Quote from: cobalt on October 12, 2017, 15:21

These countries have human beings, don�t they?

Taking pictures of elderly people moving around, being helped or cared for by family, young people repairing cars or working in construction, families cooking together.

And you can do it in local clothes, or get a T-shirt and old jeans (not very expensive in these countries)...and voila...many scenes can be created in a generic way for the world market.

Sports, yoga, body weight exercises...looking after pets,taking care of the farm...environmental issues, global warming, pollution in cities...

Women starting a small business and families working together with their business. All kinds of images of children in learning situations.

And of course there are probably a million recipes waiting, travel locations, young people working on computers...I mean you need to have a computer and an internet connection, so there is already a certain selection going on.

There is a strong demand for localised content from all parts of the world.

There are thousands of artists from these countries already uploading really excellent stock.

the biggest barrier is internet access, but with mobile phones going everywhere, I am sure there will soon be hundreds of thousands joining the stock race.

Which is what I've been trying. However people here are very camera shy or hostile. Even normal street photography focusing on some people is met with anger. Heaven forbid if you look like you are trying to shoot a girl

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Quote from: goober on October 18, 2017, 03:16

Build a real business that people around you want/need.

And how many "real" businesses do you think succeed?

How many failed clothing brands do you think there are for each GAP?

Quote from: goober on October 18, 2017, 03:16

Build a real business that people around you want/need.

And how many "real" businesses do you think succeed?

How many failed clothing brands do you think there are for each GAP?

Exactly. Your friends could have been Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. That doesn't mean you would be a billionaire if you had started a similar company...

People still make good money selling stock. But of course not everyone, why do people expect that? If you want a job with equal pay go get a standard office job.

Doing your own thing means the upside is enormous, and the downside is 0 (or less).

It's reasonable to believe that working from home is something a lot of people would like, and photography is one of the top interests people in the world have. You don't have to be a nobel prize winner to figure out that the competition will be pretty significant, especially today when the barrier to entry is low.

Whereas my friend who has over 20 year experience in building project management landed 5 mill of work in the first few months of this year. He's been running his own company for less than 10 years. Face it, stock art is very close to the bottom of the financial totem pole.

Quote from: goober on October 18, 2017, 04:58

Man, you've talked me into staying with stock! Just got to work out how I'm going to invest the $8 I made today.

I didn't say you should stick with it. If you have 10,000 images and make $8 per day that might be a strong indication you might not be producing what people want to buy.

10,000 images could yield $0 per month.
10,000 images could also yield $10,000 per month.

Again, the barrier to entry is low. Start your own construction company and see how low the barrier to entry is. 

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Again, the barrier to entry is low. Start your own construction company and see how low the barrier to entry is. 

I'll throw in my microstock 2 cents.

Indeed, this industry's barrier to entry is low and investments are relatively small (money-wise but time-wise can be substantial).

The way I look at it it's small investment and small reward. Other start-ups require substantial investment, which can have a big up-side but huge risks. What are the risks of putting 5,000 images on micros over 2 years and not meeting expectations? Surely they'll still earn a little bit and then can go off to do something else which pays better or is more rewarding.

We like to hear about success stories but as someone else mentioned above, for every success story there are 1000 failures. Look at the World Series of Poker final event...15,000 entries which means 14,000 of those are failures and will lose their initial investment of $10,000. Even within those 1,000 the big prizes are highly skewed towards the top 50.

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Unless you start investing in studios paying lots of models flying to expensive locations etc.

Absolutely.

Pay models? No, I'll ask friends and family
Flying to expensive locations? Sure, I'll go because I love travelling for personal reasons.  I'll take advantage to take some shots, who knows maybe I'll pay for the holiday with the returns.
Investing in studios? There's some really affordable second-hand lighting equipment and inexpensive lightboxes. In my case it's 99% natural light.

Keeping costs low for low expected returns is the name of the game in this business. Look at the Shutterstock Custom...do they really expect us to invest a lot to get $15/image to give away our copyright 

Yuri Arcus saw the the writing on the wall in 2013 when he wrote this:

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Sometimes it felt like having a michelin restaurant inside a burger joint and at the same time having to match the prices. At some point the professional gets tired of selling 12 course testing menues at 0300AM at burger prices.

Quote from: goober on October 18, 2017, 04:55

Whereas my friend who has over 20 year experience in building project management landed 5 mill of work in the first few months of this year.

Deciding that you should have spent the last year building a successful business is a lot different from actually spending the last year building a successful business. There's a lot more to it than that.

Everyone knows they should have invented (insert popular product here) but they didn't, unfortunately. Having a friend that has set up a successful business makes you no more qualified to actually set up a successful business, than anyone else in this forum... with the exception of maybe having a bit of a mentor and maybe some connections. Just saying that you should have set up a business doesn't mean it would have worked. I should have set up Amazon, but I was busy doing not much.

There's no point regretting something that you didn't do which could have just as easily ended in heartache and financial ruin as it would success... and be happy in the knowledge that you at least managed to do something that provided you with a living for the last ten years. But if you want to head off and set up your successful business now... then go for it! I will wish you well and look forward to seeing your name in lights!