I conclude that stock is more and more populated by industrial volume shooters and lurking accountants that spend a lot of time snooping into the most popular images, putting the popular stuff on their checklist, and reshoot it in volume. Not much you can do about it, except do the same.

... and yet everyone gets all excited when someone introduces yet another website that analyzes contributors' work and ranks it and everything.

Quote from: madelaide on January 17, 2009, 13:21

Yes, it would.  As I said, microstock prices are already too cheap and there is no need to make them even cheaper.  And if they had paid US$1, it would mean they purchased a very small image, which maybe costed them about 1/4 its credit price.  For an XL image, cost can be as low as 1/50 its original price.  This is tangible difference for me.

That's actually not true.  It seems whenever someone wants to argue against subscriptions, they always suggest that buyers are paying 25 or 30 cents per image.  If they were, the agencies would have gone out of business long ago.

Notice that I said "as low as".  Of course most buyers don't use all their credits. But even if they use only 10% of their credits, they get these too cheap in the already cheap photography world of microstock.

Regards,
Adelaide

Dan,

In fact I have different portfolios for macro and micro.  Microstock opened a huge new set of consumers who would never purchase photos otherwise. Unfortunately this also brought customers with bigger budgets, but this is not what I am discussing here.  My point is that, even in micro, I think there is no need to reduce prices even further through subs. 

Regards,
Adelaide

While SS is my best selling site by far, I don't like subs very much. Subs look like blackmail to me. It's like agencies say: "We have thousands of contributors just like you, and we don't really need you, so we will give out your images for pennies and if you don't like it, you can do nothing except to close your account. We will anyway have enough photos to sell because you contributors can never organize to fight us"

The truth is, if all agencies close their subs options, buyers will still have to buy images from them, probably in the same amount, or maybe just a bit less. But earnings would be much better for everyone...especially for us contributors.

I see things a bit different.  Maybe it's because I'm still learning to become a better photographer (although, do we ever stop learning?). 
I started taking pictures about 3 years ago.  After awhile, people I knew kept telling me I was in the wrong line of work and I should be doing photography professionally.  So, I got myself a website where I could sell my prints.  I've advertised and handed out business cards.  Guess what....zero sales after a whole year. 
I took the same pictures and put them on SS and have been making a small but steady income.   I wasn't making anything off those pictures.  Now I am. 
And I'm even published in a book selling at Costco.  Pretty good bragging rights for me at this point of my early photography career.
Sure, I would like to be making more for my pictures, but I haven't developed my talent, gotten a big reputation, and amazing equipment. 
For an amateur photographer, I'm pretty happy with my "second" job. 
Maybe someday I'll be able to quit my day job.