It's a funny picture, but ultimately nothing will change, unless a more effective reaction than victim mentality is embraced.

The union spokeswoman says "Each day, photographers are faced with decreasing rates. They are forced to compete against image libraries that are offering vile prices. These practices are infringing on photographers' moral rights."

Forced?  Are photographers slaves?  Don't want to compete against people doing similar work for a lower price?  Is the government or union supposed to protect you from competition?   Do something better than your competitors do, or get used to charging a competitive price.

Moral rights?  Sorry, if people want to be paid for working  --  whatever it is they do -- that's business.  If you produce something that is in high demand and low supply, you can command a high price.  Produce something in low demand and/or high supply, and you will make next to nothing.  Am I violating your moral rights if I pay you the value calculated by the supply/demand of the marketplace?  Silliness.

I was thinking about that...  Not sure what % of the overall stock market is US customers versus the rest of the world. anyone know? There are many countries that haven't shut down for the long weekend.

My impression has always been that the U.S. is less likely to take long breaks.  When it comes to holidays, vacations, summers, etc., the U.S. is famous for working itself crazy and not taking much time off.  Now, Europe, that's another story... or countries like India, where I've heard there are days off work declared for everything under the sun.

I expect $.12 per day from each image.  When I started several years ago, I was seeing more like $.09 per day per image, and that has increased gradually to $.12/day as I added more agencies to the mix and became better at figuring what buyers want and sharpened my skills. 

Many of my pics from the beginning still sell well, and I believe they'll outlive this arbitrary "5 year shelf life" number that people are throwing around.  But if I use that 5-year number for the sake of argument, that comes out to .12/day x 365 days/year x 5 years = $219/image.

I noticed the site being down for a while yesterday, and figured my sales would end up being lousy for the day because of it.  But when the search came back with the default to best sellers it must have helped me... turned out to be a typically good weekday for me, with sales in line with the rest of the week. 

Anyone else notice .38 commissions starting to show up in the Single and Other Downloads column?  Had a few today... I think that's a first for me.  I've been getting a nice amount of the 5.70 sales lately, so I was surprised to see some .38 sales show up in that column.  Are there some pricing shifts going on?

just checked the forum stats and in 6 months MSG went from 10k users to 28k

a lot of people reading but not sharing or participating (not to mention the ones not even registered), this is just a curious fact that shows how stock is far from dead

MS is indeed far from dead.  In fact, I expect the money spent on ms images to grow steadily for several years.  

But it will be harder and harder every day for a new contributor to achieve any success.  It's been pointed out many times here that the pie may be growing, but your own slice of it could be getting smaller and smaller, because there's so many more people like you grabbing for a piece.  

Some advice to people just starting now:

- This is hard work.  Your technical skills have to be near perfect to get accepted these days at the agencies that matter.  But that's just getting your foot in the door.  That doesn't mean you'll actually get sales.

- You need to have a unique vision.  A copycat can no longer just borrow ideas from top selling images and expect to do well.  If it doesn't get you called out and banned, it still won't help you sell, since the established pics almost always keep selling well, while a glut of copycat images sit around the bottom of searches.

- With rare exceptions, a huge portfolio is necessary to drive decent sales.  

- A good business sense may be more important than artistic skills.  Yes, you need the creative know-how to make your pictures, but you need to study the market and figure out what buyers actually want and how you can serve those needs better than anyone else.  A marketing 101 class would be time well spent, perhaps even better than a photography or illustration course.

I'm not out to discourage anyone, just painting an honest picture about the world of microstock today.  If you're talented, with unique vision, hard-working, willing to put in the months and years to build a large port, and with good marketing sense to know where to be focusing your efforts, you can do well.  But every day the odds are stacked more and more against you.  Still, best of luck... I'd like to see more creative people (not copycats) entering microstock... it builds credibility and customer satisfaction for the market, which in the big picture, helps us all.

For me, subs are typically just around one third of my total.

That breakdown has not fluctuated over the past few months or years.

Today, in fact, subs are just one quarter, and I even have an EL today.  Could be a BDE.  I guess 123RF buyers haven't heard that it's April and they're supposed to slow down their buying.  Sshhh!  Don't tell them!

Quote from: wut on March 29, 2012, 10:53

Quote from: stockmarketer on March 29, 2012, 09:19

Normally I dread the March to April drop, but the significant rise this past week suggest the falloff might not be as extreme as normal.

Why is that, I mean the April drop? Easter, spring break etc? I'm not long enough in this game to have my own pattern of April sales, but last year April was strong

Was wondering the same about April/Easter.  Will the Holiday business closures affect sales or does Easter offer a jump in sales?

Every single year I've been at this, I've seen a significant drop from March to April.  It's due to March traditionally being my month that rises the most, and April being pretty awful due to Easter and spring break.  I suppose if your port is disproportionately loaded with Easter and spring-related pics you might avoid a drop, but even then most buyers would have made such purchases in the weeks leading up to April, making your drop even worse.

No, for a few reasons.

1.  The analogy you describe is one of commodity.  It probably is apt for a large amount of copycat submissions to ms these days, but I consider my stuff different.  My style hasn't been duplicated, and my subject matter is niche yet in high demand, so I do pretty well on all the sites, big and small.  I wouldn't cut my flow of pics to any of the sites, because even at the commission levels you suggest, I would lose out.

2.  It's never wise to put all your eggs in one -- or even a select few -- baskets. 

I didn't get the survey invite either.

I'm guessing they pulled a random sample of contributors.  If there are multiple write-in boxes, that's a lot of information to go through manually, and they may not have wanted tens of thousands of responses at once. 

Speaking of which... what is the current number of Fotolia contributors, anyone know?  Of course, only a portion of those would be active.

Anyone else see a sudden drop Wed night / Thurs morning in their FT downloads?

I'm thinking a best match shift happened around midnight in Europe.

For me, yesterday (Wednesday) was a great day for downloads, normal for a weekday lately.

Then at around midnight in Europe, it's like a switch was flipped.   I'm looking at around 25% of the downloads I would normally see at this time of the day.

Maybe this hit certain types of contributors more than others.  If you're an Emerald, and/or in the top few hundred in the FT rankings, did you see a drastic change overnight?

Quote from: michaeldb on March 15, 2012, 14:37

I think there must be some cause to this March slowdown, but I am baffled as to what it could be. And since Easter comes in April this year, I fear that that month might also be disappointing. Maybe it's the effects of the solar storm, or the long-predicted end of microstock as we know it? 

I can't imagine either.  I do know that schools around here are taking Spring Break in March (rather than around Easter, like they used to).  Not sure how much effect Spring Break has on buyers, but it could account for some of it.  Still doesn't fully explain it IMO, though.

I also have been experiencing a lackluster March, particularly the last week or two.  Not terrible, but just a hair under Feb, and I have always considered March to be the best month of the year.  I have been thinking of a number of theories:
- Early spring break (agreeing with LisaFX)... the silver lining could be that April might end up being a bit better if some are taking the break now
- Heat wave in much of the US (may have prompted people to take days off and enjoy the unusually nice weather)
- St. Patrick's Day extended weekend (OK, so that one's a stretch.)