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Author Topic: YAY Newsletter: Information About New Product  (Read 95803 times)

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« Reply #25 on: April 16, 2013, 11:42 »
+7
...The commission we offer has the same ratio as our image deals and subscriptions have had for the last 5 years. It varies according the the size of the deal, but average is 35 % which is still above most of our competitors. I certainly understand that it looks like pennies when we pay a commission of 0.10 (USD 0.13) for a small image, but please consider that this image is less than 1/20th the size of the high-res. One of the largest microstock sites in the world pays $0.25 for a high-res download on the basic level. Our commission for high-res images bought through an image deal is 520 % (!) higher....
I think any site that just paid 50% without using excuses to pay us less would get a lot of support from us.  It could make a big difference.  I'm more likely to send buyers and link to sites that pay me a decent rate.  Sites that have a huge volume of sales can pay less commission but there's little incentive to use the low volume sites if the commission is low.

One of the largest microstock sites in the world pays me $0.38 for subs but I also had a $120 commission last month.  So will Yay be looking to keep up with their competitor by selling images for $240 with a 50% commission?  I think that end of the market is more lucrative than trying to convert image thieves that aren't used to spending any money on images.


« Reply #26 on: April 16, 2013, 11:59 »
+1
I am with you on this one Microbius..

for once, an agency must trust their contributors.. most of us know the industry better than they do.. especially contributors who run their personal sales platforms know very well that it is not about the price, as long as it stays between reasonable price brackets..

when I first started to sell through my own channels I was pricing the images at $3 to test the waters, then increased the prices to $9-10 levels.. to my surprise, the number of transactions did NOT drop a bit.. and I started earning 3 times more just by increasing prices..

I think YAY has just entered to my list of "agencies to cut the ties with soon"

I wonder about this too. How can these agencies "successful" business models be so far off what mine is? It really is mystifying.

Oh well, do what you like Yay. You'll probably just be doing it without me.

« Reply #27 on: April 16, 2013, 12:13 »
+1
Disappointing....... what happen if you don t make the volume then, you stop the project? You will contributors on this move I think...

Lucadp

« Reply #28 on: April 16, 2013, 14:20 »
+3
Dear Yay Team,
please, no.

« Reply #29 on: April 16, 2013, 15:27 »
+1
 We have requested that our portfolio be deleted at Yay. We had only uploaded 200, but they are coming down.

CD123

« Reply #30 on: April 16, 2013, 18:14 »
-3
OK, I am ready for all the minuses (unfortunately have to go against the grain here), but being a low sales site and considering it is low resolution pictures, I will rather prefer 20 low income sales per month than the zeros I sometimes have. Add the few nice sales I get every now and then and I can perhaps get a few payouts a year. Quite acceptable to me for a low earner (who is not slashing commission on medium to high resolution images).

Hope they can reach the new market as they plan and bring in a nice steady additional income from their product range expansion.

My 5 cents worth - so let those minuses roll  ;)

« Reply #31 on: April 16, 2013, 20:05 »
-2
A little bit of something can be better than a whole lot of nothing. I am willing to let the new scheme run for a bit to see how it pans out. But I suggest they bump up the web price to 0.2Euro which is roughly 0.25 cents.

« Reply #32 on: April 17, 2013, 02:08 »
+6
NO! By accepting this offer now, you are hurting yourself and industry. Problem is not a low income, but in low percent. When they sell 5 Mid-res, they receive 5.80 and give you 0.65. That is 11.2% and extremely low.
Dreamstime and 123rf sell credits, and price of credit is determined by amount of purchased credits. And author receives revenue, based on credit price for every case.
Buy YAY will pay you lowest price, instead of making fixed 35% of price, for example.

CD123

« Reply #33 on: April 17, 2013, 05:24 »
+3
NO! By accepting this offer now, you are hurting yourself and industry. Problem is not a low income, but in low percent. When they sell 5 Mid-res, they receive 5.80 and give you 0.65. That is 11.2% and extremely low.
Dreamstime and 123rf sell credits, and price of credit is determined by amount of purchased credits. And author receives revenue, based on credit price for every case.
Buy YAY will pay you lowest price, instead of making fixed 35% of price, for example.
If your calculation of the percentage is correct, I will unconditionally withdraw the support I pledged. Can not logically argue against that.  :P

« Reply #34 on: April 17, 2013, 16:27 »
+1
deleting my portfolio...

« Reply #35 on: April 17, 2013, 16:48 »
+2
Quote
... it is a lot better with 1000 sales paying 0.10 than 10 sales paying 1.

As if Yay would sell 1000 licenses of a photo! My advice to the YAY-people: get yourself a camera, then produces photos and then sells them to your own prices, but without me >:(
« Last Edit: April 17, 2013, 16:51 by roede-orm »

« Reply #36 on: April 17, 2013, 17:47 »
0
Perhaps if contributors pay for sell is better  ;D Bad deal for $ zone? Yahoo source, change today:
0,1$=0,767 And this is the official change, when you get a payment, add commissions and then see what is the real change for contributor. Why annoying people with these jokes.

« Reply #37 on: April 18, 2013, 06:28 »
+3
Hi again!

As we said a couple of days ago, we wanted your feedback on our new product. Weve gotten a lot of feedback, some positive, and some negative. Many of you have several concerns, and well try to address these. 

There are two issues here,: price and commission.  Although they are closely related lets look at them separately first. 

Pricing of images:
This has been a controversial topic since the rise of microstock. When the first sites appeared the prices were around $1 for a high-res image, competing with prices reaching $1000 for traditional agencies.  Many microstock photographers deliver as high quality as professional stock photographers, so no wonder microstock agencies gained huge market shares from traditional agencies. Then the market developed into what we see today: Large microstock agencies control the traditional image market and have increased the prices, smaller microstock agencies tries to compete by keeping the price low, and traditional agencies are mostly focusing on RM-collecting and low-price subs from microstock partners.  Growth is mainly achieved by taking market shares from competitors, or expanding into new markets, such as Asia.

At YAY we try to find another way to grow our revenue. We strongly believe that images and the way images are licensed must adapt to the changes we see in our society. Both the music and the film industry are working hard to find different ways to turn (illegal) users into buying customers.  According to industry experts, as much as 85% of images online are used without a legal license.  While Getty has chosen not to pursue the private market, neither to stop them from using image or by tempting them to license images, we at YAY hope to change this.

Our market research efforts tells us that people using images illegal would like to use legal images, but they dont have an offer suited for their needs and economy, so they end up lending what they find on Google images. Most of you have seen blogs citing the source of images, hoping this will make up for the lack of license.

So, we find ourselves in the same situation the music industry did years ago. Once Napster and other music sharing sites took off, it was assumed that users would not pay for material no matter what, and the solution was to work harder on copyright protection and lawsuits against wrongdoers to scare people into buying their products. In hindsight its very easy to see that this period was extremely bad for the music industry, billions where lost, and nobody was happy. But the problem was eventually resolved: First by services such as iTunes letting you buy and download music, and today streaming services like Spotify are one of the main reasons the music industry is growing. The commission rates, paid per stream, are small, but the number of users ready to pay a small monthly fee is huge, and artists are making more money than they used to.

So isnt the image industry totally different than the music industry? Yes and no. Its our belief that today it is. Its mostly business-to-business industry with large agencies and corporations buying most of the images. These companies expect value for the images they use, giving them a return on investment.

At the same time your average blogger just want their post to look good. They dont have a budget, and are not nearly as willing to pay good money for an image. But, you better believe they are many, and the total sales potential in this market is large (low-priced images in high volumes).

Our first move in trying to adapt is to release image deals for small and medium images. Small images are intended to web use, and our main target segments here are bloggers and people who run their own web site.  Currently web sized images are 2% of our sales. Clearly, we dont have a product that web users wants paying $1,95 for one web sized image is not something anyone in the market is ready to do. 

When we set the prices on our new deals we looked at it two ways. First, how much cheaper should web sized images targeted to non-corporate customers cost? And more importantly: How much do we think these people are willing to pay? Based on our data and experience we decided to begin with a price of $9.90 for the smallest image package, giving the customer web images for $1. So we are back to the roots of microstock, but this time with much smaller images.

After getting feedback from our photographers we sat down and discussed for hours and hours. Are the prices to low? And we concluded that we are confident that a baseline price of $1 for a web images is not to low.  But be assured, we will test our prices, and monitor what customers we get. We dont want to charge too little, or too much, and we dont want our high-res customers to shift to web.  As a smaller company we can turn around and change prices if we see that this isnt working.

What we did see is that we give too much discount to customers buying 100 and 500 image packages. So we have decided to raise the prices of these deals for all three versions.

The small 100 image deal will go from $39 to $ 59, and the 500 deal will go from $159 to $199. The medium sized images will go from $199 to $299 and $999 for 500 images. And for the high-res images 100 deals go from $399 to $599 and 500 from $1599 to $1999. The lowest price for an image is then $0,4 for a web sized image and $4 for a high-res.

We believe firmly that images should be priced low to reach new segments, but we agree that giving up to 70% discount for buying a larger image package made little sense.


And this leads us over to the next discussion:
What should the commission be? We really do want to be a fair agency, and we really want to make a lot of money for our company and photographers. Creating something great, and a company we can be personally proud of is very important for us three founders.

Still, with low image prices comes a low commission per image. The only way we can make a fairer deal is to make sure that we give what we consider a fair cut of our earnings, and to make sure that our earnings are high.  As we wrote, we think well reach a new segment and high volume with targeted product towards new segments.

We have decided to aim for a commission as close to 50% as we can get it. This is for all image deals.

Our system today doesnt allow for a percentage cut on image deals, but we will try to tweak the fixed price to reach an average percent. The way we calculate the average percent is to sum all the image deals, example for web images: If you buy one of each, the total of images are 625. The total cost is  $288. Then we see what the total sum of commission must be in order to reach the desired percentage. 

Given limitations on our system were not able to reach 50% blank, but were close at 44% commission on all image packages.  On all partner earnings and credit sales its 50%.

And in $ this means that well increase our commission on all image deals as following:

Small images package from $0,13 to $0,2
Medium images package from $0,65 to $1
High-res images package from $1,3 to $2
(Provisions are paid in EUR)

Nobody has complained on our commission on high-res images, but if we want to be fair and focus on a percentage cut its obvious we needed to raise this as well.

We know some of you disagree on the direction were going. We are working hard to give you more control of your images. Currently you can opt in and out of all our partners. Soon you will be able to opt in and out of YAY as well you can be a part of our partner programs, but not sell your images at YAY. Why? We dont want to force anyone to agree with our strategy, and we dont want to loose you as a photographer. We hope youll give us time to prove that our concept and direction is the right one. 

What we can promise you is that well try to let you know what is happening, the reason behind our decisions and well aim to have an open discussion. We will also try our very best to be fair. Low prices might not be fair for many of you, but we hope to make it up by having high volume, giving you a high cut of earnings and in total provide you with a good income from YAY.

And, nothing we do is set in stone if it dont work, well change it!


Bjorn, Jan and Linda
YAY Founders

CD123

« Reply #38 on: April 18, 2013, 06:49 »
+2
Thank you Yay team for actually listening to the concerns here and making (unlike some of your competitors) a real effort in addressing it. It is appreciated (well maybe at least by some of us).

« Reply #39 on: April 18, 2013, 06:58 »
+2
Thank you for listening and for trying to address our concerns. That does not happen very often in this industry.

« Reply #40 on: April 18, 2013, 07:30 »
0
I wont do anything drastic with my port at this point - but appreciate your explanation of what is going to take place.  I would like to see how this pans out in real sales - because as nice as YAY is as an agency, at the end of the day sales is what really counts - for everyone - the agency and the contributors.

Thanks for you getting your message across

« Reply #41 on: April 18, 2013, 07:40 »
0
It is good that you are open for discussion. Thanks.
I see problem not in overall prices, but in author's commission.
Quote
Our system today doesnt allow for a percentage cut on image deals, but we will try to tweak the fixed price to reach an average percent
I think an average percent looks like average temperature of patients in hospital.
You have good price for large packages, but I'm sure that 100 and 500 image packages will be extremely rare purchase. They are expensive and make good income, but rare. Commission for small packages still quite low.
For Mid and High resolution 10, 25 and 50 packages will be the most popular and they give 17%, 20%, 25.25% percents for author. Everything that goes below 25% makes me sad.
I think it can only be fixed by using fixed price for each package, not for whole category.
Same thoughts for small size - price for first 2 packages can be little higher, for example:  0.25$, 0.22$, 0.2$, 0.2$

« Reply #42 on: April 18, 2013, 08:11 »
0
It is good that you are open for discussion. Thanks.
I see problem not in overall prices, but in author's commission.
Quote
Our system today doesnt allow for a percentage cut on image deals, but we will try to tweak the fixed price to reach an average percent
I think an average percent looks like average temperature of patients in hospital.
You have good price for large packages, but I'm sure that 100 and 500 image packages will be extremely rare purchase. They are expensive and make good income, but rare. Commission for small packages still quite low.
For Mid and High resolution 10, 25 and 50 packages will be the most popular and they give 17%, 20%, 25.25% percents for author. Everything that goes below 25% makes me sad.
I think it can only be fixed by using fixed price for each package, not for whole category.
Same thoughts for small size - price for first 2 packages can be little higher, for example:  0.25$, 0.22$, 0.2$, 0.2$

Yes, we thought about this - but we have to set the same commission on each size deal. What we'll do is to adjust the overall commission over time when/if we see any changes. So: if we mostly sell small deals, and the amount we get in and the amount commission you don't add up to ≈45-50% we'll readjust.


« Reply #43 on: April 18, 2013, 08:24 »
0
Sorry I'm confused (it's late :))

small image packs
10 images = $9.90 = $0.99 ea
100 images = $59 = $0.59 ea
500 images = $199 =  $0.398 ea

our commission is between $0.13 to $0.20 per sale but is also 44%??

« Reply #44 on: April 18, 2013, 08:35 »
+1
Sorry I'm confused (it's late :))

small image packs
10 images = $9.90 = $0.99 ea
100 images = $59 = $0.59 ea
500 images = $199 =  $0.398 ea

our commission is between $0.13 to $0.20 per sale but is also 44%??

Yes, I know - it's a bit confusing! What we've done is to look at our total earnings from image packages, and then try to get the $-cut as close to 50% as we could. It doesn't look like 44%, but in reality - when you sum up all images sold, all earnings and all commissions it is.

Ex. if one customer buys one of each the total number of images are 625. The total cost is $288, and the total commission paid is 625*$0,2=$125. $125 of $288 ≈ 43-44%.

Hope this made sense. And, if we see that we sell more of one package we'll try to adjust!

m@m

« Reply #45 on: April 18, 2013, 09:03 »
+1
With all due respect Linda, based on your commission/% post (which is still very confusing) I think I'll wait until you finish with all of your adjustments and changes before I'll try to reconsider again uploading to YAY. Good luck with your new product.
« Last Edit: April 18, 2013, 09:28 by m@m »

« Reply #46 on: April 18, 2013, 09:16 »
-1
I guess it is time for another round of agency culling.

« Reply #47 on: April 18, 2013, 10:47 »
+2
I would be interested, which  positive feedback should have come from contributers  side.  8)

« Reply #48 on: April 18, 2013, 14:00 »
+1

"While Getty has chosen not to pursue the private market, neither to stop them from using image or by tempting them to license images, we at YAY hope to change this"

- Fine, if that is your real goal, then licences should not be offered to incorporated entities and be limited to non-commercial use. Will you do that?

"Nobody has complained on our commission on high-res images, but if we want to be fair and focus on a percentage cut its obvious we needed to raise this as well"

- That because we were not aware that we were not giving 50%

« Reply #49 on: April 18, 2013, 16:57 »
+3
Sorry I'm confused (it's late :))

small image packs
10 images = $9.90 = $0.99 ea
100 images = $59 = $0.59 ea
500 images = $199 =  $0.398 ea

our commission is between $0.13 to $0.20 per sale but is also 44%??

looking with fresher eyes :) (but I would love for you to come back and tell me that I'm wrong and why)

artists commission is $0.2 for a small image sale, regardless of the whether it is 10 image pack or a 500 image pack sells?? so our commission ranges from 20% to 50% depending on which image sold??

and it is 44% based on selling 1 of each pack, but I'm sure you'll sell a lot more 10 image packs then 500 image packs (Especially if you are trying to target small buyers and using price as the lure.)

Sorry for being so cynical but after years of dealing with the micros as soon as an agency says 'great news' my first thought is that I'm about to be screwed again.
The way I see this deal is "great news, we are cutting prices and commissions - you'll probably average somewhere around 25% commission instead of the 50% you were getting".
(I'm sure you would know what this will work out at based on previous sales and analysis - hence hiding it?).

other comments
There are just so many differences between the customers of stock images and music I don't think it is good comparison.
Still, with low image prices comes a low commission per image. - Why? why is this a given (and not just Yay) - we cant afford to run with our offer so we have make the artists subsidise us because they can afford it??? rings of istocks unsustainable and not doing stock for the money :D
The only way we can make a fairer deal... - a fairer deal is a commission cut ???
we give what we consider a fair cut of our earnings, and to make sure that our earnings are high.  - we have to cut your commission so we can earn more - sounds like a getty statement :D
we think well reach a new segment and high volume with targeted product towards new segments. - and with every commission cut is the statement that you'll get amazing levels of new sales blah blah blah   ;D  ;D

seperately
So did your market research, say the limiter is price? I would still guess and it is very much a guess, that someone is willing to pay $0.50 they will pay $2. I would guess that image accessibility, finding the right images, payment methods, education etc would be bigger factors??  I would think going after bloggers would be more about wordpress plugins, deals with wordpress.com etc, incorporation into other plugins ie visual composer module for insert stock image, a lot more factors than price?
« Last Edit: April 18, 2013, 19:22 by Phil »


 

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