Quote from: macrosaur on March 05, 2010, 23:13
price apart, it's just not fair for the photographer.

we're literally scammed.


i'm a photographer, not a monkey or a slave working for peanuts.
it's gonna be very tough for you guys in the future i guess, as for me
i'll stick with RM and i'll keep watching the market, who knows maybe
one day my prophecies will become reality...

What are you talking about? Microstock is currently astonishingly well paid if your images are good enough. Obviously, if you are a crap photographer, then you'll struggle to make a living at it. If you can't compete then you are indeed a monkey and certainly not 'a photographer'. Shape up or ship out.

Quote from: gostwyck on March 06, 2010, 07:33


What are you talking about? Microstock is currently astonishingly well paid if your images are good enough. Obviously, if you are a crap photographer, then you'll struggle to make a living at it. If you can't compete then you are indeed a monkey and certainly not 'a photographer'. Shape up or ship out.

i'm criticizing the model, not the gross payout :

micros are a great deal for agencies and buyers, but not for us unless we agree
on feeding 100s of clients getting back a very small slice of the pie.

what you see as "normal" (selling for 1$ or similar) is simply unthinkable for serious photographers
but i understand this is hard to grasp for many of you.

Quote from: sharpshot on March 06, 2010, 07:13

What if the buyer is only going to make $2 by using your image?  That is quite possible with blogging and lots of other uses.  Some organizations are non-profitable, they used to use only free images but now sometimes pay the small fees for microstock images.  The BBC used to ask me for free images for their website, now they use microstock.  It has opened up a big new market for people that would never pay $100 for an image.  It is a shame that the big businesses that make lots of profit from our images also use microstock but that is a problem that the sites should address, I don't see it as a reason to condemn microstock.  And however bad you might think microstock is, the alternative is free sites.  If Getty and Corbis opened the doors to all submitters and judged individual images on their merits, not on who made them, we might all switch over but do you think they will do that?

i'm not interested in feeding the bottom of the barrel.
they can even sourcing from Flickr if they're short of money, not my problem.

100$ for a good image is a very honest price, take it ot leave it.

thanks god Getty will never open the door to the horde of microstockers
or it would be the end of Getty RM.

am i pricing myself out of market ? definetely no, it's just a matter of choice,
my pics wouldn't sell much on micros anyway as travel images have never been
hot sellers on micros so why i should ?

feeding the very bottom line including now the super cheap subscriptions
is a model where you just have no way out, you're at the complete mercy
of agencies, if tomorrow istock start selling everything at 0.10$ what will you guys do ?

don't you see the competition is just about price between IS, SS, FT ?
or you think prices are gonna go up ?

if it's so good and sweet how come the top sellers are complaining over and over
about falling revenues ?

Quote from: elvinstar on March 06, 2010, 02:51

Quote600 downloads for drawing a bird is a good deal, no questions, but as long as you know you're gonna make
that money out of that design.

what if you don't ?

What if your $1,000 photo never sells as RM?

i've plenty of good images that never sold.
actually all my favourite ones never sold.

but i can sell them  in many other channels, or print and sell my own books,
or keep them in store for years, up to me.

there's nobody forcing me to give them away for less than a cup of coffee.
the ones that sell are repaying my production costs so i can do whatever
i want with my portfolio.

we should instead ask the designers what would they do if suddenly
micro images become expensive ? will they all go bankrupt ? or will
they pay decent prices as they did until a few years ago ?

i mean i worked in graphic design in my past life, it's simply
ridicolous to hear designers complain about prices ... they make
a lot of money, they ask insulting prices to their customers for
the most silly and obvious designs .. don't tell me that they can't
slash 50 bucks for a cover photo or something they really need.

go in any studio and ask for their simplest brochure ... 1000$ at least.
so why should I, providing the photos, get 5 bucks back ?

don't you see you're getting scammed ?

of course microstock is booming ... you're selling at indian or chinese prices
to client reselling at premium western prices.

it must be a new Eldorado for them ...

Quote from: macrosaur on March 06, 2010, 08:50

Quote from: elvinstar on March 06, 2010, 02:51

Quote600 downloads for drawing a bird is a good deal, no questions, but as long as you know you're gonna make
that money out of that design.

what if you don't ?

What if your $1,000 photo never sells as RM?

i've plenty of good images that never sold.
actually all my favourite ones never sold.

but i can sell them  in many other channels, or print and sell my own books,
or keep them in store for years, up to me.

there's nobody forcing me to give them away for less than a cup of coffee.
the ones that sell are repaying my production costs so i can do whatever
i want with my portfolio.

we should instead ask the designers what would they do if suddenly
micro images become expensive ? will they all go bankrupt ? or will
they pay decent prices as they did until a few years ago ?

i mean i worked in graphic design in my past life, it's simply
ridicolous to hear designers complain about prices ... they make
a lot of money, they ask insulting prices to their customers for
the most silly and obvious designs .. don't tell me that they can't
slash 50 bucks for a cover photo or something they really need.

go in any studio and ask for their simplest brochure ... 1000$ at least.
so why should I, providing the photos, get 5 bucks back ?

don't you see you're getting scammed ?

of course microstock is booming ... you're selling at indian or chinese prices
to client reselling at premium western prices.

it must be a new Eldorado for them ...

You're welcome to view the stock industry any way that you like, from any perspective that you wish. However, I think that most of us on here are concerned with the bottom line, not how much each sale was to get us there.

Quote from: elvinstar on March 06, 2010, 15:19
You're welcome to view the stock industry any way that you like, from any perspective that you wish. However, I think that most of us on here are concerned with the bottom line, not how much each sale was to get us there.

You have to be somewhat concerned.  You can't just say, well, if I sell 100 at $1, I'll probably sell 10,000 at $.01 .  There just aren't that many people in the world to support that kind of theory.  There's a limit to the supply/demand thing.