Please remember: FT has a long track record, measured in years, of not doing what's good for their contributors.  This doesn't appear to be any different.  The increased traffic will absolutely not be worth giving away your best-sellers, even for small size.  And, by the way, do you really think that those "requests from potential and existing partners" are going to stop at the "small" size??  Not on your life.

Think think think.

Well, they enforced their buyer's contract in getting that money back, so I don't think it's bad relations for them to enforce their contributor contract equally.  They have to draw the line, or else keep on making concessions to every conceivable "exceptional" situation that might arise, both from buyers and sellers.

Plus, it speaks a lot about them as a microstock site that they actually refunded the money to all the contributors that they did.  There are some sites (and one in particular I'm thinking of) that you wouldn't catch dead refunding money to contributors.

Quote from: Elenathewise on August 20, 2009, 22:57

Quote from: HughStoneIan on August 20, 2009, 19:58

Quote from: Elenathewise on August 20, 2009, 19:34
Nice image Jonathan:) I hope you weren't lying on the pavement at night in front of a speeding car to get it:)
But I see what you mean - if you crop this image horizontally or vertically, depending of buyers' need, the composition would still be great. Nicely done.
I am thinking of getting a D3X with new set on lenses by the end of the year, would make cropping like that easier. Would have got it earlier but am made to pay taxes this year though installments, not in April like before - it sucks...

Sorry, totally off-topic, but very hard to resist saying:

I wonder if WildDingo is reading this.  And if so, will he pick up on the fact that Elena is having to pay installments on her taxes.  Let's see if he can put 2 and 2 together and get 4.  

OK, back to square format....

Who is WildDingo - whould I be afraid?....

He's a troll who's been arguing rather loudly and nastily in some of the other threads that microstock shooters can't possibly be making any profit that's worth speaking of.  Nothing to be afraid of.  Just don't feed him if he shows up!

Quote from: Elenathewise on August 20, 2009, 19:34
Nice image Jonathan:) I hope you weren't lying on the pavement at night in front of a speeding car to get it:)
But I see what you mean - if you crop this image horizontally or vertically, depending of buyers' need, the composition would still be great. Nicely done.
I am thinking of getting a D3X with new set on lenses by the end of the year, would make cropping like that easier. Would have got it earlier but am made to pay taxes this year though installments, not in April like before - it sucks...

Sorry, totally off-topic, but very hard to resist saying:

I wonder if WildDingo is reading this.  And if so, will he pick up on the fact that Elena is having to pay installments on her taxes.  Let's see if he can put 2 and 2 together and get 4.  

OK, back to square format....

Yes, indeed.

XXXXXXXXXXLLL for 37 cents! 

Would it be usable for microstock shooting?

Sergey (Hippy),

WHY do you even want to bother with this forum at all?  Very strange, since from the sounds of it you're making soooooo much more in RM than you could ever dream of in microstock.  Why's this place rate even a brief moment of your thought, much less so much actual posting?  Something doesn't add up.  Sounds like out of the goodness of your heart you're really concerned about the sorry plight of micro-shooters.  Or jealous of them.  Or scared of them.......

Commendable.  Extremely commendable.  Thank you, Shutterstock.

Hope you find all the rest!



(PS - anyone know who the offender was?)

Exactly.  So how is Getty supposed to make any profit from this move??  Sure they have the resources to monitor use and deal with abuses, but will they be getting paid enough per shot to keep up those resources? Will those investigations be worth the cost?  Will the average blogger pay the prices they're asking?  And will those files sell over and over per day like they do at microstock in order to make up in volume for both the agency and contributors?  Doesn't sound promising all-around.

The photographer should submit to microstock.  They'd teach him a thing or two!!

Okay....now that she's gone, I guess I can say it....

HAPPY FLOWER POWER TO ALL OF YOU!!!

Anyone else experiencing a sudden spike in sub sales at FT?  Is it just a part of their best match changes?  15 out of my last 20 sales were subs, whereas about the 30 previous to those were by far mostly PPD.

Quote from: stockastic on July 31, 2009, 23:29

Bottom line: microstock contributors have all the clout of undocumented migrant farm workers.

I don't think micro shooters have even that much clout.  Where I live many undocumented farm workers are able to buy new pickup trucks regularly.  Try walking into your local government welfare office and say you're a starving microstock shooter and see how many benefits that gets you!

Best thread in a while around here!!  Thanks for starting it, MarkStout!

Quote from: graficallyminded on July 31, 2009, 22:17
It cracks me up, to read some of the responses to this thread.  You can't even post about a stupid rejection without getting it critiqued. This shot has good commercial value and nothing wrong with it.  It's an environmental lifestyle portrait.  Well done Mark, keep up the good work.

Yes.

Quote from: stockastic on July 31, 2009, 22:16

...  Do they think they'll be successfully selling nothing but kids' cell-phone photos, 3 years from now? ...

Dude, you just let out a great idea!  Now let's see how long it take someone to capitalise on it.  Yes....."Cell-Stock." 

Quote from: a.k.a.-tom on July 30, 2009, 01:39
Puravida...  no sir..  I'm batting 60 yrs and I've circled this planet several times, and been up and down just about every road in life....

There's no 'wool pulling' here,  some of this is bordering on just plain and simpleabuse of business ethics. Some of these outfits are just festering wounds of complete distrust in their contributors.   That's how I'm seeing it. =tom

.... probably why FT will be the 3rd I've bailed out on this year. 

Tom, you have a logical fallacy there. Some businesses have no ethics whatever, nor do they know or care what ethics are, so how can they abuse what they don't have? Those businesses simply keep raping their victims repeatedly and get all they can out of them, regardless of how loudly they scream, until the victims fight back hard enough as a group (one or two fighting back are easy to eliminate). Then they will back off and look for another way to rape them that doesn't elicit strong fighting or screaming at first, and so on and so on.  However, the good news is that most if not all victims are free to run away.  It just seems that some are afraid to, which indicates severe emotional disturbance.  And some just don't care at all.

Quote from: clustershot on July 27, 2009, 21:11
... (please send us the copyright infringements you found) ....

Oh, wow, a "community" effort?  Cool!  Sign me up!!!  You know how expensive hiring reviewers and editors can be, right?  So let's all share in this labor together (for free, of course, and for the good of the Cluster).

Wow....

http://www.clustershot.com/EmperorAnton/photo94243

http://www.clustershot.com/EmperorAnton/photo92593

http://www.clustershot.com/EmperorAnton/photo96236

http://www.clustershot.com/cloudscome/photo159583

http://www.clustershot.com/kanaka/photo348682
http://www.clustershot.com/kanaka/photo346381
(only $1000 each...)

http://www.clustershot.com/EmperorAnton/photo96449

http://www.clustershot.com/bidphotos/photo283041

http://www.clustershot.com/ostill/photo392256
(that one's only $220 for 683x1024 pixels!)

And it goes on and on and on and on, etc, etc, etc,.....

I like the title of the article.  Istock is standing up and taking serious notice, I'm sure!

The execution of eruption contains stray areas that are either too molten or too solid.....(no resubmit).

This isn't just for US citizens, unfortunately:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCkCWxv3kUE&feature=related

It appears these Senate bills are being introduced as a means of ensuring "national security" by regulating or drastically curtailing private use of the internet.  Perhaps just a false alarm, blowing smoke.  I hope so.

In the iRS instructions for schedule E, line 4, it says

"If you are in business as a self-employed writer, inventor, artist, etc., report your royalty income and expenses on Schedule C or C-EZ."

Happens occasionally at istock and doesn't usually last long.  I'm sure they're just tweaking to make for a better overall user experience for everyone.

Well, it's happened again on Stockxpert!!!  I got a  subscription sale this morning when I specifically have requested no sub sales.  I thought this was fixed!!  Unbelievable!!!

Quote from: FlemishDreams on March 06, 2009, 00:01

Quote from: lexius on March 05, 2009, 23:24
What else can i do, can somebody help me, please?

Since he has 125,000 images in his port, I guess it's a glitch in the database. It happened before: I had shots of somebody else in my port. It was solved. You will get a reply and an explanation soon. Zym is very responsive.

Either that or he/she is an extremely talented photographer able to master a tremendous variety of styles.

Regarding the issue with sub sales happening to some contributors even though they were opted out of subs, I received this email today from SX:

"You're receiving this e-mail because you opted out of having your content loaded to Photos.com and Jupiterimages Unlimited and we wanted to advise you of an error that occurred last week.

We were working on content migration between servers, and our Opt Out Process that excludes your content from loading onto Photos.com and Jupiterimages Unlimited was conducted out of sequence. This resulted in your images being offered from February 6 through February 11 on these two sites.

The error was discovered on February 11 and was fixed the same day. Your images are no longer available for download on Photos.com or Jupiterimages Unlimited.

You may see on your earnings report from February 7 - 12 subscription sales/downloads at $.30 each. In addition, you will be compensated with the Stockxpert PPD value at your normal 50% commission for these sales. You can expect this to be completed by February 20.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. Please let us know if you have any questions or need further information.

Best regards,
The Stockxpert Team"

Sure, the incident shouldn't have happened in the first place, but the way they made it right shows that at least some people at StockXpert do take some thought for their contributors.  I looked in my account and confirmed that my sales were indeed credited. And best I was able to find, my images are no longer on JIU or photos.com

What would have been the outcome had this happened at Fotolia, I wonder??