It's going to be a lot tougher for noobs to get their own portfolios rolling enough - newer uploaded content just isn't selling as well as it did 5 years ago.  So this, to me... is a good sign.  It means a lot of discouraged hobbyists and part-timers will quit early on, and the competition will include those more experienced and established stock artists that have been submitting for years.  But who knows? 

There is still plenty of money still to be made if you're producing images with high commercial value, quality, and proper keywords/tags.  I personally still think I'll be selling microstock full time at least for the next 5-10 years.  I said that back in 2008, and so far so good; right? Made it 7 years.  They were talking doom and gloom for microstock back in 2008 like crazy.  Ignore the naysayers.

The one good thing about this business is that if and when the sales dry up, it doesn't just happen overnight.  It's a slow progression.  You'll still have some sort of passive income coming in from your slowly dying sales, if you ever have to switch gears and change up your career or employer.

Keep your expense budget nil, your overhead low, work with what you've got, improve your craft and polish your style constantly.  This is now a game of working hard just to maintain if not slightly improve your current sales levels.

awhile back i was heavy-handed with ss, because of their lack of transparency,etc. they have since then been showing signs of going back to be the #1 we made them for many years .
so, i am optimistic with ss. as for the others, wellllllll, there is really, as Mantis puts it in the ds thread, no others.
but i am all for a facelift with anyone, bigstock, alamy, whoever, so long as i read here that others are getting sales finally with them; then i will join that agency even if it has a stinky sounding name .
but for now, no matter how impressive their names are, i am , to quote sweet Shania, not impressed.

the ball is in their court , really. show me they have the stuff to get sales, and i will be there.

Agreed!

No point leaving our media files to occupy some data base for PR stunt purpose only. Companies that don't invest in sales/marketing will never succeed.

Everyone's situation is different.  We all know what we need to do in order to get by. 

Let's say (for example) you are a successful stock artist earning $100k a year (gross) off of your images (on a large portfolio, after many years of hard work, submitting to many agencies).  This is a passive income, and totally unreliable.  It could rise, but more than likely it will fall from this point forward.  You notice that by year 2 your income has dropped to $85k.  Year 3, you're at $70k.  Year 4 comes in around $58k, and so on, and so forth.  If you know that you need at least an income of $50k a year to get by, pay all of your bills... then you'd better start looking for another source of income. 

At the same time, let's say you now go out to work for corporate America once again, for the benefits, the 401k, and the lack of certain stresses.  Now you could still be earning $45-50k that year off of your passive, residual stock imagery income, and adding that to your new dayjob salary of $50k+.  So now you're making 6 figures again, and the only you're working a 40 hour work week for "the man".  Heck, you just got a raise, especially if you were working an average of 40 hours a week for yourself.  Only difference, is the commute, and maybe the stress level.

The "worse case scenario" I see for the industry, as a private contractor, really isn't not that bad.  If you don't have the cajones to be able to adapt to changing market conditions in business, then you probably shouldn't be working for yourself in the first place.  It takes a lot of hunger drive and determination to venture out as a freelancer in the first place.  For those of us that did, we need to remember the original fire that we had which motivated us in the beginning.

What do you guys think?  I think I might wait until I can only afford to eat ramen and canned beans for dinner, then I'll go start looking for another job anything is better than working for corporate America again.