I wonder if the low quality of the video and his amateurish appearance are supposed to reflect the standard of the services of SV. Casual is ok, but  this man looks like he's just been dragged out of bed to do the interview while a taxi is waiting outside to take him to the gym   

What makes FP so different?

- They pay us 70%
- They treat us as photographers and partners, not a bunch of "community members"
- They leave to us to value our photos
- They mostly leave to us to decide which photos should be in our portfolio
- They are easy to upload to
- They accept RM and editorial
- They pay promptly, after a couple of days, not after two weeks or three months
- They seem to me to be cost efficient. Not all the fancy (and probably costly) bells & whistles that you find at some other agencies (LO springs to my mind)

If they are able to keep their cost at a moderate level, they can survive for a long time, even with slow sales. That's exactly what I'm looking for: long term commitment.

If a client asks me how to buy one of my photos, I can send him to IS and get 20% or I can send him to FP and get 70%. As long as FP exists, that's a very easy choice if you ask me. Should FP be gone the day after, I'll possibly lose, not my 70%, but the 20% I would have earned, had I send him to IS instead. And I can still send my client to IS or wherever the next time he needs one of my photos.

Alamy obviously pays better than any microstock agency, but at FP, I have both: microstock photos for microstock prices and RM photos for macrostock prices. And FP pays much faster than Alamy or any other macrostock agency.

Here's a funny record:
After two - 2 - days of July, FP tops my sales statistics for the month, just ahead of SS. Who would've thought.

Oh well, that won't last for many hours I'm afraid, but it shows what those 70% commissions can do if you're lucky   

Not many sales but every now and then I get $6.99 commission for one and that keeps me interested.  I would like to send buyers there but there is the risk of them doing a lucky oliver and that stops me.

If we all go around fearing that we'll lose a couple of dollars whenever an agency goes under, we can as well stay with IS and SS and accept the 10% or less they are going to offer when they've taken control of the market. Your maximum loss is $50.

While FP isn't a big seller for me either, it's been increasing lately, and with 7 dollars a shot, I'm smiling all the way   

Cameras don't matter. Lenses do.

Unless I need to use high ISO or other advanced features, I can take as good photos with a D40 as with a D3. For stock photography, I mostly need ISO 100, aperture priority and a shutter release.

It's official now. I readed the specs from a french forum. No such surprise except for the boring 95% frame coverage. What they was thinking... some lazy engineers probably.

What's hit me first it's the specs looks more like the D200 than the D300, whit this 95% coverage and it's 5fps, one less than the D300 at 6fps.

This D700 is not what I was waiting for. Seriously, more than 3000$ for a D3 sensor in a D200 body? Not a good upgrade for the moment

Though it's only little things I will wait

You need to check the details:

- It's not a D200 but a D300 body (the difference is rather big, start with the LCD)
- fps can be increased to 8 with the grip
- It's got dust removal which the D3 hasn't
- It has to systems for camera leveling (grid and horizon)
- It's only a 95% VF, but that's probably one of the most important cost-saving measures. A 100% VF requires a lot of manual adjustments to get correct.
- It's the only full frame camera on the market with a built-in flash
- The price difference from the D300 is the equivalent of just one good quality lens

Canon and Sony will launch their own FF cameras later this year, but for professional photographers with Nikon lenses, this is a no-brainer.

Featurepics and Scanstockphoto

Everything is slowing down for me, except SS, but being a subscription site, they will follow in July. It's normal and it happens every year.

Subs are on the rise at DT. I had a whole bunch of them yesterday, more than ever before   

I keep checking every 10 minutes but still no sales! I'll give it another few hours.

That long? My watch only counts seconds. Two more seconds, and boooom   

I have 0 sales at the moment.
I think they have done the things well but is it too early to see how will they perform?

What a question to ask after a few days. The big players in this market have spent years establishing themselves. Don't expect any overnight revolutions. It's not going to happen. Ask the question again in a year or two. If they still exist then, there's a fair chance that they will survive.

Canon? I thought they made copiers   

StockXpert is very up and down for me. This month has been terrible so far, but all in all it's ok.