0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
The microstock industry will end on Dec 21 along with the rest of the world on the Mayan Doomsday.
1) But seriously, would you mind sharing how you see the industry develop in the next couple of years?2) Do you think it will come to a major breakdown within that time frame?
The agencies on top are doing fine. So the "industry" is just fine. If you were asking about personal profits for individuals, that's going to be a little less profitable for probably every one of us. (except slugs like me who are in the slow growth business) People with pig collections will be losing. They will still make good money and make more than the little people, but they won't make as much as they do now.The market can't expand forever, sales can't keep increasing, there are limits! It's not going to burst, it's going to stabilize at a comfortable size, maybe contract a little, but Microstock (or some form of crowd-sourcing images) is here to stay.
You really have too much time.Do not be so pessimistic.
I see 4-5 Agencies surviving after 4 more years and artists getting increasingly diminished returns even with same or greater output to their portfolios.Artists have the loosing side here as was evidenced these last years when commissions were cut. The best we can do is produce enough to make the downward slide less abrupt more like a slow down-slope. Maybe by then we would be in a position to have our content hosted on our own terms with a company just handling the search. Like a Google of microstock, they get 20% we get 80% and there is no curation, we set our prices, we host the content and they just bring the eyes and wallets to it.
The microstock agencies party will only last until a guy makes an filesharing indexing matrix so we can sell directly out our harddisk. The broad band is there.All this upload, inspection and categories we do now is oldfashioned.Keywords are not.All it takes is that we wing out different licensing options and connect model releases. The deal could easily be done between the contributor and the buyer. There is such a thing as IPTC.And legal stuff?Yes, that goes back to the old days, where people who did things were responsible for it. The end user.Same with weapons trade.Come on, some wizzkid, do it! Im too old myself.
We want an agency with an interest in a future more than 3 months ahead, that intends to keep participation worthwhile for producers of quality new images.
They aren't going to find me through some future "Google Stock" search site.
I have read all the posts on this topic and while almost everybody seems to complain or be afraid of microstock apocalypse still nobody raised the next important topic WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT ? Come on people !All those big players and i refer to agencies, without our work are NOTHING , I am sorry if someone feels offended, but as long as we submit our work for as low as 20% and continue to sell different form of art in subscription plans, like vegetables on the market, very soon we will end by selling portfolios for few bucks.....and off topic, here is a very inspiring movie China: A Century of Revolution [1911 -1949] Part 1
The rest: Gone.
Oh by the way! this is not only predictions. I do happen to know a bit, " behind the scenes" so to speak. Say no more.
Quote from: ClaridgeJ on December 04, 2012, 02:01Oh by the way! this is not only predictions. I do happen to know a bit, " behind the scenes" so to speak. Say no more. I still can't understand why you continue to waste your time with us "bunch, thats all mouth and no money" as you so charmingly put it, where you 'used to be but it gave a bad rep', but came back under a different nom-de-guerre.
Author
Topic: The end is nigh. What will you do? (Read 16007 times)
