Congratulations! 

Photoshelter and make them RM.  . with RF.

Quote from: sjlocke on May 09, 2008, 21:29

Tell him to suck it up and pay what the cost of what he wants.

Good point but putting yourself in this kind of situation isn't exactly helping your leverage for negotiating for big money.

When someone wants to buy out the rights to a few of your images for thousands of dollars.....do you want to tell them to "suck it up"?

What happens when your at the negotiating table and your RM buyer finds that you sell work at the microstock level for 1$.  I was in this situation today.  And no I was not offering the same images RF and RM.  The buyer has a hard time understanding why you value some of your work for $1 and some of your work for hundreds and thousands of dollars.  Something for you to think about. 

And another sale reported again today. 

Seren is absolutely right.  As a non-US citizen NOT LIVING in the US you are not accountable to pay tax there. The company (Photoshelter in this case) is accountable for taxes on the income from the money they earn from us photographers (the commission that they take on each sale). I must, however, pay taxes on my income from stock in my own country of residence.  As long as they have this requirement I will not join them and I will encourage other non-US photographers to do the same and to make sure they get the message.

Here's some stuff Allen at Photoshelter wrote about the tax situation.

There�s been a lot of talk about taxes on this forum, especially from our non-US-based photographers regarding the headache that the necessary paperwork is causing. Trust us, the tax reporting obligation creates an additional administrative burden on us and we don�t like it either, but it is the law and in order to protect both PhotoShelter and you folks, we need to follow it.

We�ll try to make this as clear as you can make anything about taxes, and will work to continue to clarify the issue and make whatever changes or improvements that we can as we move forward. We didn�t make this stuff up though. We have hired and consulted with tax attorneys and tax specialists who deal with this for a living and worked with them to this result. We knew this was going to be an issue with some folks, which is the reason that we put it �up front�. As several of the folks have noted on the forums, many of our competitors do the same thing, only you don�t find out about it until you try to get paid.

Here are a few key concepts for non-US-based contributors:

First, because you are being paid by PhotoShelter, which is a U.S. Corporation, the income is deemed to be taxable in the U.S. Some folks don�t seem to like this, but please remember one key thing: for tax purposes, you are not �selling� an image in the traditional sense. What you are receiving from PhotoShelter are the proceeds under a license agreement that must be treated as a royalty as required under tax law. U.S. Treasury Regulation 1.871-7(b) makes it clear that "items of fixed or determinable annual or periodical gains, profits, or income are also subject to [the 30% withholding tax], as, for instance, royalties, including royalties for the use of patents, copyrights, secret processes and formulas, and other like property." Payments from the licensing of stock photography fall squarely within the category of royalties described in the regulation. Because these payments need be characterized as royalties constituting "fixed and determinable, annual or periodic" income, PhotoShelter, Inc. is required under the Internal Revenue Code to serve as a withholding agent.

The instructions on Form W-8BEN outline a royalty as one of the applicable reporting classes. To many who have responded that you have sold images to U.S. magazines without going through this hassle, this is the key difference (i.e. a direct sale does not constitute a royalty). Also for those who don�t like paying U.S. taxes (including Wesley Snipes), (please note that from what we can tell, and we can�t speak for every country in the world) you can often claim a lower withholding rate (possibly 0%) on the Form W-8BEN if there is a tax treaty between your home country and the U.S., or alternatively, many countries allow you to take a credit for taxes in your own country where you are a resident for taxes paid in the U.S.

The issue that we had been waiting several months to receive clarification from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was whether or not a letter is required to be submitted with the W-7 from PhotoShelter as justification for receiving an ITIN. Our take was that you don�t need this letter and that this documentation is a requisite for what we interpret as more �institutional� forms of payment, i.e. banks, insurance companies, brokerage firms, etc. We contacted the IRS on multiple occasions and when we explained our position, they needed to do further research. We finally heard back from them and even though we think it�s a bit much, the IRS requires the following documentation:

For our international photographers, when you submit the W-7 to get an ITIN, you will need to provide evidence that you will be receiving a payment from a U.S. company in order to substantiate the requirement for an ITIN. To do so, you must have your first sale with PhotoShelter before making your application for an ITIN. When you have your first sale, we will make available to you on the �My Sales� tab of your profile page, a remittance advice with your name, address and account number to demonstrate your entitlement to receive these funds. In addition, as a preemptive matter and even though the IRS said we didn�t need to, we are also going to provide a letter to further clarify this point. You can download this letter in the �Tax Information� section of the �Payment Info� tab of your profile. These documents, along with your evidence of residence should be submitted to the IRS in order to obtain an ITIN. Also, as several of you have pointed out, rather than send these documents to the U.S., the IRS does have offices in London, Paris and Frankfurt, which should help cut down on the turnaround time.

If you want to take advantage of the reduced withholding rates provided under a tax treaty upon your first sale, you�ll have to wait until you receive your ITIN and submit with your Form W-8BEN before you draw your funds, otherwise we will have to withhold taxes at a 30% rate.

Our intention was to avoid this process and enable it so that you could get the tax paperwork done �upfront� before you had a sale. But in practice, the IRS apparently doesn�t want to set up an ITIN for a person unless they can demonstrate that they need one.

Filling out the paperwork is a process that takes a lot of time. Again, we want to make the process as easy for you as possible, but we have to comply with the tax laws and ultimately there is a notable benefit to folks like our photographers in the U.K. who once the proper documentation is received get their payment with $0 withheld. One of the respondents on the forum made a comment essentially saying �do it once and get it over with�. Remember that you don�t need to go through this every time you make a sale; just the one time to get it set up to take advantage of the reduced rates. We are sorry that this process is unavoidable and realize that getting passports and other records notarized is difficult, but we are committed to assisting you in completing the process as quickly as is reasonably possible.

We've developed a few pages in the Learning Center to provide additional information, which we suggest you read:

For US Persons: http://psc.photoshelter.com/mem/learn/payment/tax
For non-US: http://psc.photoshelter.com/mem/learn/payment/tax_intl

Allen

Can a photo buyer get a complimentary download of one of these $500 photos and see how it looks in print?  Or see how it works with their design? 

Would they respond to email from a buyer requesting something like this?  They don't respond to any other emails.

Quote from: Slimshady on May 03, 2008, 18:27

I come to the conclusion that I'm either being ripped off by the microstock sites or their is more money available for purchasing photos with the higher end buyers.

Only you yourself can decide what your whotos are worth and where they should go. Microstock is merely a different business model that fills a need for lower budget users.  It is a volume game for the photographer. A hot photo may be downloaded 800 times and earn you $800 in this volume game over time. The same photo, if offered as Licensed and Rights managed, can earn you $1500 or more for one sale.

Please note that it is not proper business practice to ffer micro as Licensed on rights managed sites. It is unfortunate that some of the Rights Managed sites do not spell this out implicitly - they are so afraid to use the "M" word (microstock). I do believe Photoshelter has taken steps to clarify their kanguage since of of their contributors had photos listed as RM that were already selling on a half dozen RF micro sites.

Licensed is there for a reason, so that usage of an image can be tracked. Once it is out in the market as RF, it is up for grabs. That is why this "exclusive buyout" that Dreamstime offers is quite the joke, although it does happen. A buyer would be stupid to do an exclusive buy on an image that has already been DL'd 250 times.

If you are interested in earnings potential for an image, the price calculator at Alamy.com is open to use without logging in. Do a search on a subject you shoot. Pick any image as long as it is "L" not RF. Then use their price calculator on it. Choose different criteria when doing this, for instance, choose one use as "Front Cover" and another price as Inside Page. It will help give you an understanding of how RM pricing works. BTW, on Alamy,  the quality of the image you select won't matter. So don't worry if the image you select is trashy (unfortunately there is a lot of garbage on Alamy Alamy does not edit content, only technical quality)

I do micro mainly for my illustrations - but most of my photos go RM. I have 150+ RM on Photoshelter but just in a holding pattern there to see where things go with it.

The guy who sold the 2 for $5K on PSC is a seasoned pro already having a track record with major magazines.  Just wanted to discourage any rush of upload mania there because there will be disappointment in watching every day for sales. It does not happen that way in the RM world. It is not unusal for an image to be considered by a buyer for weeks, and if it does not fit in the final product, there is a chance of the image being returned.

Some of the above cited is why FeaturePics will ultimately fail - they don't knw how to market properly for RM, and many of the contributors there that are offering images for $10 or $14 as RM (what a joke), haven't a clue as to what it is all about. Offering RM, a bulk of their (FeatPics) income should be generated from it. But they have no idea as to how to manage RM models and do not actively market such content. One of the reasons I quit FP.

As for the higher end buyers - they are out there. And only on rare occasions do they go micro.

How many people have photos that are selling 800 times?

Yes the keywording process is a little bit more work than most microstock sites I have worked with but hopefully it will help buyers find exactly what they are looking for by bringing back relevant search results.

I think it's pretty cool how they have like 6 direct sales agents.  They also have people reviewing photos that have a lot more experience than the people who sell $500 worth of photos and become reviewers.   The whole team's credentials and experience is pretty impressive.   Allen, the top dog, is proven winner in the business world.  Winners usually keep winning.

I wonder how they can swing giving back 70% to photographers and still stay in business.  They must have to pay their direct sales agents a commission also.   Some microstock sites are only paying back 20%.  I come to the conclusion that I'm either being ripped off by the microstock sites or their is more money available for purchasing photos with the higher end buyers.




 

It struck me today that the poor US economic conditions could be a good thing for microstock in general.

Historically, in down times here in the US, companies will cut (counterintuitively) back their advertising budgets. That could mean larger corporations who generally go for the bigger budget photo shoots, just might turn to stock or even microstock in order to trim the fat from their costs.

I know that companies such as Dell have already used microstock in some campaigns.
But I never did see them as big players in the advertising game.

Just my thoughts...anyone else?

Didn't Dell run an ad with a microstock photo of Macintosh computer.    

More and more people are reporting sales.  Yesterday a photographer reported in the forums that they sold two photos that brought in $5000.

72% of the first quarter sales were RM.