Just divide $3000 by the number of downloads you get and ask Shutterstock to raise your average royalty to that.

You mean there are standards of how "serious" people must be, in order to market on SS?

Nope, there never have been. That is some of the concern I brought up. Some people have expectations of making a living with the money they make. Others just want to make a little money. Right now, SS and other micros accommodate both types. But if the supply starts to vastly outstrip the demand, will it squeeze out the people that want to make a living? Micro sites don't have to protect their higher earning contributors and the question is will they?

I got an e-mail from a business, asking for a customized version of one of my images for use on their nylon mats. It gets printed on these mats and then shipped to retail stores.

I'm now considering the price, but I've no idea about the number of prints, how many retail stores and how expensive these mats will be. Therefore, I find it hard to come up with a good license price.

Any ideas? Who's had experience with selling designs for decoration items?

I would see that as an extended license plus any customizing charges you want to charge them. Unless, they want it as exclusive, then I'd just charge regular freelance rates.

Quote from: cthoman on March 25, 2014, 10:20

To be honest, the people at the bottom worry me a lot more than the people at the top. There are a lot more of them, and they don't have the same expectations as the higher level contributors.

I worry about some of them. For sure there are super talented people trying stock for the first time and they have the greatest chance to disrupt the market for full-timers. I've seen some new portfolios with 100 or fewer images that scare the heck out of me.

But I feel like a lot of the junk is from people who have been around a while. Too many people uploading 50 variations of the same junk image with the same weak artwork they originally made years ago. Unfortunately that stuff seems like a big part of that huge pile of stuff SS takes in every week.

I guess I meant it as... At what point do they go full crowdsource if they keep adding more and more? We've all seen what other crowdsourced sites look like for artists, and the thought of that potentially happening to the micros scares me.

Probably 260,000 of them are crap images. Sorry, I know that's mean, but honestly probably true. Despite ramping up their intake week after week, year after year, SS still has pretty low standards. At least with vectors, I can't really speak to photos with any authority. There are so many junk vectors added every day. For whatever reason they still seem to be playing this numbers game as if customers care whether a company has 30 million images, 50 million, 100 million, whatever. Do they care? I have a hard time believing they do.   

I have no personal problem with how many images they ingest every week because I know 95% of them are junk. From a concerned citizen standpoint, though, I really wonder if all of these images do make it harder for buyers to find what they really want.

To be honest, the people at the bottom worry me a lot more than the people at the top. There are a lot more of them, and they don't have the same expectations as the higher level contributors.

It's very simple, really. If you are a world-class photographer with unique vision and fabulous subject matter then you would be an idiot to sell it as microstock. If you are a proficient technician who can produce excellent quality images like everybody else's then the value of your work reflects its ordinariness.  You can't change the value with wishful thinking or because the quality is up there alongside the best of all the other similar sort of images.

Except for all that middle ground of not wanting to change the value of it, but moving the slider so you get closer to max value instead of the minimum.

Your frog analogy is both ridiculous, inaccurate and insulting to the rest of us who actually do put time and effort into choosing companies that do not intentionally screw us over. If you really want to rant at someone, rant at Getty, the gold standard for RM and trad shooting. They have won the "race to the bottom" by offering images for free.

Does it have to be intentional to be bad? 

This thread says more about its contributors than shutterstock 

I don't know. I can see both sides. I had a customer this weekend contact me coming from one of the major agencies. They wanted a particular image I didn't have on that major site. It was a quick mod, so I didn't charge them for custom work just the price of the file at $20.

After the job was complete, they had 10 more files they wanted, but couldn't pay $20 a piece. I had most of the image themes they wanted already uploaded to my site, but they weren't on the major micros. I could upload them there and maybe get a couple bucks for them or I could wait and maybe they'll download one or two from my site for $20. Or maybe, I'll get nothing.

Either choice is OK, and I don't blame anyone for taking one or the other. But, there is a certain frustration knowing that certain elements of your business undermine other elements. I could say that the higher prices will never work, but I've seen it work on my own site and all the majors. At the same time, it is way too easy to get out competed by cheaper prices and huge advertising budgets. The frustrating part is realizing that they do it so they can compete against me (indirectly of course).

I'm not sure where you got that insinuation. Hope it wasn't from me.

I think it was the general comments about relocating to the middle of nowhere from a few people. I didn't take it personal though. I thought it was funny. I guess I'm never sure what countries people are from and how they picture America. I just learned about American parties the other day and I'm still laughing about that.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/this-is-what-american-parties-look-like-around-the-world?bffb

I bet you are for the NoBama Minimum Wage raising issue aren't you? How about the Mandatory Health Care Fiasco?

I'd like free healthcare. Are you giving it out? I have to pay for my Obamacare.

I totally get that. My sales dropped as well after "maintenance" a few months ago (I've worked to get them back up and have raised my earnings past that point since then).

But their offices...it' just really difficult to quantify whether that's a good thing to spend their money on. To you it may seem like a lot of money, but in the scheme of things it may not be much to pay for office space in Manhattan. They could move elsewhere, but that would require a huge upheaval, letting go of hundreds of employees and rehiring, which could cost even more. And you'd have to get hundreds of people up to speed on all the projects current employees are working on.

And perhaps being in NY is partially responsible for their success. Perhaps it's a good thing for creative directors and art buyers to visit their space. It may show them Shutterstock is a successful company that's not going anywhere, and they'll be more likely to sign on as clients. And Manhattan's where the advertising money is. You're bringing around creative people who work in "cool" spaces. They expect your space to be "cool" too.

Honestly, I was more amused by the insinuation that America is a barren hillbilly wasteland outside of New York. Not that anybody said that, but it almost seemed implied. I don't really care where their offices are.

they could save a lot of money moving to India or China or whatever backwater area in the US but one of the reasons they stay in NYC is to show they can afford a prestigious and expensive location and this is probably an important factor for investors since now they're a public company.

I think that was the point of wasting money. I really don't care where they are located. It is their business to run, but I also don't see anything wrong with criticizing the way they run their business. At the end of the day, all their decisions can come back to bite us in the butt, so there isn't anything wrong at taking a look at them.

Who wants to live in a boring suburb or country town if you can be in a vibrant metropolis??

I don't know. Austin is pretty nice too. I definitely wouldn't call it boring. I've been to New York several times. It's nice, but I'd rather live here.