I'm Canadian and this may not apply at all to Americans but I do see a lot of similarities. For me incorporation allows income to be retained and spread out from high income to lower income years, Tax on dividends are much less. Some protection from law suits against  personal assets, this can be a big deal if you own more than a 50D. The system takes you more seriously so as long as I am not being silly, gaining tax deductions for travel etc. is legitimized. I do pay more for accounting now. I just went through a hassle with my bank redoing a line of credit. They did not want to look at my dividend income when calculating loan rates and percentages. This was fixed. It costs more to administer corporations. A good accountant, and I would not take this on without an accountant, will tell you when you are making enough to make it worthwhile. You need a certain income before for it to make sense.

I congratulate VMP for tightening the standards on accepted images. They should think up and image exclusive scheme.

It's a good question and one you have to ask an iStocker as well. Most of them don't see 35% until they are well up the food chain contributing as exclusives. I'm not trying to dance around your original question but answer it by way of example. I suspect the reason iStockers do it is for the money. I find in general that too many contributers, me included,  contribute to far too many sites. This same argument of percentages goes on in one from or another on dozens of forums; why should I only take 40% for RM from Getty (home territory only??), I like Alamy they pay 60%, why is RF only paying 20%, These guys pay this, those guys pay that. In the end no bank, grocery store, car dealer or coffee shop will do business based on a commission levels; all of them want to see the green. If you think Veer will generate a good income based on those percentages then go with it, if you think you can do better elsewhere go with that. The old 50/50 relationship still exists in a few places but for the most part they have been replaced with deals that favour the distributor, like it or not. In the case of Veer they can easily argue that they already have a large customer base that is there the second the first image goes live. Advertising is in place, buyers are coming to the site now. No need to go through an exercise of bottom feeding in an attempt to attract a few fickle buyers. I'm sure that's the reason of the switch from SV to VMP. You decide if that's worth arguing over an extra 5%.

Quote from: Zeus on May 05, 2009, 09:33

I joined the party here a little late. Many collectives and "photographers agencies" have been tried out in the traditional market and I can't think of one that was successful.

I can think of more than one. But not one that has more than about 50 basically elite photographers.  And typically less than 20. And not RF either. The thing to remember about the co-ops is that invariably they are about profit sharing. So you potentially end up getting a cut of my corporate report etc. I doubt that would go down well in microstock land

This is why I believe that what micro/stock needs is some sort of market place, but which some sort of layer of administration. Rather than yet another microstock.

But aren't those elite restrictive groups and not the co-op, let's all do nice things for each other method being discussed here?

I joined the party here a little late. Many collectives and "photographers agencies" have been tried out in the traditional market and I can't think of one that was successful. It's not that I don't agree with the principle it just it would require some huge resources to pull off.

Hey, not ALL men

I have had a pretty bad cold the past week and you would not BELIEVE the number of people who have asked if I had Swine Flu.  (FWIW I don't have a fever, or nausea, and Cipro is curing it, so NO)

Kinda scary to be trying to recover from a cold and every time I turn on the TV it is this swine flu thing, though...!

LisaFX
I'm not a immunologist but Cipro probably doesn't work for a cold. Colds are viruses and Cipro works on bacteria. Colds just run their course. Better to save the big guns for when you really need them.

Batman,

What is considered a "new" account?  I have been with them for over a year.

Cricket

Which is a lot of time to have either have transfered your portfolio or have sent it in on CD.

I completely abhor "stock photo" sites that charge for hosting.
It's a clear conflict of interest and a certain indicator that they are not serious about selling your images.  They just want to make money from naive photographers.

It's an absolute indicator they have no intention of making a serious attempt to sell images. Big fat pass on this one.

At 10k/month, you're already working and likely don't have another job. If you quit uploading you'd have to pick a pretty cheap place to live because it wouldn't be long until the money started to dwindle. I'd like to spend some uninterrupted time writing.

Quote from: Zeus on April 24, 2009, 11:21

I'd like to hear form master vector artists here; what commitment in hours would you say you made before you were doing decent vectors?

It depends greatly upon where you are starting from. Can you draw? If not, you gotta learn to do that first. The software is a tool. You still have to put in the time to develop the skill.

Of course there are sites that accept dingbat fonts converted into paths. That doesn't really require skill at all.

So it also depends on what goals you'd like to set for yourself.

I see, so I'm asking the equivalent of how long does it take to learn how to take a photo.

Thanks,

I can't see any other way to do it. Many of these types of transfers have worked well for me. The good thing is, there seems to be no charges to me anywhere along the system.  Which is way more than I can say for bank transfers, which have virtual pick pockets every where the money passes through.

When you do stock photography you have rules and one of them is to make your images available to be printed at full size. That mean no noise and artifacts.

I think it would be more correct to say , LOW noise and artifacts, since noise and artifacts exist in all digital images.

The funny thing I find here is we (well most of us I assume) work on creating pictures (and vectors and graphics) for advertisers. Those advertisers are trying to get someone to buy something. Maybe this is simplistic but in essence that's what's happening. We are an intrinsic part of that chain, yet somehow someone asking you to have a look at something that may well benefit you is deemed a ripoff. I don't get it. There are things out there that are actually worth paying for. Every other year or so I doll out a bunch of money and fly to NYC to attend seminars at PhotoExpo from some of the very people who post here and elsewhere. I don't think it's a waste of money. I buy shoot briefs and market analysis data. I don't think it's a waste of money either. Yeh I'd say it's wise not to get ripped off but I don't think everyone who asks you to have a look at a product is out to rip you off. Information does cost money. Someone pays for it somewhere.