I believe the economy has a lot to do with how well all the sites will do with the changes. It doesn't look good at the present.

Is my "index" what they call "your points" in "account options"? Then mine is 46.25.

Quote from: Milinz on June 16, 2009, 20:29It is true that FP is adopting just facts and they are that microstock photos goes to standard (microstock) category.
Mid-stock will be live and running much better than before due to clear term authors must accept - that is not to sell photos on microstock or to list them less expensive than they listed at FP...

I'm not happy at all that FP was forced down this road, let that be clear. FP used to be the dream business model site for contributors. I can just observe that the "gold"/midstock images can only be sold at Alamy and Zymmetrical, and not on DT for instance, since DT has a subscription program. The "midstock" of FP is different from other midstock and much more restrictive in the sense that you can't have those pictures on cheaper sites. The question is whether FP is worthwhile to park "gold images"/midstock since those inevitably will return more on DT, SS, IS. Simply said: I don't want to trade hypothetical big sales on FP for proven and steady lower sales at DT,SS,IS.

As far as I can read on the FP test site, subscription is unlimited as to size, and a sale will be less (0.35$) than on SS.

FP is undeniably on its way down (compare the ranks of FP on Cubestat and CC on Cubestat with DT on Cubestat) and it's in fact a new beginning site with a mix of subscription and midstock.

Quote from: madelaide on June 17, 2009, 00:52Is my "index" what they call "your points" in "account options"? Then mine is 46.25.

That's about as low as it can get  - Mine was 79 when I left. Some people have almost 9,000.

i don't think this site is worth a worry. how many % does mostphotos figure in your monthly earning? 0.000000001 % ?

Quote from: tan510jomast on June 17, 2009, 14:32
i don't think this site is worth a worry. how many % does mostphotos figure in your monthly earning? 0.000000001 % ?

ROFL, you wish !

Thanks - that was very informative.

Quote from: FlemishDreams on June 16, 2009, 15:01

Quote from: hlth on June 15, 2009, 09:31Flemish Dream. If MP doesn't cut it for you, what small or mid microstock sites do you use? Or do you stick t the bigger ones at this stage?

When everybody had more or less the same rating on MP, I had sales twice per month. Then, the rating game started to play. A year or so ago, the site manager stated here that sales were important for the rating, and there was a mechanism in place to deter 1-2 raters that want to kill their competition. Both statement are blunt lies as I observed. Sold photos don't count for the rating at all, and they don't advance the photo itself. I had a "competitor" that gave me 1's and 2's in a row and I observed my rating not advancing for a while, whatever I did (logging in/out in their very slow site, "write your comment here", and things).

Sure, some people report regular sales on MP here, but their index is over 1,000. That means they must spend a lot of time commenting and rating. MP promised to get better for a year but nothing happened. A year with no sale is the limit for me, for any site. Keeping a site in your list is a burden timewise, and I want to limit myself now to sites that sell without having to socialize and comment.

"Midstock" has been a disaster. LO went down (and I made 8$ or so there), FP had to abandon its midstock concept, and Zymmetrical sells OK but not enough to spend much time on the cumbersome and flawed upload/submission system. Cutcaster sounded promising but after 3 sales in February, the site is dead for me. I don't know really of any midstock site that sells enough to pass payout level at least once per year for a moderate contributor like myself.

The only ones that meet that goal are DT and SS, and I'm thinking of putting my next batches exclusively at DT, and slowly cutting down on the rest. Now that the price competition started "for as low as 0.06$", I'm concentrating more and more again on assignement, like weddings. Those people don't complain about LCV and noise, and a D40 is enough.

I have 13 sales there, not much but at 12.5 euros, I will stick with them and see what happens.  I did play the ratings game but I look at lots of images on several sites and only took a few minutes to leave ratings each time I logged in.  I do the same with istock and used to do it with Lucky Oliver.  I don't waste hours on it.

I use it as a backup storage if my computer and external drive die at the same time. And don't ask me what's the odds, I jut had to recover some images last week.

Quote from: FlemishDreams on June 17, 2009, 04:56

Quote from: madelaide on June 17, 2009, 00:52Is my "index" what they call "your points" in "account options"? Then mine is 46.25.

That's about as low as it can get  - Mine was 79 when I left. Some people have almost 9,000.

LOL not really mine is 38.25 just checked. Well I don't care don't upload to them anymore anyway.