"Thanks Spain for getting the World Cup for Portugal. It turns out that according to the Tordesilhas Treaty signed in 1494, everything conquered by Spain east of 46 degree meridian, is indeed property of Portugal.

During our (the 17 provinces of the Lower Countries) rebellion against Philips II of Spain, Philips proclaimed a collective death penalty against the northern part (now The Netherlands). The thing seems to have never been revoked. The Spanish were legally entitled to kill all the Dutch on the field. That's why they won the cup: the Dutch were too intimidated. Good try with your old treaties 

"for just $30 a month, your own stock library has never made so much sense"

No thanks. It's not a stock selling site at all. It's a paid hoster, like Photoshelter. Misleading post...

I also like that when I do a search on DT I can find my own images in the first page of results without having to check 'exclusive'.

Yes that's very obvious. There are a few very loud exclusives on DT with many sales, and if you go have a look at their portfolio, the images are very mediocre.

Well, you can clone-out every watermark if you want

Not in one minute. The problem is the worst with overwhites and some illustrations because the two main watermarks are in the top left and bottom right corner where there is normally nothing. The SS watermark for instance goes 2/3 all over the center (you can adjust it a bit so save the eyes). The peripheral watermarks are useless for part of the images. I would have liked to have the 2007 watermark back based on the old logo.

I can imagine the buyers don't like a big fat watermark for their comps. That's not my problem. In that case they just should buy a small 1$ volume sale version for the mock-up. They will spend much more calling and meeting their customers. But whatever, I'm slowly making up my mind. Goodnite by the Fab4

I can't reply right now since I have a situation (it's no easy to work remotely with people spread out over 3 continents) but the default watermark was fine 1-2 years ago. It's a fact that that watermark changed under the radar to virtually nothing (I'm not that often on FP as on SS) and now of course, in an effort of damage control, it's brought back as an option. Feels a bit like the BP oil spill.

The fact also stays that we weren't informed about that drastic change, and our images have been exposed (for how long?) to the sharers. The reason to stay on FP was largely out of sympathy. Certainly not for the income. If that sympathy and trust is broken in a way, reparation will be difficult, and there is nothing to keep us there.

The new central watermark is much better.  (it took me 1min 12sec to get rid of it).

^^ Wow.  That's all I need to know.  Can't imagine why a stock seller would want that.

There are advantages. Many occasional image users (like bloggers) don't know about microstock and how easy and cheap it is to buy an image nowadays. Even larger corporations don't. You can at least educate them. The ones that bluntly use your Flickr images do it mostly out of convenience and not with bad intentions. The ones that do wouldn't buy your images anyways and they are "punished" by a watermark that takes them a lot of time to clone out.

The main advantage of Flickr, as I experienced, is social networking in the photography arena. It was a great help to me to settle safely and get connected in Northern Mindanao (totally different culture, dangerous if you're ignorant) around a topic that interests all of you.

I found some amazing photographers the past 2 weeks on Flickr that didn't even hear of microstock. It's a particular situation in a very poor area in the Far East. I'm convinced it's full of talent but they just don't have the resources to develop that talent. If you can team up with those, it can (and it already has) been a win-win in real before. But that might not be an issue in the West.

A third advantage is that you get a tremendous exposure since Flickr is one of the most visited sites in the world, with very good SEO. Three years ago, I was all over Google with my images, by Flickr.
That might not be an issue for big shots like you, that get a lot of exposure by the agencies, but if you are a "regular" with a small port partly in a niche, you need to take every chance you can to push yourself in the limelight.

Everybody experiencing the glass ceiling in his sales by conventional microstock is looking for new business models. I'm eager to know what the "free" thing of Boughn-Arcurs-Avava will be. "Freemium" can be a part of it, I don't know.

That's why I nevertheless reopened an account on Flickr. You'll have to use it wisely. If the bubble of microstock is bursting (for the photogs, not the agencies) you need to be proactive and try... try...

I was wondering how photographers approach Flickr in terms what they upload and how much. Are you actively participating in groups etc. contributing images or inviting endless numbers of people as friends...?

1. I did 2 years ago, full port, watermarked.

2. My paying account was suddenly terminated without any warning. My guess is (a) the watermarking annoyed the sharers and they reported me for 'commercial use' (not allowed); (b) I had links on every photo to the actual sales site (commercial use).

3. Flickr doesn't really like other (paying stock) sites, I have the impression. But maybe they changed now they decided to team up with Getty. Users hate the watermarks and I got scolded for that a few times.

4. Yes, I heavily participated in groups. It's a feelgood and wow site. It can be very rewarding and you get high exposure by that. On the downside, it eats time. If you don't do that, your photos will drown in the other 2-3 billion.

5. You can set the copyright as you wish: all rights reserved or one of the (worthless) creative common "licenses".

6. I never had anyone contacting me for a sale, but I regularly found blogs and even commercial sites carrying my pictures complete with watermark and all.

Hope this helps. Also check Dan Heller's site: he has some articles about Flickr.

Nevertheless, I started a new account again, but free this time. In that case, you are limited to 200 photos so your port won't fit there.

A heads-up: PhotoDeck is now fully open - no invitation required, opening an account takes a few seconds only. www.photodeck.com

This looks like what Clustershot should have been. Nicely designed, but of course, the question remains how to get found by buyers. Right now it's just a nice front for remote backup. I'm going to try the integration out  in a while.

Update:
- Just like Veer (and LO earlier, and BigStock till SS reprogrammed it) an older version of the IPTC title field is taken if you changed it later. I don't keyword with Adobe but with Irfanview. There are several ways to import IPTC.

- The bad habit of Flickr and Clustershot is copied to import the location IPTC tags in the keywords. That might be fine for travel snapshooters, but I use that info also for studio location if it's indoors. The address is irrelevant. I have to take it out picture by picture. If location is relevant, I put it in the keywords, like all stock sites accept it.

- Oh well, I have no idea how to bring my images in a gallery, like Home. Tried it many ways but it failed.

- As to integration, I couldn't find any usable info or tutorial. I'll check it out later, when the site is more mature. Maybe. I have my own hoster with several domains and I can't afford yet another paying service parallel to it.

What would you do if DT is your private company?

If it was my private company, I would make contributors happy being the best stock site around with 50% commissions. Then, gaining speed, I would introduce subs for peanuts.  Finally in the top 4, I would lower commissions down to 30% suddenly and sell it as god's gift compared to the 20% of iStock. For the more brain challenged ones, I would make the site a feelgood place with wows and yays on the forum all over.

When profits consequently soared through the roof, I would sell it off and live happily ever thereafter. I would keep Rolmat as a servant though, to pour me Daiquiri on the rocks under a palm tree. 

Last week I had a batch of 22 all rejected. I sent them an email with links to the same photos approved at Shutterstocks and Fotolia and I got the whole batch approved at 123RF the day after!

Is that worth the time for the email? My last batch (somewhere early June) was rejected 9/10 on 123RF and accepted 8/10 on iStock. I just took the time to delete that batch on 123RF entirely, and I removed them from my upload list.

The point is I was insulted. I can live with rejects after 5 years in stock, but not with this kind of erratic behavior. Their "reviewers" must be morons, or competitors. They went from a nice and quiet site 2005-2009 to a big PITA now. Moreover, their earnings page still shows 0 earnings for all my months and years. I can understand a glitch for 1-2 weeks but not for 2 months.

I really don't have time to email them about all this.

What does it cost? No pricing on the site.

Oh come on, I really do! :-)

Yes he does! You can see it by the grin on his face when he walks with all those Champaign bottles or when he gets stuck between the keys on his keyboard.

Great.  Just what we need is a couple of "industry leaders" messing it up for the crowd.

That's exactly how microstock started 7 years ago.