Has any one heard from Rodeo or Juha Tuomi these last two months? 

The first 4 months gave good sales, then suddently it went dead :  no sales, no reports, no answer to e-mail, just silence.  Until a week ago, the site (www.rodeo.fi) was still working, there was just no contact between submitters/site.  Right now (could be just a temporary server problem) the site is down.
Via Google I found www.rodeostudio.fi which seems to be made to attract photographers, though lots of it is in Finnish. 
What worries me most, is the fact that Juha Tuomi is not reacting to the microstockgroup posts anymore (he used to be very quick in response a few months ago).

I am sure you're right about July being a "dead" month, but Rodeo sends sales reports in the beginning of the month, and I did not receive one either.  This means that we had no sales in June.  As for July, we'll have to wait until the first week of August.

Mine are 71% - 12% - 17% (over the last 5 months)

In theory - and I really mean IN THEORY, cause I have not tested this of course, and I am talking about the Belgian tax situation, which happens to be one of the countries where one pays A LOT of taxes :

1. Most contributors still have another income, and this income (let's call it JOB INCOME) is probably higher than Microstock income.
2. That means Microstock income and Job income are added together to be taxed in your own country (let's assume at an average percent of 25%).
3. You send in your tax return to your country's government, and deduct your expenses.
4. Now this gets tricky :  indeed, many of us have more photography expenses than photography income, yet we do not deduct every expense, for the simple reason that if you would do that, you would have a negative microstock income, and the Tax Inspectors would accept that for your first start-up year, but not every year.  So let's assume your job gives you a net income of 20.000 (dollars, pounds, euros, not important), and your photography an income of 10.000 minus 7.000 expenses = net income of 3.000.  3000 extra income x 25% local taxes = 750 to be paid extra to your government.
5. Shutterstock pays you 10.000, of which 50% is of US buyers, so 5.000 x 30% = minus 1500, so you are paid 8500 instead of 10.000.
6. On your tax return, you put the 7000 expenses, but also the 1500 prepaid taxes.
7. 750 national taxes minus 1500 prepaid taxes = less than 0, so you don't have to pay anything to your local government anymore (at least for your photography income).
8. As I understand the treaty system, every country on the treaty list agreed to avoid double taxing of their citizens, but I don't think that all these countries pay eachother what they collected.  So the USA will not pay the 1500 to Belgium, and Belgium will not pay to the USA what they collected from US people living in Belgium.
9. That means that in the end, you will have paid 1500 + 0 local taxes, which is more than 25% on my net photography income.
10. Conclusion :  if your country has a treaty, you MUST do the paperwork, so that Shutterstock will not deduct anything.  If not (like Serbia?), you should absolutely find out how to report the pre-paid US taxes on your national tax return, and which documents are needed to prove it.

I repeat, this is purely theoretical.  Any one here who can back up the theory ?

OK, for the OUTSIDE workers I think I am the winner for the shortest distance :  2,5 minutes by car, or 1100 meters (yes meters!).  Yes I know I could walk that distance easily, but (1) this is Belgium and that means LOTS OF RAIN, and (2) I do my shopping right after work and for that I need the car (good excuse?).

Some one at the forums at fotofanatic.com (contest site) "confessed" he was selling at Shutterstock.  He was jeered at by the other members for selling his art at such ridiculous prices.  Not by me, cause I got curious (and I never regretted it).

That is great news, congratulations!  It's a very useful tool.

"Gelukkige Verjaardag" (congrats!) from Belgium!

A little update :   according to Istock the keywords will be kept for 24 hours?  Well, it's less than that : not even 12 hours!  I deleted my uploads, uploaded them all a second time this morning, and now, 11 hours later, they've disappeared again!
But it works fine if you keyword/categorize immediately after the uploading.

For months I used the forum-detour trick to make my keywords re-appear after uploading to Istock. 
I found that trick here on MSG and it worked great!  As soon as you notice that all keywords, title and description have disappeared, you just visit the forums for a minute and voil� the keywords are there again... 
Only, today the trick did not work.  Tried again and again.  I even logged out, deleted all istock cookies, logged back in, jumped in/out of the forums ... NO keywords ...
What's up?  The bug has a bug?

Does anyone have another trick to solve the new bug?

I had my sales report from Marsh on 1st April (and was very pleased with the results).

Quote from: Anyka on March 28, 2009, 11:12

Shot in my home in Belgium, with my brother-in-law and my niece.
Not a best-seller, but really FUN to do!

What a coincidence. I downloaded a comp of this shot a while ago for a customer that wants to revamp a pundit blog about immigration/economic issues in Flanders. We're meeting next Friday about the design. I always thought this is one of the most amazing shots I've seen on Dreamstime.

Thanks!  If you decide to use it, I'd love to see the final result!