Once Serban decides, nothing a contributor has to say has any influence; even the spat with YuriAcurs over the "similars" issue ended in a draw ... I guess.  Or, maybe Yuri was given an exception?   

Yup, and no exception for Yuri - the whole "similars" thing started to limit the content of such production companies. Yuri has 45, 557 files on Fotolia and only 32,304 on Dreamstime - and they had only 54 approved uploads this month.

I had the same problem when I owned my own graphic design company in LA. At first, I had enough work to keep myself busy. It kept growing, which was a good thing. But soon working 14 hours a day wasn't enough and I had to hire other people. That brought a whole new set of problems...taxes, etc. Pretty soon, I was stuck doing bookwork, managing people, selling, delivering jobs, and servicing the customers. There wasn't even time for me to do the work I really enjoyed, which was designing. I ended up selling the company and going back to being an employee. It wasn't perfect, but I had a steady income doing what I loved doing...design and computer work.

Thanks for sharing that - I think I'd do the same.

Well, agencies will always want new images simply because our life and technology and issues are changing, and changing fast. So I don't think there will be ever a point when agencies will say "we don't need new images at this time", this would be a suicide. As to buyers reusing images - I've seen it happening a few times, but I don't think it's happening on a large scale. Trends are changing, what clients want is changing, even if you have a few thousands images on your hard drive you'd want something new for a new client and new project.

"Stock on a cloud" - interesting thought, but I don't think for photographers it will be much difference from existing sub model - we're already paid monthly proportionality to the revenue our portfolios are generating.

Guess there would always be a love-hate story between contributors and agencies ;p.

Right now I am more on the "love" side after dealing with a few frustrating and time-consuming situations with clients... It was never a "hate" for me - yeah I'd complain here and there, sometimes what they do just doesn't make any sense, sometimes they just want to squeeze more money out of you, we all know that, but it takes a little reality check of what it's like being completely on your own to appreciate their side of business. In ideal world everyone would be not greedy, responsible, and honest, and smart - but hey, then dealing with clients wouldn't be a problem, either!

I actually feel the exact opposite. I'm amazed at the cut they take after running my own site. It's a lot of upfront work, but so was creating all the images to begin with. It has really made me realize how much untapped earning potential most of these agencies have if they were run differently.

I am glad you don't find it difficult, but I suspect you have certain type of customers, probably fellow graphic designers that understand the business and the work that goes into creating images. The use of your illustrations is also a bit limited. I don't want to go into gore details here but I had to deal with uses like printing images on bolts of fabric (how do you count number of impressions? or using images in medical advertising campaigns with "sensitive" subjects, or someone wanting to re-license the image or other things like that which take time to figure out and follow through. Some people wanting to buy images never heard of stock photography so they have a lot of questions. Some want to con you. Some don't know how to use a website. Of course, I can choose not to reply or say "no" to all special requests but then what's the point of running your own site..

Quote from: Elenathewise on May 09, 2011, 11:27

Some of the files that I opted in for Photo+ don't show updated prices. The checkbox is checked (so I can't re-add them), but they are not showing under Photo+ ... Is this the bug people were talking about? Is there a workaround for it?

there was something on the iStock forums about that.  said that you need to go to the admin area for the file then hit the "save" button and it shoudl work.  try that - I am not yet opting any in so can't verify it for you.

here's the istock thread:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=328522&messageid=6373046

YES this did work. Thank you very much for the info.

with Photo+, without Photo+ .... sales on Istock suck these days. I opted in some files but Istock is way behind Fotolia and Shutter for me this month. Significantly.

We have a collection of almost 300000 images of our own. We are looking for a software that will help us manage this stock online and also enable features like new photographers sign up, managing and recording payments, online sales. Is there a solution that will help us in doing this and also permit us to integrate the API of a microstock agency like Fotolia or Dreamstime.

300,000? Did you produce 10,000 images a year for 30 years in a row??:-)
Anyhow, here is another solution: http://www.photodeck.com
Jonathan Ross' SpacesImages are based on that one.

Hi Elena,

Here is what our company Webmaster feels why you are ask these questions from the buyers-

"I think it's a great site. A lot of work went into this one. I think, from my perspective, the reason she gets asked that a lot is that she has 11,000-plus images. That's a lot of images from one photographer on a new site, so that's probably the only reason why."

Thank you for your feedback! It could be why, too. It took about 5 years to create a portfolio that big, but the site is new so it might look like it came out of nowhere. Not that every customer asks about it, most of them actually don't :-) , it's just something that I didn't think would cross people's minds when they see my site.

How do they pay the royalties? Paypal? in USD?

Nice to hear more feedback! There are a few things that I'd need to work on for sure.
@cthoman - design-wise, we had a professional graphic designer consulting us. He'd have us more stuff changed, like color of the links and smaller things like that but we had to stop at some point - improving the design of your site can be a never-ending process.
He also hates drop shadows with passion. Must be a designer thing

Many of you know that I sell my stock photography from my own site, www.elenaphoto.com.
We have re-worked the layout extensively for it to look more professional and user-friendly.
However, sometimes my customers still have questions like - can we be sure it's your own work and the images are not stolen form somewhere? Of course, I assure them, all work presented on the site is 100% my original work, and I can prove it, but I was wondering it there is something in the layout of the site that makes them doubt that... or is it just simple caution since there are so many cases of theft?
Thanks in advance,
Elena.

Thank you for the links - nice to know. However still I don't understand how can someone pay me even 200 dollars for infringement if my revenue loss is only 28 dollars - it just doesn't make sense.