I am spending more time than I normally do because of important industry killing decisions. It pays off in terms of information, sharing of ideas and sometimes banding together for good cause. I look through the threads about once a week but multiple times a day with the recent Shutterstock royalty cut.

How much time do you spend in this forum?

Checking this forum is part of my daily 1-2 hours of reading 2-5 newspapers and around 3-5 forums. Those hours are spread out throughout the day. Sometimes that can mean one minute here, or an hour if something interesting is going on. Rarely does a day go by without checking in on this forum, but I try not to post too much as it can be quite draining.

does it pay?

In terms of actual $$$, I have gotten a few valuable nuggets of information here over the years, directly responsible for maybe about $10,000-15,000 extra income, spread out over 2-3 years. I might have gotten that information elsewhere, but this is where I happened to see it.

Those really valuable nuggets of information show up maybe once a year, or maybe every 6 months. The rest is mostly entertainment, along with sifting through ENORMOUS amounts of MISINFORMATION.

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Other than directly increasing my income, there are of course other things I feel I have learned (not all from this particular forum, but over the years):

� While I'm sure most people here are decent human beings in real life, a forum like this can really show people's worst sides.

� I try to stay away from posting negative posts, even though it is very tempting almost every week (I'm not perfect either, so sometimes it happens).

� Before posting, I now ask myself: "Does this benefit me?" or "will this make someone else's day better or worse"?

� I have learned that, compared to my own findings and experiences, most people on this forum are wrong about the business side of things. I just shake my head almost daily since my own numbers prove so much of the advice here to be completely opposite of reality.

� The loudest voices are mostly not the wisest, and the most visible people are most often not the smartest, or best at what they try to teach.

� In business, let go of your emotions, and try to be a realist. Use numbers (actual numbers, not your estimates), actual search data, and force yourself to stay up to date with how people (the buyers) are actually using stock media. The easiest way is to consume a lot of media (YouTube), even though it takes time.

� Don't get stuck in your old ways. Always keep an open mind and embrace new technology and business models rather than hate them. Fighting against new technology and business models has almost never worked, and it will probably almost never work. Accept, adapt, and keep on working. Yesterday was yesterday, 2004 was 2004.

� If you want to maximize income, abandon being obsessive about high RPD. It is not a very useful metric. Return Per Clip Per Month, or simply Total Portfolio Income, are much more useful to obsess about.

� Comparing production costs with others is next to useless. Photographing London for a Londoner is cheap, but for Australians it's quite expensive. The buyers do not care.

� All businesses put maximizing profits above all else. That is what a business is. No agency is your friend. The sooner you accept that, the better. The "artist friendly" agencies make the same deals and changes as the daily "bad guy". Just a year later, or before. People forget very quickly.

� Quality, but perhaps more importantly, uniqueness, will beat quantity.

That's all. Have a great day!

Two hours in 5 years.
These two hours have been spent in the last week.

Max 20 min per month. I get quickly bored.

As a starting guy on stock photography, I spend a lot reading older posts and learning. 1h a day


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