Dear Submitters:

We wanted to let you know that we've been working hard on the details of your 2008 commission increase, and we think you'll be very pleased with the new terms. The final stage of this process is to test new price points for Shutterstock products, which we will do over the next two months. We will then evaluate the results of these price increases and finalize your raise. We expect to be able to announce the raise to you during the first two weeks of May. It will be effective immediately.

This year we will also be experimenting with some "starter" products that offer a less expensive entry point to account holders that have never purchased from us before. These new products will offer a brief trial of our user-friendly subscription model, so the account holder can experience first hand all of the benefits of being a paid Shutterstock customer. We're confident that by doing this we'll convert even more site users into happy -- and actively downloading -- customers.

We're proud that we have the best library in the industry and offer the best products, and we will continue to encourage you, our talented submitters, to submit your outstanding content. Thank you for letting us represent your work.

Best Regards,

Shutterstock

Details are still pending, but everyone has started to make guesstimates.

You can read the fine print here:

http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33599

Hmmm.

Double hmmmmmm

Thanks for posting the link!

I'm looking forward to an increase!  I could certainly use it! lol

raise = cool!!
new products =

I like the thankyou for letting us represent your work. Kinda nice, sometimes I feel that agencies (both macro / micro) seem to be think I should be really grateful that will represent my work and it is nice to see the manners and attitude. hmm but then again, some of the rubbish I have put out, I probably should be thankful

Good to hear! If they go along with the price increase for the buyers, the new commission should be ~ 41 cents a raise by ~37 %. That would be a step in the right direction. Now it is time for DT ,StockXpert, Snapvillage to raise their subscription. Which agency will be next?
Of course also for Crestock, but there it does not sound as if they will raise it anytime soon.

Hope that other subsciption site will follow the change. That will probably make me change my mind at Stockxpert about opting out.

But I'm quite sure it's not gone be a 100% increase (25 to 50). So it's have to be an other form of subsciption. Otherwise I don't care too much about the announcement

I think SS is the only agency who could take a big step and make sub prices more decent I hope they will do that and others would follow them.

...

..
.
.
.

.
......
waiting patiently for may to come ...
...
..
.
.

...

well i'm more into waiting unpatiently 

..

Anyway, I'm really hoping for a rather substantial increase (let's say 0.40) and not the obvious 5 cents raise to 0.35.

they only do it not to offend photographers who see increases on other sites. and what they will do is to computer the average of those price increases and will get away with that.
Btw, what is the average of the other big5 price increases this year ?

Hmm.. the average price increases..

I'm not really keeping a record but here's what i remember:

Stock expert will raise prices by about 40-50% this evening
DT lowered the required amount of download for an image to gain a level (and thus becoming more expensive = meaning more $)
Fotolia   raised prices by changing the size of pics and their prices went up a little. Not sure how much.

well no news on the price increases, but it sounds like there is going to be a number of tiers..

http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/abt36091.html

I think their lawyers wasn't have anything to do Do I'm wrong to say that this is the second time in 3 months that they change 3 words in big paragraphs - I was having an alert on my account lately but I don't remember why?

Quote from: leaf on April 10, 2008, 17:09
well no news on the price increases, but it sounds like there is going to be a number of tiers..

http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/abt36091.html

So it does.....

It's a pretty safe bet that this is the most anticipated commission increase so far this year.

I better keep contributing then. This month looks to be my best ever

Let's understand something - SS announced its new prices to customers in March, and that announcement didn't include anything about different prices for different sizes.  So unless SS wants to make yet another pricing change (unlikely) this commission review CANNOT include increased payment for larger sizes unless SS wants to fund that out of their own share (also unlikely).

So the only option is to increase the existing payments or introduce an additional tier.

Given the unhappiness expressed by Yuri and others on the SS forums, I should think it very likely indeed that SS will introduce a higher band for more prolific contributors.  BUT, remember that these contributors are not the ones that make SS any profit; yes, they attract customers, but they are the least profitable for SS.

I'll be very surprised indeed if SS increases beyond 40c for upper tier contributors.

Quote from: ozbandit on April 11, 2008, 01:02

Quote from: leaf on April 10, 2008, 17:09
well no news on the price increases, but it sounds like there is going to be a number of tiers..
http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/abt36091.html

So it does.....

How are people jumping from "change in format" to adding a number of tiers. All they did was take the commission terms out of the TOS and put them in a table which they then incorporate by reference into the contract. The only change I see is that they made their TOS and rate tables look more like other agencies.

Leaf, how are you jumping from a simple change in format of a contract to a huge change in the way they do business? I agree with Vonkara on this one, it looks like the lawyers just wanted to make it easier to change commissions without changing the contract itself. "It's all about billable hours baby".

well i took it from here

QuoteWe're doing this in order to accommodate a new, separate Earnings Schedule page, wherein we show all the different earnings rates in an easy-to-read grid rather than in the text of the TOS itself. We hope you find this centralized schedule of rates useful and clear.

I bolded the text i wanted to highlight, text from here

seeing as they said 'all the different earnings rates' that sounds like more than 2 tiers to me.  if there was 2 I would have said both the earning rates....

By tiers I wasn't meaning different prices for different sized downloads, i was meaning different commission levels for how much you have allready earned on shutterstock.

Quote from: hatman12 on April 11, 2008, 05:05

Given the unhappiness expressed by Yuri and others on the SS forums, I should think it very likely indeed that SS will introduce a higher band for more prolific contributors.  BUT, remember that these contributors are not the ones that make SS any profit; yes, they attract customers, but they are the least profitable for SS.

I'll be very surprised indeed if SS increases beyond 40c for upper tier contributors.

it will be very interesting to see what shutterstock does.  I agree with sharpley that this must be the most anticipated raise of the stock sites.  Yuri wrote a very convincing post here, I wonder what shutterstock will do to try and please the top contributors.  I really don't think 40 cents will be enough to make too many Yuri and friends happy, when they stated that SS needed $1.00/download to compete with the likes of fotolia and SS

Quote from: leaf on April 11, 2008, 07:26

Quote from: hatman12 on April 11, 2008, 05:05

Given the unhappiness expressed by Yuri and others on the SS forums, I should think it very likely indeed that SS will introduce a higher band for more prolific contributors.  BUT, remember that these contributors are not the ones that make SS any profit; yes, they attract customers, but they are the least profitable for SS.

I'll be very surprised indeed if SS increases beyond 40c for upper tier contributors.

it will be very interesting to see what shutterstock does.  I agree with sharpley that this must be the most anticipated raise of the stock sites.  Yuri wrote a very convincing post here, I wonder what shutterstock will do to try and please the top contributors.  I really don't think 40 cents will be enough to make too many Yuri and friends happy, when they stated that SS needed $1.00/download to compete with the likes of fotolia and SS

Yuri wrote another very convincing post here, at microstockgroup forum, about low subscription earning and opt-out at StockXpert. But he is still selling at StockXpert for $0.30 and Creastock for $0.25. People saying one thing and do another.
Do you think that all "angry" people will leave SS if rise is only $0.40 ?

If SS pay more than 40c I'll eat my hat.