Hey, she lives right around me somewhere.

Well that's awesome...

Sorry for my language, but what idiot is putting full res images of anything online if it isn't for selling it? Why would anyone upload huge 5-10 MP snapshots in the first place? Do most people already have monitors with 3500x2333 pixel resolution??? If you want to "share your family photos" do it on a image hosting site that allows private folders.

Can't stop shaking my head.

The lady didn't do anything wrong but I don't do anything wrong either driving my Ferrari into a bad neighborhood with the keys in the ignition and leaving the car running by itself for an hour... Guess what happens?

Some people just ask for trouble...

Patience is a virtue...

Dennis, you're so gonna be rich. Smart move. Best of luck to everyone.

@miskolin

Google for tutorials online that target super high res rendering. You will find lots of info there.

Put some money on the side every month. In no time you can get a refurbished Dell that has enough power to crank out the renders in several hours.

*Don't bash me for pushing Dell* It's just cheap...

It's true. During my time in an advertising agency our clients had the $$$ for top notch images from RM agencies. They wanted RM back then and they want RM now - it's a matter of their business ethics and how they want to be perceived. In order to be unique you have to go RM.

I see Yuri's images eeeverywhere and that's good for him but I also know that those clients didn't spend a lot of money and also don't care (or don't know) how many more times these pictures are being used elsewhere. Whenever I see his images online for instance on a web hosting site where one of his models is wearing a headset (in the customer service section...), I know that she isn't working there. Not that I didn't now that other images at other sites actually display their real employees but in the end you want to present a unique and individual business. It turns into something generic. It feels more fake than other images that I haven't seen before. I hope you get my drift.

Another example. Take a portrait. It happened many times already where funky companies took microstock portraits for all kinds of weird ads. Porn sites, medical ads (hemorrhoids or STDs), political ads. So it could happen that one person is an online prostitute, who has an STD (go figure...) and campaigns for the program of a local politician. Serious businesses and advertising agencies take precautions so that never happens

Maybe the prices came down during the years but still if the buyer wants to have an image of a business team consisting out of one afro-american male, one caucasian female and an asian male in a high rise building, during a meeting so you can see the Empire State building right behind them, then there is no way around an RM agency.

That's what Zeus also meant. Some shots can not be done with a low budget - period. To isolate your apples and cell phones it doesn't matter how much or little you spend - it's still gonna be an isolated object. If you have Yuri's model gang doing their thing in a bright office is one story but it won't replace a shot of 3 business people at Times Square, if that is what the client wants.

Sometime the details make a huuuuge difference.

And what do you do, that during 6 hours of render time your 3DS doesn't freeze.

I use one of my other 3 computers...

To me this is a business therefore I need the right tools and resources.

If your computer freezes then something is wrong. It's supposed to be rendering. If I have a render oing for more than 24 hours I'm not going to do nothing. I need to have "backup".

This should be called Marketplace BETA.

Too many issues.

Looks like they never tested the site before.

I wonder what the first potential buyers are thinking.

Anyone any sales yet?

SS currently has a library of 7M images and, at their current rate of growth of 90K new images per week (which has actually been steadily accelerating), will have over 30M by 2015. What subjects/needs won't be covered within that?

I'm not too sure about that statement.

When you check various portfolios at Shutterstock, you quickly realize that 8 out of 10 almost look identical. Their best sellers could be from each others portfolio.

Some really creative contributors come up with new unique ideas but seriously. There are those waves of concepts. A year ago it was the floral design vectors or all the grunge vectors. Now you have the vectors with 3 colored arrows pointing up or 4 colored backgrounds with silhouettes of people dancing in them.

Out of those 90.000 images per week there are too many newbies (with inferior stock quality - not useless but not a real competition either) and lots of people copying each other.

So I think it doesn't matter if SS has 5M. or 7M. images - the niches will still be small or not filled at all. In my opinion SS is accepting too much stuff as are other agencies. Quality has been going up but in many areas it is still sub-par. Still you see badly isolated shots with dirty gray edges etc. That stuff shouldn't be online. SS is following a different strategy rather than providing solely high quality images...

And when you look at the Trads you will see more contributors with outstanding content than bad ones. Just because millions of freelance graphics designers and ad agencies keep buying from the Micros doesn't mean that thousands of big corporations don't need exclusive or RM material for their campaigns. RM is going to stay in one way or another.

I dare to mention the example editorial. Let's say you covered a local event and upload it as editorial to SS, DT and BigStock. What are you getting out of this? 10 sales? 20? If you have 1 sale at Alamy you start with more money than all sales at the micros altogether...

There is so much to consider when uploading to RM agencies. For one you want to make big $$$ by delivering fantastic content but on the other hand you want to cover niches/editorial that simply won't cut the cheese on the Micros.

A lot of what you said I agree with except the above quote. I am anything but famous, not that ambitious (perhaps more patient) and have few connections. However I still see a lot of good sales come through. Had a $1700 sales today for a rather mundane image that would have been rejected for all the usual reasons if submitted to micro. A good image but not great, however it filled a niche for a customer that wanted something less used. An old image I might add, something like 15 years old.

I think I worded that wrong.

First off, congrats to the sale.

Surely many photographers get sales like these on a more or less regular basis. I don't know if you can expect such a sale every other day, twice a month or every 6 months.

What I wanted to say was that those photographers that have a portfolio of 5.000 to 10.000 (or more) filled with top notch stock are more likely to get such sales (1000$ and up) than many of us "macro-water-testers" with 1000-2000 images on Alamy or any RM.

As you read through the Alamy forums, there are plenty of photographers with 3.000 or 5.000 images that sometimes don't get more than 3 to 5 sales a month. Just because someone has tons of images doesn't mean they sell well...

Still there are exceptions to the rule where the infamous mystery-photographer with 400 images can make a living...

In the end I believe it's obvious that with more images in your portfolio you have a higher chance of selling something. Minimum requirement is that one understands RM otherwise you'll rarely get a sale...

Somehow I didn't get notified when this thread gets answers... 

Not that I blame them.  If I was sitting on good returns from some not-commonly-known macro agencies I doubt I would be telling either. 

Well that's what I mean.

Clipartof.com was a hidden gem until Dennis made THE move. Can't blame him - the referral program is the best I've seen and he will be making a sh!(load of money just from people who signed up on this forum (and another forum...).

Now the upload queue is backup to the ceiling and god knows when the rest of us is getting their files online. I still have faith that there are lots of buyers out there and I'll be making some $$$ with them (sometime towards the end of this year...).

Anywho.

I've been with Alamy for over 4 years now and it was a nice ride so far. I produce not a lot of images but try to focus on 100% stock that sells and deliver quality. Those 50 images a week seems to me like torture and makes me feel like that I have to go and do a "job" in order to keep up. Well who cares anyway...

Like mentioned above I think it's realistic to say that even (and most likely "especially") Makro shooters produce A LOT of content. Talk about quantity on the micros? Go check out the portfolios of Getty photographers... It's definitely not like "Yeah now I'm in a trad agency and can lean back with my 600 images and become filthy rich". Forget that.

As with the Micros, getting more or less money (depending on where you sell) you have Makro shooters on Getty getting as low as $2 for a shot since Getty tossed their RM images into the subscription plan that got them into a class action lawsuit. Who can blame them...? But of course you can also rake in thousands of $$$ for a single RM sale. I'd assume though that those sales mostly appear for really, really ambitious and famous photographers that have connections, reputation and most likely a studio etc. (or spend quite some $$$ on expenses for their landscape shots).

Some Getty shooters have over 150.000 images in their ports - and they are not studios like iofoto or Yuri. Of course it took them years (decades) to get a collection like that but that's what the RMs want.

I know there are plenty of agencies. But and that's the key, how do you find out which agency is right for you?

I think I couldn't even go through the list of all the RM agencies checking their requirements and knocking at their door. There are simply too many.

Well, it's like lotto then. Maybe you get lucky one day, finding a few good performing agencies...

Alamy takes pretty much everything you throw at them.

But are there any other non-exclusive macros that have higher standards?

Furthermore I'm not asking for uploads that I have to pay for like that Getty deal. They're exclusive anyway...

I know most people don't speak about this but maybe someone might be kind enough...

Looking for lifestyle, landscape and creative agencies.

Just to pour some oil into the fire...:

Does anyone really know HOW the micros (or any of them) are processing credit cards?

I was also under the impression that when a buyer pays with credit card the information is being verified with the credit card company BEFORE the credits are transferred to the buyer's account.

Why on earth would someone transfer credits to an account without checking if the card is valid or not

A friend of mine mentioned that there is software available that just verifies possible combinations of credit card type, account numbers and expiration dates. So is it that those agencies that hand down refunds to the photographers ONLY check the given credit card information with such software BUT process the cards later during the month?

Reason for that: MONEY.

Supposedly an instant verification for a valid credit card means having a merchant account or something like that where the agency would have to pay processing fees etc. to the credit card companies. By just using the software they accept credit cards on a trust basis until they finally bill them and find out that they are non-existing cards or stolen.

Is this possible?

Also like mentioned before. If a credit card is stolen, all involved parties (except of the thief) are (usually) not liable. The credit card company takes the hit. If anyone had his/her credit card ever stolen knows that the cc company protects you from theft.