I have long thought about how I could make more money by hiring someone to do some of my stocking work.  But as long as outsourcing to Hondabots is not viable for the present, I have yet to come up with any ideas.

Presumably, anyone who knows enough about stocking to submit images and write keywords can make more money from stocking than from from submitting images and writing keywords for other people.

Maybe this is a good indicator of how much money is to made in stocking, and is a good thing.

Very informative. I keep thinking about getting a new PC, and I think maybe I should do it while I can still buy XP Pro. MS will stop selling it someday and make us all buy Vista on new PCs.

So how do you like your new system so far? Did you put it together yourself have custom order it somewhere like Puget?

If I understand you correctly that your friend wants to use a photo of you as the source for a vector silhouette, then, yes, it is true that he will need a model release signed by you to submit his vector image to most microstock sites.

Resellers' pricing is not based on how much it costs to produce an image (that is the producer/contributor's problem). It is based on how much the reseller can charge.  Supply and demand.

If making a good illustration were easier (as some posters have claimed) than taking a good photo, then the supply the supply of photos would be less than the supply of vectors, which it is not.

The illustrator's skills are more in demand, because those skills are harder to acquire than a photographer's skills, so they are in shorter supply. This is simply a fact. And the prices in the marketplace prove it.

I started out in microstock submitting photos. I knew 3D and I learned AI (it took me 2 years to get passably good at it). It takes at least ten times longer to learn to make a good illustration with AI or a good 3D render with 3DS Max (which costs about $3000, by the way) than it does to make an equivalently good photo. Maybe 20 times as long.

Of course, you can't make vector paths any sharper than they are, or at least I don't see how. Maybe what the reviewer means is that they would like MORE detail. That's my guess.

Same here dbvirago. I saw your thread but since there was no real discussion I decided to ask people here.

Actually, I think that thread has had a pretty interesting discussion. Perrush said that the cause is the Portfolio Search option, and it may be true. There is discussion in the sticky thread (in General Discussion) about how the Portfolio Search option may be causing slower sales of new images and more sales of older ones and Setho commented and he does not seem to discount the possibility.

I think someone is too quick to judge. When you have a larger than expected influx of buyers then you have system failures, it's the nature of servers. The queue has been in the 40Ks before. As long as the sales continue.

Like many others, I often complain about IS. But my sales have been going up there just about like the chart. I am always thinking that IS is shooting themselves in the foot with their endless search problems, their rejections of images as 'not suitable for stock' when those images are my best sellers as stock elsewhere, and so on. But I hope they survive and thrive, I miss IS when I can't read the forum or can't buy images, because of the site's problems, and I would sure miss my income from them.

They've been having big server problems since last Friday. The forums were shut down for a long time. I tried to buy two images there for a project I'm working on and the downloading did not work. My sales there have also been a small fraction of normal.

But the worst thing is that they are still reviewing and accepting images. They acceted a couple of vectors of mine which I had high hopes for, but the images will not get the views and maybe reviews they usually do when they go on line as new images. Oh well.

http://www.stockxpert.com/forum.phtml?f=showtopic&n=4431
"StockXpert is hiring!

We're looking for someone to join our image review team. As the member of the team the candidate will be in charge of inspecting new uploads (quality, composition and metadata) and communicating with contributors if necessary.

The ideal candidate has

- many great photos on StockXpert..."

Guess they are a little short-handed in the photo-reviewers department.

Congratulations DT!

Dreamstime was the first micrsostock to actually pay me money. Back in December 2005, I had a very popular Christmas image. I remember wondering if this microstock thing was for real and if they would really pay me. My Christmas tree earned $100 on DT just as 2005 ended and I got my payment. So as 2006 began, I started spending a lot more time stocking, and it has been lucrative and fun.

So thanks Achilles, and much continued success to you.

Can you post a link to the image? Is it maybe a Christmas image? Or a picture of Karl Rove? Or a bridge over the Mississippi?

Is anyone selling many vectors on BigStock?

My rasters do well enough there for me to get a payday every few months. Would it be worth my time to upload 200 or so vectors there?