Quote from: Shelma1 on September 08, 2016, 20:05

I would assume the buyers would pay the same amount they would have paid otherwise, whether that's a subscription or large SOD.

I'd like to assume that too, but I also assume Adobe wants a cut, and when a new middleman gets into the chain, his cut typically comes out of ours.

What about competition laws?  I'm not sure Adobe could take a cut.  Lots of businesses make photoshop plugins, do they all pay Adobe for that?

So, Shutterstock now knows that offering ELs at a 50% discount is by and large acceptable to contributors and will now be testing for an even lower bottom line.  Where is your bottom line or will anything do?

Is anyone getting 50% less for every EL?  Most of mine are less than 10% down.  That's annoying but as EL's are so infrequent, I'm not overly concerned.  They shouldn't be looking at increasing the discount, unless they can increase volume of sales.  They lose money with lower prices, unless they sell more.

Quote from: sharpshot on August 19, 2016, 15:54

Quote from: Rose Tinted Glasses on August 19, 2016, 12:10

Quote from: cathyslife on August 19, 2016, 11:46

Quote from: Rose Tinted Glasses on August 19, 2016, 11:32

Quote from: ShadySue on August 19, 2016, 03:55

IIRC, Getty has long had a no individual image deactivation policy.

snip
Because Getty is for adults who submit an image without the intention of removing them on some emotional whim because of the illusion on this forum that everyone else is removing their images.

I certainly agree there is some of that going on here, but images are the property of the copyright holder, not Getty. There are plenty of other reasons why a person might want to change/remove images besides being a flaky photographer.

In the 25+ years I have been a stock photographer I have only once removed an image because of a request from the property owner, even though they signed a property release. Apart from that I see no need to remove anything. I am a shoot it, upload it, forget about it sort of photographer. I have no clue which image will sell better and/or where it will sell better. I have shots that I thought would be total winners and they have never sold, I have a shot that is average that ended up on IS and it has made over 12K. I guess I simply prefer to spend my time out shooting as opposed to micro managing single images.

I am also fairly certain GI is aware you are the copyright holder and if you want to remove an image they will do so for a legitimate reason. Just use this forum for example, a classic herd mentality of removing images. Remember when Sean go the boot? Herd mentality again protesting a personal conflict and removing images. Kind of silly I think.

I also don't like Getty as far as a company is concerned and further to that I really think the attitude of the former CEO is arrogant, but that still does not change the fact (in my view) they are in many ways the only game in town if you really want to make a full on living.

I think all the people putting up with whatever Getty/istock do to them have the herd mentality.  Sean acted like an individual and I very much doubt he regrets leaving the herd.  Getty want you to think they are the only game in town but you really need blinkers more than rose tinted glasses to believe that.

To help you with your comprehension, I did not remotely imply Getty is the only game in town, I clearly said in many ways they are - big difference. As for SJL, he did not leave the herd, he was forcefully terminated - again big difference.

Also of note, just in case it went over your head, I have never submitted an image to any agency with the intention of removing it - seems a tad counter productive to me.

Maybe one day you will learn not to be patronising but that seems in many ways unlikely . I doubt anyone submits images with the intention of removing them but never using that option also seems ludicrous to me.  I doubt even you would be dumb enough to not be able to think of a scenario where you would be better off removing an image rather than leaving it on a site?

Sean strikes me as being quite smart and I'm sure he was well aware that some of his actions could lead to a termination with Getty/istock.  It might not of been the most sensible way to do it but his plan b seems to be working well and he isn't the only intelligent contributor that no longer works with Getty/istock.

Don't most microstock sites have higher prices than they did 10 years ago?  Never understood why so many people here insist that prices are going down when they have generally gone up, sometimes by a significant amount.  I'm averaging almost $1.40 per image sold with SS this month, 10 years ago I averaged $0.76.  Was it just $0.25 when they started?

Ok, so I see a lot of threads where people increase the price of their items on P5 and their sales stay the same, or sometimes even increase. I thought I'd give it a try and it's not been the same for me unfortunately!

All my HD stuff was originally priced at $25 and $49 for 4K. I started selling stock on VideoHive back when it was $6 for HD and now it's up to $8 for HD. If I'd started on SS or iS then I probably would have been pricing my clips at $79 or something.

Anyway, so a month ago I decided to double all my prices... $49 for HD and $99 for 4K. The main reason was that I've been travelling for a couple of months and hadn't uploaded anything since I've been away... so it would be a better comparison of sales, as normally my portfolio is increasing month on month.

The month prior to increasing my prices I made $150, and the month since increasing my prices, I've made $106.50. Not a massive difference, but with the 100% increase in price, that means about a 65% drop in the number of sales.

My work isn't the best, but it's of a pretty decent standard, so I get a few sales on SS, iS, VB, FT etc... but the majority of my sales still come from VideoHive. I'm wondering if...

A) There's a certain market, for certain types of stock, that have different price expectations or budgets?

B) I've not waited long enough to draw any accurate comparisons.

C) It's just that it's summer, and things might pick up next month.

D) I should have put them up by 50% instead.

Anyway... just thinking outloud. Any advice or opinions would be gratefully received!

Scott

It could be  B) but you forgot E)
E) Selling clips on VideoHive for next to nothing is going to make buyers used to paying a pittance and they are less likely to buy the same clips from Pond5 at much higher prices.

Some buyers aren't bothered by price but others are and you don't have to get many lost sales on Pond5 from price hunters to make a big difference.

I think the idea that a small 'web' sized image should cost less is just another unfortunate buyer expectation created by existing microstocks.   The photographer and the agency see the same costs.  The large 'print' image might be seen by 1000 people, the small 'web' image by 10,000.   So why the discount - are we selling content, or pixels?

When you buy music, you get the full fidelity tracks, maybe 192kbs or 256 kbs. You don't the option to pay a lower price for a scratchy 32kbs version just because you're only going to play it through cheap earbuds.   

Doesn't really matter how it happened, the fact is many sites have tried one price for all sizes and have then changed to different prices for different sizes.  They must of done that because buyers have demanded it and I really don't see how GL can go against that tide when they are selling the same images.

The comparison with music doesn't work because that's not being used for business purposes, like most of out images are.  I doubt someone making a 5 second music clip for an advert would charge the same as a 1 minute clip.

Nothing has changed yet.  I just submitted a few photos and when you select that it has people or a property with no release, it automatically goes to rights managed.

Good decision about the lower payout.  I hope GL gets big enough to start ignoring us, like the other big sites do 

Starting with video could be very difficult.  I get the feeling that contributors are more reluctant to upload to new video sites, as it can take a lot of time and they wont have buyers.  It seems even harder to get buyers to use sites that are just starting with video.  The good news is that Pond5 have been doing some strange things lately and people are looking for somewhere else to upload new video clips.  They were very successful letting us set prices, most of us thought their minimum price was too low but being able to price clips higher than the other microstock sites has worked very well for some people.  There are buyers that like higher priced content as well.  So perhaps this could be a good time for GL, as long as you can be more like Pond5 than some of the microstock sites that have just gone for low prices and have failed dismally.

Posting a hard drive is sensible.  It can take forever to upload thousands of HD clips.  I just wish they let us all send in our hard drives, so they could be competitive with other sites.  They rejected my application, I could apply again but it isn't worth it if they have a collection that isn't attractive to buyers and they aren't selling enough clips.

Quote from: sharpshot on August 05, 2016, 09:39

Quote from: madman on August 04, 2016, 16:50

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on August 04, 2016, 16:35

Sorry, it's only been two weeks since the last thread.  Please come back in January.

where is the thread?

There have been lots of threads about this for over a decade now.  Just type "union" in the search box if you want to see how this topic has gone nowhere.

I've made a search for "union" but I cannot say I can find any results "exactly the same" with my topic.

maybe this topic will go "nowhere" but why? there's a reason for that, there is a lot of contributors who selling their works in different microstock agencies and at the same time there is so many contributors who doesn't even know the existence of this forum...

I have read many threads about a microstock union, maybe you need to search more?  It has been discussed for years but nothing ever happens.  I gave up on the idea when istock cut commission below 20% and a lot of us were willing to take action but the majority carried on uploading as if nothing had happened.

...May I  suggest that since you will have new contributors making 40% and established contributors making 52 %, that you do NOT do as some other sites and jerry rig your search to favor newer 'cheaper'  portfolios and bury the work of your skilled and experienced artists.  This sort of short term policy has hurt the long term solvency of the sites that tried it...

Good point.  I would much rather we all got 45% and have no bias in the search than get 52% if it means my images are going to sink down the search, like they have with several sites now.  If I was in the position of the new GL team, I would keep it simple and pay everyone 50%, like Pond5, Alamy, Stocksy, Stockfresh and a few others do.  50% seems fair and I'm sure those sites make decent profits.  The way things are going, there might be a time when they are the only sites worth uploading new images to.

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."

Until buyers and contributions get together and start their own site that they control and wont be taken over, what can we do?  Alamy is the only big site left that I think might not be solely focused on squeezing as much out of its contributors in the long term as possible.  I thought Pond5 were the same until last year.  All the other sites are either too small to make much money with or have investors that will want to see increasing profits probably at our expense.

Every time someone mentions starting a site owned by contributors and buyers here, they get laughed at but what other option is there?  I don't like the idea of us all having our own sites, one big site is much more appealing to me but will it ever happen?  Bruce has shown what can be achieved with Stocksy, maybe he will have a less niche site one day?

If we could get 500 contributors and 500 buyers together to start a site, I think it would take off.  It just needs someone to start the ball rolling.  No doubt there will be lots of people here that think this idea is crazy and would much rather spend all their time complaining about the current sites but that gets us nowhere.