...We believe that most of you who have extensive graphs and laser sharp analytical skills would come to the conclusion that the cost cutting effect is very minimal. And any 'cost savings' realized are very small and gradual especially in the beginning.

There will very likely be new entrants into the microstock agencies over the next few years - perhaps some macro photographers who have decided this is where the future is (stranger things have happened). Are we to assume that even if they bring a portfolio of several thousand images, they can never earn the same royalty rate that others of us do? Just because we happened to be part of 123rf before some arbitrary date??

Or are we to assume that new big portfolio contributors will negotiate private deals to get the same rate we're getting?

And if the cost savings are gradual "especially in the beginning" - does that suggest they get larger over time (for those of the newbies who build a big and successful portfolio)? Why is that a good idea?

Suppose I had waited 6 more months before bailing on iStock exclusivity and found I had a reduced commission - that I could never improve upon no matter what I did - because I didn't have 150 images uploaded by January 2012?

If you want to encourage people to work hard and produce, give them a chance to earn the higher royalty rate by generating sales. Without that it just seems so arbitrary to have this two tier compensation scheme just depending on when someone signed up. And soothing words aside, I can't help but view it as the thin end of the wedge that will in the future see the old-timers royalties "aligned" with the new ones, perhaps ironically citing how unfair it is to have two different royalty structures.

Not sure what you mean about motivating "the ones sitting on the fence". If you're talking about iStock exclusives, they have to give 30 days notice, so if they haven't already done that, they're SOL with 123rf already. If not them, who? Who is "sitting on the fence" right now?

And could you elaborate on this "necessary stepping stone towards bigger things"?

I appreciate you joining the discussion Alex, but I just don't see how this scheme makes any sense for the contributor community.

I think FT was the first site to do a deal with a print on demand place that allowed them to show all the FT images via their API and if a buyer wanted to buy a print they would then buy a license for the image and print it. If a second buyer wanted to buy the image, they'd have to buy another regular license for that image.

If you are printing on demand and expect a high volume, the extended license would be considerably cheaper. If you want to offer a lot of choices but don't expect many buyers for any one image, buying individual licenses probably makes sense - after all the buyer could make the purchase and then print what they'd licensed. Making sure that the print shops do pay for additional licenses is the key, and I'm guessing that there's very little policing of such things - we're effectively on the honor system.

Nice that they are keeping the 50% commission for us old timers but they can change that whenever they want.  Not nice for anyone considering going non-exclusive with istock.  I prefer the way SS do it, pay more to those that sell more, regardless of when they started.  People that put in a lot of work should be rewarded.  Those that don't make much effort can have a reduced commission.  I don't see how putting off potentially great contributors by paying them a lower commission is a good idea.

On the offchance that 123rf is listening to this discussion, I think your suggestion is a very good one. Instead of having all new contributors be at the lower scale, have a two- or three-tier system where earnings (portfolio size is irrelevant) in $$ determine your rate. Grandfathering existing contributors would be a nice touch.

I also think it'd be appropriate to hear something from 123rf as to why they feel the need to reduce commissions - are they investing in marketing or are they seeing reduced business and instead of trying to increase it they hope to keep their profit up by taking from contributors?

And why did only some of us get the e-mail?

Site is still down for me, and no notice on the "be right back" page that gives a hint as to when.

Seems to me you're presupposing that no buyer actually wants to buy any of this "Agency" content. If they do, they're stuck with a ludicrous price for it. I think it is a buyer issue - things on the site at the wrong price.

That certainly sounds like it.If that's the case I don't understand the wording around invoicing for commissions in the membership agreement. But then I read the version that said their commission was 45% and they acknowledged that wasn't correct an changed it, so perhaps they've sensibly decided to deduct their commission at source.

Why do you think the subscriptions are live? I haven't seen any subs sales, but I also haven't seen anything on the site indicating buyers can actually purchase a subscription yet. If it is live, they've really hidden it well.

So you get no credit on Corbis, the image is $40 cheaper for the large size, and I assume you get less in royalties (percentage) because there is a cut for both Corbis and Getty in that deal.

In the internet age, why does this whacky model with many layers of distributors still persist? This isn't even an issue of internationalization (i.e. site in a local language) - it says quite clearly that Corbis international distributors can't have the image.

I checked this morning ad we're now up to a grand total of 10 images of mine transferred to Thinkstock/photos.com. That's up from 9 at the end of last week and 8 at the beginning of the week.

At this result, I won't see the whole portfolio of 2500 for about 24 years!

Things are pathetically slow at iStock today, but I think the my_uploads updates are close to real time. After getting first child to school bus I checked in on stock sites and after reading your post went back to iStock to see the time on the one overnight sale's time. There was a second sale with a reported time of a few minutes earlier (after my first check), so although two sales for Asia and Europe's Monday is horrible, I think it's real time horrible

No, it's not

If you're talking about the my_uploads page, I still see Nov 26 and earlier when sorting by last download.

If I go to the user_view page (my profile) the stats there show two bars for December 1st and 2nd. However my $$ total for the start of December is half that of my total at SS, so I'll hold the champagne for now