I read the book. He said that some people are lucky because they are born at the right time to take advantage of new technologies and because of the opportunities and tools offered to them but in the end, the ones who work the longest and hardest are the most successful. He says 10,000 hours are needed to go to the very top of the heap and to master your skills. Excellent book, highly recommended.

Hmmm. I read his earlier book 'The Tipping Point' and thought it was 90% just stating the bleeding obvious. He just garnered a few, mostly well known examples of events that had happened surprisingly quickly (like Hush Puppies coming back into fashion) and decided that they were all because they'd suddenly hit this mysterious 'tipping point'.

His gameplan is to collect a few examples of something with a common theme, coin a new word or phrase to encapsulate the 'new' phenomena, preferably one that'll make easy attention-grabbing headlines and then trot it all out in a book that should appeal to the semi-intellectual-but-not-too-heavy market. Remember Anderson's 'The Long Tail' which relied entirely on the 'fact' that 75% of Amazon's sales were outside of the best-selling list __ fine except that it actually turned out to be the other way around. We all know that the way to shift volumes of images is to have a few very good ones, not millions of very poor ones. It seems to me that there's a very good market for psycho-babble for the masses and authors like these are delighted to provide for it no matter how thin (or plain wrong) their theories are.

Hmmm. I read his earlier book 'The Tipping Point' and thought it was 90% just stating the bleeding obvious. He just garnered a few, mostly well known examples of events that had happened surprisingly quickly (like Hush Puppies coming back into fashion) and decided that they were all because they'd suddenly hit this mysterious 'tipping point'.

yep - i'll read his shorter versions of the books as they get published in the new yorker - the books are just fluffed out reprints;  black swan, and 'guns germs and steel' are other examples of this popularizing phenom

steve

it seems there are a few here who won't accept any middle ground - either you do it full time, or you shouldn't be there.    opining [fjords or not] about how an image shuld be worth so much better to figure out how to exploit the market as it actually exists - if you can do it by selling prints, fine, but profit margin there is pretty poor, esp'ly if you try to maintain a physical inventory.

Maybe I have missed some comments along the line, but I can't recall anyone saying there is no middle ground or that everyone has to be FT or give up.  There is plenty of room for part timers in microstock.  That's the majority of the contributors, after all. 

I believe the problem comes in when someone expects to put in PT hours, take pictures of found objects and things over white, and somehow strike it rich.  Sometimes a reality check is necessary for those with wildly unrealistic expectations.

OTOH, maybe I have missed the most obnoxious comments because I have a particular individual on ignore. 

i'm glad to be ignored by so many readers.

"tanti nemici, tanto onore".

and don't think FREE is the last step.
sooner or later clients will ask you to be paid to actually print or use your images, as if they're making you a favour and giving you exposure !
sort of like "emerging" bands playing in pubs and getting paid in beers ... that's our future in a not far away scenario.

Funny you should mention that. I was in an "emerging band" in the seventies. Clubs would 'audition" us by having us play in the club on an open Sunday afternoon to see how many of our followers would show up to buy food and liquor!

Peruse Craigslist just about any day of the week and you will find 'fashion" designers looking for photographers to do free work for exposure only.

EX:Date: 2010-04-22, 2:51PM PDT
Reply to: [email protected] [Errors when replying to ads?]

International clothing line is having an open audition to select the photographer for the next commercial shoot advertising the new line.
Work consists of fashion photos with a different twist making it creative. Ads will be nationwide, this is a great exposure opportunity and to build or increase a professional portfolio.
All interested photographers, please respond to this ad with contact information.
If you have a website with previous work, please include.
Selected candidates will be contacted on a one to one basis.

Everyone loves something for nothing!

art, prints, and galleries are where the money is.

Got it.  That's why you're spending all your time in the art, prints and galleries forum.  

I'm here because microstock does very well for me and I like to learn from others who take this seriously.  I'm still baffled why so many microstock haters hang out here and complain.  Seems like a lot of wasted time and energy.

the RM downfall is in fact the obvious consequence of the pirate competition by microstock.

That's only one factor. It's a convergence of a bunch of factors that have been mentioned plenty of times - digital, economy downturn, global economy, community content, blah, blah, etc.

and i predict the microstock downfall will be a consequence of FREE images, it's just a matter of time at this point. and don't think FREE is the last step. sooner or later clients will ask you to be paid to actually print or use your images, as if they're making you a favour and giving you exposure !

Downfall? Micro is growing in popularity and price. RM pricing is pressured downward because there's a ton of overlapping images similar to micro. This isn't rocket science. If you build a house next to an identical one and ask 10 times the price what do you think is going to happen? RM pricing will stabilize when photographers wake up and realize RM needs to be stuff that's in-demand and also is unique/rare. This isn't a downfall. It's an adjustment of license models to fit the times and pricing to match.

As for the free stuff, I don't see it. A high quality collection of free properly licensed stock images doesn't exist. Creative Commons stuff like on Flickr is a hornet's nest most companies would be smart to steer clear of. And sites like Stockxchng don't have high enough quality/quantity momentum to hurt micro. So Obe Wan, where would the free image death star come from?