I personally found the blog very interesting.  It has made me start looking at things that I would not normally look at to possibly photograph and even better, to use as backgrounds for other pictures and so on.  I'm glad it was posted and wanted to just say thank you for sharing.  I am surprised at all the negative reactions - it's like reading a forum at IS - everyone pooh-poohing the person who posts.  That's why I rarely post anything at the IS forum, people are so negative and condescending.  I'm sad to see it is happening here also.

Concerning sharing, I feel myself somewhere between Yuri/AVAVA and Sean... the truth is always somewhere inbetween.

But I have a question to all sharers: let's say tomorrow you find a simple way to double your sales at IS by just adding a specific keyword in all your photos (e.g. a bug in the best match algorithm which would then put all your images at the top).

Would you share this information here?

So, araminta, your example cannot apply to this situation here. It's not equivalent. If there is a bug like this, to double your sales, I would say it would be equivalent to situation of doubling the number of contributors, and decreasing your sales for 50%

It's relevant to the fact that the more you have to gain/lose from a piece of information, the less you are eager to share it. It's about the fact that it is easy to say "you are greedy" when you have nothing to lose, but everything to gain in sharing 

And some information are quite important for some niche contributors: I would like MISHA to share how he is doing that: http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&lightboxID=3362561&removeCache=1... but I guess he won't 

I agree the example was not the best, even though it does apply as the company often does not know the extent of our knowledge and, therefore cannot require us to share a specific piece of information
But then again, what is the purpose of this forum? I thought it was sharing the information. Sharing ANY information here helps other people, doesn't it?

You have nothing to lose here, that's why I said this is just paranoia...when you are afraid of things that can't hurt you.
There is always a limit about everything in life

I mostly agree as I explained in a previous message: most information shared here and there will not hurt any good/creative contributor.

But as you say: there is a limit.

And this limit is not the same for everybody as some are more exposed than others or have more to lose.

I would be interested in knowing your position in a few years when your microstock earnings are sufficient to pay for your house. Then a flow of millions of contributors from China will come to microstock through chinese agencies with $0.01 commission per download. And chinese contributors will come here to ask you how to do a good isolation.

I will catch as many of them to become my referrals, and make a profit, just like I am doing right now.
The list of my referrals is growing 50% of my income at SS comes from referrals right now

Also, I am trying to attract buyers as well. My list of referrals at IS is growing too.

Well, for now I have 7 referrals, and one of them brought me 20$ because he joined in september last year, when IS used to give 20$ for a referral. And I don't bother with that. I made a simple website. I spent about one hour of my time to make it, and now I get 10 dollars from time to time. I think it's worth it. I do nothing, and referrals are joining.
Maybe we all should spend some time to attract buyers, instead of spending time and energy to prevent new photographers to join. I think it would be more productive

Quiz

If you were the only contributor to a site that pays 50% and does $1,000,000 in sales, how much would you make?

If you were one of 1,000,000 contributors to a site that pays 50% and does $1,000,000 in sales, how much would you make?

If you were one of 1,000,000 contributors to a site that pays 50% and does $1,000,000 in sales, how much would you make?

Depends on how many of the 1,000,000 are your referrals and what the sales of dirt are like there I suppose.

oh shoot (bad pun), I forgot the other bunch of competitors already there at the OTHER convention. Laid off Starbucks workers looking for Photoshop genius to teach them isolation work. Their destructive insurgence against us, "make $$$$ shooting isolation shot of coffee and coffee products. Starbucks will supply the coffee.

Panic Button already pushed twice.

Why don't you spend your time trying to increase the buyer base instead?  That will be beneficial to all contributors, help them as sales grow and educate new buyers out there as to the options available.   The sort of approach where "I make money from X, I want to train others to compete with me in X" just seems masochistic to me.

My target audience consists of photographers .. Microstock is only one aspect of photography that I cover in my blog .. I will be posting a great deal about running a photography business, a small part of which is microstock. If I write a blog post trying to influence buyers I will be offering advice to a completely different audience who would never read it because they are not apart of my targeted audience .. thus I would fail. That would just be a bad business move and it wouldn't help anyone.

You and others keep saying "well, one more won't hurt".  A - It ain't going to help.  B - You forget there's an entire world out there poking around the internet.  you hardly know what waves you are going cause.

I'm not forgetting there's an entire world out there. I've been in this business since 1990 .. long before microstock or the internet for that matter. I'm quite aware of the reality of this business. I do want to create a wave to be honest. I want to put my experience to a meaningful use and do what I can to improve the quality of photography as a whole. Everyone who is so concerned with their sales should ask themselves a few questions. Do you realize how many photographers are getting into microstock that have no experience in photography? Do you realize how many photos have gone online that do not meet the traditional standards of quality? Do you realize how many freebie sites are associating themselves with the industry? Do you realize that mircostock agencies are beginning to ask for the option that rejects be offered for free and what impact this will have if it becomes mainstream? Have you paid attention to the fact that the information provided by magazine publishers over the last 2 decades follows a steady slope from targeting professionalism to targeting the general consumer and what impact that has had on this industry? I could go on and on about waves that have already been created and are building. Most people's problem is they think about "ME" they think about "NOW" they don't think about 5, 10 or 20 years into the future. The answers to all the questions I just asked points to a decrease in photographic quality on a global scale. Rather than everyone being concerned with "what if all these new photographers are better than me and I have to compete with them for sales?" you need to be asking yourself "what is going to happen to the industry when it becomes totally flooded by photographers with no training?"

You are targeting an audience that is unaware, with your "shoot pictures of dirt to make money theme".  Lee Torrens posts perfectly useful stuff on his blog that we can all enjoy discussing, but he's not running about trying to sign up the next 1000 contributors.

Again, I (and others) certainly don't think the sky is falling because you posted an article on shooting mundane things, regardless of all the words like "panic" and "fear" people seem to use around here.  And having the insight you do could provide help for experienced micro shooters (again, probably to your detriment).   But as one piece of the pie, it just doesn't seem to make financial or business sense to me.

Once again, do you think I will get a ton of referrals by targeting an audience who are already aware of the available microstocks sites? There's a huge list of them going down the right side of this page. Chances are the majority will find these sites without the aid of my post. If you add up all the direct referral links that can be seen on this forum it would rank in the millions ... I do not have a single one on here .. not one. Yet I am trying to trick people into giving me referrals? There's simply no logic in that. Lee Torrens site was also probably a bad example to use. His site leans more towards what new rather than how to where my site leans towards how to rather than whats new. That and you are trying to make a claim that I am seeking mass referrals and that he is not. The number of referral links on my site does not even come close to the number of referral links that can be found on his site, so once again ... that just doesnt even make sense ... and before anyone starts claiming I just said Lee had a bad site, read more carefully. I said it was a bad example for this topic not a bad site. (just thought I would nip that in the bud before the old lady gossip started)

On a side note, don't take anything I say personal. We all know it's hard to tell "how" a person is saying something when you are just reading text on a screen. All my comments are based simply on business standards, deductive logic and experience and not on emotion. If you don't want to follow it .. that's fine. But it's a shame that the attitude exists where those feel they have to grab newcomers by the collar and pull them away from learning something that could prove to be very valuable to them .. simply based on their own personal opinions and not fact. Because the fact is, my post is in no way a get rich quick style post .. I talk about making hundreds to a couple thousand over time from building a collection of quality photos of simple subjects ... I never imply that you can make millions a month uploading junk like some of you have tried to give the impression. If you read my post and honestly did not understand that .. it's time to turn down the ego volume and spend a little more time learning because you have a long way to go. That statement might seem harsh. Don't take it personal. I'm saying it because if you do not continue to learn and take your time rather than quickly scanning through something and jumping to conclusions .. you will eventually fall behind and be replaced. I personally dont want to see that happen to any of you because I know progress is fueled by competition.

There are lots of buyers and that is going to increase a lot in the future.  The sites would close their doors to contributors if they had too many images and not enough buyers, like some of the traditional sites have.

Very good point