fotolia is about 15% of my SS earnings

done 

SS is great, best agency for me, but when downloads on SS from 30-35 drops to 5-10 daily as last few weeks it's something that reminds me that it's never good to have near monopoly.

I hope fotolia, 123 and Istock will get better as soon as possible.

it is possible to earn 11k in a year or two (with vectors) but only if you know what you are doing.

my friend (and my ex-referral) earned more then that in less then 2 years with less than 300 vectors (all very high commercial vector sets) and he doesn't even work every day, but he really know what he is doing (i will not publish his gallery link) and it is something very hard to achieve.

what I want to say that there is hope, but you need to know very good what is selling (newest web trends), work hard, have great creativity and inspiration, build up your portfolio and have a little luck.

for photographers situation is a little different (harder) to earn that much, harder then before 3-4 years, but we can build faster our portfolio and when you discover what is selling best and keep doing similar photos it is possible to earn 10k annually with less then 2k photos. Possible but not easy at all.

one thing is important (this is mostly for starting photographers), you have to look at stock as your "normal" day job, work at least 8 hours a day, 6 days in a week and get approved more then 100-200 high quality images monthly so starting micro stock photography can be much easier, but if you are starting with no portfolio and look at stock only as your hobby, it will be very hard, almost impossible to make living with that. it can be hobby that earn you more then 1k monthly but only if you already have nice portfolio.

sorry for my english and happy holidays!

i think the obvious legal loophole could be to open a Swiss bank account and getting paid there, it's cheap and easy and you don't need to live/work in switzerland, once it's open you get a debit card and everything else will be done online.

another solution could be for agencies to start allowing payments in Bitcoins or other dodgy virtual currencies ?

don't know how serious or sarcastic you were in this post but there is a reason why small business are excluded for VAT in some European countries

if this move will get contributors earning less and less and agencies don't take this part as their expenses it looks like every few days there is news in which we contributors are more screwed

international stock photographer/illustrator union (syndicate) looks like something we all had to do long time ago...

i'm first who are willing to pay part of my earnings to be part of that union if it can participate in price/commision regulation and things like that

Quote from: panicAttack on December 20, 2014, 08:15

Will this affect sites like Shutterstock, Istock and others?

in the worst scenario they just open a rep.office in UK/Germany/France/Italy/Spain which are the top-5 markets in EU.

so what you think does it means to us, contributors?

less earnings (taxes excluded from our payments)?

in some EU countries small businesses (earning less than for example 40k $ annualy) doesn't have to be included in VAT system...

Hi All,

Our IT has rectified the issue. It's working perfectly fine now.

Please email to [email protected] if you encounter the issue again.

Have a lovely day!


Cheers,
Angel

Yes, it is working fine last few days

Cheers!

I submitted batch of 10 yesterday (more than 24 hours ago), only 7 of 10 have finished queue (all 10 images dimensions are more then 6 mpx so all have to be fine).  Today, I uploaded 10 more, and all of them are still in queue, times vary from 288 to 392 minutes, and it has been more then 7 hours ago, nothing changed, it still says 288 minutes.

I used web form uploader, not FTP, so it looks to me like it doesn't work.

Thank you Kamran very much! 

Problem was (I am using Chrome) when I saved my information on 123rf account photographer setting it doesn't automatically take me to Payoneer, I needed to click on Payoneer in this text field "Your Payoneer, PayPal or Moneybookers Email Address to receive " and it took me to Payoneer account page where I selected 123rf as my funding source.

So I am just waiting for first payment from 123rf.
One more thing, when will Payoneer take 29.95$ for Maintenance? Can I choose or is it automatically when I have enough on my balance?

I will check how much ATM charges and if it is ok, I will probably link Skrill to Payoneer aswell so thank you again for that!

Greetings

I have few questions for anyone who use Payoneer as payment options on any stock site (for example on 123rf)

I send question to Payoneer first but got some generic reply.

First of all, I opened account, got my card, activated account and this was easy, but do not understand one thing

If I want to receive my payment to Payoneer from 123rf, I changed payment method on 123rf to Payoneer but what else do I need to do or is that all?

I read about something that I need to add 123rf as partner on my Payoneer account, do I need to do that and how to do that? I can't see that options.

Last question is about transfering money from Skrill (Moneybookers) to Payoneer, is it possible and how to do that?

Thank you and excuse my English

Cheers!

my sales completely disappeared this week.

So all those 28c credit subs for indes will go up to 75c- $1 sales?

where did you read it?

Yes, it can happen.

I take photos for about 5 years, not very long time but I do believe I'm getting better. On stock sites I am about 2-3 years.

I had about 70-80% acceptance rate for a long time, but last few months according to Shutterstock reviewers I totally forgot how to shoot and edit my photos. My last few batches, acceptance rate is about 10 -15 %. Mostly focus, lighting issues and composition.

But according to most other sites like Fotolia, 123rf, Dreamstime (ok, and IStock too, but it isn't very relevant because of their too high acceptance rate) I am still getting better.

Strange.