I freelanced for a non-profit for a while last year. They wanted me to do work outside my normal scope of work, which required purchasing a piece of $200 software. When I asked how I'd go about being reimbursed for the purchase (of course, they also expected I'd work on my own laptop), they were incensed. The head of marketing (who makes more than 300K) actually yelled at my supervisor that I should pay for the software myself (out of my part-time freelance income) "because we're a non-profit, after all!" Meanwhile she spent at least $1,000 providing catered food for their weekly lunchtime marketing meeting. $1,000 a week, every week.

BTW, they absolutely do pay for photography and illustration, just like everyone else. In fact, they hired photographers all the time to shoot their fundraising events (like their annual weeklong conference in Miami, attended by more than 2,000 employees from all over the country, in one of the area's best resorts).

Yes, me too. I mentioned it in their forums. For me the issue is only with the home page...I can log in to the contributor page ok.

I think if enough contributors grumbled we could put a little pressure on the big two, at least.

Or maybe people interpret images differently.

Bumping just in case there are new readers who submit to Fotolia.

Hey, you never know.

I feel for you guys. Photo inspectors are much more likely to reject my illustrations, even though they're just jpgs of my eps files. The identical Eps sails through. Jpgs not worth the time to resubmit, since they don't sell as well.

Second... on the advice that I should shoot something else... ok, fair enough. I think so too. Someone mentioned I could try shooting things people buy. Ok, I can do that. I enjoy shooting objects. However, the last time I tried to shoot a lot of objects, I found I was spending way more money on things to shoot than I was making on stock revenue. Any ideas to manage that situation?

There's a whole thread on Shutterstock rejections, so a lot of people are feeling your pain there.

When we suggest things people buy, we mean types of photos that sell, not shooting objects that people purchase. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying.

Thanks...I'll check it out!

Yes....there still are. 178 at last count, approaching 300,000 total images.

Quote from: EmberMike on July 06, 2014, 17:42

Quote from: R2D2 on July 06, 2014, 15:04

In my view the buyer wants an "agency feeling" with a large selection not many sites in a network. The things have to be simple for buyers...

.....
If having one single account is a hassle to some buyers, having an account at every Symbiostock site they want to buy from is a non-starter. They won't do it.

Symbiostock never stood a chance unless the lack of a single point of entry to the network was resolved somehow.

there are a coupla approaches that might work:

1. when a new user registers give them a chance to register with the other sites at the same time (or to choose which sites to register with)

2. have an option that would automatically add the person as a new user to all the other sites

3. create a central depository were people just sign in once, then on the login screen have an option to use that instead of the individual site login

other considerations: privacy issues, security of passwords, different treatment of 'spam' on individual sites, etc

This was discussed briefly on the Symbiostock forums, and the issue with blanket logins or registrations (other than security issues) is marketing your individual site. Having my own site allows me to finally see who's buying my images and to contact them directly, so hopefully over time I'll build a mailing list and a stable of customers. If there's one registration for all 180 sites, who gets to see who that customer is? You can't let everyone see, because then that buyer might be swamped with emails, etc. from 180 people. And if you let nobody see, then we've lost that ability to build a customer base individually.

I agree registration should be easier...I'm just not sure what the solution is, honestly. But I do think one thing that would help is not having to use PayPal, just direct credit card purchases. Not sure how to solve that either.

Here's an issue I have....I have no idea who you are or what your work looks like. Perhaps others know, but I'm clueless. So far all I know is that you're someone whose work is not acceptable to Stocksy. I'm assuming you'd like others with work similar to yours, or up to your standards, to be part of the co-op. But I don't know what your standards are or how you'd differentiate yourself from all the other sites out there.

You might have more luck approaching people whose work you admire/would mesh with yours privately.

Step one:

http://www.sba.gov/writing-business-plan

The problem is that most people have lost money on Symbiostock rather than make money. I'm one of the few with sales, but I spend more money on marketing my site than I make. So I pay Shutterstock $70 and keep $30, and I pay iStock $80 and keep $20, but at least i make money. I lose money every month on my own site.

This is the same problem people have with the smaller micro sites...it's not worth the time and effort to upload to them if you get no sales.

Until someone comes up with a way to attract buyers to the collective, it will never take off. You can't gain independence from microstock unless you make money with your site.