I had my first non sub sale of the month today. Not dead, but not entirely well either.

The way I look at FB I figure if all my friends each do something really cool or interesting once a month, that pretty much fills up my news feed with cool interesting things. That doesn't mean they are all always doing cool and interesting things though. It is probably similar for microstock as far as best months - at least for a while everyone has one at one site every once in a while and if that is all they post it looks like everyone else is having them all the time. Unfortunately it also seems to appear to be true for worst months lately.

I agree with what EmberMike said. The only incentive would be if it helped keep people from quitting microstock altogether or sending everything to somewhere like stocksy or Alamy RM or any other place that people think might make them more than .38 or maybe kept people from throwing in the towel on the long run prospects and supporting things like the DPC just because they figure they might as well get every penny out of this lost cause before it is all dried up.

I would love a raise, maybe they could start small say by making the royalties on BS comparable to SS.


As for me controlling my costs, I have minimal control over the cost of gas, internet, computer equipment, photo equipment, food, lodging... Actually  I do have some control, but I have already squeezed them about as much as I can and I will have a hard time going below zero.

I think if you want to do this for real work for the long haul you have to plan on producing enough selling content that when you hit the wall you are happy with your income compared to the amount of work you put in. Compare this to a "regular" job. How much do you work, how much do you like it, and how much do you make?

Unfortunately the changes at the sites probably have as big an effect on your long term earning as what you do (well, maybe not as big - but a big effect and one you can't really do much about other than pull the plug or take your images elsewhere).

Unfortunately this isn't some magic passive income machine where every new image you create will increase your income forever by a certain amount. (but if you do stop producing new content you should still make income on a (hopefully) long and gradual decreasing tail).

They do seem like the site where SS plays screw the contributor to decide what they want to do with SS in the future.

It would be nice if they would tell us how long they will keep paying .38 for subs for the bridge folks (they are still doing that aren't they - originally it was only supposed to be for 6 months or a year I thought).

down a bit from 2013 and a bit more from 2012 but up from 2011.

Port up about 10%.

Alamy was up (Dec saved it) along w/ FP, PD, 123, CS (although some of those are so small they aren't significant).    SS, BS, veer,  down. DT, IS, SF, P5 remarkably similar.

In general sales seem less steady and it is the few rare big sales that make or break a month (or year).

The bottom line is important, but not everything. If a site continually seems shady and moves the goalposts, etc. then I am unhappy with them and might not even work with them or may stop submitting or even remove images. I am much happier with .35 from Canva than I would be with .35 from some distribution deal where the buyer paid $35.

If there was another site w/ less sales but the same $ as SS, I'd upload there at the same time and be a lot happier. (some months Alamy does this, but over the long haul they don't).

I think things will trend the way the OP suggests, but it will take a long time and sites like SS will still get enough fresh content to be king for a long long time. (plus if they just churned their library they probably have plenty of buried content that would appear to be fresh).

so can we take this material and then upload them back to p5 to sell? (perhaps with some subtle change?)

I am guessing the earnings page was done by someone who either was not interested in making the relevant information easily visible or perhaps with the goal of obscuring it. It was painfully easy to see when the last 20 sales were all subs before, now that is harder to see. As a painful aside I got a new low for credit value .118  ouch.

I got some .70 and some .35 subs during this time period. Were they all supposed to be more than the standard or are the .70 subs just something different that I am not aware of (like the $2 pseudo subs).

nothing but subs for me since it started - too bad we can't get 100% on those - I wonder what it would be...

That ranks up there along with "your sales will double" as one of the great lies from 123RF.

I'd love to see one or more of the smaller sites with fair payment take off. Maybe someone like p5 could get their search working a bit better (maybe it already is for all I know, I haven't messed with it lately) and gain some traction. In fact w/ the ability to set price and 50% to the artist, P5 would probably be my choice of a site to take off. I'd like to see faster reviews there too, but faster sales are a much higher priority.

My real dream would be for buyers to recognize just how low the percentage to the artists is and move towards the sites that pay more fairly.