Wow, that's disturbing but what I find even more disturbing is that you haven't packed your bags and left.  Really is 8.5c a whole lot better than 8c?  They have insulted you and many others time and time again with these degrading commissions yet a lot refuse to leave?  Why? What exactly are you all waiting for?  At what point will enough be enough for you?  Do they need to actually give your images away for free before you decide it's not worth selling through these arseholes?

 ....

That makes me so mad, but not just with them, with you and your tolerance for it!

I have no idea if you are making a living from this or not, but I am. It's not a huge fortune but without the $600-$700 a month I make from iStock there's no way I can carry on doing that. My $100 a month from Alamy won't magically turn into $800 if I kiss iStock goodbye (well, last year it was $100, this year it is $60). My "style" isn't sophisticated enough for traditional stock so I wouldn't get anywhere with Getty or Corbis etc.
Unless one of my other projects starts paying off, I'm not in a position to tell them to sod off.

As for the difference between 8c and 8.5c, it bothers me because it is the difference between having the percentage stated in the agreement and having someone help themselves to money out of my wallet. It doesn't matter how much it is, it is the principle. They appear arbitrarily cut my commission rate from the  agreed 17% to 16%. And if it was just once it wouldn't bother me, but over the years these 0.5c deductions (which I guess is the average per sale) gradually add up. If it is $2 or $4 a month for four or five years, that amounts to between $48 and $240 overall. For Yuri Arcurs it could be $100 a month.

Terrible!  but you know the old saying, anything is better then a SMACK in the bollucks?

Wow. I wish you'd harness some of that passion and start up a company that pays us better. I dropped the crown 1 Feb, and I'm still trying to get things online elsewhere. This is not my only job, and I'm going as fast as I can. Believe me, there's nothing at all I'd like better than to have better alternatives . . . but in the meantime, I still have bills to pay and iStock isn't making me a lot, but I can't turn it down just this second.

I'll be the first to admit: when they started all their baloney with the PP so long ago, I fought hard against that because I thought there was a battle to be won by the contributors. I never dreamed that the canister thing, the RC thing, the Agency thing and now the fraud would follow within two years and bring the site so far down. In 2007, I was able to pay my house payment with my monthly earnings (on less than 300 images). I foresaw dilution and increased competition, but I never in a million years saw it coming to this. And it's  hard to get everything placed with other agencies.

Believe me, it wouldn't be too difficult starting one of these agencies but if I was going to invest money, time and effort into a startup, it wouldn't be in a decaying industry such as microstock.  The market is oversaturated with these agents just as much as it is saturated with contributors.  There are quite a few fair paying agencies already out there but the problem here lies with the mentality of many contributors who will settle for anything thrown at them and are afraid to take a risk.  I'm not referring to you personally because you've come up with an exit strategy... probably a little late but at least you�re looking to leave.   Unlike you, however, there are still many that are crap scared to make a move because they're worried about dropping their current income.  For those saying �but I make a living out of this�, isn�t an excuse.  If anything, it's those who rely on their microstock income that should be the ones trying to drive the market to increase their profits long term.  Protecting their current diminishing income isn't going to help them in the future.  If they don't step up and take action, they may blink and find their income has halved suddenly and haven't bothered to come up with a plan on how to replace this loss.  iStock haven�t just dropped commissions recently.  Everyone should have told them to stick it at 20% commission many moons ago.  Even 20% is insulting yet contributors were happy to stay because they were selling higher volumes.  This kind of thinking is what's ruined this industry.  To say that it's okay to sell your product for peanuts because you sell more is devaluing your product.  If contributors don't believe their product has worth, why would a buyer?

Contributors also need to work smarter and play the market to suit them.  A lot of contributors dump their entire portfolios on any microstock database, regardless of the variations in prices and commissions.  Doing that won't maximise their income in the long run.  I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about.  Say I have a really hot image that is selling frequently and I have it uploaded at every agency and buyers are able to buy it from wherever they like.  If it's a hot image, I should pull it from those cheaper agents.  If I have it on Dreamstime for instance and it has climbed to a level 5 in a relatively short period of time, I can be fairly certain that it's in demand, has some worth and is probably coming up high in google.  If that's the case, why would I want to make it available at DT for $5.63 for an extra small size and also make it available at $0.28 for the same size at Fotolia?  I should (and have) pull it from Fotolia so buyers can only buy it at DT price.  Buyers are as loyal to agencies as we are... they�re not at all.  They�re not stupid, they�re going to buy it at the cheaper price and I would miss out on income if I allow that image to sit with Fotolia.  Competition is fierce in this game and we can't rest on our laurels and rely on these agencies to have full control over how we earn our income.  Nowhere else would you see this sort of thing happening.  You don't see a brand of milk selling at huge price differences at various supermarkets.  If you create a new brand of milk that's fortified with some special ingredient that benefits consumers in a different way to other common brands, you wouldn't sell it at a higher price at one store (for what it's really worth) and then sell it for the same cheaper price as the common brands at another store.  Same applies here and contributors need to play the market a little better if they want to maximise their profits.  It's not just about deciding which agency get's your images.  It's also about deciding which agencies get which images. 

^^^It looks to me that buyers are usually loyal to one site.  A few might use two sites and a few might shop around for the best price but I don't think its many.  If they were all looking for the cheapest prices, we would sell a lot more on the cheaper sites.  The sites would cut their prices to keep their buyers.  I haven't seen that happening.

I disagree, I don't think they're loyal at all, why would they be.  They may be lazy to sign up with another but it's definitly not loyalty.  If they really want an image they will sign up.  They don't really need to at the moment if the image is already available at the agent they already have an account with.  

"The sites would cut their prices to keep their buyers.  I haven't seen that happening."  

You haven't?  I certainly have with my own images.  10 months ago, I was selling more of my images at Fotolia... I wasn't earning more but I was selling much much more than any other agency.  I pulled about 75% of my images from Fotolia about 6 months ago.  Price wasn't even the deciding factor then (although it should have been).  I pulled them because of the watermark.  Not long after doing that, things picked up at Dreamstime.  Images that had not sold at all on Dreamstime but had sold well on Fotolia began selling well at Dreamstime.  We all know Fotolia is way cheaper than Dreamstime.


ETA:  Sorry I went off on a tangent, didn't I?     I probably shouldn't post at 3 in the morning.

It's really not that simple.  If the agencies drop prices, we lose money and they'll lose contributors.  It's bad enough they're shafting us by reducing our commissions, I don't think anyone will stick around if they drop prices as well.... unless they're on istock lol.

I keep posting this, and maybe I should quit, but...

With a subscription plan, any real concept of a 'commission' is lost.  A customer paid something for that image... but what?  And when?  Depends on the terms of the subscription, and on how the accountants choose to look at it. 

And the contributor gets paid something for that specific sale - but how much should that be?   It's really arbitrary and totally up to the microstock.

This is how they're grinding us down to nothing - by destroying the relationship between a sale price and a commission.

PSEUDONYMS, is in fact right in some respect and a very important one as well, namely saturating the market wont stand up in the long run. When I started in Micro 4 years back it was pretty bad then but nowdays its just a plain joke and the agencies dont care as long as we feed them. I bet if they employed professional picture-editors, not even 10% would pass inspections.
In the film days with Stones and Image-Bank, etc, when you submitted a shot, no matter how good, if it was too much alike some other photographers shot, it was rejected!!  that way the old agencies didnt fill up the shelves with piles of copies and rubbish.
The reason Micros accept copying, this and that is to have back-ups, just in case contributors get pissed off and leave, thats the only reason why, consequently, they dont give a crap if say 50 guys deactivate their portfolios and leave, they are well backed-up, well in most cases anyway.

So thanks to us, the contributors we have a situation whereby no one is indispencible, no one walks safe. Its not the fault of the agencies, we have only ourselves to blame. BASTA.
Im doing extremly well at Micro so Im not complaining at that but I do agree its totally insane, crazy, to just dump a massive portfoilio with just about anybody. It might pay off for a year or two and then just slowly vanish into oblivion.

[At least none of the subscription sales deliver 8c.

Yet. 

Quote from: lagereek on March 29, 2011, 12:17

PSEUDONYMS, is in fact right in some respect and a very important one as well, namely saturating the market wont stand up in the long run.
....
The reason Micros accept copying, this and that is to have back-ups, just in case contributors get pissed off and leave, thats the only reason why, consequently, they dont give a crap if say 50 guys deactivate their portfolios and leave, they are well backed-up, well in most cases anyway.

So thanks to us, the contributors we have a situation whereby no one is indispencible, no one walks safe. Its not the fault of the agencies, we have only ourselves to blame. BASTA.

....
I do agree its totally insane, crazy, to just dump a massive portfoilio with just about anybody. It might pay off for a year or two and then just slowly vanish into oblivion.

I don't follow the logic of that. If nobody is indispensable because everything is duplicated, then surely dumping your portfolio everywhere is the only way to maximise profits. The sites won't miss you if you're not there, someone else will fill the gap - you, on the other hand - are losing sales to someone else.
And if they have five of everything, then there is absolutely no reason for buyers to jump between sites to find one particular person's work unless there is something exceptional about it (and, lets face it, 99% of the stuff is not exceptional and 99.9% of the artists are not exceptional, either).

Well, not exactly.  what I meant was,  all agencies work on the assumption they will loose photographers work, I happen to know this for a fact. Now if they loose somebody totally unique and alone in his nieche, well, it might be a very, very costly affair, right? so by accepting as many photographers, copy-cats, you name it, they try to safeguard themselves. Think of it as a shop that will never run out of stock,  that was the motto of Image-Bank.

Micro industry is a numbers game and by spreding the numbers you stand a better chance of winning, right?  only in our case buyers are paying for the numbers. At this moment the supply is outstripping the demand, by far.

My assumption is that most buyers stick to a single agency. My own experience in business is that the management authorises the use of a service and doesn't want juniors coming along all the time saying "it's better to buy at site X" or "lets go to site Y instead". The contract details and pricing of site Z will have been checked and approved, discussed and cleared in a committee and nobody wants to have to go through the process again, just because Fred Smith took his photo somewhere else.

It would be better for you to research buyer behaviour rather than assume that most buyers stick to a single agency.  Not all buyers need to have agencies approved by management but even if they did, management's number one priority, in any business, is to reduce costs and would encourage their staff to lower costs by any means possible.  The purchasing process isn't that difficult, especially in this case.  We're talking microstock here.  We're not talking about management having to approve a large electricity contract worth millions.  I really don't see "committees" being involved here.  Most companies these days empower their employees to make their own decisions on purchasing up to a certain montly amount anyway.  You're also assuming all buyers are the same.  A lot of buyers are freelance designers and make their own decisions and will buy the right image for their client, even if it costs a few dollars more.  Of course if they find the same image at a cheaper price, they're going to buy the cheaper one.  Economic times are tough and to assume a buyer wouldn't maximise his or her profit is a little naive.  Signing up with a new agency isn't a difficult process.  It takes a couple of minutes and is well worth saving a few bucks here and there.

Even if they do go to Dreamstime, what if they buy a subscription there and download your Level 5 images at the lower rate? It's true that Dreamstime's average sale price is still $1 while Fotolia is 50c but you would need half your buyers to be personally loyal to you rather than committed to an agency to make up for scrapping files on Dreamstime.

Well you've answered your own question here but also if they download a Level 5 image at a lower rate for a subscription, I'll still get around $1 for that level 5 image at DT and only about $0.30 at FT, so why would I make that image available at FT.  I�m not talking about pulling all images, I�m talking about hot images that are unique.  I�m not talking about your best tomato photo that sells well.  If you pull that, the customer will buy the next best tomato image from someone else.[/quote] 

And why do you think buyers lack loyalty to sites but have loyalty to individual photographers?

Sorry but I find this funny that you would even think that.  Buyers aren't loyal to photographers.  They stick to them because they like the photographer's work.  If the photographer ceases to produce quality work and starts producing crap, they can kiss their buyers goodbye.  So buyers, if anything stick with a photographer because of their high quality work, in which case, my point about pulling your quality images from low paying agents such as FT and making them available at higher paying agents such as DT makes even more sense.  The buyer is likely to follow your work no matter where you have it.

Quote from: lagereek on March 29, 2011, 12:17

PSEUDONYMS, is in fact right in some respect and a very important one as well, namely saturating the market wont stand up in the long run.
....
The reason Micros accept copying, this and that is to have back-ups, just in case contributors get pissed off and leave, thats the only reason why, consequently, they dont give a crap if say 50 guys deactivate their portfolios and leave, they are well backed-up, well in most cases anyway.

So thanks to us, the contributors we have a situation whereby no one is indispencible, no one walks safe. Its not the fault of the agencies, we have only ourselves to blame. BASTA.

....
I do agree its totally insane, crazy, to just dump a massive portfoilio with just about anybody. It might pay off for a year or two and then just slowly vanish into oblivion.

I don't follow the logic of that. If nobody is indispensable because everything is duplicated, then surely dumping your portfolio everywhere is the only way to maximise profits. The sites won't miss you if you're not there, someone else will fill the gap - you, on the other hand - are losing sales to someone else.
And if they have five of everything, then there is absolutely no reason for buyers to jump between sites to find one particular person's work unless there is something exceptional about it (and, lets face it, 99% of the stuff is not exceptional and 99.9% of the artists are not exceptional, either).

Yes but I wasn't talking about work that isn't exceptional.  I was talking about the winners that are unique.  A lot of contributors have a portion of their stock that stands out from everybody elses work.  It's these images they should be protecting and not making them available everywhere.  It's also these images that contributors should be striving to produce.

I agree and that�s why there�s even more reason to pull images from agents that pay you less from subscriptions (like Fotolia) and only keep them with agencies that pay a little more like Dreamstime (for a level 5).  Stockfresh is very appealing to me because they will only allow buyers to purchase up to a medium size via subscription plus they offer commissions of at least 50%.  Every contributor should sign up with them and should promote them like crazy.

I put all my photos on GraphicLeftovers last year.  I made encouraging sales for a few months, but I flatlined in November - absolutely zero sales since then.   I think GL became known as a good place to be, and a lot of images poured in, and now their sales volume doesn't begin to match the size of their archive.  (Just guessing on this, but I don't know why else I would just go to zero).   BUT if sales ever picked up at GL, that would be a very good sign and I'd start thinking about dropping the big 3, especially if GL offered some benefit for exclusivity.

8 cents is not the bottom.  Zero is the bottom.  The agencies will let you post a URL to be seen by the customer, which will lead to your website, where you'll make money by selling coffee cups, or prints, or something.  

 

8 cents is not the bottom.  Zero is the bottom.  

True. You can always click on the "I donate this image" button if you like. An extraordinary number of people seem to do that.

Quote from: pseudonymous on March 29, 2011, 18:28

I agree and that�s why there�s even more reason to pull images from agents that pay you less from subscriptions (like Fotolia) and only keep them with agencies that pay a little more like Dreamstime (for a level 5).  Stockfresh is very appealing to me because they will only allow buyers to purchase up to a medium size via subscription plus they offer commissions of at least 50%.  Every contributor should sign up with them and should promote them like crazy.

I put all my photos on GraphicLeftovers last year.  I made encouraging sales for a few months, but I flatlined in November - absolutely zero sales since then.   I think GL became known as a good place to be, and a lot of images poured in, and now their sales volume doesn't begin to match the size of their archive.  (Just guessing on this, but I don't know why else I would just go to zero).   BUT if sales ever picked up at GL, that would be a very good sign and I'd start thinking about dropping the big 3, especially if GL offered some benefit for exclusivity.

GL is a good site and I love how we can set our own prices.  Our portfolios are made up of stock that have different worth so it�s great that we can adjust prices but unfortunately, GL has one massive flaw.  It doesn�t allow the buyer to buy varying sizes at various prices.  Unless they want to buy a large image, I cannot see them spending the extra money when they only need an XS size.  This is the major reason why I don�t see them succeeding.  Stockfresh is the site that has potential but it�s still early days.