I think there is a bit too much focus on 'who is pro' and 'who is not' and where the line should be drawn.  I do agree that it is nice to know when someone posts about a 100% increase in earnings when they have a portfolio of 20 images, but to shun people who are 'not pro', however you define the term, or if we take the attitude that they don't have anything to ad - I think is narrow sighted.

For some reason there seems to be some sort of vibe that microstock shouldn't be for people who are new - that you need to be a seasoned pro before you can submit to the micros.  Perhaps this is part of the negativity seen?

I think that is forgetting what microstock IS and how it started.  Microstock is crowd sourced and can be contributed to by everyone.  If the images aren't good enough they won't get past the review process.  Micro is one the stock arena where everyone is allowed to play no matter how many images you have or how long you have been involved in the industry.  Being so tightly reviewed it allows everyone to at least try submitting.  Some people are happy making $50 a year - that should be fine.  For those who want an arena which is an exclusive club and only pro's can submit - they should apply to Getty or Corbis or one of the big macro agencies.  

I'm not for drumming up hype that microstock is any sort of unopened treasure chest, but to discourage someone simply on the basis that they are 'new' or don't have top notch images, I think is unfair.

edited for clarity - .. hopefully it is clearer.

I also have a perhaps-related quesion:
it seems that people are differentiating "less-pro" (to avoid derogatories) people versus pros by the size of the portfolio.
Shouldn't we be measuring the user's level by something like RPI (or your favourite similar stat)...?

Speaking generally, there are always certain tendencies typical for certain groups of people; and there are always some individuals within these groups who don't follow these tendencies.

What we see quite often in this forum is that "new" contributors argue very hard and make very strong conclusions about microstock market being there only for a short time and having very little portfolio. Of course "new" here is just a label, some people remain such "new" for years. And not all "new" behave like that. And no, portfolio size isn't a bulletproof indicator of a "pro" but it gives some idea about the person, and how reasonable his/her judgments are.

I like how jsnover explained that:

There are a few people who have more posts here than images in their portfolios and for the most part I think the best way to deal with incivility from this group is just ignore them. If people don't have any stake in the game, why feed the trolls by arguing with them?

For some reason there seems to be some sort of vibe that microstock shouldn't be for people who are new - that you need to be a seasoned pro before you can submit to the micros.  Perhaps this is part of the negativity seen?

I don't get that vibe at all, the vibe I get and certainly the one I try to put out is that there's nothing wrong with being new (we were all new at some point) but don't expect to have things handed to you on a plate, anybody that's had any success in microstock has done it by hard work, long hours, learning the craft and doing the research. I will and do support people who want to do the work but need a little guidance but I won't support or respond kindly to the one's that come here with questions like "what should I shoot" "how much do you earn" "what's your best seller" and I have even less patience for the one's who sole aim is to get info to put on their blog for enticing referrals to make an easy buck.

When all is said and done it is the buyer who decides who has their finger on the Zeitgeist of commercial imagery.  Those who are successful are successful for that reason and that will always be a truism, no matter what competition exists.  As to the �value� of this craft, well, when you invite the world to compete then the premium for exclusiveness is eliminated.  Thats the microstock concept . . . . like it or not.

But what must be frustrating is the copying of someone's point of view or concept.  Years ago I had a one man show of my paintings in New York.  Some other artist copied  one of my works,  the next month it was on the cover of Art In America (the artist obviously had financial backers since that is the easiest was to get on the cover of an important magazine), I was not pleased.

There's been a few threads recently discussing upcoming events where one of the topics is 'the future of photography' and in our case the future of stock photography, as somebody who does this for a living I face the same dilemma as many others in my position and that is we need to justify our production costs against our income, and those production costs involve a very important factor and that is our time.
 Selling images via microstock puts us up against many amateurs for whom time is not an important factor, years ago before I took this up for a living I was into wildlife photography and would think nothing of "stalking' a subject for two or three days, I have a photo of a wild rabbit in my port that took me four mornings of lying on my stomach covered in camouflage waiting for the right moment, it sells well enough but I could not commit to doing that now for the microstock market as I'd go bust, my point being that even though I like to go for the quality rather than quantity approach in my port I still need to produce a fair number of images each year to make a living, and to make a living I need to get a justifiable amount for the work I put in.

 Buyers searching for images do not differentiate between the guy doing this for a living producing 1000 images a year and the guy doing this for fun producing 10 images a year, and they don't care how long or how much it cost all they want is the best image, the microstock sites themselves don't seem to care either as there is no discernable recognition and this is what I feel will lead to the microstock sites own self harm because in time the full timers won't be able to justify selling via microstock because the return is not sufficient enough, the microstock sites will still get quality shots from part timers but not in the quantity they'll require.

So my own interest regarding the future of microstock photography is how can a person doing this for a living compete against someone who is prepared to sell at a loss if the sites do not recognise that we need sales volume or commission to match our level of input, and my question to the microstock sites would be " Who do you consider more valuable 500 full time photographers producing 1000 quality shots a year, or 20,000 amateurs producing 10 quality shots a year? " and "What are you going to do to keep me producing for you and not concentrating my efforts on the RM macro market"

So for me the 'blame' does not fall on the amateurs but the sites for not supporting the full timers appropriately.

We can't blame the sites because there is nothing to stop us creating our own site and using it exclusively.  That would soon put our site at the top of the microstock poll results.  We don't need to spend any money on advertising, just use twitter, myspace, facebook etc.  I know people will find all sorts of reasons why we can't do it and that is a shame because I think it would be more positive than constantly reading threads about how bad the future could be for us.  If it is impossible, there must be other options.  I refuse to believe that we just have to sit back and watch sites cut commissions.

We can't blame the sites because there is nothing to stop us creating our own site and using it exclusively.  That would soon put our site at the top of the microstock poll results.  We don't need to spend any money on advertising, just use twitter, myspace, facebook etc.  I know people will find all sorts of reasons why we can't do it and that is a shame because I think it would be more positive than constantly reading threads about how bad the future could be for us.  If it is impossible, there must be other options.  I refuse to believe that we just have to sit back and watch sites cut commissions.

selling direct works fine for those selling something special, like news reportage, wildlife, rare animals, rare food, and anything hard to find elsewhere.

how do you hope to sell generic microstock photos at premium price when it can be found anywhere else for 0.25$ ?

it reminds me of one citizen journalism agency i joined months ago, called Demotix, they accept anyone and they think using Twitter and Facebook
sales will come but despite all their bells and whistles i've got not a single sale so far ... losers !

as far as i know the only decent sales they had in 1 year were the photos in Iran taken from Twitter.

and to top it off when you upload a new story they'll tell you the upload went fine and then they encourage you
to link the story to all your twitter and facebook friends..

* that's the last thing i wanna hear from an agency that's supposed to sell and promote my images getting its 50% fee.

Surely they already do, at least to some extent, in that you get increasing commissions based on your sales at most agencies. I'm pretty sure that on some agencies it is also more difficult to get images accepted until you have the sales record to justify their confidence in you. What more would you have them do to 'support' full-timers?

Yes you get an increase on some sites, but that applies to everyone irrelevant whether you upload 1 or 101 images a month, there's no incentive to upload other than what would be the result of your own skill. When you or I upload our images to a site they sit in the queue the same as the next person, they're reviewed by a reviewer same as the next person and on some sites reviewed by someone who may have only been doing this for six months and has a tiny amount of sales, when approved they go into the bin along with the thousands of others some of which may never see a sale.
FT changed the cannister thing a while ago so now you're competing against people on a higher cannister level who have produced and sold less than you, DT cut's it's extended license commissions and your images get flagged by people who haven't got a clue how the system works and model releases get rejected depending which way the wind blows, I get the same commission rate on iS as a guy with ten images and two sales, I'm top tier on SS but that's it there's no higher incentive, BigStock have a ridiculous upload system that requires wasting time to correct their system errors.
I'm sure I'm not the only one that's seriously considering whether microstock is financially viable anymore, or as in a lot of cases going exclusive with iS to get that little bit extra treatment (yes I know it's the same for all exclusives full or part time)

We can't blame the sites because there is nothing to stop us creating our own site and using it exclusively.  That would soon put our site at the top of the microstock poll results.  We don't need to spend any money on advertising, just use twitter, myspace, facebook etc.  I know people will find all sorts of reasons why we can't do it and that is a shame because I think it would be more positive than constantly reading threads about how bad the future could be for us.  If it is impossible, there must be other options.  I refuse to believe that we just have to sit back and watch sites cut commissions.

It's a very good point and one I've thought of before. If a site suddenly appeared that consisted of only the top 1000 microstock photographers (and finger painters  ) selling their images exclusivly at microstock prices for a fair commission it would be goodnight SS, FT ,DT et al. You'll never see the figures but I'm pretty sure that the top 1000 produce over 90% of all microstock sales. Yuri you reading this

RT !!  youre a dangerous guy!  look now what youve started.

Hey Christian don't worry you'll easily make the top 1000 

How much is the microstock industry worth now?  If we ran the biggest microstock site, it shouldn't be hard to attract investment and pay decent wages for a team to run it.  If microstock is too small, why not do higher priced RM as well?

Back on topic.

I don't get that vibe at all, the vibe I get and certainly the one I try to put out is that there's nothing wrong with being new (we were all new at some point) but don't expect to have things handed to you on a plate, anybody that's had any success in microstock has done it by hard work, long hours, learning the craft and doing the research. I will and do support people who want to do the work but need a little guidance but I won't support or respond kindly to the one's that come here with questions like "what should I shoot" "how much do you earn" "what's your best seller" and I have even less patience for the one's who sole aim is to get info to put on their blog for enticing referrals to make an easy buck.

This sums up my feelings exactly. Everyone was a newbie (noob, newb, whatever term you want to use) at one time. I would like to think that my skills have improved over the years because there were helpful people on forums. There were also people who gave the standard "read the f**king manual" answers, and sometimes I actually did exactly that. On some occasions I am frustrated with people who can't grasp a concept or expect someone here to do their research for them, but I always try to remember that I was there once.

There is no need to exclude the person shooting 20 snapshots who expects to get rich. If the snapshots are good, they will sell and that person will learn and no longer be a newbie. If the snapshots suck, nobody buys them and the shooter gives up or learns to shoot better. I don't have to do a darn thing!

But I am going to share some common sense insights that I've figured out along the way, offer encouragement, and speak out in defense of a newbie's freedom to put his or her skills to the test.  And if that scares the veterans out there, you better step up your game.  God didn't grant you the position you hold today.  You worked hard to get where you are, but you can't deny others the right to do the same.

It's not scary.  But there's a difference between saying "Good luck on your next milestone" (being friendly) and providing a roadmap, which is what some people seem to want to do with their classes, books and such.

Doesn't this thread remind anyone of the outrage that REAL PHOTOGRAPHERS displayed in the beginning of MICROSTOCK?

By the way ... I am a late-comer to microstock.  But, I was a Professional Photographer long before most of you got your first camera.