Some of that data is believable - no idea if it's right though - and some seems just bizarre.

If iStock has 50,000 contributors, 1.6% is 800 and 7% is 3,500; I can believe that 80% of their sales come from 3,500 contributors.

Geisha is in the top 150 search terms? And Calgary? I find that just beyond belief unless there's some weird fetish searches driving this list vs. what buyers use in the real world. There are other odd terms in that list - offline, racing horse, fountain pen - not to mention butterfly being so high up

The exact terms and prices for extended licenses vary from agency to agency - generally the more rights, the higher the price. So printing items for resale might have a limit on the number of items in some extended licenses (iStock) but not at other agencies. In all cases I don't think it matters what the item is - so a mug, mousepad or poster would all just count as an item under the EL for items for resale.

I didn't get the mail either - I think 123rf might have had a problem with how this mail was sent. And as pointed out, why no site mail on this as well as e-mail? I can't buy the "check your spam filters" when (a) so many didn't get it and (b) I regularly check my spam filters and it wasn't there either.

Important changes like this should be clearly communicated - such as a popup when someone logs in or visits the site, sitemail, some other positive-confirmation method so the agency is sure the contributor has actually received the notification.

Thank you for letting contributors know - that's very helpful.

I took a look at the site (in German) and did a few searches. I noticed that the titles of images are in English and wondered about translation of keywords and searching.

I did some searches (both in the English and German versions of the site) and was puzzled about the results. For example, searches for tropical beach, maine, boston harbor picnic basket, sand dunes and boston dowtown produced expected results. If I searched for maine sunrise or boston sunrise it said zero results even though images with those keywords are there. Searching for maine sonnenaufgang and boston sonnenaufgang produced results as expected. I don't speak German but used Google translate to help me out

Is that just a glitch with one word? Should an English search with the original keywords still work (as well as one with German keywords)?

I think that the 50% cut applies only to the image sale and a portion of that 150 credits is paying for some third party to upsize the image. I can't imagine why anyone ever pays to have this done, but apparently if the buyer thinks they need it and can't do it themselves, there's a market for it?

So I think the image credits (whatever they are) were priced at $34.40 and the remainder was the fee for upsizing.

The CEL paying $42 would mean $84 for 100 credits which matches (roughly) the 1200 credits for $1,000 package. That seems fine. As I mentioned in the other thread about inmagine sales, it's not the 50% that bothers me but what it's multiplied by that's a problem (in my case I wasn't happy that inmagine which is 123rf's owner gets a distributor cut on the $10 value10 sales from inmagine, leaving 123rf contributors with 50% of $8 instead of the $10 sales price)

Contributor's Agreement: http://www.123rf.com/submit/agreement.php

For all intents and purposes, 123RF and Inmagine are two separate entities. Inmagine is a 123RF Authorized Partner Reseller. All sales will be reported as such and we still do a 50-50 split with what 123RF earns.

Thanks for the link to the agreement - it might be good to have it on the site somewhere other than as part of the upload process. Have we all missed where there's a link to it from the contributor's section?

And as far as Inmagine being separate, I have a hard time accepting that if they have the same owners as 123rf. This just means the agency is pocketing 60% instead of 50% on those transactions and that's not right. As contributors, perhaps we don't have the right to know about the ownership of both companies, but when you say "for all intents and purposes" that sounds like same owners two legal entities (parent - subsidiary, common owners). What's to stop Inmagine from deciding that of the $10, only $5 goes to 123rf, thus leaving contributors with $2.50? If it were a separate company with separate owners you'd not want to do that as the agency would loose as well as contributors. When your own parent is acting as a distributor you have no incentive to minimize the cut the distributor gets.

This is just wrong.

Perhaps I should start a separate thread if it's too confusing to put the two issues in one - I definitely want to get details on the royalty to 123rf contributors from sales via inmagine's Value 10 collection.

Quote from: Karimala on January 02, 2012, 12:56

Does anyone know where to locate the Artist's Agreement on 123RF?  I can't find it for the life of me!

http://www.123rf.com/terms.php

That's not the ASA; that is the terms of use for the site. When I signed up with 1234f they were still doing paper contracts (which I have a signed copy of). I'm sure things have been updated since then, but I don't know where it is online. It should either include a rate schedule or reference an external one. Somewhere talking about the 50% and distributors, partners, etc.

Does anyone know what the 123rf contributor makes on one of these $10 inmagine sales? In theory it should be $5, right - 50% of $10?

I may not have received on of these - I did a check for the last few months and couldn't find any $5 XXL TIFF or XXL JPG royalties in my list. I did find some at lower amounts - from $2.15 to $4.70 which I assume were from sales via 123rf? How would I tell where the sale was from?

What occurred to me was that I wouldn't be happy if there were some sort of distributor commission taken off the top - buyer pays inmagine $10, inmagine pays 123rf $8 and I get $4. As inmagine and 123rf are the same company it would just be a way of effectively lowering contributor's take on what should be a one party sale.

I looked to see if I could find any sort of details on these types of sales, but couldn't - just the blanket statement that I get 50% of the net price. Does anyone else have a link to more information on this or can Alex provide us with some details please?

Quote from: jsnover on January 01, 2012, 18:16

FT has banned/banished me so I am possibly hampered by only having 3 of the 4 top tier sites

May I ask what was the reason for banning you?

You can ask, but I can't give you much in the way of detail for an answer. I deleted all my files at FT when I went exclusive with iStock but left my account open. Some months later when I went to log in to look at some data - probably because of a forum thread here discussing some recent action at FT - I found my account was no longer there. When I contacted them to see if I could keep my old account (and thus level) when returning to independence, I got an initial yes  but then a  no "...Fotolia would not be interested in re-establishing a business relationship with you".

I believe that some of my activism in the MSG forums (and a predecessor group on Yahoo) trying to organize contributors to get better terms when agencies were starting to cut contributor royalties played a part, as well as being critical here about the way FT treated contributors. They had said they reserve the right to close accounts of anyone who speaks ill of them anywhere (i.e. not just in their own forums). While I was still independent they warned me via e-mail that my suggestions to have contributors hold off uploads until they got better terms from FT on subscriptions might lead to them closing my account if I didn't back off.

You can see that once FT was all glowing here. But no longer

2011 was a transition year for me - first half as an iStock exclusive, second (from June 4th) back to independent. As such comparisons are not straightforward, but bottom line is that I had 28% lower income in 2011 than 2010. Downloads were up 70% but that's the bias of lots of subscriptions.

There are positive signs in the growth at some sites, but so far there's nothing other than SS that's big enough to make up for the massive drops at iStock (FT has banned/banished me so I am possibly hampered by only having 3 of the 4 top tier sites).

For those who see negatives in some of the low pricing at newer sites, I would note that my average sale price at PhotoDune in December  was $1.05, versus $0.95 at DT and $0.84 at 123rf (volume obviously lower at PD). If they can get the volume up, it may become a decent earner.

I would also note that in looking at the overall return per download by agency for the year, there's only one that has dropped since I was last independent (first half of 2008). That's DT which dropped from $1.07 for the first half of 2008 to $0.85 for the second half of 2011. Everyone else is up. In terms of total $$, DT is marginally up from 2008 whereas SS is almost double. You'd expect comparing first half to second half that the second half would be higher, but still SS's performance is really good.

BigStock has been a huge disappointment - they used to be about 10% of my totals and they netted me $92 and change this year (to be fair, I didn't give them all of my portfolio, but I netted more than that at Veer with only a few hundred online and for less time). To go from 10% to so small you're not even 1% is pretty sad. Someone who'd been selling well there said that it was mostly older stuff that was selling at BigStock, so perhaps that's why things have been so dead for someone uploading new stuff (it's a brand new account, not a holdover account FWIW).

In terms of keywording for stock (versus general discussions about how you categorize age), I think the Getty CV has the brackets in reasonably good shape and a Mature Adult (Mature Woman, Mature Man) is between 40 and 59. Senior is 60 and over. Young adult is 20s, and 30s is Mid Adult (I think the wording is awkward - no one uses that in speaking to people). I think at Veer (using Corbis' CV) if I keyword "older" it wants me to choose senior or mature adult for a meaning - i.e. they don't see mature as synonymous with senior either.

Perhaps as time goes by we'll have to divide senior up into categories 60-79 and 80 and up - all those ads for "active seniors" showing gray haired people running, climbing mountains, etc. are talking about a different senior from the more frail folks in their 80s and 90s who appear in ads for assisted living facilities.

I think we might be more au courrant to compare iStock to Netflix, someone once in a commanding position with enviable growth and customer satisfaction scores, but which amazingly quickly eroded most of those with breathtakingly moronic decisions and even worse PR defending them with the Kelly-clone CEO. Read here, here, here, and here for those outside the US who might have missed this little gem of a corporate pratfall.