I just started reading the photographer pages with google translate:

National sales
Shotshop tiered fee offers shares of 35% to 75% of the achieved sales (excluding VAT). The amount of the fee percentage depends to depend on what degree of exclusivity of their images have in stock market - this is a bonus of up to 20% and the other by their number of downloads achieved so far. Also this is again a bonus of up to 20%.

Kat1: Subscriptions Photographer
Besides Shotshop are your images in other agencies in Abomodellen (Subscription) sold for a few cents.
Honor share: 35-55%

Cat2: Micro Photographer
Besides Shotshop pictures of you are also available in other agencies to microstock prices-though not in the Abomodell.
Honor share: 40-60%
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I wonder how many micro sellers there are that don't sell at ANY site with subscriptions and are non-exclusive.

On the vector side Voomstock and VectorNexus are gone.

I'm using Amazon's S3 storage for backing up my vector files. They charge based on how much storage space you use. Right now I'm only paying .36 a month.

I just went to check the site and it's gray, reflective, and reorganized. I wonder what all the changes are. I should probably check the site forum 

I just got an Intuos 4 a few months ago. I love it. I've got the medium size model and use it for illustrations. The wider size is more comfortable for resting your wrist. I also appreciate that it comes with replacement pen nibs in the pen holder.  It can also be setup to work right or left handed. It's a good tablet if you decide to get it.

For Shutterstock - Do you plan to ever bring back Lightbox contest for contributors? (I thought those were good for helping sellers get seen) Have you considered allowing contributors to buy subscriptions at a discount? Can we get increased statistics information like views, keywords bought with, and lightboxes?

For iStock - How do you plan to protect sellers from lawsuits in the new logo program? Are you planning to decrease the commission price below 50% after six months?

For Fotolia - Can you implement a way for sellers to add vector formats to existing illustrations on the site? (Without having to delete the original files)

Quote from: Randomway on September 29, 2009, 06:18

It would also help if the word 'vector' would return results in the marketplace search engine. 

Not sure what you're saying here. Vectors appear in illustration searches. Are you saying that you have "vector" as a keyword and it doesn't appear in searches for that keyword?

When I click on the Marketplace tab and use the marketplace specific search box, with the word vector, there are no results at all. I see Marketplace results (0) and RF/RM results (9,656).

Now I know why. It looks like apparently the keyword vector was removed from all files when they were accepted. The only way I know to get all vector results is to first use the search word 'illustration' and go to image properties and sort by resolution with eps.

I feel like I'm missing something simple. Is there a more direct way to find the marketplace vectors?

I usually render out images at 3000x3000. It's large enough for most sites. I'd suggest rerendering your images at a larger size.

Randomway I see that you are an illustrator, maybe Americans buy more illustrations than the rest of the world?   I am a photographer and at a glance seeing around 20% U.S. sales.   

Pixart - You could be right. Maybe it's seasonal too since the US doesn't vacation the same way other places do. Either way I see a massive rekeywording campaign in my future.

1.  So far 331 images

2.  About 53 images have views so far, but none yet on the ones transferred from Snapvillage

3.  No sales yet. My images are illustrations/vectors.

I uploaded my vectors to the waiting area and am keywording about 20 a session. It goes a lot faster if you copy and paste the info from a site where you already have the images up.

I just downloaded it and am about to try it out. This sounds like the most useful script ever. Thank you Dennis for linking this to the forum.

I just had this crazy idea. As the Independent Photographers Collective seems to die softly, why not start a common site with a site name like Free Masters where we put up our decent (not crap) leftovers or LCVs for free?
Every thumb should have the clickable name of the artist to a page on the site where the links to her/his port can be found on the microstock sites, along with some thumbs of linked images on that site.

A modified Coppermine install would do the trick.

Benefits: we control the ads and the links ourselves, no fuzz with paypal etc..., no accountancy, free SEO, no messing with thumbnails, size 550px: large enough for school projects and small bloggers. We can keep the same free images on sites that treat them well, like DT, so the initiative is not competitive with our established agents and they will get increased exposure.

Just a thought...

That actually sounds like a really good idea. It would give everyone the chance to promote their stock images without feeling taken advantage of. I do a lot of variations for illustrations that never end up on a stock site. Being able to use those as promotion on a big site would be great.