I second to ShadySue's reply.

Alamy and Shutterstock are not comparable. SS is purely a RF microstock site.

Consider the rights you are giving out. If you license 100 images royalty free for 0,25-0,38 USD (or whatever SS is paying these days), you end up giving lots of image rights for pennies.

I'd rather sell fewer images for more, with the possibility of different licensing options (RM/RF) so Alamy works for me.

What we rather do or not is really irrelevant. We're here to provide a service to buyers.

Why can't you sell at both? Today, I've had the same image sell on both Alamy and SS...

"RM is dying" as per Robert Harding Founder:

What clients want is a simple way of buying an image that does not require any controlled administration afterwards. Its all part of the 'need it now' and 'haven't any time to mess about' syndrome. Modern clients do not really understand Rights Managed nor do they want to fill in long dropdown menus with all sorts of decisions and limits many of which they may not know themselves nor will they be able to administrate. Hence the popularity of Royalty Free.

Title says it all. I'm genuinely interested in figuring out how can I make $150/year from stock photos/videos?

It's fun to do - now I'd like to figure out how to reach those numbers. Figured I may as well ask in case anyone has some good ideas. Ideas/suggestions?

Perhaps - hypothetically - imagine you personally *were* currently making $150/year from microstock. What would you have to be doing to acheive that?

Thanks!

$150 a year is quite realistic. You'll need about 150-300 images spread out at at least a dozen agencies. Ideally they'll have excellent technical standards (focus, low noise, even lighting, plenty of copy space). The content should be in-demand and ideally model-released with young attractive people doing fun activities in an authentic manner. Then you'll want to keyword the images to an excellent level using relevant keywords so buyers can find those images.

$150 a year is very reasonable and I hope that answers your question. Good luck! 

I'm usually quite upbeat but the number of subs is getting ridiculous. I broke my previous record at 74...

Quote from: Brasilnut on March 05, 2019, 13:48

What do you shoot, dude

Military and police, some post-apocalyptic images

I would recommend Trevillion and/or Arcangel

Thank you very much Alex! Truly appreciated. I�ll share it widely.

Thanks! I trust March will be better and not only for the extra few days, but also for some clip sales!

Hey all,

Taking a page from Steve's earnings reports, I've finally taken the courage step to disclose (most) of my stock photography/videography earnings.

Full summary on my blog:

https://brutallyhonestmicrostock.com/2019/03/01/first-ever-earnings-report-feb-2019/

I'll be back next month!

Alex

1. What is the lowest amount I will make off a single image sale on Alamy? <$1
2. What is the most I will make off a single image sale? Realistically >$300+ net
3. What is the average amount I will make off of a single image sale? I'm at about $20 net
4. What is the benefit of making images "Exclusive" to alamy? Other than the extra 20% revenue, none.

Quote from: Brasilnut on February 26, 2019, 09:10

Going private isn't as effective, imo.

By EXPOSING the scale of the problem, it's easier for others to care and even help out. Also, there's a psychological shame factor involved. Numerous thieving contributors contacted me directly to plead to have me remove their name from the list. This is a potentially powerful deterrent.

Interesting, the thieves come to the SS forum, I suppose to troll for images to steal and ideas to copy.

Those "show your latest download" threads and "latest EL" make for easy pickings for the thieves.

Why do some contributors deliberately shoot themselves in the foot in this way?

---------

Meanwhile, SS's Ministry of Truth has completely deleted all threads related to wackamoling. Sad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe9I0QhV08w

Innocent accounts could easily be identified and confirmed by Shutterstock,

IMHO this indicates that shutterstock are either

1. Lazy, can't be bothered brushing it under the carpet hoping it'll go away.

2. Are so incompetent they don't know what they are doing

3. Know full well what is happening (lets face it they have enough evidence) and
as a deliberate policy are allowing it to happen.

I see they totally failed to lock any of the other threads established by Brasilnut.

I think it's a mixture of 1 and 3. As for point 2, even if they don't have the competence, let's face it, they are a NYSE-listed company with 700+ employees in dozens of international offices. They can afford to hire fraud-detection experts, programmers, compliance officers, etc. This day in age, they can outsource less expensive resources in India, etc.

A small % of accounts were legitimate

A small number of flagged accounts out of the 500 in total were legitimate, particularly in the beginning of the Project. We all learn with experience. However, most worrying (for me) was that the list was taken at such face-value and some of the accounts were shut down without apparent further checks (i'm not privy to the processes undertaken). Overall, way too much risk put on me and I'm not even a SS consultant/employee. These wackamole processes take time and resources need to be devoted to double/triple/quadruple check any flagged account.

"Lazy, can't be bothered brushing it under the carpet hoping it'll go away".

As for point number 1, I agree it's more about keeping this issue hush hush, less public exposure the better...keep feeding investors false truths such as 550,000 contributors and 250 million content, even if a small % of that are fraudsters and some of the million are either stolen or spammy junk. It's common practice in a corporate world to manipulate and these are savvy businesspeople who need to make the best decisions for the company/investors.

"Know full well what is happening (lets face it they have enough evidence) and
as a deliberate policy are allowing it to happen".

Point 3 is tricky because if they know/knew it was happening and failed to do anything about it (or didn't do enough), that opens up a whole can of legal worms.

More transparency needed

I would have preferred / prefer a completely transparent approach to address the problem head-on and state publicly "Yes, we have a fraud issue and we are doing XYZ to combat it. These are our results for XYZ period, compared to ZJD period." Instead, it's sort of like...let's censor and this will all blow over in a few weeks. It's not too late and they may come out publicly but I wouldn't hold my breath...

Human beings are motivated by incentives

I would like to see this Project re-introduced with a sort of incentive system to flag fraudulent accounts with profits from fraudulent accounts being donated as a charitable contribution. Difficult for anybody to disagree with this approach as it's simply turning a negative into a positive and they're welcome to spin this as much as they want. Hell, we as contributors, can even vote on which charity and see the fruits of our work being put to good use.

Conclusion and some ideas

Even if a crowdsourced model isn't the most accurate, leading to some mistakes (which is completely normal for untrained contributors), it's by far the most efficient. Fking hell, 99.5% of copyright holders have NO IDEA that their work has been stolen, so what hope is there for any of them to use the time-consuming DMCA procedure!?

At least this public action brings immediate attention, for the better. Contributors, such as myself, care about the sustainability of the agency and these types of frauds and spammy accounts to a lesser extent, deeply affect the morale of contributors. The extent of fraud is turning many contributors into Doom & Gloomers.

Anyway, it was fun and useful while it lasted and I thank all those who supported and got involved directly and indirectly.

Alex

Quote from: Brasilnut on February 20, 2019, 15:16

Glad to report that SS have recently wacked 77 out of 111 remaining moles!

And now it seems they've publicly warned you not to do it on the forum anymore. Looks like you've touched a nerve. Really starting to resent SS in an actionable way.

Obviously they don't want the extent of the fraud being made public as discussed earlier.

Was fun while it lasted and now I can focus on making money!

I was being sarcastic. Some members here will immideately point a finger at you as being a racist, when you say, that most thieves come from eastern countries. Like Zero-talent for example.

I figured you were I recall the earlier discussion.

This came through last night...not getting my hopes up....

66 cents for one of my timelapses was painful to see :/