paddy_ji:

I think you have a lot of nerve trying to defend a 15% royalty.

and some artists offer different images on both - you forgot that option

Thanks leaf, I changed the poll to reflect your recommendation.

I can pretty much guarantee that every microstock site will be offering subscription sales in the not-so-distant future.  That includes all of them - IS, FT, LO, etc.  It is a proven money maker.  It makes the site extra money, and saves buyers lots of money, but only provides a small increase for contributors.

The only way to stop the trend is to make a stand.  But the only way that would be possible is if the uber-portfolios were onboard.  A contributor with a 100 or so photos will make absolutely no difference to a large microstock site.

Whether you agree with subscription sales or not, a $0.25 royalty is simply too low for an XXL image or a vector.  That is the lowest royalty for subscription sales in the industry (at least for the big sites).  These companies makes millions of dollars a year in profits, and their profits keep rising.  They can afford to treat their subscribers (who helped make them the companies that they are today) a little better.

In my opinion, a sliding royalty scale (based on image size) would work the best.  But there are other options available as well.

Getting back on to the issue of StockXpert and their subscription, they're a commercial organization offering you an opportunity. If you don't like it you can simply decline, as others have suggested.

Well, that's not correct.  You can't simply decline because there is no "opt out".  An opt out feature is exactly what everyone is asking for.  Even better would be an opt in feature.  But the microstock sites refuse to even humor us with the thought.

At this point, the only thing that you could do is stop doing business with them.  In other words you would have to remove all of your images.  But some microstock sites (e.g., DT) won't even let you remove your own images because you agreed to leave your images on their site for a certain amount of time (6 months in DT's case).

If this were a new microstock site that was starting up and they made this announcement, they would be laughed off of this forum.  But the problem is that most of us already have an investment in this site.  Most of us have spent hours and hours of time editing, keywording, and uploaded 100s or 1000s of images with the promise that we would get a payback for our efforts over the years.

Finally, we uploaded the images under a previous contract.  It just isn't fair to have the old contract pulled out from under you and a new contract implemented without your consent.

There have been many discussions about the lifetime of an image on this and other forums.  Most people agree that a generic image (that is not fashion or technology oriented) should have a lifetime of at least 5 or 10 years.  After all, a picture of an apple is a picture of an apple.  But now it seems like the problem is not the lifetime of the image, but the lifetime of the contract that you agreed to.  Contracts don't even seem to last a year in this environment.  They are constantly changing the contract behind our backs without even asking us for comments.  This is a classic example of bait and switch.  They bait us in with enticements (such as higher royalties) and then once they establish themselves, they switch out the original contract with a newer contract that benefits only themselves.

It seems that StockXpert is becoming the latest victim of their own success.

Last week their Annual Contest turned into a joke and now this.

steve-oh:

If StockXpert really cares about its contributors, then "show us the money".  Here are some suggestions:

- Allow us to opt-out or opt-in of subscriptions

- Only allow subscriptions sales on smaller image sizes

- Have a sliding royalty scale for subscription royalties based on the size of the image (0.25 for small, 0.50 for medium, etc)

- Give contributors a 0.35 royalty for subscriptions.

I'm sure that there are other options out there as well.

But to come out with a royalty plan that is the lowest in the industry is simply not acceptable.

to address your concerns about your XL and XXL files, our experience has been (with Photos.com and LiquidLibrary subscription offerings) that the most popular download size for subscribers is medium size. Very few download the larger file sizes.

I just went to Photos.com and took a look at the offerings.  I did a search and selected an image.  I then noticed that there were 5 sizes as follows:

Multimedia (667 x 800)
Medium (1000 x 1200)
High (2001 x 2400)
Super (2751 x 3300)
Ultra (4001 x 4800)

Only the first three options (Multimedia, Medium, and High) were available by subscription.  The last two options (Super and Ultra) were only available by single download options (with the prices for the image being $219 and $299 respectively).

So the largest size available via subscription is about 5 MP, which would equate to a Large on StockXpert.

Why not offer something similar on StockXpert - only allow the smaller sizes to subscriptions?

Am I misunderstanding this?

Aren't only StockXpert exclusive images allowed in this "opportunity"?

Do you guys have that many exclusive images on StockXpert?

Most microstock sites sell the smallest size for 1 credit (which equates to about $1).  That would compare to the smallest size on Photoshelter for $50.  So their is a pretty large difference in pricing.

Larger sizes on the microstock sites sell for more (up to $20), but PhotoShelter will charge more for larger sizes as well.

Although I personally don't have a problem with people selling images for different amounts on different sites, many people do have a problem with it.

iStockphoto is trying to make MySQL the scapegoat.  That is just plain ridiculous.  For a database to be the bottleneck is extremely rare.  Usually the application code is the problem (which is my bet in this case as well).  They still refuse to take ownership of this problem and want to move the blame elsewhere.

Google, Yahoo, and Wikipedia all use MySQL and all of them are WAY larger and don't have these issues.  Why is that?

Any last minute voters?

with more than 1450 DLs I have never had a single XS sale...

I find that to be near impossible.  You are either joking or making a fundamental mistake on how you read your stats.

Keep those votes coming...

As the title suggests, do you think that LO should change their current watermark?

There are some that believe the current watermark is weak and encourages image thefts, while others believe that the watermark is fine and should be left alone.

What do you think???