Quote from: Red Dove on February 28, 2010, 16:27

A friend of mine over in Boston works for a printing and design company - they finish and print specs from clients....leaflets,news sheets, promotional materials, dvd covers,cd covers etc He says the number of clients sourcing their images from SS and IS is increasing every day and they are dropping (in some cases completely) commissioned shoots as a source. I've read this elsewhere but it's encouraging (for microstockers) to hear it from someone in the business.

how can it be good for business in general ?

of course it's bad, but they've no other alternatives after all.

microstock is to blame for this.
quality is actually too good over there, often better than photos
you find on RM agencies, and all this for a pittance.

microstockers are indeed shooting their own foot accepting
such low prices but who am i to judge now ? it's too late already,
there's no turning back, clients are used to micros and will never
go back to Getty or Alamy or whatever in the middle.

and the next step will be buyers sourcing from Flickr or Wikipedia (!!),
weren't you all telling me to "adapt or die" ? 

Buyers are already sourcing from FLICKR - Getty saw that hence the FLICKR/Getty collection, providing the more realistic/creative work that Yuri and others are always banging on about as the way forward.

But I can't see a way back, with SS (for example) now sitting on 10m images and counting

A friend of mine over in Boston works for a printing and design company - they finish and print specs from clients....leaflets,news sheets, promotional materials, dvd covers,cd covers etc He says the number of clients sourcing their images from SS and IS is increasing every day and they are dropping (in some cases completely) commissioned shoots as a source. I've read this elsewhere but it's encouraging (for microstockers) to hear it from someone in the business.

They have some really crap stuff on there and that can't be good for business. Seriously ought to bring in an inspection process to reinforce their credibility as a stock site and not an image dump, especially at those prices....otherwise it's just FLICKR with a price tag. Anyway, I've made more sales through FLICKR than Worstphotos (sic)

I'd hate to be a buyer, SS just accepted an image of mine with keyword "brainstorm" - so I searched newest first and page after page is filled with models gathered around laptops or standing in random groups doing nothing but flashing too white teeth - also loads drawing meaningless flow charts on transparency boards.

Having worked in the corporate arena for 20+ years I know we don't work in offices cleaner and brighter than operating theatres and everyone walks around with faces like smacked arses (apart from Friday afternoons).

I keep hearing that buyers want realistic images of serious people doing serious work in non-studio locations, but don't see much of that being uploaded.....is this a gap to be exploited or not?

My people shots have always turned out naff, nowhere near good enough, so I'm still on a steep learning curve to get those right. In the meantime I make myself feel better by looking at the portfolio of a guy called "ooyoo" on IS......100K+ DL since 2007 and nearly all landscape shots. His top sellers are really well done shots of leaves.

I don't think you have to do people shots to do well in the top three. I like your portfolio by the way.

I'll probably get jumped on for this - but I don't know how many of you work for corporate entities where this is common practice. For example, my experience working with the number one and two computer companies in the world has been exactly this; whether hiking the price or reducing it, the quick and dirty way to increase your profit/share price always ends up by reducing opex ie. wages and salaries. I've seen top class people leave the company in question and nobody cares as long as Wall Street and London are happy.

And my cynicism extends to not believing the gold plus contributors will really leave Fotolia - it's bad for their business to write off a revenue stream in the belief they can generate it elsewhere in a short time frame.

Prove me wrong but that's been my experience.

Sorry, 9 from me, they just approved my application to join. Good news* is, I don't have a further 500 to upload on them.

* not so good news for me

"chasmcn" is right. The stock market in the UK ran around like babies with wet nappies at every announcement on the news, mainly because the big league investors were sweating about losing a few mil off their billion dollar fortunes. It's the little people in small/medium sized companies who are upbeat about the next quarter, and good luck to them.

I prefer to look on the positive side - but reckon some of the new sites/low earners will go.

 

Just noticed they are in the green on the right....I haven't uploaded much since November, but will give this site another go. JG seems determined 2010 will be a good year.

Good for you! I am afraid to even try.
Smiling Jack

He who dares wins. Good Luck.

Welcome to the family .

Not the Corleone or Soprano family I hope 

Congratulations!  That is quite an accomplishment, especially with the high standards they have now. 

You should celebrate!

Managed to bang my knee on the desk after I'd got up to run around the room for a bit. Then settled down over a nice claret with my lady.