Quote from: Rinderart on March 18, 2015, 01:22.Experience is a good thing.

I don't deny this.

But who cares if a beautiful image is 10 years old or 1 year young, or if it is produced by a 65 year old experienced photographer or by a 20 years young talented newcomer?
Customers want the best images. Period. And that's what SS should promote.

 

 

I am at .38 level and have high lifetime earnings at SS and others.  But Ultimagia has a point.  Some of my oldy but goody stuff is a bit dusty now.  It should be based on several things, not just lifetime Earnings but also quality of current submissions.  Premiere implies quality and thats what should be there.

"We're currently testing a new service for our Premier platform. We wanted to let contributors know and help to provide more information.

First, a bit about Premier. It's been four years since we launched Premier to help us build relationships with larger clients, such as publishers, ad agencies, and Fortune 500 companies. It showcases the collection in a way that works for their needs, and through Premier we offer custom license packages, additional indemnification, and help with researching the collection.

To add more value to the experience of these large customers, we are currently testing a new collection — Premier Select. During this test, we are working with a small group of contributors. If customers respond well to this test, we will look to expand to additional contributors based on lifetime earnings, giving you the opportunity to consider participation in this collection.

Many of you regularly see downloads from Premier customers and you will continue to see those payouts. Premier Select will not change the exposure of your content currently available to our Premier customers.

Ultimately, the goals for this initiative are to meet more of our customers' needs, while providing additional, premium licensing opportunities to more contributors. As we test and learn, we will be back in touch with you about how your work can be included in this new collection."

Customers want the best images. Period. And that's what SS should promote.

Couldn't agree more. But....Who decides that? I hope it's sales that decides it. "Best Images" Is pretty subjective. I think sales are the determining Factor. But, were guessing here until we know the criteria. Agree?

I know quite a few that are Unbelievably Talented and amazing that have horrible sales. We'll just have to wait and see. I know I'm certainly not qualified to judge.

Quote from: hatman12 on March 18, 2015, 04:05
"We're currently testing a new service for our Premier platform. We wanted to let contributors know and help to provide more information.

First, a bit about Premier. It's been four years since we launched Premier to help us build relationships with larger clients, such as publishers, ad agencies, and Fortune 500 companies. It showcases the collection in a way that works for their needs, and through Premier we offer custom license packages, additional indemnification, and help with researching the collection.

To add more value to the experience of these large customers, we are currently testing a new collection — Premier Select. During this test, we are working with a small group of contributors. If customers respond well to this test, we will look to expand to additional contributors based on lifetime earnings, giving you the opportunity to consider participation in this collection.

Many of you regularly see downloads from Premier customers and you will continue to see those payouts. Premier Select will not change the exposure of your content currently available to our Premier customers.

Ultimately, the goals for this initiative are to meet more of our customers' needs, while providing additional, premium licensing opportunities to more contributors. As we test and learn, we will be back in touch with you about how your work can be included in this new collection."

When ss controls exposure and with this they control the sales, i don't see real motivation for giving to SS best images. Business needs to see the perspective. After cases when images searched intentionally by buyer were not present in results, i see the recent only as a new game wasting time of serious contributors. BTW flooders with law quality images think themselves as serious and priviledged now, so i make the difference between 2 types of contributors.  When somebody decided to show or not your images to the client, then tell that your earnings are not good enough - many other questions come.
Value of life earnings was in place many years ago - i remember discussions (2009?) that if you started, you have to give the volume immediately. So all who created accounts in early years of ss and these accounts were nearly dormant years, then used actively, still are not good.

Basically SS is creating a Vetta collection and now favouring contributors.

A combination of IS and DP.

Quote from: Semmick Photo on March 18, 2015, 07:25
Basically SS is creating a Vetta collection and now favouring contributors.

A combination of IS and DP.

I don't think so, weren't Vetta images exclusive? Hasn't Oringer been on record as saying he would never offer exclusivity?

They are creating a special collection, not sure if the pricing and royalties are different. But they are now creating a separate collection within the library. Whatever you call it.

And if the pricing structure is the same, it would be an  insult to contributors.

The pricing structure is not the same. It's much higher...at least i know it is for ad agencies. That's why we get the occasional big SODs.

Sounds like it could be good. And also good to see they are paying attention to all the calls for them to award top end contributors more. Lets wait and see how it turns out.

Shelma, do you want to tell me that people getting big SoDs are in this collection? Great!  Waiting for full transfer of my gallery to SoDs branch only  To be serious, I thought all of us get that high prices in SoDs...

By "we" I meant all of us. When I searched at my last advertising gig the search results looked the same to me, but the prices for ad agencies are higher. I have no idea how Premier Select will work...I just googled it.

I certainly hope they bring in a Vetta / Premier collection at SS. It did extremely well for me when iStock first brought it in at the $75 range. My earnings more than doubled with Vetta, it also motivated me to produce much more polished images.

Vetta is also what made Getty nervous, the iS collection began to look a lot less micro and much more Macro quality. Then they panicked and raised the prices and brought in Agency and poor quality Macro from Getty and stuffed up the whole collection.

If they keep their nerve and curate properly and allow the right images in it could transform SS. Vetta was a great success in its early days.

Quote from: Rinderart on March 18, 2015, 05:01
Customers want the best images. Period. And that's what SS should promote.

Couldn't agree more. But....Who decides that? I hope it's sales that decides it. "Best Images" Is pretty subjective. I think sales are the determining Factor. But, were guessing here until we know the criteria. Agree?

I know quite a few that are Unbelievably Talented and amazing that have horrible sales. We'll just have to wait and see. I know I'm certainly not qualified to judge.

Instead of sales/photo, SS could promote the most dynamic photos, the ones that are trending fast, the ones that the customer want today. I'm sure they can easily identify which photos are viral, even if those photos have not yet accumulated enough downloads to beat a 10 years old scan that stopped selling 2 years ago.

Quote from: stock-will-eat-itself on March 18, 2015, 10:51
Vetta was a great success in its early days.

Early Vetta was also somewhat spoiled by the collection being flooded with a lot of hammy artsiness which was never going to do well commercially - often produced by the very people who were supposed to be gatekeeping that collection. They were flooding the collection with their own pictures.

It was iStock's black nail varnish moment. Like  a mid life crisis. iStock was right to explore a sort of indy left field. But it should have been much more about lifestyle (they should have been embracing the hipster-indy aesthetic instead of becoming goths).

Is it possible the contributors selected for Premier might not know they're in it?

My lifetime earnings are high, but I don't believe I've seen anything from SS. 

Is no one on this forum in Premier?  To me that suggests we might not even know.

Lot of searches I do on SS for clients throw out lots of dated awful images. Likewise there are also lots of excellent images, its time consuming to find anything on trend. There is a need for curation, but it needs to be done properly.

Micro stockers fall into the trap of producing a certain dated look because they are not really connected to the buyers, they scan the collection see whats on the front page a duplicate or keep pumping out the same tired concepts.

The micro libraries have a Cash and Carry mentality where everything is dumped onto the shop floor, not good for buyers or suppliers.

Premier could be a good motivation tool to push the talent they already have with their contributors.

I imagine that those in the initial test don't know, or we would have heard about it.

Quote from: stock-will-eat-itself on March 18, 2015, 10:51
I certainly hope they bring in a Vetta / Premier collection at SS. It did extremely well for me when iStock first brought it in at the $75 range. My earnings more than doubled with Vetta, it also motivated me to produce much

That would go against nearly all of their marketing.  If you've looked recently it's all about one collection, every image the same price, no favoritism in the search, no signature required, etc..  They aren't going to make a higher priced collection in Shutterstock anytime soon, it would be very inconsistent with their marketing. 

Quote from: tickstock on March 18, 2015, 12:12

Quote from: stock-will-eat-itself on March 18, 2015, 10:51
I certainly hope they bring in a Vetta / Premier collection at SS. It did extremely well for me when iStock first brought it in at the $75 range. My earnings more than doubled with Vetta, it also motivated me to produce much

That would go against nearly all of their marketing.  If you've looked recently it's all about one collection, every image the same price, no favoritism in the search, no signature required, etc..  They aren't going to make a higher priced collection in Shutterstock anytime soon, it would be very inconsistent with their marketing.

They already have a higher-priced Shutterstock collection for large enterprises—according to the blog post, they have for four years.

Quote from: tickstock on March 18, 2015, 12:12

Quote from: stock-will-eat-itself on March 18, 2015, 10:51
I certainly hope they bring in a Vetta / Premier collection at SS. It did extremely well for me when iStock first brought it in at the $75 range. My earnings more than doubled with Vetta, it also motivated me to produce much

That would go against nearly all of their marketing.  If you've looked recently it's all about one collection, every image the same price, no favoritism in the search, no signature required, etc..  They aren't going to make a higher priced collection in Shutterstock anytime soon, it would be very inconsistent with their marketing.

At this point we don't know if they will be asking for image exclusivity, but they probably won't.  So, if they allow us to keep those images that get into Premier in the cheap seat collection too, the differentiator must be in the license.  Without any form of marketing hook like "exclusive" or "only found on SS" there would be nothing to offer certain clients other than a more robust license that meets the unique needs of big organizations/clients.  In my humble opinion it's one or the other or both.

Quote from: Shelma1 on March 18, 2015, 13:14

Quote from: tickstock on March 18, 2015, 12:12

Quote from: stock-will-eat-itself on March 18, 2015, 10:51
I certainly hope they bring in a Vetta / Premier collection at SS. It did extremely well for me when iStock first brought it in at the $75 range. My earnings more than doubled with Vetta, it also motivated me to produce much

That would go against nearly all of their marketing.  If you've looked recently it's all about one collection, every image the same price, no favoritism in the search, no signature required, etc..  They aren't going to make a higher priced collection in Shutterstock anytime soon, it would be very inconsistent with their marketing.

They already have a higher-priced Shutterstock collection for large enterprises—according to the blog post, they have for four years.

It's not a higher priced collection.  They are talking about enterprise customers who pay more for the same images because they get indemnification, multi seat licenses, ability to transfer images to clients, etc...   From what they've said it looks like the new collection will be placed in front of those buyers which will result in more sales from enterprise customers not a higher priced collection, just more sales from buyers who pay more for more rights.