Ebay is another example of a company that built their success on small sellers, then gradually squeezed them out by raising fees and introducing other restrictions that favored big sellers that could still "make it up on volume".   They lost a lot of sellers (Ebay "stores")  along the way and actually had to backpedal and try to mend fences to some extent.   

But that was a rapidly developing new market, in the true sense of the word, and obviously eBay wants to generate the most profit for the least work/hassle (just like any other business) so it was bound to favour the bigger players that helped them. A lot of small players were also squeezed out by their own naivety and the inability to scale their operation. eBay is a meritocracy, you get the respect or advantages that you earn __ just like microstock.

I would very much doubt it as presumably they are the actual subject of the image rather than something in the background.

Not sure you can have 'editorial' illustrations anyway __ kind of an oxymoron.

Just tried a couple of searches on Photos.com Plus, to see how the search-order was working, and when I clicked on one of my own images ... this message popped up in bright red type;

Alert: This image will not be available to download or license after November 2.

Looks like the party might be over fairly soon after all. Oh well.

I choose not to name my beaches, I go back and forth with the pro's and con's. My point was shooting a single woman on the beach lying down doesn't play like it used to.

Just calling it how I see it. They do fantastic work by the way, print work is also very very good, not trying to take that away from them.

Well obviously, from knowing it was in the VI's, it only took me a couple of minutes to identify the location. You can ensure that many buyers won't see your images but you can't keep it secret from your serious competitors. We photographers have a great interest and memory for spectacular locations. Most landscape photographers could open any coffee-table book and name the majority of the locations without reading the text.

And yep, 'woman on beach' has probably been shot before and it'll probably happen again. Just like everything else. Any image/theme on microstock that rises up the rankings will be copied relentlessly unless it is sufficiently unique to make that difficult or impossible.

To be honest I do think the example above is probably coincidental. They appear to be a husband and wife team who shoot similarly-themed stuff throughout their portfolio and naturally she has the outfits to go with it.

As far as framing the shot is concerned you almost have to place the background island close to the centre of the composition and, taking the shadows from the trees into account, there's only really one place she could sit. It is the most obvious and natural composition of that scene under those particular conditions.

It's more common than you might think to produce near identical images. I've several examples when neither photographer had seen the others work (for example because the image uploaded later had actually been captured months before being submitted).

No, I think talk of the 'spike' is exaggerated and of course spikes of a few sales do make a big splash in what is normally a very shallow pond (if I'm not mixing my metaphors too much).

I've had a few recent remarkably good days of late .. followed by very little. At the end of the month it tends to be 'same old, same old' at best.

^^^ Yes, I'll be using it for my food images. It'll be handy to see how the images appear as I'm shooting. What works and what does not is often difficult to see clearly through the viewfinder and also unwanted reflections, etc.

In general the stock sites don't approve things that people would want on their walls. How many times have we, as a group, complained about images being rejected for "not stock" or "over photoshoped / to artsy / to designed"? The stock sites want themes that apply to concepts or isolations that can be manipulated by designers to create what they want.

The other big part of this will come down to marketing. To my knowledge IS never marketed the concept of coming to them for prints. Designers, in general, are creating an advertisement - not looking for a finished art piece to hang on a wall. If they can market this to people who purchase wall art on a regular basis - like interior designers - then it may work out ok.

I'd agree. One of the first adages I heard about this game was "If your image looks good enough to hang on a wall ... then it probably won't be a good stock image"

Since this poll shows nothing about portfolio size, number of agencies, or anything, I can't say it's of much use.

Worse than that the question is not actually specific to microstock or even photography in general __ just 'how much are you making'.

If people are voting honestly then some of them must be including income from other sources. There are probably fewer than 100 people worldwide earning more than $5K per month from microstock and I doubt that 11 of them have turned up to vote here. I'd guess there may be 60 or 70 in that category in total which would be roughly 0.2% of the 30K contributors listed on the multimedia.de chart.

I'm not a troll folks, I haven't argued with any of you guys, but agencies forums are sooo censored that I believed that this page could let our tongues free, but I see that also this forum is censored and people only wants to read what they want

I'm not frauding againts agencies, simply brought some polemic themes over the table to know people's opinions, but I see that you CAN'T free speak here neither

pity

How have you been censored? Just because others may not agree with you does not qualify it as censorship. You can say pretty much what you like here but then so can others about you too.

^^^ Great work Click_click.

It's good to know that we can rely on our fellow contributors to watch out and take action even when we may be unaware of the situation. Cheers!

I certainly would not put landscapes on there to be only compensated $10.

Why not? That's about 10x more than the average most other license sales make and those sales are often being used for expensive advertising campaigns. How much would you think was appropriate for a simple print?

I am at the .36 level and I just did a test of 4 photos that I just uploaded and got approved this week.

Three came up on the first page when sorted by newest first using one or two keywords I know were included. One photo was of snow peas in a bowl. When I search for snow AND peas AND bowl, nothing shows up. When I search for peas AND bowl, it shows up. Go figure. Maybe the search term snow seems irrelevant, therefore nothing shows up? Not sure why that happens. I don't imagine it will ever be possible to get a search engine that is perfect 100% of the time.

Cathy - Your image doesn't come up with 'snow' because it is not in the keywords. Maybe the reviewer removed it? I'm not familiar with the term 'snow pea' but in the UK I think those vegetables would be called 'mangetout' (as in French for 'eat all').