Dear friends, as you know for a long time, like most of you, I am in the microstock business.

I am not a citizen or resident of the United States, and every year I receive several 1042-S forms reporting the 30% withholding for sales made in the USA (due to royalties).

As a non-US resident, I never paid much attention to these forms, nothing to do with them.

But, last year my situation changed. Although I continue to receive a significant income from royalties from the sale of my images, the business has dropped significantly and I have been forced to look for new ways to make money. For this reason, last year I formed an LLC in the United States (to carry out a business not related to microstock, by the way).

Therefore, I must now respond to the IRS. As a non-US resident with an LLC in the USA, every year I must fill out forms 1120 and 5472; but also the 1040NR, the latter only if I have sales associated with the United States.

A single member LLC reports taxes through the owner, so business and personal profits are the same.

My question is: Should I report anything for receiving the 1042-S forms from the microstock agencies?

I am clear that I do not have to pay taxes since the agencies already pay them through the 30% withholding, but this issue of taxes and the IRS is very complicated and sometimes you have to report things and if you don't you have big penalties.

I would appreciate if anyone could give me any information regarding this.

I just realized that some blog posts I've been reading use SS images that are EDITORIAL ones ...

It is a proper use? May i use them for blog article, even if in same page i am promoting a commercial product / service ??

This is actually not a MS question, so maybe wrong forum... anyway...

As i quit from SS, my incoming in MS world just down to almost zero. I'm just getting between 1 to 3 dollars with my Dreamstime account.

I never upload pictures (i am vector designer), i still have no camera but i will get one as soon as posible; but not to upload to MS but to use in my new projet that is a blog where i will try to do some niche marketing related to my main profession.

I will use some pictures of some models to use in some ebooks, printed books and blog articles, but i am worry about making some mistake and get future legal issues because of the improper use of someone image.

I have always worked ethically and I will not use someone's image without authorization, but to fill the proper papers is pretty important, i think.

So, as this forum collects a lot of experience in the field of photography, I want to ask: What papers should I have the models sign to ensure the proper use of these images?

Recently SS show to contributors a warning box claiming that due COVID-19 image review time will be larger

PLEASE NOTE: Our review teams are taking the necessary steps to continue operating safely and at full capacity. However, you may experience longer than usual wait times for review due to the global impact of COVID-19.

One week ago the also implement an image limit:

PLEASE NOTE: There is a temporary limit on the volume of content each contributor can submit weekly due to a reduction in review capacity. Contributors can submit up to 500 images and 100 videos in a 7 day period. Thanks for your patience while we provide the opportunity for all contributors to get their work reviewed.

Nobody really care about this, i think because most of us are not able to upload 500 images per week. For me, even making basic vector illustrators, 500 designs per week is an unattainable goal.

I've been thinking about this a little bit and i can't make sense to the fact that reviewers have trouble doing their job due to covid-19, because reviewers are doing remote work, as most of us, they stay more time at home and are really able to review more images, so no reason for longer review time or for a collapse in reviews that requires to put a limit.

The only way I can make sense to this is that contributors are uploading more content due to covid-19... because other activities was cancelled so they have more time to upload pics and illustrations...

Any thoughts on this?

Hello community

Even when the incoming in this business is less and less each month, for me this is still a profitable business, but this question is not about me.

China situation is getting harder and harder, my good friend is in Hunan province and due to quarantine she is not able to go out from her house. Few weeks ago she was able to go out for food, but now all the stores are closed and the only way to get food is to buy from internet to those government-enabled stores and wait for the delivery. Goverment dont allow them to go out and if police found you on street and you don't have a good reason to be there, you can have serious problems.

The issue is money and food... she have some rice reserve at home and she also have some extra money to keeping buying food online, but if the quarantine is extended things can get ugly.

She is not able to work in the traditional way so i was thinking for her to uploading some illustrations and vector illustrations to ShutterStock; her designer abilities are not at proffesional level but much better than the average of what is currently uploaded by contributors.

The only problem is that i dont know if it is possible to be SS contributor from China. Actually the only way to get access to "western" internet from China is by using VPN. I also dont know if it is possible for Chinese people to get the money by Paypal.

Do any of you have experience in this and could you give me some feedback?

Just wonder if any of you looks less image spam now they implement new "policity" about this...

I'm the only one who stopped receiving the "Submission status" emails??

I just upload some 62 files yesterday (no MP restriction) but im sending it today (4MP restriction), most vector files are under 4MP, so i want to see if any of these files are rejected due to this issues.

My latest reviewed file now was sended on april 6 and reviewed on april 8, approved file under 4MP, i also upload some files (under 4MP) today to see if the are rejected due to this.

Any one have the first rejection due to 4MP issue??

For long time, I was a contributor, and I will keep uploading my images as I get some significant incoming for it, but today I'm also working on some blog project, and I'm thinking now about buying some images at SS.

I have two questions related to it, first one is related to the website usage of images. I can use a full resolution picture as background of a wordpress template??

My second question is if the monthly subscription to SS: 750 images per month: 249$ per month (0.33 per image) are just one-month  payment, or I must keep paying every month? I'm a little confused about that because there is also an annual plan that is slightly cheap.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

As usual im using FTP Zilla to upload images to ShutterStock.

Usually the amount of images i upload is short enough to process the queue in just "one upload", but currently due to low internet connection and largest amount of vector images being upload (vector images than actually needs two files to upload one image) i need to stop processing queue sometimes in order to being able to use internet for other proposes.

I thought that this did not generate any problem in the upload process, but actually it does.

I start to have some images refuses due to "File Transfer Error" issue, so i discover that when you are processing a queue of files in filezilla and you stop the process (stop processing the queue), the files was incompletely uploaded; thats means that if you stop processing a file when the file upload is 50% complete, half of the file is uploaded to shutterstock and deleted form queue, what results in a corrupt file on the server (SS).

My question is, is there any way to configurate FileZilla to:
1 - When you press "Stop Processing Queue" finish to process the files that are currently being upload before stop process
OR
2 - Dont remove files form queue and delete the incomplete uploaded files from server

Thank you for your help



PS. This is a question for Filezilla web site forum, but when i try to register in this forum they dont allow me becuse my email account is on Gmail and the forum show me a message that due to recent spam attack on forum using massive gmail account they dont allow anymore users to register using gmail account... then i create a yahoo mail account to being able to register in FZ forum and i get i new message that says that yahoo is the main email service using to send spam so register a new user with yahoo account is not allowed... so before creating hundreds of email accounts with different services to discover which one is allowed i prefer to ask here.

So, after sending 40 images in browser, some of the images appears again with title and metadata... so i send it again and again, is only me??

So, my Firefox was having problems for weeks so im using Microsoft Edge as explorer, everything was ok up to today, i cannot send images, after complete titles and keywords it get loading more that usual and then nothing happens, same images are in the list with titles and keywords but none of them are sended.

So, it is about my explorer problems (maybe i have some explorer drivers working wrong on my computer) or it is SS problem?

Anybody else have this problem??

I noticed that now when uploading a batch of 40 images (vectors) every image is upload correctly, before the upgrade at SS maybe 2-5 images fail (becuase for some reason .eps file was incorrectly upload).

I wonder if it is now possible to use FTP without having problems?