Got my first sale at SV.

I've priced all my images at $10, so 30% commission on this sale is $3.

SV are a very late entrant to the market and I don't think it makes sense for artists to undercut the existing agencies who have worked hard to develop a customer base.  As my D200 generates 'large' at IS and XL at FT, StockXpert etc, a $10 price tag is above the prices at these existing agencies.  So I'm happy to upload to SV on the basis that my sales elsewhere will not be impacted in any way.

BTW, the 'snappyness' thing doesn't work; it is meant to be a 'sophisticated algorithm' based on views, comments and sales.  I wrote to them to explain that it doesn't appear to work and they replied to say that at the moment the snappyness thing is based on umm.....'editors choice'........

Everyone expected Corbis to enter the market with a bang, but the evidence so far is more like a whimper; there is certainly nothing yet to suggest they are prepared to invest decent money to get this thing established.

Still, a $10 sale is good news.  More please......

Congrats hatman.  Still waiting for my first sale there.  I was disappointed with snapviallge at first but I had raised my hopes too high.  Perhaps one day they will remove the beta and give istock a bit of competition.

Congrats! I had my first about a week ago so it seems that things are slowly picking up.

Well I'm afraid I don't have particularly high hopes for SV; it's too amateurish to offer much potential at this stage.

Their keyword and category choices give me the impression they have employed people who have no experience of the stock industry at all - some of my images are left alone, others have most of the keywords removed; their choice of words bears no relation to the subject matter, and they choose categories that would be my last choice.

My recent submission of my 'businessman slipping on a banana' resulted in them stripping out all references to business and businessman, even though the images are clearly of a businessman in a suit and city shoes.  They keywords left in were: banana, slip, slippery.

Doh!

I got 2 downloads, one last week and one this week. $5 and a $10 sale. Looking forward how it will be in half a year.

No problem.  Hope my comments help.

Yeah, $10 seems right sharpshot - $5 to some extent undercuts the existing agencies who have spent much time and effort and who are already generating sales (and money) for us.  Personal choice I suppose, but it seems right not to give this newcomer the same terms given that they are late to the game.

Besides....... all the existing agencies should charge higher prices........

My main reason for pricing them higher is that I presume Snap Village will attract customers from Corbis.  They are used to paying higher prices.

I am not convinced that microstock prices will continue to increase at the rates they have the past few years.  Can SS keep having a 20% raise each year?  If prices go too high, downloads might fall and we could end up losing money.  Wont new sites be able to gain customers by undercutting the old sites, if they move their prices too high?

Macro sites are lowering their prices and we now have a few midstock sites emerging.  Some micro sites are allowing higher prices, similar to the cheapest macro prices.  I hope istock does this soon.

You are one ahead of me then sharpshot...... I've still only got one sale...

As for pricing - Getty are now advertising 'web size' RF images for $49, three month use only.

The same size will cost $1 at iStock, no time constraints.

The question is: over the next couple of years will Getty have to reduce prices yet again, or will iStock's price continue to rise?

There is scope for microstock prices to increase by a very large amount.

And I don't think all these new 'small' agencies will have any effect at all on sales at the larger agencies like IS and SS.  But that's only my view.

Can you see image buyers leaving IS in droves because prices at Albumo are slightly cheaper?

Nah.......

How many images do you all have on S V? I HAVE UNDER A 100 at the moment.

I had 16 sales in September and 27 sales in October so far... I do think they'll pull their act together eventually, but oh boy did I have my share of dealing with their glitches!!! However before we complain too much let's remember they are still in "beta". Hopefully version 1.0 will be free of all those annoying bugs.

This is starting to become interesting.  What were the cons about SV?  Watermakring?

madelaide:

I'm shocked!    You're not on SnapVillage yet??? 

Elena, are any of those subscription sales?

Personally I have disallowed subscription sales at SV (for the moment).  I'll be interested to hear how people fare with subscription versus normal sales.