On the other hand it would be very bleak if most of the photographers on the site were failing to reach even a 35$ per month.

On the contrary, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it's always been so.  Most of the people who sign up as suppliers probably don't submit more than a handful of images, see a trickle of sales and stop bothering.  They'll never reach even this lower payout.  But the next group that makes a few dollars a month might be encouraged enough by their first payout to put some effort in and increase their earnings. 

Back when I started it took me seven months to get my first payout.  I kept at it despite the meagre returns, but how many don't?  Those almost successful suppliers are the likely target of this change, not the vast majority who thought this would be easy money and gave up quickly when they discovered otherwise.

Quote from: Pauws99 on June 27, 2015, 08:22

Quote from: memakephoto on June 27, 2015, 07:36

I'd like to add to the above by saying continuous light is much hotter. In a short while the studio will get uncomfortable.

A con of flash is sync. You can only shoot max 1/200 or 1/250 of a second.

Why do yo see this as a con I've never seen a need to shoot faster in a studio environment?

You said above that flash freezes action. Depends on the action. There's some action that 1/200 isn't fast enough to freeze. You've never seen a need to shoot faster which is good for you. I have and sync speed is a con.

But keep in mind that it isn't the speed of the shutter that matters when freezing action; it's the speed of the strobe.  Most strobes have a t.1 time (time to for the light to fall to 10% power) that's much shorter than your max sync speed.  As an example, my Einsteins have a t.1 time of 1/1700 second at half power.  If your room is dark enough, your shutter can be open for many seconds without affecting exposure.  Put the camera on a tripod, set the exposure for 5 seconds, press the shutter and then trigger the strobe manually some time during that interval.  You'll be able to freeze action, or when combined with ambient light, get a blurred motion leading to a frozen moment.  This last is an excellent use of the rear curtain firing option, where the flash fires just before the shutter closes instead of when it opens.

Cleared up?

What did you use to upload?

Via browser or FTP?

It didn't matter; while things were broken, both browser and FTP uploads failed.  I uploaded another back on June 5th which worked.  The broken batch stayed broken, so I deleted and reuploaded.  Everything worked after that.

April was an improvement over a weak March.  Up 7% over March, down 8% from April '14, up 2% year over year.  SS was #1 at 44% of my total, up 66% over March and up 18% over April '14.  123RF was 2nd at 25%, down 32% from March (when it surpassed SS for the first time) but up 4% over April '14.  They were followed by Deposit at 6%, iStock at 5%, Envato at 4%, DT at 4%, Canva at 4%, BigStock at 3%, CanStock at 3% and a few other small fry for that last 2%.

It's working again this morning, or at least it did when I uploaded a batch an hour ago.

Microstock is all about small money for each sale, but lots of sales adding up to a good payout.  If you can't accept that, then forget about microstock.  I prefer it; I get many sales every day and watch my balance increase.  And I get plenty of good feedback about what kinds of images sell for me; a few sales a month on another type of agency would not provide that kind of insight.  But it's your work and your choice.

There's no good answer.  If the person can be recognized even after all the retouching, then yes.  If not, then maybe.  It's all up to the agency and its reviewers to decide, and my guess is they'll err on the side of caution.

Replace retouching with stage makeup.  Same problem and same answer: maybe, probably, why would they risk a problem?

And they're back.

Yep, I ran into the same thing this morning.

Things just got weirder.  I just got an email entitled "Your Recent Submission to Shutterstock".  It was a review message, with a new layout.  The images were another matter; they were from a submission from February 10th last year.  In the meantime, my submission from yesterday was approved, but no email for that.

If you mean that you uploaded one single image, it might be weeks, months or never before you see a sale.  There are a lot of buyers and a lot of images on offer; it takes luck and patience for your work to get in front of a buyer who needs what you have to offer.  And the more usable images you have, the better the chance that someone will find them and throw real money at you.  Small amounts at first, but still real.

With that said, I'd tell you that BigStock wouldn't be my first choice.  They produce a small fraction of the sales of other agencies.  I personally do more than 10:1 better at 123RF than I do at BigStock, and even better at Shutterstock.

Good luck.

I am probably missing something, if it is a percentage (with a max fee or not) how can it be more expensive? Honest question. Its late here, and I am tired. 

A worst-case example, assuming in-country transfer: I earn $10 per month and want a payout each month.  At a 2% fee, Canva pays PayPal $.20 for each transfer.  Over ten months that's $2 in fees.  If they set a minimum payment of $100, Canva pays only $1 in fees for that single transfer.  And that's true no matter how much the payment is beyond $100.

Lee,

Could you consider dropping the 2% fee for payments under 100$?

Your cost do not go up if you pay under 100$ using PayPal mass payments.

Quote

Fee for each payment sent to a recipient:

2.0% of the payment up to $20.00 USD

2% of 100 is 2$, 2% of 50 is 1$ x 2 = 2$. If you automate payment through the API call, you do not incur more costs.

2$ is 9 sales lost just to get paid.

Thanks for considering.

There's a small flaw in your argument, Semmick.  If they remove the fee for a lower balance, it means Canva pays the mass payment fee every month rather than just the months the balance is over $100.  If I make $20/month, they would pay five mass payment fees rather than one when my balance reaches $100.  Oh, and one other point: it's a $2 fee, not 2%.  If your balance is $7.50 at the end of the month, you pay $2 and get the $5.50 balance.