That's hardly true. I mean the "oversaturating a subject" part. It just would be rigth I you talk about "unique" subjects than just you have or can have. But you can upload as many business handshakes as you want, you are not competing with yourself but with hundreds of others fotogs. The more variatons of the theme you have, the more you would (potentially) sell.

If it was my image and they paid for it, I'm happy.

What buyers do with our images is beyond our control. These days we should be happy actually getting paid for the usage...

Whitechild, I'm sorry to hear your story about not getting paid. But as a freelancer, I never lift a finger without getting paid 50% up front for ANY job.

Furthermore this web site you mentioned does not look professional at all. Who recommended it to you?

Maybe you would be happy, but I doubt your model would.

Earning enough here, after several years and a consistent portfolio. But some friends of mine that were spirited by my success have, one or two years after, red numbers, after investing in cameras, lenses and strobes, and not selling enough.

I'm no more at Flickr, but, when I was, all I got was requests to use my images for free and crediting me (with some exceptions where they ofered ludicrous prices) and adding that, of course, they would need the image without the watermark (that was apparent and difficult to remove). So, Flickr is the best place to give away your images or to get them robbed.
And, as a buyer, and seeing the growing amount of people posting with their names images that they don't own, I wouldn't use a Flickr image in my life. Go and use an image that results being from Getty, and you'll receive soon The Letter.

Most people wouldn't pay, they would stick to the free search engine. That's what experiencie tells. Paying customers would be maginal, if they see that exactly the same that costs money, can be got by free.

Yes, but the risk (around $100) and the reward (thousands?) make it a bit more annoying if you spot it in action somewhere .

That's at istockphoto, there are many places that sell els for 25 $ or so.

What already is in Google will be there for many time.

According to the IS forums, today is a holiday and tomorrow is pay day.

ETA: Beat me to it, loop.

Just in the photo finish.

Quote from: FD-amateur on February 13, 2010, 13:35

The real horror scenario (more for IS exclusives than for independents) would be that the PP on IS becomes mandatory. As Getty obviously doesn't care really about its contributors, that might be a possibility when TS doesn't make enough profit fast by its meager content.

I'd say it's more than a possibility. It's highly likely. All of this opt-in opt-out stuff is probably perceived as a major headache for Getty. At some point fairly soon I believe there won't be an opt-out option. They will choose what goes where based on what will most boost revenue and profits. Or they'll leave the opt-out option available but will change the terms so much that you would hurt yourself to opt-out. The end result is the same. You won't have a choice.

In that scenario, dropping exclusivity and uploading to all the sites is, certainly, a choice.

I always recommend IS, telling them that there they will find lots of superb photos that aren't everywhere. If not, anyone, I say, all of them have more or less the same content. Being IS exclusive is a good reson to do that, but I find that people stick there and thank me for the recommendation. I also think than getting the micro-buyers used to pay decent prices is also good.

Quote from: sjlocke on February 07, 2010, 14:29

...
Again, this is not the macro-micro discussion.  This is actually your peers trying to actively work more for less.

Yes, but it's a similar argument that will have similar results.

If there's a marketplace for cheaper imagery - and there definitely is - you ignore it at your own financial loss. So go ahead, sjlocke, continue making fancy images for a so-so return at Getty. I'll practice techniques to whip off a lot of simple low-res stuff for the ultra-cheap subscription market - I'm already pretty good at it thanks to Shutterstock. Let's rejoin the discussion in a year to see how we fared.

According to his success and impressive number of downloads, I would say that customers value much more the "fancy" images of Sean than others cheap stuff.

The only reason because ceap suscription sites exists is because agencies can still make money with this scheme. Contributor, in the long term an taking in account the weekly influx of new images, doesn't. For an agency, selling 100 photos from 100 different contributors gives the same benefit that selling 100 photos of the same contributor. Selling for pennies is, have been and will be always against our interest. In the mid-long term, suscription cheapo sites will lose a great numer of good potographers.