Here in the Netherlands (which I think has the same tax laws as it's a EU country), when I sell something directly to the US or a non-EU country, I have to charge 0% VAT and the only tax I need to pay, is Dutch income tax. No need to worry about an ITIN or paying taxes to the US.

Just a note: Your statement is partly wrong. If you are selling something to a private person (or any legal person that is not VAT registered as e.g. public institutions) in another EU country, you will have to charge their country's VAT. The 0% rule is only valid if you are selling to companies who are also VAT registered in their country. So if the base case was the same as the OP's and you would sell to a German university, you would have to charge them German VAT.

Also, from my point of view, a "royalty" is not the same as selling a product or having income from work. This is very often treated different than other income. E.g. in Germany, companies need to pay a tax if they are using art work from people from other countries. Technically, any German company using stock imagery would have to pay this tax. This is valid unless the company can provide documentation that the selling company is registered in a country with a double-tax agreement. I worked in the European offices of iStock for some years, so believe me I know this part of the tax rules because I had to discuss them quite often.

I would not be surprised if the US has similar rules for their local use of art work. It could be very well true that a royalty payment requires local taxation where the art work gets used. And it's true that you might need to apply for an ITIN if you want to sell directly to US clients. I certainly would not dismiss those arguments right away.

I think it would be important for SS to comment on this thread.

Did you ask them directly?

123rf has an easy uploading process and I have a 99% approval rating. 123RF is my fastest growing site. Thank 123RF!

I agree, approval is very high, I only have more on Deposit. And 123RF has the advantage of not having to categorize images. I have similar amounts of downloads and earnings on both as well. The average download pays $0.45 on both, even slightly ahead of Shutterstock but the latter makes up in volume and the two don't.

Well, hoping for the best. Either way I learned a lot today from everyone, and feel good about my future in stock photography (micro, macro or whatever!), thank you!

Well, don't get too positive about it. I think the industry changed with the technology. We are all competing with other photographers around the world, there are no secrets anymore. No matter where and how you sell your images, there will always be someone else having taken a very similar image you are going to compete with.

However, $100/month from 2,300 is far less than you should make. I don't trust the $1 to $3 a month per image anymore but something in the range of $1,000 should be realistic.

Stocksy is great, I love to be part of it and I will do my best to get more images up there. It can be a game changer and put pressure on all other agencies if it succeeds. So I guess we all hope it will succeed. But you should be aware that it just started and needs time to find its place in the market.

If you consider microstock, I'd think you would have to adapt your way of shooting and processing. In micro, images often need to be very clean, very bright, very saturated and stereotypical to be successful. You won't earn money from a beautiful image if it only attracts one or five clients over the years. This is usually the RM kind of images - it might not sell for years but once it sells it makes you a big amount. For micro success, you need images that sell week after week, hundreds of times. And for that you need a generic look that can be used for many purposes.

If you want to try micro, you won't get sufficient returns if you omit iStock or Shutterstock from your list. iStock is paying low percentages, Shutterstock is paying a flat sub rate even if clients buy the largest version. Both is not really a great promise, but both have a market large enough to make more than all other micros.

I would look around, try different things and see what works best for you. It can well be a single agency but it could also be a variety of agencies for different types of images.

Good luck with your ventures whatever you do and try.

ETA: Just wanted to add about the numbers - as it looks I will pass making $100 in April on Shutterstock with now 900 images online and I just started submitting to them a few months ago, And I keep making more than $150 a month as a non-exclusive on iStock with 1,500 images online. And the images are more or less the same on both agencies as well as on half a dozen other agencies, adding another small amount each. Just to put your $100 from 2,300 images in perspective to micro.

Any opinions on the best place to buy microstock if you're just interested in one or two high-quality people images? Budget is low, around $10 per image of 2550x3300. I don't need a subscription but want high quality work.

My favorite at this point is http://graphicleftovers.com/ - some images cost $6, some $10 and some $15 at the highest resolution.

Quote from: Xanox on April 03, 2013, 07:30

they're the last one in a long line of new agencies that popped up with small budgets and no clear business plans.

Why and how did you get to this conclusion?

By the fact that they are a) Not RM b) Not Macro. Can't succeed then. 

For those of you that got the invitation to join, can you direct me to the part that states image exclusivity?

I am not a native english speaker so this might have been lost on me reading through the agreements.

They said so in the Facebook group before it was taken private. The site itself is not open to the public yet.

I have one folder.

I upload all new images to all the sites.

Whatever gets accepted - fine.

Whatever gets rejected - who cares?

I use almost the same, only I use subfolders with batches of files, so I can keep track which batch has been sent and which is the next I prepare. And when I start with a new agency, I start with the batch1 folder again.
 

How can it be?
As I know the essence of RM is to be exclusive, to be sold to one customer in the way that a competitor cannot use the same image (and for this reason a RM image cannot be proposed as RF on other microstocks).

That is a common misunderstanding. The core of rights managed is that the customer pays a license fee based on the specific use and he gets a restricted license for a specified period of time.

Royalty free means the clients get a license that is more less free in its use and perpetual. So, an RF license by definition allows the client to do MORE than an RM license. In the classic model when RF came up some 15-20 years ago, it was quite logical to offer the same image at a lower price for a limited use or at a higher price for unlimited use. So RF was more expensive than RM.

This has basically changed over the years, already with the macro agencies in the past but the more so with microstock which was just impractical to offer RM. So microstock almost by definition is RF and that is part of why today RF is considered cheap and RM expensive.

What you are also saying is a potential additional use of RM: The ability to offer exclusivity to a client for a specific use, specific reason, specific timeframe. This can be done only with pure RM images, of course. But it isn't something essential for RM, just a potential additional offer. It is up to each agency and/or photographer to decide if they want to make that additional offer. If that is not an issue, there is no reason keeping you from offering the same image with RM and RF licensing. But once sold as RF, you lose the ability to ever offer exclusivity in the future, of course.

So you'd recommend 'a business' to have only one income partner then? That truly is the definition of 'stupid', especially when there are multiple other outlets available with which to spread the risk.

No, it isn't necessarily "stupid". It's highly risky yes. But over many years that risk was rewarded with about 3 to 5 times more income than independents have reported in their blogs and forum posts. That part has only changed recently for many but still many are probably making far more money than they would sharing their images across many sites.

Saying that it stupid to make more money than you could otherwise is pretty ignorant. It's a personal decision if you put the weight on "higher income" or "lower risk". Go back and figure out how much you have earned if I you had made 3 times more money in microstock for the last five years. Having given up that amount of money I wouldn't know why people wouldn't call you stupid. Or is money not so important to you?

but those ones are not the one we signed

If you uploaded a single files after August 2011, yes you "signed" it. All ASA changes are forced upon you with 30 days notice, and they will block your account if you don't agree to them in due time.

Did I miss something? Here, Lobo indicates there's going to be an announcement of sorts about what's going on, but I haven't seen it. Is it hiding somewhere I haven't looked or just forgotten about?

He already indicated something like that a few weeks ago, and what we got was the Contributor Newsletter summarizing all the facts already known... I won't hold my breath for the next set of "news".