The margins just aren't there in micro selling to allow for expensive legal cases.
For at least a year after I reported the fiverr gigs featuring Thinkstock images, they were still up, as (IIRC) were the SS ones there which other people reported to SS.

I just checked Fiverr yesterday after reading about the Getty lawsuit. About the only change I saw was that if you search for Shutterstock you get no results. If you search for stock photos there are still gigs offering large piles of images for $5 with what appear to be a variety of artists' images in the gig description. Fiverr apparently doesn't care as long as they make their 20% and I guess if the amounts lost stay small enough, the agencies don't care either.

It'd be nice if Getty's action had some sort of trickle-down effect, but I doubt it'll have any impact on the sleazy offerings at Fiverr, sadly

Looks as though they are set up to get referral income - at the end of the URL is this referral ID #res170862

The site is very poorly built, IMO. You can't type keywords, but have to pick an image and then navigate based on keywords shown for that image. The UI for picking a language has been poorly implemented in that it shows "Select a language" instead of English to start - I thought I couldn't type a keyword because I hadn't selected a language. English wasn't in the list of languages because it only shows those other than the current one. I picked French to see if I could type a keyword (as I speak some French) and then I could pick English from the list.

With showing teeth as the keyword seed, there's a squirrel in the center and isolated smiling women around the outside - it makes you think you've gone mad.

DT's sales are in the toilet, but I doubt referrals from this place will help them at all

It is not a general change, just a change for subscriptions of more than one year:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/8/11880730/apple-app-store-subscription-update-phil-schiller-interview

It's the carrot to get more subscriptions into the app store. In general, I try to avoid subscriptions like the plague and the ones I do have don't go through the app store. With the New York Times, for example, I buy a subscription via their web site that entitles me to read all content including via their iOS app. I think they avoided doing the subscription through the app because they didn't want to give apple 30%.

Apple may hope that by sweetening the pot they can capture more business they're now unable to get.

They have contacted me several times starting some time in April. I was a little suspicious given the over-the-top tone of the praise for my work, but I asked a couple of questions via e-mail.

One was where online they saw my work - never got a clear answer - and the other was about royalties. They pay 10% of the net price, meaning any discounts or promotions reduce the royalty further. A $4 royalty on the sale of a $40 scarf seemed a bit low, especially as I'm not really clear if there's a market for clothing with stock art on it.

The person who does the recruiting doesn't appear to actually read the replies you send. I sent a reply saying that 10% sounded way too low and that they might do better with artists who didn't already license their work and received a reply that said "We're excited that you are interested in collaborating with us"

I do have a small trial set of work at Society6 and Redbubble, but decided to give Vida a pass. They've sent several more "invitations" since that exchange in April, all as if they'd never contacted me before

Welcome.

This forum primarily caters to contributors to stock agencies (photographers, illustrators, videographers and a few audio folks). You won't find much sharing of work here (500px would be a better bet if you like looking at photos)

Not sure if you'll find anything of interest here - stock imagery sells, but is typically focused on the useful versus the gorgeous

Do a search for many prior threads about them (often started by them with their latest gimmicky offering).

I don't think they're a failed agency as they never really got started in the first place

I can't think of any reason to even consider giving them your content.

I don't have any information to share about this site, but in taking a quick look it seems like a truly terrible place from the artists' point of view. 400 vectors for $19; 134 word press templates for $34 and so on. All about overstuffed bundles of low quality stuff at very low prices.

I didn't look at any of the terms and conditions, but with those sorts of prices, even if you kept 100% of the sale price you'd be getting a bad deal.

If you do decide to give it a try, take a look at the contents of some of the bundles to be sure they aren't collections of other people's artwork - a number of these bundle-happy sites are a home for thieves (like Fiverr) and you wouldn't want to be part of something like that.

Two thoughts on proving the image is yours. You have the RAW file, or you have the camera and the JPEG zazzle has will have the camera serial number in the metadata (unless you strip that out).

The upload dates on the image in stock portfolios will be helpful, especially if the scammer has uploaded it to zazzle more recently.

Ages ago, I remember someone saying that they always trimmed a few pixels from the edges of all images they uploaded as stock as an insurance policy in case someone claimed the image was theirs (having the few extra pixels was something the thief couldn't produce). Any chance you cropped this image before uploading?

Is it possible that this is a competitor trying to shut you down with false DMCA notice (versus a good faith mistake)?

My April payout arrived on May 15 (a week ago). The May payout won't arrive until June 15th.

If you didn't receive your payout - and did you check your earnings total? - I'd contact support. I've never known them to be a week late (in recent times; there were hiccups when they were just getting started)

http://www.dreamstime.com/sell-stock-photos-images

That was a subscription. You used to earn 70 cent royalties for higher level subscriptions, but that was eliminated a few years ago.

Levels matter for credit sales (when they happen; I find the proportion of subscription sales keeps increasing)

Yes. I received mine Sunday evening (May 15)

I was cleaning out last month's rubbish from an e-mail account I keep for signups I don't care about and found a couple of e-mails from late April from StockUnlimited.

They're still peddling the lifetime deal for $49, but instead of saying there were only 1,000 of these available, they're now saying they've sold 10,000 but only 1,000 are left!

Still the same size image collection, but now they say it's growing at 10,000 images a month.

I don't know how it's OK to claim you've sold 10,000 if you haven't, but I have a hard time imagining they've sold that many. Perhaps it was a freebie with some other 123rf package and they're counting those as "sales"?

On the site, they're offering unlimited subscriptions at $19 for one month, $69 a year or $89 lifetime.

But it's not really unlimited or lifetime...

In the FAQ, there's a definition of what they mean by lifetime:

""Lifetime" is defined as the period until StockUnlimited ceases to operate or license the subscribed StockUnlimited content, guaranteed to be at least 36 months from the date of subscription. Please consult the Terms of Use for the full definition."

And in the legal blurb, they point out they have the right to limit the amount of downloads in a 24 hour period:

"Further, in order to facilitate a smooth download process and to ensure the best possible service to all Stock Unlimited users, Stock Unlimited may, at its sole discretion, restrict or limit downloads of the Content by any Stock Unlimited users (including you) to a fixed amount of total downloads of the Content per 24 hour period."

I hope this sort of sleazy stuff doesn't rub off on the reputations of decent sites. But as pointed out above, their collection is pretty sad, so that may limit the audience for their pitch anyway.