Personally, I am getting really tired of being fleeced. I will watch agencies very closely and will stop uploading to those with questionable business practices (many of those are not getting my new uploads already). Lucky for us, there are still a few places where stock business is done in a reasonable way.

Has anyone ever experienced, or know of anyone who has experienced this? I am just wondering. It has not happened to me but as I am going to be investing more into my microstock efforts, I want to just investigate if there is any possibility of this happening, thanks.

Hi everyone,

I've been following the thread and I hope I would be given the opportunity to jump in and clarify a few matters.

Yes, you're right to view Inmagine as a sister or parent company, whose main product are PREMIUM RM and RF images and have the same shareholders. However, that's where the similarities end -  Inmagine and 123RF do not share manpower, infrastructure, sales or marketing budgets, marketing activities, strategies etc.

Being experienced contributors, you would understand that every business is carried out differently - Inmagine's target audience are customers of a different segment with different needs. With 123RF, we're largely a self-serve, pay before you consume, volume based sales approach. While Inmagine has longer sales cycles, heavily reliant on relationship based sales, requires a lot of extensive image research, travelling and pitching before a client finally gets on board and the customer care that entails after the sale is very protracted, a lot of manual invoicing, mailing and follow up is required even if only a single image was sold.  A majority of Inmagine's customers demand credit terms ranging anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months. This is because, Inmagine's own customers (the agencies themselves) have to be paid beforehand. Once they're paid then only Inmagine gets paid.

However, the 123RF Partner Reseller API (the bridge between 123RF and Inmagine) immediately registers a sale whenever Inmagine records an image purchase. 123RF is then committed to pay the commissions to you regardless of the ability of Inmagine to collect payment with credit terms mentioned above.

The image that I'm trying to paint here is:
1. Inmagine's cost of sales is very much different from 123RF's. It's a lot more involved - client visits and servicing are imperative to the business.
2. Inmagine's undertaking of RISK is also very much higher because there is a significant chance that clients might default or even go bust before payments are collected. This is a very real risk during bad economic downturns when a large number of agencies stopped operating.
3. 123RF has to pay commissions upon record of sale and charge Inmagine immediately, but Inmagine has to take a long time to recover the sales as Imagine have to abide by the credit terms given.
4. Inmagine and 123RF are incorporated in different parts of the world, we cannot "merge" the accounting systems between the 2 companies as easily as some might think.

With the 4 points above, I hope you can somewhat relate that we are unable treat the businesses as a single entity. Inmagine has to retain that margin because of a larger cost of sale required to sustain its business. Please also note that we feel that Inmagine should retain itself as an API Partner Reseller because we believe that every sale we can fight for our contributors and keep it within the community would be beneficial and count towards your earnings.

Thanks for lending us your ears.

Alex

I'd like to know what it is, too?  I got a couple for 4.50 last week. "Low EL"?