Most sites accept H.264 if it's the native output of your camera

(the Chinese remind me of the ferengi aliens with the big ears on star trek).

Blimey. Donald, is that you?

I Started with a 600D (I think that's the T3i) and I concur that they're really good for the price. If there are still any new ones around then $600 wouldn't be a problem. Second hand, you'll probably have enough left over for the f1.8 50mm lens. 

"If we could get 500 contributors and 500 buyers together to start a site, I think it would take off."

What about the site would make it take off though? I'm sure getting 500 buyers and 500 sellers wouldn't be too hard with a bit of effort, but if that's all it takes for something to take off... then are you saying that each and every one of us could create a stock site, bring along 500 buyer snd 500 sellers... and it would automatically take off?

I don't want to unnecessarily add to the list of people that laugh at other people for suggesting starting a stock site... but it's not exactly easy. Even with your 500 buyers... Some might need one image a year, some might need 100 a week... but with 500 contributors with 100 / 1,000 / 10,000 images... even at 100% commission, what are they going to earn per image per month? One cent?

And just on this point...

"All the other sites are either too small to make much money with or have investors that will want to see increasing profits probably at our expense."

A new stock site would be no different. And if we don't have investors, then that rules out the latter and automatically makes us the former.

I'm not saying it's not possible to make a great new stock site, or that people shouldn't try, but the odds of making a great new stock site are pretty low. I think we've missed the boat a bit.
 

I left Envato because of the tax policies.

The VAT policy? Their VAT policy is that they're the seller for the purpose of VAT, so they have to charge VAT and remit VAT payments. That's what they should be doing, and that's what they are doing. They may say that the author is the seller, but that's nothing to do with who handles the VAT.

They're not saying, and never have said... "you're the seller, so you need to charge and remit VAT.

They're just saying "you're the seller."

If them saying that was some cunning plan to avoid charging and remitting VAT... then why would they willingly charge and remit VAT?

Yeah, GraphicRiver is like Creative Market, Envato Elements is like GraphicStock... the graphics 'branch' of VideoBlocks.

Remains to be seen if it takes off, but Envato have a pretty big existing customer base to market it to, which is half job... so you never know. With a subscription model, I can't see the return for contributors being that high, but if it gets loads of subscribers then it could be worth it.

One thing it does have over the whole VideoBlocks/GraphicRiver model... is that when you download something, you have to register its use, if you want to use it in an end-product. I guess that's to stop people just downloading every single item on a whim. In theory, that might lead to less downloads, which means a higher return for contributors. 

Yeah, I'd look into that pretty quickly, as there's 'very similar' and then there's 'virtually identical':

It might not be as stupid as it sounds. If this guy is the author of that '140 effects' pack on Videohive, and he was non-exclusive so he was allowed to sell it elsewhere, then it makes perfect sense. On Envato he gets the gross equivalent of $0.24 per clip, every time it sells.

After Envato get their cut, that works out to $0.17 per clip. On his own site, with no commission, he gets $1.00 per clip.

Obviously I'd never specifically create content just for $1.00 per clip minus commission, unless I knew they were going to sell hundreds of times a month... but if somebody already has an existing pack of multiple clips elsewhere, which isn't exclusive... then splitting them out into individual assets and selling them here could be a reasonable additional revenue stream. That's if the site takes off and gets a decent amount of buyers, of course.

Not too "salesy" as far as I'm concerned. Some people just turn up, posting a link about some super amazing new stock site they've happened to stumble upon, and then it turns out they're the owner of the site. A bit sneaky! So a proper, above-board introduction is always welcome.

One thing I couldn't help noticing though, and please forgive me if I'm mistaken.. but a lot of your items look very familiar. For example, some of your smoke/energy items are exactly the same as the items in this pack:

https://videohive.net/item/140-flash-fx-elements/11266469

And there's this one: https://videohive.net/item/cubic-background-clips/11470969

And this one: https://videohive.net/item/animated-elements-shapes-2/12703750

And a few others I can't quite put my finger on.

As I say, I could be wrong, but just thought I'd put that out there.

You've lost me slightly. Just to clarify... you have a US Payoneer card, with a US balance and you were attempting to buy something in US dollars... and they still charged you a fee, just because the company you're paying is not in the US.

And if this company had been charging in something other than US dollars, then you would have been charged this fee, as well as the currency conversion fee?

Currency conversion fee is understandable... that's just the way it works, and although it's a fee that relates to the transaction, it's not a 'transaction fee' per se. But a fee just for buying something from a different country... without any currency conversion, is a bit extreme. Never had that with the PayPal card.

Do videos count? http://www.shutterstock.com/video/video.html?id=11325599

Unfortunately not, but seeing as all the documentation says 100%, then that should apply to any sale, no matter the sale price. They'd have to say if you got a different percentage on certain sales, and I've not seen that anywhere.