Author Topic: The road to hell is paved with subscription (Read 25020 times)

lurkertwo · « **on:** July 02, 2009, 12:22 »

An email from PictureNation:

(This sounds like FeaturePics that had to abandon its author-priced model for a subscription model)

Quote

Industry watch – pricing and licences

As mentioned in our last newsletter, we’ve been monitoring sales and trends and changes in the market even more closely than usual. Whilst our members continue to get print res sales of £35 and £75, there aren’t enough of these transactions happening.

We’ve always been a ‘mid-stock’ site – floating inbetween the American microstock sites that sell pictures for a dollar or less, and the Alamys and Gettys who sell pictures for hundreds of dollars each. Alamy are totally open about their sales figures – and have reported quite a drop in some of their sectors. Their newspaper image sales are down by as much as 70%. Picture buyers are – like many during the recession – having to cut costs for their publications – and many are turning to the cheaper microstock libraries.

This is significant for us – because our key clients have so far been the public sector, marketing companies, education establishments and, we were starting to make good progress with the newspapers. The downturn has affected them – so is affecting us, and we’re a small and quite new library – not with the income stream of the US giants or Alamy. Alamy have done their own research and found that the newspapers are instructing their picture staff to use, wherever possible, the subscription sites where they can buy images for very little. Alamy are looking at how they will address that. And we have been too.

Watchers in the image industry forecast that more and more images will be obtained from social networking sites, that images are becoming so easily available, and so many available for free, that libraries will struggle. We know that businesses and wary image buyers will always choose to get their images from a trustworthy place where the photographers, like yourselves, have given permission for the images to be bought and used, and not just right clicked off the internet for free, with the risk of copyright breach.

We have been doing our own research and talking to small business owners, printers, web designers, marketing companies, etc….who all report that they love our site, its simplicity, the licensing, and your images – especially the spontaneity of them – and for the UK businesses they love the UK look of your pictures. But, when they get to our prices they are shocked. They are literally all now using the microstock sites and say their clients will not pay £75 for a solitary image any more. It’s not just the effects of a recession – we are no longer price competitive. And once these buyers start using the cheaper libraries – they won’t go back to the pricier ones. We haven’t lowered our prices since we launched in November 2006.

Our web prices are great value. But our single print prices are too high. We don’t have license options for businesses who want to use our pictures for templates and re-use. This is losing us – and you – quite a bit of business - and the associated PR – and it’s time for us to address that.

We also confuse clients with our language - ‘subscriptions’. Not our fault – the other bigger libraries have changed their language or introduced subscriptions that have different meaning to ours.

We have to follow the big players sometimes, as they do set the trends. More libraries are now offering a subscription or a credit service. Our PN subscription service is like their credit service. So we think we need to change our language from subscription to credits.

Many of our members sell images on other sites too – which we encourage - and having spoken to some of our members on the phone and by e-mail – we know they are happy to get sales from the microstock sites even for the small amounts that are paid out. Shutterstock only pay 25 cents (about 15p) commission for every download – even high res. But they’re a good, established and popular US site.

To increase sales volume, we need to lower our print prices and we need to offer an extended license option – all of which will increase the purchase options for buyers, give better value for money in a competitive market, and increase your chances of sales.

Some members have images for sale with us and the same images on other cheaper sites, and are getting few or no sales for those images with PN. We’d need to offer a more competitive price. Your commission rate would not be affected and stay at 40%. We pay 40% across the board – before our costs – and we don’t seek exclusivity. You can sell your images elsewhere too.

sharpshot · « **Reply #1 on:** July 02, 2009, 13:24 »

I don't mind subs if the commission is reasonable. SS pay me 38 cents a download and I would be very pleased if PictureNation made me as much as they do every month.

I disagree about buyers only wanting to pay low prices now. istock are launching their higher priced collection and I am still getting higher priced sales on several sites. Perhaps PictureNation need to find the right buyers?

Phil · « **Reply #2 on:** July 02, 2009, 21:05 »

Similar story to absolutestock last week. A number of buyers complained about Vetta

personally I think there needs to at least 3 tiers so that images can be priced more according to how much they will sell and hopefully the market can sustain it. My personal hope is to see more sites going to the veer / fotosearch style and offering multiple tiers in the one site (and obviously I hope this works

Personally I dont like subs, I put up with them very simply because I need the money but I think they are the majority of the problem. Even on $0.38 at shutterstock, I dont believe it is sustainable.

Lee Torrens · « **Reply #3 on:** July 03, 2009, 01:38 »

Here's another email from PN. To misrepresent my earnings like that they must be incredibly stupid or liars. Either way, I'm keeping my distance.

...not to mention calling me an "expert" and saying I shoot "great stock"! I'm guessing incredibly stupid.

Quote

As mentioned in our last newsletter, we’ve been monitoring sales and trends and changes in the market even more closely than usual. Whilst our members continue to get print res sales of £35 and £75, there aren’t enough of these transactions happening.

We’ve always been a ‘mid-stock’ site – floating inbetween the American microstock sites that sell pictures for a dollar or less, and the Alamys and Gettys who sell pictures for hundreds of dollars each. Alamy are totally open about their sales figures – and have reported quite a drop in some of their sectors. Their newspaper image sales are down by as much as 70%. Picture buyers are – like many during the recession – having to cut costs for their publications – and many are turning to the cheaper microstock libraries.

This is significant for us – because our key clients have so far been the public sector, marketing companies, education establishments and, we were starting to make good progress with the newspapers. The downturn has affected them – so is affecting us, and we’re a small and quite new library – not with the income stream of the US giants or Alamy. Alamy have done their own research and found that the newspapers are instructing their picture staff to use, wherever possible, the subscription sites where they can buy images for very little. Alamy are looking at how they will address that. And we have been too.

Watchers in the image industry forecast that more and more images will be obtained from social networking sites, that images are becoming so easily available, and so many available for free, that libraries will struggle. We know that businesses and wary image buyers will always choose to get their images from a trustworthy place where the photographers, like yourselves, have given permission for the images to be bought and used, and not just right clicked off the internet for free, with the risk of copyright breach.

We have been doing our own research and talking to small business owners, printers, web designers, marketing companies, etc….who all report that they love our site, its simplicity, the licensing, and your images – especially the spontaneity of them – and for the UK businesses they love the UK look of your pictures. But, when they get to our prices they are shocked. They are literally all now using the microstock sites and say their clients will not pay £75 for a solitary image any more. It’s not just the effects of a recession – we are no longer price competitive. And once these buyers start using the cheaper libraries – they won’t go back to the pricier ones. We haven’t lowered our prices since we launched in November 2006.

Our web prices are great value. But our single print prices are too high. We don’t have license options for businesses who want to use our pictures for templates and re-use. This is losing us – and you – quite a bit of business - and the associated PR – and it’s time for us to address that.

We also confuse clients with our language - ‘subscriptions’. Not our fault – the other bigger libraries have changed their language or introduced subscriptions that have different meaning to ours.

We have to follow the big players sometimes, as they do set the trends. More libraries are now offering a subscription or a credit service. Our PN subscription service is like their credit service. So we think we need to change our language from subscription to credits.

Many of our members sell images on other sites too – which we encourage - and having spoken to some of our members on the phone and by e-mail – we know they are happy to get sales from the microstock sites even for the small amounts that are paid out. Shutterstock only pay 25 cents (about 15p) commission for every download – even high res. But they’re a good, established and popular US site.

To increase sales volume, we need to lower our print prices and we need to offer an extended license option – all of which will increase the purchase options for buyers, give better value for money in a competitive market, and increase your chances of sales.

Some members have images for sale with us and the same images on other cheaper sites, and are getting few or no sales for those images with PN. We’d need to offer a more competitive price. Your commission rate would not be affected and stay at 40%. We pay 40% across the board – before our costs – and we don’t seek exclusivity. You can sell your images elsewhere too.

Lee Torrens who writes www.microstockdiaries.com has images on several websites – thousands of images – and reports on his earnings regularly. All the sites are American/Canadian microsotck – so sell very cheaply (hence the competition) and figures quoted below are in US Dollars (or cents).

In January 2009 these were his average monthly returns on his sales. Bear in mind this is a picture selling expert who knows the market and shoots great stock.

Image library Av. Commission per image sale
iStockphoto 20 cents
Shutterstock 14 cents
Dreamstime 8 cents
StockXpert 13 cents
BigStockPhoto 6 cents
Crestock 2 cents
Fotolia 10 cents

100 cents = 0.61p

The biggest average return on his istock images was 20 cents. That’s about 11p a sale. The least amount you make on Picturenation is 40p a sale. And much more for print sales.

Our proposal for a new pricing structure on PN is to be competitive, more attractive to buyers, but more appealing to photographers than microstock payouts. All buyers will have to purchase credits to buy pictures – with a minimum purchase of £10, which is the same as now. Only the language changes – to avoid confusion for buyers.

PN new licenses and pricing model

Picturenation image Standard license Extended license Multi-seat license
Small (72dpi) £1.00 £35.00 £5.00
Medium (300dpi) £10.00 £50.00 £35.00
Large (300dpi) £15.00 £75.00 £50.00

Your commission (still @ 40%)

Picturenation image Standard license Extended license Multi-seat license
Small (72dpi) £0.40 £14.00 £2.00
Medium (300dpi) £4.00 £20.00 £14.00
Large (300dpi) £6.00 £30.00 £20.00

What’s an extended license?
There’s a market for image purchase for re-sale, where a buyer needs to use an image several times over but will not and cannot pay for each use. For example, a school book publisher, a T shirt printer, or a poster company. The extended license would give them permission to use an image on a product for selling, (terms apply), up to a certain number, on the one license and for an increased cost. This is a very popular way of buying images and we are one of the few libraries of our kind who haven’t offered it yet.

What’s a multi-seat license?
Our standard current license permits the buyer to use and store the image in a restricted way and to one person in one place at a time. This multi-seat license allows more than one person in an organisation to legitimately use that image, i.e a classroom or a webteam working on one project.

Before we do anything we would like your feedback. As much as we’d like to converse with everyone, it just isn’t possible with 8,000 members. What we are doing is sending you a quick and brief online poll to gauge what your thoughts are. If you don’t have time or the inclination to look at it or fill it in then that’s OK. The adaptions we make will have to be for everyone. Buyers will not use us if our images are all priced differently. The larger volume sites can do that – but buyers have told us they prefer the same rules across the site for clarity. We are hoping to introduce the extended license options in the next few weeks. The new referrers commission will come in after that, where you can make money on clients purchases you bring to PN.

We hope to be able to introduce the wider and more flexible pricing options and licenses soon. The quick and simple poll attached is for us to see if you understand and support the license proposals. We hope you can take a few seconds to answer the 3 or 4 questions it contains. Many thanks for your input.

michealo · « **Reply #4 on:** July 03, 2009, 03:19 »

I have never heard of picturenation, I think that says it all

RT · « **Reply #5 on:** July 03, 2009, 03:40 »

Quote from: Lee Torrens on July 03, 2009, 01:38

Here's another email from PN. To misrepresent my earnings like that they must be incredibly stupid or liars. Either way, I'm keeping my distance.

...not to mention calling me an "expert" and saying I shoot "great stock"! I'm guessing incredibly stupid.

Lee I wouldn't worry about it, like many others I'd never heard of them, I looked them up and they have a total of 88k photos!!! most of which are very sub par.

I sometimes wonder if folks like them and some photographers who write how great they are actually realise most readers aren't as gullible as they'd hoped, or perhaps they hope people will read their statement and not then look at the site

Milinz · « **Reply #6 on:** July 03, 2009, 05:22 »

Well... It looks like provocation try.

Anyway with $1 sales and so small library picturenation will go deep down...
Somehow $1 pricing is for agencies that have 1 million images and above ;-)

In next time period crisis will get even worse and after that it will get even worse than ever.
Loosers will be the lowest and the most expensive. So, I'd stick with middle priced agencies for next couple of years ;-)

Magnum · « **Reply #7 on:** July 03, 2009, 05:28 »

cover blown milinz

lurkertwo · « **Reply #8 on:** July 03, 2009, 08:01 »

Quote from: Magnum on July 03, 2009, 05:28

cover blown milinz

Me? Well I'm not loose enough to confound "loosers" with "losers" all the time, second, I'm not a reviewer at FP, and third, my last iStock batch was accepted 12/15. Nice try.

lurkertwo · « **Reply #9 on:** July 03, 2009, 08:09 »

Quote from: Lee Torrens on July 03, 2009, 01:38

Here's another email from PN. To misrepresent my earnings like that they must be incredibly stupid or liars. Either way, I'm keeping my distance.

I left that part of the email out for brevity. Don't forget to mention that PN asks a parking fee for your images > 10. They argued that their high prices would make up for that. Now that they seem to have opted for the slippery slope of subscription, I wonder if they're going to dump that parking fee too. I uploaded 10 to PN, 5 non-people, 5 models. They asked to email the Releases or fax them, for which I have no time. And that's it.

willie · « **Reply #10 on:** July 03, 2009, 12:10 »

Quote from: Phil on July 02, 2009, 21:05

Similar story to absolutestock last week. A number of buyers complained about Vetta personally I think there needs to at least 3 tiers so that images can be priced more according to how much they will sell and hopefully the market can sustain it. My personal hope is to see more sites going to the veer / fotosearch style and offering multiple tiers in the one site (and obviously I hope this works

Personally I dont like subs, I put up with them very simply because I need the money but I think they are the majority of the problem. Even on $0.38 at shutterstock, I dont believe it is sustainable.

Phil, following your comments here on this forum, I have the same growing sentiments about the current state of things in microstock. I like Veer Marketplace as they belong to Corbis, and support them to prevent a Getty monopoly. Still, I dislike Getty's treatment of screwing contributors with how they handled subs between IS and StockXpert. And they killed StockXpert, which was a good site for me, which makes me pissed off with Getty.
But with Vetta, I cheer for them as they provide us with an alternative to subs. Many of the newbie sites with big promises and no sales keep pushing with their "road out of hell" (to quote cevapcici)
but we cannot forget history of those who came before them with similar empty promises. And as I pointed out elsewhere here, Dreamstime is pissing me off too. Which is sick, as I like them alot , ... until today !

cevapcici, we can do with a new idea, as this road to subs is too much of a reality that everyone has jumped on board. The only ones thinking of jumping ship is all of us, but we cannot leave without an alternative that works.
Let's hope with Veer Marketplace and Vetta, we can turn the ship around instead of heading the whole business into an iceberg. Like Phil said elsewhere, if I am to earn 3% or 30 cents mostly, I may as well quit the business, and just shoot for fun. If it keeps up, I will go back to Flickr, wth. It's stupid, none the less, but there comes a time we contributors must reach a point of getting f##king sick of being screwed. (sorry, I feel in a pissy mood today already).

puravida · « **Reply #11 on:** July 03, 2009, 12:28 »

the road is sure headed for hell, but didn't we see the writing on the wall? am i the only one who read Yuri say his expectations were down to 20% as his profit margin on microstock?

if this is Yuri's expectation and he sell like hot tamales. what do we normal folks expect for our own profit margin? how can this be sustainable? (quote Phil).

how can paying a model to pose for you and time and money on equipment, depreciation,etc.. be sustainable if all we get is 30cents.

with a tier system, at least we can submit higher cost images to Vetta and other similar stock, while keeping only the low cost productions to subs.

what do the rest of you think? am i crazy or what?

stockastic · « **Reply #12 on:** July 03, 2009, 12:50 »

We're starting to sell into a generation that grew up on cell phone photos. Feelings about, and expectations for, imagery in general are changing. This generation also expects digital content to be free, or close to it.

I think that before too long, today's carefully posed and ighted stock shots of suspiciously good-looking people will look as stiff and comical as 19th century portraits often look today, and will no longer be in demand for advertising and promotion.

Everythng changes. It will be interesting to see what future "professional" photography actually has.

willie · « **Reply #13 on:** July 03, 2009, 13:06 »

Quote from: stockastic on July 03, 2009, 12:50

We're starting to sell into a generation that grew up on cell phone photos. Feelings about, and expectations for, imagery in general are changing. This generation also expects digital content to be free, or close to it.

I think that before too long, today's carefully posed and ighted stock shots of suspiciously good-looking people will look as stiff and comical as 19th century portraits often look today, and will no longer be in demand for advertising and promotion.

Everythng changes. It will be interesting to see what future "professional" photography actually has.

well done, I couldn't have said it out better.

puravida · « **Reply #14 on:** July 03, 2009, 13:08 »

Quote from: stockastic on July 03, 2009, 12:50

We're starting to sell into a generation that grew up on cell phone photos. Feelings about, and expectations for, imagery in general are changing. This generation also expects digital content to be free, or close to it.

I think that before too long, today's carefully posed and ighted stock shots of suspiciously good-looking people will look as stiff and comical as 19th century portraits often look today, and will no longer be in demand for advertising and promotion.

Everythng changes. It will be interesting to see what future "professional" photography actually has.

Agree too!

Our imagery fakery went from the old full suit Chubby Checker Hang On Sloopy crowd to the sraggily unkempt dopey Woodstock stoned who cares look. Then back to polyester John Travolta disco (ugh, puke, lol) to weird M Jackson, to jailbird wannabee gangsta pyjamas , then back to the starch over dressed all flash and no substance. Now with the mobile phone we are back to the come as you are casual is best look. Except for those strung out on Paris Hilton overdressed, underdressed and still weird financed by daddy .
Yes, much as we try to predict and brainwashed by the media, the only thing certain is that it never stays the same long. Much like the attention span of our 3 year old. lol.

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #15 on:** July 03, 2009, 13:13 »

Quote from: puravida on July 03, 2009, 12:28

if this is Yuri's expectation and he sell like hot tamales. what do we normal folks expect for our own profit margin? how can this be sustainable? (quote Phil).

Yuri, nice guy that he is, isn't the end all of everything shot by a camera. Don't despair.

Graffoto · « **Reply #16 on:** July 03, 2009, 13:58 »

There will always be a market for high quality/High production imagary.
(Think European Vogue for instance).

Will there continue to be a market for it in microstock?
Only time will tell.

One thing is for certain, the pendulum swings in both directions.
What was old eventually becomes new again.

sharpshot · « **Reply #17 on:** July 03, 2009, 14:32 »

Quote from: puravida on July 03, 2009, 12:28

the road is sure headed for hell, but didn't we see the writing on the wall? am i the only one who read Yuri say his expectations were down to 20% as his profit margin on microstock?

if this is Yuri's expectation and he sell like hot tamales. what do we normal folks expect for our own profit margin? how can this be sustainable? (quote Phil).

how can paying a model to pose for you and time and money on equipment, depreciation,etc.. be sustainable if all we get is 30cents.

with a tier system, at least we can submit higher cost images to Vetta and other similar stock, while keeping only the low cost productions to subs.

what do the rest of you think? am i crazy or what?

Have you seen Yuri's studio? If he can pay for that and all the equpment, models, props and travel etc. and make a 20% profit margin, he is doing great. He could stop spending and earn more but I think he is having fun and that might be more important to him than his profit margin. Others spend less and probably make more.

Jonathan Ross · « **Reply #18 on:** July 03, 2009, 14:49 »

Big Believer in a three tiered system. Just wrote a presentation to this exact subject a couple of weeks ago for a Micro Blog site, hasn't been released yet. This is the best approach I have heard so far and there are buyers to sustain all three levels. Good topic.

Best,
Jonathan

PixelBytes · « **Reply #19 on:** July 03, 2009, 15:09 »

Quote from: puravida on July 03, 2009, 12:28

with a tier system, at least we can submit higher cost images to Vetta and other similar stock, while keeping only the low cost productions to subs.

what do the rest of you think? am i crazy or what?

Puravida, I thought you were independent. Are you thinking of going exclusive with istock?

If you aren't, don't expect to submit anything to Vetta. Vetta collection is for istock exclusives only.

puravida · « **Reply #20 on:** July 03, 2009, 15:42 »

Quote from: PixelBytes on July 03, 2009, 15:09

Puravida, I thought you were independent. Are you thinking of going exclusive with istock?

If you aren't, don't expect to submit anything to Vetta. Vetta collection is for istock exclusives only.

yes PixelBytes, i'm indie. what i mean is credit to where it's due. Getty deserves all the crapping for what they did with StockXpert and IS sub,etc... but now with Vetta, it's somethng for contributors to feel optimistic . sure, only for exclusives, but if i were exclusive with IS, i'd expect some extra special treatment.
maybe if DT stop inventing games and do the same , they too might get some of us to go exclusive

PixelBytes · « **Reply #21 on:** July 03, 2009, 15:52 »

Quote from: puravida on July 03, 2009, 15:42

yes PixelBytes, i'm indie. what i mean is credit to where it's due. Getty deserves all the crapping for what they did with StockXpert and IS sub,etc... but now with Vetta, it's somethng for contributors to feel optimistic . sure, only for exclusives, but if i were exclusive with IS, i'd expect some extra special treatment.

I see what you mean. Glad you are staying non-exclusive for now. You are one of the most active and vocal independents. Would hate to lose you from our "team"

puravida · « **Reply #22 on:** July 03, 2009, 16:02 »

Quote from: PixelBytes on July 03, 2009, 15:52

Quote from: puravida on July 03, 2009, 15:42

yes PixelBytes, i'm indie. what i mean is credit to where it's due. Getty deserves all the crapping for what they did with StockXpert and IS sub,etc... but now with Vetta, it's somethng for contributors to feel optimistic . sure, only for exclusives, but if i were exclusive with IS, i'd expect some extra special treatment.

I see what you mean. Glad you are staying non-exclusive for now. You are one of the most active and vocal independents. Would hate to lose you from our "team"

PixelBytes, that's good to know I am not just making obssessive enemies here with my (quote) most active and vocal (unquote), lol !
Not to worry. Even if I do turn exclusive, you will still get me screaming hell if something's unfair. I am not just suddenly going to turn fawn or speechless simply because I become exclusive.
For that reason, maybe the exclusves will dread the day I join their "team", rofl !
Thx again for the good thoughts, PixelBytes

Phil · « **Reply #23 on:** July 03, 2009, 16:28 »

Quote from: PixelBytes on July 03, 2009, 15:09

Quote from: puravida on July 03, 2009, 12:28

with a tier system, at least we can submit higher cost images to Vetta and other similar stock, while keeping only the low cost productions to subs.

what do the rest of you think? am i crazy or what?

Puravida, I thought you were independent. Are you thinking of going exclusive with istock?

If you aren't, don't expect to submit anything to Vetta. Vetta collection is for istock exclusives only.

me too, I'm independant but very pleased to see Vetta. Reminds people that some images are worth more than the dollar bin or subs pricing. I hope other agencies start similar collections

Jonathan Ross · « **Reply #24 on:** July 03, 2009, 17:12 »

I agree with Phil.

Vetta is good for the industry to start separating the quality levels. People that have been true to Istock deserve this opportunity, they believed and it looks like for some it has paid off well.

Jonathan

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Author Topic: The road to hell is paved with subscription (Read 25020 times)

lurkertwo

sharpshot

Phil

Lee Torrens

michealo

RT

Milinz

Magnum

lurkertwo

lurkertwo

willie

puravida

stockastic

willie

puravida

Sean Locke Photography

Graffoto

sharpshot

Jonathan Ross

PixelBytes

puravida

PixelBytes

puravida

Phil

Jonathan Ross

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