Continuing its steady ascendant trend, Dreamstime has registered a 90% traffic growth rate in the last 12 months according to third parties that provide web analytics. Similar results have been registered for all other parameters as well: number of registered users, buyers, submissions and images online (while the waiting time gets close to 0 now!)
While a strong positioning has already been secured within the market, our aim is to continue growth at the same if not even higher rates.
We've just released a price update, 9 months after our previous adjustments (credits 2008). This is not an update of the pricing in credits, but of the credit value itself. The credit amount required for image download will not change. Subscription plans will also stay the same.
Full details can't be provided here, due to the dynamics of the purchase tool, but most of you will already see updated royalties for the latest downloads. A few examples are in the above graphics. As you can see, for the lower volumes, a non exclusive photographer will receive $0.84 instead of $0.50 per credit. A 5 credits image will bring him $4.2 (up from $2.5) while the exclusive will receive $5.01 (up from $3) .
Overall, adding discounts and additional credits, the price update should translate in over 30-40% increase in sales and royalties. Coming right before the summer season, we expect this to bring better earnings for everyone and record months for most contributors.
Although this is a significant increase, we still continue to provide the best prices for buyers!
Due to the competitive landscape, we have also contemplated a simultaneous decrease within the royalties area. As you know, Dreamstime provides the highest royalties in the industry and we would very much like to keep it that way. The drawback is that a lower margin inevitably affects the marketing and advertising budgets. As a side effect, that can result in a lower sale volume for our contributors. Our goal is to be able to deliver the highest royalties while also providing the highest revenue.
We decided to delay this launch, but we plan to adjust the royalty percentages in the upcoming months. We will first evaluate the results of the current price update. We hope contributors' revenue will not be affected and that the RPD remains at significant values. Also, we plan to keep the royalties at a higher level compared to competition. This should translate in higher revenue for everyone, as the marketing budgets will be increased.
A fair system in our perspective is a level-based royalties system, allowing higher level images to earn a higher percentage compared to the fresh, low-level images. Opposite to this proposal would be a portfolio based system that rewards older members higher revenue. Older doesn't necessarily mean better and you know we refer to great images not just great portfolios. As always, we would like to hear your thoughts about how the right system should look like (portfolio based vs image based).
The specifics for this update are not ready yet. While we don't expect contributors to be happy with a decrease in royalties, we hope that a bigger revenue will make this worthwhile.
And to emphasize that these are not just plain words, you may remember the last update that added bonus credits as part of the royalties algorithm. Although it decreased the royalties, the revenue continued to grow.
As a result of that strategy of added bonuses, we will be able to pay contributors $0.83 per credit instead of the previous fixed $0.50. We hope all mentioned above make a good example about our previous goal being achieved.
Other marketing campaigns are scheduled for the near future, some being quite innovative.
A last note: our search engine keeps updating and its relevancy now emphasizes the quality of the content more than ever before. We try to keep the right balance between new images and new contributors vs. popular images and older contributors. Recent changes try to favor less the new images (we found out they were too overexposed) and provide buyers with more diversity, without ignoring relevancy. Some of our contributors have seen their revenue double in the last months, while others were affected. Rest assured that we keep an eye on all factors, but also do note that competition that is becoming more aggressive. Do your best to provide the best stock you can and do your best to keep improving!
Dream for more, the future looks bright!
