@JustinB

This isn't information; it's a pitch to trust you - you've been around the block a few times; you've surveyed users; things are changing, you embrace change, you'll use every means possible...

None of this is in any way a concrete plan - no one's asking for excessive detail. Just something more than blather about why you should be paid $40 a month. I'm hearing general platitudes about the industry and your knowledge of it.

Without buyers, it doesn't matter what you build or how lovely it is. There's a trail of all sorts of lovely development that's gone completely to waste because the businesses couldn't get buyers to use it.

Keep us posted when the site goes live and the skeptics among us can take another look

Honestly, I don't know how else you would answer this question. It would be like him asking you how you plan to make great selling images in the next year. You either can do it or you can't. There's no real tome of traffic building secrets out there (most of the strategies are all online). That doesn't mean it doesn't take talent or is easy to do though. I guess if you want to see if he can build traffic look at some of his other websites and judge him based on those.

The agencies on top are doing fine. So the "industry" is just fine. If you were asking about personal profits for individuals, that's going to be a little less profitable for probably every one of us. (except slugs like me who are in the slow growth business) People with pig collections will be losing. They will still make good money and make more than the little people, but they won't make as much as they do now.

The market can't expand forever, sales can't keep increasing, there are limits! It's not going to burst, it's going to stabilize at a comfortable size, maybe contract a little, but Microstock (or some form of crowd-sourcing images) is here to stay.

I've thought for a while that there would be a split in the industry and we would be left with two models. One would be massive crowd-sourced sites where everyone is invited, they'd have large sales quantities, but the share of the pie would be small. The other model would be smaller more restrictive niche sites that would sell less quantity, but you'd get larger profits because of less competition. Unfortunately, I haven't seen many niche sites popping up lately, so I'm not sure if that opportunity will be made available to many contributors. Unless, they build their own site.

I guess PE is only for the big shots, or people who can afford to take a financial risk. PE is not for everyone, so they will never conquer the stock world.

Is $10-$40 a month that large? That seems like a fairly modest advertising budget to me. Obviously, you want to get value out of the money you spend, but what they offer doesn't seem exceedingly steep.

any updates on this one?

is the new search.php as good as everyone expected?

Not sure. I don't have version 4, so I can't test these files.

I didn't see this coming.. I have no intention to counter strike

will just translate my previous post which wasn't in english apparently..

non of us are completely supporting ourselves with personal sites but it is something we should all have.. it is a step in the right direction.. what's wrong with advising people to start their own websites?

eventually (if you put your time to it) you are bound to increase sales on your site.. and at some point you(all of us) should reach to a level where we can support ourselves..

of course it is not a great thing that agencies are cutting commissions.. but if people don't like commission cuts, they should do something about it, not just complain in the forums..

- We had union talks! That didn't work..
- We talked about having a central search engine! That's not happening either..

I can see that the best anyone can do is "start a site" and work hard to increase sales, so when an agency says "less money for you", we can be ready to say "then no images for you"!

Otherwise, no matter what we write on the forums, they will keep cutting commissions..

I might have worded it badly in my previous post but bragging (as you misunderstood) was the last thing in my mind.. My motive was more like "why don't we all do something" instead of just talking?

I definitely agree. Having your own site isn't going to work out for everyone, but having an escape plan isn't a bad idea.

You should open a deli and forget about microstock. If not, I'd say upload to a bunch of different sites, evaluate YOUR numbers, and make the best decision based on the numbers. Anybody, that tells you they know what's best for you is probably just guessing or is psychic. If they are psychic, then you should probably get some lottery numbers and open that deli with the winnings.

Well I won't apply - sorry.

I'm trying to make a living and 50% commission is still a good deal in my books.

No idea whether you are happy with the 45% commission you get from IS (assuming you are selling 1.2 Million credits per year) or not but 50% is still more than 45%.

So why complain about a company that gives you 50% when you are perfectly fine selling EXCLUSIVELY your RF stuff for 45%?

This kind of doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

While it's never good to have your rates cut, I tend to agree with you. I think people should have a standard across every agency of what they get paid. And, they should organize their priorities or affiliations with agencies according to those standards. I know I do, but that doesn't seem to be the case with most contributors.

Agencies which lower commissions are not worth talking about..

Instead of going mad over the crap they are pulling I am concentrating on my own websites..

I made the same decision about two years ago, and I haven't regretted at all.

An iStock monopoly would not be good for either contributors or image buyers.

I probably would have made more money with an iStock monopoly, but it doesn't really matter. It's all hypothetical.

You can get Ktools for a few hundred and get hosting and domain for standard prices. There are other options too in the link Leaf provided.

Denis. we are not discussing art or not. Its about defending microstock which is fair enough but hey, lets not go overboard with it.

Isnt it quite obvious that the people who started their photography in micro and nothing else, the very second you even mention a world outside micro, well? you see what happend some posts further up. I mean its catastrophy, all hell breaks out.

Alln stock photography is a commercial cogwheel, nothing else and its as far from art as it can be.

Speak for yourself. I'm creating masterpieces. 

Seriously though, I don't think something being commercial or even stock art prevents it from attaining the vaunted title of "art" (whatever that means in this day and age). I know many of my favorite artists did commercial art (posters, comics, cartoons, etc.).

No point in you being so up yourself. Microstock is a great leveler. It doesn't matter how long you've been doing photography, which agencies you once belonged to or how many art directors you know. You're only as good as your sales record __ which in your case isn't anything to write home about.

It's not even necessarily about talent or skill. It's about creating images that sell. Most creative fields are like this though. It's 50% skill and 50% marketing.

Besides, everyone knows that the invention of the camera ruined the illustration business, so way to mess it all up guys. 

My point is from the buyers/art director's perspective as it relates to client budgets. The price point and annual licensing arrangement of RM was beyond the budgets for MANY small business's marketing programs. Then came the Getty and Corbis lawyers if an image ever got used for something outside of the original license. That would always send a shock through a company.

Then microstock emerged and ALL of my clients would tell me not to use the RM photos.

And that is after 27 years of buying stock photography.

I agree. Microstock didn't just include more contributors. It included more buyers too. That said, I think prices have and will continue to reach a more happy medium. Or at least, they should.