I'd always reply no what they say. Just quote them your hourly rate or what you think you're work is worth. It could be a negotiation tactic, because nobody wants to spend more than they have to. If they are unwilling to meet your rate, so be it.

What a crap move by Getty. If I were you, I'd leave immediately, let them worry about the 'debt' you have with them, if there is any.
The way they conduct business, and even make old statistics inaccessible is a joke and highly unprofessional.

Best of luck!

4K resolution is around $7 as well. So don't bother.

No.

No, you must own the copyright of the photo(s) you want to trace. Although I wouldn't be surprised if most silhouette vectors (of people) on Shutterstock weren't somehow derived from existing photos from others.

Maybe if you'd draw the bodies or heads from scratch, and use photos only as a loose reference, you could create a completely new image. I guess that would be okay.

I am surprised by your decision.

For me, 123RF deserves encouragements, since they have a very contributor friendly RPD when compared with most other agencies i.e.when the same file is sold by 123RF, I get significantly more than from SS or FT.

Besides, even if it only accounts for only about 5%-6% of my revenue, I see constant growth, therefore absolutely no reason to quit. I get from them more than twice my DT revenue.

I would rather focus the negativity on iStock and their appalling royalty rates and insulting RPD.

Don't forget that 123RF slashed our royalties too a couple of years ago, introducing an iStock-like RC system, promising twice as much sales to make up for it. Of course the sales stayed behind. So why should they deserve encouragement?

I'm from the Netherlands as well, and I never bother with VAT for microstock income. Of course you still need to pay income tax.
As far as I know, VAT cannot be applied here because we can't send invoices for our sales and we can't control the way the agencies are paying their contributors. Also, we have no way of knowing from which country the sale originated.

So what I do is this: I basically collect all earnings (in an Excel sheet) and at the end of the year, I add the income as one lump sum to my total revenue.

The only VAT I'm dealing with is when I send a client an invoice directly, or when I receive an invoice.

And for your information (could be you already know this): the 'missing' VAT from Adobe CC membership should be registered as 'reverse charged VAT' in your tax return ('Prestaties uit het buitenland aan u verricht').

Quote from: Tror on February 24, 2017, 08:01

Quote from: skysense on February 24, 2017, 07:42

Yep, that 30% tax is totally not cool, and i have it on all sites for clips sales in America.

Entrepreneurs should stop setting up companies in the USA. At least when speaking of crowdsourced and online based models. Just so much complications, obligations and privacy issues.

Yeah I'm from germany and have the 0% tax partnership...whatever.. but need to pay the taxes here then greedy governments ..:/

If Germany has a tax treaty with a 0% tax rate, and you're still getting taxed 30%, you should complete the tax form on VB. No sense in getting double-taxed, right.

Didn't get an email (yet), is it invite only?

Clearly, the 0.00 sales in the PDF are not given away for free, that'd be ridiculous. If you look closely, they're always paired with an actual sale of the same image.

Don't like this way of reporting, though. Stupid graphs with useless info, separate file download for my sales and worst of all, terrible sales. I saw some 0.07 and 0.08 sales in there as well.

It's hard to fathom how iStock has gone from promising market leader to an average-performing agency.

Most contributors who are happy with microstock either started out recently, or have no financial dependence on microstock.
You should consider the amount of time needed to create your work and then figure out how much your return per image is. If it makes you more money than the average job at the office, good for you. Hopefully it will be stable income for several years. But most people are working for (less than) minimum wage, happily spending way too much time on creating and uploading with little or no return on their investment.

Do you also get a royalty statement in ESP this month if the total amount did not exceed $100?

lee [at] canva.com

I tried to contact him. It's been two weeks, no answer yet.