It's hard to have a discussion with you, you never answer my questions, while at the same time you're always saying I don't get it and just state the same things over and over (without further explanation). I try to explain why I think the way I do and if nothing else, my opinion is backed by polls (at least when it comes to earnings). So in a way, it's really hard to understand you. The point of all discussions is to illustrate your point, make other ppl understand your view (not agree with it, there's a big difference). Unless they're really dumb, then of course, you can't do anything...

So what was your question? To name an agency with fair share, decent prices and volume? I thought I answered that: I don't think there is any, at least if "volume" means comparable to IS or SS.

And yes, I agree with you, the top four bring in the lion's share of the earnings (else they wouldn't be the top four).

But still I believe supporting the smaller ones (with fair shares and decent prices) is worth it. Which are they? To name a few: Zoonar (my experience with their support is totally different to what you mention here, so no complains from me), GL, Yay, Featurepics,... Do they sell a lot? No. But as long as the amount of time needed to upload to them is not too big, I will keep on supporting them.

Quote from: dirkr on June 12, 2012, 17:22

Quote from: wut on June 11, 2012, 18:07

Quote from: jsnover on June 11, 2012, 17:47

I think if you consider that there are n buyers spending y dollars on photos each month for their projects, from the seller's point of view, it doesn't much matter how they spend their dollars beyond what cut of it we get (share of total sales and then what the agencies hand over out of that). It's a mistake to think that if the buyers didn't have subscriptions, you'd get PAYG sales on a 1-for-1 basis instead - they'd buy, but probably fewer images.

And what the price of those files is. Let's say we compare 2 credit based agencies (so that we compare apples to apples), one is selling images starting at 1$ and is charging 1-5 credits for a photo DL (S-XXL) and gives contributors 50% (and is about to cut commissions soon anyway). The other it selling images from 1,2$ and charges 1-250 credits for a photo DL (XS-XXXL, E+, V, A), paying 15-45%. Ppl just look at the royalty % they get, which is just so stupid, the equation is missing an essential bit of info. Then there is volume on top of that, that should be included when doing the calculations.

Just 2 real life examples. This IS spitting is getting a bit tiresome. I know, if you get a bad rep it's hard to get rid of it, most of it is justified, but there are many more worse examples out there. In this industry, for most of us, there's really just 2 agencies that can deliver. Well only one if you're exclusive.

I disagree. It's not stupid. In the end the royalty percentage is the most important factor. If a buyer has a fixed budget of 1000 dollars, where do you want him to spend that for buying images? At a site that prices images at 100$ and pays 15% commission or at a site that prices images at 10$ and pays 50% commission?

In the long run supporting low-paying (in terms of percentage!) sites is doing nothing but reducing the total amount of money in the pockets of image producers.

Do you know just how absurd you sound?

First off, buyers won't buy 50x more images because their budget allows them to (as you put it 100$ per image on one site and other sites are selling them well under a dollar). Second, if that was true, those cheap agencies would be on top of the industries, not getting 0,1% of the market, or even 3%, but no such agency gets a significant piece of the pie. If they would, they'd just raise prices and cut commissions. Every single site has done so, when it became big (SS doesn't count since they're predominantly a sub site, 54% of the income is from subs and they pay 20-30% for credit sales, which is second lowest in the industry). As you can see second point is closely related to the first (well I hope you see the connection;)

ETA check your shares and how much gets in your pockets from supporting low price agencies. You'll break down in tears if you will (a quick look on the right also paints a great picture -------------->)

You got it all wrong. I am not advocating low prices, I am pointing out the importance of high royalty percentages. The example of "lower price with higher royalty vs. higher price with lower royalty" is an artificial one to illustrate that the often heard argument "I don't care for the percentage as long as the RPD is higher" is a flawed one.

In an ideal world we would have (reasonable) high prices AND high royalty percentages.

And you are right, the agencies bringing in the most money today are not the ones paying the highest percentages. Is there any way to change that? I honestly don't know, but by NOT supporting those agencies that pay decent percentages (and if you want, only those that charge not too low prices - there are enoug of them) you are not giving them any chance.

If you only support (i.e. at least upload to) those agencies that pay lower percentages (because they are the ones bringing in the bulk of the money), you're giving them an advantage over those that pay more. If you (or we all) continue to do so, that will only strengthen their position - which will lead to further commission cuts simply because they can get away with it.

I am not saying everybody should leave IS because they pay the lowest percentage (to indies), but the least thing we should do is to try our best to keep some viable alternatives alive. Which agencies will be those alternatives in the future? I don't know, so I support many of the mid and lower level sites who pay out a "fair" share. My risk is that I spend uploading time for no return. The upside potential is, that one (or more) of these sites will develop into such an alternative that at least keeps the big sites from cutting commissions even further.

^^ Which means the vast majority have never and will never reach pay-out !
IS is making millions out of interest alone...

Do a little math and you see you're completely wrong...

We're talking about 68k contributors. Let's assume they are all just below the payout limit, then that would mean 6,8 million unpaid royalties. In reality it's likely below 1 million. In today's world 1 million will give you around 20k in interest per year with a relatively safe investment.

I'm sure there's no profit in it for Istock.

I don't know what's funny about that. Not at all.




Btw, I have a 1D 

The one thing that isn't on the project preview yet is our contributor royalty rates. These will start at 35% and work there way up to as much as 70%.

And from the website:

What Sets Creative Warehouse Apart?

High contributor royalty rates, I repeat, HIGH ROYALTY RATES.

35% is not high.

However, I can't see any partner agreeing to cooperation/negotiations with a stock agency NOT knowing how much content will actually be supplied.

Zoonar and Yaymicro come to my mind. They offer exactly that - explicit opt in / out per partner.

So the average royalty rate (in 2011) at shutterstock is now official:

28%.                 (33,7 / 120,2)

How much above (higher levels) or below (beginners) that average anyone's individual percentage is, is still a little mystery...

Quote from: dirkr on March 08, 2012, 14:53

congrats as well!
Had my first sale today, for a new agency with such a small overall image number that's quite impressive!
And I have to say I love the 75% commission! $1.58 for a small resolution is a nice change to the "established" agencies. Let's hope sales will rise!

On the contrary, sales have stopped!

I have to agree, looks like a little teaser in the beginning - followed by nothing more...

I do hope it's a success for him and I do have some hope that it might bring some changes to the industry in the long term.

I do understand his motivation to set up his own shop. You only need to do some back of the envelope calculations to see what amount of money is at stake.

If we believe the "one image sold per 8 seconds", that results in roughly 10.000 images sold per day. Now doing a very conservative guess, the average sales price (total price, not his cut) of those images is maybe 4$ (including subs, but also including ELs and XXLs). Next assumption: his overall average commission may be as high as 40%.

Taking these numbers, he pays around 24.000 $ to stock agencies every single day.
That makes almost one million US dollars per year. Reality may be (average price higher, average commission lower) even a lot more.

Motivation enough to give it a try... Every percent of buyer budget he is able to move from other agencies to his own (only accounting for people buying his images at his site instead of elsewhere) would bring him around 10.000$ a year. Any new business or any business he may take away from other photographers is additional upside potential.

Obviously that is not without risk (e.g. agencies throwing him out), but that's what business is about: risk and return.

It will certainly be interesting to watch...

Quote from: dirkr on April 27, 2012, 02:21

I now had my second refund at Veer this month. With the number of sales they have, that is really disturbing. Anyone ever heard an explanation from Veer about this?

Read my post a few above yours - they say credit card fraud

Thanks, I missed that. Sounds like a pretty big fraud then, judging from the number of people posting here alone...

What other agency has a print-run limit on their Enhanced Licence? 

Looks like today's sales are now up to date but the latter part of the 17th has yet to do so.

same for me on the daily rows on the download stats page, but the totals in the top line on the screen are still not including any sales starting from late on the17th
Update: all fine but the remainder from the 17th...

Quite different. Looking at the top five sellers in the top 4 sites (including Istock until end of 2010) only three pictures appear more than once.