Do it's just me or barely all of the pictures on StockXpert are available for subs. There's me and some other weird who are out of the subs. If I was a buyer I will never think a second to buy by credits. So for people whit subs, do your incomes fall since the subs model? Or do the subs are coming enough to make the incomes the same it was whit credit?

I have opted out of subs at StockXpert as well.

My belief is that if a buyer see's what they need for credits and it is not offered anywhere they have a subscription, then they will still go ahead and purchase it for credits if it is what they need for their project.

Mark

I never opted out, as I think that is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
The customers who buy subscriptions are not the same customers who buy single pictures. I believe SX is trying to tempt the existing customers away from SS, so the subscription sales are as well as single sales, not instead of.
I view the subscription sales as sales I would have had on another site, and would have missed if I opted out.

I have no regrets opt out, for me it works well. Selling images for 0.30$ or even 0.21  on Dreamstime  its not a way to sell my work.

but,as for the 'two type of buyers' I have doubts about that as this sub systems goes on sooner or later  I believe they  will all convert in to sub buyers.especially  considering StockXpert is (was)going to increase ppd prices while they are going to keep the sub prices same(as far as I know that is the case) that will probably encourage ppd buyers to become subscribers because for the price of a handful images they would be able to buy hundreds of images.

Exactly what I wanted to say. Because I know there are two types of buyer, but if I was one of them and see that almost every pictures are available to sub, why I will purchase them whit credits. The only thing that can make somebody purchase whit credits is the ones who don't buy for the same amount as subs cost as I understand it. Maybe I'm wrong, do I.

After reading some more of your replies a thought stuck me.

Under which conditions would I be more content:

1. selling 25 images for $1.00
2. selling 100 images for .30 cents?

The second option has one distinct advantage over the other. Can you guess?
The answer is not of course the additional $5.00 you made....that's too obvious.

It is for this OTHER advantage that I would even forsake the additional $5.00!

Anyone care to guess what that is?

The MIZ

I never opted out, as I think that is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
The customers who buy subscriptions are not the same customers who buy single pictures. I believe SX is trying to tempt the existing customers away from SS, so the subscription sales are as well as single sales, not instead of.
I view the subscription sales as sales I would have had on another site, and would have missed if I opted out.

This argument sounds very reasonable, and I certainly agree that StockXpert is trying to tempt existing customers from SS, rather than going after new markets.

If it's true though, why are so many reporting that their XL and L sales have almost dried up on StockXpert?

I think the one thing I have come to realise from all this, is that subscription must be far, far more profitable for the agency than I ever realised. Otherwise, why would DT and StockXpert be so keen to get into it? And to think we all thought that IS was paying the least.

As we all patiently wait for SS to make their announcement.......

I will opt-in and then hope that you will be right and that it will be a hundred downloads instead of 25 simple as that. If not .

Opted out in January -> thread "Are things going well in microstock?"

Might have worked if the person that started the boycott stayed out, eh?

Under which conditions would I be more content:

1. selling 25 images for $1.00
2. selling 100 images for .30 cents?

I am an odd person and I definitely prefer number 1. 

Regards,
Adelaide

No one can predict how things will change if we opt in or out of subscription sales at StockXpert, but as part of cutting out unproductive elements in the mix of income (like dropping CanStock) I have opted out at StockXpert.

I don't have to answer the rhetorical question about what will happen if all buyers move to subscriptions as so far they haven't.

There are long term and short term answers to most of these questions about fair pricing. This month, if the total from either of two pricing models is $100 it doesn't much matter how it came about, but over time, supporting unfavorable (to contributors) pricing models will not be good for business - for us, the contributors.

Business needs to be sustainable - except for pyramid schemes and other illegal scams. Some folks at iStock were very disparaging of SS when it started, saying that subscriptions just weren't sustainable. SS has proved them wrong (the limit per day and per month made the system work).

In spite of the various  criticisms chucked at microstock by the traditional stock business, there has been a good and growing market for quality images at bargain prices. The prices overall have risen quite a bit over the last few years. Even with the erosion of addiing subscription sales, DT's per download average is higher now than the 50 cents a download we got at the beginning.

As contributors, I think we gain when businesses try to get a new market - new pool of buyers - into the microstock customer base. Fotolia and StockXpert both went after the international market (iStock belatedly followed), for example. DT and SS are offering editorial.

When the sites start competing with one another in such a way as to drive prices back down again without expanding the market (which is what StockXpert's and  DTs subscriptions seem to have done), it doesn't seem to be good for contributors.

Clearly the microstock sites have something more than the free sites offer or buyers wouldn't be paying. Even when the trads drop their prices (the $49 web image from Getty for example) it's still significantly higher than the micros. I don't see that every per-picture micro site has to offer subscriptions to survive and prosper. None of them have been able to even approach SS's volume.

I'd like to see a few solid, long-term sustainable models come out of the various experiments the micro agencies are trying. I sincerely hope that this mixed model is one that doesn't make it. Subscriptions for small/med sizes or variable price subscriptions (high res files count as 2 dowloads, for example) would be a much more interesting experiment, IMO. It's a shame none of the sites want to give it a shot.

Personal contentment has nothing to do with it (for me) - it's about keeping an eye on the long term while still counting this month's income.

Nothing gives an image long term sustainability quite like DL's.  Though you may lose out (in the $ per DL dept) giving away your image at penny prices to one particular consumer that would just as likely move on to some other similar image in lieu of buying yours for full credit prices (unless your image is very, very unique, there is almost always one similar that is good enough), you gain when two years down the road someone looking for a single image and willing to pay top prices for it finds it on the front page of their search as opposed to being buried several pages deep because it was never downloaded very much.  The search engine that orders the images for the customers doesn't care if your image averages .30/DL or 2.00/DL, all it cares about is the total number of downloads (or average rate over a time span) for either a best match sort or a download sort.  It is my experience, and readily checkable on sites with a DL sort, that the more an image is DL'ed, the more an image is DL'ed.  The # of DL's per image on page 1 of any DL sort far exceeds the images on all other pages simply because they are on page 1.  If you opt out and your image is similar to one that hasn't, chances are over time, the opted in one will be DL'ed more, get higher placement (for subs or not) be DL'ed more and so on, in the end drastically beating your opted out image not only in overall sales, but in single image sales as well simply because it is more highly place in the search engine.  The only way that I can ever see opting out to be good is if your images are so unique that there is no competition (that competition will create itself though if they are too good via copycats) or if you are specifically sought out by the majority of your buyers.

I have a feeling they modified the search engine for people who turned subs off forcing them   opt-in again.