Hi Dan,

 I don't know a lot but I know one thing, change is a guarantee. Adapt or die has been hard wired in us from day one. If you can find a way to treat photography as something you love and look at the cash as an added bonus or not at all, then hopefully you will nurture back the passion you once had. I have been on top of the mountain and tumbled all the way down so I get it, took me four years to enjoy shooting again. It is sad but not uncommon to hear a person lose their passion for something by making it their job. Best of luck I hope that some day you can enjoy that art of creating images without the worry of income being part of the equation.

Best,
Jonathan

I DO shoot what I love, and benefit from it Jonathan. I've been doing more and more event photography the last 2 years. It hasn't built up to my stock earnings yet, but the work is a lot more rewarding and interesting. It's an opportunity to be an artist again. And of course, I only offer my services at prices which allow me some self-esteem. 

Never would have guessed it several years ago when I was shooting NCAA football, but my new love is modern dance photography. I work with one of the foremost dance studios in NY State. They are brilliant, and provide me with all the inspiration I need to shoot. It's a challenge and a pleasure to capture their art and do it justice.

Alamy has been cruel to me.  Once in a great while, I get a sale for a significant amount - just often enough to preserve the illusion that something might happen.  Then, weeks go by.  Then, a sale that nets me $3.   The intervals between sales get longer.

I put quite a few on MacroGrafiks and I hope they go somewhere.  If I ever sell anything there, I think I'll get interested in doing more. 

I put quite a few on MacroGrafiks and I hope they go somewhere.  If I ever sell anything there, I think I'll get interested in doing more.

Good luck, that was one of only two new starts announced here that I've had any interest in.

I'm not a believer in divine intervention, but I just checked my Alamy account and noticed I got $245 sale two days ago. So I can continue to concentrate my efforts with them, at least until that relationship becomes tenuous too. They've been a Top 5 contributor for me with only 1/2 my portfolio.

Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in

Alamy has been cruel to me.  Once in a great while, I get a sale for a significant amount - just often enough to preserve the illusion that something might happen.  Then, weeks go by.  Then, a sale that nets me $3.   The intervals between sales get longer.

Last year I was getting regular sales from them and it was looking good, bringing in hundreds a month, even though the actual sale price was falling. The last three or four months have been awful. So far this month, I have got 50c commission. The problem with Alamy is lack of sales volume and consistency. I know I might get a $500 sale tomorrow but it's equally possible that I'll get to the end of the month with nothing more.

Agree totally Dan,

Lost interest a year or so ago, got motivated again and uploaded a bit, another cut came and I went away for a while, uploaded sporadically. Got interested again a few months ago and uploaded. Poor sales in may really lost interest, Alamy's changes hurt me a lot this year. Just a long line of being hurt by best match changes and commission cuts. Also realised that I dislike the agencies and I just cant be bothered (standards have risen and I'm not interested enough for images to sit at the back of a search .
Even struggling for motivation to set up symbiostock site (I'm halfway through uploading). Logged in here and stock sites today, first time this month (I remember checking ss multiple times a day years ago
I'm going back and watching photography videos and doing stuff for myself, its nice being able say 'yep its has no commercial potential and is iso 800+ but is still nice'. Getting back to having fun exploring new stuff.
I'm lucky enough to have good day job that pays well, my stock can sit in and bring the income it does (still significant, but only a fraction of what it was), I cant see myself uploading to a stock site again

Phil

Quote from: ShadySue on July 11, 2013, 20:35

Quote from: stockastic on July 11, 2013, 20:15

I put quite a few on MacroGrafiks and I hope they go somewhere.  If I ever sell anything there, I think I'll get interested in doing more.

Good luck, that was one of only two new starts announced here that I've had any interest in.

what is the other one? cheers

The geo one, as an idea - probably mostly because the only image buyer I actually know would really love the precise locations; but I thought the macro one had a better possibility of generating reasonable sales, if they kept going.

Funny thing about having your own site. You start getting real picky about which agencies you want to share your images with. The sub sites start looking less and less attractive every time you get a sale on your own site. I pretty much only contribute new images to a few (maybe 3) smaller sites that pay really well. I just can't get myself to upload to the sub sites anymore. The self hosted train has just started rolling and it is starting to pick up some steam. Eventually "self hosted" is going to start showing up in the poll results and as soon as it does people are going to start realizing that they need to get on board or they are going to be left behind. Once that happens contributors will start curating their portfolios and the agencies that don't pay a reasonable commission will start losing those images.
I don't buy the argument that contributors are a dime a dozen and for every one that leaves there are 10 more ready to replace them. As far as overall contributors that may be correct but if you adjust that to "quality contributors" then the story changes dramatically. It is the quality contributors that are going to take the time to build their own sites and are going to see positive results. When enough "quality contributors" stop adding images to the agencies or even start removing them, the agencies are going to be in trouble. Customers will start realizing that the best images are no longer with the large agencies and they will get used to looking elsewhere.

Dan, don't give up just yet... just adjust your focus. Change is coming. You are just at the forefront of it. Others will follow, it's just a matter of time. 55 new self hosted sites in 6 months is pretty impressive. I bet that number is 200 by the end of the year. I said it two years ago that "the future is in the little guys". I still believe that but I will amend it to include "self hosted" as well.

Great post. When I started out there had been many arguments to have a real Agency in your back...all illusions sadly of the time being.

In 2005 I thought:
1) They may be better able to handle a proper payment system and protect me against fraud, processing problems etc.
Turns out they pass that risk along to us. Chargebacks are our own risk. We do not get any compensation for stolen material. Not from the Agency nor from the thieve. Nowadays there are many payment processors out there who seem to provide a better service and are accessible to everyone.

2) They are able to do proper advertising for my material.
Truth is, a good SEO and a generic script like WP is more effective than the sums any Agency may spend on Advertising. Otherwise the symbiostock material would not rank so high in the image searchesEven if a Agency spends 200.000 $ a month on, lets say, Google adwords, and the Agency has 200.000 Contributors (which the hue agencies have), then they spend exactly 1 $ on promoting your material, I can do this myself. I can even spend ten times more if you wish (10$) and I doubt many agencies spend more then 2.000.000 a month on ads. Plus: I do not promote any free images.

3) They can handle the technical part….I got no Idea about that.
Truth is, if you ever installed Symbiostock, Ktools, CMSaccount etc you will find out that it is actually just a few clicks. To be honest, in most cases this may usually be followed by 2 days of frustration of some problem which is finally solved easier than you thought. But thats it then. No life long frustration with any abusive behavior of a Agency. Just a couple of clicks and maybe helpful forum posts.[/b]

4) How can I, as a small individual, compete with the big boys…
See number 2. If you use a well done SEO script you have the power of thousands and millions of sites in your back, since the code is something well accessible for the Bots. No single Agency, no matter how big, can integrate so well in the invisible structure of the indexed internet. Beyond that: you will have to compete anyhow. Weather your competition is distributed amonst the whole net or within your Agency. It is there and your success depends to a certain degree on the search engine/best match. You just have more control about it without a agency in the middle.

5) They protect my material from being stolen.
Truth is, they do not seem to care too much. In fact, they became more a security risk by themselves with shady deals like IS/Google drive or Bigstock/Zazzle. With those deals they devaluate our work or force us to compete with ourselves or give up on them.
In most cases of real theft the Contributor himself points out an abuse and many times he files himself a takedown request. I havent heard yet of any department on SS or IS which scans the net for illicit use by themselves. They only react - sometimes - on request of us.

Honestly, who needs a abusive middleman anymore? We can be independent, and even if we sell less in the beginning we will not feel like bloody losers being spit on…

Dan, I think it is a good time to take some time off. In two years everything may look different. I totally understand and respect your situation....

Tror ~
Your points are all valid, but I have a point 6, which is not being able to do anything like adequate customer service. A lot of the time I'm out of phone contact, even quite near home, far less internet; and I'm sometimes weeks out of phone/internet contact, even more out of secure internet access. Customers nowadays demand virtually instant, or at the very least next day, answers to enquiries. How do you deal with that?

Tror ~
Your points are all valid, but I have a point 6, which is not being able to do anything like adequate customer service. A lot of the time I'm out of phone contact, even quite near home, far less internet; and I'm sometimes weeks out of phone/internet contact, even more out of secure internet access. Customers nowadays demand virtually instant, or at the very least next day, answers to enquiries. How do you deal with that?

You got a valid point here, although I have to say that I am almost 24h connected. Yesterday I wrote two emails from the beach, and first thing in the morning as well as last thing of the day is looking on the screen.....

And one thing we all know by now is that - without a doubt - things will only get worse.  The future with these agencies holds nothing but more commission cuts, more forced participation in subscription plans, more Google Drive deals.  And the other jaw of the vise is: more rejections for LCV, 'similiars',  more demands for higher resolution, and more use of half-baked bots to screen for 'focus', white balance etc.

Why invest effort in building a portfolio at one of these companies - given that it's really a bet on the future?  A sucker bet, in this case.

Quote from: ShadySue on July 12, 2013, 13:13

Tror ~
Your points are all valid, but I have a point 6, which is not being able to do anything like adequate customer service. A lot of the time I'm out of phone contact, even quite near home, far less internet; and I'm sometimes weeks out of phone/internet contact, even more out of secure internet access. Customers nowadays demand virtually instant, or at the very least next day, answers to enquiries. How do you deal with that?

I don't really have that problem, but I guess you'd have to hire someone, ask a friend, or partner up if you can't do it.

That would be 'hire someone', so probably I'd be even more quids out, and I'd probably be paying them for really little actual work. Finding someone I could trust to deal with financials ... big risk.
At the moment, I'm at home virtually all the time as we've got a huge garden project, but this is extremely unusual, especially if I were out and about shooting. Luckily the death of new files at iStock has coincided with this project, so I don't even feel I'm missing anything by not shooting stock.
Actually, I feel pretty much like the OP, but for me I don't see 'going it alone' as an option. Of course I realise other people have different circumstances.  3G is notoriously spotty and dead slow here, and 4G non-existent out of big cities (I'm out in the boonies).