I find it all fascinating.  Its great that someone has the power to perhaps change the direction of MS for good.  Hopefully the non-Yuri shops will start competing for other superstars and we can get back to the competing on quality and content instead of "who has the lowest price".   Maybe then the "agencies" can actually act like agencies and promote the photographers instead of price point.

I did find the typos and strange wording off putting.  Yuri, you can afford a proofreader!  Especially when dealing with publicly held companies, any public statement should go through filters.

No device replaces the artist eye, sense of composition and the art of post processing.

You can't even buy a stamp with 18 cents.  Time to stop supporting low earners who chip away at the big earners.

Ever read the stock of Vlasic pickles and how their deal with Walmart nearly bankrupt them?  Long story short (look it up for more detail - Wall St. Journal I believe), V wants to get into the Wmart stores. Walmart and V strike a deal to sell a 5 gallon jar of pickle for $5.  V's margin is so razor thin that they are basically looking at the deal as a branding/marketing scheme.

They sell like crazy during this special offer.

Now everyone and their  brother has more pickles than they can ever eat in three years on their counter.  V pickles sales slump.  The next year V officials get their heads to together and come up with a price for this pickle jar that will allow them to at least make a profit.  They approach Walmart with the offer.

Walmart laughs and says "didn't you see our signs?  We promote falling prices.  Come back with a deal that is 10% lower than last years!"

The only one who profits is Walmart.

One thing I've been doing on my symbiostock site - dogfordstudios.com - when I'm not uploading images, is writing some blog articles with stock image buyers in mind.

The thing that always bugged me about the blogs on say, Dreamstime, is that they are always written from photographers to other photographers - giving tips about equipment or bragging about a sale or something.

If you want to attract buyers you need to have info that they want.  Blogs gear towards designers on what RF is all about, how to use it, why they would want to buy directly from fellow artists etc.

"Enjoy free photos? Consider contributing some of yours for others"

Freerangestock.com offers the lowest commissions yet in the world of microstock - "0"

Upload your images to be given away for the chance at sharing in advertising revenue.  I think this is the new low until they charge a fee for giving away photos.

I'm in now - dogfordstudios.com

What held me back initially is ignorance.  Too busy trying to take/upload as many images a month as I could with the big sites only to see dwindling commissions and sales.  I ignored any forum posts mentioning Symbiostock...

Then a few posts nailed it on the head. The sites that have gone public are constantly looking for short sighted deals to please their shareholders.  Making bundle deals that bring in some quick cash to make their quarterly numbers look good while shooting themselves (and us with them) in the foot in the long term.

Unlike signing up with a traditional agency, setting up a SS takes a bit of upfront hosting money and a few days of learning and reading to figure everything out.  But if you've set up a blog or simple website before its not too bad.

For me the big pluses for a Sys site are:

1.  100% commissions.  I only need a few large downloads a month to rival one of my agencies with all of the subscription sales.
2.  No reviewers.  Its your site. You are the review.  You can put up as many similars as you want.  You can put up images the sites rejected.  You can put up more artistic shots that the stock sites reject.
3  Artist to artist connection - The network among SS sites make it stronger than just creating your own stand alone website and designers are artist who can appreciate buying from fellow artists.

A Sys site is likely to attract the smaller volume buyers who just need the occasional stock image.  High volume buyers are probably still going to do most of their shopping at the subscription sites but if they can't find what they need there they have a new option to choose from.  No  doubt many images on the Sys network will be exclusive.

Before microstock, the stock world paid good commissions and the various stock agencies competed on quality and uniqueness.  They recruited quality artists and were proud to promote their talent pool.  Then the microstock sites came along and treated images as a commodity and competed on price - which is the race to 0.

The Sys network will be great if everyone keeps this history lesson in mind.  Compete on quality and offering unique images not on price. 

At this point my plan is to just work on SS site.  I've stopped uploading to the agencies at the moment.  As sales start to come in I may start pulling some of my images from the agencies to offer exclusively on my Sys site.

Anyway, its exciting to have your own stock site free from all of the daily turmoil at the agencies.  -- Ed

Hi, my ss site went live a couple days ago.

website: Dogford Studios

url: http://www.dogfordstudios.com

your photo topics: humor, dogs, people, objects, still lifes

what  you're looking for: networking partners

I expect to have about 2,000 images up eventually.  I have over 2,000 on DT, almost 1,000 on SS, a portfolio on Arc Angel, Fine Art America etc.

Thanks, Ed

Joined the SS experience yesterday afternoon.  With the constant F'n of contributors by the agencies I love the idea of taking back control.  Power to the people!

Anyway, first time user of WP and things are going alright.  Figuring it out.  Will probably go with Amanda's Clean look.  That is when my site comes back from the dead.

BlueHost is my host and they tell me that my server is having an emergency.  Hopefully its not DOA.  Kind of a bummer that it would crash within 24 hours of starting.