I thought RF sales could only go as high as $365?  was it a particularly large file size or something , never heard of such a large rf sale.  Congrats.....does this mean there is a distributor selling for higher prices than alamy? I just went to alamy can't find any rf images priced that high.

Didn't see this thread the first time around, thought it might be good to revive it in lieu of the recent threads regarding fair commissions and cuts by fotolia and istock .  Some of us do have a few chances to direct clients to a particular site, we should choose wisely where we send buyers and we should choose our words wisely in public forums since a lot of times that is where buyers learn about new sites.  I voted along with the huge majority that dreamstime was the best place as it has the highest pay per download, hence the best place to send a buyer. (with the exception of Alamy, but many who are used to the low prices will not go there anyway)  so I hope we are all in some sort of agreement to send buyers to where it will benefit us the most, if we can't ever get it together to form a union at least we can collectively drive traffic to the place that earns the most per download....that is Dreamstime at this point...may change in the future but for now that is where I will send clients.

Quote from: Anita Potter on January 24, 2011, 22:41
Now I really noticed it with a new file upload.  When I clicked on the extended license button it said 8 and not 10.  Guess it's not just my imagination anymore.

Will see how things fair with them in the next few months.  I'm due for the unsold files section come this June (2 years with no files sold) so I'm not making any decisions on anything.

I'm still having a hard time understanding the statistical data of how much it's going down.  Can someone way smarter than me put something up that's in like dollars and cents?  I've never been good with statistics esp. with percentages.  What makes it harder is that they have so many different subscription models I can't figure out where I'm losing at.

your earnings have dropped by around 20% depending on what level you are at.  So if you made $100/month you will now make $80  It is a bit more complicated than that but for the most part you will be losing 20 cents on the dollar.

Quote from: stockmarketer on January 24, 2011, 19:31
Do any of the agencies have a policy against its contributors forming a competing agency?  I know you're not talking about starting a new agency in the strictest sense of the word, but if you're kicking around ideas such as aggregated searches and common licensing platforms, it looks more and more like a competitor in the eyes of the agencies.

If I joined, I would lose sleep over one or more of the big players seeing the site and deciding to shut down the accounts of its founding members.  If I were Ford Motor Co, I wouldn't allow the guys starting Tesla to be on my payroll.

No rules against this sort of thing....many of the top contributer are also partners in other stock agencies.....that is the benefit of being non-exclusive and Royalty Free you can do whatever you want with your images.

Interesting to read through this old thread...funny how things change in a few months...I didn't realize fotolia bans people for commenting about changes they made...will they really ban you if you speak your opinions in this forum as well...even istock doesn't do that...I better keep my mouth shut or open an anonymous account...wow that is really terrible sorry to hear that.

Found these guys as one of the few Macro/midstock sites listed in the  2011 The Photographers Market book that are willing to take on non-exclusive RF contributers.  www.painetworks.com   Quality of work has that slightly dated characteristic 35mm look so they've probably been around a while, image prices are in the hundreds, does anybody have any experience contributing to them? Is it worth the time they seem to have kind of an alamy-ish feel they offer 60% commission and give photographers their own website where they earn 100% commission (still confused on how that actually works?)  I have been putting in a lot of research time in finding other outlets that offer fair commissions.... with all these micro commission cuts it is not really sustainable any more to be solely in micro, however there are only a few big guys that will work without exclusivity. 

So anyone have any sales with these folks.?

Quote from: Artemis on January 24, 2011, 17:47
In my humble opinion Dreamstime belongs in this list too. The only downside is their 'similars issue'. (I've never been hurt by it much because i usually pick only 1 or 2 shots from a shoot (and the times i felt it wasnt fair i shot a message to support and it got reversed) so i am slightly biassed here).
Apart from that issue they have always been very transparent and open for our suggestions. They constantly are trying to improve their site for customers and contributors and i feel like i've always been treated very well and fair there. Their image level system (as far as i know) seems unique in the industry and works very well (level 4-5 images pay a good sum). imho they fit the 'fair category' well

yes I frequently receive sales in the $5 range for my level 4 or 5 images. Very smart to start raising prices on the images you know are selling well.  I am surprised others haven't copied this model, an image with over 50 downloads will most certainly still be purchased for a few dollars more. This is a great way to increase profit for the agency as well as contributor.  Simple idea but also one of the smartest ideas I have seen in microstock. Pay per popularity... this model has worked in many other industries throughout the history of free-market economies...it is called Supply and Demand....we all know it, but for some reason the internet does not put it to use very often....the more demand for an image the higher the price people are willing to pay.

Quote from: shiyali on November 29, 2010, 22:59
1700 images online, 0 sales. Things can only get better.

well hearing things like this makes me wonder....why would anyone even expect to get sales from a website that also offers the option of FREE IMAGES right on the front page.....Ummm am I not getting something here if I went to a website to buy an image and saw that I could either buy it or get it for free I think I would go for free!   

I will not upload to sites that give free images away anymore...this model has been tried and it never works.  Remove the words FREE IMAGES and I will be more than happy to upload my portfolio (i do like the idea of more fair commissions) Who started this idea that offering free images as bait would bring in buyers, it only brings in people who cant afford to pay for images. They can find plenty of free images on flicker you don't need to provide yet another place for our work to be devalued down to zero dollars. 

no way to sort images after I search.....pretty standard on every stock site.....sort by most downloaded, sort by newest first, sort by relevance, etc etc etc?
also no stats, like no way to see how many downloads a particular image has.  The name of the site should change... what does "cutcaster" even mean? always thought it was a weird name for a stock agency.

great idea, and congrats for trying to actually do something rather than just the endless complaining discussions that get us no where.  good to see someone with the spirit of independence.  Can't wait to hear how this project evolves over time. I am still confused as to the layout of the main link webpage will there be a search box that will help direct you to portfolios that specialize in business, medical, nature, etc. photos. or will be people have to just click through a hundred different websites with different layouts to find the images they are looking for.  I understand Rome was not built in a day just trying to understand how someone who does get directed to the site will then be directed to a specific portfolio or will the links just be grouped by categories?  Wishing you much luck, anything that helps us not be reliant on other agencies for sales is always a good thing!

Quote from: WarrenPrice on January 21, 2011, 18:05

Quote from: jamirae on January 21, 2011, 15:39

Quote from: helix7 on January 21, 2011, 14:03

Quote from: lightscribe on January 21, 2011, 04:36

back more on topic.  has anyone check out this site:
http://www.whichstockagency.com/

I believe it is more geared towards buyers and to be honest I have not spent a lot of time there, but they post on Twitter frequently asking people to share their opinions of various stock agencies.

Very interesting;  noticed that Flickr is ranked very highly as a "buyer's" source.

Clicking on the microstock link  http://www.whichstockagency.com/en/19/category/microstock/agencies   you can see that istock and fotolia are number one and two.  Everyone needs to sign in and post comments as to why it is important to suppport fair trade stock photography and also include your recommendations/rankings for the top sites.  This is the list that I bet a lot of buyers are using to decide who is best....so are we in agreement yet which agency we all should be pushing? At the end of the day what agency gives us the highest dollar amount per dowload should probably be considered the best way for us to collectively push traffic and earn more money,  I guess what agency has the highest RPD would be a good measure. (lets exclude alamy for the microstock list since people used to fotolia pricing are not going to switch to alamy. 

From my personal analytics (please add yours if different results). My list in order of highest return to artist per download is this. (excluding alamy which is the highest at $71 average sale, very few sales though)

dreamstime  $1.69
canstock       $1.42
bigstock        $1.15
Istock           $0.92*
123rf            $0.65
Fotolia          $0.64*
Shutterstock  $0.55

*all numbers are an average of the past 12 months these are numbers not taking into account the recent commision cut so presumably fotolia and IS will have roughly 20% lower numbers in the coming year.

The winner for the top 2 sites that we should focus on pushing traffic to (based only on my numbers for these 7 sites) are Dreamstime and Canstock.  I really wish we could push higher sales traffic to canstock it is so easy to use. but Dreamstime have the unique quality that your prices go up as you sell more.   So we could argue all year and complain and moan but in the end if we do not organize with the common theme of pushing traffic to the sites with the highest payout per image we are just waisting energy that could be put to good use.  So get on your blogs and get on these stock recommendation sites and make your voice heard. buyers really do go to these sites to find out the "best" places to buy images.

please add other sites if you have more RPD data...I am no ton many of the smaller sites but would be willing to give them a try if the RPDs are high.

stockfresh sounds really great...I wish they would open up to some new contributers though it seems they are not accepting new contributers? anyone get in recently? I applied many many months ago and no word.

On topic... this thread is a great idea!  I think there are so many variables to consider but commission is hugely important to me and the easiest to analyze. If the agency is getting exactly the same cut for representing my work then that is fair. Anything under 40% to contributer is not fair.  I worked in the offline art gallery sales world for many years. Every single art gallery I dealt with took between a 40-60% cut of any sale...that has always been industry standard for access to more buyers. Lets remember a real brick and mortar business with huge overheads  and a limited client base of only people who are in a radius that can physically drive to the store somehow manages to maintain an industry standard of around 50/50 for many many decades, possibly hundreds of years (speculating)  but an online agency with access to the entire world and very little overhead can't do the same. It is hugely unethical and not fair trade to offer such low commissions. Sorry but advertising on the net is so much cheaper than the overhead for a real storefront. They are just so greedy that they are going to run this new microstock experimental business model into the ground very quickly to turn a quick profit.

Quote from: lathspell on January 21, 2011, 01:23

Quote from: lightscribe on January 20, 2011, 18:33For example if you are going from 25% to 20%  that is 25/20=1.25  so a 5 point drop in your overall commission really translates to 25% less earnings!

Erm - are you serious with your math? 25 % of 25 is 5?

Wow! Holy crap, what was I thinking....I am really bad at math....it should have been 20/25 = .80 or 20% less in earnings 20% is still an enormous cut to my earnings.... warranting an exclamation point!

Okay...suggestion...

Perhaps we can get stock http://www.stockartistsalliance.org/ to open up a branch dedicated to improving micro RF commissions, it really would be in their best interest to have the hundreds of thousands of photographers they hate to actually be on their side and paying dues.

Throughout the history of the world the only way any human being in the arts ever made fair wages was if they joined a guild.  Because there will always be another more poor artist who is willing to do the job for less. Whether it is the Screen Actors Guild  or Masonry guild or Photographers, there are guilds for every single type of art there is a pastel artists guild.  Why have we yet to convince SAA to start working with us to help raise the bar. 

So who will volunteer to be our liason and speak with the president of SAA about how it would be in there benefit to stop hating us micros and try to get us to set a commision limit which we will absolutely refuse to accept.  Any volunteers...I nominate yuri he is one of the few with the celeb status to get enough followers to really make it have any impact.

why would they include the very people who support sites that pay 25 cents per download and less and undercut them, when they are used to receiving hundreds per sale. how can you even take us seriously, we are not looked at as professionals but as bottom feeders willing to take literally pennies, and we really will take anything they give us there are sites like photospin that give .02 cents per download and have over a million images up clearly people are willing to take .02 cents a download.  why would you want us in an organization that is trying to maintain a level of fair pricing in the industry? We have very few full time stockers so technically we are not "pros" as we don't earn 100% of our income from this.  We really need to collectively start an RF Guild that helps educate contributers as to why it is a good thing in the long run to not upload to unfair agencies. interesting to note that in the new 2011 Photographers Market Book, on the section about stock photography micro is only listed as a small side note while a hundred other macro/specialty agenies are listed.

Every time percents get cut it seems we need a quickie math refresher for us number-challenged artists....for all those that are referring to this as a 5% cut...that is NOT correct.  Your commission percent is 5% less, but to find out how much less your earnings would be simply divide your old percent by your new percent. For example if you are going from 25% to 20%  that is 20/25=.80 or a 20% cut! So a 5 point drop in your overall commission really translates to 20% less earnings!  That is a huge drop.

This is outrageous! Usually when any other company anounces record profits they also anounce a small raise for their employees not a pay-cut.

I think the only thing we can do short of forming an artists guild/union with price standards, would be to publicly thank and support those companies that have not made cuts. Could you imagine if in the wake of all these cuts if some company (DT or SS) had the nerve to actually raise commissions, you would see every single microstocker flock to their site immediately, its such a no brainer business decision you would have every single microstock photographer flocking to that site.  You would instantly become the number one microstock site overnight. That is all it would take to have professional photographers start referring clients to your site. A 10% increase in commission's could easily bring way more than 10% more business to your site, not to mention what the positive vibe would do for word of mouth advertising and contributers productivity. Come on SS and dreamstime ...step to the plate...show us what you are really made of do you want to be number one or do you want to force your contributers to all quit uploading to micro and start applying to the macros...the amateur days are long over and the work is now good enough to be put up on macros who pay good commissions.  Alamy is not even really a macro since it sells $5 images now and it still maintains giving their photographers 60% of the commission as opposed to 12% or whatever it is now.   Fotolia just made the worst business decision ever! Just when disgruntled istockers were looking for other more fair agencies to go with they chose to be greedy.

Edit: for bad math earlier 

Quote from: lisafx on January 19, 2011, 20:07
I realize it may not be an ideal solution, but why not just add 7 word descriptions to all your images in the first place.  That's what I do and so it's never been a problem uploading to BigStock. 

You are right, I will add the 7 words for future images but I am not going back and editing the past.  I know it really seems like a petty and minor issue but with absolutely no standardization in the industry it is always the artist who is expected to make the time consuming adjustments. I am tired of jumping these little hurdles... they do add up after a while and make for major keyword fatigue, and I only have a few hundred images, I can't imagine what a new contributer to Bigstock who already has a few thousand images keyworded would have to go through just because of such a simple thing. Anyway I think we beat this dead horse enough.  Hmm, "beating a dead horse".... anyone up for a totally sick concept shot? * still only coming up with 4 words for descriptions.   

On the 7 word description issue, it may seem like a little thing, but when I upload to all sites with mass upload software such as the new microstocksubmitter software (or other software) I have to check off don't upload to bigstock, because it is the only one of all the sites that has this silly restriction so the software will force me to re-keyword everything (which I am not doing). This means I would have to spend hours re-keywording my metadata on hundreds of images (some people have thousands) just so that I can get my images on one of the lowest earning sites?  If the whole goal is to make it easier for people to get images on the site then "little" things like this compounded over thousands of people and thousands of images can make all the difference. When I do take the time to upload to big stock I find myself having to use filler (spam) words just to fill the quota. An image of "poison ivy" becomes "green poison ivy leaf on sunny day"  that to me is forcing contributers to do "soft spamming", when someone is looking for "poison ivy" leaf they do not want images with keywords sunny day and green that will return too much unrelated stuff such as hundreds of pages of green grass on sunny day with no "poison ivy" to be found. 

Anyway I just wanted to let my voice be heard, what seems like a tiny requirement is actually keeping many images from being uploaded and helping to force spam. I wish there was an industry standard with metadata requirements. the pay is not enough to warrant special attention to any one site let alone a low earning site with odd requirements.

We have only seen real numbers from one person,  that is someone who says they make 80-120 per month off 400 photos. That is .20 rpi a month on the low end this is near the same RPI as I earn on SS. I hate to give someone my photos for such a terrible rate 13 cents or whatever, but at the end of the month if I can add $80 to my income it sounds more tempting. Anyone else willing to share how much you earn per image per month (RPI) I don't want to make any bad decisions based on the data of only one contributer.

I can't even find where to look to see a list of individual sales broken down....please help! The normal stats bar graph doesn't show this info?  how do I know if I had a 0.00 sale?

Tim, while this pseudonymous person is obviously overreacting and communicating in a very nasty tone (really the best way to make sure no one takes your side!)  I would like to examine a few of the facts that were brought up from a non-emotional perspective.  I would like to say I chose to upload some designs for the sole reason that Tim actually comes to the forums and interacts, he is very polite and genuinely seems motivated to be successful. That can not be said for some other business owners in this field.  I think that any business owner who takes the time to come to respond to forums should get a few extra points. And Tim gets a few extra points for dealing with the nasty tone in such a professional way. 

I have to say though I was completely unaware that we only got paid $5 on our first sale (not blaming anyone that is my fault, I know I should have read the fine print closer).  Can you address this business decision however Tim and is this something you are willing to bend on in the future?  As pointed out it is only 8% of the sale, we really need to be paid per sale not per client tomake this worth our time.  I knew all along that it was $5 but I really didn't realize if the same client spends thousands we still only get the original $5. Hmm, I really want this company to succeed and I am even okay with the extremely low 8% commission if some sales do start to happen. But all emotions aside I can't understand why we are not getting compensated for having work that is so good it makes clients want to come back a second/third time, sites like dreamstime raise your commission if your get recurring customers to the same image in order to encourage you to produce similar work, it seems we are penalized for having good work.  It's only $5 (8%) why not just keep your contributers happy and pay for every sale, they will be more inclined to refer the site to other stock photography friends, and you will avoid the inevitable negative publicity that rants like pseudonymous' has caused.  I understand if you feel that the current business model would not be sustainable if you had to pay contributers for every sale they make, but seriously do consider it for the future as I am certain this issue is going to keep coming back to haunt you, at least now that it has been clarified publicly in this forum....regardless of the inappropriate way it was brought to our attention. 

Like I said I only have 30 something templates up with no sales, as I try to decide if it is worth my time to continue to upload templates. These are the issues myself and others will be considering. I understand the competition in the business card world is fierce when you have so many sites giving away 500 free business cards left and right.

I wish your business much success in 2011 and look forward to watching it grow.

Since this site is almost all people who sell stock photo/footage and only occasionally do stock buyers hang around here you may be in the wrong place.  Also the idea that someone could download a file and then continue to use it forever in an unlimited capacity is just outrageous, you really would have to pay a huge commission to get anyone to submit to a site that has absolutely no terms and conditions on how the footage can be used, I have never heard of a business model like that.  I usually wish new agencies success, but I have to say I hope this sales model doesn't succeed. We are already giving up so much with RF and then to have unlimited lifetime use... I don't see how this could be sustainable for the agency either?

Probably hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from unpaid sales sitting there earning a few percent interest means a major incentive to not pay us as long as they can....I want my money with interest even if only a few extra cents, i never gave permission for my earnings to be used in this way. I would love to close my thinkstock account but there is no way to close it through I stock without closing all the other partner sites.  I really wish we could check off sites separately.  This is bordering on criminal action/theft. we have been told we'll get paid the 10th day after the end of every month, then we were told this would be resolved by early Jan, then we are being told in a few days, and now apparently we are being told maybe next week.  This is a dangerous and highly illegal game they are playing!  I can't imagine anyone keeping  there images on the shadey scam of a website Thinkstock for the lousy $7 a month they earn.  I want my money NOW! This is no longer about the tiny amount of money we earn from Thinkstock it is about not setting a precedent that we are willing to just roll over and allow this behavior because you can be sure other sites will follow suit when they find out we don't make a peep when our images are sold for 25cents and then we don't even see that money. How far will you allow them to screw you, perhaps they should lower it to 10 cents or just make them free since we are not getting paid anyway!

Only 3.70! Wow that has to be the lowest pay in the industry. Yeah I will avoid it too... best not to support the lowest in the industry.  That is really terrible.   I'm just trying to focus on the ones that pay well, I think we learned a lesson from the "race to the bottom" that has obliterated any chance for decent earnings on the still photo side, most istockers will see a 20% drop in earnings this month, going from 20% to 15% commission, translates to 20% less income not 5% as they are trying to make it look. Hopefully video folks will learn that it is not in your best interest to support sites that have low percentage commissions even if they have high sales volume, it only goes to send a message to the rest of the industry that we are willing to work for peanuts and you will quickly see all earnings drop at all sites. we can't let history repeat itself for stock footage.  Anyway still wondering if there are sites that do well with specifically software generated clips?

I am wondering if the top 4 earners for stock footage is really the same list for those people doing mostly motion graphics (software generated footage) as opposed to those who sell footage shot with actual cameras.  The list seems to be pond5, Istock, revo, and Shutterstock.   Does that same list hold true for motion graphics folks as well, or is there a different set of top sites that are considered "worth the time"?  I ask because when I google "buy stock motion graphics" videohive and some others show up first in the ranking...you would think they would be better sellers as google seems to drive more traffic to them....any experience with these other sites?