Yes they do. They have to be news type though, they don't seem to be looking for images with a long life span, like DT, ss and 123rf. Eg. they rejected the first image below of an annual festival in India and could sell for the next 100 years. But accepted the second pic. of a tournament which lasted 1 week, plus Tennis players also have a limited time at being famous. Also, don't send them any editorial pics. with kids in them. Cutcaster's world only has adults in it.

Quote from: borg on April 25, 2011, 11:44

So, where was problem with "Contributor collective" topic?

well.. I was a little uncertain about that locked thread (still am I suppose), and agree it may have been premature, but it seemed to just be flipping back and forth between complaining about who was or wasn't invited, why that was OK or not and arguing about a certain members actions and what actually happened.  I can't say that Dan's decision to throw in the preverbial forum towel didn't push me towards locking it either.  .. that's not to say Dan ask me to lock it, rather the contrary.. I asked him what he thought about me locking it, but he didn't really care either way, but I thought since he wasn't planning on being around I could just as well lock it.

fair point!

Quote from: Microstock Posts on April 25, 2011, 10:24

We could always just submit to macros. All the microstock agencies are becoming more about subscriptions. They all want a piece of Shutterstock's pie. It wouldn't be wise for an agency not to have subs, when the other agencies have them.

Well, that's what I'm wondering.  We all complain about IS driving it down to 22 cents, and wonder if Shutterstock is steadily herding all their buyers to subscriptions, and talk about how subscriptions are the nail in the coffin.  Should we be getting behind StockFresh if it's just going to be a clone of Shutterstock?  What's the point in helping them siphon off some small portion of Shutterstock's business, just so we have the hassle of submitting to more sites and can start getting our 35 cents from another source?

Yes, u make a convincing argument actually. But you just can't stop it though, there are too many of us already clambering in to try and get in to Stockfresh as it is. If some of us take your view point, it doesn't stop everyone else from piling in. I know some people who refuse to upload to ss because it's mostly a sub site, however they only lose revenue because of it. It's all going to get siphoned off eventually and we'll be blaming the sites, when it was actually us who nailed the coffin because of uploading. It's catch 22 in a way though.

Just seen ur post, hence the late reply.
I think a lot of them are former or current submitters. But I think you would probably have to be a good contributor and by that I mean, never to have caused any kind of stir in a forum, which probably counts out most of us who post on msg.

I did see an ad recently for microstock reviewer positions based in Australia, I have no idea what company it was though, as the ad was through an agency. I wrote a blog on the ad. as it just made me laugh, as it just seemed that anyone who likes photography could get the job. The link is below.
The ad is offline now, but I replaced the link on the blog with a jpg image of the ad.

http://www.microstockposts.com/become-a-microstock-image-reviewer/

Ok I'm trying to get excited about StockFresh.  I look at their site and see that it says "We believe in fair compensation and fair pricing."   And right next it that it says "subscription packages - 35 cents per download".

I couldn't find that..but there are a lot of pages and I just went to the homepage. I did find in the 'why shop with us' widget, "We take pride in the fact that our photographer commissions are among the highest in the industry. If you shop with us, your money goes to the right place � to those who work hard to deliver these great images."

Which sounds good. I should really start submitting more to them (I managed to sneak in somehow), as it may be a good investment for the future, the only thing is they don't accept much of what I send, I've sent 92, but only 27 accepted. They have gone in to the Big agency philosophy on accepting images, I guess you have to think big to be successful, but new agencies need images. I was shopping on DepositPhotos recently, they have 3 million images now and I can pretty much find everything I need, but on agencies with 500,000 to a million photos, I don't know why buyers would go there instead of the others.

edit: replaced wrong word

I finally hit $10,000 on Shutterstock!

That's brilliant Matt! And you dance really well too :-)

And what about this: "Your image is not in focus or focus is not located where we feel it works best.", when you have a picture with blur background and people in focus?
Someone has to tell them about DOF!

Lol!

DT has completely died for me this month, just 3 sales and subs too, I can't remember it being so slow.

Paypal has been calling me trying to get me to give them my info, and I keep telling them to heck off, since I had less than 200 transactions, and my payments aren't for goods or services.

I received a text message from paypal, which said considering the lack of activity in my account would I consider switching over to Moneybookers. 

I wake up today at 3pm

..and so does Kelly.

^^^I don't think it makes any financial sense whatsoever to accept a commission cut from the site that pays by far the lowest commission already.  All the other big sites can see that istock can get away with tiny commissions, they will all slash their own commissions.  Then istock will just cut commissions again next year or make it even harder to reach the next level.

Tolerating this is going to kill microstock for me.  It isn't easy to make money doing this and there's no way I'm going to work harder to make less money each year.  If all the sites keep cutting commissions, I will find something else to do.

It's a real shame that we can't all work together to change things, it looks like istock are having real problems and buyers are getting frustrated.  I really can't understand why so many non-exclusive contributors are so determined to ruin their future earnings by tolerating the commission cuts and all the other problems we have with the site.

True if they accept 15% from one site they must be prepared to accept it from the others. The other agencies will follow suit in time.

England will win the next world cup. Oh, that's optimistic, you want positive, um..England won the world cup in 1966.

Now for something positive on microstock


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLzDonjglY0[/youtube]