I am seeing different results from different computers / network connections.
Maybe they're doing some testing again...

Yes, thats strange. I sold a sub this afternoon (some six hours ago) and it was for $0.30. And about an hour ago I sold three subs, all for $0.44, one JPG size small and two vectors    a mistake they made, I guess?

Maybe no mistake...
They did announce that they will change their subscription royalties, see here.

Until today I didn't believe they would really do this. And I can't understand why they don't announce such a change...

Just sold a file via subscription and received $0,44 for it. Yesterday I sold one and received $0.30 (as always before).
I couldn't find any announcement on their site and their royalty schedule still shows fixed amounts per subscription sale (from $0.30 to $0.35 depending on your level).

Anyone else seen something similar?

Just for the record, I made (and attached) a screenshot or what I see right now.
Will look again tonight from my computer at home if it looks different or the same.

Seriously though, the long term strategy seems decent. If you want really cheap prices, buy subs. If you are not going to buy in bulk, then you have to pay more. Shutterstock kind of works the same way. I can't say all the details of what they are doing are good, but I like the idea of moving away from images for a buck. I wouldn't mind seeing other sites do the same.

I tend to agree to that strategy in general.
My only concern about that is that it's coming from Getty / IS, those greedy s*ckers that tell us that paying 20% to contributors is "not sustainable".

Thank you for the feedback Regarding the first impression.
Surely it would be possible to increase the commissions.
In the long run it reduces the possible measures that we could implement. These measures directly contribute to the possible success. Therefore, 50% are not to be despised. This is an absolute maximum (purely Costing).

No, 50% are ok. As a start, but not as the last step in your commission schedule. You have no proven track record, nobody knows if you will ever reach 1000 sales as an agency, let alone for a single contributor. And that's what - according to your site - is needed to achieve these 50%.

On the other hand, I agree to the Subscriber Shares are not the highest. So here we have room for improvement. Here Indivstock can come to meet the artists.

"Are not the highest"? Do you think that's funny? $0.18 is clearly the lowest in the industry, not even 123RF pays that little, and they are the worst I've ever seen!

Start at $0.50 per download to be better then your competition. Adapt prices accordingly. Or leave out subs completely. If all your strategy is competing on price, then good luck finding contributors here.

In addition, the artist Receives sales shares for Easy Image Changes.

Can you elaborate on that? What is that?

Unfortunately, prices of $ 20 per image are not feasible.

They are feasible. Yes, this will lead to less sales. But I don't need another agency competing on price. There's too much of them already.

The market price is significantly lower. 70% Commission would be theoretically possible. But what sense does this, when Indivstock ran unable to move. 60% of a a few sales ist not much. 70% of even less is almost nothing. 80% commission is nothing, since no sales are coming into existence.

This sounds like you have an idea of how the commission percentage will affect your ability to invest in marketing. How many sales you will make, how much money you can invest. So what's your business plan? How much sales do you think you can generate (overall, as agency) with your proposed commissions? How much money will go into marketing? How will you attract buyers?

to make it short:

- your prices are too low, full size images should go for around $20.
- commissions should start at 50%, not end there.
- your subscription royalties are outright insulting, $0.25 is the entry level on Shutterstock

You want to compete against established agencies.
If you want people to contribute, you have to offer more.

Believe it or not, we WANT all the talent in the world. We dont require exclusive images, BUT we do require your  genuine title, description and keyword input. Why? Because a search engine has no clue what your image is. They need text. If you are pasting keywords and titles/descriptions from your other submissions in other agencies to StockTal, you may as well spend that time you spent uploading, instead go fishing or shopping or go party at a bar, because that work ...if not original, the text not genuinely created? is just lost and your file on our site? a waste of bytes.

Do I understand that right? You want us to have different titles / descriptions / keywords than on other sites?

Jack, some questions from me:

You said you support FTP, read IPTC, no categories needed... Does this mean uploading will be just sending a whole portfolio via FTP and no further clicks necessary (because that's what would be useful for a new site to attract big portfolios)?

I understand we can set our own prices. Is there a possibility that sets a default price which is then applied to all further uploads?

I don't see anything about ELs on your site. Am I right to assume the standard license covers all possible uses (products for resale, any print run) and thus essentially contains all rights that on other sites require an EL?

Thanks for answering, if the conditions are right I'm all for supporting sites that pay fair percentages...

Most of their images at most sizes are going to be less costly. The pricing is broadly similar to Shutterstock pricing but with a better selection of content. The minimum spend is less than at Shutterstock. Their subscription plans are at a lower entry price point than Shutterstock.

What specifically makes you say that they have given up on small to medium sized businesses ?

That bolded statement is only true if you look for full sized images. Anyone wanting to buy smaller sizes will not be able to get it cheaper on Istock, but Shutterstock sells image packs for "small and medium jpegs". Price here in Germany (can't see any $-based pricing) is €39 for 12 images or €3.25 per image.
That's roughly half the minimum price per image on Istock in the future.

I wouldn't mind selling all sizes for the same price.
But 5$ and 15%?
Make that 20$ and 50%, and I'll re-upload my port to IS...

Quote from: Ploink on August 22, 2014, 09:30

*sigh* After clicking through 30+ pages, I found 4 images (among 600+), some of them even listing the keyword with which they were downloaded. Still, to me this suggests a more innocent explanation, like promotional use...

Thanks for your feedback (+1) so now we can be sure there are files downloaded and not reported.
I didn't agree to sell images for free.

You base your proof only on the wrong numbers in the gallery stats. If those files would not show zero, you would not have detected anything.

Can you be sure that these files (showing zero downloads in gallery stats) have never reported a sale? I.e. have you checked every single day since upload of the file(s) in question in the earnings tab (to my knowledge that's the only way to really see if a specific file was downloaded on shutterstock)?

If not, maybe those sales have been reported, but "only" the numbers of the gallery stats are wrong.

And to gbalex: Assuming that you can get any data out of the shutterstock database with "just a simple database query" is a bold assumption. Given the size of data they have to process and the performance requirements they have, I doubt that data presented to contributors is retreived with simple SQL statements from one big master database...
It's likely a lot more complex, and a lot more likely to include some bugs in a beta-feature.

It may be a mixture of both.
To really know if prices for all different kind of downloads (subs, OD, ...) have stayed the same, we would have to check all different currencies. I bet there is a different level of price sensitivity in different countries.
Anybody knows if SS has been playing with pricing anywhere around the world?

If not, you are right, then the major part driving the revenue increase is a change in the product mix.

I don't have my numbers at hand right now, but it would be an easy check for everybody to see if one's own RPD grows the same way as the reported revenue per sale from SS does.