Raise at SS

ajn · #1 (**permalink**) 05-13-2008, 04:53 PM

It's been announced:

Comission - Lifetime Earnings
$0.25 - Less than $500
$0.33 - $500 to $3,000
$0.36 - $3,000 to $10,000
$0.38 - Over $10,000

ELs go up to 28$

A bit of a disapointment for me... what do you all think?

Cheers

louoates · #2 (**permalink**) 05-13-2008, 05:02 PM

About what I expected. Not great, but it does reward the better producers a bit more.

e-person · #3 (**permalink**) 05-13-2008, 05:14 PM

Although a rise is a rise, it does not turn me on.

On my first months with SS, somehow I got all excited. Now I feel idiot submitting to it.

nicemonkey · #4 (**permalink**) 05-13-2008, 05:28 PM

I would like to have seen a higher band say 25K paying .43 to encourage more quality images and reward the people who do it as a living

ca2hill · #5 (**permalink**) 05-13-2008, 05:29 PM

It could have been better, but I guess I can't complain to much. I'm in the 3 cent raise (10%), with the 6 cent raise (20%) not to far off.

I guess I'm a little surprised at the outrage over it. What did people expect? Especially given that it's fairly in line with previous SS raises. For me stock photography is a spare-time thing, so it doesn't really affect me as much as full-timers. Maybe that's why I'm less disappointed.

I'm always in favor of rewarding the top contributors more and believe that all sites should work in that way. Despite the fact that I'm probably middle of the road at best in my rank.

The issue of subscription royalties continue to be a huge issue in microstock. It will be very interesting to see where the dust settles.

sharpshot · #6 (**permalink**) 05-13-2008, 05:38 PM

I think people are annoyed because SS raised the prices for buyers 50%. Our commissions relative to that fell behind last year and have fallen again this year. They also took two weeks longer to announce the raise this year. That gave us longer to think of things we were going to spend the extra money on

RacePhoto · #7 (**permalink**) 05-13-2008, 06:50 PM

I'm not upset or outraged, but I do wonder this, What Raise? I'm getting 25c an image now and will still be getting 25c an image?

I was kind of hoping that they would raise the base subscription download value to 30c and elevate the tiers for better earners in proportion.

I'm not sure if I've ever had anything but 25c subscription sales on SS. On the other hand, they do produce good volume, so I can't complain about that.

While it's an incentive for the regulars and the higher volume photographers, it's a disincentive for the new members. SS has always been (in my opinion) set up to give new people a boost in the search, so they get a higher amount of sales the first month or two, as an encouragement to produce more.

Just about everyone says they had great sales the first month and then things dropped. Hey, guess what, the first month you are up on top and get the views. After that you are back into the pack with the rest of the regulars.

Just about everyone agrees that if you upload new photos each month, you seem to get placed better in the searches and have better sales than if you just stop uploading.

Thus my opinion that this isn't in line with the SS practice of giving new contributors a boost and encouraging them to keep moving up and making more photos. It isn't with their perceived search ranking that encourages fresh uploads to keep earning more.

It's more of a rich get richer raise.

Of course I'll really like it much more when I get the first $500 in downloads and get that 8c raise.

Karimala · #8 (**permalink**) 05-13-2008, 08:52 PM

I'm also surprised by how many people are angry about the raise, because it's really no different than raises in previous years.

When I started it was 20 cents, then contributors who signed up prior to a certain date were bumped up to 23 cents. I missed out on that raise by only a week, but later on we were all bumped up to 23 cents. Then they raised it to 25 across the board, and last year raised it to 30 for those who had earned over $500. Now they have added more tiers, which is what I expected based on their history.

louoates · #9 (**permalink**) 05-13-2008, 10:14 PM

I can't believe there are so many whiners out there. You'd think the leg irons anchored to their desks were rubbing their ankles raw.

nativelight · #10 (**permalink**) 05-13-2008, 10:58 PM

I think people are disappointed because SS themselves set us up with the words "you'll be pleasantly surprised" when they first announced the impending raise. Then 2-3 weeks go by with lots of speculation about what kind of raise would be a pleasant surprise. What they announced today was probably more in line with what would have been expected had they not said we would all be pleasantly surprised.