Quote from: ellenboughn on March 05, 2010, 12:27

I have one word for all those worried about competition, people writing books to encourage others to enter the business and other somewhat irrational fears that the marketplace will decide that microstock will cease to make money. If you really want to have something to worry about, consider the following. It isn't smart business people like Yuri or newbies or more amateurs or more pros entering microstock it's: Flickr

PS "Free" actually will have excellent financial rewards to market leaders in the future and it won't have anything to do with selling ancillary products or links. I predict that it will drive all models from RM to micro. I'm not prepared to reveal what that might be as it is in its infancy and not worth getting all riled up about. And NO I won't be making money because of it or promoting it or anything.

" "Free" actually will have excellent financial rewards to market leaders in the future"

Where will this leave the non "market leaders"?

Where they are now.

exactly.

i've plenty of RM images that would never pass istock's QC and yet they sell and they're very nice shots.

it's simply ugly to search something on micros and finding the same stuff over and over because their
QC doesn't allow anything slightly different from their submission guidelines.

"harsh shadows" being the most stupid QC rejection reason.
what if i like harsh shadows ? what if i did it on purpose ? what if buyers love it ?
and what if i like de-saturated images, selective focus, artistic blurring ?
no, you can't, because getty thinks so.

and the funny thing, if you submit the same pic to getty RM chances are they'll be glad
to accept it and sell it.

i see plenty of fresh and creative images on Flickr by complete amateurs using a 90$ point & shoot.

the only agency recognizing this is Alamy with its non-edited collection.
the drawback is 90% of the alamy collection is junk but it's the price to pay
if you want to store photos you can't find anywhere else.

the big problem of flickr is the lack of decent keywording but i'm sure the pros there
knows how to deal with it.

it's certainly a heaven for thieves but if this is the problem there's plenty of designers
removing watermarks from istock and SS thumbnails, it's a 2 minutes work if you
know about layers and alpha channels, not to mention there's plenty of stolen
RM and RF images on torrents and P2P.

lower volume photographers are already out of the market unless they produce exceptional images
or are specialized in obscure niches.

if i was a buyer i wouldn't know where to start.

there's simply zillions of photos around, and dozens of very good agencies, and to top it off you've Flickr, Photoshelter, SmugMug, and the 1000s of single photographers selling from their own sites, then finally the art galleries, art sites, auctions, ebay, and who knows what more.

it's just overwhelming, before or later it will be very hard to get noticed in this ocean
of photos.

how's gonna be in 10 years if Flickr has already 1+ billion images and Alamy 18+ millions ?

lower volume photographers are already out of the market unless they produce exceptional images
or are specialized in obscure niches.

if i was a buyer i wouldn't know where to start.

there's simply zillions of photos around, and dozens of very good agencies, and to top it off you've Flickr, Photoshelter, SmugMug, and the 1000s of single photographers selling from their own sites, then finally the art galleries, art sites, auctions, ebay, and who knows what more.

it's just overwhelming, before or later it will be very hard to get noticed in this ocean
of photos.

how's gonna be in 10 years if Flickr has already 1+ billion images and Alamy 18+ millions ?

I agree and those exceptional and specialized niche images are getting harder and harder to find because there are so many images. We have little control over how deeply they become buried.

I think that was the best thing said on this entire thread, follow what makes you really happy with an intensity and passion and you will usually always be content.

Yes, that's by far the best advice on the thread.

lower volume photographers are already out of the market unless they produce exceptional images
or are specialized in obscure niches.

if i was a buyer i wouldn't know where to start.

there's simply zillions of photos around, and dozens of very good agencies, and to top it off you've Flickr, Photoshelter, SmugMug, and the 1000s of single photographers selling from their own sites, then finally the art galleries, art sites, auctions, ebay, and who knows what more.

it's just overwhelming, before or later it will be very hard to get noticed in this ocean
of photos.

how's gonna be in 10 years if Flickr has already 1+ billion images and Alamy 18+ millions ?

Modern humans began replacing Neanderthals around 45,000 years ago you need to see that your time has passed. You should just cut and paste your repititious spew because you do nothing but repeat yourself. You need some new material to stay fresh and funny. 1 billions image on flickr isn't microstock.

Selling on Flickr is possible, and for good money I might add, but so is getting assignment work.

Anyone with a brain could have seen this coming. Search my original posts on this subject well over a year ago. The right thing to do is stop uploading and start going independent. In fact, just to increase your chances go back in time about a year and start making preparations then.

The logic is sound... with these sorts of things your greatest advantages comes when you happen to arrive at the beginning when the business is young.

Out of curiosity, are there any newcomers of the last year that:

A: Have cool and original stuff
B: Are motivated

...that have seen any success like the original guys back in the day?

Thanks Sean for that read. Not very exposing a lot of new facts but I have to comment on the following:

Quote

...He had read that the average lifetime return of an accepted microstock image is about $14 for Arcurs, but more like $2 for the average photographer. ...

I hope a few full-timers can chime in here but I would have left microstock a long time ago if my average return per image would be $14.

I can only imagine that an image factory is "able" to achieve such low results by producing so many images that their downloads are spread out across their entire archive.

Across all sites I contribute to (including very low earners like Crestock, Scanstock, 123RF and Canstockphoto) I average at $25 return per image.

Why even adjusting colors of an image not to mention retouching it if you are epxecting $2 of lifetime earnings??? These are very funny numbers. I find that hard to believe.

He is talking about earning per month, not over lifetime

In the RM stock world, yes I can understand high production costs, I mean many of us way back used to have horrible stock-costs when we supplied Image-Bank and Stones, etc, these were the tranny days, I know Art-Kane for example had modeling costs far more then anybody today BUT ofclourse an RM image also fetch a hell of a lot more money.
You get a good 10 years in any business venture and in the Micro world?  well we have had our time, etc, now its time to either wrap up or just persevere hoping?

I still cant see the why its a must to invest such vast amounts, such incredible overheads in Micro?  its a penny pinching world but with high costs.
Maybe its time to slow down and boot a few guys.

This could be a reason Yuri's losing money

http://rising.blackstar.com/there-are-no-shortcuts-to-success-in-microstock.html

Thanks. Always wondered why best sellers kept selling.