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� there's no need to upload to both sites, as content uploaded to one will be distributed via the other (assuming you click through the new agreement)
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Thanks for coming here to help us understand this transition, Tom.

I am in a slightly odd situation in that I have two different small portions of my portfolio (which totals about 2,500 images) on Pixmac and Pond5. 389 on pixmac and 25 on Pond5 with another 25 in the queue.

I'd like to have my images on Pond5 where the price I've chosen ($12 and down) is higher than what Pixmac is selling for.

1) Can you address the pricing plans for the two sites - are you planning to offer the same prices in both? And will Pixmac users have a choice of prices?

2) Where should I upload my files going forward (I'd prefer to use Pond5)?

Odd timing.

A couple of weeks back I had decided to start uploading to Pond5 directly and had them remove my pixmac portfolio (which is only 300 of my images). At the time, Pond5 support said that they couldn't just move the Pixmac files into my Pond5 account - possibly now they can?

I also wonder about balances at Pixmac - I have 49.xx credits at pixmac and sales dried up ages ago. I was hoping to wait until a sale took me over the 50 credit mark, cash out and leave. I'm fed up with all these distributor deals where the buyer's money is spread around so many places that I see less of it. Possibly now this will work out better, although reviews at Pond5 make Veer look speedy, so I may not have much work up for a year or two

If DT would change two other things, I might explore uploading everything to them that I upload elsewhere, but as it is, this change is a big vaguely described and the penalties for incorrectly second  guessing what they'll take make it not worth it.

If my approval rate falls below 80% then my uploads per week are cut (I stopped trying to upload my full port because there were too many "similars" rejections) and it reportedly hurts search position. I don't upload crap (I did in 2004, but that's another story and if they would eliminate the similars rejections from the approval percentage, I'd be more willing to play footsie with their new rules.

To round out the month, I received a distributor sale today - $26.46 for a 1580 x 1053 that "lists" for $190.

$26.46 was the gross. The distributor gets 40% off the top - $10.58 - and then Alamy and I split the rest, leaving me with $7.94

It doesn't list the distributor, so I have no way of knowing if this is just some Alamy subsidiary - which would then allow them to keep 70% of the total. If you ask Alamy will they tell you which distributor sold this image?

I want to like Alamy, but they take forever for sales to clear, their payout is $250 even though they're selling more and more cheaply, the discounting is massive and they can't even be bothered to tell you how much you made on a sale (you need to substract their commission from the total; I assume they're hoping you won't notice the actual money in your pocket and focus on the gross number.

You can read some reviews of agencies at this blog site to give yourself an overview

http://www.microstockdiaries.com/

I would say that at the moment, image exclusivity is a reasonable proposition, but agency exclusivity - given how badly most of the agences are or have been behaving - is a pretty risk proposition

The fact that Scott came to post a response here is much appreciated.

The content of his message is the worst kind of PR spin and didn't address a number of key issues. Some mumble speak about sensitivity to contributor issues and "monitoring subscription volume" neatly sidesteps the utter fantasy of any more than one or two contributors ever (i.e. lifetime) making 50K downloads on Bigstock.

I didn't fall off the turnip truck - I've been around all these sites for a number of years. They are lowballing the subscription prices - undercutting Shutterstock - and even more heavily lowballing contributors.

The responses from Bigstock support to the "happy shiny" notice announcing all of this were very polite but content free.

There are a number of us who are not part of the Bridge to Bigstock program for whom the only possibility of an upside in this fiasco is that it will not succeed and they'll withdraw subscriptions as fast as they withdrew cash pricing.

If it does succeed and subscriptions migrate from SS to Bigstock, by the time the 6 months are up, those of you feeling all happy about the absence of any threat from this move (because it's only Bigstock and they're such a low-income player) are going to see your 38 cents get cut significantly.

This seems like a replay of the struggle when iStock/Getty introduced the Partner Program - all the talk about separate markets and separate customers. It's the same pool of customers - as far as I can see no one is bringing in a new set of buyers, just trying to swipe buyers from other agencies. Or, in the case of Shutterstock, migrate buyers to the lower-cost subscriptions at Bigstock.

I guess I'm resigned to the reality that the "agencies" are just indifferent to the relentless lowering of royalty rates - and I know SS's income per month for many of us has been very healthy, but if I were paid there based on the Bigstock rate chart, that would all come to a screeching halt.

Once upon a time, you didn't have to be a factory to be able to be successful. You didn't have to be full time. These types of annual hamster wheel royalty schemes change all of that - and in the process transfer a nice chunk of the income total from the contributors to the agency.

I acknowledge the list of nice little contributor features that have been added, but (a) it's not even close to the stats I'd like to see and (b) these things aren't a substitute for royalties (and introducing them in a discussion about royalty payments suggests the sort of distraction one does with toddlers - ooh, shiny).

Shutterstock has refused to say that the Bigstock royalty scheme will not be implemented at Shutterstock. Talking of "minimizing the possibility of having to adjust rates in the future" can be translated to avoiding having to decrease rates - no one would be worried about SS adjusting rates upward! That's something they used to do and I don't remember anyone being upset about it.

For me, even if it means the end of being a microstock contributor, if my rates at Shutterstock are cut, I'm pulling my port and closing my account - #248. Without an opt-out for subscriptions, I'm pulling by Bigstock port March 15th.

I know Shutterstock doesn't care, but I've had enough of being effed about by agency after agency.

I'm in. Great collection of images so far. Sean is there as well. Did he ditch the crown or have I missed something?

The crown ditched him.

But if you're there and he's there, you should be able to find out more about that.

$14 was for a poster, so there is some product cost in there.

But (a) I have no way of knowing what BigStock is collecting and (b) I think that doing print on demand for a cheapo-poster isn't a great deal for the artist - so even if $11.24 is material costs and I'm getting my 30% of $2.76, I think that's a really crappy deal.

I don't think at the lower end pricing there's any room for a middle-man (agency)

I opted out of partner sales and sent Bigstock support a note asking when the files would be gone. Their reply this morning said

"It will take a maximum of 7 days for your images to be removed from the partner sites."

I think both files of mine that were in their CafePress store are already down (they show up in searches but you get an "oops" page if you try to buy.

Interesting portfolio - makes reality look really lack-lustre

Welcome

Thus is very similar to Veer and Alamy - they don't consider the need to let us choose not to compete with ourselves

I think this issue of lack of transparency (although Bigstock does have this on their site) and lack of control - preferably deal by deal - is important for fair trade

The agency acts like it owns these works but they don't.

In the Bigstock case I'm assuming I'll be gone on March 15 as they show no signs of being interested in a dialog about an opt out

I would contact the magazine and politely ask if they could tell you which agency sold the image - possibly don't explain why unless they ask. I would make it a simple inquiry - that you want to check with the agency on your royalties for the sale but don't know which agency.

Are you part of the bridge to Bigstock? If the image was there, they only just put in a 250K limit on print run - prior to the e-mail about subscriptions and the nutso royalty scheme, they had no print run limit