I recently put a dozen or so images on Flikr so I can't talk from my experience. But a friend of mine uses it for his images, mainly landscapes, and he does get the occasional sale from it. It's also pleasant to get requests to add images to someone's Flikr group although I have no idea if there is any benefit doing so other than feeling warm and fuzzy.

It's easy to upload there especially if you send small files optimized for the web. I was disappointed that my view numbers haven't been higher until I realized that, according to a counter during uploading, Flikr as getting 5,000 to 8,000 images PER MINUTE.
 
When you scan through recent shots there you see that there is a huge range of quality from superior to gag-me-with-a-spoon ugly. Some Folks seem to upload every digital shot they every took. Can you imagine being a microstock-style reviewer sifting through all that garbage looking for pearls?

About 2 years ago I had an image of mine of the Magma Hotel in Superior Az stolen by a rock group in Eastern Europe somewhere named "Magma Hotel". They used it on one of their best selling CDs as a cover shot. I emailed them my, ahem, displeasure and got back an email that said they didn't know where the image came from. I sent them a copy of the original image showing them it was identical. I also offered to re-do their CD cover (they had really butchered the image--probably stole it off my web site as no stock site has it) in exchange for a minimum fee of $25. That was the last I heard from them. Needless to say it would be folly to spend a nickel to try for some "damage" claim.

*, I thought I had forgotten about this.

  Taking the deduction for your home is still a flag. The idea with the IRS is to stay under the radar, take only reasonable and justifiable deductions, and have lots of paperwork to back it up. There's a reason they put a little checkbox asking whether you took this deduction. The test is that the space is used 100% of the time for business, and cannot possibly be reconfigured easily to another , personal use.  And they WILL come and look, and once that auditor comes to your house, he's not going back with a "no change". He's got to pay his way..In an audit situation, the auditor will usually try to cut a deal on stuff that would take too long to deal with on a piece by piece basis ( i.e petty cash receipts), but the home deduction is all or none, and they will give you none, and it's up to you to pay a lawyer to defend it. And if you think that you're safe because you've gotten away with it for 3 or 4 years, you're wrong. Most full audits take a few years to wind through the system, and once they find it in one year, they will go back to the others. I've been there and fought these battles, and they are not worth the trouble and money. The best advice I could give is to incorporate. As a sole prop, I'm a big target. As a corporation, I'm lost in the crowd- just where I want to be.

I agree with most items here except with the incorporate advice relative to audits. I've been audited as both sole proprietor and corporation. Same ramifications with both types. As stated above they will find something to pay for their visit and to justify their selection of your books to audit. I suspect from my observations during audits that the agents for the corporate returns are even more aggressive. You may or may not have less of an audit chance as a corporation.
In my experience the few dollars saved with questionable deductions--meaning any red flag or even pink flag deduction--even after eventually being held as justified will never equal the direct costs of "hosting" agents in your home or office. Prior years records will come into play as well as countless hours spent accumulating records they order you to produce. Each audit in my case cost me thousands of dollars just to prepare for. Don't kid yourself that you are just small potatoes with minimal exposure. Once that audit is instigated if you have any brains at all you will hire professional help to get you through the process with minimal damage.

I challenge anyone to justify the "savings" of any red flag deduction with the IRS with the possible costs (financial and mental) of defending it.

The home deduction is a red flag of enormous proportions. Think of the size of the U.S. flag on an aircraft carrier. Take it if you absolutely have an insatiable desire for an IRS audit.

I believe that there's also a downside to getting that deduction properly. I seem to remember that that deduction needs to be "recaptured" when you sell the property. It may be that that portion of the residence is "outside" the normal liberal home sale exclusion. Check with that aspect of the deduction with a CPA who can explain the latest wrinkles in a very convoluted tax code.

Short advice: IRS agents also need work. So forget about the home office deduction.

I rarely upload any more. Maybe 2 or 3 per month maximum for the last year or so. It is just too little money to make a big deal of it. I have 715 images on IS and 769 on SS with smaller amounts on FT, DT, and FP. I must say that sales keep coming in on a fairly constant basis. My 2 or 3 best sellers on IS have maintained their downloads per month performance rate of sale for over a year. My total sales, like most folks here have reported, have dwindled slowly as the total cumulative image counts have risen across the sites. I think that the search engines are finding my images regardless of their age and that my sales attrition would have happened regardless of how many more uploads I made. I don't think many of us can keep up with the huge numbers of new images on a percentage basis. Thank God I don't have to make a living in this business.

I just peeked in there and found 0 photographs. Decent commission of 50% on $9.99 and under sales.
I consider this to be another start-up with zero info about why anyone should upload there. It's firmly at the bottom of the low earners list now but you never know. If it ever shows life for us photographers there's plenty of time to detect a heart beat. Til then I'm not spending another minute on

I don't know where he's from. But I'm from Arizona.

Although one day up and one day down... I came in this morning to see all my 47 images of the Cherry Blossoms in Washington DC rejected by Fotolia for a combination of Technical problems mainly. The same images that have been accepted on Canstock, Bigstock, Shutterstock, Zoonar etc. I generally take this in my stride, but every one of them....

Steve

Next time upload a few at a time of each subject so as not to tax one inspector too much. But 47 images of the same subject? Begging for rejection as too similar?

You can't search with English but if you use the drop down artists selection you'll see that Yuri has hundreds of images there properly attributed. Photooo may be just one of those "partners" we hear so much about.

I agree that there is an opportunity to organize "something" to protect our creative products. There is a compelling need for some method that so many independent operators can relate to. One thing for sure is that someone will come up with a creative idea. It may well be a site with 100% exclusive content.

I doubt that it would be worth the investment. Buyers don't care that a site is "capped" at 500 photographers (if that's true or not) or if they don't charge a commission. What else do they have going for them? Sounds like they're spending money getting suckers to sign up and that's their real business.

Hard to see from this if it's a scam or a very naive person looking to sell some images.
"Good" scams are usually much slicker. But I agree it's spam since you've had no dealing with this person. I'd hoist at least one red flag, though.