Quote from: Harvepino on April 05, 2016, 11:48

I've been doing some investigation into this as I also don't like paying high taxes in corrupted country either. My outcome was: It is possible to do microstock through offshore company, BUT it requires additional administrative work, lot of research into legislations, accounting standarts, etc. Your connection to offshore company may also spark a reason for tax audit in your home country. It might be good for large companies that can pay accountants and lawyers to do all the admin, not good for a photographer who has to do everything on its own. Therefore I decided: Instead of diving into the world of offshore business that you know nothing about, focus on what you already know - sell more images

I've just read about a different scheme. You create a company in your country and use it for microstock. You ALSO create an offshore company which does some "work" for your company (marketing, consultations, ...) and that offshore company charges your company x amount of money. Since you spent this x amount, you deduct it from your taxes in your home country, and then just pick up the cash in the country where you have the offshore company opened.

Not sure how legal/borderline legal/illegal/grey area this is, maybe someone else will. But it does seem like a simple plan to reduce the tax.

The tax authorities allow big corporations to do things like that but do you know any individuals that have been doing it successfully for a number of years without getting in to trouble?  There might be safety in numbers, this is worth a read. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crickhowell-welsh-town-moves-offshore-to-avoid-tax-on-local-business-a6728971.html

Quote from: sharpshot on April 03, 2016, 15:52

I stopped uploading and will go back to doing more photos than video.

They are batch rejecting photos too.

I didn't mean I would upload them to P5, that was hardly worth it before the mass rejections.

I had a bad month with SS but still made 7x my FT earnings.  Not seen any change with FT since adobe took over.

Quote from: dirkr on April 01, 2016, 13:51

Quote from: pkphotos on April 01, 2016, 13:34

Those Alamy results are totally false. I am with several agencies and know the capabilities of Alamy. Compared to most agencies they severely under perform. Someone is entering false data on Alamy for whatever reason.

Alamy has currently 110 votes in this poll (Shutterstock 169, Istock 132 to put it into perspective).
Must be a lot of "someones" working together to skew the results.

Good point, however knowing the performance of my own Alamy account over several years, as well as observing the contributor monthly reported earnings string on the Alamy forum (over a long period of time), I still find these results barely credible. They were for so long middle tier and within the last couple of months they're suddenly near the top. I'm sure many people are as dubious as I am.

Lots of people in the Alamy forum say they earn more than I would think the average microstocker here makes on any individual site.  So I'm not that surprised by Alamy doing so well.  My RM portfolio isn't that big compared to many other contributors and I can see that people with 5,000 images could make more than all but SS.  With the Alamy review system, it isn't hard to have a much bigger portfolio there than the micros.

It was mid 1980's when times were more optimistic I suppose. I don't mind selling just microstock but we should get paid far more than we do for the time, editing and legwork of getting to these locations. I also sold an image that ended up being used as the main backdrop of an A listed Hollywood movie poster. Did I get much for it ? No, I got peanuts.

Was it a photo arts course?  I did a photo science course in the UK in the mid eighties and we were told that a career in photography wasn't easy and that most of the photo arts students usually ended up waiting tables.

You decide to sell your photos for low amounts of money, nobody forced you to use microstock.  There are other sites that pay higher but sell less volume, like Alamy.  Lots of photographers just use them and do well but it still takes a lot of hard work.  Most of my microstock portfolio cost very little to produce, I wouldn't want to sell photos that cost a lot to produce for such low prices but things like a brick wall background have made money and cost almost nothing and are suited to microstock.

Shutterstock has millions of images that you wont find on istock because contributors don't like getting 15 to 19%.

... Ever since the implementation of socialism, what the good came out of England?....

Historically, the greatest inventors came from Scotland, they would probably prefer you call it the UK than England.  Since Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in 1979, socialism in the UK was virtually wiped out.  Labour did try and revive it but apart from the NHS, we are much closer to the US on the political spectrum than in the 1970's.  We do have our version of Bernie Sanders leading the Labour party now but he is unpopular in his own party and might not make it to the next election.

Something good has come out of England in recent times.  Apart from the inventor of the world wide web, without whom we might not be having this discussion, I think graphene is about as spectacular as we will see this century. http://www.graphene.manchester.ac.uk/

There's no istock, its just a Getty collection and the only possibility of things improving is if Getty sell it to owners that would be more contributor friendly and that's not going to happen.

Quote from: sharpshot on March 01, 2016, 05:46

Sold my first mobile phone photo for $2.  Used a few sites but had no luck in over 6 months, so I will have to upload a lot more images.
https://www.twenty20.com/photos/3fe1283f-f225-42dc-96cb-b0721c630372

Congratulations! Is it possible / makes sense to upload DSLR pictures to Twenty20? Will they sell?

I don't see the point in doing that, I already have enough places to sell DSLR photos.

They were good for video but I'm not sure they still are after all the changes.  A lot of the good feeling I had about Pond5 has gone this year.  The only positive now is the 50% but wont that be on their list of things to ruin?

Yesterday I had 712 videos accepted - none rejected and today 1042 accepted with none rejected.
I don't think my video's are amazingly special or anything. It took them 3 weeks to review. So I'm either very lucky or everything is normal? I'm hoping on the latter?

You probably just got lucky.  In their forum they have said they have changed review standards and that seems to of led to some reviewers rejecting almost everything while others must of missed the memo and are still accepting everything.  There's no point in raising standards if they haven't gone through all the old clips and removed the substandard ones.

Quote from: sharpshot on March 16, 2016, 04:20

Quote from: Minscer on March 15, 2016, 20:12

Nothing wrong with Trump winning. People are tired of politicians who promise things and never deliver. People are tried of politicians who are easily bribed by lobbyist groups and help their rich friends get richer.

Trump winning is a shot in the arm for America. He just may be the best candidate in this entire election.

Why would Trump be any different?  Do you really think he wont be helping his rich friends and himself get richer?  Are people really that naive? The system doesn't work, it really doesn't matter who makes the false promises before the election.  I wouldn't trust Trump or Clinton, they both have a shady past.

You seriously think he can do it better this way, than from the behind the scene, hidden from the public eye? That's just pure nonsense. You actually likely to erode most of your ability for corruption if you become the world's most watched person. Going thru all this hassle probably means losing influence for a super rich person. If what you said had any truth to it, the last 3 decades would have been about rich businessmen being candidates, and it never happened - for a good reason

Even if his intentions are shady, it's definitely not business. He is solely losing on the business side with this. An overwhelming sense of pride an ego, to achieve everything there is to be achieved would be the best bet... but people who try smear Trump every way possible don't like mention that, because all that urge to prove himself to the world might work out to the benefit of USA in this situation.

As president, Trump could lower taxes for the rich and lower taxes for his businesses.  I don't think being president would hinder him in any way, just look at other leaders around the world, many of them use it to increase their wealth.  This week, the multi millionaire George Osborne lowered his taxes while attempting to take money away from disabled people in the UK.

If Trump didn't want to profit from being president, he could pledge to sell his businesses if he got the job.

I think they are destroying Pond5.  They should at least tell us more about what they do want now.  Uploading video clips isn't a trivial task, I think the reviewers are unlikely to look at all the clips they are rejecting but if they do, that's a big waste of time as well.

The lack of communication is more than alarming, it will stop most of us uploading and then they are stuck with a site full of old clips.  Their rivals must be so pleased to see this happening.