Similar experience to SS for me... sales climbing back up in September... close to where they were a year ago, but I've added so much to my port since then... so much blood, sweat and tears just to tread water.   

Quote from: stockmarketer on September 01, 2014, 07:33

It's been widely reported that most SS veterans are reporting lower sales.  There are two primary reasons:

- THE BIG CRASH OF EARLY 2013...

- HUGE INCREASE IN OVERALL COMPETITION. ..

There are two other potentially very significant factors:

1. Likely decline in the market for cheap stock photo content. Many companies and other potential clients for stock photography have substantially switched to using social media. Today they are just as likely to re-share a picture which one of their customers ('friends') took on their iPhone and instantly shared. Also - today most professional blogs use free content supplied by the companies which they are writing about (promoting).

In the early 2000s everyone running a corner-shop or church choir thought that they needed to be on the web. And maybe they even printed a newsletter. Lots of little clubs and community groups used to have websites and blogs which potentially needed content. Today they are all on Facebook - and their users share iPhone photos.

2. iStock launched subs.

IMO microstock (cheap and relatively low production value stock) was a 2000s phenomenon. Today shared content (and free / bundled stock) is where it is going.

Disagree.

Not sure who your customers are, but I know mine are publishers, mid-sized companies and business owners who would not use social media, shared pics or iStock freebies in their frame with their info around it. 

No, I stick with my #1 and #2 reasons as described above, but I will add a potential #3 cause:

3. RISE OF BARGAIN-BASEMENT SITES LIKE DPC and DP.  Customers who might normally pay more at sites like SS and DT might be drawn to sites where every day is a fire sale.  Nightmare scenario is SS, DT and other big players slash their prices to squash these threats and we all see a further 50% drop in earnings overnight. 

My revenue at SS stays the same in the last year or so. At that time it stopped growing. You are right there. But it doesn't decline neither.

Out of curiosity, how much did your port grow in the past year?   Math would suggest you would have needed to increase your port by around 60% to be treading water at SS a year later.  If your port grew by well under that rate, you are likely in a great niche, or a smarter ms'er than the rest of us.

Quote from: stockmarketer on August 18, 2014, 14:53

Quote from: pkphotos on August 15, 2014, 18:29

BME after only 12 days. MY portfolio is growing rapidly which may explain it.

Yes, that DOES explain it.  The ONLY people experiencing good sales these days are contributors who are new to this and rapidly growing their portfolio.  That's because you're comparing your sales to a month ago, when you may have only had a fraction of what you have in your port today.

The moment your rate of growth in uploads falls behind the rate of growth in available images at the agencies, you will start making less money each month.  It's an unavoidable truth in microstock, and everyone jumping into this today needs to understand that while things seem rosy today as you start out, your sales will reach a point of falling behind and never catching up. 

See the point above me from Herg, who has been at this for some time...

"absolutely soul destroyingly depressing free fall of sales."

That pretty much sums it up for everyone.

that's for speaking for ALL of us -- but as is always the case, such statements fall flat

if you said 'most' or 'many' your blanket statements might have some validity -- but ALL contributors are not seeing the results you claim everyone is experiencing -- several of us have gone away for many weeks with NO LOSS of sales

"your sales will reach a point of falling behind and never catching up. "  and in the long run we'll all be dead.  but again, there are many who have not seen this happen after many years of doing MS.  my sales have increased every year since I started 6 years ago and 2014 is doing better % wise than 2013 did

a lot depends on what you shoot, and how long your subjects are in demand

Hmm... if this is true, you would be the only microstock vet with a large port and significant income reporting gains. Based on everything I've seen and heard, everyone who is in the upper income range in this business is voicing grave concern about microstock's future, and in particular, the very troubling changes at SS that began in early 2013.

When you combine SS's changes to search and other tinkerings behind the scenes, with the fact that it now has about 40 million images in its collection vs about 25 million a year ago, and it's clear that the serious players are, by and large, finding it impossible to grow revenue and in fact are seeing STEEP declines.

Is there a single vet in the upper income tier that disputes this?

I keep expecting to see "old thread alert."  This must be a topic from 2008.  All these posts sound like things I would have written then, but not now.

Back then, I was so excited to have stumbled upon something that seemed to promise financial independence.  I calculated that in a few years I'd be able to leave the day job and enjoy all the wonderful plusses described so joyfully in this thread.

But today?  I've woken up to accept that these are unsustainable dreams.  Thank God I didn't give up the day job.  Everyone hits the wall eventually, then you start making less and less, and you see the dream slipping further and further away.  It's a simple financial equation detailed in another thread.  On average, the moment your rate of portfolio growth slips behind the rate of total image growth offered by the agencies, you start making less and less.  Then it becomes harder and harder to pour so much work into this knowing you'll still be making less money than you made a year ago (or two or three years ago!), despite being better at this, understanding more about what customers want, etc.  Factor in the big agencies changing their searches, creating services that drive our returns lower (Dollar Photo Club), and growth is simply impossible.

I wonder how many new contributors this thread has convinced to start competing with us?  Yes, that's a selfish thought.  I don't want my situation to become even worse, having to fight for dwindling downloads with an ever-growing pool of new microstockers.  But I'm also trying to open their eyes to the reality of this business.  Newbies can start out making some sales and do the math like I did several years ago, thinking if they produce a certain amount each month they'll reach that magical moment of leaving the day job.  But the wall WILL come down on everyone, and the dream evaporates.  It's a crushing moment, spirit-breaking and dream-shattering.  Everyone needs to know that moment comes for us all.

Microstock veterans tried to tell me this when I was a wide-eyed newbie several years ago, but I scoffed.  My work was in high demand, I argued.  I would buck the trend because I figured out what customers wanted.  I had found several underserved niches.  I would be the exception to the rule.  Ha.

So for me the positives outweighed the negatives for a few years while I lived the microstock dream so full of hope.  Now it's almost all negative, and I feel chained to a dream I know I will never achieve.  Still working the day job then coming home and slaving away to grow my port size in the hopes of maintaining the shrinking extra microstock income my family has come to rely upon and thought would keep growing well into the future.  Today, microstock is an abusive spouse I know will continue to beat me, but I can't afford to leave.

Quote from: grsphoto on June 26, 2014, 10:00

OK so I did the math... and from this poll "we" control about 500,000 to 600,000 image.

According to 2013 poll 'we' control 2,045,428 images. 812 respondents * 2519 avg images.

OK, so this suggests that we "control" about 10% of the images on the agencies, right.

What do we do with this information?  To me, it tells me that we don't carry that much weight.

Even if 100% of us agreed to a mass deletion of images from an agency, that would leave said agency about 10% down... and this would quickly be made up by the masses who are happy to fill the void.  I know I see blatant copying of my work everywhere I look.  I could delete my port from every agency tomorrow and (despite the fact that I sell really well at most agencies) within a few months they wouldn't even know I'm gone.

Best Month Ever = newbie response
Worst Month Ever = veteran response

I've finally come to accept that it's virtually impossible for an ms vet to get past the dreaded wall, and here's why...

If a newbie has a port of 50 images one month, and 100 the next, his/her port size went up 100%.
In that same month, the total images on any given site went up from, say, 25 to 26 million images, an increase of 4%.  As long as the rookie's percentage rate of port increase beats the total image percentage of increase, he/she can see fantastic growth.

But if a veteran has a port of 5000 images one month and 5,100 the next, his/her port size went up  just 2%.  Compared to the 4% monthly growth in total images available on the agencies, the ms vet is going backward, and will see less money each month.

Of course, there are other factors such as monthly variations (March is always a better month than April, December is always much worse than January).  So run the same calculation on an annual basis.  Depressing, depressing results.

It's a numbers game, and once your port is a certain size, and as the agencies keep growing at an incredible rate, you WILL start going backward.  I denied this reality for a long time, insisting that I could overcome the wall by finding niches and meeting an aggressive daily quota, and I may have held back the wall for a year or two by doing this, but it ended up crushing me. 

I've got nearly double the port size I had two years ago, and I'm averaging a few dollars less every day.  And I expect two years from now to be making even less.  For the first time in nearly 8 years of doing this, I feel very negative about microstock.

Here's the thing... it won't be dead for buyers, just contributors.  People in areas of the world where you can survive on a few dollars a day will be happy to keep cranking out new images for pennies, and buyers will love it, paying less and less.

Those of us who have made a decent living off this for the past few years will slowly pull away from microstock, and there will be plenty of people willing to fill the void for a tiny fraction of what we're used to making at this.

This is already happening.  Some of the veterans on this board are already pondering dropping out if and when their income drops below a certain threshold (me included).

But back to your question, what's a good alternative for photographers and designers to make up this lost income?  There's portrait and wedding photography (... er... no... everyone's uncle now has a cheap digital camera and thinks he can produce work as good as a pro.)  Or there's freelance design work (... er... no... fiverr and similar sites will design your client's next brochure/calendar/logo for five bucks.)

OK, there's always McDonald's.

Quote from: stockmarketer on June 03, 2014, 15:09

Quote from: jamesdeanny on June 03, 2014, 14:41

Record month

+290% from May 2013
+155% from April 2014

It helps that I had two sales that must've been ELs of some sort (huge earnings per each clip)

Those are nice numbers.  I'm curious how long you've been at this, and how your portfolio increased during the same periods.

In general, I think it's only relative newcomers to microstock that can see growth like this.  If you started just a year or two ago, and today you have several times the port size of the year you're comparing, then huge increases are the norm.

But once you've been at this five years or more, growth typically falls to zero, or into negative territory.  It becomes impossible to keep your head above the tide of new competitors flooding the market, and you start realizing that growth is unsustainable.

Does any microstock veteran have a different experience?

Does this mean you finally hit the wall?
You talked about producing images in niche subject matter and what not to avoid the wall for the past few years. It seems like your experiencing a slow down of sorts.

Yes, I feel like the wall has hit me.  I've ramped up my uploads, but with more contributors joining everyday, it has become impossible to keep up.

Last I saw, there are 20,000 new images uploaded every day at SS.  I could be the best in the world at what I do (I'm not) and I would still drown in all this ever-growing competition.

And yes, I'm in niches and am constantly looking for new ones, but I'm seeing new copycats stealing my ideas every day. 

I once had a rosy view of microstock.  Now I see my days in it are numbered.

Record month

+290% from May 2013
+155% from April 2014

It helps that I had two sales that must've been ELs of some sort (huge earnings per each clip)

Those are nice numbers.  I'm curious how long you've been at this, and how your portfolio increased during the same periods.

In general, I think it's only relative newcomers to microstock that can see growth like this.  If you started just a year or two ago, and today you have several times the port size of the year you're comparing, then huge increases are the norm.

But once you've been at this five years or more, growth typically falls to zero, or into negative territory.  It becomes impossible to keep your head above the tide of new competitors flooding the market, and you start realizing that growth is unsustainable.

Does any microstock veteran have a different experience?

I think these agencies are at a crossroads.  Price has been driven down to the point of extinction. 

Right!  And who has driven the price so low?  WE have, by supporting every low-balling new agency that comes along.  And when the bigger agencies have to remain competitive by dropping their prices, sure there's some whining here in the forums, but backed with no real action.  In fact, we keep uploading more.

So what's an agency to do if it wants to survive, and maybe drive more downloads of our images?  One way is to create deals with partners to position our content in unique ways.  That's exactly what DT is doing with this potential deal, and what do contributors say?   We want to kill the deal because the beta test period won't pay us for images that the testers use for a few weeks.  Are we really that short-sighted?!? (insert your tired arguments about who should pay for the beta test here... I'm looking at the big picture, and my "losses" during the beta test will be tiny drops compared to the big revenue that could be possible with the deal if it goes well.) 

Fact is, DT is one of the more fair-paying agencies out there.  We should give them some credit on this, and once the deal is finalized let them present the commission scenario to us.  If we don't like it, we can bail.  But for god's sake, let's give them the chance. 

I have opted out of (all) alliances as soon as I got their email stating they wanted 39 of my images.

If the beta test fails I loose nothing (of nothing).

If the beta test is successful (and I'm pretty sure we'll all hear about it PDQ) then I'll opt in to the program ann benefit from the success.

I am quite happy to let 'others take the risk' if they want to (and thank you for that) and I'll join in later 

If DT think I have 39 images worthy for the beta test now, I'm pretty sure they'll let me join the program once it's proven, to make sure it continues to be a success in the future.

And do I feel guilty about my stance on this?

No I do not. Why should I?

There is NO risk in this beta test.  The ACTUAL risk is in it not going well and the partner not wanting to proceed.

You read that right... there is NO risk to you!  This is for an online advertising platform.  Testers of this program would NOT be buying your images elsewhere if they didn't have access to them through this test.  They just wouldn't be running ANY images in their ad if it weren't for this test.  You are out NOTHING.  And DT says they will actually try to compensate you for images used in the test!  What have they done to you to earn your mistrust?

Everyone is fixating on these few weeks of POSSIBLY unpaid image usage during the beta test!!! Don't you see the forest for the trees?!!  Do you really want this to fail?  Imagine who this big player could be and what this could mean!

Despite how it may sound, I'm no shill for DT.  I just think they're getting a raw deal in this forum.  I was starting to write a snarky response to Laurin's letter to Achilles, but I'm just going to do it straight, with all due respect to Laurin, who does deserve respect...

A personal Note to Achilles...

My friend I've been with you since day one

Right, this is my first point.  Many of us have done business with DT for several years now.  I, for one, actually trust them.  They have done right by me for a long time, and they AT LEAST deserve the benefit of the doubt.  Let's continue...

But...The time has come to tell you and anyone else reading and listening to whats going on lately has to Know.....

Achilles....Without us, You and your site is dead and I mean dead. You and the other sites biggest issue is , You and others still after all this time have no clue or respect for what we go through to give you our hearts and soul through our work, The time and Money we invest in supplying you with your income and vast income. We own everything...You and all the other sites own Nothing But server space and some furniture. The sooner you and all the other greedy sites realize this the better off you will be going forward. FT set off a firestorm and It's about time, I've been saying since 2006 we have to unite and we Finally are.

Yes, we contributors own our work.  But it's completely unfair to say the agencies bring nothing to the table but servers and furniture.  They have real overhead, and are spending real money everyday to sell our work.  Reviewers, accountants, lawyers, marketing costs.  This is why no single or small group of contributors could do what they do, and exactly why we need them.

This is not going to stop and I prey it doesn't. This crap cannot go on and I will spend whatever time it takes to alarm everyone about the continuing injustice we have been through.


If any site cannot make a decent profit with product they don't make themselves at a 50/50 split from every dollar then maybe it's time to do something else.

The same should be true with contributors.  I'm profiting handsomely right now.  I treat it as a business.  I keep my costs down, my workflow tight, but the moment this looks like the payoff won't be worth it, I'll be out.  If enough contributors decided this, the law of supply and demand would kick in, and things would have to tilt in the supplier's favor. 

The Gravy train is over my Old friend, We are starting to rise up and I Prey we don't stop....Is it to late? well ya. We were lazy and let this happen. But Im afraid FT and now you have awoken a sleeping Giant and Thank God it's about time.

Ya better hear this Achilles and Oleg and Jon[/b]. Those of us that do the work, Invest in our craft deserve more. There is no creative agency anywhere that takes more than 50% of any artists work.

I'm all for using our collective weight to try to get changes made.  But let's be careful who we're lumping together and targeting.  I'd love to get 50% as well, but I agreed to those terms and if I disagree I can end my partnership with any agency I believe is treating me unfairly. 

You can spin this anyway you want, and this message is not about your new test program...it's about Our future, Not the gullible newbies that are happy getting 20 cents or whatever....You want to target them Like the others? Go for it.

This IS about a test program.  It's supposed to last a few weeks and be done.  If the test goes well, DT says we could benefit greatly. They have not lied to me before.  Again, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

245,000 Images are new just this week on SS. WHY?   because no one Gives a crap.  if thats what you want, Well you got it.

Some of those 245,000 are mine.  And they've been selling, on SS and elsewhere.  Who isn't giving a crap?   The agencies like them, their customers like them, and I like how they're selling.

My advise is make it as fast as you can because WE OWN EVERYTHING!! You own Nothing and the sooner you get this the better you will Position yourself for the future because no matter what you think, it's gonna change and come back to us..  That I will guarantee or die trying.

The agencies own their infrastructure for selling our work, and they own the branding and relationship with customers keep coming back for more.  Is this worth nothing?  Try to duplicate it.  Many are trying, most are failing.

I would rather make 800 Million and take care of the people who made that happen than make a Billion.  All you owners have to get your head straight. 50/50 or nothing!!!  No Business makes a better margin than that. You can't? Then business is not your forte"

I wish you the best of Luck and also My Comrades whom I will always support regardless of there opinions.

Laurin Rinder.

50/50 or nothing.  That's quite a line in the sand.  I admire your boldness, Laurin, and I do believe you feel you're fighting for all of us.  But what exactly does "50/50 or nothing" mean?  Are you going to delete your port from agencies that don't meet this demand?  If you make statements like this and don't follow it with real action that makes the agencies take notice -- like taking your valuable work and going home -- you could end up doing more harm to the cause than good.

Despite all this... respect, Laurin.  Just wanted to offer a different perspective.