Quote from: jonbull on February 24, 2017, 15:17

Quote from: Shelma1 on February 24, 2017, 13:29

They rejiggered the search again...my best sellers have been pushed back from the top of page one to the middle of page two, and page one is stuff from newbies. Our fearless CEO is under pressure to get the stock price up to $80/share, and I suspect they're trying to show an increase in profits by paying out lower royalties.

I have to go back to 2014 to see a February this low.

my february is better than last year but i have my portfolio bigger 60 % with more micro stock oriented content...i'm near january earning with 5 days left...but i expected much much more...at least doubling january.
today appalling 9 download. this month mostly subs, zero enhanced.

Not finished at all then.....your forecast for next year is out by a factor of about three things may be bad but not that bad...if you really believe that why haven't you stopped uploading.......

" stop uploading"  youre right that would work but you have the Russians and all neighbouring countries where $.10 a day goes a long way and they are uploading in millions and millions. Soon they will be the only contributors left and thats probably enough for a few years.

Quote from: PixelBytes on February 20, 2017, 00:00

Eventually I expect that will happen.  But as I said earlier in the thread, in spite of all the income loss, I managed to build a large, high quality enough portfolio to keep bringing in some royalties for another few years.  At least as much as I would make in a real world job, with my skill set. 

So no, I'm not going to drag my 50+ year old, sciatica plagued body out to learn a new trade that won't pay what I'm making now.  I'm gonna wring every drop of passive income I can out of micro, and I'm gonna be mad every time some greedy agency takes another chunk of my retirement income away to line their pockets.

If you can't understand the logic in that, you are free to disagree, but you're not gonna shut me up.  I have as much right to complain about unfair practices as anyone else.  And in case you didn't notice,  the people who are upset about falling incomes seem to outnumber the blissful ones by a pretty high margin.  It did NOT used to be that way. When there was nothing to complain about,  nobody had to run around telling people to stop complaining.

PS.  My sanity is in good shape.  Insanity would be to see your livlihood going down the toilet and NOT   have a problem with that!

Obviously, this is partially directed at me. If you look at my points, and read it in context, you'll see that I didn't ask you learn a new trade. I was suggesting learning other ways to generate passive income. If you think veterans have it hard, the newbies have it even harder. They have compete against 100 million images, whereas the veterans have many images that are well-established in the search results. You can call me inexperienced all you like, but I didn't break into SS's top tier and FT's weekly top 100 in less than 2 years if I didn't know what I was doing. I had to learn things faster than the veterans and I had to work harder.

You already know how to generate passive income with Microstock, so that experience can translate to a number of other fields that can serve as complimentary income. That's all I suggest. You don't need years, just months. I learned to make apps in 2 months with no programming experience. I went into microstock with no experience other than as a buyer of stock images. I know some people here are younger, and while you have some valid excuses, some don't. They waste plenty of time talking about Trump when they could put that time to better use.

I'm no spring chicken myself. In Silicon Valley, I'm considered over the hill, and yet I force myself to learn new things constantly otherwise I'll get left behind. My optimistic attitude isn't some delusion, it's a necessity. Believe me when I tell you this, microstockers have it much easier than app developers. They spend 2 months on something only to give it away for FREE to serve ads, and many people don't download random free apps anymore. Other than Getty, whom I've always said was predatory company, the other agencies treat people relatively fairly. Maybe things aren't what they were 10 years ago, but nothing ever is. The market is saturated and there are over 150,000 contributors. That's the world we live in.

In a way he is right. Time will come when one has to move on.  Impossible to expand in micro since its just too much of everything contributors and pictures. Living is getting more expensive by the day with sales not increasing. The business seems to have stagnated somehow.

I am financially dependent and fulltime on stock photography for the last 18-20 years. Its ok but I can't say I am too happy about the micro industry at present. SS down from around $.80 per day to a meager $.30-40.
Adobe going up around 30%. DT is showing signs of coming alive.

My what some call Macro agencies are steady going up not by much but at leat moving upwards.

On the whole and all things considered competition this and that one has to be reasonably content.

POD is not a commercial and its no problems uploading anything , RM as well. The POD dont sell pictures like micro-agencies they sell prints and therefore not commercial as such.
I have to say though, it used to be good but today its like a graveyard!

Taliking about his food stills and cityscapes! I thought you understood that.

Quote from: jonbull on February 15, 2017, 12:43

Quote from: Brightontl on February 12, 2017, 06:00

I think the ideal situation is for people who have another source of income that leaves them a lot of spare times (teachers for example).
Especially if shooting photo/video is your hobby and you enjoy it in your spare time, even better if you have already a few thousands of images sitting in your computer.
Microstock can give you a complementary income while having fun

yes and the quality of micro stock today reflects this...and will be worsecause nobody could live in long time and the quality will reflect this.
if i were a buyer i would never bother with micro stock, i will go directly to stocksy for example.

That would depend on your budget I would think. Stocksy is great for some but a tiny market share compared with SS I would imagine.

Correct it all depends on the budget. Go buy at Trevillion and the price tag is three times that of stocky or offset. Besides I think the higher end of micro-stock can offer equal quality perhaps not as trendy or unique but many microstockers can equal in terms of quality.

I dont know why but something tells me that it will never completely go back to normal. Sure we will have good and bad days but on the broader perspective it looks very much like some sort of an Istock shamble with the exception of their exclusivity. Been with both since 2008

Anyway win some lose some. Good news is that Adobe continues to perform excellent. Fingers crossed.

Spot on! in Europe its the reverse. Could also be losing droves of buyers. Seriously though with 120 million files who wants to sit there looking for a picture.

Uploading new files is also a complete waste. Uploaded 20 studio concepts involving people and everything they were all accepted within hours but they are nowhere to be seen just gone. That was a week back.
Until they have completely changed that was my last upload. No more.

Sadly with their silly search experiments they've managed to  annihilate Bigstock as well.

Quote from: Microstockphoto on February 07, 2017, 09:47

last week of jan and first week of feb were like the old days. but today its back to misery. flipping the switch comes to mind

that has been the "conspiracy" theory many months back since going public. but some fanboy or girl came to say we're imagining things , as usual LOL.
but yes, you see it, esp when you get a large amount of dls or SOD at the start of the month,
then, it's flip... long lists of zero days.
i always thought it best to see a big last minute earning come in at the end of the month, so there is
no time to flip off the switch.

it's not a silly theory. smart shareholders say, "give everyone some earning, and everybody happy!!!"
why give only a handful of top sellers. connect this to the 40 % loss old top sellers have been reporting
i say flip the switch is definitely very real at ss
...
except for the fanboy or girl who believe in Elvis and say we've gone gone "flipping" mad!!!

Maybe this time they've gone too far with " give everyone some earnings" there ar lots and lots of very unhappy people small and big contributors and in every single forum even some photographic forums where they just happen to discuss stock agencies. Bad advertising indeed.

I got it but whats the point? any uploading to Istock as an independant is just bound to fail.

That should get you in! they sell lots of bookcovers so standing pics are of help of course.

Defocused images are normally associated with portraits like the 135mil.DF etc.

Yes those days comes once in a blue moon!  even so its a very pale memory of what once was such a good and stable agency.