I get $28 for EL's from shutterstock.  Match that and I'll be happy but at the moment, I have no choice but to opt out.

I think the average $0.40 for subs is fair but sites have tried doing it like this before and people only see the worst case scenario.  You would get a lot more people opting in with a fixed $0.40 or if you matched the shutterstock $0.38.

I really think this is a big problem, with so many people opting out, your subs collection wont appeal to buyers.  They will look elsewhere.  I hope something is changed and those that have opted out already are given the chance to opt back in.

Your reputation is on the line here, you will get a lot of respect if you make changes, I think we're all getting tired of sites that make bad decisions and don't have the flexibility to change them.

Aaron you have the opportunity to get back a lot of contributors if you change the EL pricing, like many others I opted out for now...

I remain out too, but nobody received opt out email confirmation!!!!? Why such a complicated way of opting out by email??? Why don't you include an option on the veer site??? That's not fair!!! I never received the email information about the subscription plan and when I'm login  on Veer I don't see any advert about the subscription plan!!! So, do you planing to trick people by hiding the information and avoid them to opt out easily ans clearly ? Then after the 21st october, the people who don't get the information will be f....and forced to sell subscription? Do you think it's a good way to work together, you the seller and us the photographers??
SS don't move for now, they are actually the only agency really growing in sales and all the others agencies want to kill it by lowering prices again and again, lowering prices is it the only way to fight in business? No clever alternatives??? Are you sure?
We have to warn all agencies: lowering prices is the only way to stop contributors making good pictures quality and to loose work motivation!! How can we pay models with such low earning?Do you think we gonna work and pay you next year?
We see all agencies becoming Leechers and new little worms like photodune want to suck the blood too.
So, for now, thank you to Veer team to write on this precious forum, but please be fair !!!
We also all waiting for opt out confirmation!!!!! And this opt out must be clearly noticed on each contributor account!!!!
thanks

   I have consistently supported veer on this forum, but this subscription move has completely changed my point of view. Given the high handed way that Corbis has dealt with their rights managed contributors lately, i have to conclude that the upper management of Corbis has gotten some new marching orders. This plan is so bad that it calls into question even continuing with veer at all. I had hoped for some better efforts at veer to market their microstock division, and some better sales given the large rights managed business. Instead, sales at veer are anemic, and my rights managed sales have fallen to a pitiful level. Last month I got 53 cents from  corbis rights managed sales- and that was for 2 sales! This from an account that routinely generated between 5k and 10k per month for many years. If this experience is in any way typical of the rights managed collections at corbis ( and I'm not saying it is), then there must be quite an air of desperation at the HQ. Even with Bill Gates' money, they must at least pretend to be a viable business. I think this latest plan by veer is driven by the same dynamics as at istock. The old models generating huge amounts of cash are rapidly disappearing , but the debts and overhead remain. Creating short term windfalls for the company at the expense of the long term health of the business seems to be the order of the day.
   I opted out ( using the convoluted email method, with no confirmation) and am ready to dump the whole sorry mess.

I remain out too, but nobody received opt out email confirmation!!!!? Why such a complicated way of opting out by email??? Why don't you include an option on the veer site??? That's not fair!!! I never received the email information about the subscription plan and when I'm login  on Veer I don't see any advert about the subscription plan!!! So, do you planing to trick people by hiding the information and avoid them to opt out easily ans clearly ? Then after the 21st october, the people who don't get the information will be f....and forced to sell subscription? Do you think it's a good way to work together, you the seller and us the photographers??
*snip*

While i also don't agree with the terms for the subs to me it really doesnt look like they want to deceive us by not sending out a proper warning (they also dont have a history of pulling such tricks; i think most of us are pretty happy with their transparency). I do see a big banner announcing subscriptions when i log in into my submitter account (dashboard section), they sent an email (strange you didnt get it though) and its here on the forums....
They want to give existing contributors the option to opt-out, but probably dont want to implement it on site because its only a temporary offer.
I know i sound like a true cheerleader, but i really have only good experiences with them.

@Aaron,
thank you for taking the time to reply to us. Much appreciated
I understand that you cannot change the plan and I respect that.
But I cannot accept it, so I will have to opt out.
I'm sorry.

Also, is there a chance that you could ask them to change the payout limit?
100 dollars in sales at Veer is way too much for someone like me.
I barely have a sale, a dollar so, every few months.
For me it's not happening Aaron, do you think they would agree to lower that limit?
Many thanks, and looking forward

Quote from: sharpshot on September 27, 2011, 00:57

Your reputation is on the line here, you will get a lot of respect if you make changes, I think we're all getting tired of sites that make bad decisions and don't have the flexibility to change them.

Exactly. A stock photo agency need not look beyond Fotolia for an example of a company which lost a significant amount of contributors after attempting to low ball them. Once considered the heir apparent to iStock, they are now teetering on mid tier status. And once they reach mid tier, they will lose even more contributors who realize their revenue no longer justifies the ridiculous commission structure.

The bottom line for Veer to realize is that contributors really don't need them. They are a borderline low tier / mid tier earner with a history of painfully slow reviews, and previously failed agencies (Snapvillage). Nobody is going to accept a terrible deal from a company which earns them between 1% and 6% of their monthly sales. Either you treat contributors with respect, or you can expect to disappear from relevance rather quickly.

+1

I'm more or less where I was previously.  I can live with the subs model on the basis that I can withdraw if it's not working for me.  Although a 30 to 40 cent fixed price would be FAR preferable.

But there is no way on earth I'm going to take that sort of cut for an EL.  Not a chance.

Veer appreciates your feedback and we are listening.  We are working through some new scenarios for our subscription model and will announce an adjustment within the next day or so.  Stay tuned.  And meantime, keep the ideas flowing.

Aaron

That sounds good. Changes needed from my point of view:

- don't offer ELs as subscription at all. If somebody needs an EL, he needs to pay the full price.
- introduce a competitive minimum amount per download (around the competition: DT $0,35, SS $0,38, 123RF $0,36). If you can top that, much better.
- don't undercut other (better paying) sites with your pricing. If you offer the top commission (why not do something like $0,50), than fine, let's drag customers over.
- finally: if you do these changes, allow those of us who already opted out back in again 

Quote from: AaronBooth on September 27, 2011, 15:30

Veer appreciates your feedback and we are listening.  We are working through some new scenarios for our subscription model and will announce an adjustment within the next day or so.  Stay tuned.  And meantime, keep the ideas flowing.

Aaron

That sounds good. Changes needed from my point of view:

- don't offer ELs as subscription at all. If somebody needs an EL, he needs to pay the full price.
- introduce a competitive minimum amount per download (around the competition: DT $0,35, SS $0,38, 123RF $0,36). If you can top that, much better.
- don't undercut other (better paying) sites with your pricing. If you offer the top commission (why not do something like $0,50), than fine, let's drag customers over.
- finally: if you do these changes, allow those of us who already opted out back in again 

That sums it up pretty much for me too!
Especially the 2nd point. Getting anything below a certain amount feels like an insult....(for me thats anything below $0.30-0.35)

Regarding the extended license royalty, we aligned our extended license rate to what we found in our market research of daily download subscriptions. 

Aaron

*. You are starting to sound like Istock trying to explain how an 80% cut of the royalties was driving them to bankruptcy.

We appreciate the points raised here and in Lee's article.  Thanks for your patience in hearing our reply. 

First on the $3.00 - $0.10 per download: 

When designing our subscription royalty model we did not want to follow the approach of other subscription sites that pay a fixed royalty per download, because of the imbalance of what the company earns versus what the contributor earns.  Let's say a subscription site pays $0.25 per download, their customers pay $250 for a 31 day subscription, amounting to a daily spend of $8.06.  An estimated average of nine downloads per day means $2.25 royalty is paid to contributors (who's images were downloaded by a customer) and $5.81 is kept by the site.  For four downloads, the site pays $1.00 in royalties and keeps $7.06.  One download per day, the site pays $0.25 in royalty and keeps $7.81 - that's a 3% royalty to the contributor.

So we decided to do things differently and create a more balanced royalty model for Veer subscription.  Unlike other sites, Veer offers a guaranteed "royalty pool" of $3.00 per day, per image-downloading customer.  Whether a customer downloads thirty images or just one image per day, we pay out the full $3.00 to contributors.  Compared to the previous example, if a Veer customer downloads one image, the contributor gets $3.00 (the other site would pay only $0.25).  Four downloads, Veer pays $0.75 per image.  Nine downloads, $0.33 per image royalty.  I won't give away our pricing yet but I can say it's less than $250 per month.

As Lee points out, most customers don't use their full quotas, and so $0.10 per image is an outlier.  With a typical range of five to fifteen downloads per day, the typical Veer subscription royalty per image is between $0.20 to $0.60, which is consistent - and in many cases better - than other subscription sites.

Veer's subscription model is different than other sites by paying out the full share of $3.00 per image-downloading customer per day regardless of the number of downloads.  In a few cases, we acknowledge that Veer contributors will earn less per download than other sites but in many cases, contributors will earn much more per image than other sites.  We believe the law of averages is on side with contributors in Veer's subscription royalty model.

Regarding the extended license royalty, we aligned our extended license rate to what we found in our market research of daily download subscriptions.  Veer needs to be on par with the playing field and so we've designed our extended license royalties to be, in our view, a standard price for this type of subscription (to be presented at launch).  We're by no means trying to insult our contributors and we appreciate everyone's concern.  As always, Veer is committed to openness and transparency with our community.

As part of this commitment we have given our existing contributors the option to opt-out, but that said, we believe our offer is competitive with the current market and we are glad to offer this new subscription revenue stream to our contributors.  We hope you join us.

Aaron

Fail. This is what subscription should do: increase downloads becasue of the package bargain, so buyers will go around downloading even pictures they just 'might' use. This works if the site has large traffic.... Veer doesn't. Fail. Disadvantage for the contributor: lower paying downloads... but two things make up for it: volume, and the fix-price protetcion from flimsy few cent downloads of small sizes. Big fail again, instead of that, this implements nano royalties.