I think I threw up a little in my mouth. Wow does that bit of propaganda ring hollow after the last 6 months or so.

I have always thought the way the DT search engine will return a whole row of similars in a row is bad, but rather than take the effort to change this (or perhaps put the similars behind one of them or something like that), they are taking a sledgehammer to things.

As usual, the proof will be in what they actually do. I remember IS was once going to get tough on spammers, as far as I could tell they never did.
If they actually clean up their image collection that will be fine, if they delete for example a picture of a sailboat and a rowboat because they are similar to the aircraft carrier, then it won't be fine. Based on my pessimistic view of things there, I suspect the latter. Also, just because someone else has a picture of something doesn't mean I don't want one in my port too.

Reading some of the DT posts on their boards, you'd think the way to make money at DT is to not submit anything and delete all but your level 5 images. Now I bet that would improve the RPI and RPD, but the bottom line is going to hurt.

It is nice that we still get 50% for level 5 images, but dropping down to 30% for level 1 has really hurt the submitter, especially in the long tail images.

They said trust us, your income will go up when they lowered commissions. Mine went down for over a year and only now are back to the level they were before the drop (with plenty of new images).

I think trying to get people to combine multiple images into one is a particularly lame effort. Isn't microstock micro enough? Also it makes the thumbs look like crap.

I also agree w/ Lisa - as long as they don't remove my images it is fine.

I got a .10 royalty before they cut the %, so I guess that could get rounded down to .07

That is pretty sad.

They could also really push agency or other content not from MSG members, which would tend to hurt all of us, but possibly help their "sustainability"

I got that notice w/ PS too, but it didn't seem to stop me from editing the bill. Maybe it would have stopped me from printing it? In any case, don't copy money, print it out, and try to pass it. Don't sell flat scans or images of bills, and you should be fine.

I have a feeling that if you took your best seller and posted it in the critique forums saying it just got rejected and how could they do that etc. etc. at least some of the people would defend the reviewers and point out all the problems with your best seller image. They might even be right, for the most part the technical requirements are not as critical as the others as far as getting sales. That doesn't mean that the technical requirements don't matter, but especially for small size images and web use it is not as critical as the microstocks would make you think.

Getting rejections is part of this business. Sometimes they are right, sometimes they aren't. Sometimes it happens with an image you have high hopes for. Tweak it and resubmit it or don't bother. It can be frustrating and demotivating, but if you can't handle that occasionally happening this isn't the business for you.


One of the best things about being at a number of sites is usually by the time the image gets rejected it has already been accepted elsewhere and perhaps even had sales.

Certainly some shallow DOF images work well, maybe it is just that I am a bit of an odd duck and I often want to look at something other than the tiny bit in focus and get frustrated.  I do find it useful to think about why someone chose the DOF they did and the specific focus point.  It is a quite powerful tool to direct the viewers attention. Stepping back and looking at the image as a whole is also a good exercise.
W/ macros you are almost forced to use a shallow DOF anyway unless you want to do focus stacking, so you might as well use it. I do wish the stocks took more shallow DOF images for macros.

I do quite like cilantro, although I can taste the soapy flavor too.

If I had the power (and I most definitely do not), I'd have stopped IS sales cold in the water the day they announced the commissions cuts and kept them that way 'til they rescinded (hopefully within a few days). Of course I don't have that power. If I did you can bet FT wouldn't have done it a few months later though.

Now If I was telling buyers to go get their stuff for free from Flickr because I was mad at IS, that would be for revenge and make no sense. Sending buyers somewhere that offer a better return to the artists makes a lot of sense for those artists. Of course you want to send them somewhere that has a decent site and reasonable search and isn't likely to go bust in the next month etc. etc. too.  I somewhat doubt that anything we do will have much impact, but it seems nuts to do the marketing for a sites that take a huge percentage of each sale for marketing (or something), especially if the impact of most of that marketing is to take sales away from sites that pay us better returns.

I made more there in 2008 (and I uploaded more that year).  I was barely down in 2009 (at a higher return but less downloads) and up (above 2008 levels for $ but not DL) in 2010.  I almost doubled my port in 2008, and increased it by 70% over the next 2 years. The DL #s and $ in general have picked up lately but I have been uploading fairly regularly too. No ELs lately either. New images definitely don't get the downloads they used to though. I don't know how that will play out over the long run. I am guessing that for the people with fairly big old ports this is better and for the people trying to start out now it is worse.

My all time best seller got onto the newest first page just before they had a computer glitch so it stayed there for a week or so before they got the indexing fixed. That was enough to put it on the best match first page where it has been ever since (It is a good image too, but had I uploaded it a few days later it probably would have just been buried forever).

pissing matches aside, I see 2 separate questions here.

1. can we do anything to change the traffic IS and Fot get. (if so, what)

2. should we (obviously for exclusives, no).



as for 1, I am not sure anything we actually do will make any noticeable difference, but if we could, then I think we should - I'm willing to give it a try.

as for 2, I think we should. If nothing else it will make the greedy bean counters over there think a little longer about it when they plan to screw us again. Besides  I'd much rather make $5 off of a 10$ sale than 3 something from a $20 sale.



Unfortunately we all are on the losing side of the supply/demand curve.

Quote from: WarrenPrice on February 14, 2011, 11:07

Wouldn't you agree that hard work trumps talent?

Not a chance. True talent always beats hard work (e.g. you can work at your running as hard as you like but you're not going to beat Bolt).

I'm guessing Bolt puts in more work than most too.

Quote from: qwerty on February 12, 2011, 20:42

after one sale he would be up to 19%

But only for a year?

Artist "I sold a print for one million dollars, I should get 20 percent now"

IS "yeah, that million dollar sale is nice and all, but what have you done for me lately? besides, money isn't what is going to make you happy"

I had one like that rejected for limited commercial value