I'd like to see all sites handle their partners like Yaymicro do.  They have a page with them all listed and we can opt out of any of them.

We have a bit more simple, but a list of partners that you can opt-out from. You can find it in My Account > Settings > For contributors

Sounds good, but what if I do want everything from DP to be on Pond5 and Pixmac? How do I get it moved over?

If you have everything at DP, you don't have to care about anything.

For now it's not completed, but we are working on a system that will move all content from Pixmac to Pond5 and vice versa. You can consider both sites as one company with two sub-brands (like Fanta and Coca-Cola). Still, considering your royalties, it might make sense to upload directly to either Pixmac (if you have vectors) or Pond5 (if you have just photos). Later in time, the integration of the two sites would be better than it is now.

Yes, CD123 and klsbear, you would be able to disable any ports that would duplicate your submitted content at PX+P5.

Vita

I don't like the idea of the sites merging and my Pond5 balance decreasing.

True, that seems scary. Can you please contact Lucy at [email protected] to give you more info and possibly a solution? Just please, give her your username at Pixmac and we'll look at it.

What happens if we have the same files at both sites?

Please contact Lucy at: [email protected] and we'll handle that individually.

Thank you Lisa. Tropical island not yet :-) I'll stay and try to help out with design and usability - things I love the most. And yes, your files will be sold at Pond5 as well, if you agree to the new agreement. Later on ideally having one interface for both sites.

Thank you Jsnover as well. Speed of curatorial crew at Pond5 should be faster, it's already in the process. You can also opt-out from API partners at Pixmac.

@Mantis

Just a few statements to think about.

Our partners were bigger competitors at the same time, looking at our growth as potential risk in future.

Any individual company itself can do a pile of gray stuff and not being seen. We stepped into the wild waters and tried to do a partnership with direct competitors, believing we can reach to more customers. And yes, we were under magnifying glass. My mistake was, that I was so idealistic, that I thought they would respect us and as you said, they would listen and understand with a vision of a better future.

The reality is that we all fight for life on this planet. And at that time, we were a small unknown against a big wellknown. And in such cases the winner is easy to guess. So everything that happened is easy to understand for me. And yes, it was the biggest lesson of my life so far.

And as for your 3k images? I'd be happy to host and sell them. I bet you put a lot of work into creating them and I understand how careful you are about putting them somewhere. The reality is that you never know. In any company: technical error can happen, somebody's mistake can occur, and in the end there's always somebody with a stolen creditcard putting your stuff onto strange websites.

At least I tried to talk about things that other companies just hide or do not comment.

But you know what? Microstock has one powerful feature that nobody uses. You can do a test purchase anytime and see if the whole chain works as it should. And ask questions. Still, the reality is that many people prefer to construct strange theories rather than spending a few dollars to find out the truth with a single click.

Sorry if I'm too open. And honestly, enjoy your life with or without Pixmac.

Vita

You're welcome. Good luck with sales!

Vita

Every time I reply to your questions or suggestions, I try to put myself into your shoes. In case my words sounds like BS, please let me know or ask further questions. I'll try to explain my point of view and tell you guys anything that's not under NDA.

Thank you for understanding.

Thank you Lisa for the comment. I've discussed that right now with our developers. It's a pain for more contributors so we'd launch some pretty simple but working solution so you would have month + downloads + earnings on one page.

As for the import of the images, THP and CoisaX, it's not super-fast and even that I'm pushing it here as much as I can, there are some technical issues or speed limitations from time to time. We're now importing and checking on duplicates all the files that came in and unfortunately it takes a lot of computing power and time. I can only say that we would have all the files on our site one day. It's my target to have/market/sell as much files as possible, so we're on the same boat.

Thank you steheap for the question. There are advantages for sure:
- higher royalties (in majority of cases)
- better ranking in search
- zoom capability in picture detail (as we have hi-res only when the contributor is direct)
- more metadata (title+desc+keywords+exif)
- usually sharper and better looking thumbs
- subscription sales
- distribution sales (you can opt-out)
- individual help with import
- setting bonus ranking to your hand picked bestsellers (5-10% of portfolio)
- me ready to help you, to make us both happy...
etc.

The downside is more maintenance work for you, so it's good to check similar content and how it works at Pixmac, so you can estimate if we have the customers for the content you offer.

Should be fixed now. Thank you!

CDN: yes, exactly...

It's probably A/B testing. A technique to learn what setup works best for the customer by serving two similar pages to a lot of readers and measuring result...

I don't know how this is done at SS. We delete images in case there's a complain from the trademark owner (eg. author/owner of the building etc.). I guess that's the same issue there. So it's on case by case basis.