OK, I admit it, I was disenchanted with the crowd here. Perhaps a little upset about the freezing cold welcome. After a day of deep breathing and working on a different project I came back and now I am laughing. After my first brush with the cowboys I guess you have a good heart after all for the most part.

Innovation is a tough cookie to crack. If I wanted to do the same old same old I would not be an Entrepreneur. If you wanted to do the same old same old there would not be Microstock. May I say how much other "real" (their words, not mine) photographers hate you guys? You eroded their businesses, took amateur photography mainstream and dared to take good pictures that someone wanted to buy. Shocking, daring and it changed stock forever. Is it better that everyone has access to photography? Is it a shame that photography as an artform is therefore seriously threatened? Is it good that you can generate extra $$ to pay for your kids private schools? Who is to say, that is just the way evolution goes and we have seen major evolution in photography and it's your fault! (Non judgmental comment)

Let us agree that I am new to your world and I have been appropriately dissected, taken apart and been put back together partially.

Let us also agree that making money in photography is a beautiful thing and as you make yours - I make mine.

I don't work for free and neither should you, first thing I teach. I give things away for free (as on my beautiful site you love so much) and frankly I think it is good stuff. But you would need to read it and listen to it to judge it. Which you still can.

If and only IF one, two or many think they could use some help to run their business and make $16,000 instead of $1,600 (which is possible but a lot of hard work) you need to learn new stuff. In business the equation is simple. Unless you change something you will not see a different result. If and how is up to you. If you do it on your own or hire help is also up to you. I and every successful person has a coach, manager, partner, mastermind or whatever that might be called. If you are in it you can't work on it. You need to step out to work at it. You can do that by finding someone who has experience and can save you lots of time (=money) and think of investing versus spending. You invest in products, services, ideas, software that helps you to run your shop better and more efficiently. Your investment pays off because you made a commitment and a decision and you take action on it. That is the ruling idea.

Enough said. Now that we are almost friends it's OK to look at the info which many of you have done BTW, just nobody admits it. And the blog - really has a lot of great information mixed with (you guessed it right) shameless self-promotion. After all I do run a business.

Now that we are almost friends it's OK to look at the info which many of you have done BTW, just nobody admits it. And the blog - really has a lot of great information mixed with (you guessed it right) shameless self-promotion. After all I do run a business.

Some remarks and some interesting Google digging.

Where is your portoflio to judge that you are really a top photographer, or at least good enough to pay 600$ for to know her secrets? There is a lot of talk about who you have been working with, but where is the meat? The proof of the pudding is in the eating, neither in the talking about the eating nor in the talking about other people who's kitchen you've been in watching them make fantastic pudding. A very limited sample on your site from your work might help.

You are probably a very successful entrepreneur in a lot of things, included some highly esoteric quack-sounding sect-stuff like "ego-Rhythm", but what are your credentials in the microstock world? (not art, news, travel, fashion, wedding, event photography).

What sells in microstock, why, what are the technical aspects to care for, what is exactly the "personality" of the different microstock sites, how to find and deal with models, what's the secret to get catapulted on page #1 of the search results? There is no hint at all that you will be covering those aspects which are vital to a microstocker, and there is also no info about your undoubtedly very successful microstock portfolio that made you obtain all that secret knowledge.

Andrew Eccles, the top photographer you teamed up with may be a great fine art photographer, but I'm quite confident his style of pictures wouldn't be accepted let alone sold in microstock.

As to the business side, a microstocker doesn't need it, since the sites take care of the marketing and the selling. As to SEO and web design (you mention flash or not): there have recently been two very good free reports about this matter on Photoshelter. Apart from these, there is a plethora of good and free webdesign and SEO sites, blogs and forums all over the net.

On a minor note, I am allergic to sites that draw attention with "free gifts" several times on the landing page. Not only because a gift is free by definition, but because it sounds so slick and spammish. To obtain more free info, one is forced to fill in his home postal address, and that's definitively spammish. Why not just put some excerpts of the course material on line so everybody can judge for himself quickly?

"Chelette Enterprises" has 15 hits on Google. Some are about "custom programming", some about your book on "ego-RHYTHM".

What exactly is ego-Rhythm?: �ego-RHYTHM is a simple method that enables you to approach life in a new light. ego-RHYTHM teaches you how to live your life one rhythm at a time and how to be fully in the moment. Although ego-RHYTHM applies to both men and women, each has their own way of interpreting it. Men can set one main focus and follow it until their next idea comes into play. Women tend to think too far into the future instead of being focused on the now. ego-RHYTHM will give you the tools to know and accept where you are currently so that you can begin to truly enjoy your journey.�

Not exactly photography, not exactly microstock.

But whatever the face appearance might be, of course there might be some hidden treasures beneath the spammy surface of this all. Since some people on this forum had a look into it already as you claim, I will be happy to read what they think of it. Is it worth 600$ for a microstocker?

If mr. Locke with mr. Deal and mr. Rinder would team up for a 20-hr seminar for 600$ about their secrets in microstock, I'm pretty sure the course would be sold out 5 seconds after it was announced, no free gifts needed.

This forum is a general photography forum.

No, this is a microstock photography, illustrations and business forum. Not that general photography stuff isn't welcome, but it sets the focus a bit.

"the only one to make millions is the bloke you paid 35 bucks ". a tough reality lesson for a kid which stuck for the rest of his life. never more to buy snakeoil from the snakeoil peddlar.

When I as about 16, a slick salesman passed by our door and sold me an Encyclopedia Britannica. Twenty four glossy volumes and a free mahogany wood cabinet. The world would have no secrets any more and I would be very successful. My mom (a widow) had to pay for that junk that was obsolete after two years and later there was the internet. What's more, there were too little naked woman in it, the thing I was really hoping for.

Since then, I acquired an irresistible disgust for slick salesmen/women with free gifts. Especially when they write books about holistic healing, voodoo psychology, and new age crap (click). 

The funny thing I find here is we (well most of us I assume) work on creating pictures (and vectors and graphics) for advertisers. Those advertisers are trying to get someone to buy something. Maybe this is simplistic but in essence that's what's happening. We are an intrinsic part of that chain, yet somehow someone asking you to have a look at something that may well benefit you is deemed a ripoff. I don't get it. There are things out there that are actually worth paying for. Every other year or so I doll out a bunch of money and fly to NYC to attend seminars at PhotoExpo from some of the very people who post here and elsewhere. I don't think it's a waste of money. I buy shoot briefs and market analysis data. I don't think it's a waste of money either. Yeh I'd say it's wise not to get ripped off but I don't think everyone who asks you to have a look at a product is out to rip you off. Information does cost money. Someone pays for it somewhere.

Quote from: Zeus on April 18, 2009, 16:04

Yeh I'd say it's wise not to get ripped off but I don't think everyone who asks you to have a look at a product is out to rip you off. Information does cost money. Someone pays for it somewhere.

Correct, but it's not about the money, it's about the value for that money. A seminar from Rinder/Locke/Deal would certainly be worth 600$. I'm not so sure of a book writer about ego-rythm with no traceable microstock portfolio talking about microstock.

Anyone here old enough to remember EST? http://skepdic.com/est.html
People paid good money to sit around and be told they were worthless, and not allowed to get up to go to the restroom.
When you finally grew the cajones to get up anyway, then you finally got "it".

That should have been the end of all further self-help and actualization movements. But alas, there is always a new generation of gullible fools willing to part with hard earned dinero to some huckster with the promise of the 'secret' to a better life.

A seminar from Rinder/Locke/Deal would certainly be worth 600$.

Flemish, Sean is in a different league to the other two, and would probably be worth $590 of the total amount.

I agree with you as far as stock photography is concerned I would do a course with Sean but not the other 2  but would love a portrait course with Rinder.

Quote from: FlemishDreams on April 18, 2009, 23:03

A seminar from Rinder/Locke/Deal would certainly be worth 600$.

Flemish, Sean is in a different league to the other two, and would probably be worth $590 of the total amount.

BTW, if one abbreviates 'professional photographers' to pro's, this is correct because the apostrophe indicates that an abbreviation has been made.

Hi Beate,

perhaps a little bit of personal presentation of your personal career along with slightly different (less pretending) user name should have helped to get more "warm" welcome in the microstockgroup community.

bye.

OK, I admit it, I was disenchanted with the crowd here. Perhaps a little upset about the freezing cold welcome.

Quote from: OM on April 20, 2009, 07:27

BTW, if one abbreviates 'professional photographers' to pro's, this is correct because the apostrophe indicates that an abbreviation has been made.

No, it isn't, although some will accept it as correct:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe_(mark)#Use_in_forming_certain_plurals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe_(mark)#Greengrocers.27_apostrophes

Eh? You should have read the article more thoroughly Sean __ in my view it is both necessary and standard practice to use the apostrophe to clarify the omission in the word 'pro's'.

From your article;

Apostrophe showing omission
An apostrophe is commonly used to indicate omitted characters:

It is used in contractions, such as can't from cannot, it's from it is or it has, and I'll from I will or I shall.[33]
It is used in abbreviations, as gov't for government, or '70s for 1970s.

...she wrote a book about some new age  "ego rythm", the kind of voodoo that only gullible desperate housewives fall for.

That makes me laugh - you nailed the audience, and I know several such house wives that would take interest!