I think they paid out $80 million dollars to contributors last year. How many cents is that?
Just how can you defend subscriptions? Are you saying that you wouldn't want to earn, or deserve, more for your work? Come on...you must be on SS payroll to try and justify demeaning "royalties" with statistics that may or may not be doctored up to look good. This is not exact but with about 60,000 contributors that means the average earnings for each contributor last year was $1333. Ummm....oh yeah then there's taxes. Oh yeah and then the cost to produce images. Wait...and fees from Paypal. Maintenance for equipment... oh well you get the picture.
I guess I was naive when I signed up thinking that SS was looking to license images in a way that contributors and SS would profit together. Wrong...