As most people report earnings went down significantly at those agencies that reduced royalty percentages to their in contributors. First in line is of course IS, Fotolia following (or sinking as a popular thread suggests). So is it the perfect timing for an agency announcing something in the line of:"we intend to split the profit 50/50 with our dear contributors..."? I think it should be one of the big 4 (the others are just too small and some of them are already doing it and it's no use as we see). Shutterstock has a good thing going for them, it seems they stick to the saying "don't fix it if it ain't broken". Which works great for them, they don't complicate their business model with many higher priced collections etc. They're becoming (or have already become) the leaders of MS and if it wasn't a significant raise, they wouldn't draw in masses of new contributors. And that way their profitability would lower. They could however introduce exclusivity (give exclusives a 20% raise, better search placements etc) and take tens of thousands of contributors from numerous other agencies. It would probably hurt IS the most, because exclusives over there could change one exclusivity for another (keep on making it simple for themselves, dealing with just one agency). The second agency that could do it is Dreamstime, they could offer 40-50% for non-exclusive content and 50-60% for their exclusives content. For instance level zero gets you the base royalty and every level bumps you another 2% higher. They'd become no.2 by the end of the year, I'm sure of it. If they (whoever it would be) announced today that they'll start paying the highest royalty in the MS industry from 1st September, they would start getting tons of ULs over the summer and would be set up with a lot of great, fresh content by September. I think this would be the best strategy for Dreamstime, they're so far behind (from what I can read by most people over here) from the top 2, that they'd gain the most and they have less to lose than Shutterstock (their owners probably think they don't need this to rule the MS market).

Dreamstime are already my top earner. I've been getting an RPD of around 3$ for nearly a year now which is way higher than the what I get at other sites.

So just imagine your earnings rise by another 50% (percentages may be off, I didn't do the math and I'm not familiar with their exact percentages)

"we intend to split the profit 50/50 with our dear contributors..."

splitting the profits by 50% can easily mean that the photographer only gets 20% - because the cost of doing business in this very competitive market is so high.

OK, my mistake, I meant "we'll pay our contributors 50%/up to 60%/at least 40%/40-60%". Something along these lines;)

Why not, it would be beneficial to them as well. If they're not the same shortsighted, greedy bunch of owners (as it's the case with Getty) who just want to make short term profits, so they can get their bonuses at the expense of the company loosing marketshare and longterm profits.

Well you said it yourself. There are no buyers. It's not worth our time, at least it's not worth mine. They don't need more contributors, just more buyers. It's not up to us.

""we intend to split the profit 50/50 with our dear contributors..."? I think it should be one of the big 4 (the others are just too small and some of them are already doing it and it's no use as we see)"


of course, why would the buyers care about your split? There are some cases of sympathy expressed, but it hardly affects business. As for ShutterS, they might just give the lowest % of the money they actually make, but at least they stick to their system fair and square, no screwing around with credit prices to surprise you with some next-to-nothing comissions popping up in your report.

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Buyers wont use smaller sites because they have smaller collections and less choice.  The only way to change that is for us to give them a chance but unfortunately most people would just prefer to complain about their low sales.  It's one of the few positive things we can do to make a change, much better than wishing the big sites would pay us more.  I made money with a few small sites before they closed and I haven't regretted giving them a chance.  What really annoys me is that the solution to our problems is there but people aren't even willing to try it.

I'm sorry, but that's naive thinking. When they become big, they start behaving like big agencies

One would hope so but there are other parts that plays equally major roles, such as a sudden and for no reason at all a best match change, slaughtering thousands of port, just over a night.
Too many things can go wrong in the micro business.

...Any fair agency that grows will incur increased operating costs. They will then raise prices and cut commissions. Then contributors will complain and look for the next fair agency. Repeat cycle.

StockXpert was a highly successful agency and they never cut commissions or raised prices. It's completely reasonable to believe that StockFresh could operate under a similar system through long-term growth without pulling an istock.

The biggest problem seems to be persuading buyers to try a new site.  I just wish that all the old Stockxpert buyers would try Stockfresh.

I'm guessing a huge advertising campaign would do it. As far as I can see with a search through relevant magazines in a newsagent, the only micro which is currently advertising in UK professional publications is Shutterstock. That's not counting subscription mags that aren't available in shops.

StockXpert never made it to the Big 4 and ranged from a low to mid earner for most people. They were one of the worst earners for me.

Obviously if StockFresh moved into the "Big" category and still offered fair commissions it would benefit everybody and decrease leverage from other agencies. But, historically, whenever a site moves up to top tier they start making changes that nobody likes...

...Shutterstock may be at status quo but unseen influences can change that at any moment.

Darlings can turn into the devil overnight.

I should have clarified "highly successful" as "highly successful for me." StockXpert was consistently my 3rd earner, sometimes even surpassing istock and taking the #2 spot.

It's true that many agencies that do move up into the "big" category make changes that are unfavorable to contributors. I just feel like with SF we're at least starting off on a better footing. So they cut commissions someday. Maybe to 40% (still very good) or maybe to 30% (still acceptable). They could slash them in half and still be paying better than istock for most people. And maybe they'll raise prices, but again, they've got a long way to go to reach istock levels. And I'd consider SF far less likely to make these sort of changes anyway given their StockXpert history and the fact that they never cut commissions there.

Darlings can indeed turn into the devil, but similarly to StockXpert/SF, I just don't see SS doing anything that destructive either. SS is one of the few agencies that actually raised pay rates over the years. They have done that in a while, but at the same time the company seems to be doing well at the current rates. No talk of unsustainability, etc. It's also helpful to not have a Getty-like company lording over them.

Any company could potentially pull an istock and destroy contributor earnings overnight. But it's very unlikely for SS and SF. And as long as SS is still around and still paying the same rates, I'm still able to make a living in this business.

Quote from: sharpshot on June 08, 2011, 04:28

^^^I'm sure the top 4 sites would be far too frightened of their profits falling if they increased commissions.  And it's really up to us to support the smaller sites that pay a decent commission by uploading all we can.

Buyers wont use smaller sites because they have smaller collections and less choice.  The only way to change that is for us to give them a chance but unfortunately most people would just prefer to complain about their low sales.  It's one of the few positive things we can do to make a change, much better than wishing the big sites would pay us more.  I made money with a few small sites before they closed and I haven't regretted giving them a chance.  What really annoys me is that the solution to our problems is there but people aren't even willing to try it.

I'm starting to agree with you.  I have always been reluctant to join up with a smaller site, but after setting up my own site and spending around $1k to set up the way I wanted it, submitting to a smaller site seems like and easier and cheaper way to go. 

With 6k images, though, I am only interested in smaller sites that will make it pretty much effortless for me to get my portfolio up there.  Pixmac, for example, I was able to get my whole port on the site in two weeks, with very little work involved - just FTP and assign release.  In contrast, with Veer I am only able to get 50 images in the queue per week.  Uploading since the first of the year and only have 1300 pics up. 

OK, which of the smaller sites would you recommend? I'm interested in simplicity as well. Though I really should get up to speed with FTP, entering keywords in PS etc. I'm doing it the old fashioned way right now, uploading to IS and SS. I've recently ULed some files to FT and DT as well, since I really need to earn every cent I can get, to make a living.

^^^I'm sure the top 4 sites would be far too frightened of their profits falling if they increased commissions.  And it's really up to us to support the smaller sites that pay a decent commission by uploading all we can.

Buyers wont use smaller sites because they have smaller collections and less choice.  The only way to change that is for us to give them a chance but unfortunately most people would just prefer to complain about their low sales.  It's one of the few positive things we can do to make a change, much better than wishing the big sites would pay us more.  I made money with a few small sites before they closed and I haven't regretted giving them a chance.  What really annoys me is that the solution to our problems is there but people aren't even willing to try it.

I decided to give Stockfresh a shot - in spite of the fact that apparently they haven't yet really started getting sales. I would not want to get tangled with another Albumo-like enterprise, but as I know who started Stockfresh, it seemed like a reasonable risk. I do think that it's reasonable to consider the time we have to invest to get our portfolios up when deciding if it's worth it, but I agree that we need someone else to be successful in the PPD segment to balance out the greedy cash grabs at some of the established ones.