people put the same photos on Alamy that they have on SS it's no surprise that Alamy has to lower royalty rates.  Jon Oringer said that himself, if you pay more than 30% you won't be able to compete with SS's marketing. 

http://www.shutterstock.com/blog/a-is-for-the-artist-celebrating-60-million-images-with-visuals-and-sound-from-a-to-z?pl=45259-43068&irgwc=1

Is the word they erased "curated"?

Quote from: tickstock on August 20, 2015, 13:31

Warmpictures and Symbiostock are not good examples, especially symbiostock those sites looked terrible and even worse was that everyone had different licensing terms some of which were incoherent.  It was never going to succeed without major changes.  Stocksy is a much better example.

Yeah but Stocksy was started by Bruce Livingstone and run as an actual business,  not a bunch of individual microstoskers.

Yep, I took that to be her suggestion.  A bunch of individual sites probably will not do well at all unless each one fills a specific niche.  Symbiostock was a bunch of sites with a poor look, the same files as on the micros, no curating, confusing and poorly written terms, etc... A professionally run site is what's needed to be successful most likely with exclusive files, something similar to stocksy's model.

Quote from: tickstock on August 16, 2015, 12:17

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on August 16, 2015, 12:14

Quote from: tickstock on August 16, 2015, 12:12

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on August 16, 2015, 12:11

Not that I care, but I imagine anything to do with the "state of RC targets and the like" to be pretty important to most people.

Yeah that's true but they've had that announcement the last few years that nothing is changing you won't go down from where you are.  So it's not necessarily a big announcement.

I don't know if one can assume that is the content of the announcement this year.

I'm not, I think there will be a change this year.  Still when you put something in quotes you are saying iStock said there will be a "big announcement" when nobody actually said that.

Welcome to Planet Earth Ticktock. This may be helpful translation for you. They aren't meant to be direct quotes, but are meant to be sarcastic or sceptical quotes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes

Scare quotes, shudder quotes, or sneer quotes are quotation marks placed around a word or phrase to signal that a term is being used in a nonstandard, ironic, or in another special sense. They may be used to imply that a particular expression is not necessarily how the author would have worded a concept. Scare quotes may serve a function similar to verbally preceding a phrase with the expression "so-called", they may imply skepticism or disagreement, or that the writer intends an opposite sense of the words enclosed in quotes.

Big Announcement is not what iStock wrote but is what the author was indicating the view was. I cringe at the next announcement from iStock. The history has not been good news.

Announcing nothing happened is not announcing anything. Why would iStock "announce" no change?

This is what was said.  (I'm using quotes here because I'm quoting someone with what they actually said, not something I made up)  "But it's the advertised "big announcement" that I am specifically referring to."

He is "specifically referring to" iStock's advertised "big announcement".  How can he specifically be referring to something that was never said?  He can't that wouldn't make any sense, he's saying iStock said that.

For me it's about protecting myself, I'd rather be safe than sorry.  It only takes a second to fill out a release.  And standards change, maybe next week SS won't take a release that doesn't match the date the photo was taken.  Then how much of a pain in the a is it going to be to get a new release.

Didn't Yuri already do this?