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As some members have indicated a desire to discuss Symzio’s stock media pricing, I’ve created this thread as the place to discuss/share your ideas and make suggestions if you have them. If you have any critiques / suggestion please back your ideas with well thought out reasoning. Our aim is to be constructive and analyse what will work best towards achieving success in an already dense industry.
For reference, Symzio’s pricing scheme for customers is as follows:
One Time Use small JPG – $0.99
One Time Use full JPG – $4.99
One Time Use full EPS – $4.99
Royalty-Free full JPG – $24.99
Royalty-Free full Vector – $24.99
One Time Use HD Video – $29.99
Royalty-Free HD Video – $59.99
One Time Use 4K Video – $49.99
Royalty-Free 4K Video – $99.99It’s hard if not impossible to get lots of contributors to agree on pricing. Many come from a traditional micro stock background, others are hobbyists who are happy to make 2 bucks in a month, some might come from traditional (macro) stock who have been in the business for many years. You can’t even say that one image is worth as much as every other one.
Offering only two different sizes – fine. Keeping 20% of the sales – seems fair to me. But forcing the lowest possible standards of pricing to contributors is “not smart”. Only the client will be happy with that.
I think you need to keep Symzio open to pull the prices a contributor has set.
Contributor earnings comparison
Agency subscription sale: $0.25 (full size, royalty free)
Independent Symzio sale: $0.79 (low resolution, one time use)
For a 6000×4000 image, that translates to:
$0.0000000010417 per square pixel through an agency
$0.00000033917 per square pixel through Symzio
For a difference of:
$0.0000003381283 per square pixel, or:
326x the revenue per square pixel.
So, through Symzio, the average contributor that is currently with Fotolia or Shutterstock will earn, at a minimum, at least 326 times more per square pixel.
That number, large as it is, is still under-represented. Why? Because the former is a RF license; the latter is a one-time-use, rights managed license. I can’t quantify that number, so I left it out.
Of course, if you are currently not dependent on agency subscription sales for a majority of your revenue, you are not an ‘average’ contributor. In that case, Symzio may not be for you – no worries, use Symzio to whatever capacity it benefits you.
In conclusion, to suggest that earning 326x the revenue per pixel is the:
lowest possible standards
Just means you’re not clear on things. Could it be better? Maybe – let’s talk about that. But variable pricing just serves to confuse customers, and though we initially wanted to integrate individual pricing, the market just seems to dictate that customers want simple, clear, homogeneous costs.
To me it’s not about the absolute amount of money you make per pixel. If you compare pest to cholera you might find one better or worse than the other.
I’m one of the people that believes in the value of high quality work and I don’t want to spread the idea photographs are just pixels and the license fee can be determined by factor $0.0000000000x multiplied with the amount of pixels the image has.
But if others think their work is worth $4.99 then so be it. Maybe it even is.
That’s totally understandable, and each contributor must decide what works for them. Our goal with Symzio is to maximize contributor revenue through competitive pricing and volume.
If you think we can charge significantly more than agencies and still get lots of volume, let us know how and we can discuss it to see if it is viable.
If you think we can charge significantly more than agencies and still get lots of volume, let us know how and we can discuss it to see if it is viable.
Right now I think undermining even the cheapest micro stock agencies is not the way to help photographers or the stock industry. It’s basically contra productive. If you think you can only be competitive over pricing, then you might actually be part of the problem the industry suffers from.
The industry has changed, and will never be where it was ten years ago. A hard pill that you’re going to have to swallow if you want to survive.
I’ve made a thread about the current market situation:
http://www.symbiostock.org/forums/topic/the-current-stock-industry-market/
I think they only disagree about the One Time Use. If you see most of us offers Royalty-Free in our website.
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