BUT, I think if you know what you are doing and are very careful you can get great shots from a $20 tripod.

Don't even entertain a cheap tripod.  Go without.  You are better off having the camera around your neck than sitting on an unstable tripod.  Save for something heavy and rugged that will outlive the next 10 bodies you purchase, and support the heavy beastly lenses you will add to your kit. 

Take it from me... a wind gust knocked over my old tripod last fall and the impact broke my Nikon in half.  It's horrifying, imagine witnessing your spouse being hit by a car and seeing their wires and chips dangling from their torso. 

Purchase/make a couple beanbags and use those to stabilize your camera on a table top or a car hood and save for the best tripod you can get.  Beanbags work surprizingly well.   If you can't find one simply sew (or beg someone to sew) together a square and fillit with a bag of lentils, barley etc. from the grocery store.

You know, what I think might work the best would be to comment on the 3 above you...  What do you think?  Everyone should have the time to make 3 comments, and it won't be too obvious at LO?  Then next week we can add another photo to this list and do your comments? 

jorgeinthewater:  Good to hear about your vegetables!

Anyhow, here's one of my most recent ones.  I'll go comment on a few now.

http://www.luckyoliver.com/photo/3998896/teen_girl_with_wake_board

Yuri Arcur wrote the following on his website (I can't post a direct link to this quote but his website is here www.arcurs.com).

In one year I sell around 400,000 individual licenses for the use of my pictures, which is equal to the amount that my biggest istock competitor has had in her entire lifetime.

I don't know when that was last updated, but Lise now has 5176 photos on IS and 583770 sales.

Yuri has over 2000 on IS, but over 5000 on DT.  Difficult to compare the bottom line, but - somewhat similar size portfolio aside from the fact that he must suffer from the upload restrictions on Istock.  I'm grabbing a number here - if he averages about 60 cents per sale, Yuri would make $240,000 per year and I read recently that Lise makes $120,000.  I think that recent Times article said "over 100,000."

It's not very scientific, but I'm guessing that Yuri makes twice as much as Lise.

Edited:  I didn't mention that Lise is exclusive at IS, but I think everyone knows that.

Do any of the other microsites have size limits on their subscription offering?
Thanks!
-Steve

Many experienced stockers have recommended to downsample to 4 or 5 mp for SS because they are loath to give their XL files away for such low return.

The wild price differences in this industry don't sit well with me.   LO sells the largest/original file size for $50 and they give me $25.   Now, stop laughing.  I know a lot of us are discouraged that LO has failed to take off, but I HAVE and many others have sold XL's there.  It just doesn't seem right selling that same image for the $ or whatever the purchaser will pay you on subscription.

Ahhhhhh.... really?  So this is why it has not improved my sales! 

When I looked at my similars on a few I thought it was working.

Has this improved my sales at FT?  NO. 

But you can make categories in My Files, a folder to place your group of similar theme photos into.  That way, if a buyer happens to find just one of your photos, there is a chance they will click through to see the rest in the series.

I wonder how much traffic is due to contributors just playing around (forums,...)

Shutterstock seems to do things differently, we go to a different site to check stats and play on the forum.  In my brief experience at SS, there hasn't been any of these monstrous troubles the others eventually stumble into that I've noticed.  I wouldn't be surprised if contributors spend more time than purchasers on these sites.

I'm not trying to start an argument because I know nothing about economics - but wasn't the US in Vietnam or just out of Vietnam the last time the CDN $ was this high?  1976?

When CAD was at 1.60 vs USD, did Canada go to war, or had unbalanced budget? In fact, Canada has balanced budgets for what, 25-30 years now? And fights mostly mosquitos in prairie provinces not spending on military anything above amounts bordering with indecent.

Hmm.. then why are so many Canadians dying in Afganistan?  (And why is my nephew taking advanced bomb squad training to go there in a few weeks? )

They caught up overnight for me.

I think that Istock image was a freebie once, I think I saw it before.

Leaf, that frost one isn't yours is it?  I thought I might have seen it before as well.

only 1 days, 48 minutes for me.

But that is because I don't like you guys. Otherwise I would be up with Pixart who obviously is stalking you all ...

Ooh watch it litifeta... I know which country you are in, which house is yours and if you are a man or a woman!!! 

Crap.  I can't even lie on the Internet. 

Thanks Perrush, I did ask on their forum and one of the admins confirmed.  So, yes, they got the photo for a buck.  Now, I don't think this title is going to sell a million copies, but wow - imagine if your photo was purchased for a buck and was on the latest Harry Potter cover?

I find it more bizarre that you have to buy a special license to put the same photo on a single coffee mug, but oh well. 

The other stab - get this - the subject matter could be defamatory so they asked special permission to use the photo and that I sign a minor model release (my kid) and mail it back to them.  Here's the stab.... it costs .93 cents plus .06 gst to mail a letter to the U.S. from here.     With currency exchange I will have made about 3 cents.

The agent is really nice though, I made a comment that I liked their catalogue - is it available in Canada and he said to send him a list of titles, they likely have publicity copies they can send.

I have a digital file that I'll post if/when it actually goes to print.