Surprisingly, I tried one blurry illustration and it sold today for the first time. (jpg)

In my experience SS has been more open to things than other sites. I don't know anything about CanStock, but certainly they're ahead of the curve compared to iS, for example. At least from a vector perspective, SS was accepting illustrations with text for years that sold really well, while iS was rejecting them until fairly recently. (Even in the last few weeks iS has rejected my all-time highest seller on SS as "not suitable for stock," while it's sold more than 2,000 times on SS). And in fact in their forums iS said "don't tell us what sells well at other places," which was certainly shortsighted, looking back. I think SS's attention to trends and accepting images that are on trend is part of what made them the market leader.

That was exactly the article I was looking for a few weeks ago, when I paraphrased this quote from Oringer in another thread:

"I never imagined that Shutterstock would provide people in emerging economies with the opportunity to earn a decent living."

No, businesses don't close in the U.S. for spring break...but I think a lot of parents plan to take their vacations then to be with their kids.

I think that was the problem...I'd paid Social Security tax on my entire income, not realizing there was a limit (wage base). So I don't think you need to pay more if you're already maxed out with your main job.

I don't' deduct any of my household expenses either. It requires having a dedicated space, only deducting expenses relating to the portion of your house where you conduct business, only deducting expenses relative to the portion of income that comes from working in that space (I also work onsite at ad agencies sometimes) and has financial repercussions down the road when you sell your house. My accountant felt it wasn't worth it and advised against it. I do deduct advertising expenses for my websites, though.

Quote from: Shelma1 on April 05, 2015, 17:50

Quote from: robhainer on April 05, 2015, 16:23

Quote from: gbalex on April 05, 2015, 14:03

Quote from: Hobostocker on April 05, 2015, 08:47

Quote from: sgoodwin4813 on April 05, 2015, 08:03

At the bottom end employers will pay as little as possible.  If left to market forces we will have what we have had in the past, which was basically slavery and/or people working under horrible conditions.

exactly, or even not paid at all with the excuse of unpaid stages and internships, i can attest this sh-it is going on even in top-tier multinationals like IBM or Oracle, go figure...

the market forces don't care about the social consequences of all this, and the governments have abdicated from their natural role ... the entire West is de facto at the mercy of the greediest and most corrupt multinationals and speculators in housing, education, food, energy and pretty much any primary item humans need, sooner or later they will privatize even water with the excuse of global warming.

Long article but worth the read, not completely accurate but close enough, they sucked the middle class dry on a large scale and left many without retirement or jobs. 

The Subprime Mortgage Crisis Timeline
http://tinyurl.com/37q963

Worked out good for me. I was able to buy a foreclosure for $75,000 in 2011, remodel it for about $15,000 and now I'm selling it for $150,000 after 2.5 years. All tax free because I used it as my primary residence and reinvesting it in a new, better house.

Your attitude simply amazes me. The only reason the mortgage crisis worked for you was luck. If you'd bought that house 5 years earlier, it would now be worth less than what you paid for it. But heck, it worked for you, so eff the suckers who could afford a house before you could.

It's horrible and unfortunate when someone loses their house. It's your home. It's your life. Here in the US a major reason for the housing crisis was people buying homes they couldn't afford in the first place.

Where I live a large percentage of foreclosures were "McMansion" $300,000US+ luxury homes. Before I went to buy a house I ran the numbers for my expenses, income, savings, etc, and figured out what I could afford. When I went to the bank the loan officer told me "you qualify for $XXX,XXX.". It was twice as much as the number I came up with. I told him "yeah, I qualify for that, but there's no way I could afford it." I'd be in foreclosure within months. But plenty of people bought houses based on what they qualified for which wasn't what they could afford. Why? Maybe some greed of wanting a nice house. Maybe ignorance not knowing what they could afford. Maybe poor planing and not having enough savings in the event one member of the household lost their job. Maybe just horrendously bad fortune.

I'm sure few people will agree with what I'm about to say because this is probably considered "old school" mentality. In my opinion we are increasingly moving toward a society where there's little self-accountability. When someone does something wrong or makes a bad decision it's someone elses fault. Commit an armed robbery and get shot by the convenience store owner? It's the store owners fault. Can't get a job? It's because somebody else isn't providing the jobs. Don't make enough money to live in an ultra expensive city? It's the business's fault and the government needs to force them to give higher pay.

I believe your fortune should only equal what you're capable of achieving. But we're increasingly headed toward a society of penalizing the hard workers and rewarding people who make bad decisions, perform poorly, or expect hard outs. The news is constantly reporting about the move toward only rich and poor. Should we be surprised that the middle class is disappearing?

So who's fault is it when someone buys a house they can't afford? Banks fault? Seller's fault? Foreclosure buyer's fault? Nobody is responsible for their decisions anymore.

There's culpability on both sides, IMO. Some homeowners should not have bought the homes they did, because they had balloon mortgages that would be impossible to pay once the interest rate went up (though I'm guessing many people were hoping they'd be making more money by the time that came about). However, banks and investors were absolutely predatory in this instance. They targeted certain groups and purposely sold them unaffordable mortgages, bundled those mortgages into difficult-to-undertand investment instruments, then bet against the homeowners being able to pay those mortgages. When the homeowners went into foreclosure the investors made a killing.

And when the bubble burst those mortgage lenders were on a rampage. At the time my dad passed away, and I had to sell his house as executor of his estate. His bank absolutely refused to give me or my attorneys a payoff amount because they were dead set on foreclosing. The house was worth much more to them if they could sell it at auction than the mortgage was worth if the estate paid it off. They finally were forced to give us a payoff amount the morning of the closing, because my attorney told them we "ARE selling this house TODAY." But for months they played games, pretending they'd never received my admin papers�even when my attorneys sent them. They even tried to serve my mom, who was dying of dementia in a nursing home, with foreclosure papers�impossible, because I was her legal guardian because she lacked the mental capacity to make decisions for herself any more.

I've worked for banks (in marketing) for decades. They are predatory. They prey on the naive and poor and uneducated.

Get another accountant. In my industry (advertising) we look for/recommend accountants who are familiar with creative businesses. If you're making a profit, I don't see why you couldn't take deductions related to the business. I think your accountant might be used to people who have expensive hobbies that make no money who then try to offset their hobby's expenses by claiming them as deductions.

As for proof that you were working on your trips...you have lots of photos taken during those trips and list those photos on micro sites, and can easily grab screenshots showing you're making an income from licensing, no?

OK, fair enough. We don't know who they are, although you do give them worldwide rights to the image in perpetuity.

But think about it...by the time you buy a new, pristine pair of Nike shoes (or shorts or shirts or whatever you're shooting) and pay your model, you've already blown more than $250, would be my guess.

Custom photography they want to pitch to Nike for $250.  Sigh.

Nike spends $2.4 billion a year on marketing. Hire a photographer and pay a decent amount for licensing. I really find crowd sourcing for custom work disturbing.

Quote from: Shelma1 on April 04, 2015, 05:48

Quote from: michaeldb on April 03, 2015, 21:33

Quote from: cathyslife on April 03, 2015, 09:17

I wonder if the business owners who are tacking on a visible surcharge for the wage increase also tacked on visible surcharges when the cost of coffee went up, or the cost of flour, or the cost of every other thing they buy on a daily basis. Seems to me like they are making more of a political statement.

I suspect the 'political statement' theory is true. But it's also true about the costs of flour, coffee, labor and everything else: When businesses have to pay more to be in business, they have to raise prices or else operate at a loss.

If costs of labor go up 15%, then most of what businesses buy will go up (suppliers eventually have to pay higher labor costs too). The result is that employees make more money, but the things they buy cost more. All that has really happened is inflation. Unfortunately gov can't create new wealth by passing laws.

Yes, prices will go up. But they won't go up as much as salaries will rise. Payroll is just one expense of running a business. Rent, for example, won't double overnight. Equipment has already been purchased. And I'm glad to see the public backlash. Do business owners think people will want to see some poor working person's slight minimum wage increase broken out on their bill? Customers interact with staff, not business owners, most of the time. So customers will have sympathy for the people they know and see every day.

You clearly don't own a business that deals in retail in any significant way. Customers go to where they feel they get the best value, and lot of them think the best value is the cheapest. They don't care how much the employees are paid.

Why do you think foreign car makers such as Mercedes, BMW, Volkswagen, Kia and Hyundai build all their plants in the Southeast? They do it because the labor costs are cheaper. And now American workers also have to compete with foreign workers who make $1 a day, and you want to price small businesses out of business because you hate corporations? Left-wing thinking is so nonsensical and bankrupt. Guess what? Unemployment doesn't pay more than minimum wage, and it doesn't last forever.

Many people think "value" means "good quality at a fair price," and actually do care about how much people are paid. If some people weren't willing to pay more for better quality everyone would own a Kia.

Yes, foreign car manufacturers such as Mercedes and BMW absolutely take advantage of the lower wages people are willing to accept in the Southeast�where people and corporations get a disproportionately higher share of federal aid and government handouts�then turn around sell those cars to people like me, who get less back in federal "welfare" than they pay in federal taxes. (That includes corporate "welfare.")

I love to hear people who live in the "taker" states complain about other people feeling "entitled" when I live in the state that gets the least amount back from federal taxes of any in the nation. We support you with our taxes. (And that includes the military and the GI Bill.)

Why would I want to put corporations or small businesses out of business? I've worked for both. I've also owned my own retail business. All I'm saying is pay people a minimum wage that keeps pace with the cost of living. Parity. That's all. Assume the cost of your payroll is going to rise each year right along with all your other costs.

If people were going to "coast" on minimum wage they would have done that back in 1978, when minimum wage was worth a lot more than it is now. But somehow that didn't happen.

I really don't get why you're so angry about people being paid an amount of minimum wage that's equivalent to the minimum wage from 40 years ago. Do you own a pizza shop on the side?

Hi guys,

Is it possible for a jpg to have layers when you open it in Photoshop? I'm clueless because I work in Illustrator. A customer is upset that a jpg she bought doesn't have layers. I though jpg just compressed everything into one flat layer?

My last zero day sale there was about a week after I joined in August 2011. But today *feels* like a zero sale day. So far it's worse than Christmas day. Yesterday was pretty bad at SS too, though surprisingly normal at DT and iS.