I don not think Shutterstock has done anything in the past to earn mistrust of image producers. They have not (yet maybe) pulled stunts in the magnitude of Istock, Getty, Fotolia, Deposit Photos, etc. I think at this point it is a case of not guilty until proven guilty, benefit of the doubt (if there is any doubt), etc. etc.

I guess it depends on whether you were making money off the partner program or thought BigStock was better before they bought them. Not that those things can't be said about other agencies too, but I don't think anybody really gets a pass.

If you have high production value images, put them somewhere else. What's so hard to get about that?

If more of those places existed, I'd totally do that.

How about the Microstock market as a whole, not blaming SS or investors for what's wrong? How about that the top four on the right are roughly the only four viable places for artists to make a reliable return? Why is that? You're going to say, it's all because of SS?

There is probably a chicken and egg answer to that of which came first. Dominance of the big 4 or belief in the dominance of the big 4? 

Financially this year has been rough so far, and I'm not in a position to be able to keep riding out the dip in income. So I'm giving serious thought to going back to an office/studio job later this year if I can't get some things happening with stock. But I don't mind so much. I've had a good run, and I got some years of time spent with my son and memories made that I can't put a price tag on. My daughter will be here in September, and I'd still like to spend time at home with her, too. I just may need to go back to a regular job for a while to get the finances back in order first.

I hear you. I'm kind of getting sick of the ups and downs in income. I was doing design temp work with Aquent and iCreatives before I started in stock. It can have dead periods too, but it seemed to work pretty well. You might give that a try.

Over time I have found that few have the stomach or inclination to uncover the cold hard facts. Life is more pleasant when viewed through rose colored glasses.

When this site began most of the people who visited here came to discus the cold hard facts of business, many of those people have moved on for one reason or another.

When this site censored my post by removing the cold hard facts, information which took several months to gather. Documentation taken directly from the SEC & Insight Venture Partner sites, it reduced my post above to just one persons opinion, which it is not.

Granted most people do not want take the time to uncover the reality of the situation and most people will not take the time to read nor understand it. However I posted a good deal of information that is relevant and important to contributors as business people and most contributors do not have the time or inclination to do their own research or read threads about SSTK stock.

Leaf left the longer post above that Jon wrote, but removed the actual documentation that is crucial to understand just who we are dealing with, when making business decisions regarding our future.

I am sure shutterstock much prefers the censored version which leaves the false perception that Jon is still in control of shutterstock intact.

Not to discount any research that went into it, but is there really anything being hidden from us? Most of it seems pretty much on the surface for us to see right in front of us.

I'm sure it would be attractive to a lot of contributors, but it would probably make the rest of us happy seeing a lot of our competitors flock to one site.

How would you get all the high res images onto your phone or tablet? It seems like it would have to be cloud based. I guess you could just remote into your computer. Do they make remote desktop stuff for tablets? Just thinking out loud...

Quote from: cthoman on June 26, 2014, 08:29

Somebody made one of these threads a month ago...

http://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/how-many-images-do-'we'-control/

I thought I would average the number from the poll then times by no. of forum member.
Sample space of 106 from 34336 members is low. From previous poll I averaged 4047 image per person. Which mean we have ~139,000,000 images. That's not possible. SS only have 38ish millions.

Is there a way to really gauge how much microstockgroup really represent?

I think the annual survey gets around 500 responses. That's probably more than most polls get, so that might be as close as you'll get. Tyler probably has those numbers if they aren't listed in the survey.

You can really only speculate about the rest of the contributors from MSG. I'm not sure how active some of them are. Not that you have to post a lot to be active here. I assume there are a fair amount of non-contributor accounts as well here.

If Stockfresh curated the images it has into a collection and raised the prices of those image slightly, even on a non exclusive basis it would be much more appealing to buyers. Wading through millions of dated images is a drag for any designer.

If you guys went for a mini macro collection I'd be much more interested in uploading.

It's good in theory, and I've advocated for one of the larger agencies to move in this direction. At the same time, these places do have customers, and they run the risk of alienating them for a gamble that may or may not work for them. Unless you are in desperate times, then you almost have to launch with that mission statement because you probably won't naturally evolve into it.

I'll never understand this logic. What do you expect? That a company like Stockfresh is going to magically acquire enough images to be competitive and then you'll upload? Images have to come from somewhere, and we have to be willing to assume some of the risk if we want to ever see a fair-trade company succeed.

And how do you think the bigger agencies gain more traction? Because everyone keeps uploading to them, growing the collections and giving them more to work with, more to offer buyers. Small companies don't stand a chance if too many people have your attitude about them.

Yep, it's not always all about marketing budgets (although that doesn't hurt). Sometimes, it is about contributor support. That said, I did leave Stockfresh a while back. I wasn't crazy about the somewhat low prices. I'm thinking I should probably give them another shot (if they'll take me back). They still offer a better deal than a lot of other places out there.

Contributors are waking up and it is clear for Oringer we are not even an afterthought. He views us simply as a way to make bank. Notice that he never once considers nor mentions what would be best for contributors in this equation to acquire more wealth.

I hate to break it to you, but that's the whole industry. I sold more subs at iStock/Thinkstock last month than I did at Shutterstock. This after leaving IS because I thought it was going to be worse than Shutterstock. Guess what? I was right. I'm selling at even lower RPD there now with a higher volume. Wooyay! I wish there was another way, but it's hard to make a living doing this without all the players.

I'm all for helping out a project that wants to make a difference in the industry, but I'm skeptical that one will form. I think small victories can be won like DPC or that illustrators get 20% again at IS, but those are barely victories in my opinion. There is still so much more out there for contributors to earn. My hope is that one day most contributors will come to see that, but it could be just an illusion based on my own numbers. I hope that is not the case though.

How can an agency decide what a buyer would want?

I suppose it depends on the strategy of the agency. I think most of the majors are kind of a "one stop shop" where they try to have everything you'd ever want. I don't see any reason why they should delete anything unless it is really outdated. Other agencies might want to have a more curated collection, although they usually do that by just not accepting things in the first place.

No issues here.