I'll offer my assessment of the situation and ask whether or not anyone agrees.  It seems to me that the POD sites offer a service and some products to be comined with our "products" (photos or illustrations).  It is then our responsibility to generate sales by our own marketing and promotions because simply putting our products on the POD sites is likely to do nothing at all.  It's not a situation wherein we can upload our material to the sites and then watch the sales roll in, as most of us have discovered.  So I suppose the question then becomes one of how best to market these products and generate sales, which means more time away from photography (or creating vectors if you're an illustrator) to devote to sales & marketing.  I'm not sure I wanna go there.  Any thoughts?

Is anyone selling anything on the print-on-demand sites?  Sites such as www.artflakes.com, www.redbubble.com, www.zazzle.com, www.deviantart.com, and others.

I had this very thing happen to me yesterday, which I found rather odd, given the fact that I have other editorial photos in my SS portfolio that aren't newsworthy, such as shots of a tourist attraction in south Florida.  DT gave me the same response.  Is there another site that accepts general editorial that's not late-breaking news?

Personally, I find the FT review and approval process to be completely irrational and unpredictable, but I don't lose sleep over it.  As a result, FT is a low-priority site for me because it's a low earner and the upload mechanism, while certainly not the worst (hello, Istock!), is still a PITA.  I submit, they take what they want, reject the rest, and life goes on.

So all else being equal, price is the only way to compete?  Really?  I think not.

Definitely not okay on my end.  Nearly every page I visit looks like the following screenshot.

I've been getting the same thing for the last several days.

Many years ago, in my younger days, I had a client stiff me.  I won by default in small claims court because he didn't even bother to show up at the hearing.  As I was leaving, the judge said, "Good luck, son."  I wondered why he would say that, because I had just won my law suit.  That's when I found out that what I had, essentially, was a piece of paper that said, "Yep.  This individual owes you money."  It was up to me to collect it.  That meant finding out what he owned and file an attachment.  He was self-employed, so there was no salary to garnish.  I would have had to hire an investigator, which meant even more money out of pocket.  I cut my losses and let it go.  I filed it in the public records and never heard from the guy again.

Looking back on it, I'm sure he did it because he had done it many times before to unwitting victims, and there is a plentiful supply of soft targets.  Prior to my small claims court suit, he told me on the phone that he wasn't gonna pay me.  When I asked him why, he said, "I don't want to."  Case closed.

It's not 'hilarious' at all. It is at best mildly ironic. I find precious little amusement from an industry giant abusing it's suppliers or it's workers. Is it 'hilarious' that India has millions of children being exploited as workers? Is it 'hilarious' that so many Chinese workers have few rights and are employed in atrocious conditions? What's the difference other than the scale of the abuse?

The difference is that we have a choice.  No one is forcing us to sign up with Getty or any other stock photo retailer.  No one is forcing us to even be a photographer.  So yeah, it's hilarious.

I stopped uploading to BS because (1) high rejection rate and (2) virtually no sales.  Ironically, on SS (which now owns BS) I have a (1) low rejection rate and (2) daily sales.  Your mileage may vary...  

I've come to the conclusion that low-earning sites are also sites on which the contributor uploading mechanism is ill-conceived, bulky, troublesome, and (most important) time-consuming.  The reason is because they use the same design rationale for the buyers that they use for the contributors, so if the uploading mechanism is burdensome, the purchase mechanism will be likewise.  Therefore, the buyers will tend to do business at other sites with better (more user-friendly and streamlined) designs.  For example, the FT upload mechanism allows only one file to be edited at a time, including the assignment of model or property releases, and it can take a long time to wade through all of those stinkin' categories.  Contrast that with SS where I can assign a model release to multiple files, edit multiple files on one page, and submit multiple files with one click.

Example:  I've been a contributor to FT since March of 2009, and I have 1445 files in my portfolio.  I might average a half dozen sales per month.  I've been a contributor to SS since April of 2005.  I started with video and was accepted as a still photographer in September of 2010.  I currently have 1570 files in my portfolio, and I experience consistent daily sales.

In summary, it seems that there's a connection between the upload mechanism and the profitability of a site because the same design rationale is used for the contributor and the buyer.  My conclusion is that I get a better return on the investment of my time uploading to those sites with the most efficient upload mechanism.  One exception, however, is CanStockPhoto.  Very efficient upload mechanism, but sales (and even views) have dropped to zero.

I'd be interested in knowing whether or not other contibutors have the same observation and conclusion.

My top seller at SS, downloaded 87 times thus far:



My second-best seller, downloaded 57 times thus far:

I'm curious to know what the general workflow volume is for other stock photographers.  I shoot primarily with models, and I'm doing good to get 30 viable photos per week.  For instance, I just finished retouching the shots from Wednesday of last week (it's Monday evening as I write).  There are a total of 28 retouched out of a raw count of 73.  Some of the 28 finished photos will get rejected, of course, and that number will vary significantly from site to site.  Having finished keywording, I'm uploading to the first of a handful of sites, after which I'll have to further process them on the sites in order to submit.  Some sites, as you probably know, are a breeze (i.e. SS only takes a minute or two).  Others are very tedious and time-consuming, like Fotolia where we can only edit one file at a time.  And forget IS!  I don't upload there at all any more.  But it easily will be a full week from shoot to submit for this batch.

So with 28 viable files, averaging roughly - what - 20 files being accepted?  (God forbid that we should submit too many of a good thing!)  That's 20 files per week in a game where we need 20,000 files to make an income that even approaches something decent.  It will take 1000 weeks to do that... 20 years!  (19.23 years if you want to get technical.)  And that's working a full 52 weeks per year!  Are we all that desperate??   

There's a lot to appreciate about CanStockPhoto, including fast review times.  But the last sale I had there was November 28, and my stats are filled with more zeros than a binary code.  It seems like the activity on the site came to a sudden stop.   

Quote from: csproductions on January 09, 2012, 09:18

  For SS, it took no less than eight submissions!  It seemed to be a moving target.  At least one submission contained only images that were approved in other submissions, but some were rejected nevertheless.  It was worth the effort, though, because I now get daily sales at SS (although at 33 cents per sale, it will take a long time to realize any significant income).  I make payout every other month, working diligently toward making it every month. 

You have c800 pics of models on SS and 'make payout every other month' - Please tell me they have a high payout bar!

It depends on your definition of "high."  After all, you've gotta sell a lotta pictures at 33 cents each in order to make any money.  For example, so far this month I've had 28 sales resulting in a whopping $11.39*.  That's just plain wrong!     Ya know how many sales it takes to get that amount of money at AllYouCanStock.com?  THREE!

Don't get me wrong - I'm honored to be a SS contributor, and I appreciate the steady volume, which I don't get (yet) at AYCS.  But I'm definitely not a fan of subscription sales.  I think it devalues our work.  But the truth is that it's just the simple law of supply and demand at work here.  If I were to delete my SS portfolio, it would have the same lasting effect as withdrawing my finger from a glass of water.   

(*In case you're doing the math, there was one on-demand sale for $2.48.)