Digest of Septembers Microstock [3] News Stories:
Two big stories this month relating to the commission and sales structure under which images are sold. Veer announced they were to offer a subscription product, while subscription site shutterstock announced it would to start offering single images.
New Veer Subscriptions
Veer announced a subscription offering available from "later this year" , 30 images per day, prices to be announced but touted as being "less than $250 a month". An updated contributor rate card [4] (pdf) details commissions from subscription downloads which like istockphoto vary with the number of images that end users download per day. If one image is downloaded then the contributor gets $3 commission, if 30 images are download each image contributor gets 1/30 (10 cents per image downloaded). A post on microstockdairies [5] pretty much mirrored my feelings about the new rate... a little too favorable to veer. To opt out of the subscription offer you need to send an email, instructions were sent to all contributors on how to do this, deadline for opting out is 21st October. (read the note below first).
New Shutterstock Single Images
Subscription microstock pioneers shutterstock [6] announced [7] that due to popular demand they would be offering an option to buy single images (they previously offered an 'on demand subscription' that allowed 5 downloads for $49).
The new offer is not available in all markets. Commission rates for single images are as follows:
| Contributor Lifetime Earnings | Commission Rate |
|---|---|
| < $500 | 20% |
| $500-3,000 | 25% |
| $3000-10,000 | 28% |
| > $10.000 | 30% |
Subscription Commission Comparison
(say that three times fast) A quick comparison of the commission rates at shuterstock and istockphoto should help you decide what you think about the new veer subscription offer:
| Veer [8] | Shutterstock [9] | iStockphoto [10] | ||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| rate details [4] | rate details [11] |
rate details [12] |
||||||||||||||||||||
Your pay per download is determined by number of images download by the user in one day: (key values shown)
|
Your pay per download is determined by your total lifetime earnings:
|
Royalty level based on how much of the subscriber's daily limit was used to download your file, with a minimum value of $0.65 according to rate details [13] |
Extended License $3.75 at best down to $0.13 at 30 downloads. (So that's as low as 13 cents for unlimited use) IS and SS don't offer extended licenses on their subscriptions. A shutterstock EL will earn you $28, istock ELs work on the same rates as standard image downloads costing from 75 to 125 credits. For me this was the decider on opting out; the potential low subscription payouts I might have swallowed if I could opt-out later (just to see how the sales were and report back on this blog); but $3.75 at best for an EL, No.
Note: At time of posting it appears that veer may be putting together a different structure, a thread on microstockgroup [14] is keeping track of things.
Other News
Cutcaster [15] announced upgrades to their search system and the launch of an API [16] for searching and reselling cutcaster images
Mystockphoto reported on improvements to the despositphotos site [17]
MicrostockPosts featured an article on istocks new terms "opt in or close account ultimatum [18]"
Picniche took a detailed look at which agencies strip your metadata [19] and why.