I've said this before but the difficulty in this business is how to extrapolate any useful data from these numbers - without being able to drill down.

SS has 48m images but how many of those actually sell more than once. How many are cats and dogs? Or landscapes that are basically mud and grass with bits of trees sticking out of them.

They have 70k contributors - but how many of those people are active? How many images do people upload by month and what is the distribution of uploading i.e. what percentage upload >100 or >10 or less than 10.

I use Stock Performer and my own records and I make my decisions based on these numbers and my own additional research....Otherwise all I would have to go on are these meaningless top level statistics and personal anecdotes.

I don't expect the agencies to produce that data because of the competition but this is why I rarely read the "doom and gloom" stuff  - there is nothing there for me.

PS. There is no doubt in my mind that some of the people who joined in 2011 to 2014 when we were saying the exact same things are absolutely raking it in. Great ports, contemporary style, creative concepts and compositions, market savvy and a huge work ethic....I envy them.

One can never have enough tomatoes 698,000, coffee beans 149,000 or Piles of Wood 54,000

Those goddamn commies and their drone thingamabubs. If I see one within a mile of my property I'll take a twelve gauge to it and that'll be all she wrote.

STABLE: Firmly fixed or not likely to move or change

STABLE: A structure for housing dumb livestock

Both apply I think.

I don't believe in paying for results before they've actually happened unless it involves medication or sex. So I've passed them up.

"Fotolia beats Shutterstock" - not in my Universe, although I do subscribe to the multiple universe/dimension theory.

FT are performing very well and I enjoyed a BME there in January - but they are still being comprehensively beaten into third place. Let's see what those hippies over at Adobe can do.

I read the "brief but titillating taste" and concluded I wouldn't pay a cent for that crap let alone three and a half dollars.

Nice pic, shame about the usage but there it is.

Ironically, arriving sweaty and lost at an airport at midnight is how I avoid doing those other things which you despair about.

I envy you and when I was a whippersnapper I wasn't worried - but now I'm older flip flops and rucksacks are out. I prefer to have my luggage on wheels and my hotel in easy reach of a Mercedes, driven by someone who doesn't smell of boiled onions.

PS. Apologies for straying off topic.

For me the wall is not running out of creativity, its financial.

Good point and why icebergs or beautiful people prancing about in Gucci don't feature in my port.

If I were brand new at this or any business though, I'd want someone to tell me not to be worrying about walls and focus on getting my pigs to market.

Some days I think I've hit a wall but the next day I wake up and I'm raring to go. Like anything creative there are times when the ideas won't come - but I do like this quote about writing from Terry Pratchett: �There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.�

Personally, I believe if you start worrying about walls you can end up building them. And you can quote me on that.

I wish fellow microstockers would stop pointing at other people's work or a person's earnings level/age in the business as a reason for deterioration in their own sales.

Besides which, the contributor highlighted has 50,000 images accepted and that says a lot about a work ethic which many of us (myself included) would do well to emulate.

This thread is about as useful as the Doom and Gloom thread over at SS....all problems and no solutions. Then again, most of us know it is unwise to offer solutions in business until you've milked the opportunity dry yourself.

"bottom line", "adding value", "outsourcing", "streamlining" are power words for shareholders and a source of outright glee whenever they see/hear them being used. I once attended an AGM where the company was basically going to the dogs but shareholders floated out of the hall on a wave of euphoria, simply because the CEO used all the right buzzwords. He could have given them a handful of magic beans instead of a dividend by the time he was finished. Sheeple - most of them.