Quote from: sharpshot on August 05, 2012, 01:56

Quote from: Lagereek on August 05, 2012, 01:34

...Any agency that start with clawbacks, reducing royalties, tampering with the Search in hopes to increase profit at the cost of contributors, bugs and glitches, etc, are simply not worth it anymore. Life is too short, etc. bail out and take your pics with you.

Doesn't that rule out all the microstock sites?  I don't see any point in leaving sites that make me money.  The larger sites are all nearly as bad as each other, they could all easily afford to pay us 50% commission but they choose not to.  SS is perhaps better than the others but I still think we get a bad deal from them, nowhere near 50%.  The smaller sites don't have as many buyers, so there's no point in only using them.  So I'll either use all the sites that make me some money or I'll get out of microstock entirely.  At the moment, I can't afford to get out of microstock.

Well, not exactly what I meant. but if they lend themselves to all this scullduggery and still dont produce any revenue to speak of, then whats the point? obviously if an agency produces good results, etc, then you stay with them.
Maybe Im in a differant position then you. I mean I blew out, 123, over a year back, deleted over 750 shots and thats because their reviewing stunk something chronic, some horrible automated reviewing process which couldnt even separate a purposely toned image from faulty WB. That was enough for me.

Quote from: sharpshot on August 04, 2012, 01:39

I did get rid of a couple of sites in the past but I don't see the point unless most of us leave.  The problem is, all the copycats stay with those sites and will get the money that would of been mine.  It's only a small percentage of my portfolio that makes most of the money and many of those images have similar versions by other people.

It would be great to leave some sites but when you start, where do you stop?  Is there much point in being independent and only using SS?  I rely on the money from microstock, if it was a hobby, I would probably be exclusive with istock.  Hopefully one day I wont be so reliant on my microstock income but it's going to take me a long time to get another income with the non-microstock sites.  So I don't see much advantage in leaving site, unless they completely stop selling.

I guess I gave up on what everyone else is going to do a while ago, so I'm definitely not trying to lead a revolution. I'm just focused on trying to make my own situation better. It's hard to say if I'm accomplishing that or not because I don't know if I would be doing better with the sites that I eliminated. It's the whole you can't be in two places at once thing. I am trying to dial down on these sites cautiously, so that I can maintain a certain income level. I am doing that, so I guess it is working from that perspective. Everything else? Who knows?