We appreciate the input, and both perspectives are valid.  Our goal is to ensure we are putting out the best product for our users and to appeal to the widest range of buyers possible, while continuing to maintain a very high level of quality in our marketplace.  This change that we are making will enable our sellers to price their images in a way that will appeal to the small, medium, or large budget buyers that they are targeting in the creation of their images. 

For those of you who are skeptical that adjusting your prices will result in less sales, you are not required to make any changes.

The idea behind these changes is to transpose GL from where it was to where it has the potential to be.  We do not want to be another company that dictates the value of our sellers' images.  Instead, we want to give our hard working sellers more control over their image pricing.  By enabling our sellers to control the pricing for their high quality images, not only will this help their profitability, it will also attract a wider range of buyers with various budgets shopping on our site. 

Hey All,

Just want to let you know, we are hard at work, so will not be able to post incredibly frequently.  However, we are reading through suggestions and will be working on many of them.  Please keep in mind, some things will take longer than others due to the intense amounts of development work and planning that will go into them.

To start:

1) We will ensure that deposits NEVER expire.  This one is very important, and frankly is something that we were not fond of either.  The old ownership had this in place, and we will be removing it as soon as possible.  We will make an announcement when it is officially removed.

2) We will lower the payout threshold to $50 for new sellers (in addition to the grandfathered sellers) based on the feedback here.  Your concerns are valid.  I think we were a bit excited for our plans of growth that we figured more sellers would be able to cross the $100 threshold faster, but until we get to that point with the business, we want to be fair to our sellers.

3) Videos WILL happen, though it is going to take us a bit of time.  In the 8+ years that GL has been in operation, this had been on the back burner for a very long time. When making this significant addition, we want to ensure we do so the right way.

We will continue to release updates and inform everybody of any changes along the way.  We have received immense amounts of wonderful feedback, and really good suggestions from many of our members and potential members.  We really appreciate this and we are listening so that we can offer the best experience possible.

-- Regarding issues with accessing site, prior to transitioning the site to new ownership, we wanted to ensure that every page on GL was secured.  We did this, but there was a minor error which we fixed today.  Please PM me directly if you are still having that same issue, but you no longer should experience that.  Only a small percentage of individuals experienced this.

Thank you,

Phil

Can I suggest you start of with a different payment structure that is actually sustainable in the long term for both contributors and the site?

It could seem harsh to start off with but we have seen the alternative which is sites constantly cutting commissions to try and increase profits.

What about a tiered payment structure? Ones based on an absolute number of downloads inevitably end up with promises of volume that are never met, as the agency plays it safe with unrealistic predictions. How about one based on contributors' performance compared to other contributors. So those earning in the top 10% of contributors get 75% commission, the next 10% get 60% and so on down to say 25%. It will keep people motivated. Plus people can't really complain because if they are on a low tier they know it is directly based on their sale-ability compared to other contributors and how much they are contributing to the site's success, not because they have failed to meet an arbitrary level set by the site.

People will like the 40% commission and grandfathering for now, they wont like when the "exciting" announcement is made  that everyone has to be moved to standard commission, or when it is 30% then 25% in a few years when more money is need for marketing the site.

This is a great idea, and I think we have some variations of it in mind already.  In our other business, and in this business, quality is of utmost important.  In development, which we haven't announced yet, is the ability for us to manually adjust contributors commissions, instead of the default rate.  So we will be able to do these types of things to reward the highest quality sellers. 

I don't want to commit to any one method, as we still are doing a lot of internal planning, but to respond to your points -- we are thinking of the best approach for all parties to reward the highest quality contributors. 

@Chichikov - There is no time limit for the grandfathering of sellers prior to 8/3/16 at 52%.  We will honor this rate moving forward.  Also, the limit of 20 per day can be changed, please PM me your account name or email address and i'll take a look!
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Several of you had expressed concerns about rigging the search to display images from newer sellers at the 40% so that we can encourage the higher margin images.  If we had any negative intentions of stacking the deck against the "old" sellers, we simply would have lowered all rates to 40%.  To be frank, the thought crossed our mind to lower all members to 40%, but we saw much more value in trying not to waste 8 years of a company's history and tick off a lot of loyal customers to make a few extra bucks and quite possibly lose a significant amount of sellers in the process.

Since the previous owners created a natural divider by shutting down new sellers for almost 2 years, we felt that if we honor the commitment the previous owners made to their clients at the time, they will [hopefully] remain happy, and moving forward with our new clients that we bring on, we will be making our own unique commitment to them.  I see a lot of people saying that we are "Dropping the royalty" rate, however, by grandfathering the old sellers in, I don't see this as a royalty drop.  I see this as a fresh start, and it was a LOT easier for us to change the royalty rate immediately upon opening new contributors back up, rather than at a later time down the road.  For our new customers, there is no "shock" of lowering their royalty rates, they will simply come to our site and see that they can earn 40% selling their photos.  They have the ability to sign up, or click the big X on the top right of their screen.  We hope they work with us, and we know that this rate of 40% is still very competitive in an incredibly competitive market. 

Customers are the most important part of every business, but simultaneously, every business needs to make money in order to provide the customer with a better experience.  We are trying to make the business more profitable, while keeping as many people happy as we can.  Interestingly enough, the influx of new sellers since we opened the doors only 1 1/2 days ago is incredibly positive feedback which tells us a lot about peoples opinions of our royalty rates!

@Teddy the Cat - Similar to the 52% being grandfathered, we also left old sellers at $50 payout thresholds.  So the idea is that nothing is changing for old sellers.  New sellers will sign up seeing 40% and $100 payment threshold, correct.  This really is not as outrageous as you may think.  We run a marketing company sending hundreds - thousands of payments per month, and we are simply adding the responsibility of payments on to our existing accounting team in an effort to streamline payments.  We are also going to be offering more payment options other than paypal and skrill (such as ACH/Direct Deposit, Checks, and Wire for int'l clients earning over a certain threshold).  The idea of increasing the threshold is simply to make things manageable for our existing team, while also ensuring that the cost of making payments on a large scale makes sense.  Each transaction costs money to make, whether in fees, staff time, or both, so we are just addressing that in this way.

We are not just making these 2 changes, and "setting and forgetting" the site.  These are two changes that will help us move forward in the future and make many positive changes.  The reality is, we had to make these changes sooner than later so we can focus on positive changes to come.

@Cobalt - Yes, we are very eager to be able to accept videos.  This is on our priority list.

@Microstockphoto - When it comes to free images, the previous owners had a tab for free images, we truly didn't think anything of it since we saw that on many stock sites.  Having said that, your feedback was very much heard, and your points are incredibly valid. 
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Our success will benefit our members, so there is no harm in us trying .

Thanks guys.  Don't hesitate to send us PM. 

Compared to the emails I usually get from sites, this one was great.  I wish you the best of luck.  Only problem with the email was this line, did you leave "one" out?
" If GraphicLeftovers is not already your number source of income for selling your Stock Photos, we are confident it will by the time we are done with all of the improvements we have in store."

Thank you @sharpshot, I'm embarrassed about the typo!  We've been dying to reach out to our customer base, but have been waiting until the developer finished with a few functions that we needed!  A bit too excited, but thanks for pointing it out.

@Microstockphotos -- I apologize for missing your sarcasm, after all of your kind-hearted responses, that one went over my head. Your comment has been heard though and I understand where you are coming from.  Everyone is entitiled to their opinion, so I will just respond by reiterating that we are marketing professionals and we know how to increase traffic volume and revenue for businesses; it�s what we do. We have already seen an increase in sales since we have taken over the site. We of course understand the high value and big time committment associated with stock photos, and once again it is our goal to help contributors earn more money. You don�t have to agree with every marketing plan we have, and every word that I say, but if you choose to continue working with us you will see the results over time.

@Stockastic - We do not have any plans to lower pricing.  In fact, we have plans to give more freedom over the pricing of your images.  There are a lot of things in the pipeline, and we will listen to all of our members for suggestions as to how to best serve them.  The previous owners felt that what the current prices are set to was the sweet spot for both sellers and buyers alike.  However, with any business, things change over time.  We will evaluate the pricing, and will adjust accordingly as needed to ensure that buyers are happy with the pricing, but sellers are happy with their earnings.  It's obviously paramount for us to find the sweet spot, and rest assured, we will be working on this.

We have a bowl full of suggestions, but please do not hesitate to make more.  We are listening, and as long as the suggestions are possible, we will be working on them.

@ Sean - we sent out an email to all sellers, and an internal message to all sellers about this.  The blog post was primarily targeted towards new visitors/members.  But we sent notice via several means.

@ Pixart - Yes.  Many thoughts on rebranding.  However, we want to first put together a product that we are fully satisfied with before spending the significant amounts of time, effort, and money that goes into a successful (and not a sloppy) rebrand.  There are so many potential "hazards" if done incorrectly, particularly when it comes to SEO rankings, which are obviously incredibly important.  We want to be fully prepared when the time comes to rebrand so it does not do any major damage.

@ topol - Yes, you can upload through our interface, and can upload many images at once.  We are manually adjusting "upload limits" based on quality of images submitted.  Those who have a great internal reputation do not have limits, though new posters start at 20 per day until we see the quality of images being submitted.

@ Hellou, very good questions, and I appreciate them.   
- This business has been established for 8 years, so the purpose of it initially was to provide a cheap alternative to the bigger players in the industry, who charge tremendous amounts of money for stock photography, vectors, videos, and more.  Our "purpose" is to continue with the intentions of the original owners, while providing better service for all parties involved, and adding on features to the site to make significant improvements to what you currently see.
- What is unique about this agency compared to others is a very difficult question to answer.  When there are hundreds of companies who are all doing similar things, sometimes there are small differences that set them apart.  For us, our pricing for buyers is much lower than many of the bigger players.  You may be able to find the same or similar images at 50-80% less with us.  Additionally, we do not offer subscriptions for buyers, which means that sellers' earnings will not be diminished based on a package that any particular buyer has.
- Why would buyers use us?  We will have images they want at lower prices.  We will be pushing out free images on a weekly basis, and we are committed to the growth of the business.  By opening new contributors, we are expanding the volume of quality images that will come through our doors, and this will pique the interest of more and more buyers. 

We have a marketing background, specifically lead generation, and will be attracting users via various methods.  There are various "target buyers" from one time users to marketing agencies and everything in between.  It would not be appropriate for me to publicly outline our marketing plans.