Quote from: holgs on July 15, 2008, 06:58
- although rejected at DT on the basis of using the IS model release form with logos removed.

Get a generic one...

Editorial images at micros equals a waste of time...

Editorial images, by its nature, will get few downloads... Why accept peanuts for those few downloads when they can earn more (far far more) at traditional stock sites.  I just sold one at Alamy today, as editorial... At a microsite, even at a dollar a pop it would have required 80 downloads to just match the single earnings from one sale... And the image is so strange that I really don´t know if it will sell again... At a micro it would have earned one dollar, or less...

Since my earnings are from sales and licences from abroad my country does not charge me income tax... So the whole 100% remains in my pockets... And from here, to deposit in a Bahamas bank is like going to a local bank, with very tight banking secrecy... And I don´t get charged for depositing american checks in my local account... I really love to be here...

Too many sites with too many the same photos for too many of the same business model... I wouldn´t waste my time... And I haven´t... I skipped LuckyO (I was right) and I am currently leaving alone Snapvillage, Yay and every other... Indeed, I feel that market is oversaturaded and with the advent of subscription all over it has become a "thanks, but no thanks" These last months Alamy has proved far superior than everything else, with far less work.

If you think it very well and manage your images wisely you can have a number of pseudos and with that play the numbers and increase your exposure... And when the new keywording engine comes it will be more important, especially if you use the special annotations that will refine searches.

Editorial is not necessarily a newsworthy image, so some manipulation can be allowed in some cases (if the image is newsworthy then no manipulation should be done, but not all editorial images are newsworthy).

About posting the same images here or there it is a common question and the common answer is that common sense says it is not a good idea.  Despite you can compare rights vs prices at Alamy RF prices do vary according to size in a way that a full resolution image could earn more money than the same image at a micro even with a full extended licence.  Also there is the importance that buyers have to trust Alamy (or traditional sites) about their libraries.  It will be a disservice to Alamy, to other photographers and to yourself (if you take this as a serious business in the long run) to submit the same images, more now that technology allows to screen the web for the presence of images at some webpages and very soon buyers will use those tools to seek if an image has been sold many many times, where and, with this infor, at which prices.  So they will find out and you will get a lot of return sales and will affect everybody by hurting Alamy´s trust in the eyes of buyers.

Micro images should stay micro, even images with the "micro look" will do better at micros than at Alamy.  Explore the website and see what is offered, it is very different of what you see at micros.

Nice option, will look into it.

This guy is very accurate in many things, yet he presents them with a lot of very good humor...    Those are the classical micro-look photographs... he he... Did hit the nail on the head.

This is a tricky question to answer, since markets vary very much.  For very generic shots, those that are all over many micros and that are very indistinct I would go RF.  For something special, more unique, I would go RM.  The tricky part is that many generic shots still sell as RM, since the buyer may want to have a photo that has some degree of a history in terms of previous buyers, to prevent ending having the same image as a compatitor, as has happened before.  In the end, the more broad rule is that if a shot is unique, rare, or if you want to have control over its usage it should be RM. 

Life is change... You're alive... You changed and will change.... It´s only natural.

It is a valid question the one you ask.  I can tell you that it will depend on the style of your shooting.  I see that people focus just on RPI and many don´t take into account the time spent in sorting them, selecting and editing images, adjusting their color, cropping, then uploading, and also all costs involved:  from electric energy and fuel to getting to the shooting place to all other costs involved.  And if you use models then the administrative costs of managing the model releases can be a burden when you have several hundred going around.

It all costs money (and time... well, time is money).  In the long run you can recover this money, but if the time needed is too long then you have to take into account other financial considerations into the equation. 

If you see this as a business you should ask and ask yourself all these questions and find out if it is worth the effort.  Only you can put a value on your time according to the living standards of your city or country.  Then you will be able to decide what to do.  Otherwise, it will be just a paid hobby and sometimes, depending on your talent, a money losing one.

I would consider traditional licencing or other channels for this kind of work, instead of micros.

I haven´t uploaded in almost a year too and my results are about the same you post (maybe even better in some instances).  I expected sales to go to down to zero but the only site that has gone way down is IS.  The rest are very average month to month.  I have focused my available time on Alamy with very nice results, it is getting to the point of making me over 50% of my monthly photo income with very little effort compared to managing six micro sites.

Imagine that each of (for example) 100K SS users posted a free image, that would be 100K free images, then multiply by the number of micros, and add up the creative commons images on Flickr and those free images sites and then you have a huge problem.  It makes no sense, images are already free (for pennies they could be seen as free).  The only winners are sites with free images that get traffic, submitters are less likely to get any benefit from it.

This illustrates why micros do whatever they do and get away with it.  If photographers pull out for valid reasons there are many still willing to take their place, even under less favorable circumstances. 

I'm new in the game but for the three years into it I agree with many of Rinder's comment.  This cannot be "THE" business, it is absurd to think that numbers will be the same in the future.  This has to be a part of a photographic business, well diversified and well run. 

I really love the way many dismiss older photographer's experience very quickly:  they don´t adapt, some say... or are reluctant to change.  The fact is that we are seeing a trend in wich anyone with a SLR, a couple of lights and a few hundred images on SS calls himself a photographer (even professional photographer).  There is more to it than micros and even more beyond stock imaging.  We can listen carefully (or read, in this case) and be open minded and learn from the lessons of the past or we can follow the "peanuts" trend that Fotolia and other sites are implementing. Think micro and you'll always be micro.

If you faithfully think that in two years you will be able to live a good life from micros, well... good luck.  Hope that crystal ball of yours has a good reception.  I certainly know that from what I've been reading the last few months from top earning shooters here and on other boards the feeling trends not in that direction to the point that many of them are (some in a public way and some in a not so public way) diversifying in other areas (midstock, traditional licensing, etc).  Even a couple of hundred years ago Malthus established the model of aritmetic vs geometric growth of population and resources.  It applies here very well.

I personally don´t think that selling editorial images as RF at micros is such a great idea.  Editorial shots are usually sold less than non editorial, so for the payment you are going to get (if any) it is not worth the effort.  It is better to sell those at traditional sites, the very few sales will be very well paid.  For instance, my Alamy sales of editorial content average $240 this month and almost the same on previous months (that is one editorial sale= hundreds of dl's at micros).

It says "Photoshelter" but not "Photoshelter Collection"... How do I know which site it came from?

I haven't seen a single sale reported in any of the major professional forums over the web in several months.  There are many praises about PS, many questions... there used to be a hype... Now the most common phrase I see is "No sales yet".  There is ONE sale reported here by the photographer who took the pic, all the rest is vaporware.

In the end I wont be submitting any info to the US government at all...I don´t like the idea at all.

If all those micros and even Alamy pay me all my money in full and I deal with my taxes in my country I don´t see why I should deal with a cumbersome and absurd keywording process to then have to shell out 30% of my earnings to the US government for nothing in return. 

Not at all... well, I would have to settle for an APS camera instead of a full frame, and no more L glass...

They are macro, so it is slower... it should be seen as a long term investment.  If you submit to Alamy chances are your "L" images will find PS a good place to be, especially since Alamy targets a different market.  Sales are rare, but it is to be expected, they are new in the market.

This is exactly why I think that selling people's images as RF micro is not such a great idea... The licence agreement becomes useless and trying to police these (and worst) uses is impossible.

Quote from: Perry on June 11, 2008, 17:54
I try to divide my images as following:

Microstock RF:

-no people shots. If I was a model for someone I'd like to know that the images cannot be used forever over and over.
-images with not-so-perfect lightning
-generic, "universal" subjects
-images that are easy to produce very fast, low production value

RM (almost my all macrostock images are RM):

-people shots
-technically good shots with good lighting
-special subjects (they won't sell as microstock anyway)
-"lucky shots" special moments that are hard to capture
-images that are hard to produce, high production value
-editorial photography
-"creative" and "artsy" shots (that would propably be rejected by microstock inspectors anyway )

Well said, it is the way I do it.

Unique shots should always be sold under RM licences.  To put them as RF in a micro site is to devaluate them. 

It seems that instead of going up in prices for single images all sites now try to pull these disgusting subs (at least disgusting for us).  I don´t know, but this is a new version of the "race to the bottom" that I tought we had surpassed last year... If this trend continues we will see diminishing returns and people leaving those sites that do not have an opt-out option.  Agencies will always use corporate spin to promise more sales, more returns... in the end they will profit, we wont.

This is exactly why I just figured out that my portfolios on micros are just not going to get more pics in...

The last 3 months Alamy has lead my earnings without much hassle... Even ONE sale at Alamy outperforms most of my micros (at least 4 out of 6)...

And then this TIME thing... it is an absolute insult.  It just proves that micros are targeting big time corporate buyers, pocketing their big earnings and leaving us peanuts...