Quote from: stockastic on January 20, 2015, 01:52
My take on this is a bit different and no doubt simplistic.

Your 'agent' - Dreamstime - just licensed one of your photos to a corporation with a market cap of $344 billion, with the potential for that photo to be seen around the planet.  You get $2.  You should be happy with the deal he cut for you.  He's a hard bargainer.

That's what you have to accept, in order to believe this is "a good deal".    Are we there yet?

There was nothing stopping this from happening before, though, for $0.35 to the contributor!  Starbucks could purchase a shot of coffee beans and plaster it all over the world, Hilton could print wall art in their hotel chain, a web designer could use our images for Fortune 500 company websites, etc.  Did Serban drive a hard bargain?  Is it any kind of 'good deal' for contributors?  No.  But did he attract a large client to purchase RF licensing from DT?  Yes.  Surely better news for the site than contributors, though...

When you read between the lines in people's posts, I think the real complaint here is that sites sell images as RF for subscription (or low dollar) pricing at all.  This deal is just a sad reminder of the potential of what one agrees to, when one agrees to sell RF under a subscription model...  This use by Google sounds to me exactly like what the RF license was intended for (which is to say nothing about getting good returns for the contributor):

What Royalty-Free means is that you pay for the image only once and then you can use it as many times as you like, with just a few restrictions. In other words, there are no license fees except the initial fee and no other royalties to be paid except those included in the initial cost.

...you may use the image in a concept in as many websites as you want, for any number of clients.

Their announcement sounds more like a news release for shareholders, than for contributors!

Is there anything in this 'deal' that is different than a standard RF sale to an ad agency (aside from Google's larger reach to customers)?  Can not an ad agency currently purchase an RF license and resell the image as part of an ad to multiple customers of theirs without needing another license?  So long as Google isn't actually giving the images to the 'customers' and just making them available as part of their ads, isn't that fair game under current RF licensing terms?

If anything, DT has talked Google into their most expensive subscription model ($2 versus $.35), and guaranteed us payment whether anyone selects our image for an ad or not...  Not trying to defend this plan, as I'm not decided yet on whether this is good, bad or neutral, but when I try to see this through DT's eyes I can't really see why this is a bad idea for them (and us, from their perspective).

Is it just that I'm unhappy with selling under a sub model, when I actually know who the end customer is? 

Quote from: stockastic on December 16, 2014, 23:14
By interposing a bogus currency called 'credits', with no fixed exchange rate, DT and others have created a system where they can sell our images for whatever they want. The published price or royalty schedules really don't mean anything anymore.  We don't know what a buyer paid for an image, and we get whatever token payment the agency chooses to make.

Instead of openly discounting images, they can simply discount 'credits'.   It's probably more complicated than they like, but it gives them total freedom to compete on price without technically violating any contributor agreements.   

It's only for those 'big important customers' of course.  And we'll make it up on volume.

I have to admit, while it is nice to talk about high royalty rates, you are right that it doesn't mean much when the dollar value to you is calculated.  While I have little idea what specific royalty Shutterstock pays me, at least I know how much I will get per sale.  Dreamstime (and others) are all about posting maximum payout rates to contributors, and then selling customers on how low prices are!  On their payout page, DT list the contributor royalty as $1.02 for this example of a level 1 credit sale, with a little * at the top and a note about these being maximums.  I'd at least like to see them post minimums!  Essentially they'd be within their legal rights to put on a penny sale and pay us nothing!

Time is your friend when it comes to large photo counts.  If you do 7 photos a week, you'll have 1825 photos in 5 years.  Just a photo a day   Yes - every photos needs titles and keywords, but if you do a series you can copy them around.  Whether you can do a series or not depends on the site, but most seem to allow it to some degree.

Interesting how varied results are.  DT falls every month, but continues to hold as my 2nd best site.  It has a long way to fall still before #3 moves up, for me.  So while I'm disappointed, I should be much more disappointed in the other sites below it!

Looking at my graphs, my real story is that my monthly RPI at DT has been cut in half in the last year.  SS has been steady.  Same number of uploads, roughly.

And not just the assignment, but the assignment option where you relinquish all rights for $25 up front.  Obviously not a great choice for any reason I can think of.  For other submissions:

"The Parties agree that all rights, including title and copyright, in and to the uploaded Media, shall be retained by the Photographer, unless otherwise mentioned by the license agreement."

For me it is just a drop in volume - looking back at 2013 I had 9:31 versus 8:32 credit:subs sales, looking at a random 40 sales around the same date.  My feeling is that DT had a bit of a niche, with bloggers, and the whole Getty thing sucked the market dry.  Way to go Getty!  Take a group of buyers and suck them out of the pool, since they weren't buying from Getty anyways...

Quote from: stockastic on July 18, 2014, 15:11
They cut royalties, and sold subscriptions plans where they get all the money in up-front fees and we get nothing. They kept saying we'd make it up on volume, but with 10s of millions of images on line  there's no volume left for any individual contributor.

I agree that volume is the issue - but my feeling is that the large number of images isn't so much the issue - it is the growing number of contributors that cut the volume too thin.  The agencies can't grow customer demand as fast as we are supposed to grow our inventory, but if there were no new contributors the pie would at least be divided up amongst the same number of people.  I realize the hypocrisy of saying they shouldn't have new contributors (given that at some point I was a new contributor!), but the point is more that as long as a agency accepts new people they are purposely pulling market share from existing, proven contributors.  They have to realize at some point that no serious contributors will be left producing new work if they can't get enough share of the market...

I imagine selling my work at an Art Gallery where every year they take on twice as many new artists as the year before and doubled their gallery space, cut my commissions, and put my older work furthest from the door.  I'd decide it wasn't worth it pretty quickly!

I'm certainly not seeing any of the 'low earners' picking up the slack.  Just my top dog losing ground.

I'm still shocked when I let someone know they can purchase what they want for a few dollars and they walk away...  With music the vast majority of people accept paying $0.99 for a song or an app that they can't use commercially, it is that with photos people think anyone can take them?  Kind of contradicted by the interested party starting out with 'your work is amazing'...

I've dropped off the map in the last couple of months.  This month (as of the 15th) I'm at 62% of half of my July 2013 sales, and at 55% of the sales...  My last 45 days don't add up to July 2013!  I've always felt like I was ahead of the curve on Dreamstime, but I guess I've finally reverted to the mean...

My main complaint about this is that we have to opt out of all Alliances, if we don't want to participate.  That feels more coercive than an e-mail saying 'let us know if you don't want to participate'.  By being one of the 'lucky' chosen ones, we have to give up existing sales to not participate - in effect punishing those with the images they want to use for the trial by imposing a financial penalty if we don't participate...

Sort of like if my boss came to me and said "Hey, we have an exciting new opportunity that could really help our company take off.  We need a few volunteers to help out with a few extra hours - don't worry: nothing out of pocket for you.  We can't pay you for your time but if things work out you could be in for a raise (or not!).  If you aren't interested, that is not a problem, but we'll dock your pay by <whatever portion of sales I get from the partner program>."

Up 23% over March 2013 for me, with SS and DT vying for top spot.  Those two sites made up 80% of my revenue, with 123RF a very distant third.  Pretty even with Feb '14.  Year over year I'm up 25% as well, versus a year up to March 2013.

As of the 16th I'm at 71% of last month, and a little under half of March 2013.  Over 200 sales so far this month.  RPD has been slowly sliding over a year, but this month I'm back to levels from a year ago, 20% than last month...

I was wondering why things were so hot on DT right now, compared to last month.  Apparently we are on opposite wavelengths.  Over 100 sales so far in March, and higher RPD than Feb for me...

Apparently ShutterStock investors have recovered from the shock of losing Yuri last July

Quote from: lisafx on March 05, 2014, 03:22
Thanks for the info Tyler.  One stat I found interesting is that average and median gross incomes rose year on year until 2013, when they started going down.  This is a worrying trend in my own numbers, but apparently for others as well. Not really that surprising when you consider all the royalty and price cuts.  And those seem to be accelerating in 2014.

If you look at my post above, you can see that the number of months reported being involved in MS only grew by 3, and the number of people who responded for the first time was at least 41% of responders.  I think it must be hard to draw conclusions on income growth, when the numbers seem to show that there were more newcomers to the microstock industry responding to the survey.  Still worrying that someone such as yourself is still losing ground, of course

No wonder it is hard to succeed in Microstock, we can't even grow our number of months involved by 12 year over year 

How many months have you been involved in microstock?

Average: 53 {50} [44] (36)

What about income taxes?  You'd have to pay tax on the full $3500...  Plus, I think they would shut you down on the artificially inflating downloads point:

"Shutterstock has the right to refuse to establish an account or to close any existing account, for fraud, intellectual property infringement, violation of a third party's rights including those of privacy or publicity, artificially inflating downloads, submission of material that is obscene in nature, violent or that might be construed as defamatory, failure to comply with Shutterstock's guidelines as may be amended from time to time, for any breach of the terms of this or any other agreement that you have with Shutterstock, or for convenience. "

Quote from: grsphoto on February 19, 2014, 14:33
Exclusive images.... is it worthwhile or a money loser?

Tough to justify these days.  They only offer 7c more (20%) per download on subscriptions and 10% more on other downloads types (credit and the $2 subs).  There would have to be an incredible boost on search placement to make that worthwhile, and DT doesn't have the volume to have search placement help that much.  That said, if it is a file you ONLY sell on DT it is worth considering... 

Quote from: Asthebelltolls on February 18, 2014, 20:58
     DP and SS are my best sellers. DT and especially 123rf, aren't. DT however always seems to come through with credit sales in the $2-$5 range so one DT sale is equivalent to 6 or more DP sales. And on the flip side, DP always seems to sell images that otherwise languish untouched by other agencies.

It is amazing how different results are.  I earn close to 10x on DT and SS compared to the likes of DP, CS, etc. and 123 is at least double DP for me... 

As for the original question: a lot depends on how much you upload, how long you've been at it, how you keyword across agencies, whether you sell photos or illustrations, concept or landscapes, in demand or niche, etc.  Way too many variables to generalize how to do well on a particular agency!

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 14, 2014, 15:42
What I wonder about and never checked, is sensor dust and cleaning, since there's no shutter or mirror protecting it? Is there some new "dust bunny" issue on the horizon?

Quote from: melastmohican on February 14, 2014, 15:26
One of the reasons I chose Olympus E-M1 was new line of pro lens they released with it. I was considering A7 for a moment but Sony does not have good lens ready for this system. I did not want to spent lots of money on Zeiss lens. Also full frame lens cannot be small so it would not be any size benefits of having mirrorless.

I switched to mirrorless two years ago, and am now using the E-M1.  Interestingly I had more issues with dust on my Canon dSLR (which had sensor cleaning) than I do with the Olympus.  I think Olympus has a particularly effective dust cleaning system, though.

I think whether mirrorless or mirrored appeals to you depends on what and where you shoot.  I switched as I wanted a single system and the size of micro four thirds allows me to use one body for both stock and personal stuff.  If you aren't going to a smaller sensor (i.e. smaller) system then there is no inherent quality difference between dSLRs and mirrorless - given that they have the same sensors basically.  That said, for static subjects, I think mirrorless has an advantage in that contrast AF is more accurate, typically, supports AF anywhere in the frame and magnification.  A tilt screen is nice for composing macro shots and the viewfinders are larger than what you find in a similar APS-C body.  Of course dSLRs shouldn't really be at a disadvantage, since they too can employ live view - but for some reason mirrorless cameras are ahead for AF and focus options.

Generally I see dSLRs as still being king in cost effectiveness (you aren't waiting on the latest pricey lenses from Sony, Olympus, etc.), AF Tracking (unless you are using live view to get odd angles or using eye detection type features), general responsiveness (no lag when switching to the viewfinder) and DOF control (more lens choices, larger sensors on all but the Sony A7/A7r).

What I really like about mirrorless cameras (like the EM1) is the big 'experience' in a small size (large viewfinder, lots of controls, weather sealed) and the seamless transition from using the viewfinder to the rear screen.

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Happy 2014, nice to see growth in your revenue...

Here is another that is active (of course I have no idea if they purchased an EL on these).  Shows 190 purchased:

http://www.groupon.com/deals/gg-5x7-good-luck-symbol-art-print-on-metal-2

Featuring:

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-132232247/stock-photo-old-rustic-horseshoe-hanging-on-door-said-to-bring-good-fortune-and-luck-according-to-superstition.html?src=Lf-shHxaRVc7RQFvDHvNUg-1-1

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-138280409/stock-photo-beautiful-dream-catcher-on-yellow-background.html?src=4LIKZkxgd2F4oKiJzgYgpA-1-31

Quote from: Herg on November 04, 2013, 07:35
They are picky with their reviews as well as not getting me a single sale for months.

The one word I would not use to describe Canstock is 'picky'

I'm up to 60% of last October's sales, as of the 15th - so looking good so far this month to me.  The bulk of that is due to my 3500 images on Dreamstime - up 40% over last Oct if the month continues.