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.

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.

  (I met some fine braggers, guy, and you are one of them; too chicken to show port?  )

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.

Quote from: macrosaur on April 21, 2010, 03:59

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.

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.   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.

I would classify stocktastic as the former

By some coincidence, I know his port and it's great.

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.

Quote from: averil on April 21, 2010, 07:55

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."

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  ?

 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.

Quote

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 ?

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