The way I see it, the microstocks would no doubt like to raise prices to their customers over time.  But percentage-based payments to contributors would eat into those increases. 

So one goal has to be to get rid off of the 'commission' model and come up with new marketing plans where the selling price isn't disclosed to the contributor - in fact, where there is no simple answer to the question "what did the buyer pay for the image?".

A simple way to do this is a subscription, where no commission is paid on the up-front subscription fee; we get paid an essentially arbitrary amount per sale.  Shutterstock can raise their subscription rates without increasing payments to us; or just reduce our payments.  They're still called commissions, but they're not.

Now Shutterstock owns the brand name and customer list of Bigstock.  Watch for creative pricing schemes that move at least part of the buyer's payment out of the individual sale transaction.  That doesn't mean pure subscriptions, necessarily, just ways to disguise payments for images as "service fees".   Maybe the small buyer pays $10 a month to "join" the agency, and then gets discounts on individual image purchases; we get nothing from that $10 and percentage-based commissions go down.

I'm just speculating, of course, and don't have any inside knowledge of this business. 

   

... just offering my usual cynicism and pessimism ...

Like others the lowest sale I've had on BigStock is 50c but the quarters add up faster on Shutterstock. Different markets, different buyers, same images.

Have you ever heard of Yum brands? They all sell franchised food, they all compete with each other. They are all owned by one Corp.

Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Long John Silver�s and A&W.

Some stores are KFC/Taco Bell, I've seen a KFC/Long John Silver and a Taco Bell/Long John Silver.

As long as Shutterstock and BigStock pay me, I'm happy. I'm not so sure I see some conspiracy here to drive anything down, just to bring in more sales of more images. It's not always about us?