Interesting time ahead.  With iStock's prices up 50%, Fotolia's new prices/sizes producing price rises of anywhere between 100% (small) to 25% (XL), BigStock having increased prices by 50/100% last November, it will be interesting to see what Shutterstock do in April.

My feeling on the matter is that the subscription sites have much less flexibility and are going to find it hard to implement price rises without losing customers.  Dreamstime and StockXpert clearly introduced subscriptions to try to capture SS's market, and now they are all pricing at or around $199 waiting for someone to 'make the first move'.  All eyes are clearly on SS.

So what will happen?  Any guesses?

My own view is, firstly, that SS will try a price rise to either $229 or possibly $259.  In doing so they will lose customers to ppd agencies, but the price rise might offset that loss.

If they can get a price rise I think the basic commission will stay at 25c.  The higher level might rise to 35c, but my feeling is that they will introduce another trigger level, possibly at $1,000, giving a 25c, 30c, 35c ladder; in doing this they will reap more profit from the thousands of small contributors whilst rewarding the photographers who make most of the sales.

What I'd REALLY like to see is a two tiered system giving standard subs terms to images below 8mp and a 'double price' system for higher rez.  But I don't think we'll see that this year, if at all.

Given that SS has raised the commission to contributors by 5 cents the last few years, it will probably be the same again.  They do seem to be losing some customers to DT and StockXpert, so they will have to come up with something to keep the buyers and contributors happy.  I wish they would have pay per download on their main site.  Just having subscriptions doesn't seem like the best way to make the most money from our images.

I agree that they should have some sort of pay-per download on their main site. Crestock pulls it off nicely with a simple $5 small $10 medium $15 large. Sure, it's not very common to get one of those downloads, but they are a nice boost, even at the 20% commission that Crestock gives. I suggested this on SS forums but was shot down by pretty much everyone. 

Quote from: Kngkyle on January 31, 2008, 18:05

Quote from: sharpshot on January 31, 2008, 17:29

Given that SS has raised the commission to contributors by 5 cents the last few years, it will probably be the same again.  They do seem to be losing some customers to DT and StockXpert, so they will have to come up with something to keep the buyers and contributors happy.  I wish they would have pay per download on their main site.  Just having subscriptions doesn't seem like the best way to make the most money from our images.

I agree that they should have some sort of pay-per download on their main site. Crestock pulls it off nicely with a simple $5 small $10 medium $15 large. Sure, it's not very common to get one of those downloads, but they are a nice boost, even at the 20% commission that Crestock gives. I suggested this on SS forums but was shot down by pretty much everyone. 

Strange that they do it. They have a good opportunity to increase their sales as well as profits for all involved, by allowing single downloads. The only reason why I never buy anything from SS is that it isn't possible without a subscription.

well they did have a pay per download site before, but canned it because it wasn't working very well - or wasn't succesful.

The SS pay per download site was hard to find and I doubt they advertised it much.  It was a shock to get pay per download commissions. 

If they had pay per download on the main site, I think it would be a success.  SS accept lots of high selling quality images that istock reject because they don't allow some illustrations, saturation etc.