MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => Selling Stock Direct => Topic started by: Yuri_Arcurs on August 09, 2012, 05:21
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Last three months:
I have spent my time completely rewriting peopleimages.com's landing, checkout, image view and sign-up pages (based on the user feedback we received during the first month). These are the cornerstones of a website so they take a little time to complete.
The good news: The website is fast, customers are surprisingly happy and uptime as been 100% since we launched.
Uploading.
DT: We see the biggest drop in income from Dreamstime primarily because of the upload limit they impose. It is hard to quite understand why an agency would put an upload limit on it's top content providers. DT is getting images that are quite old while the other sites have the most recent and fresh content. Of course this matters and as we can see on their Alexa rank, new agencies like DepositPhotos will probably overtake them in rank in the upcoming years.
iStock: We have a serious problem with their commissions and upload limits for non-exclusives. We stopped uploading primarily based on that. We are still in doubt off what to do here.
Shutterstock: When commissions became public due to Shutterstock's IPO they where staggering low. The net payout to the contributors was surprisingly below 20%. I like Jon a lot, but it's time for a raise! :)
Income from Micro and PeopleImages.com
The only income we have from a microtock channel that continues to increase is from our own site. The income/file from all microstock agencies we submit images to seem to be shrinking. My income from peopleimages.com is growing slowly but steadily with about 30% per month and sometimes more. It is still low, but not for long at this growth rate. One thing I have noticed, and which I did not know about before, is that a lot of people buy more credit than they spend. Who receives all the money for these credits? Well, the majority of the credits are lost, never spent and forgotten by users. So to my big surprise you don't get a 100% commission rate from having your own site, you actually get closer to 200-300% because you also get to keep the lost credits that nobody uses or just stays on their accounts. A major income that we, as contributors, currently receive no share of through the agencies. But the agencies receive this money only because of our images being on their site. Food for thought!
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Thank you for sharing your experiences. Food for thought indeed! Interesting that SS pays less than 20%, didnīt know that. So with 42 cents for my Partner program subscriptions (thinkstock) I am getting a lot more.
The market has so many players, I wouldnīt be surprised if there was more consolidation ahead of us.
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Very interesting, thanks Yuri!
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can we sell images/vectors in your site...?
give us fare commision though and allow us to sell in your site :D
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Great info. Thanks and take a heart for your trouble!
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Thanks for the breakdown Yuri, mostly stuff we are thinking too but great to hear it from someone with clout.
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can we sell images/vectors in your site...?
give us fare commision though and allow us to sell in your site :D
Sure, you'll get %15 and he keeps all the forgotten credits ;) .
Interesting info. Perhaps people have forgotten credits heir credits because they decided they aren't satisfied and haven't come back? Although, I don't think in three months you can claim that they have been abandoned. Maybe after a year? Or are you talking about some subscription type credit scheme per week?
Upload limits are good for the majority of contributors, as it keeps factories, like your company, from overwhelming the limited agency resources, as well as giving everyone a chance to prosper. That might be a bit socialist, but whatever. As we say to my daughter, "It's not all about you".
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Thanks for sharing your perspective, and especially for pointing out the true commission rate on funds spent rather than sales - I had not really thought about that previously. It really is time for a raise! Hopefully your holdout at iS will cause them to re-evaluate their low commissions for non-exclusives. I would join you in the cause, except if I stop uploading they won't notice - hopefully those of you with clout can get a better deal for us all (although I won't be holding my breath for that!).
Congratulations on the success of your site - it proves that due diligence and hard work can still pay off.
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Thanks for sharing Yuri! Good news to see that your site is growing.
Regarding DT: The strategy of this site is IMHO totally counterproductive. Their politics does not make any sense and the quality of their reviews continues to be low. Depositphotos already earns me more money then them since a couple of month and I see a much brighter future for them.
iStock: Decreasing income reported from all sides. Even if I would bother to upload I assume it would only bring me around 10 - 15% of my total income (as it was before I stopped uploading).
Honesty and honor have more value for me than 15% income increase.
Good luck with all your projects!
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can we sell images/vectors in your site...?
give us fare commision though and allow us to sell in your site :D
Sure, you'll get %15 and he keeps all the forgotten credits ;) .
Interesting info. Perhaps people have forgotten credits heir credits because they decided they aren't satisfied and haven't come back? Although, I don't think in three months you can claim that they have been abandoned. Maybe after a year? Or are you talking about some subscription type credit scheme per week?
Upload limits are good for the majority of contributors, as it keeps factories, like your company, from overwhelming the limited agency resources, as well as giving everyone a chance to prosper. That might be a bit socialist, but whatever. As we say to my daughter, "It's not all about you".
Sometimes people bite back, and you have been criticizing me endlessly during the last couple of years. So let's look at your arguments, Sean.
Factories like mine feed the mouths of more than 100 people and have internships and educational programs with the purpose of giving back to the community (https://peopleimages.com/more). How many interns do you have? How many mouths are fed from your success besides your own? How much charity do you do, if any? How much do you share, Sean? Give back? In fact, I seem to find quite a lot of posts in here from you advocating "not sharing", keeping costs low, being conservative...I'm not sure the "right" socialist thing is to support the "small guys" like you and not "factories" like mine.
You seem to use popular socialistic "small guy" arguments against me from time to time, but at the same time act and support completely opposite values. Perhaps showing more of your true colors, than that of the "socialist" you claim to be - when appropriate... Your profit margin is way above mine for sure, Sean. What iStock is getting in supporting you is a person that gives little back to the community, shoots cheap because spending money on shoots would be less profitable, and takes the low hanging fruit because they are very accessible while making sure that he gets the biggest piece of the pie for himself.
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Be right back. Going to get a more comfortable chair and some popcorn.
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I have signed up and got an account today as I can no longer sit here and read this absolute crap. Are you honestly trying to tell us that you're doing this for the good of the people?!
You are advertising for talented retouchers that are often paid way below the minimum wage in most developed countries, which makes it funny how you are no longer based in Denmark. You still feel that you are feeding 100s of hungry mouths, however the truth is your feeding your already over inflated ego. No wonder you have 100 plus staff when you are paying peanuts.
You advertise on your site for retouchers at $4.63 per hour! You say you are running these bootcamps to pass on your knowledge on but really you want cheap pictures shot for your own personal gain, you've copied this idea from Simon Cowell and the X Factor and lets face it he's a very charitable guy that is just helping out new talent!
I have nothing against you making a good business, but please do not make out you are the new Mother Teresa.
How do you feel you have the right to question if Sean gives to charity or not? That is personal information, and most people that give to charity don't feel the need to tell others as they are doing it for themselves and there own piece of mind, not to show off to the world.
All he does is question your ego mania and lets face it someone has to.
Lets make this clear before all your disciples slate me - I respect that you have done very well in the micro stock world but just admit you are in it for the money!
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It was definitely eye opening when I opened my own store at how little the big guys were doing for me.
As far as the orphaned credits, I'm not sure I'd brag about that. While I like to make money, I don't really want to do it at the expense of the customer, and credits were always one of those issues that left a sour taste in my mouth as a buyer.
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Pocket stock has started out with a no credit system, maybe some of the big guys will follow?
In any case, I often had credits sitting in my account at IStock, when I bought there, for a few months at a time, so could be that some of those "abandoned" credits will be spent eventually.
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Factories like mine feed the mouths of more than 100 people and have internships and educational programs with the purpose of giving back to the community (https://peopleimages.com/more).
What a fascinating read, especially:- "The Ambition Team program received a 100,000 USD grant from the Cape Town Film Commission (South African Government) in 2011"
I'm dismayed that the South African tax-payer is apparently subsidising the hubristic manifesto of a wealthy western european business.
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Wow! Really eye opening. Had no clue Shutterstock paid out so little... :o
Lets make this clear before all your disciples slate me - I respect that you have done very well in the micro stock world but just admit you are in it for the money!
I don't want to get into all this (because it looks like it's going to get very ugly), but I just have to say one thing though... As far as I know, no one would ever be able to go far with anything, if they didn't like it. I'm pretty sure Steve Jobs was also "in it for the money", but if he didn't like what he was creating, he'd never had made it as far as he did. (Not wanting to compare Yuri to Steve Jobs, but it was the best example I could think of.....) All I'm saying is that I'm sure it's possible to actually like what you're doing and still earn a profit from it while wanting to "give something back" or whatever it's called.
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Shutterstock: When commissions became public due to Shutterstock's IPO they where staggering low. The net payout to the contributors was surprisingly below 20%. I like Jon a lot, but it's time for a raise! :)
I don't want to take the thread off topic, but this is a very important point that you raise Yuri. Shutterstock has told us for years that our percentage was in the 25 to 33 percent range. Now that the numbers are public, it is obvious that we have been quite misled.
Congratulations on PeopleImages. As we have done with Warmpicture, many of us are obviously scrambling for a way to eliminate the need for agencies which bring the industry down, and mistreat artists.
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I don't want to take the thread off topic, but this is a very important point that you raise Yuri. Shutterstock has told us for years that our percentage was in the 25 to 33 percent range. Now that the numbers are public, it is obvious that we have been quite misled.
Congratulations on PeopleImages. As we have done with Warmpicture, many of us are obviously scrambling for a way to eliminate the need for agencies which bring the industry down, and mistreat artists.
agencies are the market makers, not an idiot "middleman".
if you sell on your own you will need a sales team, and at the end of the day it could cost you more than selling on SS.
look at many companies in the Nasdaq, they spend 100 to produce a 10% net gain on a good year.
if SS is so greedy is because either they do so or they simply can't sustain their biz.
and when a company goes public is also usually because the founders recognize they reached the peak and want to monetize.
considering that here Yuri is confirming he's getting flat or sluggish sales overall the top micro agencies we should clearly see a pattern from all this : the whole microstock model is flawed, too cheap, and unsustainable when run on a massive scale.
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ok... First I congrats Yuri for his success on PeopleImages.com , and I was really looking forward if Yuri allow other contributors too to submit there content on his site.
Regarding commission the agencies give, we should always respect them as it is just because of them only that we are here and a entire new industry is setup.
If there was no shutterstock, dreamstime, istock...etc then we would never been here. I still love shutterstock for giving us the fare commission.
Yes, everyone here wants to earn money.... as it is the nature of life. Everyone want to have better living, everyone has family, everyone wants to see the beauty of life. So if you are working for money then its no harm. Enjoy your work.. :)
Also donating and doing social work is good but it is not required to tell in public that yes, I did this and did that.
When you're a beautiful person on the inside, there is nothing in the world that can change that about you.
Also lets clear out one thing that its all about passion you have towards your work, and this passion gives you money.
Your Passion = More Money
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It was definitely eye opening when I opened my own store at how little the big guys were doing for me.
As far as the orphaned credits, I'm not sure I'd brag about that. While I like to make money, I don't really want to do it at the expense of the customer, and credits were always one of those issues that left a sour taste in my mouth as a buyer.
Amen. The surplus revenue that comes from unspent credits and subscriptions is, I thought, common knowledge, but it seems it's the dirty little secret of the stock industry if even Yuri Arcurs didn't know about it.
The subscription packages are enormous, very few would actually need all the downloads they allow in a month but big firms buy them because it still ends up being cheaper for the images they do need than buying on an as needed basis. If you're allowed 750 downloads in a month for your subscription fee and you only DL 500 (still a huge number of shots that I think would be rare) the agency certainly doesn't refund the difference. However, the commissions they pay are based on maximum downloads for the subscription. The remainder? straight in their pockets.
As a buyer at DT I was always ticked at the odd number of credits you get for the minimum credit package. 8 credits? Weird They want you to have either a surplus left over or an insufficient amount requiring you to buy yet another package. Once you've bought what you need, if there's surplus and you have no further needs for a while, they're happy to announce those credits are expired and forfeited. Straight into the pocket.
of course, there's no profit sharing with the contributors of this extra revenue that has nothing to do with the profits they earn for the sales. Why would they share the extra cash that's created by their manipulation of their system to gouge buyers and shaft contributors. That would be a fair gesture on something that's intended to be dirty and low down.
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ok... First I congrats Yuri for his success on PeopleImages.com , and I was really looking forward if Yuri allow other contributors too to submit there content on his site.
Regarding commission the agencies give, we should always respect them as it is just because of them only that we are here and a entire new industry is setup.
If there was no shutterstock, dreamstime, istock...etc then we would never been here. I still love shutterstock for giving us the fare commission.
Yes, everyone here wants to earn money.... as it is the nature of life. Everyone want to have better living, everyone has family, everyone wants to see the beauty of life. So if you are working for money then its no harm. Enjoy your work.. :)
Also donating and doing social work is good but it is not required to tell in public that yes, I did this and did that.
When you're a beautiful person on the inside, there is nothing in the world that can change that about you.
Also lets clear out one thing that its all about passion you have towards your work, and this passion gives you money.
Your Passion = More Money
Yuri made an informative post; Sean found a point with which to take exception; Yuri let it get personal.
Now, we are all choosing sides. Why? It really has nothing to do with us.
Baldrick Trousers had the right idea -- Why not shut the ef up and let the Heavies duke it out?
PS: I'm cheering for Yuri on this one. ;D
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I don't want to take the thread off topic, but this is a very important point that you raise Yuri. Shutterstock has told us for years that our percentage was in the 25 to 33 percent range. Now that the numbers are public, it is obvious that we have been quite misled.
Congratulations on PeopleImages. As we have done with Warmpicture, many of us are obviously scrambling for a way to eliminate the need for agencies which bring the industry down, and mistreat artists.
agencies are the market makers, not an idiot "middleman".
if you sell on your own you will need a sales team, and at the end of the day it could cost you more than selling on SS.
look at many companies in the Nasdaq, they spend 100 to produce a 10% net gain on a good year.
if SS is so greedy is because either they do so or they simply can't sustain their biz.
and when a company goes public is also usually because the founders recognize they reached the peak and want to monetize.
considering that here Yuri is confirming he's getting flat or sluggish sales overall the top micro agencies we should clearly see a pattern from all this : the whole microstock model is flawed, too cheap, and unsustainable when run on a massive scale.
Seriously? They either play dirty or they can't be profitable? If it were that difficult to sell millions of images per year and make money doing it without gouging everyone else involved then it's a bad business model and needs to be changed, which is what people on this board have been saying for years anyway.
I refuse to believe you can't run a microstock agency profitably and still allow everyone to win. Shutterstock, like most of the others is simply trying to take the whole pie. Greed isn't a viable business plan.
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ok... First I congrats Yuri for his success on PeopleImages.com , and I was really looking forward if Yuri allow other contributors too to submit there content on his site.
Regarding commission the agencies give, we should always respect them as it is just because of them only that we are here and a entire new industry is setup.
If there was no shutterstock, dreamstime, istock...etc then we would never been here. I still love shutterstock for giving us the fare commission.
Yes, everyone here wants to earn money.... as it is the nature of life. Everyone want to have better living, everyone has family, everyone wants to see the beauty of life. So if you are working for money then its no harm. Enjoy your work.. :)
Also donating and doing social work is good but it is not required to tell in public that yes, I did this and did that.
When you're a beautiful person on the inside, there is nothing in the world that can change that about you.
Also lets clear out one thing that its all about passion you have towards your work, and this passion gives you money.
Your Passion = More Money
Yuri made an informative post; Sean found a point with which to take exception; Yuri let it get personal.
Now, we are all choosing sides. Why? It really has nothing to do with us.
Baldrick Trousers had the right idea -- Why not shut the ef up and let the Heavies duke it out?
PS: I'm cheering for Yuri on this one. ;D
haha... no one here is choosing sides. Its just the personal opinion which I am sharing, nothing to do with anyone.
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Factories like mine feed the mouths of more than 100 people and have internships and educational programs with the purpose of giving back to the community...
Come on! Don't tell us the purpose of you educational program is giving back to the community. You are here just for the money. Your educational program is nothing but an investment.
How much is the cut you take from all your trainees who upload to iStock as exclusives?
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I refuse to believe you can't run a microstock agency profitably and still allow everyone to win. Shutterstock, like most of the others is simply trying to take the whole pie. Greed isn't a viable business plan.
even facebook, youtube, yahoo, zynga, are losing money or struggling to stay afloat, no matter if they have zillions of free users, paying users, huge advertising deals, sponsors, and whatever in between.
i never hear anybody here talking about how much is the cost to acquire a customer for instance.
that would be a good start but no, only endless rants about greedy agencies.
what do you guys know exactly ? they can easily spend 10$ to acquire a client that buys 5$ in credits and later dumps them off to buy on cheaper agencies.
let me remind you if your images were so precious and unique they would sell like hotcaked on art galleries or at least on Getty and Corbis rather than for a pittance on micros.
SS might have its greedy plans but no one forces you to join them, it's up to you.
considering they're the only agency left who's really delivering i've nothing against them eating up 80% of a sale that me alone could never possibly make on my own without a substantial and risky investment.
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You advertise on your site for retouchers at $4.63 per hour! You say you are running these bootcamps to pass on your knowledge on but really you want cheap pictures shot for your own personal gain, you've copied this idea from Simon Cowell and the X Factor and lets face it he's a very charitable guy that is just helping out new talent!
I have nothing against you making a good business, but please do not make out you are the new Mother Teresa.
no idea in South Africa but in most of the world 4.5$ per hour is a very good salary.
i'm surprised he hasn't outsourced to India or Cambodia actually.
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JoeBoy and others...Do you really think it would matter if I had a million more? Or even five or ten? Would my life change?
I truly enjoy teaching. I enjoy life with my students and the experiences we have and perhaps... in three years... I have ten great photographers. They can leave my company, but hopefully the stock market will be stable enough for me to hire them, which I certainly plan to.
I enjoy re-living photography basics, being amazed again. It's an inspirational thing to teach and to see people grow. I could have made many choices in my business life that would have given much more profit, but why? That's not happiness. More money?
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even facebook, youtube, yahoo, zynga, are losing money or struggling to stay afloat, no matter if they have zillions of free users, paying users, huge advertising deals, sponsors, and whatever in between.
i never hear anybody here talking about how much is the cost to acquire a customer for instance.
that would be a good start but no, only endless rants about greedy agencies.
what do you guys know exactly ? they can easily spend 10$ to acquire a client that buys 5$ in credits and later dumps them off to buy on cheaper agencies.
let me remind you if your images were so precious and unique they would sell like hotcaked on art galleries or at least on Getty and Corbis rather than for a pittance on micros.
SS might have its greedy plans but no one forces you to join them, it's up to you.
considering they're the only agency left who's really delivering i've nothing against them eating up 80% of a sale that me alone could never possibly make on my own without a substantial and risky investment.
Maybe, you should try it before you decide it is hopeless. ;)
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What iStock is getting in supporting you is a person that gives little back to the community, shoots cheap because spending money on shoots would be less profitable, and takes the low hanging fruit because they are very accessible while making sure that he gets the biggest piece of the pie for himself.
and what you're getting from istock is being told to limit your uploads despite being their top sellers.
i think here both Sean and Yuri are right, they just their goals on different ways.
i've nothing against photo factories, and nothing against single photographers in their own studios cutting costs and producing as much as they can.
however, i can't understand this diatribe about charity and giving back.
istock is giving us NOTHING back, nor are the cheap as-s buyers who only choose micros to cut costs to the bone.
considering the rock bottom payout we get from agencies i can't see any space left for extra charity or volunteering projects, many photographers are lucky to stay afloat actually.
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I refuse to believe you can't run a microstock agency profitably and still allow everyone to win. Shutterstock, like most of the others is simply trying to take the whole pie. Greed isn't a viable business plan.
even facebook, youtube, yahoo, zynga, are losing money or struggling to stay afloat, no matter if they have zillions of free users, paying users, huge advertising deals, sponsors, and whatever in between.
i never hear anybody here talking about how much is the cost to acquire a customer for instance.
that would be a good start but no, only endless rants about greedy agencies.
what do you guys know exactly ? they can easily spend 10$ to acquire a client that buys 5$ in credits and later dumps them off to buy on cheaper agencies.
let me remind you if your images were so precious and unique they would sell like hotcaked on art galleries or at least on Getty and Corbis rather than for a pittance on micros.
SS might have its greedy plans but no one forces you to join them, it's up to you.
considering they're the only agency left who's really delivering i've nothing against them eating up 80% of a sale that me alone could never possibly make on my own without a substantial and risky investment.
It's true. This kind of forum tend to get very one-sided and not consider the agency's point of view. Valid point
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Maybe, you should try it before you decide it is hopeless. ;)
i don't say it's hopeless, i say it's very hard, risky, and takes a long time and lots of money and skills.
because of the internet now everyone thinks it's easy to sell stuff online while actually it's even harder
than with a brick and mortar store !
i'm personally trying to get my foot in the door of art galleries and it's a hard costly and sectarian business,
and even if you ever make a sale the gallery will keep 50% of it as that's the going rate, but for newbies
they could keep up to 80% of sale, take it or leave it, the demand is low, the buyers few, and you're not
famous, what do you do ?
in plus, nowadays any other 13 yrs old punk shooting junk with his iPhone and Instagram thinks to
be a fine art genius and you see people buying into this new trend along with stuff shot on Polaroid
and other conceptual rubbish.
i mean here you have the top selling micro photographer telling us his own agency is making profits
but he's not making a trillion $ out of it and he's got a whole marketing and sales team, if he can't why should we ?
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Sometimes people bite back, and you have been criticizing me endlessly during the last couple of years. So let's look at your arguments, Sean.
I have to say Yuri that I am incredibly impressed with the patience you have shown this far. I kid you not, every time you make a post here I predict an over/under on how long it will take Sean to chime in and turn whatever you say (or anyone who praises your work for that matter) into something negative and ugly. For me, I simply feel sorry for him. "Me, Me, Me!" is a sad way to go through life in my opinion. It can be argued by the darkest pessimists of the world that there is no true altruism. Even if you were to turn around and give every penny you earn back to the community you would receive a good feeling therefor a form of reward. It is simply impossible to make everyone happy.
As for your original post I agree on all counts. I've had a large number of images sitting in the queue at Dreamstime waiting week to week for me to keyword. I'll get out of the uploading mode so it turns into about 70 images every 6 weeks or so for me. Not very profitable.
SS is paying me pretty OK and their upload/review process is 2nd to none making it a much more pleasant experience in general.
IS I just cannot justify uploading to. 15% is scandalous at best and a little piece of me died inside every time I tried to upload through their archaic, unintuitive system.
I truly wish you the very best of luck Yuri. I understand that if you allow other photographers to contribute to Peopleimages your income flow from the other sites would have to be shut down. I predict that you are going to do it anyway down the road when your customer base increases so count me in as an eager contributor.
All the best,
Mat
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It's true. This kind of forum tend to get very one-sided and not consider the agency's point of view. Valid point
no, they're all just jealous of your success.
and indeed they never see the other side, if running an agency was such an easy and lucrative business
anyone would do it and any other photographer would at least set up his shop on Photoshelter.
well i know many people on Photoshelter and SmugMug and they can hardly pay the bills for the hosting.
i mean even Magnum Photos is in dire straits, even Murdoch is talking about selling part of his news empire,
we must accept nowadays selling photos is harder and harder, the whole publishing business is in turmoil
and nobody can see a way out or an exit strategy, and ebook sales are not compensating for the profits they
were making with paper, as simple as that.
agencies are the ones making the market, chasing the buyers, selling them our photos, and sharing the profits.
too many here downplay the role of agencies as if photos could be easily sell like hotcakes alone once they're
online on a few web sites and once they're found on google images.
it's BS, and i would be surprised if SS or IS make a net profit above 20% actually.
so they make 20% ROI and we make 20% per sales, it's not as bad as it seems.
making comparison with Apple taking 30% off any sale on iTunes is like apples and oranges, Apple sales
are backed by their hardware (ipod, iphone, imac), stock agencies are not backed by canon or nikon and have
to grab customers by themselves including getty and corbis, it's a cut throat business !
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i don't say it's hopeless, i say it's very hard, risky, and takes a long time and lots of money and skills.
because of the internet now everyone thinks it's easy to sell stuff online while actually it's even harder
than with a brick and mortar store !
i'm personally trying to get my foot in the door of art galleries and it's a hard costly and sectarian business,
and even if you ever make a sale the gallery will keep 50% of it as that's the going rate, but for newbies
they could keep up to 80% of sale, take it or leave it, the demand is low, the buyers few, and you're not
famous, what do you do ?
in plus, nowadays any other 13 yrs old punk shooting junk with his iPhone and Instagram thinks to
be a fine art genius and you see people buying into this new trend along with stuff shot on Polaroid
and other conceptual rubbish.
i mean here you have the top selling micro photographer telling us his own agency is making profits
but he's not making a trillion $ out of it and he's got a whole marketing and sales team, if he can't why should we ?
I wouldn't say it is easy either, but the barrier to entry and path to a profit (I thought) was pretty low. A few months after I opened my store, I seriously wondered what these agencies were doing with their 80% of the share. They certainly didn't seem to be using it to bring in sales for me. My theory is that they waste it on staff that they probably don't need and ads that don't convert.
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i don't say it's hopeless, i say it's very hard, risky, and takes a long time and lots of money and skills.
because of the internet now everyone thinks it's easy to sell stuff online while actually it's even harder
than with a brick and mortar store !
i'm personally trying to get my foot in the door of art galleries and it's a hard costly and sectarian business,
and even if you ever make a sale the gallery will keep 50% of it as that's the going rate, but for newbies
they could keep up to 80% of sale, take it or leave it, the demand is low, the buyers few, and you're not
famous, what do you do ?
in plus, nowadays any other 13 yrs old punk shooting junk with his iPhone and Instagram thinks to
be a fine art genius and you see people buying into this new trend along with stuff shot on Polaroid
and other conceptual rubbish.
i mean here you have the top selling micro photographer telling us his own agency is making profits
but he's not making a trillion $ out of it and he's got a whole marketing and sales team, if he can't why should we ?
I wouldn't say it is easy either, but the barrier to entry and path to a profit (I thought) was pretty low. A few months after I opened my store, I seriously wondered what these agencies were doing with their 80% of the share. They certainly didn't seem to be using it to bring in sales for me. My theory is that they waste it on staff that they probably don't need and ads that don't convert.
first of all they pay taxes, a building with offices, clerks, security guards, parking lots, electricity, water, insurance, a data center or cloud provider to host the whole backend/frontend site etc etc
if you just run a small site you can get away with maybe 30-50$ a month, but once you scale your business it's quite another story, the costs are massive and that's exactly why facebook is losing millions, they run the biggest datacenter in the world and they get peanuts from their whole operation.
as for ads not converting that's also quite another complex story and it's also the biggest limit for micro agencies, they can't chase customers on the phone or signing big deals like RM agencies do, all they can do is advertising on web channels targeting the cheapest buyers, but as i said before this model is flawed in my opinion as the product is too cheap, they exploited a niche making it so big that now it's mainstream while killing RM sales and now discovering they can barely pay the bills with it ..
the moral of the story is dozens of respectable RM agencies had to go bankrupt to leave space for the micro agencies which are now scre-wing us in any way, talk about progress, "adapt or die", etc etc
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... and ebook sales are not compensating for the profits they were making with paper, as simple as that.
Er ... it's not actually as simple as you think. Ever heard of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' by EL James? Just happens to be the fastest selling and most profitable book of all time with the majority of sales in e-book format. Things change, businesses adapt.
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You advertise on your site for retouchers at $4.63 per hour! You say you are running these bootcamps to pass on your knowledge on but really you want cheap pictures shot for your own personal gain, you've copied this idea from Simon Cowell and the X Factor and lets face it he's a very charitable guy that is just helping out new talent!
I have nothing against you making a good business, but please do not make out you are the new Mother Teresa.
no idea in South Africa but in most of the world 4.5$ per hour is a very good salary.
i'm surprised he hasn't outsourced to India or Cambodia actually.
$4.5/hour a very good salary in most of the world? ??? I guess you mean, a very good salary for people living in very poor countries.
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firstly you say you get 300% comission rate and then you say that money doesnīt make you happy.. seriously? what sense does that make? why donīt you say what we all think including you!
the more $ the better ;D
why having the last ranking level in depositphotos when you havenīt reached it yet, actually you have it from the beginning, its incredible how you have accept that, ainīt that unfair?
have nothing against you but I hate cynicism really
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... and ebook sales are not compensating for the profits they were making with paper, as simple as that.
Er ... it's not actually as simple as you think. Ever heard of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' by EL James? Just happens to be the fastest selling and most profitable book of all time with the majority of sales in e-book format. Things change, businesses adapt.
havenīt read it but its just nuts, I believe that was the only book beeing read on my latest vacation
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first of all they pay taxes, a building with offices, clerks, security guards, parking lots, electricity, water, insurance, a data center or cloud provider to host the whole backend/frontend site etc etc
Those costs are easily spread out over all the contributors. When I left iStock, I joked that the person's salary I was paying would have to find a new job. It was a joke, but the money they were receiving from my sales was literally enough to pay someone's salary for a year. And, I'm a nobody when it comes to sales. If you are going to pay somebody that much money to be your agent, they should probably... well, be your agent, represent your interests and drive sales to your portfolio. I'd probably be better off hiring a single employee to make cold calls all day.
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not saying I am happy having 38 cents sales but they are paying me from 27.8% to 132.4% royalties
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The problem of "fair" fees exist for a long time
I seriously wonder why some people advocate the big agency
Yuri works fine.
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even facebook, youtube, yahoo, zynga, are losing money or struggling to stay afloat, no matter if they have zillions of free users, paying users, huge advertising deals, sponsors, and whatever in between.
Source?
Youtube is owned by Google, which earned $2.8 billion after taxes in the last 3 months. Yahoo netted well over $200 million. Fighting to stay afloat? Seriously?
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Thanks for the info Yuri. I hope you open a site for the rest of us one day. I still think if alamy can pay 60% commission non-exclusive, microstock sites should find it easy to pay 50% and still make a healthy profit.
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... and ebook sales are not compensating for the profits they were making with paper, as simple as that.
Er ... it's not actually as simple as you think. Ever heard of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' by EL James? Just happens to be the fastest selling and most profitable book of all time with the majority of sales in e-book format. Things change, businesses adapt.
But there are no pictures in that book. Wouldn't it be nice if there were ;)
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... and ebook sales are not compensating for the profits they were making with paper, as simple as that.
Er ... it's not actually as simple as you think. Ever heard of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' by EL James? Just happens to be the fastest selling and most profitable book of all time with the majority of sales in e-book format. Things change, businesses adapt.
havenīt read it but its just nuts, I believe that was the only book beeing read on my latest vacation
ebooks are not compensating the traditional publishers is where the truth is... Trads pay authors roughly 1.75% per sold book and then authors must pay agents, managers, attorneys. Traditional pubishing is simply dying because the trads won't change. [I went to purchase the last Steven King book and it was $20, seriously!!!] Smart authors are going the indie route. An indie author receives 70% of the sale on Amazon (and elsewhere). That is $2.10 on a $2.99 book. A 9.99 paperback earns that author $1.75 - from that the author must give 10-30% away to agents etc. If it's not a best seller, a trad books go out of circulation very quickly. Ebooks are forever. Amanda Hawking was selling 9000 books a day for a while. Joe Konrath started off this 2012 earning 100,000 month - so happy that the trads had rejected so many of his titles that he owned to self publish. John Locke publishes his books at .99 (that's 70 cents profit) and was the first indie on Kindle to sell 1 million ebooks books (nice math for him!)
I have been watching this evolution in publishing thinking how the h*ll did photographers allow this (our treatment by agents) go so wrong? Do we need Amazon to start a photo agency? Amazon and Kindle have changed the entire publishing industry and I feel sorry for the trads, but they were too scared/greedy/stubborn to adapt.
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I have been watching this evolution in publishing thinking how the h*ll did photographers allow this (our treatment by agents) go so wrong? Do we need Amazon to start a photo agency? Amazon and Kindle have changed the entire publishing industry and I feel sorry for the trads, but they were too scared/greedy/stubborn to adapt.
I wonder about that too. I think what the heck was I thinking when I started selling microstock? I guess hindsight is 20/20.
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Not to distract from this thread - but amazon to get in the stock business to sell photos, videos, sounds, templates....uhhhhh...Maybe we are lucky they are not doing this. Amazon would be instantly a huge dominating site.
Although - if they keep paying 70%...
Anyway, back to Yuris success...
;)
ETA: why isnīt there a stock agency that sells via amazon? It is the biggest online market place in the world. Somebody must have tried to get into it??
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Several themes:
One:
I don't think 20 $for the last seven hundred or so pages SK book is expensive. Paying 8 or 10 dollars for a kg of decent salad tomates it is, in my opinion. On the other hand, after buying a Kindle I've discovered that I prefer reading books on paper. Some friends of mine agree with me, but they point out that with and e-book reader you can get the books for nothing on the file sharing pirate sites. They consider that a great advantage.
On the other hand: all crowdsourcing sites have their examples of "people making fast fortunes with them". That's a given. One of two examples of these kind are the greatest free publicity you can ever have. Of course, you alway can promote someone to guarantee his/her success. But go to the indie authors forums: 99% of them are getting almost nothing, nothing or losing money after paying for art in the covers, design, editing, proofreading, formatting, self promoting etc. And by the way: you can be an indie author and have an agent as well, not to talk of eventually needing a lawyer.
Two:
Anyway, if Amazon can pay 70% (lets say that sometimes they pay 35% too) for non-exclusive books, why couldn't microstock sites pay these kind of rates? Amazon also have staff, bandwith, storage and adds etc to pay. Probably more than MS sites. And they earn a lot of money.
Three:
I can't understand why disagreeing with Yuri is seen by some like a kind of personal attack. Forums are a tool to contrast opinions, aren't they? Contrasting opinions and learning in the process is a good thing, I'm sure. Not all can be woyaying and pating shoulders. Politely disagreeing with other posters opinions is not judged so harshly. About Sean, I'll just say that he has done a lote for many of us: he keeps the most informative page about stock that I know, he has personally written for free lots of apps for photographers and customers and he is, certainly, in his rigth to speak his mind.
Four:
Very surprising this information about SS paying less than 20%, although I don't understand what the source is.
Added in edit responding to Pixart: John Locke doen't get 70 c per book. If you sell at .99 you just get 35%, not 70
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... and ebook sales are not compensating for the profits they were making with paper, as simple as that.
Er ... it's not actually as simple as you think. Ever heard of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' by EL James? Just happens to be the fastest selling and most profitable book of all time with the majority of sales in e-book format. Things change, businesses adapt.
But there are no pictures in that book. Wouldn't it be nice if there were ;)
You may have just stumbled upon the next publishing phenomena __ an 'illustrated' version of said stories! I'm sure it must be ... erm ... technically possible.
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... and ebook sales are not compensating for the profits they were making with paper, as simple as that.
Er ... it's not actually as simple as you think. Ever heard of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' by EL James? Just happens to be the fastest selling and most profitable book of all time with the majority of sales in e-book format. Things change, businesses adapt.
But there are no pictures in that book. Wouldn't it be nice if there were ;)
The front cover is a photo from Dreamstime.
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Is it true that SS pay less than 20%? I read through the IPO paperwork and I thought it was just under 30%. Am I wrong?
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Factories like mine feed the mouths of more than 100 people and have internships and educational programs with the purpose of giving back to the community
What amount of the 100+ people are in position of creating work they are able to own their copyright to?
I would rather see 100+ individual entrepreneurs than a 100+ person corporation.
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Factories like mine feed the mouths of more than 100 people and have internships and educational programs with the purpose of giving back to the community
What amount of the 100+ people are in position of creating work they are able to own their copyright to?
I would rather see 100+ individual entrepreneurs than a 100+ person corporation.
That's a good way to put it.
Anyways, you can always respond to my comments. I'm going to respond when you start a thread just like I respond to anyone else who starts threads. It is, after all, a discussion forum, and if you are going to post something for discussion, you should expect more than just sanitized fan replies. It's actually better, don't you think?
I thought my initial post was pretty even keeled aside from my %15 comment, which I don't think was too bad, considering we all think agencies are out to get us. However, what about those forgotten credits - "Well, the majority of the credits are lost, never spent and forgotten by users" - do you send out emails to the users to remind them, or is this just pocketed with no effort to help the buyer? Or is it leftovers from a sub plan? Either way, better customer service would help them get more images. I mean either way, you get the same amount of cash, but without helping them, they get less value.
You can see some of my 'charity' in my December blog posts for the last few years, where I've blogged about donations to several organizations in an attempt to raise publicity for them a bit. I don't see much need in 'giving back' to my peers in the way you seem to, although I do enjoy some friendly blog/discussion/software posts with those with common interests.
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Can't we all just get along?
R.I.P. Rodney King
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Can't we all just get along?
R.I.P. Rodney King
Can't we all just vomit at your pathetic and inappropriate anology?
This is a discussion forum where people sometimes have different points of view, sometimes quite strongly. Thank goodness for that. Otherwise there would be no point.
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You may have just stumbled upon the next publishing phenomena __ an 'illustrated' version of said stories! I'm sure it must be ... erm ... technically possible.
;D No doubt! I also doubt there will be a shortage of photogs stepping forward to shoot the images....
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While Sean is not warm and fuzzy he has helped countless people at iStock. I have be encouraged by both Sean and Yuri. I wish them both success as I do this full-time for myself and you
bet it is for myself! I have a family to feed. I have helped others on the way but business is business!
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While Sean is not warm and fuzzy he has helped countless people at iStock. I have be encouraged by both Sean and Yuri. I wish them both success as I do this full-time for myself and you
bet it is for myself! I have a family to feed. I have helped others on the way but business is business!
I kind of second that however each one of us runs their "operation" differently.
There is no right or wrong - probably just more or less cash depending on the business decisions you make on the way to meet your goals.
Just because I don't agree with one's business operation style I don't feel the need to object or point out how certain things are "incorrect", "immoral", "unethical" or whatever you want to call it.
Does any one here on the forums have a problem buying/using an iPhone or other pieces of technology coming from China and other Asian countries where labor laws simply don't exist or aren't enforced?
It's a bit two-faced to say yes to some companies exploiting workers but on the other hand judging how well or not well the staff of a photographer's operation is being compensated.
I don't understand or know how Yuri runs his shop, nor Sean's, and neither one of them know everything about the other, so it's not a very effective or fruitful discussion throwing assumptions into ring.
There is no way to call Yuri's way right, wrong, good or bad - it works for him and I can't see him putting a gun to anyone's head to make them work for him. If they want to work for $4 an hour it's their choice but then also take a closer look at the gadgets you're using to tweet about Yuri's bloated ego because you can bet that the assembly line workers who put your phone together make less then that (up to $2.55/hr) - BUT THAT's OK. :-X
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/the-ieconomy-how-much-do-foxconn-workers-make/ (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/the-ieconomy-how-much-do-foxconn-workers-make/)
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You may have just stumbled upon the next publishing phenomena __ an 'illustrated' version of said stories! I'm sure it must be ... erm ... technically possible.
;D No doubt! I also doubt there will be a shortage of photogs stepping forward to shoot the images....
This one is a (indie) fairy tale for adults. LOL, it seems more the type to be illustrated? I wonder how many 50 shades knockoffs there are already.
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/516DzRYFnRL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA278_PIkin4,BottomRight,-65,22_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg)
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Yeah Loop, I should clarify a couple things. That Steven King book was an e-book. If it was a paper book I could read it, share it, give it away. an e-book is drum locked and you can only read it on the device you bought it on. I can't lend it to you unless I give you my Kobo. I'm sure King has negotiated pretty good royalties, but the average author would only earn a couple bucks on that sale. $19 is robbery when it is not printed, not shareable, and the authors don't get the biggest share.
Several themes:
One:
I don't think 20 $for the last seven hundred or so pages SK book is expensive. Paying 8 or 10 dollars for a kg of decent salad tomates it is, in my opinion. On the other hand, after buying a Kindle I've discovered that I prefer reading books on paper. Some friends of mine agree with me, but they point out that with and e-book reader you can get the books for nothing on the file sharing pirate sites. They consider that a great advantage.
Yeah, I just checked and most of Locke's books are $2.99. He has others at .99 and some at free. Free books usually work phenomenally well in publishing. They don't do much at all for us. He would boost his ranking by giving free downloads and then the sales would follow.
Added in edit responding to Pixart: John Locke doen't get 70 c per book. If you sell at .99 you just get 35%, not 70
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... and ebook sales are not compensating for the profits they were making with paper, as simple as that.
Er ... it's not actually as simple as you think. Ever heard of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' by EL James? Just happens to be the fastest selling and most profitable book of all time with the majority of sales in e-book format. Things change, businesses adapt.
yes but yet i would like to know how much their publishers had to spend in advertising and promotion to sell
that book, any other newspaper and magazine and blog is talking about it, it can't be all free or "viral" promotion,
i mean in many articles the news itself is about the book selling a lot, not about what the book is all about.
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$4.5/hour a very good salary in most of the world? ??? I guess you mean, a very good salary for people living in very poor countries.
for instance in Thailand a good salary is 15$ a DAY, i mean in Bangkok, not in the countryside where 5-10$ is more than enough.
china (apart in big cities), vietnam, burma, indonesia, philippines, india, nepal, same story ...
that's roughly 2-3 billion people living fairly well with 150-200$ a month, so enough to say "in most of the world".
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Youtube is owned by Google, which earned $2.8 billion after taxes in the last 3 months. Yahoo netted well over $200 million. Fighting to stay afloat? Seriously?
source : Bloomberg news, take a look and follow the Nasdaq index.
no matter if they make profits, they're killed instantly when their stock is in free fall, Zynga lost 40% overnight last week, FB is going down to 20$ per stock, Yahoo changed 4 CEOs in 2 yrs ...
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The problem of "fair" fees exist for a long time
I seriously wonder why some people advocate the big agency
Yuri works fine.
80% might look unfair but if they spend 100 to make 120 to me it looks fair, there are very very few companies around
making net profits above 30%, you guys forget that with their 80% fee they have to pay ALL the costs and the taxes, which
in canada are at least 20-25%.
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80% might look unfair but if they spend 100 to make 120 to me it looks fair, there are very very few companies around
making net profits above 30%, you guys forget that with their 80% fee they have to pay ALL the costs and the taxes, which
in canada are at least 20-25%.
Umm... I have to pay those taxes too. Self-Employment is a rough tax.
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$4.5/hour a very good salary in most of the world? ??? I guess you mean, a very good salary for people living in very poor countries.
for instance in Thailand a good salary is 15$ a DAY, i mean in Bangkok, not in the countryside where 5-10$ is more than enough.
china (apart in big cities), vietnam, burma, indonesia, philippines, india, nepal, same story ...
that's roughly 2-3 billion people living fairly well with 150-200$ a month, so enough to say "in most of the world".
Living fairly well with 150-200$ a month... What's the definittion of "fairly well"?
Paying retouchers $4.63 per hour is abusive. Funny how Yuri complains about the low royalties paid by the agencies, and look at peanuts he pays.
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Yuri.
Keep on giving tips for us the contributors, is always good to know things from succesful people in the business we are.
I know many successful people that are very selfish with their knowledge and work and not share nothing to nobody. In my special case i take in my work many of your tips, starting from the universal model release you create long time ago and your site to help with keywords available for all of us that are your direct competition.
All the best.
David.
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I've been well aware of the "forgotten" credit thing for a long time....
This really isn't any different than selling gift cards. Millions of cards expire each year with a few bucks left on them. That's a lot of easy cash every year no one misses.
I'm not sure how this really matters to you however, you're not paying a commission to anyone but yourself. I suppose you could say they need to pay more for extra shots they could have purchased with expired credits, but I don't really know how much of a factor that really is.
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Youtube is owned by Google, which earned $2.8 billion after taxes in the last 3 months. Yahoo netted well over $200 million. Fighting to stay afloat? Seriously?
source : Bloomberg news, take a look and follow the Nasdaq index.
no matter if they make profits, they're killed instantly when their stock is in free fall, Zynga lost 40% overnight last week, FB is going down to 20$ per stock, Yahoo changed 4 CEOs in 2 yrs ...
I watch it plenty. Still not sure what your point is. Yahoo stock is up 15-20% over the last 12 months. Google's rise is similar.
Facebook was a terribly priced IPO and the stock is being pushed toward fair value. It has nothing to do with their business going bankrupt. Zynga is small potatoes compared to the other 3, and I really don't feel their business success is indicative of anything in this discussion.
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Living fairly well with 150-200$ a month... What's the definittion of "fairly well"?
Paying retouchers $4.63 per hour is abusive. Funny how Yuri complains about the low royalties paid by the agencies, and look at peanuts he pays.
royalties are low because the cheap as-s micro buyers aren't willing to pay a fair price for a photo.
and they do it because their cheap as-s clients aren't willing to pay a single dollar more.
and the clients of the clients aren't willing to pay a dime more for the cheap products advertised in brochures filled
by micro images.
sorry, welcome to the real world ... and it can only get worse.
as for salaries you better travel a bit more before talking about abusive payouts.
a clerk at 7-eleven in Bangkok is paid no more than 200$ a month, a thai meal is 1-2$, a bus ride 0.3$ ...
now, no idea about Cape Town but i don't think a guy earning 30$ per day is starving, quite the opposite !
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Paying retouchers $4.63 per hour is abusive.
Let me educate you about the real world. This doesn't even compare to the abuse I get from my girlfriend or some despicable MS agencies.
According to my calculations, getting paid $4.63/hr for sitting in a warm place one could make $37.12 for eight hours of work. Not counting other benefits. That's substantially more than most microstock contributors make in one day.
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Let me educate you about the real world. This doesn't even compare to the abuse I get from my girlfriend or some despicable MS agencies.
According to my calculations, getting paid $4.63/hr for sitting in a warm place one could make $37.12 for eight hours of work. Not counting other benefits. That's substantially more than most microstock contributors make in one day.
even if you are talking about 31 days per month its 1150$, any serious average/low contributor can get there with work of course but it ainīt certainly that hard, so if the most donīt make it, its pretty much because they are lazy
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Living fairly well with 150-200$ a month... What's the definittion of "fairly well"?
Paying retouchers $4.63 per hour is abusive. Funny how Yuri complains about the low royalties paid by the agencies, and look at peanuts he pays.
royalties are low because the cheap as-s micro buyers aren't willing to pay a fair price for a photo.
and they do it because their cheap as-s clients aren't willing to pay a single dollar more.
and the clients of the clients aren't willing to pay a dime more for the cheap products advertised in brochures filled
by micro images.
sorry, welcome to the real world ... and it can only get worse.
as for salaries you better travel a bit more before talking about abusive payouts.
a clerk at 7-eleven in Bangkok is paid no more than 200$ a month, a thai meal is 1-2$, a bus ride 0.3$ ...
now, no idea about Cape Town but i don't think a guy earning 30$ per day is starving, quite the opposite !
And what's your definittion of "living fairly well"?
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Paying retouchers $4.63 per hour is abusive.
Let me educate you about the real world. This doesn't even compare to the abuse I get from my girlfriend or some despicable MS agencies.
According to my calculations, getting paid $4.63/hr for sitting in a warm place one could make $37.12 for eight hours of work. Not counting other benefits. That's substantially more than most microstock contributors make in one day.
Why haven't you left your girlfriend? ::)
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Paying retouchers $4.63 per hour is abusive.
Let me educate you about the real world. This doesn't even compare to the abuse I get from my girlfriend or some despicable MS agencies.
According to my calculations, getting paid $4.63/hr for sitting in a warm place one could make $37.12 for eight hours of work. Not counting other benefits. That's substantially more than most microstock contributors make in one day.
Why haven't you left your girlfriend? ::)
Good benefits?
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^^^ LOL
good one :)
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And what's your definittion of "living fairly well"?
i can give you the example of Bangkok, a big city, expensive by thai standards.
- small apartment for around 100$/month with tv/fridge/washmachine/hot water, eventually a couple fans or aircon.
- a honda scooter
- a smart phone
- cheap chinese clothes
- 1$ meals, anywhere at any corner of bangkok, 24hrs, always someone selling food around take away.
- weekend : getting drunk with friends on cheap beers (1.5$ for 66cc bottles) or Thai rum (Sang Som) or Thai whiskey (2-3$/bottle)
or even the awful Mekong Whiskey (1$/bottle !!).
THAT's what they call a normal life and believe it or not they can make it with 150-200$ per month
and with great fun (sanuk) in the spare time !
if you say Yuri is underpaying his drones well i can't confirm it as we should know the prices in Cape Town
but i can say in most of the countries i've been that salary would be high-end, not rock bottom.
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I watch it plenty. Still not sure what your point is. Yahoo stock is up 15-20% over the last 12 months. Google's rise is similar.
Facebook was a terribly priced IPO and the stock is being pushed toward fair value. It has nothing to do with their business going bankrupt. Zynga is small potatoes compared to the other 3, and I really don't feel their business success is indicative of anything in this discussion.
i repeat, a big company selling digital products and making net profits above 30% is the exception, not the rule.
investors are getting wild about Google announcing 35% rise in profits for instance.
but NO WAY micro agencies like SS or IS are doing 50% or 80% as someone here thinks erroneously.
if true, i would seriously buy SS shares and get rich and that's not the case.
if they go IPO is because they peaked and they want to jump crap soon after, just like the FB ponzi scam.
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Thanks for the thoughts Yuri.
There are certainly a number of ways agencies boost their earnings 'on the side'. Unused credits, as you mentioned is one, another is accounts filled with stolen photos which get sales but are later closed (due to stolen content). This is probably a pretty small amount in comparison to unused credits but where do all the earnings go that are in an account with stolen photos (our photos) that get's closed?? I'm assuming they just get absorbed by the stock agencies.
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Paying retouchers $4.63 per hour is abusive.
Let me educate you about the real world. This doesn't even compare to the abuse I get from my girlfriend or some despicable MS agencies.
According to my calculations, getting paid $4.63/hr for sitting in a warm place one could make $37.12 for eight hours of work. Not counting other benefits. That's substantially more than most microstock contributors make in one day.
Why haven't you left your girlfriend? ::)
It's a friendly abuse. I borrowed the line from BB King's Lucille. Play it, it's a great tune.
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Paying retouchers $4.63 per hour is abusive.
Let me educate you about the real world. This doesn't even compare to the abuse I get from my girlfriend or some despicable MS agencies.
According to my calculations, getting paid $4.63/hr for sitting in a warm place one could make $37.12 for eight hours of work. Not counting other benefits. That's substantially more than most microstock contributors make in one day.
Why haven't you left your girlfriend? ::)
Good benefits?
According to Facebook, South Africa gives you free condoms. (from Facebook or Health Department).
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The logical move in a world of crowsourcing, when you step up and hire personel, is of course to crowdsource the personel also at world market prices.
Wages are not the same at different places in the world, whereas picture prices are the same, and they are low. We all complain about that.
Its amazing that Yuri could build such a succes out of the high costs in Denmark in the beginning. He is now doing what we all need to do if we want to expand: hire cheap hands to produce cheap pictures.
That just gave me an idea: To outsource my photography and send my camera to a guy in Africa, and have him photograph elephant feet, African landscapes and broken down landrovers. I could then sell the pictures and he could get 20 % of the earnings.
We live in a crude world of capitalistic competition, and the wages we are used to in the rich western world are under pressure. We microstock photographers should of all know that.
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Paying retouchers $4.63 per hour is abusive. Funny how Yuri complains about the low royalties paid by the agencies, and look at peanuts he pays.
It's why he moved to RSA; the same reason as so many UK companies outsource to India.
For example, minimum legal wage for a domestic worker in RSA is R8.34 per hour:
(http://www.mywage.co.za/main/salary/minimum-wages/domestic-workers-wages)
According to XE, R8.34 is equivalent to US$1.033.
Which would you rather be? A retoucher or a domestic? (Apart from the fact that sitting at a computer all day is unhealthy).
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And what's your definittion of "living fairly well"?
i can give you the example of Bangkok, a big city, expensive by thai standards.
- small apartment for around 100$/month with tv/fridge/washmachine/hot water, eventually a couple fans or aircon.
- a honda scooter
- a smart phone
- cheap chinese clothes
- 1$ meals, anywhere at any corner of bangkok, 24hrs, always someone selling food around take away.
- weekend : getting drunk with friends on cheap beers (1.5$ for 66cc bottles) or Thai rum (Sang Som) or Thai whiskey (2-3$/bottle)
or even the awful Mekong Whiskey (1$/bottle !!).
THAT's what they call a normal life and believe it or not they can make it with 150-200$ per month
and with great fun (sanuk) in the spare time !
Rather than living fairly well, it sounds like surviving in a big city with no family.
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Paying retouchers $4.63 per hour is abusive. Funny how Yuri complains about the low royalties paid by the agencies, and look at peanuts he pays.
It's why he moved to RSA; the same reason as so many UK companies outsource to India.
For example, minimum legal wage for a domestic worker in RSA is R8.34 per hour:
([url]http://www.mywage.co.za/main/salary/minimum-wages/domestic-workers-wages[/url])
According to XE, R8.34 is equivalent to US$1.033.
Which would you rather be? A retoucher or a domestic? (Apart from the fact that sitting at a computer all day is unhealthy).
Paying such wages is exploitation. And that's what Yuri is doing in SA. He's exploiting people and want everyone to see him as the great benefactor.
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Yuri is paying a fair wage for South Africa. Go to Cambodia and get a Tuk Tuk and driver all day for $10?? Exploitative? We all live in different places with different costs. The world really is bigger than Western Europe and USA my god there is even Canada Denmark and Australia. Yuri's actions help us all.
Upload limits are difficult to understand. At a time IS had it going well many people could not upload many of their images there. So you join others such as SS. Guess what by the time you can go exclusive you have many more images paying much more at SS etc. Any exclusives at IS complaining about others and their ethics is so so hypocritical. In this dog eat dog world IS exclusives do not mind what happens to independents there so how can they complain about Yuri.
Good luck and keep going Yuri.
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Paying retouchers $4.63 per hour is abusive. Funny how Yuri complains about the low royalties paid by the agencies, and look at peanuts he pays.
It's why he moved to RSA; the same reason as so many UK companies outsource to India.
For example, minimum legal wage for a domestic worker in RSA is R8.34 per hour:
([url]http://www.mywage.co.za/main/salary/minimum-wages/domestic-workers-wages[/url])
According to XE, R8.34 is equivalent to US$1.033.
Which would you rather be? A retoucher or a domestic? (Apart from the fact that sitting at a computer all day is unhealthy).
Paying such wages is exploitation. And that's what Yuri is doing in SA. He's exploiting people and want everyone to see him as the great benefactor.
If he's paying the minimum legal wage or above, how can you call it exploitation? It's exploitation when people pay below the minimum legal wage or when they outsource to a country that doesn't have a minimum wage.
Do you know how much the people that make your cameras and other photographic equipment are paid?
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And what's your definittion of "living fairly well"?
i can give you the example of Bangkok, a big city, expensive by thai standards.
- small apartment for around 100$/month with tv/fridge/washmachine/hot water, eventually a couple fans or aircon.
- a honda scooter
- a smart phone
- cheap chinese clothes
- 1$ meals, anywhere at any corner of bangkok, 24hrs, always someone selling food around take away.
- weekend : getting drunk with friends on cheap beers (1.5$ for 66cc bottles) or Thai rum (Sang Som) or Thai whiskey (2-3$/bottle)
or even the awful Mekong Whiskey (1$/bottle !!).
THAT's what they call a normal life and believe it or not they can make it with 150-200$ per month
and with great fun (sanuk) in the spare time !
Rather than living fairly well, it sounds like surviving in a big city with no family.
There are definately cheaper Countries/Cities than Cape Town.
There are also other reasons to move to Cape Town. Great Weather. Wonderful City. Unbeliveable Landscapes and a huge amount of Models.
I think the combination of these Qualities made him move there.
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.
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Paying retouchers $4.63 per hour is abusive. Funny how Yuri complains about the low royalties paid by the agencies, and look at peanuts he pays.
It's why he moved to RSA; the same reason as so many UK companies outsource to India.
For example, minimum legal wage for a domestic worker in RSA is R8.34 per hour:
([url]http://www.mywage.co.za/main/salary/minimum-wages/domestic-workers-wages[/url])
According to XE, R8.34 is equivalent to US$1.033.
Which would you rather be? A retoucher or a domestic? (Apart from the fact that sitting at a computer all day is unhealthy).
Paying such wages is exploitation. And that's what Yuri is doing in SA. He's exploiting people and want everyone to see him as the great benefactor.
He has moved to a low-wage economy, which isn't the same issue.
If he were paying e.g. Scandinavians, Brits or North Americans $1 an hour, that would be exploitation (and illegal).
He appears to be paying them 4x minimum wage, which is proportionately more than I get for teaching community education classes (i.e. the 'going rate' is around 3x UK minimum wage, with no payment for class prep time). It's probably more than many microstockers get for their efforts.
I was in Edinburgh over the past few days, and as I was waiting for a bus, I happened to look into an employment agency, and was astonished at how many jobs of responsibility (i.e. being responsible for supervising other workers, and with a 'proven track record' in similar positions as a prerequisite) in offices and the construction industry were being advertised for around 1.5x minimum wage, in the city with the second most-expensive accomodation prices in the UK (so the workers would have to live a long way out of town and have big commute times and costs.
I don't like that he made them work overnight because of his cock-up, and I sure hope he paid them at least double time and gave them a day off afterwards.
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Hi there,
not that it matters or that anybody cares, but I for one am firmly standing for Team Sean Locke.
I am taking sides. I always did, on every matter, that's how I am. Opinionated.
There are other reasons for supporting Sean, besides his fascinating good looks, (after all, Yuri is gorgeously handsome too).
Sean, you might find the following amusing, keep reading :)
I remember years ago when I first started reading this forum and Sean's posts.
I immediately fell into the same trap many other people did and still do.
I could not think of another, more caustic, despicable person walking the surface of the Earth than Sean Locke.
I was wrong. Very wrong, and it took me years to finally be able to crack his carefully built appearance.
I will give you a few reasons for changing my mind and standing by his team today.
Sean Locke is fair.
He is also brave enough to stand up for the 'little people', even when he has nothing to gain by doing so.
About 2 years ago IStock decided to implement the canister changes.
It was a miserable move and Sean didn't like it. He wasn't personally affected by it, but his sense of right and wrong was powerful enough to make him take a stand against it.
Some time later IStock decided to cut independents' commissions to an unheard low of 15%.
Again, Sean wasn't affected by the change, but again he stood by us, independents and voiced his disapproval.
Did he really do that solely for us, independents?
Not entirely.
He didn't like the general direction things were going and he tried to make his point clear and defend his own future and the future of the industry.
But what did he actually do that was so great and worthy of praise?
He complained and posted a few times on Istock's own forums.
That's not much indeed, but it is a lot more than Yuri ever did.
I have never seen Yuri fighting for us, contributors, or taking anybody's side, (except his own) in conflicts with agencies.
You can do easily do it, Yuri!
You've got the whole world at your feet, you're young and handsome, you're rich, you're famous and you're powerful. Use that power to change things for the better. You would be remembered and respected for something else beside the money you've made.
And one more point for Sean.
Since Yuri mentioned charities, what about charities? I have no information about Yuri giving money to charities but I know Sean did.
About 2 years ago, around Christmas Sean set up a charity - can't remember the name or the exact details, but I know for a fact that he gave away a percentage of his total earnings for the month of December 2011 to help children(?)
Sean is a gentleman and he may decide to keep quiet and not give us any more details about his charity, but I know for certain that he had set up a charity and gave part of his money away.
LisaFX also participated to something similar, Adelaide did too, so did I and many other photographers on this forum, but I'm sorry, I can't remember anything about Yuri.
So, to answer Yuri's question: - 'did Sean ever give money to charities'?
Yes, he did.
I'm sure Yuri did too, a lot more possibly, it's just that I don't know about it.
Charity or no charity, it's irrelevant and we shouldn't be talking about this kind of things anyway.
Meanwhile let's try to stick together and stop agencies from forever lowering our commissions and paying us 5 cents per download like IStock is so fond of doing. LisaFX has many times tried her best to stop them, so did Sean.
Let's hope Yuri will be joining them soon.
Best regards,
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All this talk about money.... the real culprit is the Federal Reserve and useless paper money that's being printed like crazy. Heck, there are foreign currencies being printed like crazy that are backed by US dollars being printed like crazy.... If you want to blame something. Blame those two things and you're on the right track. Don't blame Yuri, he's just trying to survive and thrive in a world that is destroying his gains via printing presses.
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I remember years ago when I first started reading this forum and Sean's posts.
I immediately fell into the same trap many other people did and still do.
I could not think of another, more caustic, despicable person walking the surface of the Earth than Sean Locke.
I was wrong. Very wrong, and it took me years to finally be able to crack his carefully built appearance.
LOL! I thought it was just me. I had the same impression early on about Sean. But you are absolutely right, he has been probably the most activist of the big sellers in trying to boost this industry and fight the negative changes we are seeing, even when he's not personally affected. And yes, I remember the charity initiative too. Probably still happening, but under the radar.
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i can't see what this fuss about donations, charities, and philantropism is all about.
i live in a poor country at the moment and we're flooded by greedy NGOs and if you
could come here and see what i see on a daily basis you would think twice before
giving these guys half a dollar.
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i can't see what this fuss about donations, charities, and philantropism is all about.
exactly, we need to be sure of what we are talking about before attacking other ;D
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All this talk about money.... the real culprit is the Federal Reserve and useless paper money that's being printed like crazy. Heck, there are foreign currencies being printed like crazy that are backed by US dollars being printed like crazy.... If you want to blame something. Blame those two things and you're on the right track. Don't blame Yuri, he's just trying to survive and thrive in a world that is destroying his gains via printing presses.
it's not so simple.
nobody forbids thailand or china to make their currency as expensive as the euro or the dollar.
but they don't do it or they would lose instantly all their exports and most of their national economy would
go in turmoil.
go in china and while the unskilled workers have a very hard life, the white collars are doing pretty good
in the last 10 yrs, and this happens also the in whole SE asia.
raising the Thai baht 30% in the last 4 yrs already had a huge negative impact on thailand tourism and
in thai exports, they're no more the world's top rice producer and exporter, as Vietnam is not nr.1 due
to cheaper price and improving quality, Burma also is pushing in the same direction.
now thai farmers are asking for help or they will lose their jobs, government is doing F all and even refusing
the 300 baht/day (10$) minimum wage.
this has prevented a further domino effect in inflation, but for how long ?
you think it's a matter of printing paper money, but it's more complex than that.
money will be soon in electronic form, no need to even print it, it's already like
that for some central banks, as they only print on demand.
cambodia is also using a dual currency, Riel and US Dollar, they can't print dollars but
they can print Riels .. let me say they're not getting rich with that and their whole economical strategy
is still primarily based on begging to foreign powers.
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Yup, China keeps the value of its currency down by as much as 35% below what the market would set, guaranteeing they can export cheaper than any Western nation.
Just think on that when considering international competition. It makes the idea of a free market a bit of a joke.
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Yup, China keeps the value of its currency down by as much as 35% below what the market would set, guaranteeing they can export cheaper than any Western nation.
Just think on that when considering international competition. It makes the idea of a free market a bit of a joke.
It's not a free market.... no system of banking controlled by government instituted central banks is free.
As for undervaluing, it's true, China does, but it's only hurting them in the long run, eventually they will see they don't need to sell to countries like the US. They can sell to their own domestic market and do just fine.
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I remember years ago when I first started reading this forum and Sean's posts.
I immediately fell into the same trap many other people did and still do.
I could not think of another, more caustic, despicable person walking the surface of the Earth than Sean Locke.
I was wrong. Very wrong, and it took me years to finally be able to crack his carefully built appearance.
LOL! I thought it was just me. I had the same impression early on about Sean. But you are absolutely right, he has been probably the most activist of the big sellers in trying to boost this industry and fight the negative changes we are seeing, even when he's not personally affected. And yes, I remember the charity initiative too. Probably still happening, but under the radar.
Sean pays Federal, State, and local taxes. The U.S. government is the largest charity ever to exist. So anyone who pays taxes in the U.S. has no reason to "give back". If you want to compare Sean vs Yuri then as exclusive or independent Sean is by far better helping both groups. Yuri has propped up and then complained about all the low paying sites. Without his help they would have had a harder time sticking around. The is an assumption that if istock was dominant they would screw us. But, it appears the competition competing only price has left a declining market and a lot of worry.
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Sean pays Federal, State, and local taxes. The U.S. government is the largest charity ever to exist. So anyone who pays taxes in the U.S. has no reason to "give back".
Hahaha hilarious quote! Typical "American discovering the world through the internet" reply actually. What do you think about someone paying taxes in Denmark? Do you believe it is all spent for the sweet buns world production?
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Sean pays Federal, State, and local taxes. The U.S. government is the largest charity ever to exist. So anyone who pays taxes in the U.S. has no reason to "give back".
Ha ha, true, 'dat. My effective tax rate was about %30 last year, iirc.
Anyways, I didn't bring up the "charity" thing. Just responded.
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I dont see what is wrong if anyone says I give to any kind charity or community xx,yy $
Isnt it similar like threads/posts about KIWA or other plundering PawnShop wannabe charity organisations which are crawling at this forum from time to time.
....
How do you feel you have the right to question if Sean gives to charity or not? That is personal information, and most people that give to charity don't feel the need to tell others as they are doing it for themselves and there own piece of mind, not to show off to the world...
Why not? Its just question.
Isnt the one fag site in they soul I mean eg IS put on they front page 2 or 3 years in row something like:
Wew donate xxxxxxx$ to some noname charity while we plunder you contributors with 5% or more royalty down and rise you never desired RC targets which are fine tuned at the end of the year to see how much we can grab from you.
Sometimes people bite back,
Eh Yuri
I am biting to much at any kind of injustice and I am toothless now :)
Last week Leaf kick me from this forum for 7 days
... however, i can't understand this diatribe about charity and giving back.
istock is giving us NOTHING back, nor are the cheap as-s buyers who only choose micros to cut costs to the bone.
Its all about that, that non exlusives there gives nothing back, only PITA. "Lost or forbidden credits are payments for they reviewers and forum pacifiers.
Factories like mine feed the mouths of more than 100 people and have internships and educational programs with the purpose of giving back to the community
What amount of the 100+ people are in position of creating work they are able to own their copyright to?
I would rather see 100+ individual entrepreneurs than a 100+ person corporation.
That's a good way to put it.
Soo
in you opinion yuri will must tell whole his story about his success to all this 100 persons and when they all learn all knowlege from him than both of you will bee satisfied?!?
Cmoan
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Ha ha, true, 'dat. My effective tax rate was about %30 last year, iirc.
Anyways, I didn't bring up the "charity" thing. Just responded.
30% is very good, in europe it would be 35% at the very least, with peaks of 40-45% in some countries.
in plus, the cost of life in europe is among the most expensive in the world, especially Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia.
i can't see many incentives to be based in europe nowadays apart the availability of local models and the fast
internet connections.
by opposite, last time i went to the HongKong Chamber of Commerce they prospected me a 15% to 25% tax rate,
permanent residence (HK-ID), everything was quick and easy to setup and you can make it all in just one week,
foreigners can open bank accounts in half an hour, no BS as in europe, that's the way it should be, too bad now
in HK the living costs are skyrocketing and it's ain't cheap anymore, i mean it's maybe cheaper now to go
in Berlin actually despite germany having 35-40% tax rates.
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Hahaha hilarious quote! Typical "American discovering the world through the internet" reply actually. What do you think about someone paying taxes in Denmark? Do you believe it is all spent for the sweet buns world production?
is Denmark too expensive or the rest of the world too cheap ?
the gap is mainly about labor costs actually from what i can see, i can't blame Yuri for moving to
greener pastures, not at all.
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So anyone who pays taxes in the U.S. has no reason to "give back".
there's no need to ever "give back".
it's a business, and to stay in business you need to make profits.
maybe Yuri is so successful he has even spare time and money for these things.
good for him, but not all of us could afford it.
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It's not a free market.... no system of banking controlled by government instituted central banks is free.
As for undervaluing, it's true, China does, but it's only hurting them in the long run, eventually they will see they don't need to sell to countries like the US. They can sell to their own domestic market and do just fine.
they're already selling inside china, go in any chinese house and you wil hardly spot one single foreign-made item !
just about everything is made in china .. their car, their microwave, gas cooker, dishes, forks, spoons, furnitures, tv, dvd, hi-fi, computers, mobile phones, cigarettes, food, beers, clothes, eyeglasses, watches ... it's unbelievable .. if they've some money they will eventually buy some korean and japanese stuff as it's perceived to be high quality but that's all, no european or american stuff AT ALL .. zero .. only cars eventually if they're rich and want to show off their brand new BMW or Mercedes or Ferrari ... and then the eventual french wine or champagne, italian designer clothes, but not much .. the average chinese can easily live 100% on chinese items all his life, they're the only ones who can do it.
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Ha ha, true, 'dat. My effective tax rate was about %30 last year, iirc.
30% is very good, in europe it would be 35% at the very least, with peaks of 40-45% in some countries.
in plus, the cost of life in europe is among the most expensive in the world, especially Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia.
To my extreme surprise, I see that UK base rate income tax is currently 20%: I thought it was more.
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/incometax/basics.htm#6 (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/incometax/basics.htm#6)
(I paid 40% in my old day job, so hey - something else to cheer about, as well as feeling smug because term starts tomorrow!)
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To my extreme surprise, I see that UK base rate income tax is currently 20%: I thought it was more.
[url]http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/incometax/basics.htm#6[/url] ([url]http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/incometax/basics.htm#6[/url])
(I paid 40% in my old day job, so hey - something else to cheer about, as well as feeling smug because term starts tomorrow!)
yes, low taxation in UK and low overhead to setup a business.
said that. the cost of life is still way too high, how much they ask for a shabby office in London for instance, crazy prices ... and what about food ... UK is no match with asia and never will.
if i had to setup a digital business in europe, Berlin is probably the place to be at the moment.
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UK tax is much higher than it seems because we also have to pay national insurance. I always used to think that national insurance was for the health service but it all goes in to the same pot. For some reason, governments have found it easier to raise national insurance than income tax, probably because most people have no idea it's all the same thing. Then there's local council tax that shot up while services were cut. And VAT that's now gone to an all time high 20%. And there's stamp duty on house purchases and inheritance tax. I'm sure I've missed a few out :)
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The envy, jealousy and trash talking in this thread is unnecessary. My 2c
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Dear Community,
While we don't typically reply to forum posts, from time to time we believe it is important to correct misleading or incorrect information that may be meaningful to our contributors and customers. For the record, the effective royalty rate we pay our contributors varies based on product type, customer usage, currency exchange rates and other factors. In aggregate, it is generally in the range of 25%-30% of net revenue, not the 20% rate that was previously suggested.
As always, we appreciate your contributions and we're excited to provide value to such a great community of artists.
Best Regards,
Scott
VP of Content
Shutterstock
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Scott, can you please explain the term "net revenue" and is it any different then "gross revenue" ?
When you say "generally in the range of 25%-30%" does this mean that it does go down to sub 20% ?
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Dear Community,
While we don't typically reply to forum posts, from time to time we believe it is important to correct misleading or incorrect information that may be meaningful to our contributors and customers. For the record, the effective royalty rate we pay our contributors varies based on product type, customer usage, currency exchange rates and other factors. In aggregate, it is generally in the range of 25%-30% of net revenue, not the 20% rate that was previously suggested.
As always, we appreciate your contributions and we're excited to provide value to such a great community of artists.
Best Regards,
Scott
VP of Content
Shutterstock
Thanks for clearing this up, Scott. Hard facts are always welcome ...
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Scott, can you please explain the term "net revenue" and is it any different then "gross revenue" ?
When you say "generally in the range of 25%-30%" does this mean that it does go down to sub 20% ?
I don't know what he meant by the term 'in aggregate'. Is that an average, or a mean or a median or ... ? "Aggregate = ' data combined from several measurements'," which is a bit meaningless in this context.
I'm guessing that those on the bottom rung get <20%.
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Scott, can you please explain the term "net revenue" and is it any different then "gross revenue" ?
When you say "generally in the range of 25%-30%" does this mean that it does go down to sub 20% ?
My guess is that every transaction has it's own costs (credit card processing etc) so I'm assuming that's what makes the difference (couple of percent probably).
My guess is that the 25-30% number doesn't take into account the unused credits Yuri mentioned. I'm pretty sure Shutterstock thinks it's 100% their money, but you could argue we all contributed to it.
Maybe every year a small Christmas bonus for all users .. even 10% of the unused credits distributed proportionally to the number of downloads in a given year? It would help to go through the Christmas/New year sales slump. :D
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^^ the whole idea of the subscription model is based on the fact that everyone (on average) has "unused credit" and lots of it!
if everybody used their credit SS would be out of bussiness whitin a few months.
Credit card transaction fees for a bussiness this size could be well below 0.5%
there is no such term as "net revenue". there is revenue and expenses.
(total payout to contributors)/(gross revenue) would give you the average payout percentage
do the same but include ONLY subscription revenue and payout and you will get a figure that can be considerd a "minimum" and in my opinion is much less then 20%
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^^ the whole idea of the subscription model is based on the fact that everyone (on average) has "unused credit" and lots of it!
if everybody used their credit SS would be out of bussiness whitin a few months.
Credit card transaction fees for a bussiness this size could be well below 0.5%
there is no such term as "net revenue". there is revenue and expenses.
(total payout to contributors)/(gross revenue) would give you the average payout percentage
do the same but include ONLY subscription revenue and payout and you will get a figure that can be considerd a "minimum" and in my opinion is much less then 20%
Don't be ridiculous. Credit card fees were about $5.5M out of sales of $120M. You don't have to ask, guess or make absurd assumptions about SS's financials. It's all detailed in the IPO document published several weeks ago (and linked to here in previous discussions).
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5.5M out of 120M sounds EXTREMLY high, can you point me in the right direction ?
Not that it matters though, since credit card fees is in EXPENSE just like any other expense, and has nothing to do with actual percentage paid to the contributors.
The %% you get at IS comes from the GROSS income, not the "net income" so if one wants to comapre percentage rates one must first level the playing field!
Also, add to the fact that if that if that is what SS pays, one can only assume that SS's competition pays more or less the same ammounts.
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5.5M out of 120M sounds EXTREMLY high, can you point me in the right direction ?
Not that it matters though, since credit card fees is in EXPENSE just like any other expense, and has nothing to do with actual percentage paid to the contributors.
The %% you get at IS comes from the GROSS income, not the "net income" so if one wants to comapre percentage rates one must first level the playing field!
Also, add to the fact that if that if that is what SS pays, one can only assume that SS's competition pays more or less the same ammounts.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1549346/000104746912005905/a2209364zs-1.htm (http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1549346/000104746912005905/a2209364zs-1.htm)
P56. Credit card charges were $5.1M
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What Scott says (between 25-30% royalties) also agrees with the IPO paper. I did some math and started a new thread discussing Shutterstock's commission
http://www.microstockgroup.com/shutterstock-com/what-does-shutterstock-actually-pay-out-i've-figured-it-out (http://www.microstockgroup.com/shutterstock-com/what-does-shutterstock-actually-pay-out-i've-figured-it-out)!/