I don't see a problem with the wait on a portion of your portfolio - we already accepted it with DT years ago (although if you remember they originally proposed 12 months no exceptions and we stopped uploading and fussed and they changed it to 6 months). I don't like it, but I can see that as they're dealing with larger companies as clients they need to accommodate more of these types of requests - grab the comp now and buy in a month or two.

I wish they would be more forthcoming about what exactly happens with these premier customers. What makes a customer premier; how many unwatermarked comps (at what size) can they have for how long without purchasing anything before SS will audit them to see what they're up to; do these higher prices paid for the premier customers who get unwatermarked comps show up in higher royalties for contributors when they do buy? Does that show up as a single and other download? Do they offer unwatermarked comps on subscriptions (one would think not, but as I had no idea they were even offering such a service, it makes me wonder how this works).

I wasn't comfortable when they introduced the Single and Other Downloads that they wouldn't give us any information about the price the customer paid or what the license terms were. I'm still not happy (but not unhappy enough to walk away from SS) as it may or may not be a good deal for us - the numbers can be high (yesterday I had one for $82.50 which was great, but I have no idea what I sold for that amount) but we can't know if we're being ripped off or fairly compensated. Finding out about these other Premier customers with special rates just adds to this concern that they are not being transparent enough with contributors about what terms they sell our content on.

Our content, not theirs, and we can't see the terms of the sales (other than subscriptions, enhanced licenses and on demand).

As far as not discussing earnings, they post an earnings schedule with royalty rates - how can we not discuss publicly what they post on their web site? The full section in the new TOS says:

Confidentiality
By submitting any Content to Shutterstock, you acknowledge that you will acquire certain confidential information, including but not limited to royalty rates, royalty payments and earnings data (collectively, "Confidential Information"). Confidential Information shall not be disclosed to any third party other than representatives, agents, attorneys, accountants, auditors and advisors with a bona fide need to know, who shall first agree to keep the terms confidential.

I might also argue that as fellow contributors have a need to know about rising or falling monthly earnings, it'd be fine to keep discussing it. However, that's a stretch and as they can terminate my account at any time for pretty much any reason, I'm a little concerned that this might give them an excuse. Section 3.a. about termination of our accounts for various reasons ends "..., or for convenience."

People are always writing about guesstimates of public companies' earnings and whether they're on the rise or fall. I don't see why writing about how well (or not) SS is doing is suddenly not acceptable.

I don't talk about my monthly totals in $$ in forums, but I don't like being told I can't

I'm not thrilled at the Facebook and other social media section not making any mention of steps they would take - such as watermarking our content - to prevent theft when "marketing" our work this way. I hope that they would, but  I think they should say so.

Right. It does for me too.

I just wondered if they'd bought that domain or whether it was a porn site or Shutterstock had bought it or...

I think I'd argue that you are better off even though your rate of growth is the same as before, in part because you are now (a) insulated against DT losing ground and (b) positioned to benefit from growth at other sites. In particular where you earn more over time at sites like SS, you'll see your income there really go up once you get paid at the highest rate.

You don't say (and don't have portfolio links) how many other sites you now upload to - is it at least the top 4 to 6?

Their page for potential contributors doesn't say - just directs you to the contact page. Not sure why the'd be cagey about that, but even if it's 50%, isn't $2.50 for an HD video clip pretty low? And it's that or $50 - no other choices?

http://www.dissolve.com/stockfootage/home/shootfordissolve.do

Here's an example search for business team and all the clips are $5

Here are the people involved. Patrick was one of iStock's founders, but not sure who the Veer alumni are

http://www.dissolve.com/stockfootage/home/team.do

Alamy pricing is a puzzle. I don't think anything has sold at the "list price" for me, so unless they take the same massive discounts on the new pricing as they did on the old, it seems irrelevant.

...Looks like they are also taking steps to port BS images to agencies, large corporations, media and retail stores via skyword.  I expect to seem them push more downloads to BS in lieu of SS.

A few of the large companies skyword serves IBM, GMC, CoxMedia, United Way, Market Watch, TransUnion, Stack, Auto Trader, Etc....

And no word of this great new deal to contributors? I'm no longer at BigStock (I left in March because they wouldn't let me opt out of subscriptions - I'm not part of the bridge to BigStock which would have at least let me have the 38 cents I have on SS) but I think some sort of notification (a) that contributors would earn royalties on the freebie intro program and (b) about the skyword program and how the earnings from that would be paid and at what rate is the least an agency should be doing.

They act like they own our content, but they don't.

I tried creating an extended license to go with the Standard one and attempted to set that up and apply it to just one image (to see if it worked). It didn't - no error messages, but I didn't get any changes in the prices if I selected the Extended license.

First problem is that it doesn't appear you can edit a license you create (if you got the wrong URL, for example) so I had to delete and reenter all the valid information which was a pain.

Second problem is that I didn't understand what to select (Yes or No) for Purchasable Upgrade. It says "If "Yes" the onpage location is overridden and options appear under product table." but what does that mean? The onpage location of what is overridden?

As I entered prices in the boxes (for the extra amount for each size that an extended license would cost), I figured that meant those numbers would be added to the standard license price, but nothing got added to anything when I selected Extended License on the test image I applied this to.

Third problem is that I have CleanTheme and changing the image to have both Standard and Extended License as an option reformatted parts of the page - blue highlighting on the selected size instead of light gray, for example, fonts changed (or spacing). In addition to the radio buttons for the two licenses where there's a link to the license, under the download button there are two more links for Standard License and Extended license (incorrectly formatted in that it doesn't look like Clean Theme any more and has blue text on a pale blue background).

Fourth problem is that if I go back to just a standard license on that image, I don't go back to the way things were. I even reprocessed that image to try and get it to look right, but I still have the misformatted text - see the sample I tried to put an extended license on and then removed

http://www.digitalbristles.com/image/sunset-sail-in-puget-sound/

versus the way a page should look (for a page I never tried to add licenses to)

http://www.digitalbristles.com/image/mount-rainier-and-puget-sound/

Fifth problem would be how I'd update the whole site with extended licenses - as it is right now I'd have to select categories one at a time in the batch editor to apply them, hope I didn't forget a category and hope I didn't ever want to change anything.  This really needs an option to apply to all images as well as selected images

Has anybody got this working on their site?

I hesitate to write this because I do not want to undermine the sterling work done by so many for a very worthy and useful cause, but as a graphic designer I cannot get past the ugliness of it.

It looks amateurish and I wouldn't want to display my pictures in that context for that reason. Compared to something like this:

http://graphpaperpress.com/themes/sell-photos/

it doesn't look great, even if the underlying functionality and 'symbiosis' idea of artists sharing data is miles ahead of everything else.

We're selling in a visual field to design professionals and the vehicle for supplying our images needs to reflect that. I think that's why iStock succeeded so well in the beginning, because it looks like it's by designers for designers, whereas ShutterStock and Dreamstime looked like a programmer had done the layout (I realise they've been reworked since). Designers are a very picky bunch.

I really am very impressed with the efforts and teamwork that have taken Symbiostock this far - but you've got to make it look professional to attract professionals I think. Does that sound familiar?

I'll just apologise here in advance to those that disagree.

I think the visual look is very important too. You will see many different appearances from the different sites though.

Clearly I've made my site look the way I think it should (and someone commented the other day that I had apparently spent a lot of time on how things look). I started with an add-on theme that Amanda sells because I thought it looked better than the default child theme. I believe she has another paid theme in the works.

The network is a loose confederation of sites though, and as such isn't going to enforce a particular look and feel. I suspect that in some ways the alternative look may help answer the question about why you might buy from a network of artists versus an agency where there's a lot more uniformity.

No apologies necessary for expressing an opinion, but I think the part you're missing is that Symbiostock isn't an "it" (as in "...the ugliness of it") but a "them" where we're a heterogeneous network not a homogenous one.

And if buyers hate my site design, they'll probably hate my images too, so not much lost

If I was happy with the microstock agencies, there's no way I'd spend the time to set up my own site. What tipped the scales for me (and I'm not done setting up my own site yet, but it is open for business while I'm working on it; I've had one sale of which I kept $19.12 of the $20 the buyer paid) was that I'm heartily disgusted with how the agencies are behaving and see no prospect that they'll change how they treat contributors any time soon.

I already had hosting and a couple of web sites on it, so there wasn't really any incremental cost for me - other than my time - to set up a sales site.

I'm not an expert in WordPress or setting up web sites, but I figured it wasn't a bad thing to get better at that as I may be able to use the skills later on.

I can't imagine how there will be a "free and easy" option for those who aren't up for setting up their own site, but the beauty of the network is that if someone does set up one of those, it can easily join with the other independent artist sites.

I think it'd be great if more people joined, but there's a chicken-and-egg situation if everyone waits for everyone else to make money before joining

Thanks. You edit the page that is your home page in WordPress  (Pages/All Pages) and in the Page Attributes section you'll find a list box for the templates you can choose from in your current theme. You'll find the Widgets (Appearance/Widgets) for placing items on the side, below the content, in the footer, etc.

It's very confusing at first if you're not a WordPress expert (which I'm not) but it gets clearer as you keep working on it

Thanks for posting - and I wish I could say I am surprised. Do you remember several years ago when an iStock exclusive posted in the forums that their Getty sales rep (at his day job) was telling a conference room full of folks at his company that it wasn't safe to buy from iStock because they didn't have model and property releases for their images?

I was exclusive at the time and what stuck out for me was that no one at iStock seemed to think this could be "fixed" - rein in the Getty reps who were selling iStock down the river to make their own quotas. Fast forward to this crap.

It's no longer my fight, but for those who are still exclusive, this has got to be another addition to the list of unsettling things Getty is doing that have the effect of undermining your business.

This is a reasonable interim move, but it won't be necessary for very long.

It won't take long until almost all Symbiostock discussions move to the dedicated forums, so I think it'd make sense to remove the separation once they do as it'll look really odd to have a section with nothing but old dead threads in it. Leaf will know when the time has come

Meantime, if anyone wants to join us in Symbiostock discussions, head on over.

I've registered and entered a few posts, an avatar, a signature line with my Symbiostock site. Seems to be working to me.

What do you envision - that all the Symbiostock stuff here will go away and move to Symbiostock.org?