I don't think that it will be 18MP if they are combining the 1DS and 1D

Quote from: bhr on October 13, 2011, 15:03

Quote from: sharpshot on October 13, 2011, 14:48

Quote from: bhr on October 13, 2011, 14:24

Quote from: sharpshot on October 13, 2011, 14:02

I don't really feel comfortable selling editorial photos on a microstock site.  I'll stick with alamy for those.  Perhaps they were right not to bother with editorial all those years?

What does Alamy do differently which makes you comfortable selling editorial images via them rather than via RF microstock ?

Editorial has lower sales volume.  I usually get a higher commission with alamy RM than I would with microstock editorial RF.  I get some information about what the photo is being used for.  The buyers usually pay a lot more for a specific use.  I don't like the idea of low sales volume and low commissions and not knowing anything about what the photo is being used for.

Okay. Thanks for the quick answer. I was misunderstanding your use of the word comfortable I thought that you meant that you had an ethical issue related to the use of the images.

Otherwise it is only down to price and where the image is most likely to find a customer.

From an ethical perspective I am most comfortable with a relatively tight and restrictive licensing model. I like and respect Alamy but am still slightly nervous of the site in some ways - because it sometimes seems rather like a free for all.

ETA: @BaldricksTrousers - I am not completely convinced that an RM image is any more or less likely than an RF image to "sit in a designer's folder for years" ... etc

I'm not sure why it matters where the image sits or for how long.  The buyer agreed to use the image in a certain way and if he doesn't use it correctly then he is liable for damages not IS or the contributor.  Am I missing something?

I don't know if the point was meant to be someone paying $200 for an image may be more likely to read and comply with the license conditions than somebody who is a casual or once off buyer who buys a picture of Tom Cruise to put on their small business website selling second hand landmines.

There is also the case where you can make 1 sale or 100 sales and end up with the same money in your pocket but because there are 100 people using your image there is more chance it will be misused.

There is nothing to say that the RM buyer won't use it the wrong way but there may be less risk than selling via microstock.

$20 not enough for me to send anybody to Istock.

Like someone said maybe they shouldn't have destroyed the base they had.

Saw this funny post today:

Quote

Marie LePage , Oct 06, 2011; 05:38 p.m.

My fiance are running our side business without it being business. We aren't charging anything. Now we're moving into a phase where either we charge $ and the client donates that $ to a charity OR the client and we do a service exchange. This keeps us away from the whole accounting, actually having a business thing.
However, is there a way to make a little money on this? Like is there a website where we could post all the pictures from, say, a birthday party, and then we can give out this site to all the attendees and they can order the prints from there, resulting in us getting some kind of cut? This also fixes the problem of everyone wanting a disc of all the photos from us.
We are very new to this. So feel free to state the obvious and redirect my efforts if I am doing this backwards or something.

http://photo.net/business-photography-forum/00ZQyh

What a great "business" where you don't charge anything!  I wish I had a business like that, lol.  And what a revolutionary thought - a website you could post pictures on where people can order prints.  I wonder why no one has ever thought of that one before.

Yeah but after they gave all the photos away for free and went broke.

I am wondering - where is Rebecca? Did she come to Milan? Is she still working at istock?

Did she post anything, anywhere on what is coming? It would be nice to hear from her and after all she is now leading a huge community driven site.

Honestly I don't want to hear a single thing from them unless its we've decided to restore the previous commission structure.

Quote from: ibogdan on October 04, 2011, 10:19

I finally reached silver today and I hope they won't throw me back into white level.

congrats! you should be at 31% not 25%

When I started at FT white was 33%

Looks like everyone can cover his songs (sell them on stock audio) as long as they add their own vibrancy and freshness from everyday scenes they observed during their travels.

Just imagining the tick box

Do you confirm that the audio you are loading is entirely your own work and you hold copywrite or have you added your vibrancy and freshness ?

Were the scenes you observed whilst travelling everyday ?

Leaf got one ?

Any comments on which one you might think it is ?

the scurvy dogs ! and i thought they sold eye patches, parrots and hooks.

We appreciate the points raised here and in Lee's article.  Thanks for your patience in hearing our reply.  

First on the $3.00 - $0.10 per download:  

When designing our subscription royalty model we did not want to follow the approach of other subscription sites that pay a fixed royalty per download, because of the imbalance of what the company earns versus what the contributor earns.  Let's say a subscription site pays $0.25 per download, their customers pay $250 for a 31 day subscription, amounting to a daily spend of $8.06.  An estimated average of nine downloads per day means $2.25 royalty is paid to contributors (who's images were downloaded by a customer) and $5.81 is kept by the site.  For four downloads, the site pays $1.00 in royalties and keeps $7.06.  One download per day, the site pays $0.25 in royalty and keeps $7.81 - that's a 3% royalty to the contributor.

So we decided to do things differently and create a more balanced royalty model for Veer subscription.  Unlike other sites, Veer offers a guaranteed "royalty pool" of $3.00 per day, per image-downloading customer.  Whether a customer downloads thirty images or just one image per day, we pay out the full $3.00 to contributors.  Compared to the previous example, if a Veer customer downloads one image, the contributor gets $3.00 (the other site would pay only $0.25).  Four downloads, Veer pays $0.75 per image.  Nine downloads, $0.33 per image royalty.  I won't give away our pricing yet but I can say it's less than $250 per month.

As Lee points out, most customers don't use their full quotas, and so $0.10 per image is an outlier.  With a typical range of five to fifteen downloads per day, the typical Veer subscription royalty per image is between $0.20 to $0.60, which is consistent - and in many cases better - than other subscription sites.

Veer's subscription model is different than other sites by paying out the full share of $3.00 per image-downloading customer per day regardless of the number of downloads.  In a few cases, we acknowledge that Veer contributors will earn less per download than other sites but in many cases, contributors will earn much more per image than other sites.  We believe the law of averages is on side with contributors in Veer's subscription royalty model.

Regarding the extended license royalty, we aligned our extended license rate to what we found in our market research of daily download subscriptions.  Veer needs to be on par with the playing field and so we've designed our extended license royalties to be, in our view, a standard price for this type of subscription (to be presented at launch).  We're by no means trying to insult our contributors and we appreciate everyone's concern.  As always, Veer is committed to openness and transparency with our community.

As part of this commitment we have given our existing contributors the option to opt-out, but that said, we believe our offer is competitive with the current market and we are glad to offer this new subscription revenue stream to our contributors.  We hope you join us.

Aaron

Thanks for replying. Good to see an agency at least responding.
However I can't see this being as rosey as you portray.

Veer is offering a maximum of $3 per day per customer to the contributors. = $93 per month.
Shutterstock offers a maximum of 25x25centsx31= $193.75 (base level) + extended license are $28
if your on the top level (25x38centsx31 = $294.50) + extended license.

The subscription plan price is important to evaluate further, I don't want you to undercut subscription prices they are already too low and impact on credit sales.

You will get alot more images available for your subscription plan if extended licenses are excluded.
Do buyers really need a subscription plan for extended licenses ? I personally don't want 13cents for an image that people can produce items for resale.

If the royality pool was spread over a week it would be better. I think that alot of people will use the entire quota in a day, and none on the weekend. Worst case for contributors. If it was calculated over a week I would expect to receive royalities above the minimum.

Istock has a similar subscription pool and I can never remember getting more than the minimum amount. I wouldn't expect anything different with the Veer plan.  

I'm glad there is a flickr, imagine if all those people started microstock.

with so many contributors how can they really police this?  I mean how can they track down every contributor's portfolio on other sites?  what am I missing here? 

They trying to block the top contributors puting images on cheaper sites/new - stop competition
They trying to claw some more profit - you go to white if you are on Istock

I don't think they're trying to get people to choose between being on Istock or FT they would lose that battle. However if by reducing commission in FT to 20% for emeralds they are thinking that they would keep their portfolio on both because 20% of what they sell on FT is still more than 0%.

FT is behaving like youd expect from a major player RM agency trying to protect their ground. They are however a midrange microstock agency that established their business undercutttting the market.

 

Quote from: VB inc on September 22, 2011, 12:44

gambling, while fun and addicting, ruins lives. nuff said

"nuff said"

That is an ignorant statement.  Gambling  certainly can ruin lives.  Watch the (awesome) movie Owning Mahoney.  There is an example for sure.  That being said, many things can ruin lives.  Lets ban alcohol!  Heck, lets ban cars..when used improperly they too can ruin lives.  I don't need the government telling me what I should or shouldn't be doing.  Gambling isn't going away.  Why not tax it and put the (billions) money towards help programs for those that are unable to control their impulsive behavior.

I don't mind a beer or two but cars are banned from inside my house