MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: Lcjtripod on April 18, 2010, 13:58
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The big up loaders are finding out that you can not pay models and others to put the images on sites. They are losing money. The fix is: Stop uploading and paying people and just collect your earnings from each site.
I uploaded zip from Jan 1 this year and did not stop earning money at all.
That is my thoughts on the big up loaders.
The micro market has already been ruined by dirt low prices, each site trying to under sell the others and pay the photographers less to cover their losses. They make less and we make less. Many of the sites will fail and go broke very soon. Another bad point: Free images on every site to attract the low payers or no payers to the site. NONE of my images are free on any site and never will be. Thousands more are stolen every day and the sites do next to nothing to stop it. Ever hear of a image theft being fined or put in jail for copyright theft? NO. So why pay?
When I sold stock photos in the 50's 60's and through the early 80's NONE sold for less than $100.00 for RF images and RM sold for $200 to $5,000.00 per image. Calendar and greeting card companies never paid less than $500.00 for an image. Book covers $250.00 and up. Now they get them for less than a cup of coffee.
The Internet ruined it all. That is why I have lost nearly all interest in up loading any more to any site. I can sell Cd's full of images on Ebay for $25.00 per each for low res shots RF and not give a crap what they actually do with them. They do not get my best, only my rejects the ones I did not ever try to up load. Junk.
Sorry to sound sour but those are the facts. I for one just don't want to work for 5 cents an hour.
Larry
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Larry, I understand what you saying, and I think you are completely right. I'm doing this only about 2 years, and I can't believe how fast things gone bad. I can imagine how pissed off you are...
But unfortunately, I don't see things going better anytime soon. That's why I focused in making audio last few months. I saw that audio brings me much more than images. My audios are 15-25 credits each which is more than photos can make on average.
I'm just editing some images right now, and I'm thinking how they will sell for cents... I think it's almost humiliating... I don't say I'm great photographer, but there are people here who are, and I personally think their value is not appreciated enough. When you think how much accumulated work we have behind us, and for what!?
For less and less every month. We are fooling our selves here if we think our sales are steady, or even growing. The truth is in most cases that we upload more and get less. And if our uploads are bigger than downloads, we feel our earnings are steady. The situation is sad.
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There is a lot to blame, not only the internet. You can blame the development of digital cameras too. You can blame the ridiculous cheap prices of microstock too, with their very broad license terms. You can blame buyers who do not care about how many times the image they use has been used before, even by the competition. I see magazines and newspapers using low quality images probably taken with a cell phone.
Outside the stock world, I also see people who are happy with their snapshots of a graduation ceremony of their children instead of quality images by pro photographers, because the latter is expensive.
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Stock photography isn't for everyone. Stock images are a commercial product intended largely for commercial use and producing them isn't necessarily fun or lucrative.
Like most creative arts or industries (and also sport) a few people are naturally gifted and can make fantastic money, lots more have less talent but can make a decent living but the vast majority could never hope to earn a living from it. Not many people assume that they should be able to earn their living by painting or singing or playing sport __ so why do so many assume that they should be well paid for their photography when all the evidence is to the contrary?
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Stock photography isn't for everyone. Stock images are a commercial product intended largely for commercial use and producing them isn't necessarily fun or lucrative.
Like most creative arts or industries (and also sport) a few people are naturally gifted and can make fantastic money, lots more have less talent but can make a decent living but the vast majority could never hope to earn a living from it. Not many people assume that they should be able to earn their living by painting or singing or playing sport __ so why do so many assume that they should be well paid for their photography when all the evidence is to the contrary?
Everyone who's photos are accepted to any agency should be well paid, or agencies should reject all ugly photos submitted by non-talented photographers. You compared it to singing, but you know how many bad musicians and bad singers have more money than excellent talented musicians. It's not all about talent.
Or maybe you want to say you are satisfied with the fact that you get few cents or few dollars for your images? Actually, you think what you do is worth few dollars and you don't think you should earn more?
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Stock photography isn't for everyone. Stock images are a commercial product intended largely for commercial use and producing them isn't necessarily fun or lucrative.
Like most creative arts or industries (and also sport) a few people are naturally gifted and can make fantastic money, lots more have less talent but can make a decent living but the vast majority could never hope to earn a living from it. Not many people assume that they should be able to earn their living by painting or singing or playing sport __ so why do so many assume that they should be well paid for their photography when all the evidence is to the contrary?
I agree with you.
Before I retired 15 years ago I made 250,000.00 plus per year as a wedding photographer. I had 10 photographers working for me. So the money is there always has been and always will be.
But not selling RF images for .25 Cents each. Needless to say I do not need the money from RF sales.
I have 7 children and put five of them through college on photography.
In the early 50's when Polaroid first came out, my father told me to close my studio .... now everybody can be their own photographer. But the fact is Polaroid increased interest in photography when people found out that if took more than the click of a shutter to produce a professional image.
Digital has done the same. If I wanted to go back into business, which I do not, it would be weddings complete with professionally printed photo story books of the wedding and video to go along with it.
Many people on this site are good enough to do it and get paid $1,000.00 & up for their time.
My advise to everybody that would like to improve things a bit would be to opt out of subs and delete all of your free images.
-Larry
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Sorry, guys, but this is how capitalism works. When you were in the minority with the skills and the means to take and sell photos, capitalism worked well for you... supply and demand was on your side and you were happy capitalists. Today, however, technology has allowed many others to practice your craft, and new marketplaces have been set up to allow them to profit from it. With these changes, the laws of supply and demand have shifted and you have much more competition. Suddenly you think the world has turned against you, when really it is only capitalism running its natural course.
Some veterans contend that there's no more money to be made here, and maybe that's their reality, but it's not mine. You have to evolve to survive and thrive in any changing marketplace. If you refuse to do so, you deserve the results... but if you accept that the rules have changed and look for ways to serve today's and tomorrow's customers, you can do very well for yourself. It's your choice.
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Thank goodness for the Internet and digital revolution. Of course sub plans are an exercise in poor business, but thanks to istock and my rebel300d, I'm doing something I reaaly enjoy. And I earn more than $.05 an hour :).
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I'm with Gostwyck on this. Just because an image has been approved doesn't mean that it is good enough to make good money and just because an image sells at only a couple of dollars a time doesn't mean that you can't make a small fortune on it. It's all down to the usefulness and quality of an image. I know the question wasn't aimed at me but yes, I am very satisfied with the fact that I get that I get "few cents or few dollars" per sale because what counts to me is how much my portfolio makes a month not what each individual sale makes.
Stock photography isn't for everyone. Stock images are a commercial product intended largely for commercial use and producing them isn't necessarily fun or lucrative.
Like most creative arts or industries (and also sport) a few people are naturally gifted and can make fantastic money, lots more have less talent but can make a decent living but the vast majority could never hope to earn a living from it. Not many people assume that they should be able to earn their living by painting or singing or playing sport __ so why do so many assume that they should be well paid for their photography when all the evidence is to the contrary?
Everyone who's photos are accepted to any agency should be well paid, or agencies should reject all ugly photos submitted by non-talented photographers. You compared it to singing, but you know how many bad musicians and bad singers have more money than excellent talented musicians. It's not all about talent.
Or maybe you want to say you are satisfied with the fact that you get few cents or few dollars for your images? Actually, you think what you do is worth few dollars and you don't think you should earn more?
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Well, I'm much more satisfied with the fact that I'm selling audios for more than few dollars, and never for few cents. And I think that everyone who is satisfied with few cents deserve to earn even less, because he/she obviously doesn't appreciate his/her own work.
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You're not getting it. I wouldn't be satisfied with selling it for that price if I sold one or two a month but selling 1000s a month I am quite satisfied. I really don't care if an image sells once for a few hundreds or thousands of dollars or a few hundred or thousand times for one dollar a time. I care about the money made at the end of the month and either way it would work out the same.
author=Whitechild link=topic=10420.msg143110#msg143110 date=1271624052]
Well, I'm much more satisfied with the fact that I'm selling audios for more than few dollars, and never for few cents. And I think that everyone who is satisfied with few cents deserve to earn even less, because he/she obviously doesn't appreciate his/her own work.
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You're not getting it. I wouldn't be satisfied with selling it for that price if I sold one or two a month but selling 1000s a month I am quite satisfied. I really don't care if an image sells once for a few hundreds or thousands of dollars or a few hundred or thousand times for one dollar a time. I care about the money made at the end of the month and either way it would work out the same.
author=Whitechild link=topic=10420.msg143110#msg143110 date=1271624052]
Well, I'm much more satisfied with the fact that I'm selling audios for more than few dollars, and never for few cents. And I think that everyone who is satisfied with few cents deserve to earn even less, because he/she obviously doesn't appreciate his/her own work.
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No, I think you don't get it. You don't get that you would still sell thousands if their price is doubled. That's what I'm talking about. It doesn't have to be very expensive, but you would earn double if images are twice expensive than they are now. Tell me you don't agree.
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I truly believe that people are putting price over quality these days, even when they can afford it.
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Of course I'd like to get paid double the same as I would like to get paid double in my full time job but my point is that I am quite happy with the amount of money that I make from my images which works out a better hourly working rate than my fulltime job. Would I like to make more? of course, I'm not mad :) but I'm not complaining at all about the total return per image in microstock.
No, I think you don't get it. You don't get that you would still sell thousands if their price is doubled. That's what I'm talking about. It doesn't have to be very expensive, but you would earn double if images are twice expensive than they are now. Tell me you don't agree.
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You are making dollars on audio files, but how long will that last? Those files will go the way of microstock, probably sooner than later.
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You are making dollars on audio files, but how long will that last? Those files will go the way of microstock, probably sooner than later.
Of course it will happen. I'm just saying it's much better when you get few dollars more for what you do. It would be good if we could make more out of images.
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I truly believe that people are putting price over quality these days, even when they can afford it.
Everybody is putting price over quality,inferior product, less productive employees, lower margins on sales.....and the argument is;this is necessary to compete with the far east economy and their vast output with lower operating costs.
But this is old news isn't it? In micro, 5% make exceptional money, another 10-15% make enough money to do it full time, probably another 20% make enough to pay the mortgage/expenses and the rest make expenses or less.
But there is a lot of crap out there (some of it mine) and people buy it. That's how microstock works. As for wedding photography, minimum charge in the UK is around £1k - 1.5k but why pay that when your nephew/uncle has a 5d mark 11 and will shoot and video the whole thing for a six pack?
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Before I retired 15 years ago I made 250,000.00 plus per year as a wedding photographer. I had 10 photographers working for me. So the money is there always has been and always will be.
But not selling RF images for .25 Cents each. Needless to say I do not need the money from RF sales.
-Larry
Microstock keeps wannabe photographers away from where the real money is - I see no problem with this ::)
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But this is old news isn't it? In micro, 5% make exceptional money, another 10-15% make enough money to do it full time, probably another 20% make enough to pay the mortgage/expenses and the rest make expenses or less.
That's pretty much the case except that I'd revise your figures to suggest that 0.1% make exceptional money (maybe 30 out of 30,000), 1% make a living (roughly the top 300 on IS) and maybe 10% (the top 3000 on IS) make a useful contribution to their overall income. The other 88.9% are just ... well, really just doing it for fun or pin money. The truth is you've either got it or you haven't __ same as every other overt meritocracy like the arts or sport.
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Before I retired 15 years ago I made 250,000.00 plus per year as a wedding photographer. I had 10 photographers working for me. So the money is there always has been and always will be.
But not selling RF images for .25 Cents each. Needless to say I do not need the money from RF sales.
-Larry
Microstock keeps wannabe photographers away from where the real money is - I see no problem with this ::)
Every microstocker I know (who are doing it for a living) shudders at the idea of doing weddings. That's what many of them used to do and they are so glad to give it up.
You can certainly make decent money doing weddings but that's because it's a horrible job, that mostly has to be done during anti-social hours, that any half-decent photographer would gladly do anything else instead if they could get the same money. Same with having commercial clients. Who needs all that hassle __ the ever-changing briefs, chasing the money, dealing with the unwashed masses of the public, etc, etc?
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Before I retired 15 years ago I made 250,000.00 plus per year as a wedding photographer. I had 10 photographers working for me. So the money is there always has been and always will be.
But not selling RF images for .25 Cents each. Needless to say I do not need the money from RF sales.
-Larry
Microstock keeps wannabe photographers away from where the real money is - I see no problem with this ::)
Every microstocker I know (who are doing it for a living) shudders at the idea of doing weddings. That's what many of them used to do and they are so glad to give it up.
You can certainly make decent money doing weddings but that's because it's a horrible job, that mostly has to be done during anti-social hours, that any half-decent photographer would gladly do anything else instead if they could get the same money. Same with having commercial clients. Who needs all that hassle __ the ever-changing briefs, chasing the money, dealing with the unwashed masses of the public, etc, etc?
That is why I hired photographers to do the work. I ran the studio and collected the money. Lived well and spent my spare time in the woods shooting wildlife in Montana while my studio was in New York. Just because your in the business does not mean you personally have to do the dirty work.
(http://static2.bigstockphoto.com/thumbs/2/4/5/large2/5427631.jpg)
Just having fun in Montana.
-Larry
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That is why I hired photographers to do the work. I ran the studio and collected the money. Lived well and spent my spare time in the woods shooting wildlife in Montana while my studio was in New York. Just because your in the business does not mean you personally have to do the dirty work.
I thought you'd be back defending the honourable, hard-working wedding photographer __ but nope, you obviously think it's crap work too!
Maybe you should take the same approach to microstock Larry. Get others to do the work whilst you live-the-life in Montana (I really must go there one day!).
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That is why I hired photographers to do the work. I ran the studio and collected the money. Lived well and spent my spare time in the woods shooting wildlife in Montana while my studio was in New York. Just because your in the business does not mean you personally have to do the dirty work.
I thought you'd be back defending the honourable, hard-working wedding photographer __ but nope, you obviously think it's crap work too!
Maybe you should take the same approach to microstock Larry. Get others to do the work whilst you live-the-life in Montana (I really must go there one day!).
If you go to Montana you will never move back home wherever that is. If I was in good health I'd move to Montana tomorrow. Freedom!
-Larry
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I've been doing this for over a year now, and have concluded that it's a fun hobby and nothing more. No surprise to most of you there. It's a strange business, though, where "hobbyists" are supplying images to professionals for serious commercial use - at hobby prices.
I see 2 basic problems.
First, these microstocks haven't really figured out how to differentiate themselves and compete on anything but price. That ends predictably, with the lowest possible quality, commodity prices and no margin left.
Second, I agree that the internet has ruined the business. Many buyers would probably be receptive to buying original, creative images directly from photographers for more reasonable prices - BUT, they no longer have any concept of how to connect directly with the actual producers of the products they use. They don't know who we are, or how to find us - they can only think in terms of web sites like the current microstocks.
we need to get past this pathological business model, and find new ways to sell our images without these parasitic middlemen that don't even really know who their suppliers are, what products they have on the shelves, or which ones are good and which aren't - mindlessly driving down prices with gimmicks like subscriptions and packages. And eventually I think we will, somehow.
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Every microstocker I know (who are doing it for a living) shudders at the idea of doing weddings. That's what many of them used to do and they are so glad to give it up.
And I thought I'm a weirdo because I really hate weddings, baptisms and all that.
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Hi Larry -You are right about Montana. but don't tell everbody.Then it will be like microstock-OVER CROWDED.
Smiling Jack
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First, these microstocks haven't really figured out how to differentiate themselves and compete on anything but price. That ends predictably, with the lowest possible quality, commodity prices and no margin left.
Second, I agree that the internet has ruined the business ...
What on earth are you talking about?
In case you haven't noticed microstock prices have generally increased 10-20x over the last 5 years and not much sign of the process slowing anytime soon. Agencies are developing ever more sophisticated means of introducing 'added value' to their products and pricing them accordingly.
BTW, the internet is 'the business' and has changed so many peple's lives for the better, mine included. I'd hate to go back to the times when agencies were terribly sniffy about who they deemed worthy to accept. Give me a wonderful, no-holds-barred meritocracy any day. Can you believe that even SJL was knocked back by agencies in those days? Are those the days you want to return to? If you can't hold your own in today's market then, rest assurred, you had virtually no chance before unless you were exceptionally lucky and had managed to crawl in under the radar.
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Every microstocker I know (who are doing it for a living) shudders at the idea of doing weddings. That's what many of them used to do and they are so glad to give it up.
You can certainly make decent money doing weddings but that's because it's a horrible job, that mostly has to be done during anti-social hours, that any half-decent photographer would gladly do anything else instead if they could get the same money. Same with having commercial clients. Who needs all that hassle __ the ever-changing briefs, chasing the money, dealing with the unwashed masses of the public, etc, etc?
Couldn't agree more - I should have said *except weddings* and saved you the effort. Weddings are, what, 1% of all professional photography work?!
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Second, I agree that the internet has ruined the business.
One the other hand, internet helped create a new group of buyers: small business, ordinary people.
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The internet has also made image buying and implementation fast and easy. Everyone wants it now. In the old days you had to plan ahead, look through stock books or call a stock agency who would do the research for you. They would send you samples and you would have to get the transparencies scanned. Then you would have to negotiate a price. Internet and digital do the same thing in minutes and you don't have to talk to anybody. No time for that. As a buyer, I prefer today's speed and I don't want a relationship with a photographer. I just want an image. If it's a full ad campaign it might be different but many use images for things not heard of before - blogs, newsletters, make-you-own cards, etc. Image buying is not just for the big ad agencies anymore.
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The internet has also made image buying and implementation fast and easy. Everyone wants it now. In the old days you had to plan ahead, look through stock books or call a stock agency who would do the research for you. They would send you samples and you would have to get the transparencies scanned. Then you would have to negotiate a price. Internet and digital do the same thing in minutes and you don't have to talk to anybody. No time for that. As a buyer, I prefer today's speed and I don't want a relationship with a photographer. I just want an image. If it's a full ad campaign it might be different but many use images for things not heard of before - blogs, newsletters, make-you-own cards, etc. Image buying is not just for the big ad agencies anymore.
It is indeed a marvelously quick and efficient way to make a transaction in which the photographer nets 19 cents before taxes.
And no, you don't have to talk to anybody. Is that a good thing?
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It is indeed a marvelously quick and efficient way to make a transaction in which the photographer nets 19 cents before taxes.
And no, you don't have to talk to anybody. Is that a good thing?
There are ways to make a lot more than 19c per transaction in microstock, stockastic. If you're unhappy with how little you are getting paid, you should do something about it - something other than constantly complaining, that is.
The same goes for all you other malcontents, too.
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First, these microstocks haven't really figured out how to differentiate themselves and compete on anything but price. That ends predictably, with the lowest possible quality, commodity prices and no margin left.
Second, I agree that the internet has ruined the business ...
What on earth are you talking about?
In case you haven't noticed microstock prices have generally increased 10-20x over the last 5 years and not much sign of the process slowing anytime soon. Agencies are developing ever more sophisticated means of introducing 'added value' to their products and pricing them accordingly.
I'm glad you said it. Sometimes I think the sky is green and grass is blue in other people's world. I've seen prices going up overall too. Maybe contributors aren't always the beneficiaries of those increases, but they are increases.
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sorta funny - OP is all upset that some agencies are making money from the work of others - then it turns out that's what HE did - profiting from the work of others while he wandered around Montana! AIN'T CAPITALKISM GRAND?
S
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Everyone who's photos are accepted to any agency should be well paid, or agencies should reject all ugly photos submitted by non-talented photographers. You compared it to singing, but you know how many bad musicians and bad singers have more money than excellent talented musicians. It's not all about talent.
Or maybe you want to say you are satisfied with the fact that you get few cents or few dollars for your images? Actually, you think what you do is worth few dollars and you don't think you should earn more?
i really don't know how much i should earn for i didn't study photography as a profession nor have i been a 'photographer' for very long. however, i'm pretty sure i'm not ready to apply for getty/corbis yet. if you really value your photos, then you should submit only to the higher paying sites or even become exclusive at IS and benefit from their much higher prices/vetta/exclusive/better search bonuses.
even though i get only 25 cents for a sub at ss, i also get lots of els for $28. i'm still thrilled with the latter. one day when i feel it's no longer worth my while, then i'll move on to (hopefully) better pastures, if there are any. right now, i think there is an oversupply of photos and photographers, so one can only vent, but not beat the reality of the situation. at least, i'm really enjoying what i do. :)
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I don't mind the low pay outs. I have been doing it about a year now and have 150-500 images on all of the main sites. I make a steady $1-3/day. Don't laugh. But I get lots of practice doing what I like. I get lots of rejections that help me see what to do differently. I see what sells well and learn what I did right. I suspect after another year I will be making $3-6/day. That's a decent new lens every year. I am also building up a portfolio where I may try to sell my stuff on my own.
So its a nice way, with no risk, and no investment on my part to have lots of fun, get some advice, build a portfolio, and pocket a little money.
And occasionally when I get one of enhanced downloads for $28..... it totally makes my day : )
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The micro market has already been ruined by dirt low prices, each site trying to under sell the others and pay the photographers less to cover their losses. They make less and we make less. Many of the sites will fail and go broke very soon. Another bad point: Free images on every site to attract the low payers or no payers to the site. NONE of my images are free on any site and never will be. Thousands more are stolen every day and the sites do next to nothing to stop it. Ever hear of a image theft being fined or put in jail for copyright theft? NO. So why pay?
When I sold stock photos in the 50's 60's and through the early 80's NONE sold for less than $100.00 for RF images and RM sold for $200 to $5,000.00 per image. Calendar and greeting card companies never paid less than $500.00 for an image. Book covers $250.00 and up. Now they get them for less than a cup of coffee.
The Internet ruined it all. That is why I have lost nearly all interest in up loading any more to any site. I can sell Cd's full of images on Ebay for $25.00 per each for low res shots RF and not give a crap what they actually do with them. They do not get my best, only my rejects the ones I did not ever try to up load. Junk.
Sorry to sound sour but those are the facts. I for one just don't want to work for 5 cents an hour.
Larry
i'm surprised with such a solid photography background as yours that you even attempted to dabble in microstock at microstock prices. if you're only a member at the three sites on your profile, then i can understand why you're so obsessed with the commission per photo. microstock is all about volume and dt and bs have little volume to speak of. if you'd join is and ss, you'll be more concerned with the bottom line, which should be 10-20x of what you're getting. at that rate, you won't care whether your photos sell for a $1 or $20.
also, a lot of us happen to like the microstock online business model. the immediacy, of it, both for buyers and sellers, is really appealing. if i wanted to be fairly paid at the prices you used to get, i'd put everything on alamy. there are a lot of photographers who do really well there. i remember one gentleman who's based in a remote part of scotland, never leaves his hometown and takes mostly rm, no mr, photos and is making hand over fist. i presume he takes good photographs.
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It is really funny reading all the responses :D
A lot of people, it appears, haven't figured out yet that microstock is NOT a job/business (for the microstocker) - it is a competition. Considering how big is the buyer's market for images and how many people upload pics to the microstock sites - there is no way in the world for EVERYONE to succeed, no matter how talented they are and how hard they work. It is a simple fact.
It is also a fact, that an average microstocker does not pull out all stops in order to succeed. Those who do (and have a modicum of talent) - gain a competitive edge over the rest of the crowd. And for them - it becomes a business or a job.
However, if ALL microstockers all of a sudden display a sudden burst of talent, and if ALL of them upload heaps of images, and if ALL these images are good - then I am not sure that Gostwyck and Sharply_Done would be repeating their mantras (their advice is perfectly good - but will not work if EVERYONE succeeds).
This is just a competition - pure and simple. And, as in any competition. the rewards are few, and the competitors are many. No wonder most have to do without.
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I don't understand why people expect to make much money without treating this like a full time job. There can't be many jobs where you make a living without putting in 40 hours a week and having the right skills. If people are working 40 hours a week and not making a living from microstock, they should do something else. I could spend 40 hours a week painting but I doubt I would make much money.
Digital cameras and microstock have changed the industry but I prefer the money I make now to the rejection letter I received before. I also prefer the people who pay me a small commission when they used to ask for my photos for free. I can still use the sites that charge more as well and microstock prices are much higher than a few years ago. The biggest problem is low commission subs but it looks like there is still a strong demand for pay per download.
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think I'm in the wrong side of the business today.
Graduation photos, 1 photog taking the shot of the handshake with on camera flash. About 200 people in 2 hours. $50 for image on cd, $37 for a 5x 7, $50 for 8x10, special $75 +postage for cd and 8x10. Neither the chancellor or I are even looking at the camera :(
then another photog from same company gets the people into the 'studio' area, grey mottled background, 2 x elinchrom lights with umbrellas, $10 sitting fee gets 3-4 poses. Our 4 poses / 12 shots and by the time you take out the blinkers in comes down to 6 shots - on a cd ready for you print $178!! prints are same as above with a 20x16 costing $150+postage. Being a big group we were slow and took a little over 5 mins. They had a queue and went nonstop for 4-5 hours.
I think I'd hate it, unless I did it like how it was done with neither of the photogs being the owner of the company (who knows where he was, probably not montana though :))
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... microstock is NOT a job/business (for the microstocker) - it is a competition.
???
Business IS competition.
Unless someone inherited his/her parents' business, most successful business people earned their success by beating their competitors. They did something better... offered better products, had better service, better prices, etc. But make no mistake, it was a competition, and they won and profited from it. These same rules govern who wins and loses in microstock.
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fully agree with the OP.
digital + internet == hell.
by the way, i just read recently a similar rant about musicians making pennies and losing money
with the web :
http://thecynicalmusician.com/2010/01/the-paradise-that-should-have-been/ (http://thecynicalmusician.com/2010/01/the-paradise-that-should-have-been/)
thinking about it, musicians are in a much worse positions than photographers and journalists.
the web is gonna become a gigantic ocean of free music, books, articles and photos before or later.
only a small bunch of pros will survive.
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for anything else : yes, shooting studio photos with models (paid or not) is gonna be more and more hard to sustain with microstock prices.
i'm saying the same things since the stone age but people keep calling me a "macrosaur" while recently even Yuri admitted he's shooting 80% RM and only his leftovers go in RF/micro, guess he has got very solid reasons for this U-turn...
soon even shooting food will become unsustainable and finally it will become just impossible to make money with micros starting from scratch : too many photogs, too many photos, too low payout.
i'll rather grill burgers at mcdonalds than start a career in microstock today.
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The web has done enormous damage to journalism too. Here in Minneapolis, our local newspaper has steadily collapsed and deteriorated and is now little more than a sports tabloid. And this is supposed to be a good thing? Quality coverage of local events is simply no longer available. Other channels will evolve to fill this gap, but it's not happening yet.
It's the same pattern as with microstock. The emergence of a perfect buyers' market causes a price collapse, and a loss of quality. For a while, consumers feel like they've won - hey look, I'm reading the New York Times every morning, on my iPad, for nothing! Does it really matter that I can't find out who's running for mayor, or what the city council did last week? Not at first, but I think in time people will decide they care about those things too. And I think new image marketing channels will open up, so it becomes possible to produce unique, niche images and find buyers for them at prices that seem reasonable to both buyers and sellers.
I also like what leszek said about this being a competition, not a business. There is certainly a lot of truth in that. I think it's still sort of a dumb competition, though, where you can win by flooding the market with similar images, by keyword spamming, and where you can only really score points by selling an image hundreds of times. It needs to evolve into something more sophisticated.
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I fully agree with all the speculation that we're in a race to the bottom. But I don't necessarily believe that the bottom is free. Maybe images will be offered free on some sites, but there will be models for the contributing artists to be paid somehow, either through advertising or agencies paying for contributions up-front. And the market will level out at a point at which skilled artists will be content with the financial payout, or they'll bolt, which will affect the supply and demand equation and the remaining artists will make more, which would draw more artists in, and the cycle would go on indefinitely. It just won't ever hit zero.
It just doesn't make sense that masses of people will spend any energy on creating images for zero payout. Sure, there will be hobbyists and enthusiasts who don't expect anything more than the thrill of sharing their stuff, but with few exceptions, the quality of work generated by a non-paid audience won't satisfy the business world.
As the human story moves forward, we will be communicating visually more and more, and that will increase the demand for effective images. A crowd-sourced base of contributors working for free won't cut it. There will always be a demand for talented visual artists -- photographers, illustrators, etc. -- and the best will continue to be compensated well, if not in microstock then via some other model (and no, that won't be macro or RM... those days are gone). Now is not the time to be scared and cower in the corner. If you want to be a survivor, get excited about the opportunities coming and be ready to pounce on them.
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Check out what the internet did to musicians:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Aqe2P9sYhZ2ndE9iZHhWc0pMcDlCdmxNdmFRQXRPY3c&hl=en_GB (http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Aqe2P9sYhZ2ndE9iZHhWc0pMcDlCdmxNdmFRQXRPY3c&hl=en_GB)
This spreadsheet was compiled by musicians showing the quantities you'd have to sell in order to make US minimum wage. I got this from the news lately.
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Micro stock is a microcosm of competitive spirit that has made this country the economic powerhouse it is today. Imagine the indignation of the buggy-whip makers when the Fords started streaming off the assembly lines. Our micro stock business is just evolving faster than most. So we keep up or jump into some other line of work that requires less adaptation.
Micro stock exists only because of the profits made by micro sites. And those profits are attainable only because of the profits of the users from paying far less per image than in the pre-micro age.
I agree that we photographers are at the bottom of the food chain existing purely by the laws of supply and demand. That's okay by me. It's open and transparent. And I enjoy the competition. And it is a business as long as we aren't selling for zero. If someone could figure out a method to profit for selling images for one cent that too will come to pass.
For now I choose to keep uploading.
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I think that having a "global economy" has affected many businesses, not just journalism and microstock.
Another example is the graphic design industry. I checked out some of the top freelance sites. Designers in India are bidding $10 to design a logo. Retouching, color correcting and resizing photos in Photoshop...the bids start at 50 cents per photo. There is no way I can compete with that and still pay my bills.
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I think that having a "global economy" has affected many businesses, not just journalism and microstock.
Another example is the graphic design industry. I checked out some of the top freelance sites. Designers in India are bidding $10 to design a logo. Retouching, color correcting and resizing photos in Photoshop...the bids start at 50 cents per photo. There is no way I can compete with that and still pay my bills.
And then you pair that with customers who don't really give a rat's a$$ about the image quality and you're out of business like nothing.
The damage has been done, so there is little we can do to change the industry.
I originally thought that we get "properly" compensated for the quality we deliver.
Honestly, I see 7 out of 10 images being worth the cents that they earn. But images that have high quality and are shot with budgets/models/props/effort should be priced higher. Well, just wishful thinking.
So much that is wrong with this industry in the meantime.
Still, it's not stopping us to be creative and look for more ways to monetize our images...
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I think that having a "global economy" has affected many businesses, not just journalism and microstock.
Another example is the graphic design industry. I checked out some of the top freelance sites. Designers in India are bidding $10 to design a logo. Retouching, color correcting and resizing photos in Photoshop...the bids start at 50 cents per photo. There is no way I can compete with that and still pay my bills.
This is definitely true. Maybe, this is why I'm always defending stock because it is growing faster than my freelance work. There are still a lot of clients out there that pay a fair wage, but a lot that want things as cheap as possible.
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50% of a microstock success is related to when you started for me. Of course there is exceptions. But the earlier people have joined, the easier their learning curve have been, easier sales due to a bigger exposure ect.
I hardly believe than most people who have started lately, will be able to even make a decent income to cover their expense. They compete with more than 6 millions images on most agencies now, while it was less than 3 millions in 2007 when I started. The acceptance of images was a lot easier back then ect.
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^^^ Yes, I must admit I wouldn't want to be starting microstock today with the (lack of) skill and knowledge that I had 5 years ago.
When I started at Istock I was restricted to 'only' 10 uploads per day __ now it's 15 per week for a newbie. Combine that with much tougher reviewing standards and it must be very difficult to build up momentum.
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I still don't understand the race to the bottom when prices keep going up. Can someone explain that to me? Istock started out as a free site, some images cost $250 there now. Prices are much higher on all the sites I use than they were when I started in 2006. Subscriptions haven't followed pay per download prices yet but I expect them to in the future. DT have already increased subs commissions substantially for higher level images. I started on $0.25 subs with SS and now get $0.38. Thinkstock are paying less but they are new, we will have to wait and see if they raise prices and commissions when they have established some market share. I don't see why they wont go the way istock have, raising prices when their sales increase.
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I still don't understand the race to the bottom when prices keep going up. Can someone explain that to me?
Didn't you know that if you keep posting a catchy slogan, it becomes true? ;) It works in politics anyway.
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50% of a microstock success is related to when you started for me. Of course there is exceptions. But the earlier people have joined, the easier their learning curve have been, easier sales due to a bigger exposure ect.
I hardly believe than most people who have started lately, will be able to even make a decent income to cover their expense. They compete with more than 6 millions images on most agencies now, while it was less than 3 millions in 2007 when I started. The acceptance of images was a lot easier back then ect.
I agree.
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I think a major reason for so much disappointment and disillusionment with microstock is a result of unrealistic expectations to begin with. Who told any of us we would be able to make a living at this??
When I started in 2005 there were no blogs, podcasts, books, news stories, etc. promising untold wealth from selling your "snapshots" like there are now. Newsflash: If the people spouting that nonsense were actually making any money in micro they would not be wasting time trying to sell the concept to everyone and their cousin. People used to go into microstock just for the fun of it. Did anyone starting the micros in 2005 - 2006 EVER expect to make a living at it?! I know I sure didn't.
I feel blessed that microstock has exceeded the expectations I had when I started - which were pretty much none. I hoped if I worked hard maybe I could eventually net $200/month.
I do realize it is much more competitive now and I wish it wasn't. I enjoyed it more years ago, even though I was making less money. Now I find I am having to force myself to work just to put my ONE child through (an insanely expensive!) college. Wish I could still be doing it for fun....
Powerdroid has it right when he sad this:
It just doesn't make sense that masses of people will spend any energy on creating images for zero payout. Sure, there will be hobbyists and enthusiasts who don't expect anything more than the thrill of sharing their stuff, but with few exceptions, the quality of work generated by a non-paid audience won't satisfy the business world.
If the sites want to continue to get high-production conceptual shots involving props, models, locations, etc. they will have to continue to compensate photographers enough to make it worth doing. If they don't, then they will go back to being libraries full of flowers, cats, and travel snapshots.
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...If the sites want to continue to get high-production conceptual shots involving props, models, locations, etc. they will have to continue to compensate photographers enough to make it worth doing. If they don't, then they will go back to being libraries full of flowers, cats, and travel snapshots.
I agree. I hope the agencies are listening.
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If they don't, then they will go back to being libraries full of flowers, cats, and travel snapshots.
My best selling photos are travel snapshots. Things went wrong when I bought lightboxes. :P
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Powerdroid has it right when he sad this:
It just doesn't make sense that masses of people will spend any energy on creating images for zero payout. Sure, there will be hobbyists and enthusiasts who don't expect anything more than the thrill of sharing their stuff, but with few exceptions, the quality of work generated by a non-paid audience won't satisfy the business world.
If the sites want to continue to get high-production conceptual shots involving props, models, locations, etc. they will have to continue to compensate photographers enough to make it worth doing. If they don't, then they will go back to being libraries full of flowers, cats, and travel snapshots.
Nicely said, I think that while there is more offer (photographers), most people start earning less every year. Add to this that many agencies believe that subscriptions and lowering photographer share is genius and we are in this situation in 2010.
Lowering production cost is a wise move to achieve lately, at least for me. Since I had a budget of let say 80$ a month for stock, now I just don't shoot lol
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as a matter of fact they're already collections with cats, dogs, and flowers.
there's no way they can compete with RM on this, and obviously it will be harder and harder to get photos accepted
as micros are already more than saturated regarding many subjects, travel included.
and this once again will mean less money for the photographers.
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Lowering production cost is a wise move to achieve lately, at least for me. Since I had a budget of let say 80$ a month for stock, now I just don't shoot lol
Ouch! Not shooting is definitely a way to lower your production costs ;)
If it becomes financially unfeasible to make money at this you will probably find a lot of us joining you!
One thing about stopping shooting is that anything you make can be taxed as royalties and you don't have to pay SS tax on it. According to my accountant the only reason I have to pay SS, self-employment tax, etc. on the money is because I am actively engaged in business to make it. If I were to stop producing images then it would count as royalty money and be exempt from SS taxes.
Not that I intend to stop any time soon. My daughter's going to be doing 5 years to get a Masters at a private college, so that's 5 more years of indentured servitude for me. Sure hope the industry and/or royalties don't tank before then...!!
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Lowering production cost is a wise move to achieve lately, at least for me. Since I had a budget of let say 80$ a month for stock, now I just don't shoot lol
Did medaillons become that expensive lately? :P
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as a matter of fact they're already collections with cats, dogs, and flowers. there's no way they can compete with RM on this...
Are the snapshots, cats, dog and flowers so much better then on RM? Do they surf the whitewater on a surf plank? As long as it isn't the creature of Bichon on SS, a dog is a dog.
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Lowering production cost is a wise move to achieve lately, at least for me. Since I had a budget of let say 80$ a month for stock, now I just don't shoot lol
Did medaillons become that expensive lately? :P
LOL I have done what I could with medals. I can't even shoot them in perspective, because I will need to invest in more light power :)
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Eventually there has to be a return to quality - however you define it - in journalism, music, and stock imagery.
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According to my accountant the only reason I have to pay SS, self-employment tax, etc. on the money is because I am actively engaged in business to make it. If I were to stop producing images then it would count as royalty money and be exempt from SS taxes.
This is the impression we finally came to as well.
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Eventually there has to be a return to quality - however you define it - in journalism, music, and stock imagery.
i wouldn't bet on this.
the only ones making money with journalism are writing about financial news
and analysis.
war photographers are starving, and no magazine like the old LIFE mag. at the horizon.
their bread and butter now is selling expensive workshops.
as for music unless you're Lady Gaga and you've a contract with Sony it seems
it's a hard time today to live with music.
the money is to be made with live shows and DJing, those selling CDs
are struggling because of piracy and the internet.
it's always the same problem : how to make money off a product
anyone can easily steal with a few clicks ?
the success of the 3D movies like avatar shown once again that piracy
is the a major negative factor in the content industry.
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It just doesn't make sense that masses of people will spend any energy on creating images for zero payout. Sure, there will be hobbyists and enthusiasts who don't expect anything more than the thrill of sharing their stuff, but with few exceptions, the quality of work generated by a non-paid audience won't satisfy the business world.
If the sites want to continue to get high-production conceptual shots involving props, models, locations, etc. they will have to continue to compensate photographers enough to make it worth doing. If they don't, then they will go back to being libraries full of flowers, cats, and travel snapshots.
[/quote]
The industry (both micro and macro) works on the photographers spectulating financially. The photog invests say $500 on the shoot, the sites then pick and choose (only send the best etc), if it doesnt pay off its the photographers fault and loss. Yuri mentioned one time that it is doubtful his casino and nightclub shoots will ever be profitable for him (will be for the agencies though). But other people have since come along and done similar shoots / themes. It takes a long time to learn how much can be spent and remain profitable or estimate how much return there will be on a shoot. With the number of photographers out there, they will keep trying new ideas and themes investing the money in the hope it is profitable for them.
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Yuri admitted he's shooting 80% RM and only his leftovers go in RF/micro, guess he has got very solid reasons for this U-turn...
Can Yuri's RM portfolio be seen somewhere? Where does he sell them?
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Yuri admitted he's shooting 80% RM and only his leftovers go in RF/micro, guess he has got very solid reasons for this U-turn...
Can Yuri's RM portfolio be seen somewhere? Where does he sell them?
I know that he has an account at Alamy but have no idea what pseudonyms he is using. I'm sure he is not so willing to show his RM stuff to a lot of people.
He probably also changed his style a bit to operate more undercover... but who knows.
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I know that he has an account at Alamy but have no idea what pseudonyms he is using. I'm sure he is not so willing to show his RM stuff to a lot of people.
Form Advertising.
http://www.alamy.com/search-results.asp?qt=+form+advertising&submitsearch=Search&st=0&go=1&a=-1&archive=1&size=0xFF&CreativeOn=1&lic=6&lic=1&mr=0&pr=0 (http://www.alamy.com/search-results.asp?qt=+form+advertising&submitsearch=Search&st=0&go=1&a=-1&archive=1&size=0xFF&CreativeOn=1&lic=6&lic=1&mr=0&pr=0)
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People used to go into microstock just for the fun of it. Did anyone starting the micros in 2005 - 2006 EVER expect to make a living at it?! I know I sure didn't.
I hoped it would, but I never thought it could.
I thought I would only have enough to by new gear.
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Eventually there has to be a return to quality - however you define it - in journalism, music, and stock imagery.
that's what a lot of macro shooters say :)
My dad's a printer and looked at a bag of potatoes I had out last night and said what a bugger they are and how picky the customer is with quality and colour accuracy. I laughed and mentioned that I really dont care if my bag of potatoes is exactly 326-green or pyschadelic purple and yellow, its a bag of potatoes.
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I know that he has an account at Alamy but have no idea what pseudonyms he is using. I'm sure he is not so willing to show his RM stuff to a lot of people.
Form Advertising.
[url]http://www.alamy.com/search-results.asp?qt=+form+advertising&submitsearch=Search&st=0&go=1&a=-1&archive=1&size=0xFF&CreativeOn=1&lic=6&lic=1&mr=0&pr=0[/url] ([url]http://www.alamy.com/search-results.asp?qt=+form+advertising&submitsearch=Search&st=0&go=1&a=-1&archive=1&size=0xFF&CreativeOn=1&lic=6&lic=1&mr=0&pr=0[/url])
and shoosh, both are RF portfolios.
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I know that he has an account at Alamy but have no idea what pseudonyms he is using. I'm sure he is not so willing to show his RM stuff to a lot of people.
Form Advertising.
[url]http://www.alamy.com/search-results.asp?qt=+form+advertising&submitsearch=Search&st=0&go=1&a=-1&archive=1&size=0xFF&CreativeOn=1&lic=6&lic=1&mr=0&pr=0[/url] ([url]http://www.alamy.com/search-results.asp?qt=+form+advertising&submitsearch=Search&st=0&go=1&a=-1&archive=1&size=0xFF&CreativeOn=1&lic=6&lic=1&mr=0&pr=0[/url])
Nice find. I'm not surprised he's not shouting about his stuff at Alamy __ they are clearly the also-ran images deemed not good enough for microstock (or indeed to put his name to). I suppose it's slightly reassuring that Yuri doesn't actually fire off a best-seller every time he clicks the shutter button.
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If the sites want to continue to get high-production conceptual shots involving props, models, locations, etc. they will have to continue to compensate photographers enough to make it worth doing. If they don't, then they will go back to being libraries full of flowers, cats, and travel snapshots.
You're partially right about the flowers, dogs, and cats. But I don't think people will yank their portfolios. They'll stop submitting and leave their portfolios there. Most of the fresh content will be newbie snapshots of flowers and cats. The rest will be stale technology and models with outdated styles.
I think a few factors are going to change things fairly soon. Contributor profitibility, agency relations, and recovering economy.
Sounds like unprofitible contributors are already jumping ship and focusing on other areas.
Contributors are getting tired of getting their T&C getting regularly changed to their disadvantage.
And I think a lot of people dove into micro to help pay the bills to weather the economy. When things pick back up and people are back to work are they really going to spend as much time on micro to make pocket change? And even if sales pick up and agencies make more you can bet that they'll cut commissions again.
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I know that he has an account at Alamy but have no idea what pseudonyms he is using. I'm sure he is not so willing to show his RM stuff to a lot of people.
Form Advertising.
[url]http://www.alamy.com/search-results.asp?qt=+form+advertising&submitsearch=Search&st=0&go=1&a=-1&archive=1&size=0xFF&CreativeOn=1&lic=6&lic=1&mr=0&pr=0[/url] ([url]http://www.alamy.com/search-results.asp?qt=+form+advertising&submitsearch=Search&st=0&go=1&a=-1&archive=1&size=0xFF&CreativeOn=1&lic=6&lic=1&mr=0&pr=0[/url])
and shoosh, both are RF portfolios.
shoosh .. isn't that the name used when all his RF images was uploaded to Alamy as RM and then when people started talking about him trying to pull a sneaky it was changed to RF and noted that an error was made by some third world country uploading company LOL .. Form Advertising sounds like another sweat shop distributer to me.
Does seem kinda odd that he isn't tooting his own horn on where his RM stuff can be viewed. ??? Why would somebody who had already placed years of getting their name out to build a brand name not better that brand name by saying ok we're bumping things up a notch and here it is. You wouldn't start over from scratch .. goes against business logic .. except in situations where a business runs themselves into the ground and creates a bad name for themselves or if they want to introduce a cheaper lower quality product line .. that's when you brand from scratch .. not the case with Yuri going to RM. So going from uploading 1000+ images a month on a micro level to saying I'm shooting 80% RM but not providing a reference ... isn't that like saying I have a MONSTER portfolio of higher quality images available as RM .. but I'm not going to market it or use my established name to draw any attention to it in order to increase the income stream from the highly profitable images.
Seems extremely odd .. just my opinion.
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If the sites want to continue to get high-production conceptual shots involving props, models, locations, etc. they will have to continue to compensate photographers enough to make it worth doing. If they don't, then they will go back to being libraries full of flowers, cats, and travel snapshots.
You're partially right about the flowers, dogs, and cats. But I don't think people will yank their portfolios. They'll stop submitting and leave their portfolios there. Most of the fresh content will be newbie snapshots of flowers and cats. The rest will be stale technology and models with outdated styles.
I think a few factors are going to change things fairly soon. Contributor profitibility, agency relations, and recovering economy.
Sounds like unprofitible contributors are already jumping ship and focusing on other areas.
Contributors are getting tired of getting their T&C getting regularly changed to their disadvantage.
And I think a lot of people dove into micro to help pay the bills to weather the economy. When things pick back up and people are back to work are they really going to spend as much time on micro to make pocket change? And even if sales pick up and agencies make more you can bet that they'll cut commissions again.
You and Lisa NAILED IT!
Amen
-Larry
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... Sounds like unprofitible contributors are already jumping ship and focusing on other areas.
Contributors are getting tired of getting their T&C getting regularly changed to their disadvantage.
And I think a lot of people dove into micro to help pay the bills to weather the economy. When things pick back up and people are back to work are they really going to spend as much time on micro to make pocket change? And even if sales pick up and agencies make more you can bet that they'll cut commissions again.
I think there's a few holes in this theory... if contributors start dropping like flies, will the agencies be able to afford to cut commissions across the board? The law of supply and demand would suggest not. If what you're really suggesting is a leveling out of the contributor base (growth slows to zero), then reduced commissions on the big sites seems plausible, but if you're thinking that the amount of contributors will fall by a significant percentage, the agencies will start to fear for their futures and cutting commissions would be against their interests.
I see a rebounding economy as a very good thing for contributors, and they'll increase their output. As more money is available and small businesses flourish, we'll see much more spending on microstock. And even the big buyers will have increased budgets, but now that they've discovered microstock during the lean years, they'll continue to buy here instead of returning to macro. That genie is out of the bottle.
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PowerDroid said: "...will the agencies be able to afford to cut commissions across the board? The law of supply and demand would suggest not."
Well, the law of supply and demand is one of attributes of a homeostatic system, and economic systems could be classified as such. But - every homeostatic system has its limits: if the external influences exceed the capacity of the system to adjust - it inevitably ends with the destruction of the system.
If, say, US economy was a closed system - then yes, the law of supply and demand would apply (in a sense that an equilibrium would be achieved). However - the US economy (and every other developed economy, for that matter) does not exist in vacuum - there are new external forces at work. What I mean is a cheap supply of images (and not only) from economies where the cost of production (and a cost of living) are incomparably lower.
Of course - the equilibrium will be eventually reached, but in the process the original system will be destroyed (or transformed to a degree which will render the difference immaterial). This, however, will be no consolation for you and for everyone who believes that "competition is OK, one needs to change and adjust, blah blah blah...".
If one rat in a cage needs to produce 200 revs/minute in order to survive, and the other rat needs only 20 - then it doesn't take a rocket scientist to predict the outcome.
What is happening in microstock - is only an aspect of far deeper processes in economy, which has been globalized. And - due to the fact that there are large inequalities in production costs/living costs, the field is far from being level.
Mind it, I am not blaming the developing countries for all the woes of Western economies - I am just observing what is happening (and there are many more factors buried in our economies - like fractional reserve banking, credit based development, short-term profit, built-in inflation etc. etc.) which make our world what it is now.
So - have no doubt, commisions CAN be cut across the board, and most likely WILL be. I guess - if you are good and dedicated - you will be able to increase the revs of your cage and stay in the competition for some time. But - you can't do this indefinitely - and someone somewhere will produce images for $0.10 a pop (or less). Examples are many - from various industries which are disappearing/going broke because of that.
You may say - this is OK, this is normal - and in a sense it is. Except - the adjustments to the new (economic, but not only) reality may be a little bit more than most of the public in the West can imagine in their worst dreams.
All things are driven by the lowest common denominator - and the bottom line is defined by the accountants. They do not care if their images (and profit) come from you or from someone in Burkina Faso (no offense intended).
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All things are driven by the lowest common denominator - and the bottom line is defined by the accountants. They do not care if their images (and profit) come from you or from someone in Burkina Faso (no offense intended).
While a drone in Burkina Faso may be able to photograph some apples on white, I'm pretty sure some subjects are far from their ability.
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I agree with Leszek - and it's exactly what I've seen from the inside in the software business, for about 10 years now. Guys in India and Russia are just as smart as I am, but their cost of living is a fraction of mine here in the U.S., and there isn't much I can do about it. The only thing that held them back (for a while) was lack of broadband, and the cost of a PC, which is the same everywhere - but eventually things change so that anyone could get into the game. It's the same with the cost of a DSLR.
If you think of people in less developed parts of the world as just "drones" who lack our "ability", I've got news - those drones are highly motivated, and they're going to get at least a big piece of your lunch. And that's going to go on for a long time, until the cost of living in these various parts of the world starts to equalize.
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All things are driven by the lowest common denominator - and the bottom line is defined by the accountants. They do not care if their images (and profit) come from you or from someone in Burkina Faso (no offense intended).
While a drone in Burkina Faso may be able to photograph some apples on white, I'm pretty sure some subjects are far from their ability.
And I'm perfectly sure that ability and skills is not a problem for some BF photographers, although access to certain subjects may be, as access to other subjects may be for you. You, however, are in the lucky position of having easy access to most of the subjects currently in greater demand.
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Before I retired 15 years ago I made 250,000.00 plus per year as a wedding photographer. I had 10 photographers working for me. So the money is there always has been and always will be.
But not selling RF images for .25 Cents each. Needless to say I do not need the money from RF sales.
-Larry
Microstock keeps wannabe photographers away from where the real money is - I see no problem with this ::)
Every microstocker I know (who are doing it for a living) shudders at the idea of doing weddings. That's what many of them used to do and they are so glad to give it up.
You can certainly make decent money doing weddings but that's because it's a horrible job, that mostly has to be done during anti-social hours, that any half-decent photographer would gladly do anything else instead if they could get the same money. Same with having commercial clients. Who needs all that hassle __ the ever-changing briefs, chasing the money, dealing with the unwashed masses of the public, etc, etc?
That is why I hired photographers to do the work. I ran the studio and collected the money. Lived well and spent my spare time in the woods shooting wildlife in Montana while my studio was in New York. Just because your in the business does not mean you personally have to do the dirty work.
([url]http://static2.bigstockphoto.com/thumbs/2/4/5/large2/5427631.jpg[/url])
Just having fun in Montana.
-Larry
Wow you are in Montana jizz!!!
You have opportunity to be the one of the first mans putted in orbit of the Earth without expensive paying visit to international Space Station like newborn geeks if Yellowstone pimple explode.
I am not scientist and dont now to calculate if this explosion will paste you face on Moon too. Maybe you will be the first Microstocker on the Moon like fly on car window. LoL
Sorry I dont want to offend you anyhow, just try to be humorous in my morbid creepy way.
V
Live long and prosper...
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You, however, are in the lucky position of having easy access to most of the subjects currently in greater demand.
In greater demand, until low-cost designers from Burkina Faso start doing the buying...
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"While a drone in Burkina Faso may be able to photograph some apples on white, I'm pretty sure some subjects are far from their ability."
You may be right - and then, you may not.
The example I am most familiar with is aircraft industry. Over the last decade or so there is increasing trend to move the production to the "developing" countries. As a result - manufacturing facilities here are getting closed. The quality seems to be taking (far) second place - and I know this for a fact.
Furthermore - the recent (or not so recent, depends how you look at it) trend is to farm out the design and analysis to outfits in Malaysia, Indonesia, India - and couple of other places. The economics is simple: it can be done properly, quickly and with required quality, taking - say - 6 months at a rate of $100/hour - by subcontracting to engineering company in the "West". If it goes somewhere else - it also may take 6 months, but with 3x more people employed and a rate of $15/hour. The job gets botched - and it comes back to the "West", but as a "correction" - at $60/hour and 30% of the original hours. So - let's do the math the way accountants do it:
-Option 1 (doing it properly)
Cost = 100*T = 100T
-Option 2 (farming out)
Cost = 15*3*T + 60*0.3*T = 63T
This is a whopping 37% saving - which means large bonuses for the selected few. And the next job goes where ? No cigar for guessing.
In the meantime, you can't survive doing "corrections" at a cut rate with insufficient hours given for the job - which means a lot of unpaid overtime, frustration, people leaving the industry, businesses getting closed. And - as a side effect - educating the competition while going out of business. This, unfortunately, is the prevailing economic/business model (at least in civil aviation, the military branch fares quite a bit better), which results in loss of skils (frequently this is irreversible), loss of manufacturing facilities (mostly irreversible), transfer of know-how - and increasing unemployed rate.
Sounds familiar ? So, what makes you think that microstock is exempt ?
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So, what makes you think that microstock is exempt ?
I don't think anyone actually stated that 'microstock's exempt' did they? For starters the agency 'bosses' don't ponder over a globe from where to draw their 'workforce' from, as they might in a manufacturing industry.
Truth is the current market for images appears to be almost entirely Western oriented __ and it's very difficult, and probably more expensive, to produce Western-style images in Burkina Faso. Try moving there yourself and see how you get on. I spend a lot of time in the developing world and, trust me, it's not that easy or cheap to be productive in effective microstock whilst you're there.
I'd very much recommend Jim Roger's 'Investment Biker Around the World' and his follow-up 'Adventure Capitalist' amongst his other books __ very, very insightful observations of the world's economies from a man who's dabbled in most of them and made billions doing so.
One of the things he points out is that the Middle Ages were very much the 'Commodity Age' in that those who traded silks, spices, etc tended to be the richest men in the world. Then it moved to the 'Industrial Age' in which the richest were those who manufactured things, like Henry Ford for example. Now we're in the 'Information Age' in which the richest are those who sell you very expensive 0's and 1's on a cheap CD (nowadays you're lucky to even get that!), like Bill Gates and many others. As microstockers we sell 0's and 1's too, or at least the license to use them. It's our ability to produce the right 0's and 1's that will keep us ahead __ or not.
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Leszek - yes, that's exactly how it works in the software industry too. Same dollar amounts, big promises, same timetable.
But I'm now seeing a trend towards bringing work back to the US because companies have been through that cycle a couple of times, and gotten burned. The problem isn't really a lack of competence, it's the language barrier, time zone differential, and the hierarchical/bureaucratic structure of companies in places like Bangalore. Basically, there just isn't enough direct communication with the technical people doing the work.
Why are we even talking about Burkina Faso? The real competition today is from Eastern Europe isn't it?
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And I'm perfectly sure that ability and skills is not a problem for some BF photographers, although access to certain subjects may be, as access to other subjects may be for you. You, however, are in the lucky position of having easy access to most of the subjects currently in greater demand.
Aw, you read between my lines!
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Yes, people around the world will be more competitive as access to broadband improves and computer hardware and software gets into every home in every nook and cranny of the Earth. They will have access to the same tools as you, except for one... your creative mind.
In the early days of microstock, you didn't need to have brilliant or original ideas to succeed. Any isolated apple or business handshake shot would sell. But if your work is uninspired and doesn't stand out from the crowd today, you're watching your sales plummet, and rightfully so... worse yet, there's no way you will survive tomorrow. As the playing field becomes more and more flat, it will be more and more apparent who the true artists are... they will continue to rise to the top, whether in the U.S., India, Ethiopia, etc.
And yes, we could see commissions fall, but also keep in mind that as world economies open up and your competitors grow in numbers, so will your customers. Small business will sprout everywhere, and the demand for quality, creative images will only increase. If you think this is a volume business today, just wait for tomorrow. But these expanding markets will have unique needs, so the smartest among us will be watching these emerging markets and adapting our styles and subject matter to serve these new customers.
That's my glass-half-full view, anyway. You can pick it apart, but I believe those who complain about the changing world are the ones left behind... those with the positive attitudes will see through the clouds to new opportunities and reap the rewards. Choose your side wisely.
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I think there's a few holes in this theory... if contributors start dropping like flies, will the agencies be able to afford to cut commissions across the board? The law of supply and demand would suggest not. If what you're really suggesting is a leveling out of the contributor base (growth slows to zero), then reduced commissions on the big sites seems plausible, but if you're thinking that the amount of contributors will fall by a significant percentage, the agencies will start to fear for their futures and cutting commissions would be against their interests.
You're missing one part. There will always be a strong supply of contributors. But more happy snappers and less high production cost contributors. What will level off is the supply of good quality fresh images. Shutterstock lives on new stuff. What would happen to them if over a period of a few years that quality producers taper off and most new people joining are snapshooters with their cats? Sales would probably also taper off. If supply drops and demand remains/increases then contributor value goes up.
I see a rebounding economy as a very good thing for contributors, and they'll increase their output. As more money is available and small businesses flourish, we'll see much more spending on microstock. And even the big buyers will have increased budgets, but now that they've discovered microstock during the lean years, they'll continue to buy here instead of returning to macro. That genie is out of the bottle.
You're assuming the rebounding economy will be good for contributors. Just because the economy rebounds and agency sales go up doesn't automatically mean contributor sales go up. Rising sales would be a perfect time for agencies to continue dropping commissions and spin it as "we're doing you a favor, you're still making the same/more money". Fotolia has already proven it can do whatever they want and not even respond to contributors because they know eventually the bitching and moaning will go away. All of these agencies are focused on growth and profits. One easy to cost way to increase profits is through what they perceive as powerless contributors.
Contributors are not powerless. They just haven't been pushed hard enough to push back or go away. I'm guessing both will happen at some point and then contributors will have better leverage.
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If supply drops and demand remains/increases then contributor value goes up.
I think we're saying the same thing. SS and other agencies need to keep quality contributors happy. So cutting commissions would be exactly the wrong thing to do.
Contributors are not powerless. They just haven't been pushed hard enough to push back or go away. I'm guessing both will happen at some point and then contributors will have better leverage.
Again, I think we're on the same page. But I'm using this argument to say that ultimately commissions can't fall too much -- or if they do they will have to rebound -- because the agencies can't afford to have the best contributors stop uploading.
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and the cost of a PC, which is the same everywhere - but eventually things change so that anyone could get into the game. It's the same with the cost of a DSLR.
Again (I've said it so many times in other threads), I can't tell about Russia or India, but the cost of electronics is very expensive in Brazil, cameras & stuff cost twice the price as in USA, and even the chance of buying second hand is much smaller. PCs are now much cheaper than they used to be, but they are still much more expensive.
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^^ Agencies should be doing things to keep contributors happy but are they? Can you name one that either isn't doing nothing or cutting comissions? Istock seems to be making the most positive changes but they're still adjusting comissions.
Yes, when contributors get hosed badly enough and either leave or stop uploading agencies will need to do something to bring them back and maybe increasing comissions will be one way.
Unfortunately I think we have a lot more "adjustments" to our T&C coming before we hit the boiling point. Ever hear of boiling frogs? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog)
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industrial age -> information age -> conceptual age
Many tasks/jobs of information age, e.g., software development or accounting, are getting automated or outsourced to Asia or other developing countries. It leads to a higher demand for a conceptual "right brain" work.
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The cost of a PC is NOT the same everywhere. Same applies to photo equipment, power tools, PC games, CDs etc. etc.
It is called "price discrimination" or "yield management".
Very nice euphemisms for profit gouging.
While manufacturers are allowed to produce their stuff "somewhere in the world" at a very low cost - more and more barriers are being raised for the consumers to access the world wide market in order to buy at a best price. Try to buy a power tool (reputable brand, but made in China, of course) on Amazon: you will find very quickly that it can not be sent to your address (if outside US).
Very quickly growing practice - where the producers (and sellers) feel entitled to a proportional (and sometimes very disproportional) part of your income - no matter where in the world you are and w/o any regard to the profit margin. Mind it - it is being done by segmenting the market, limiting the supply and selling the same products at wildly differing prices.
Supply and demand, someone said ? Sure - let's regulate the supply, the demand (and the price) will take care of itself.
Isn't it what is happening with microstock too ?
The entry barrier for the new players is already too high - so now market is being "consolidated" (read: big dogs devour the smaller ones). When it is all over - two things will happen:
1) the price (for the buyer) will go up
2) the price (for the seller) will go down
Time will tell how this will work out.
My guess is - like some other of my guesses. First people tell me that I am being "pessimistic", and after some time that "I couldn' have known at the time".
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the problem is always the same : agencies must pay more and sell more.
it's unthinkable to keep selling as low as 0.25$.
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I agree with Leszek - and it's exactly what I've seen from the inside in the software business, for about 10 years now. Guys in India and Russia are just as smart as I am, but their cost of living is a fraction of mine here in the U.S., and there isn't much I can do about it. The only thing that held them back (for a while) was lack of broadband, and the cost of a PC, which is the same everywhere - but eventually things change so that anyone could get into the game. It's the same with the cost of a DSLR.
If you think of people in less developed parts of the world as just "drones" who lack our "ability", I've got news - those drones are highly motivated, and they're going to get at least a big piece of your lunch. And that's going to go on for a long time, until the cost of living in these various parts of the world starts to equalize.
well actually living in russia and especially in moscow can be more expensive than London.
and talking about china : they've excellent and very skilled IT guys there, computers are made
there and a lot cheaper than in the west, broadband is everywhere, 15$/month for a decent connection
with China Telecom.
India has slower connections but plenty of fresh engineers, i've never seen so many job offers
as if you search for India and especially Bangalore, i mean there's microsoft seeking kernel
developers for windows while in europe they hire salesmen and tech support guys.
the core production of microsoft, oracle, ibm, and many others is already in india and china,
the west now is only a market where they sell at premium price what they make for cheap
in the orient !
will it happen also for STOCK ?
i think so, the only problem for them is mastering the keywording with english words
but indians are already good at this.
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But who is it who buys stock? At work today I saw the latest copy of New Scientist in the staff tea room. Opened it and a big ad on the inside of the front cover. I immediatley recognized the three models in one photo - Cecilie, Sophie and Ask. Not too many blond, blue eyed Scandinavians in India or China.
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But who is it who buys stock? At work today I saw the latest copy of New Scientist in the staff tea room. Opened it and a big ad on the inside of the front cover. I immediatley recognized the three models in one photo - Cecilie, Sophie and Ask. Not too many blond, blue eyed Scandinavians in India or China.
Good point.
And food is different too.
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But who is it who buys stock? At work today I saw the latest copy of New Scientist in the staff tea room. Opened it and a big ad on the inside of the front cover. I immediately recognized the three models in one photo - Cecilie, Sophie and Ask. Not too many blond, blue eyed Scandinavians in India or China.
Exactly why Yuri & Mr. Locke et al do not have any competition from Indian or Chinese shooters. They only need to worry about competition from the old Soviet block.
Yeah, stuff can be done cheaply if the far east (on bootleg software), but you are not going to get cheap decent looking Caucasian models there.
High end -read expensive- models travel to the far east for gigs,
When the major consumers of stock start to switch to targeting the far east then the model demographic will need to change as well.
I have been around Asia quite a bit. In India, the models are fair skinned Indians.
In Singapore, Indonesia etc. the models are fair skinned Asians or fair skinned mixed race (Asian/Caucasian).
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I have been around Asia quite a bit. In India, the models are fair skinned Indians.
In Singapore, Indonesia etc. the models are fair skinned Asians or fair skinned mixed race (Asian/Caucasian).
Yes, I always think that advertising in a particular country, being aspirational, tells you quite a bit about their ideals.
In Thailand the billboard models have been 'whitened' to the degree that they're virtually translucent. If I wanted to sell stock into the Thai market I'd presumably have to do the same to my models although to my eyes it looks faintly ridiculous as nobody on the street looks even remotely like that.
Funny how light-skinned people aspire to be darker and dark-skinned people want to be lighter. Both appearances, in their respective countries, are associated with wealth, health and leisure.
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in China i've met plenty of blond and blue eyed female expats.
the problem is they were very far from looking like models ...
plenty of fat yanks on business trips or teaching english,
and probably shy about the idea of modeling.
as for russia it's now as expensive as germany.
only ukraine and other eastern euro countries
are cheaper to live but it's not gonna last for long,
even in romania you need 1000 euro/month to
survive nowadays.
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in China i've met plenty of blond and blue eyed female expats.
Allow me to grin at all your self-contented posts. You know it best, huh? You know everything about China, Russia, the East, India, - with your smirky face, yet we didn't see any single shot of you or any port. Let me call you a fraud, a redneck, an imposer, a fraud.
I have seen much more than you of (central) China, India and the "East". I'm currently living in SE Asia but I'm connected with IT outsourcing in Chennai. I don't even care for microstock, except it's fun. My snapshots on business travel are for myself. I probably fly more miles in a year than you in a lifetime. I have more "editorial" on my disk that you can dream off, but I just don't like to brag about it since in the time it takes to process, I earn more outside photography.
But that's none of your's or any body else's business. Unless you show some of your work and/or port, I will just consider you as a dementing old hilarious pensioner troll in some remote Western downstairs suburb hamlet getting his orgams from forums. The time you spend on forums with unproductive crap you could better spend on processing your 1,000$ pending images that are - undoubtedly - god's gift to stock.
;D (I met some fine braggers, guy, and you are one of them; too chicken to show port? :D)
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Nobody here is going to see my port either, because then I wouldn't be able to speak freely about issues with the microstocks, their management and ownership. I guess that makes me a "dementing old hilarious pensioner troll" too. So be it.
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the problem is always the same : agencies must pay more and sell more.
it's unthinkable to keep selling as low as 0.25$.
I totally agree with this statement. It doesn't matter if you make 10 to 5th Dls per day per photo, they still need to sell for a much higher price and quite frankly I get tired of the old "well we sell a lot more so it's okay to get less money" argument.
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you certainly fly more than me as i like to travel overland and smell the stink of sh.. coming in from the windows.
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the problem is always the same : agencies must pay more and sell more.
it's unthinkable to keep selling as low as 0.25$.
I totally agree with this statement. It doesn't matter if you make 10 to 5th Dls per day per photo, they still need to sell for a much higher price and quite frankly I get tired of the old "well we sell a lot more so it's okay to get less money" argument.
how can they sell more if agencies' portfolios are doubling or tripling and the number of buyers
remains the same ?
in fact pictures are selling less and for less money than before and for a short period of time too.
what will we sell when istock will have 30 millions pics online ?
microstock is getting near the point where shooting micro alone
is no more sustainable.
their new "exclusive plus" options are targeting exactly the few exclusives
who are sick of poor payout or planning to go elsewhere.
anyone starting doing microstock today is getting screwed.
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Nobody here is going to see my port either, because then I wouldn't be able to speak freely about issues with the microstocks, their management and ownership. I guess that makes me a "dementing old hilarious pensioner troll" too. So be it.
Lots of people here are anonymous (although usually with only one account) and it's perfectly obvious why. You can tell the sincere ones from the ones who are just shooting off their mouth.
I would classify stocktastic as the former, and macrosaur/perseus/tanjomast/batman as the other type. Why would anyone need to keep changing alias's and have several going at once unless they were trolling?
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I would classify stocktastic as the former, and macrosaur/perseus/tanjomast/batman as the other type. Why would anyone need to keep changing alias's and have several going at once unless they were trolling?
Perseus is certainly an obnoxious troll. He just made another pathetic "blog" entry at DT. I'm trying to keep myself from commenting. :P Macrosaur is clearly a troll. He has no portfolio at all. He is a nobody just ranting here. He should join a knitting club.
On topic: DT just launched a new assignment: agriculture. Three weeks ago I was on an expedition with friends, lightboxes and models to the inlands of Bukidnon (a tropical plateau, where's a lot of subsistence agriculture). The FAO (UN) was interested in the shots, since the location and crowd is unique. I just said "thank you no" in the DT thread. That shoot amounted to 100$ in total (I had to feed an entire village since I'm a Caucasian - dirt rich by definition) and there is no way I'm going to give it to microstock for a meager 0.35$ sub. Microstock has gone too far... I'd rather give my shots for free on Flickr.
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how can they sell more if agencies' portfolios are doubling or tripling and the number of buyers
remains the same ?
They no longer want the small contributors and hobbyists they used to start their business. They don't really want addtional millions of images that cost them time and money to review. If 25 cent commissions cause us to go away, that's fine.
What they want now, ideally, is a relatively small number of pros supplying enough imagery so that the vast majority of buyers find something adequate for their needs, and spend whatever money they have available to spend for it. Beyond that point, additional intake of images is a waste of money spent on reviewers' time.
Occasional buyers looking for small numbers of niche images are of little interest - neither are the suppliers of those images. Who is going to produce low-volume niche images at these prices? Those buyers and sellers won't find each other through microstock. But macro is broken - the prices are now too high.
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I would classify stocktastic as the former
By some coincidence, I know his port and it's great.
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If 25 cent commissions cause us to go away, that's fine.
Not a chance in a billion years. Amateurs, for the most part, care little about the how much they make. I takes nothing to institute a policy of non acceptance from poor photographers.
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Not a chance in a billion years. Amateurs, for the most part, care little about the how much they make. I takes nothing to institute a policy of non acceptance from poor photographers.
I thought it was the amateurs that complained the most because they are trapped. All the pros have either graduated to higher royalty rates, better stock sites or the low royalties work in their business model.
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Not a chance in a billion years. Amateurs, for the most part, care little about the how much they make. I takes nothing to institute a policy of non acceptance from poor photographers.
I thought it was the amateurs that complained the most because they are trapped. All the pros have either graduated to higher royalty rates, better stock sites or the low royalties work in their business model.
Complain sure, but never leave because of it.
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But who is it who buys stock? At work today I saw the latest copy of New Scientist in the staff tea room. Opened it and a big ad on the inside of the front cover. I immediatley recognized the three models in one photo - Cecilie, Sophie and Ask. Not too many blond, blue eyed Scandinavians in India or China.
Good point.
And food is different too.
Which is what I meant by "You, however, are in the lucky position of having easy access to most of the subjects currently in greater demand."
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If you go to Montana you will never move back home wherever that is. If I was in good health I'd move to Montana tomorrow. Freedom!
-Larry
I'll be visiting in September... Be shooting in Glacier, and up into Banff & Jasper. Looking forward to it very much!!! Have friends out there that wont put a foot back in Jersey. Can't blame them at all. When you open a studio in Montana, Larry, I'll be knocking on the door for a job!! 8)=tom
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Macrosaur is clearly a troll.
On topic: DT just launched a new assignment: agriculture. Three weeks ago I was on an expedition with friends, lightboxes and models to the inlands of Bukidnon (a tropical plateau, where's a lot of subsistence agriculture). The FAO (UN) was interested in the shots, since the location and crowd is unique. I just said "thank you no" in the DT thread. That shoot amounted to 100$ in total (I had to feed an entire village since I'm a Caucasian - dirt rich by definition) and there is no way I'm going to give it to microstock for a meager 0.35$ sub. Microstock has gone too far... I'd rather give my shots for free on Flickr.
hahaha !
p.s.
so the FAO, who's receiving BILLIONS of $ from the UN is going cheap asking starving microstockers to shoot a whole reportage for just 100$.
weren't you guys telling me to "adapt or die", "micro is the future", "RM is dead" and other BS some time ago ? :)
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I would classify stocktastic as the former
By some coincidence, I know his port and it's great.
and since when people writes on public forum with their real name/surname, email, www address, telephone, and much more ?
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Those buyers and sellers won't find each other through microstock. But macro is broken - the prices are now too high.
not yet.
macro is priced right exactly because you can NOT find those images elsewhere, and good look browsing Flickr
or google images for a few hours...
it's called "added value" or just plain "value".
on the other side micro is paying less and less because their images can be found in dozens of RF agencies
for as low as 0.25$.
who can blame the buyers if the photogs shoot themselves in the foot ?
and talking about niche images, shooting that stuff can only be sustainable at RM prices, it could never ever work
in RF.
the funny thing is FAO will probably grab some sh.. from DT for 5 or 6 bucks and pay hundreds of $ on RM for the missing
pics they need.
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on the other side micro is paying less and less because their images can be found in dozens of RF agencies
for as low as 0.25$.
You keep getting it wrong. Over the years, micro is charging and paying more and more. 3 years ago, $0.25 was my highest subs commission, now it is my lowest and I don't need to use the sites that pay that low. Pay per download prices and commissions have increased a lot. I sell less than a few years ago but my earnings have gone up each year. How can that happen if micro is paying less? Some images sold on istock will now make more for the contributor than ones sold with Getty. Considering the huge gap a few years ago, I think that is incredible.
Of course these facts don't register with you or several other people here that keep posting about the race to the bottom. There is a difference between wanting it to happen and it actually happening. If micro was going to collapse, I think it would of happened by now. The sites are going to take more commission, that isn't a surprise. Do Getty , Corbis, Alamy etc. pay the same commission they did 5 years ago? People will always want new images and over the years everything changes, macro has survived and I think micro will as well.
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on the other side micro is paying less and less because their images can be found in dozens of RF agencies
for as low as 0.25$.
You keep getting it wrong. Over the years, micro is charging and paying more and more. 3 years ago, $0.25 was my highest subs commission, now it is my lowest and I don't need to use the sites that pay that low. Pay per download prices and commissions have increased a lot. I sell less than a few years ago but my earnings have gone up each year. How can that happen if micro is paying less? Some images sold on istock will now make more for the contributor than ones sold with Getty. Considering the huge gap a few years ago, I think that is incredible.
Of course these facts don't register with you or several other people here that keep posting about the race to the bottom. There is a difference between wanting it to happen and it actually happening. If micro was going to collapse, I think it would of happened by now. The sites are going to take more commission, that isn't a surprise. Do Getty , Corbis, Alamy etc. pay the same commission they did 5 years ago? People will always want new images and over the years everything changes, macro has survived and I think micro will as well.
because lots of former RM buyers are moving to microstock and the transition is not over yet.
but before or later it will stop, the number of buyers will remain the same, their budget will remain
the same, istock's portfolio will triple, and you'll start to see a sharp decline in sales and views,
it's math !
on the other side my RM earnings are increasing as well despite some agencies are
adding as much as 600K images every month (see Alamy), how do i explain this ?
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on the other side micro is paying less and less because their images can be found in dozens of RF agencies
for as low as 0.25$.
You keep getting it wrong. Over the years, micro is charging and paying more and more. 3 years ago, $0.25 was my highest subs commission, now it is my lowest and I don't need to use the sites that pay that low. Pay per download prices and commissions have increased a lot. I sell less than a few years ago but my earnings have gone up each year. How can that happen if micro is paying less? Some images sold on istock will now make more for the contributor than ones sold with Getty. Considering the huge gap a few years ago, I think that is incredible.
Of course these facts don't register with you or several other people here that keep posting about the race to the bottom. There is a difference between wanting it to happen and it actually happening. If micro was going to collapse, I think it would of happened by now. The sites are going to take more commission, that isn't a surprise. Do Getty , Corbis, Alamy etc. pay the same commission they did 5 years ago? People will always want new images and over the years everything changes, macro has survived and I think micro will as well.
because lots of former RM buyers are moving to microstock and the transition is not over yet.
but before or later it will stop, the number of buyers will remain the same, their budget will remain
the same, istock's portfolio will triple, and you'll start to see a sharp decline in sales and views,
it's math !
on the other side my RM earnings are increasing as well despite some agencies are
adding as much as 600K images every month (see Alamy), how do i explain this ?
I think you have ruined your own argument. The competition doesn't matter as long as you can supply something the buyers want that hasn't already been over supplied. You can do it with alamy and I can do it with microstock. I don't have any problem using both with different portfolios. 100 million more images wouldn't bother me, as there will always be something missing that I can work on.
I don't see that many macro contributors switching, as a lot of them detest micro. They might have a shock with the micro QC standards. From past experience, it looks like portfolios with lots of people photos get hit hardest, as that is already an over supplied category. I don't do those and haven't had a problem. There are already enough buyers for me and there will probably be more as the internet expands.
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but before or later it will stop, the number of buyers will remain the same, their budget will remain
the same, istock's portfolio will triple, and you'll start to see a sharp decline in sales and views,
it's math !
math has little to do with it - especially if your initial assumptions don't hold. you make 4 claims:
===the number of buyers will remain the same, -- why? the internet continues to grow as hundreds of millions of new computer users come online. the demand for images will continue to grow, and lower costs make it more accessible.
==== their budget will remain
the same, -- again, based on what? more likely budgets will increase in total as more firms start using stock rather than custom shoots
====istock's portfolio will triple, -- ok, you got 1 of 4!
====and you'll start to see a sharp decline in sales and views,--- only if you're correct on items 1 & 2 above
your doomsday forecasts are remarkably similar to what the pro's were saying would happen 20 years ago when digital stock first took hold. the same arguments were recycled 5 years ago as microstock started making an impression. saying it 3 times won't make it true. the market will change; some photographers won't make it, but overall, the direction will continue upwards
steve
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+1, what steve (cascoly) said.
Add to his argument:
- When the world emerges from the current recession, more businesses will form and need to advertise, and those who have been quiet will jump back into full marketing gear, and the need for images will increase dramatically.
- As the undeveloped, or underdeveloped, world sees growth in their small business sectors, those businesses will also look for the most cost-effective ways to advertise and will become big users of microstock.
To macrosaur and the other nattering nabobs of negativism... why do you spend so much of your energies concerning yourself with something you see as dead or dying? You present yourselves as astute business people, but how smart is it so spend so much of your time and energy kicking what you see as a dead horse, when you could be making more money elsewhere?
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nattering nabobs of negativism...
Don't try to tell me you're old enough to remember the source of that classic quote! :D
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nattering nabobs of negativism...
Don't try to tell me you're old enough to remember the source of that classic quote! :D
You must return here with a shrubbery or else you will never pass through this wood alive!
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nattering nabobs of negativism...
Don't try to tell me you're old enough to remember the source of that classic quote! :D
You must return here with a shrubbery or else you will never pass through this wood alive!
One that looks nice... and not too expensive.
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Now please don't tell me you guys think "nattering nabobs of negativism" came from the Pythons.
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... how smart is it so spend so much of your time and energy kicking what you see as a dead horse, when you could be making more money elsewhere?
This is a really good question ^^
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Now please don't tell me you guys think "nattering nabobs of negativism" came from the Pythons.
I knew it was a politician, but not which one. Turns out it's Spiro Agnew:
http://www.answers.com/topic/nattering-nabobs-of-negativism (http://www.answers.com/topic/nattering-nabobs-of-negativism)
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doomsday ? kicking dead horses ?
i'm just analyzing the market from a broader perspective.
if you all admit nowadays is harder to get the foot on microstock, how and why should this change or improve
in the next 5 yrs ?
on one side istock is launching its "Exclusive Plus" option, on the other side they're pushing for super cheap subs with Thinkstock.
Alamy in the meantime announced its new "Creative Collection", and Getty keeps fishing new amateurs on Flickr.
Corbis never made a single profit in years, and is kept in artificial life because it's owned by Bill Gates.
Others are struggling to survive with wild discounts or trying to get bought by Getty.
IS, FT, SS, DT are getting bigger and bigger, small players are going miserably out of the arena.
in the meantime there's dozens of new sites popping up trying to sell overpriced prints & merchandising,
some are good, some have no buyers at all, others resemble more flickr or facebook rather than a serious
online shop.
and the good ones wants to be paid (see FineArtAmerica, or AllPosters/art.com) or accept only few selected contributors.
music labels are starving due to piracy, trying every dirty trick in their hope of catching the new "viral" hit of the moment like Lady Gaga and friends.
newspapers are in deep sh.. since years, 2009 has been their worst ever.
gossip magazine and paparazzi keep making million $ as usual.
so where are we heading ?
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Now please don't tell me you guys think "nattering nabobs of negativism" came from the Pythons.
I knew it was a politician, but not which one. Turns out it's Spiro Agnew:
[url]http://www.answers.com/topic/nattering-nabobs-of-negativism[/url] ([url]http://www.answers.com/topic/nattering-nabobs-of-negativism[/url])
Correct, Spiro Agnew - the man who had to resign as Vice President to face corruption charges - the man who Nixon himself privately referred to as an "@sshole". The "negativism" being mocked by Agnew was the steadily growing feeling that the Vietnam war was a mistake and a disaster. That view turned out to be "realism".
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Now please don't tell me you guys think "nattering nabobs of negativism" came from the Pythons.
I knew it was a politician, but not which one. Turns out it's Spiro Agnew:
[url]http://www.answers.com/topic/nattering-nabobs-of-negativism[/url] ([url]http://www.answers.com/topic/nattering-nabobs-of-negativism[/url])
Correct, Spiro Agnew - the man who had to resign as Vice President to face corruption charges - the man who Nixon himself privately referred to as an "@sshole". The "negativism" being mocked by Agnew was the steadily growing feeling that the Vietnam war was a mistake and a disaster. That view turned out to be "realism".
A bit more trivia... Agnew didn't come up with the phrase himself... rather, it was his speechwriter William Safire, who went on to be a respected conservative columnist. I was too young to hear it being used first-hand... instead I heard it in college and have loved the phrase ever since. I dish it out when surrounded by people being way too glum.
No connections to the Pythons, of course, aside from being from the same era. Holy Grail is probably my favorite comedy of all time... just introduced my ten-year-old son to it a few weeks ago and I was thrilled to find that he loved it. He and I were quoting the movie for days.
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So that came from Safire! Now that's great trivia. I know there were a couple more alliterative gems in subsequent Agnew speeches, no doubt from the same source - wish I could recall them. What a worthless windbag Agnew was. I read a bio of Nixon a couple years ago and learned that he detested Agenew and kept him totally out of the loop.
My wife and I recently watched a Python retrospective and I was struck by how complex, polished and rehearsed those skits were.
Now how can I relate all this to microstock...?
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+1, what steve (cascoly) said.
Add to his argument:
- When the world emerges from the current recession, more businesses will form and need to advertise, and those who have been quiet will jump back into full marketing gear, and the need for images will increase dramatically.
- As the undeveloped, or underdeveloped, world sees growth in their small business sectors, those businesses will also look for the most cost-effective ways to advertise and will become big users of microstock.
To macrosaur and the other nattering nabobs of negativism... why do you spend so much of your energies concerning yourself with something you see as dead or dying? You present yourselves as astute business people, but how smart is it so spend so much of your time and energy kicking what you see as a dead horse, when you could be making more money elsewhere?
Negativity or reality?
I see an aweful lot of optimists here carying love signs but have poor sales performance. Optimism only goes so far unless you're one of the few who coast through life on pure luck. And the negative people defeat themselves. Only the paranoid survive.
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I coast through life on pure luck. The harder I work, the luckier I get :)
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Negativity or reality?
it's typical of the american sub-culture.
all these buzzwords "think positive", "learn the I CAN attitude", "you can do it", and the list goes on...
but fact is, there's probably just a 100 people doing microstock full time, anyone else is starving
but won't admit it, after all they've no idea about any other alternative, they wouldn't even be
in this market if they hadn't heard about microstock.
for instance how many of you guys are selling prints now ?
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I think exactly the opposite that there are a lot of people quietly raking in a fortune out of microstock. It isn't that difficult with the right portfolio, I know plenty of people doing it.
but fact is, there's probably just a 100 people doing microstock full time, anyone else is starving
but won't admit it,
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Optimism only goes so far unless you're one of the few who coast through life on pure luck.
What a jaded view to think that optimism = luck. I'm optimistic becuase I've worked hard, reached my goals, and all the evidence I've collected so far points to more work equaling more results. Luck doesn't enter into it.
When I decided to try microstock, I did my homework. I checked out all the sites, figured out what were the lucrative subjects, what was oversaturated and what topics were underrepresented. I developed what I believe is a unique style. And I set a quota... a few hours a day and a few uploads every night. I'm right where my goal line says I should be right now, and my trend line is pretty straight and upward. But if I were struggling to hit my goals, you can bet I would have moved on to a different pursuit, and wouldn't be hanging around here moaning about it and ridiculing others for chasing their failed dreams. What a silly waste of time that would be.
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I can't agree more powerdroid. For me as I've taken it more seriously and now woven it into my work plan alongside design jobs I find my monthly graph continues it's steep climb. Otherwise I wouldn't do it as there's plenty of graphic design work now. Whilst there wasn't when I started this at the beginning of the recession. For me it was ' have a go and see ' and now it's part if my job as returns are very good.
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you guys still don't get it.
if YOU don't price your photos high enough, NO ONE WILL.
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the only reason you guys are "stuck" on microstock is because you're not good enough to produce photos saleable on Getty RM or saleable as fine-art in expensive galleries.
and the funny thing is this : there's plenty of GREAT photos on istock but as the market got saturated because of istock & the micros, these beautiful pics are worth what ? as low as 0.25$/download, and 5 or 10$ if you're lucky.
in short, they're worth the same as postcards, and that's what essentially you're good for as long as you only sell on micros.
microsotck is by a far margin the LEAST paying field in photography.
art, prints, and galleries are where the money is.
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the only reason you guys are "stuck" on microstock is because you're not good enough to produce photos saleable on Getty RM or saleable as fine-art in expensive galleries.
Lay it on me, macrosaur. I can take it!
There is some truth here of course. But my real complaint is there is not much middle ground between 25 cent micro and $300 "fine art" sales.
Microtock is like a shopping mall with nothing but "Everything's $1" stores. Oh yeah, I know how we're supposed to be able to work our way up the pricing ladder, go exclusive at IS, become "Vetta", yada yada yada. My material will never generate the volume it takes to get to those exhalted levels.
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What a jaded view to think that optimism = luck. I'm optimistic becuase I've worked hard, reached my goals, and all the evidence I've collected so far points to more work equaling more results. Luck doesn't enter into it.
...
I can't agree more powerdroid. ...
You might want to pick up Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)), where he postulates that in the end it is perhaps nothing but else but luck that propels the overwhelmingly successful and separates them from the also-rans.
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You might want to pick up Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)), where he postulates that in the end it is perhaps nothing but else but luck that propels the overwhelmingly successful and separates them from the also-rans.
[/quote]
I'm assuming that this postulation is in jest.
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the only reason you guys are "stuck" on microstock is because you're not good enough to produce photos saleable on Getty RM or saleable as fine-art in expensive galleries.
Lay it on me, macrosaur. I can take it!
There is some truth here of course. But my real complaint is there is not much middle ground between 25 cent micro and $300 "fine art" sales.
Microtock is like a shopping mall with nothing but "Everything's $1" stores. Oh yeah, I know how we're supposed to be able to work our way up the pricing ladder, go exclusive at IS, become "Vetta", yada yada yada. My material will never generate the volume it takes to get to those exhalted levels.
i've now almost 100 fine-art photos on sale.
no sales so far but the feedbacks i received so far is encouraging.
that's where i hope to make big $$ sales, or at least i'm trying.
we'll let you know.
the "middle way" is Vetta and now there's no turning back as anything else
has lost any value, even your best photos can be bought for few bucks
so take it or leave it.
the problem of microstock is they're targeting the very bottom of the barrel.
no wonder their buyers even complain about prices being too high !
5$ for a photo is too high ?
how they pretend photographers can even go on par with the production costs ?
so that's the value of micro images today, we can only accept it.
i'm studying ways to quit stock altogether and becoming a full time
fine-artist.
anyone can do stock, soon it will be impossible to get in and to
sell decently.
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You might want to pick up Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers ([url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)),[/url] where he postulates that in the end it is perhaps nothing but else but luck that propels the overwhelmingly successful and separates them from the also-rans.
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.
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Epantha,
Thanks for your clarification of the book. I think it was Lee Trevino, the pro golfer, who once said "the more I practice, the luckier I get".
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You might want to pick up Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers ([url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)),[/url] where he postulates that in the end it is perhaps nothing but else but luck that propels the overwhelmingly successful and separates them from the also-rans.
I read the book. He said that some people are lucky because of the opportunities and tools offered to them but in the end, the ones that 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 skill. Excellent book, by the way.
from my experience the most crucial factor is talent and continuity.
any one can make a few good pictures, but how many do that for 20-30 years ?
if we look at the best photographers in any field they are famous and rich
because they kept working hard, luck is only one of the many factors in the mix.
luck is more important in music and art in my opinion, because people's tastes
vary so much for silly reasons.
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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.
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i've been doing stock since the mid 70s - eventually ending up with both corbis and getty. i started doing digital stock in the early 90s, but got into micro only a coupla years ago.
i never approached it as a career because i wasnt interested in doing all the boring bits that go along with a full time photo job. instead it's always been a pleasant supplement [and often business deduction] that pays for my travel habit. approaching ss age, i have even less interest in flogging my stuff to art fairs and cafes - i've got friends who do that in the arts and they need 2nd jobs to pay for the first with no vacation time.
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.
steve
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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
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if these guys writing marketing books are so good why they're not already stinking rich and retired in Florida ?
i'll tell you why, because their books are full of sh...
to understand why the stock industry is sinking all you need is to read the age old books by Adam Smith.
he correctly predicted the actual worldwide crisis and much more.
the RM downfall is in fact the obvious consequence of the pirate competition by microstock.
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 !
sort of like "emerging" bands playing in pubs and getting paid in beers ... that's our future in a not far away scenario.
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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.
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OTOH, maybe I have missed the most obnoxious comments because I have a particular individual on ignore.
you'd need to have several on ignore!!
then again, any troll who thinks adam smith is the final word on economics hasnt studied any economics, and so is hardly worth worrying about when predicting the future of stock.
steve
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i'm glad to be ignored by so many readers.
"tanti nemici, tanto onore".
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I would never put you on "ignore", Macrosaur - I can always use a good laugh
Smiling Jack
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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!
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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!
But at the end, "you" are one who decide to reply or not to reply ;)
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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.
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Dollars vote, PD. Carry on!
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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?