Albumo's corporate address is an apartment. Good chances are their server is in a closet there. And along with no marketing it probably doesn't take much for them to keep going.

I thought Featurepics would be gone already but they're still chugging along.

I suspect that cutcaster or Yay would be likely targets. Snap village is another candidate.

I'd second that!

Yaymicro is showing no sign of life at all!

I can tell you that Cutcaster is going nowhere but up.  We are very happy with our progress and have strong financial backing.  Plus I am way more open about the inner workings of our company than most others.  My burn rate and overhead is extremely low and we could hum along for at least a few years.  I just spend on marketing and tech projects. But I love the few doubters and the challenge.  Brings out the competitiveness in me when I get bet against. 

What shocks me is that companies like DRR can burn through 15mm and have nothing to show for it. 

Best wishes John!

Who knows what the stocks are, then he knows what can expect in business like microstock.... ;-)
No doubt for Cutcaster!

Based only on my experience it would be FP or CS. No sales on FeaturePics for 5 months. I gave up uploading to Crestock cause they reject 90% of my photos while I have 1 sale a month.

Some businesses are set up to get acquired. It's nothing wrong with that and it happens in many industries. They got excellent product idea but no chance to compete with market leaders so they spend most money on their product instead of growing business. In case of microstock their product is website they do not care about selling photos. Are there any potential buyers still around?

...Snap village is another candidate.

Definitely. Very little activity over there. I wouldn't be surprised to see them close their doors.

With recent economic stress and recent closure of PhotoShelter and demise of Dig Railroad, just wonder what sales venue(s) will go under next.

I really thought Albumo would be a goner by now, but still alive.

Digital Railroad had professional backing, investors, Sports Illustrated and other major companies rented server space, it was an archive as well as a sales site. They lost over 15 million dollars. If they couldn't make it, it's pretty scary looking into 2009 for upstarts and the old cobweb sites.

Can Stock.  Actually "sold" to Fotosearch which may make it a better site. I'm still not contributing there, but for those of you who do, you might watch and see if anything changes?

October 17th:

MicroStockPhoto is approaching its first birthday in a few weeks and we would like to inform you of some imminent and positive changes that will be taking place in the near future. For those of you that contribute to several sites, you may have noticed that one or two have disappeared recently.

And this one was stillborn?

I won't say it's impossible but I think it was FlemishDreams who pointed out that no new site since 2005 has really made it. So far that's true, and my feelings are that all we see are imitators with hardly a truly inspired vision for something different. Copycats who want a piece of the pie, which is already sliced up and getting stale. Subscription sites that sell for less and less in hopes of scraping up pennies to make dollars.

Lets go back in history for the one reason I won't say "there will never be a new site added to the big seven Micro sites". Seven is because I choose to include BS as a contender for worthwhile sites that bring returns for those of you who devote time to sites that bring in income.

Years ago there was a battle between Altavista, Yahoo, Dogpile/Metacrawler (which I still use because it gives good results), MSN, AOL, Netscape and ASK was a new site. Google didn't exist. Search sites were eating each other and buying up the smaller ones. Sound familiar? Then out of nowhere comes Google with a new way of doing things and now they hold over 70% of the market.

IF someone comes up with something different and attractive to photographers and buyers that is revolutionary, they could change the Micro, Mid, Macro photo market. Right now, the world economy is not thriving. Starting, just another micro site, isn't going to make it. Corbis is #2 and not turning a profit. #1 Getty revenue has been dropping. These are the big guys! Alamy says they are leveling off, but are expanding into the US market, which is three times the European market where they have most of their sales. Alamy was an upstart that wasn't exclusive and allowed anyone who produced a good photo, to be able to market them. They changed the market.

Digital photography companies have seen stock prices come down due to increasing pressure in the royalty-free photography business from discount Web sites offering pictures.

The reason why micro is interesting is because it's a volume business which is very attractive to the buyers. The reason in my opinion why it's so difficult for anyone (agency or photographers) to make a profit is the margin is minimal. Microstock photographers who produce very good work are underselling themselves, in hopes of making it up with the volume, because that's the way the competition is working. I realize this forum is for sellers and we all know how hard it is to make it in micro. Hard work, long hours, great ideas, a good eye, taking stock appropriate pictures, thousands of accepted photos and yes some people do make it. That's not the issue here.

What does it take for a microstock agency to turn a profit on such a small margin? Some people see the agencies and think they are pulling in big bucks at our expense. HA... if it was so easy why do they fail, one after another? Servers, advertising, staff, accounting, taxes, commission, software, programmers and after all that is done, maybe some profit. They sell photos for a dollar, after all the expenses, they  might make  pennies, just like us.

Any new site that thinks it's easy money and all they have to do is copy the successful sites is going to collapse. Watch them come and go. I have no sympathy for anyone who walks in to a highly competitive market as nothing but an imitator. It's like someone who thinks they can be a photographer because, heck, all you do is get a camera and push the button! 

I think the question isn't which site will be next but what's the over under on the number of sites that will fail in 2009. 

racephoto, i like the analogy of google for microstock. be different and succeed.
but then again, photoshelter was different , and brave too... picking on getty...
and they died right after that.  i like photoshelter's culture. they rejected all my "micro" type images and took just the unique ones. good idea, i thought, as you can sell the same image for 25 cents and 250 dollars.
but photoshelter explained why they failed. the public did not fall for that new idea of rewarding contributors with larger commissions.

so all in all, the final say is still the bottom line. 25 cents or nothing.
i think, it was someone else here who grumbled, "how long do we go?"
well, that is a scary question, isn't it?

Thanks very much John for yor response and for answering my questions.
I admire your approach - and yes, i will be with you.