Self-hosted?

  On behalf of the dinosaurs, I totally agree. It was fun while it lasted, but it's over. But to give stock images of that era a little credit, the pricing came about at a time when you had to shoot film, and there was no photoshop. Everything had to be perfect in the camera, and then you had to hope the lab didn't screw it up. Also, there was a great premium placed on exclusivity- the idea that a competitor could not use the image you were using, and that it hadn't been used before. This justified some of the pricing because that took an image out of circulation for a year or more.
   Having said that, it was an exclusive club that was hard to get into. Out of hundreds of submissions, you were often lucky to get 2 or 3 shots in a catalog. And 500 page catalogues weighing 10 lbs each had to be mailed all over the globe, and took 6 months to produce, costing half a million dollars at a time.
   So the big change, as was said earlier, was structural. Internet delivery, digital cameras, no film costs, and no interest in exclusivity. Getty was slowly moving in that direction when Istock came out of the blue and hit them over the head. I remember bidding on a job for an AR for an investment company. There were a series of small 1" x 1" shots of simple stuff- stacks of money, gold bars, like that. I think I bid something like $250 each, which was a cheap price at the time. the designer bought them on istock for maybe $10 each. That was the first time I had heard of istock, and believe me, i could see the future. It didn't mean I had to like it, i just had to deal with it.

I would assume the other side of that is graphic design has changed just as much, so the customers are evolving and changing as well.

If he wants to replace his iStock earnings from the micros then I'm pretty sure the only way to do it is to follow that path Yuri was on until recently and flood every single site with everything you can.

Didn't Yuri end up deciding the exact opposite though and remove his port from everywhere?

You will no doubt say that many subs images are never used, and that may be true, but we could all have a much better living if we sold less images for just a bit more money.

That's kind of how I see it. I'm not interested in leaving micro. I just want to get a little more out of it. After selling at a variety of prices, I have a pretty clear idea of where the best value/price of my work. Unfortunately, not everybody has the same number as me, so some people will sell for less and undercut that. Just as I'm probably undercutting someone else.

good month for me as well! I am just afraid if Shutter were to fade most of us would be in deep trouble since we have such a high percentage of our overall income from them...

You could always try to create a delayed uploading strategy or develop exclusive content to try to boost sales at other sites. Or try branching out into other markets (POD, RM, etc).

As some people learned from iStock, a drastic change can hurt your overall income if most of it comes from one agency.

3rd best month ever and best month of the year. A little bit down from last May (2nd BME) though. I thought it was going to be a BME, but the last week and Memorial day weekend were pretty slow.

One important suggestion that was made by Jsnover didnt get picked up, its about agency employees posting here need to get a banner regardless if they want it or not.

Shouldn't they be allowed to be anonymous too?

You have to "be invited" (sign up) just to LOOK?!

It's the new business model of psychically buying images. 

I'm not sure other subscription services are a huge threat to SS. They've got that part of the market pretty well locked up. I would think if something is going to threaten them it would be at the higher end of the market. It would have to lure contributors away from them which would probably mean they are paying a lot better and a lot more. I don't see a company right now that is doing that with a large number of contributors. Smaller agencies like Stocksy could chip away at them, but you'd need a lot of Stocksies to do it.

I would say that a reading of this forum thread should make the advantages of allowing anonymity obvious already.  We have, so far, examples of Sean Locke, JoAnn Snover, Bobby Deal, and Laurin Rinder all having been directly penalized by various agencies as a result of things they've said or admitted to in these forums. 

We also have a growing list of valuable "anonymous" contributors who will cease to participate at all if they are forced to go public.

Even though I won't be directly affected, as I am already public, I expect we will all be affected by the chill this is going to put over the open exchange of ideas and information.  If I wanted sanitized pablum I would still be frequenting the agency forums.

I'm not sure that anonymity would have prevented these things from happening. Most of the people on here aren't really all that anonymous. If an agency is out for your blood because of something you did or are doing, they are probably going to find you and punish you regardless.

Actually I'm going to take back the inch I gave earlier on this.  As Mellimage said, it does feel as though I'd be forced against my will to do something - and I'd never accept that in real life, so I'm not going to accept it just to be able to participate here.  I'd probably have itchy fingers for a while if I couldn't post, but I'd get over it.

Yes, because we are never forced to do anything in microstock. 

oh really... interesting that nothing changes, actually it has, for worst

LOL. That's what I was thinking.

I hope that "gap in the marketplace in terms of pricing structures" doesn't translate as "we're going to drive prices even lower".

I thought their pricing was pretty good. I might think about joining, but the exclusive files seems like too much of an investment for me.