Quote from: Randy McKown on June 05, 2010, 23:48

Show of hands .. how many people have ever forked over the $25 for a yearly copy of the photographers market ... and actually used it 
Don't like $0.25 sales then take business into your own hands .. you don't have to belong to a single agency micro or macro or whatever to pull in bigger sales ... but it takes motivation and you have to treat it as a career. Treat photography as a hobby and you'll bring in a hobby income which is nobodys fault but your own.
Face it people, no matter how many "pro shooters" become contributors microstock will always be at the bottom of the barrel in the overall photography industry .. that's where it was designed to be and that's where it belongs .. take it for what it is.

Quite right Randy. Didn't RF stock used to be the dumping ground of shoot leftovers?

To be honest, when I tell pro photographers that I shoot for microstock they are  all disgusted in some way. On the other hand, they all say they used to earn more few years ago, and they are not satisfied now. So, it seems that most people are not satisfied with their current earnings, at least when photography business is in question.

I suspect the real point is "I do it so I have to justify it to myself somehow".
I'm going to give up, as this is turning more into a test of my stamina and patience then any sort of constructive debate.

You are accusing me for something that you don't know. That's not polite, and I think you should apologize before you make any other comment.

I'm trying to explain how stuff works here, and in whole eastern Europe, China, India etc. and you are saying that I'm trying to justify myself.
Everyone here is fighting for his own things. If something is stolen from you, YOU have to fight for it. And other people should fight for their own stolen things.
That's the rule if you want to survive here. Don't expect to be protected from any side. This is not America. Your rules, not matter how correct they are, sound funny here where there are no rules.

I know what he wants to say. I just want to say that it seems to me that you guys don't get that half of the world is flooded with everything pirated. You tube is nothing comparing to billions of dollars in pirated software, movies and everything else.
Thousands of music videos on youtube can only promote the artist on the video. Otherwise, noone would hear for Rihanna in my country, and she could never make a concert here, like she did last year. Yes, she could come, and make a concert for few people, but if there are not things like youtube, almost noone would hear for her. Not everyone has MTV in vast majority of the world population.

George Michael offers all his music for free on his own website. You can download it as much as you want.
He is big enough start for you I guess...

Quote from: madelaide on June 04, 2010, 19:45

If you consider viewing a low res video that BBC could have had YouTube to remove (it hasn't, maybe it's also online in their website or at Youtube itself) the same as sharing software/DVD/CD containt without control...

You said yourself they already had it removed once so you knew they didn't want it up there. The BBC has better things to do with my license fee money then endlessly chase down thieves on Youtube.
I just find it a bit rich when people complain about other people stealing their work but have no qualms about doing the same thing.
What difference does the resolution make, the fact is that video infringes copyright, by your own admission you knew it did, and you still linked to it. Exactly the same as someone linking to our work on rapidshare and saying "well it's not my fault, IStock could have had it removed"
It's all this hypocrisy and double standards that clouds the issue and makes it harder to educate people.

You are not right. It's more like someone is pointing of your watermarked images than to full res images. Seeing something on youtube is more a "preview" than theft. Otherwise, agents of all celebrities would easily pull down all music videos from youtube. But downloading a full res music video from rapidshare is theft.

Did you see Yaymicro's presentation on youtube? It's full of our images without watermark, and they are changing like a slide show. That's is not theft. That is a presentation, because it's on youtube.

Zoonar now has FTP. There is "activate FTP" button.

Quote from: Dreamframer on June 03, 2010, 18:01

The probability is very small for some model to be attacked, and I believe it could really happen only on the street, if someone who was robbed recognize a model.
Images those criminals use are not bought on microstock sites. They are downloaded from pirated websites.

Pretty scary thought though!  I will have to make sure none of my models ever go to visit you Ivan!

FWIW, I agree with you about not everyone understanding that the models in the pictures are just models.  A couple at my church who model for me a lot were used by a vitamin catalogue.  Several people at church came up to them to ask how they liked the vitamins and why they recommend them. 

From my experience, mostly it seems to be elderly people who don't understand about it.  Most younger and mid-adult people seem pretty media savvy. 

lol and lol

Model aare like actors. Nobody is going to think that Robert De Niro is a gangster or a boxer becauses he has played some, or that Tm Cruise is a psyco. Model play a role for a while, that's all.

Don't be so sure. There are millions of really dumb people out there, and not so many people who know anything about modeling. I keep telling people that I sell images on internet, and they always ask: "why? what kind of images? what for? who is buying images?" And when I say that all images in magazines are actually bought from websites like those where I sell images, everyone seems surprised.
People mostly think that images in printed media are actually taken especially for that printed media.... like for catalogs etc.
We here "live" in microstock world everyday, and for us it's hard to believe that people actually don't have an idea what "microstock" is. I can easily imagine some angry Russian or Serbian, or Bosnian, or whichever guy, who meets on the street "fake CEO" of a fake company, and attacks him.
I'm telling this because I live in a society where all kinds of organized criminal simply flourish.
In nineties we had several fake banks, that offered great interest rate for people who want to put foreign currencies in them. They all appeared at the same time, and people put millions of dollars in them. In few weeks, they disappeared with money, and put the money in banks in Cyprus, Switzerland etc.
People were simply robbed completely.
My neighbor used to work in one of those banks. She said they were told to putt all money in big bags, and to move them to another bank. She said, no one actually counted how much money there is....
After it, she build a big nice house, and now she happily lives there with her family. And she was just a simple teller in the bank.

Photoshop.

Wooooooooo! (without hoooo) Congrats! I wish you many more!

My friend who was a bank manager in a local bank changed the city where he works, and moved to a neighbor city. He contacted all his important clients...I believe more than 100 of them, and almost all of them moved their accounts to be managed from the neighbor city, where my friend works now.
He made a huge success, and in the next 3 months he fulfilled the plan for whole year.
Maybe, if guys from ex-StockXpert have email addresses from all buyers, they can contact them, and invite them to stockfresh... It's not impossible.
They could get large amount of buyers in a short time. I would do it in their place.

I am doing it only when I think the actual image has big potential, and I missed some important keywords. Again, when I think I can't correct it on 123RF and Fotolia I get discouraged.
My best seller on FT is missing the most important keyword. It's a picture of isolated ants over white, and I don't have the word "ants". I got only "ant", lol.

I just had my first sale at Polylooks.