Astonishingly crap review times lately - they make IS look like a rocket ship in comparison.

The similars rejection thing I can understand, to some extent, but I don't think their reviewers get it - definitely a lack of consistency there.

And the community makes me cringe. I cannot,will not read any more threads like "I have a difficult decision to make (about exclusivity)" from people with 50 files and 7 dl in a year.  Or along the lines of "Dreamstime is the bestest most perfect site in the Universe and I go to sleep at night knowing I am part of a loving, sharing wonderful community of fellow artists. Sigh." ......makes them sound like besotted teenagers. Retchworthy.

But I earn real folding money out of them so, hey ho.

I'm also UK. Access to site is okay but I have images waiting at 3-4 days right now - usual review time is never greater than 24 hours.

I'd drop support a line but they usually ping back with a standard message on review delays.

.....looks lovely. Hope it generates sales.

BigStock is a dead duck for me but SS is growing month on month, had a few OD's this week on SS but not a single DL on BigStock

I have had my eye on the Sigma DP2 http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sigmadp2/
It has its drawbacks and limitations, but hey it has APS-C size sensor.
And don't let the low megapixel count fool you, it's Foveon (If you need to crop you can always upsize some, then dp your cropping and nobody will notice Look at the detail on this image http://sigma-dp.com/DP2/sample-photo/img/SigmaDP2-011.jpg

The British Journal of Photography rates the DP1 and DP2 over any other p&s. If you can work with a fixed lens, a bit of shutter lag and some other quirks they claim fantastic results up to ISO 400. A viewfinder is an expensive accessory - but essential IMO. I'd get the DP1s with 28m lens if I was looking for a P&S but.....I wish they'd make them a bit BIGGER,  say the size of my old Konica S3 and with a built in vf 100% coverage. Otherwise I can't use 'em.

Not insolvency, probably a decision made by some bean counter to hang onto the cash for longer. He probably got a bonus for the idea.

Sorry no if you read the post the salient issue isnt so much the vector/illustration issue so much as the researching the market and creating saleable images scenario, that is when you can make a dramatic jump in income. I only know 3 other people doing this bar myself and that scenario pans out for us all, albeit I am at the bottom right now!

I think there is less competition with vectors, a lot of the very good vector artists are exclusive at istock, I would say there are far more good photographers than good illustrators and thus competition is less. If you look through the vector collections on all sites other than istock I firmly believe that this is the case.

As for 80k full time, no sweat, I'll get back to you on that when I get there. I can only speak for myself but when i read all these posts that a full time income is impossible I find it truly unbelievable. My 3 full timemicrostock friends are all vector artists exclusive to istock and have been full time for quite some years, though 2 have slowed down now as they have young babies.

I believe you. There's always an opportunity where others believe there are none. I worked in sales for nearly eight years and there were four of us in the department who were always "parachuted" in to so-called dead markets and turned them around. Hoping I can bring that ethos to microstock...having just started out though, the only place I could probably live on my income is somewhere in Papua New Guinea.

I'm not looking to buy a Ferrari, just earn enough to be comfortable and not be a number on some bean counter's spreadsheet.

Yep. I let these chancers have a shot when I was green....seems they get a lot of their images from FLICKR....when I later contacted Emma Williams at SCHMAP and offered to shoot to order in the UK (at a reasonable cost) they went very quiet. What a surprise.

Choice is yours but if they ever contact me again.....can't write that here.

Exclusive or unique are the keywords here. With Thinkstock now cold calling IStock clients (see other thread) to push subscription sales I can't see how the CC model can work at their price points unless they have exclusivity..or some value add to clients I don't know about.

There's a race to the bottom and there will be blood on the carpet this year. We all have to duck and dive to make sure it's not ours.

Received an invite last night to submit five out of the ten images I made available back in December!! The invite states for "possible inclusion" - so I'm not there yet. Note the submission of new images for consideration is closed until mid-April to allow catch up and maybe some of you will get invites this week.

Anyway, reading the posts here from Jeff et al, I'd be stupid not to go for this opportunity - and don't believe it will affect my work for IS,SS etc since the images I put up for consideration were geared specifically towards the GT/FL collection and not traditional stock.

I would be interested to hear from more stockers re how it is going for them since signing up though. And one specific question, I understand they look for 30-50mb files?? Which means a new hard drive for me or maybe a new PC

Cheers, Ed

Crap.  Everything isn't ending: http://blog.johnlund.com/2010/03/positive-indicators-in-stock.html

I like John.  He's a very sensible guy.

Cheers for the link. Yep, like any other business it has it's ups and downs. Those who do well or reasonably well see it as an opportunity come what may.

The CEO of the company I work for is always predicting the future and he is often very right but just as often VERY wrong. His predecessor (fired) was famous for claiming there wouldn't be a global demand for the iPhone since it was too expensive and people would not want or need such a complex feature set. What a clown.

Nobody has that much of a handle on supply and demand or what the market will do next. Agree it's a classic 'spin' sales technique;everything is really baaaaad but we have the product/service you need. Ker-ching.

Not really bothered about Yuri losing money. He should have seen it coming in a niche market (as far as the majority of his images are concerned) which he and others have saturated. Anyway, I'm sure he's savvy enough to head in a new direction.....but like most organisations so intent on growth, when you take your eye off operating expenses it has a tendency to bite you in the arse down the line. Then you get the knee-jerk reaction of redundancies and relocation of jobs to low pay countries. Greed is not good.