so are we "macrosaurs" really on the way to extinction ? 

What if the buyer is only going to make $2 by using your image?  That is quite possible with blogging and lots of other uses.  Some organizations are non-profitable, they used to use only free images but now sometimes pay the small fees for microstock images.  The BBC used to ask me for free images for their website, now they use microstock.  It has opened up a big new market for people that would never pay $100 for an image.  It is a shame that the big businesses that make lots of profit from our images also use microstock but that is a problem that the sites should address, I don't see it as a reason to condemn microstock.  And however bad you might think microstock is, the alternative is free sites.  If Getty and Corbis opened the doors to all submitters and judged individual images on their merits, not on who made them, we might all switch over but do you think they will do that?

i'm not interested in feeding the bottom of the barrel.
they can even sourcing from Flickr if they're short of money, not my problem.

100$ for a good image is a very honest price, take it ot leave it.

thanks god Getty will never open the door to the horde of microstockers
or it would be the end of Getty RM.

am i pricing myself out of market ? definetely no, it's just a matter of choice,
my pics wouldn't sell much on micros anyway as travel images have never been
hot sellers on micros so why i should ?

feeding the very bottom line including now the super cheap subscriptions
is a model where you just have no way out, you're at the complete mercy
of agencies, if tomorrow istock start selling everything at 0.10$ what will you guys do ?

don't you see the competition is just about price between IS, SS, FT ?
or you think prices are gonna go up ?

if it's so good and sweet how come the top sellers are complaining over and over
about falling revenues ?

macrosaur
The way I look at it is this...if you were not willing to take the small commision for that shot or any other shot then why would you even put them in microstock. You pretty well know up front that is the risk you are taking. If twitter hadn't bought that image they would have bought another..I really doubt they would go to a RM site to purchase it.

price apart, it's just not fair for the photographer.

we're literally scammed.

if i want to sell at 1$ a pop i can do it also knocking the door of every local design studio.
what's 1$ today ? the price of a coffee ?

they say target the designers .. well all the designers i know ask at the very least 500 euro
for a simple logo, 1000 for a complex logo, 4-5000 for a simple blog ... 2000 for an illustration....

why . should they pay cheap prices ?
and the crazy thing is they also complain in the istock forum, unbelievable.

do you know what i'm seeling on istock ? fruits, vegetables, patterns, and a few leftovers.
i can't even think of uploading serious stuff.

i'm a photographer, not a monkey or a slave working for peanuts.
it's gonna be very tough for you guys in the future i guess, as for me
i'll stick with RM and i'll keep watching the market, who knows maybe
one day my prophecies will become reality...

Quote from: Jonathan Ross on March 05, 2010, 11:32

I think that was the best thing said on this entire thread, follow what makes you really happy with an intensity and passion and you will usually always be content.

Yes, that's by far the best advice on the thread.

yes but can we also say that it's frightening to read on Ellen's blog that the president of the Stock Artist Alliance (SAA)
is selling microstock ?

i was thinking the SAA was a reputable organization, now SAA and all the big guns in stock are going
microstock for part of their portfolios.

Sanger and Lund adding pepper telling us about SEO and diversification, as if this wasn't the same stuff
heard since 1996 in any internet marketing forum or workshop.

i've the impression nobody really knows where the market is heading, they're all waiting for either
the sudden crash of Getty RM or the sinking of iStock or something in between.

there's just maybe no magic trick nor magic receipt.
i shoot travel, i will keep shooting travel.

i know i could make 10x more shooting models like Yuri or Sean Locke.
but it's not my style nor my cup of tea.

as Ellen rightfully said, you must do what you love.

Quote from: macrosaur on March 05, 2010, 15:18

is it me needing a course of math and economy?

Yes, you might do well.

First of all, you'd figure out it's called "economics", not "economy". Then in Economics 101 you will learn about Supply and Demand and that demand rises by lowering the price. The maximum profit is not achieved by asking the maximum price to sell one piece of your product but by finding the right spot where the profit per piece and the number of pieces sold optimize your margins - that's especially true with the technology when multiplying your digital product does not cost more than a fraction of a cent.

But I guess you're too old to learn new tricks, aren't you?

maybe i'm just too old... a macro-saur.

but i don't know a single designer who would draw anything for less than 500 euro,
and never ever for big companies for less than a few thousands euro.

would i like to make the cover of TIME magazine ?
of course.

would i do it for 5 bucks ?
hmmm ... i don't think so.

stick and carrot ... egg vs chicken ... but i still find unthinkable to make 6 bucks
from a logo of a millionaire company with plenty of cash to spend from their VCs.

i prefer to not sell at all instead of getting ripped off and give away my work for free.
somebody else will get the job, no problem, i can live pretty well without those 5 bucks
don't you think ?

exactly.

i've plenty of RM images that would never pass istock's QC and yet they sell and they're very nice shots.

it's simply ugly to search something on micros and finding the same stuff over and over because their
QC doesn't allow anything slightly different from their submission guidelines.

"harsh shadows" being the most stupid QC rejection reason.
what if i like harsh shadows ? what if i did it on purpose ? what if buyers love it ?
and what if i like de-saturated images, selective focus, artistic blurring ?
no, you can't, because getty thinks so.

and the funny thing, if you submit the same pic to getty RM chances are they'll be glad
to accept it and sell it.

i see plenty of fresh and creative images on Flickr by complete amateurs using a 90$ point & shoot.

the only agency recognizing this is Alamy with its non-edited collection.
the drawback is 90% of the alamy collection is junk but it's the price to pay
if you want to store photos you can't find anywhere else.

the big problem of flickr is the lack of decent keywording but i'm sure the pros there
knows how to deal with it.

it's certainly a heaven for thieves but if this is the problem there's plenty of designers
removing watermarks from istock and SS thumbnails, it's a 2 minutes work if you
know about layers and alpha channels, not to mention there's plenty of stolen
RM and RF images on torrents and P2P.

c'mon guys, let's get serious.

6$ for such an iconic image is a joke !

if it was sold on RM he would have popped 1000s of $.

and don't tell me he now had "great exposure".
i've never heard of that dude and probably never will again.

exposure is nothing, there's plenty of award winning photographers
starving or grilling burgers to survive.

he was lucky, period, and that bird paid very well anyway,
but this is happening more and more often.

everyone is making money and saving cost, ON OUR SHOULDERS.

I have one word for all those worried about competition, people writing books to encourage others to enter the business and other somewhat irrational fears that the marketplace will decide that microstock will cease to make money. If you really want to have something to worry about, consider the following. It isn't smart business people like Yuri or newbies or more amateurs or more pros entering microstock it's: Flickr

PS "Free" actually will have excellent financial rewards to market leaders in the future and it won't have anything to do with selling ancillary products or links. I predict that it will drive all models from RM to micro. I'm not prepared to reveal what that might be as it is in its infancy and not worth getting all riled up about. And NO I won't be making money because of it or promoting it or anything.

there's an interesting discussion about selling on Flickr in the Alamy forum :
http://www.alamy.com/forums/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=7511&p=1

i always wondered why Flickr doesn't provide any built-in function to sell photos as RM or RF
o any hybrid licence, they would make milions in my opinion, but i also understand that's
not what Flickr was designed for.

the scary thing is there are big clients already browing Flickr for images.
first of all, we should ask ourselves WHY are they spending time there instead of macro agencies.

are RM agencies to blame for being too strict in their editing ?
too much arrogance from their editors in picking up "what's selling" ?

because Flickr is clearly showing buyers are sometimes more than happy
to pay for images hardly found on Getty & friends.

i always thought agencies were wrong in their idiotic selection and tastes,
always pushing for the same artificial stock crap over and over, i'm not at all
surprised client enjoy some weird and creative photo from time to time,
especially if they can deal directly with the author and eventually
get a good price.

but my impression is it's not just about the price, but about something
else, about pictures that would be rejected by QC but that are great
nonetheless.

how depressing is this ?

6$ fr the iconic logo of one of the world's top 10 web sites used by tens of millions of people every day.

and how cheap is Twitter using that as they don't own it exclusively and it already sold 600+ times ?

unbelievable.

I just checked my profile and found out I'm being ignored by 3.   I have no doubt they're "professionals".   

i'm ignored by 12 !
they love me ! 

there's certainly space for both RM and RF and Assignments but why only RM should pay the price for it ?

i've nothing against microstock selling cheap images and hiring hordes of Flickrs but i've certainly something
to worry about when they start selling editorial travel and invading the RM market with images priced 100x times
less.

and please tell me, who's stopping micros from selling RM at 10$ ?

or istock selling editorial RM with a 100$ monthly fee ?

because i'm afraid this is the strategy they're already cooking up for us.

the getty bean-counters can't spot the difference between RM or RF or CC or Freeware, all
they know is iStock is now their top selling market and they're ready to kill the whole
RM market if they can squeeze 1$ more with iStock and Thinkstock.

In industry's early days a good photog with 500 decent images could make a very good income.

yes and no.

you can do it nowadays as well if you're represented by serious agencies with rich buyers.

what about Getty Images, Robert Harding, Corbis, LPI, Alamy, AGE, Masterfile, Blend Images, for instance ?

there's plenty of pros making this full time, some have 500 pics, other have 50.000, and yet
they're not starving counting their 0.25$ downloads.

there can be no long-term plan with microstock, and Yuri's recent statements only confirms this
obvious fact.