DMCA letters if you have a lot of time

It's interesting that so many top contributors will accept 25% commissions, low prices and very low EL prices from a low selling site.  I can understand why others then join them.  It just fills me with fear for the future of microstock.  Perhaps I should just give up and upload to every site, ignoring what they pay but I find that very hard to do.  I tried uploading again to istock but I have this voice screaming in my head, "they only pay you 17%, you muppet".

I'm going to have to work harder at other ways to make money, I just don't enjoy working for such low commissions when it's obvious that the sites are just doing this out of greed.  Some of them used to pay 50% when hosting and advertising cost more and microstock was much smaller.  It looked like they were making a nice profit.  Pond5 still pay 50% and they must have much more expense, hosting all those big video files.  I know that I'm not going to persuade those that want to maximise their earnings in the short term that they are jeopardizing the future of microstock and I can understand the other side of the argument.  It's probably sensible to grab all that you can now but I just can't help thinking what happens next?

I agree 100% with all that you have said and other in this topic but let�s think about it..

IS, went to 15%, what have happened? some left, other joined, sales down.. overall it will continue to be number 1 or 2 for most contributors
FT, another cut on %, what have happened? same story! don�t think that contributor will abandon them
DT, cut to 25% on level 0 and subs seem to be on the raise (at least for a big part that shows on a topic I open a while ago).. DT won�t dissapear of the market, many people have big RPD there

on the other hand SF and GLO seem to be very cool agencies with very nice 50 and 52%.. but far will they go?

SF is open for one year.. I guess 95% still waiting for first payment.. lack of investment from them as they keep on promising it is going to happen..
GLO seem to be the same thing or perhaps they are a lot more into illustrations..

in the end what do we have left, yep the top 4, 5 agencies including 123RF which is performing nicely for me even above FT, DT and IS sometimes

stock is very hard to deal really, if we look into what will be the future that would be even harder but I am sure things will stay the same for a long time and or we collect as much as possible or we are losing big time once big % will never come and agencies that are willing to give that to us will never make it..

beside this I do agree that photodune must raise the % to like 35% and the EL prices which seem a "little" low

Quote from: lagereek on August 08, 2011, 10:51

people are repeating themselves constantly and in severall threads. IS exclusives, frustrated and angered are venting their frustration about the same old thing over and over again and then trying to tone down every little bit of criticism against IS and in a very nice and polite way,  thinking nobody will notice?

The whole forum represents the kind of a microstock contributor.
I talked with many people who found my job interesting but only 0.1% of them become contributors. They are like all of us.
So what's the problem if frustration is one of our main subjects? (I was crying many times to my mother but she simply doesn't understood the IS rejects. So I came here)
BTW I said many times, life will be better and I will be more balanced and happy if I don't watch the TV and I don't read the MSG forums anymore. The TV is out, I'm half happy.

why still here? imagine 100% happiness? because of yours reasons IS have the famous slogan "money ain�t gonna make you happy!"

I am really not going to continue this ridiculous discussion! Ok I am the only one here talking about them so you guys can pick on me, guess that I will leave this topic for you and other that wanna offend other, nice meeting you

Quote from: luissantos84 on August 10, 2011, 19:04

still stratching my head on this one but ok

just had a sale on my first day there, 1.25$

So that could be a regular large size sale or an Extended license sale at extra small size. Do they let you know what the sale was?

it was a M size (6MP) for 5$

so true PW, one of these days will be ano too, not that I have much to lose (loose for lagereek) but I wanna say bad things about agencies

still stratching my head on this one but ok

just had a sale on my first day there, 1.25$

Personally I do not even consider following the lead of the "big contributors". These guys have ports of thousands and can rack up in a month what will take me years to do. They also have other avenues to uploading their huge ports than the personal painful image by image way I have to do it.

Their decision to add another income source must be much easier than for a person who will have to toil over another slow performing site and its painful uploading process (of which I have enough already).

The big guns are welcome to the bit of income there might be at the moment. I am definitely not going to spend all that time to see if a few morsels can drop my way.  If their sales justify in the end (top or top of middle tier), then I will reconsider. 

true, their upload is smooth if you dont have MR pictures

I am so tired of FB, unless you are just with real friends, having a lot of photographers? I am so close to delete all of them, tired of sold 10 files on ss, sold 1 at ft and all that crap, I don�t understand why they keep on posting that, what a smart strategy to ruin their business.. not to mention the referral crap all over their posts just spamming and filling my view there.. maybe they think that us photographers/contributors will buy their stuff, cannot understand them really

It seems that many contributors have fogotten that money isn�t going to be what makes you all happy.

stock is a jungle that�s right.. top contributors are there already, why let them take all the money??

I can't upload MRs!
 I put all required jpg MRs for one image in one zip file... After uploading I marked it on drop down menu as Model releases and submit..
But after submitting I get error message: "Release Forms must be a zip containing a '.pdf', '.jpg' or '.png', got a zip containing ''  
Aslo do I have to upload MRs for every new image with same models...?

still finding that out too.. I have been told that we should write on note to reviewer the name of the release, have done that, and some got in, but some need improvement (MR missing)

overall they are quite quick and kind on reply

there are anonymous and anonymous, I really don�t mind about them unless they don�t enter here attacking everywhere and talking bs without assuming who they are, that�s just coward.. on the other hand there a few anonymous here that I have been reading and agreeing for a little while so I don�t find that weird, if I have the curiousity to know? sure I do!

when I want really to find out I can get there (not contacting other members) but googling and some are quite easy to track, the last one that I have found was aeonf, nothing against him but the continuous desire of him to know everybody income got me curious, sometimes I do read comments of that person and they have holes which we can sneak in, never lost a lot of time doing it but surely a lot of the anonymous can be found.. but I have no problem with them when they have a consistent speech and things that I found familiar from own experiences

the other thing that Bladricks talked is a very important subject too, sometimes it is a lot better to talk "bad" about agencies without showing who we are, had my own learning (not that I wanted to be there) but because of a topic about CC I got kicked out after saying they were dead (2 sales in 2 years)

my sweet mother takes care of that on the weekends