rob,
on that page, down at the bottom there is a link to
REPORT ABUSE
and a menu that includes
SOMEONE IS USING PHOTOS THAT I TOOK IN THEIR FLICKR ACCOUNT

i suppose this is where u should report, no?

prior to any sale , be it rental property, stock agency, anything...
you will see the artificiality/superficiality/window-dressing  . it's to give potential buyers, shareholders,etc.. the impression it is doing better than ever
- in this case, as mentioned by our colleagues here, approval of apples and pretty woman,etc..
lots of fillings all flash no substance stuff, in order to inflat the bottom line.

they don't care about the specifics, so long as the numbers impress.
no one is going to ask how many of these come from long-time contributors or top-selling contributors,
or contributors who made the agency what they are.  notice the same thing happened to IS
when they let go of their exclusive superman,etc..  ie. everyone is expendable.

that's what business does. like the takeover corporations who replaced highly-paid middle management
and placed minimum-waged wet behind the ears assistant/interns in their place, to report a
remarkable profit.
last year .

Quote from: mojaric on August 24, 2014, 07:51

I cant understand the purpose...is just a collection of images redirected from ss or something else?

Something else.

definitely something else. if u missed the launch this is elitary ss project as Tror so aptly calls it,
i repeat it for you... as blatantly succinct as possible,


read our lips, "ss microstockers need not apply !"  (aside - hidden middle finger)

Two months for me, thats alot of Guinness..........C'mon, C'mon, C'mon

hmm, now u r talking !!! methinks i will apply for Stocksy;
another gallon of the good ole irish ,pls !!! 

as they say, one can only control one's own path, ... ie. only each of us can decide when to turn off the tap for subs .
let's say if tomorrow, a new site which provides us with the option of sub/higher price, like photominer 's pipe-dream, and they have the pull of the market with sales .

i would put all my exisiting work there, and remove the ones that i do not wish to earn sub commission at ss,is, ...

whether the others will do the same does not matter to me. it only matters that there is an agency which is earning money for me where i can choose to opt out on subs or not.

the pipe-dream being, that agency will have to be ss, as for now, only ss has the clientele.
but tomorrow, someone else may be daring enough to challenge that,
and also have the pull of the clientele.

i don't know anyone yet to be able to do this. thus, we smoke on ... like the natives around the sweet grass while great white bwana colonialists take their land away. *(sad analogy with micro today).

But you have to be reasonable. What would your solution be? Shutterstock, for example, started as a subs place, and I'm sure that's where the major portion of their revenue comes from. Now they have to compete with iStock subs and all sorts of other agencies who jumped on the subs bandwagon.

As far as huge corporations using subs, I'm not sure if that's true. My guess would be it's smaller businesses and smaller design shops. Large ad agencies do not buy subs. They buy images one at a time. (This I know.) But I don't have any hard data about it.

and here's the irony.. ie. smaller ad agencies buying subs.
they make lots of money ,these penny-pinchers , paying peanuts to us.
i am sure they are not creating ads from our images and earning 33-38 cts or even $28 per ad.

it's like the old saying where the old-school business person would not only expect to be paid fairly,
but also to pay someone else a fair wage or fair sum for dealing with each other.

  if only these small ad agencies and SS, IS think like that,
we would not be in this pathetic situation today, would we?

instead we continue to read of how xxx sold their business at walked away with a bundle of cash,
and each quarterly nets profit of millions, supplying millions of images, bla bla bla..
and then in the same breath cockily expects the contributors to be paid pennies.

or worst, give away their work for free.


if tomorrow, Oringer says SS will no longer do subs, and the cheapest image will earn contributors a minimum of $2, or whatever that is not 33 cts.
do u think the clients will run away to elsewhere
if we all do not cannibalize our work and give it to only another site which earns a photographer more than $2?

i highly doubt that. sure there will be lots of newbies giving away their work,
but their work will not be what the clients readily needs or will pay for.

my tuppence thoughts. but i won't hold my breath.

3) There are too many inter-agency agreements.  Agencies should be limited to licensing the images they represent. They should not be able to send our images to any other agency they want so they can sit back and let the other agency do the sales work allowing them to reap 80% of 50%.

+1
but what is more complicated than a 3rd party is where an individual (not another agency, but just some body) can start a site by linking to portfolios of yours and mine and suddenly, he is an �ffliate... treated like a 3rd party site.
to me, that`s scary.

Quote from: etudiante_rapide on August 21, 2014, 11:44

12_ what is your favorite pasta?

Pesto   

grazie mille 
http://www.pastaalpesto.com/about.php

The OP gave a good summary of the situation.  This is exactly what the agencies have to do, if they want me to start contributing again.  I'm not expecting it to happen. 

Specifically, this is what Shutterstock has to do - they're now the biggest and will increasingly control the market.  They need to give us some control over our pricing - at minimum, a premium tier with the decision up to the contributor, not the agency. 

Until then, they'll never get another photo from me.  And my photos are pretty good, and they sell.

stockastic, ... but SS did introduce a premium ie. Offset
except it also announced   microstockers need not apply

No Solicitation
i think the designer should have just put up a sign like that.

i have been to certain old-school businesses where the owner(s) are not afraid to "offend" a client who is trying to freeload on them. they literally walk to the door and told the freeload, "this is the door, ...
no free lunch here!".

what's wrong with doing the same on the web?  it's not defammation or whatumightcallit, if it is true that they did ask to freeload.
the problem is the myth that every freeloader will sue you if u pubish it . so, no one dares relate anything. it's no wonder the freeloaders continue to breed and now, it's the norm.

and the irony of this ? the same freeloader don't think much about paying $x for a cup of coffee at
$.......ks every morning . yet, he expects the photographer/designer/ .....  to give away his /her
work for less than he pays for a cup of coffee.

Quote from: heywoody on August 20, 2014, 14:02

How does one define premium?  My own experience is that what I would consider premium doesn't sell that well in comparison to what I consider generic crap (all within my own port).

You said it better than I could

i think that applies to most things in life, really. like fast food outsells your cordon bleu restaurants, garbage reading outsells good books, lady gaga outsells ella fitzgerald,etc..
what did someone say a long time ago re the same problem... something about the mass appeal of mediocrity to the proliterian majority. paul simon and sting said the same thing quoting this guy in the 60 s or something.
maybe someone here can help me with that.

and today , nothing's changed. wooly booly outsold round midnight ... crap sells.

Even sized down to 720px wide for Facebook then copied to Flickr, they are definitely 'mushy', so even if allowed, I wouldn't have thought of submitting them anywhere, and am astonished anyone would think of buying them.
So who knows what the market might be?

interesting !  so in a way Yuri was right ! the mobile phone is going 2b the new DSLR.
so why is Shitterstock lifting the bar so high up when their sales are down and potential buyers like this at Flickr is only looking at content ?
that's really something , who knows

p.s.
with more proof of mushy stuffs being used. has anyone seen yahoo's ad "we're big!!!"
sunrise and tons of noise and all sorts of things none of us would dare submit to any site, not just ss or is

this is a GOOD news from any perspective because finally these companies are realizing they can monetize images instead of giving them away for free as they did in the last decade.

and this will further educate the average users and freetards that nothing is free in this world, only snapshots and selfies will remain free, no matter if flickr prices will be cheaper than microstock, what matters is the fact that you have to pay and therefore the image has a value.

hopefully by domino effect all the other major photo sharing sites will follow suit and when that happens the freetards and the spongers will have nowhere to hide, either they pay or they steal, no other options.

i would not be the least scared by the immense competition and oversupply that could happen on Flickr, as always the Pro will deal with it accordingly.

what really matters is : are there enough serious buyers on sites like Flickr ? i've quite mixed feelings about it, if we take the example of 500px or FAA i'm not impressed so far, they're a good niche for what they do but still a niche, Flickr could turn to be a different beast considering how many users they have but there are all freeloaders as far as we know, how many will become buyers ? and once they're buyers what kind of incentives will they get to stick with Flickr rather than other stock agencies ?

+1 to = 4 for hobo
. response in pursant to bolden text of your comment.
hobo, i think the problem is market perception.
as a contributor to something like 500px, flickr,etc  even i as a photographer dislike the LIKE, LOVE, whatever there is in an agency which does not know what it is they want.
are you interested in traffic, with 90% of photog coming in daily to "heart" other portfolio with "um, check out my photos!" and other such drivel.

as ms contributors i am sure are not interested in gathering "hearts and flowers", they , hopefully,
want only to see downloads and $ cents.  at least i am !

so , imagine if i as a photog feel this way, how many clients will think the same, and say, "naaa,
this is just another social media. just a bunch of nice oversharpened over saturated pictures with banding and noise and fringes,etc". (italics not meant to be blatant, just realistic).

the problem is just this. in my tuppence worth. what do u think?