I have to add my voice to the "what on earth are you thinking?" column regarding the plan to consider subscription sales with no opt out.

There is one successful microstock subscription site, and it sells only subscriptions.

DT, 123rf and CanStock have this mixed model of both credit sales and subscriptions and it hasn't worked well (IMHO) at any of those sites.

For subscription to work, especially at the low price of 25cents, there has to be big volume. SS has that, and no one else has.

A week or so ago I deleted 200+ of my bestselling images from CanStock because they have a low volume of sales and the percentage of that pitifully low volume that were 25 cent subscriptions has crept up and up to about 50% of the total. I figure this is just a bargain bin for large sizes of my popular files. Once I reach the next payout at CanStock the rest of the portfolio is going.

StockXpert has been very promising - a very high average sale price of $1 - and the volume has been good. It's a shame to see you consider changing that.

Why are you going to be able to make this mixed model work when no one else has? DT says that they're monitoring things and wil revisit the issue of prices if the percentage of subscription sales gets up above 10% of the total. IOW even they realize that they're not going to get what SS has.

I've stopped uploading to DT while I figure out what to do about their site - things have been going downhill since they introduced the subscription plan (at least for me).

None of the sites will offer an opt out, so that leaves us contributors with only one way to opt out - by deleting our portfolios if we don't like the new subscriptions. I don't want to do that - I've invested time and effort in uploading to StockXpert as you have in inspecting my images. But I see no reason to start offering bargains to customers with another half-baked subscription plan that's just cutting into sales price and not increasing the volume.

I'm not a happy camper...

Guys,

to address your concerns about your XL and XXL files, our experience has been (with Photos.com and LiquidLibrary subscription offerings) that the most popular download size for subscribers is medium size. Very few download the larger file sizes.

-Steve

Steve, this has not been our experience at DT.  Almost all subscription DL there are maximum size.
DT ignored most photographers' wishes when they brought in their subscription plan - many of us would have found it more acceptable if they had limited the size of DL allowed by subscription. Hopefully you will not go the same route.
I don't believe this will increase earnings for photographers.  It may grab a slice of Shutterstock's pie for StockXpert, but it won't be good for us.
We will not be uploading to StockXpert until we hear more details. If we don't like what we hear, we will delete our portfolio.
Linda & Colin

Thankfully I don't get that many subscription sales at DT.  But I've just looked at the last ten sales and I'm astonished and disappointed to see 2 Medium, 2 Large and 6 Maximum.  None of the sales are small.

I just checked my subscription sales on DT and have had the following breakout:

Medium (6%)
Large (17%)
Maximum (78%)

My numbers are similar, in addition to a lot of vectors, that normally generate $4 per download.

With the information that has appeared during this discussion, I will opt out of subscriptions for all of my images on Snapvillage, instead of only the best ones, which was the original plan. It becomes increasingly clear, that subscriptions, so far looked upon as a double-edged sword, is more of a single-edged variety. Unfortunately, we are the ones being cut into pieces.

Steve i'm a little astonished that you know the market so little. Please don't take it as an offence. But first thing you have to know is that microstock already matured most of the experienced user are interested in a longterm strategy now. There is only one succesful subscription site but first they are subscription only second most experienced user downsample their images for this site but this site does some automatic upsampling (called supersize) because of this it may look to you that they have a lot of highres files but they have not and buyers are aware of this. A good pricing scheme allows contributors to give you good quality both in terms of pixelsize and content. Even this only succesful subscription site is only succesful for newest files (this is the reason unexpiriended contributors rave so much about this site). I give you an example my last batch in January i send to them before i stopped submitting to them i earned over 700,- Dollars now i'm down to 200,- (i deleted a few files but not that much to explain this huge drop). This is not the business i wanna invest more time and effort this is the reason i will abandon this site at the end of the year as i abandonded 123rf already a few months ago. Better prices allows me to give you better pictures my pictures at Microstocksites are definately not the end of what i can do. To remain as a succesful agency its important to you to have good content the typical highvolume sellers will remain with you but the contributors with more creative and unique stuff will leave you. Even if buyers mostly buy the typical stuff they are most attracted by the pictures with better content (even if they are not good sellers). This is the reason IS is so succesful. If you introduce subscription without the possibility to option out i will stop submitting to you and i will delete my more unique pictures from your site these are not lame words i will do this as i did it with dreamstime.
You have already two sites stockxpert and stockxchange why not simply create a new one stockxscription if you are so interested in the subscription market (you can give StockXpert-users the possibility that they can offer their StockXpert-Portfolio also via the stockxscription-site if they want to do so).

I haven't noticed that myself. What I have noticed are three tiers of contributors:

1. Those with a small portfolio (such as myself) who are primarily concerned with selling their photos.

2. The middle tier with portfolio size roughly in the range 500 to 2000 who focus on strategy and the deal they get from each agency, often deleting their images from agencies they don't like.

3. The superstars like Yuri, Ron and Andres who are primarily concerned with selling their photos. All these three contribute to agencies that have subscriptions and aren't deleting any images.

I'm not criticizing anyone here. I'm in group 1 but follow the strategy and analysis like group 2.

It's true, I don't care about the long term effects. The market is changing every day, so what you plan today will be irrelevant tomorrow. Sacrificing income today so you'll have a better market tomorrow is silly. You don't know what's coming or who will be in the market tomorrow. That's why so many MACROstock photographers are upset about MICROstock. They planned and "protected" their industry, only to have it blown away by new technology.

Yes, photographers with larger portfolios have more to lose, and it's sad, but that's what happens in capitalist markets. That's exactly why Corbis aren't profitable - they invested massive amounts of money in photos just before photos became obscenely cheap to produce. It was a strategy that didn't work, and photographers who see their large portfolios as their primary income producing asset are right to be worried.

Listen to Sharply_done. His focus is on working hard and ongoingly producing new images. His strategy is sound, and based on reality and without emotional baggage. It's not about building your portfolio as an asset. It didn't work for Corbis and it won't work for anyone else.

Microstock changed the rules. You have to catch up and stop thinking with the old rules.

How's that relevant?

You're not mistaken, but we're off the point.

Sharply will go exclusive when he reaches Diamond level. It's a mathematical decision - at that point it becomes financially wise to do so. (I can't find a quote for this, so correct me if it's inaccurate)

If he was more concerned about the long-term state of the industry than his earnings, he'd stop contributing to Shutterstock immediately.

He's wisely concerned with the long-term state of his earnings, not the long-term state of the market.

The point was, he's focussed on hard work and ongoing supply rather than a portfolio as an asset. This is still the case given his strategy to go exclusive.

I don't see how having a subscription opt out would work.  It looks like a large percentage of the contributors would opt out and that would make it a bad deal for the subscribers.

My sales are going up all the time with some of the sites that offer subscriptions.  My earnings with istock are up and down and I am not seeing a good increase with continued uploads.

Perhaps more buyers are going for the subscription option.  It might not be a bad thing, as subscribers have a quota and are likely to download more images.  Those that buy as they use might be more selective and spend less in the long run.

A subscription opt out could work. At first many people would likely opt out. But that means the people who opt-in would get a lot more volume making it worth while. Possibly even similar to Shutterstocks volume. Then a lot of the people who initially chose to opt out would likely change their minds when they see the volume. It would all depend on how well they can sell the subscription plans.

Agreed, though if large numbers of contributors opt-out of subscription sales, it'll be very frustrating for subscribers who'll see images they can't have unless they pay with credits. It might turn away subscriptions, so those high sales never come through for those that did opt-in at the start.

Thats where it would depend on how well they could market the subscriptions. Maybe make a separate search option, maybe a separate number that shows the amount of images available for subscription downloads. They could set the default as being subscription enabled. So submitters would have to manually change their preferences to disable it. I'm sure a large number of submitters only uploaded 100 or less images and don't even look at the site any more. So all of those would be available for subscription download too.

Whether you agree with subscription sales or not, a $0.25 royalty is simply too low for an XXL image or a vector.  That is the lowest royalty for subscription sales in the industry (at least for the big sites).  These companies makes millions of dollars a year in profits, and their profits keep rising.  They can afford to treat their subscribers (who helped make them the companies that they are today) a little better.

In my opinion, a sliding royalty scale (based on image size) would work the best.  But there are other options available as well.

See my suggestion on that: http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=2560.msg21965#msg21965

Steve,
my last beg to you is to inform us at least a couple a days in advance before subscription finally arrive. At least i want the chance to delete my important files which i don't wanna see to go away for 25,- Cents.
I'm off now for a couple of days i hope it is not already there than i'm back.
Thanks in advance.

Let me add my voice to those who are opposed to adding subscriptions to StockXpert.  Dreamstime added this feature to their site, and my earnings stagnated as a result. I would hate to see the same thing happen at StockXpert. StockXpert has been doing great lately - please don't ruin it!