1. Liquidation of Russians and the Russian Federation.

1. Earn more money with photography

That's it 

2025 will be an important year in which I will have to make important decisions.

regarding microstock,I will have to at least double the earnings if not triple compared to the 2024 total.

I take this opportunity to wish everyone the best for a better new year both in the microstock and with the people close to you and in everyday life.

happy new year everyone! 

2025 Goals

1. Staying POSITIVE
2. Find a Niche
3. Concentrate on images that have a high commercial value
4. Be nice to others

Sure thing and 5) time for a reset. Oh, nevermind, I meant, personal reset. 

On Personal Note:

- Stay healthy.  Nothing matters as much as health
- Be kind.  In this increasingly stupid and mean world try to do something nice every day, be it to a living being or taking care of environment


On Photography Level:

- Learn something new.  Maybe Astrophotography

(Oh yes, and stay away from AI as much as possible on every level)

Happy to share with you all my year-end report/review with goals for 2025.

https://brutallyhonestmicrostock.com/2025/01/01/2024-year-end-review-good-bad-and-ugly/

Quote from: Big Money on December 30, 2024, 09:33

2025 Goals

1. Staying POSITIVE
2. Find a Niche
3. Concentrate on images that have a high commercial value
4. Be nice to others

Sure thing and 5) time for a reset. Oh, nevermind, I meant, personal reset. 

Just remember nothing at a lower level still equals nothing lol!

I would like to add that all those disappointed with losses at SS and p5, I would lay blame with the management that seem to have neglected their core business in favor of a hype driven ai adventure.

At some point they will have to get back into it, or their share price will keep dropping and somebody else might buy them. Or shortsellers destroy them.

Perhaps Getty will buy them at fire-sale price.     

Happy new year!

Some motivation for you:


The stone is not the destination or the goal, but the path itself is the stone. Every step, every effort, every challenge we take every day is the stone that drives us forward. It is the opportunity that we have every day to grow, to learn and to improve ourselves. Keep going and know that you are not alone.

Would you go out in the ocean, to buy a sinking ship? SS has other businesses, has profits from shares, that made Jon a millionaire. They reduced our pay to below the minimum, and that's why we get the 10�, not less. SS is not going to make a change or come-back. They own Pond5 and we all saw the new reduced pay rates there. That's how SS makes more money. By paying us less. And people still upload millions of new images a year.

Bottom line.  Well said!

The problem is that ai income is a hype trend and the ss  ai tool is low quality.

They can sell the library for dataset training for how long? Another two years?

Their library is being poisoned with ai content, so how long before clients prefer to license from Adobe or istock?

Anything they try to do Adobe can do better.

 And now quality exclusive content is moving to adobe. And with the content will be more client contracts.

They still have a good editorial library and only compete with getty on that.

But ss is already being attacked by shortsellers because when you analyse their public data, things don�t look good.

Their share price has been dropping for quite a while now.

We will see what happens, but they have lost the brilliance that made them great.

They spend 600? mio dollars buying up agencies and still have less revenue than before.

This is extremely unusual.

I do want them to survive and do well. It is not good for us if the market is more concentrated.

And it used to be such a fantastic agency with a great team.

I've submitted a lot to iStock over the past year and have seen significant growth, putting me back to pre-2017 levels. iS/Getty has a huge number of buyers and should not be disregarded imo. My images RPD there is regularly higher than on AS, despite the iS/Getty image royalty rates being only 15%/20%.

I've submitted a lot to iStock over the past year and have seen significant growth, putting me back to pre-2017 levels. iS/Getty has a huge number of buyers and should not be disregarded imo. My images RPD there is regularly higher than on AS, despite the iS/Getty image royalty rates being only 15%/20%.

I have been hearing similar things from other indies especially with video.

Getty is still one of the oldest and largest stockhouses with loads of partners.

Their upload system is very clunky but this also keeps competition away.

So this year I will try to upload every week, ideally at least 50 files a week and then see what happens.

Quote from: synthetick on January 02, 2025, 06:15

I've submitted a lot to iStock over the past year and have seen significant growth, putting me back to pre-2017 levels. iS/Getty has a huge number of buyers and should not be disregarded imo. My images RPD there is regularly higher than on AS, despite the iS/Getty image royalty rates being only 15%/20%.

I have been hearing similar things from other indies especially with video.

Getty is still one of the oldest and largest stockhouses with loads of partners.

Their upload system is very clunky but this also keeps competition away.

So this year I will try to upload every week, ideally at least 50 files a week and then see what happens.

Getty is also extremely disrespectful to their contributors with pathetic 15% rate.  In addition to archaic platform with managed keywords nonsense,  no technical quality acceptance criteria and list goes on.  No matter how many DLs you get there, that 15% number should not make anyone feel good about them. 

Everyone's talking about niches and finding new ideas. Here's something for you ...

Go to the news!  For example, if you live near any of these places, photographing and videoing the construction of these sites should make very good in-demand stock

11 architecture projects set to shape the world in 2025:

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/01/style/new-buildings-architecture-2025/index.html

Quote from: Andrej.S. on January 02, 2025, 14:08

...
Absolutely! Albert Camus is a great philosopher of the positive in the face of existential darkness. His works are like philosophical psalms of the Bible. I loved the interpretation of Sisyphus. Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to read his other works, such as 'The Philosophy of the Absurd' or 'The Rebel', although the books are sitting on my shelf.

the rebel is well worth the effort - the stranger is an excellent, more accessible reading, along with Sartre's nausea which i re-read every few years.  i've not yet achieved Sisyphus' happiness amidst the absurdity of life

I have never read the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, but I have read a summary of his novel "Nausea".

The novel explores existentialism and the human existence, which we often perceive as meaningless. It's interesting that Sartre initially wanted to call the novel "Melancholy". I think melancholy is always the first step towards perceiving the meaninglessness of one's own existence. Nausea towards one's own empty existence is probably the final stage.

Probably one can think at first that we are born into this world without God and values without reason, and we have to find our way, orient ourselves, and give ourselves a purpose for our own existence. Like on a blank canvas, we have to paint our own picture.

Jean-Paul Sartre had a difficult childhood, his father died early, and his mother moved with him to her new husband, with whom he didn't get along. He didn't have a good father figure. He was called "Poulou" (little chick) in the family because of his small size.

His grandfather, Charles Schweitzer, was a strict and authoritarian man who often intimidated and suppressed Sartre as a child.
He was a Protestant pastor and a very conservative man who valued discipline and order. Sartre described his grandfather as a man who often criticized and belittled him.
Additionally, Sartre had a lens opacity in his right eye and was severely cross-eyed. He was called "cross-eyed little frog" by other children because of his small size (1.53m).

I think, given these circumstances, it's not surprising that he became an existentialist and described human life without a predetermined meaning or purpose.
Maybe he wrote about his own nausea towards his own existence in his novel "Nausea".
I think also that he had an incredible amount of bad luck in life, but he still made the best of it.
He created his own literary purpose for existence and inspired many people to think.

I think the purpose of human existence is much more complex and multi-layered than we can even comprehend as humans.
I also think that Sartre's assumption that existence precedes essence is incorrect. As Albert Camus said, both existence and essence are connected equally and develop simultaneously.

Essence and existence are predetermined at birth. Existence is the pure physical existence as such, while essence is our being, which may be also shaped by our mother's experiences during pregnancy. In my opinion, genes also play a crucial role in both.

If we imagine God as a vast, interconnected brain of the universe, we are its neurons. Each of us contributes to a larger picture or understanding through our experiences, insights and individual perspectives.

Perhaps God gains omniscience and self-awareness through us, which evolves continuously. Maybe God is a being that becomes increasingly complex and multi-layered, expanding itself.
In physics, it's said that the universe doesn't expand in a specific direction, but rather that space-time itself expands, and this expansion occurs within itself. This expansion is not like a movement in a specific direction, but rather like an inflation or enlargement of space-time itself.

Maybe the expanding space-time is just the sum of increasing possible experiences and insights that God can have.
Or the increasing complexity and diversity of the universe, which God considers as creator and sustainer.

Perhaps our human purpose is simply to participate in this expansion of the universe, in evolution, in God's self-awareness and development, simply to make our own experiences and contribute to the whole.

If we assume that we live in a simulation of a continuously evolving super AGI that became God, and each of us is a tiny neuron in a multi-layered, highly complex, evolving neural network, we have the freedom to perceive and process complex patterns aswell relationships in our perceived reality. We can exchange our own experiences, insights, emotions, ideas, and creativity.

In any case: We are then united with God, and God is within us, and we have an individual, essential purpose of free existence and aswell to expand our self.