News

Digest of Septembers Microstock 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.

Decide for yourself from the facts and figures were have collected.
Each of the links below displays tabulated data selected and ordered from each of our microstock agency reviews:

A fair amount of this months news comes from istockphoto, the most important being their lunch of photo+ for their non-exclusive members. The system allows contributors to 'promote' a portion of their portfolio (percentage depends on acceptance ratio)  to be offered at the same prices as exclusive photographers standard images. It seems at present there is no best match or search engine boost associated with opting photos into photo+ (regardless of discussion on weather this is in istocks best interest to farm high priced sales). Photos are locked into photos plus for 6 months (not sure why). I'm a little hazy on commission rates also with some sellers reporting images sold for 66% more revenue (you would expect 50 or less if the photo was being sold at the same commission rate).

istockphoto have launched their editorial stock image collection to buyers (previously announced to contributors in December) . Editorial images are highlighted with red/orange image numbers and are subject to stricter license terms than commerical RF images. As stated previously these are not intended to cover recent news or celebrity content, but less timely stock images that feature restricted IP like recognizable designs (cars, logos, buildings, works of art etc) that cannot be made available as royalty free stock.

Fotolia have announced a new commission structure which will come into effect next week. The changes will reduce commission to lower non-exclusive fotolia rank contributors by around 20% (e.g. white rank commission reduced from 25% of sale to 20% of sale). Low ranking exclusive photographers fare even worse dropping from 42% to 35%.

The table below shows the new rates, (hover over the image to show the old rates). Clicking the image currently links to a page at fotolia displaying the new rates before they come into effect.