Glad we could help!

Just wanted to say thanks for reporting this to us her as well (see the email I sent direct to you on this). Normally we're much faster but we have a weekly Weds meeting so this one took us an hour or two but rest assured we always act quick on any issues like this (or anything really!).

I know somebody else from the boards here emailed us with more "proof" which makes our job even easier. As of now, all images are gone, that user has been removed, and they have been banned from selling with us again.

Side note: I have to agree with the others, you have some excellent work there! Just trying to find the positive in this negative situation

Hi,

Please feel free to contact us at any time by clicking the "Contact Us" button at the top of The3dStudio.com and we'll get back to you as fast as we can.

As for FTP, we actually don't allow it into our datacenter because of the security risks it would bring into our datacenter and servers. Instead, we have a very nice web based uploader that will easily let you upload many (hundreds to thousands) of files at one time. Give it a shot, it's very fast and easy to use.

If you have a lot of files (5000 or more) please contact us and we can offer other options like sending us a DVD/hard drive of your files if needed.

@sharpshot: The IRS won't discuss any other company, but even our CPA's said something like "I wouldn't want to be shutter when they get an audit". My understanding is that taxes and W8BENs are fairly new to shutter and if that is the case they may have just done it wrong. My experience has taught me that in these businesses (in 3D as well) that one company does something and the rest blindly follow under the assumption that the other company "must know what they are talking about". I see time and time again. I suppose somebody could ask shutter why they don't require the ITIN when Page 5 of the W8BEN directions clearly say you do, maybe they have offices outside the USA and sales are done outside...I really have no idea as I know nothing about those companies. For us, we have to do what the IRS and our CPA's tell us.

Getting the ITIN isn't a fun thing but most tell me it wasn't nearly as bad as they expected it to be. Of course, some don't realize they don't have to get one if they accept the 30% tax. Sounds bad but keep in mind the 30% tax is ONLY on orders placed by USA customers. Non-USA orders are NEVER taxed. For most this isn't a huge deal since around 25%-ish of our total orders are from USA customers. Personally, I'd get the ITIN as I don't like the IRS having my money but there are options

You can also sell and get sales without anything, that gives you an option to see if you want to get an ITIN or not. Since our reports show you where the order came from (by country) you'll even know what you will pay in tax (if you accept the 30%) before you get paid out. I've had others worry about this as well only to find that 90% or more of theirs sales came from non-USA customers and thus it was a non-issue for them.

@Norebbo: We really appreciate your support! It's contributors like you who are in this for the long haul that we love to have and how we really will change the way stock is bought and sold.

I got an email to post a reply here to correct some information so wanted to do that really quick...

1. On the W8BEN issue, we have no plans to change this because the IRS has no plans to change this and thus we MUST follow the laws of our country. I'd love to lose the whole tax issue as well but we are required to do it. I've had many CPAs look at this issue now (and have literally paid thousands of dollars to have this investigate) and have talked with the IRS (anyone can call the IRS to get the same info) and the bottom line is that the ONLY way to claim tax treaty benefits for a reduced rate is with an ITIN. The IRS will tell you that if you read Page 5 of the W8BEN directions...

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/iw8ben.pdf

...you will see...

You must provide a U.S. TIN if you are:
Claiming benefits under an income tax treaty

...and that's about as clear as it gets. I used the "well, here is what shutter does" and every person tells me "they are wrong". We will watch this issue closely of course.

2. @cclapper – We have a system in place called Delete Protection that allows you to add and remove products without any problems at any time. But, it will detect surges in deleting and if a bunch of items are removed all at once it will temporarily stop the deleting to protect the account in case somebody got into your account. We actually added this feature years ago after an incident with an "ex" deleting their spouses products. We then had to restore some products from a backup to fix the issue so we added that feature and over the years it's saved a few of our members from disaster.

You see, in the world of 3D we find that sellers don't really delete many products and most people who sell with us stay with us so it's rare when we run into an issue where somebody is removing their entire collection. Personally, even if a collection isn't selling well I always go with the logic of it can't hurt to leave it and see.

3. On that note, I know a lot of people here are starting to see their sales finally pick up and we have a few who aren't seeing many or any sales. This is perfectly normal, this is a very tough business to break into and it just takes time and has been part of our business plan from day 1. We are actually ahead of where we planned to be and growing faster than expected as well which is great news. There is a common theme when I see people reporting sales, and that's about the money they make. Even with low sales the amount you make per sale with us is much higher than in most places. Join our loyalty program and you are making $8.40 on each large size sale. We think this is why it only makes sense to stick with us because we are growing fast and getting where we need to be but we're not in this to make every rich overnight, that's just not our business model.

4. I've actually had 2 people tell me they want to leave because we are adding people like Yuri and iofoto (many others on the way!) and that they'll get buried and never see sales. I explained to them both that the exact opposite is true because big names bring in both buyers and sellers and that allows for fast growth all around. We've already seen direct impact from the addition of large collections that has brought in many more sellers and many new buyers that we otherwise wouldn't have. These buyers don't just buy from these big collections and instead the sales are evenly spread around to many collections (big and small). It's the support from these big names that will end up helping us all.

I'd love to offer check payout under the $50 min we have now, but it's just not feasible when you consider the time and costs involved in checks. While our check system is automatically printed (of course) it still requires some manual effort in checking (no pun) each one, signing them, putting them in envelopes, and then adding and paying for postage. There's more of a process and thus more of a cost (envelopes, checks, and postage all add up) so we have that minimum just for that reason.

I think that's better than passing the fees onto the contributor as that always feels like "nickle and diming" you which I hate. Tiny little fees burried into businesses are the bane of my existence

Most of our members use the PayPal option though it's not for everyone and not available in all countries either and so we're always watching the payment system and trying to add more options and find ways to get money back to the members as fast as possible.

I've had a few people ask the question about offering larger image sizes and I think that's just confusion when we get compared to how other sites sell images. While we do offer 400px, 800px, and 1600px sizes for our x-small, small, and medium sizes our Large size is whatever max size you want to upload. Rather than define a large as a pixel size we'd rather just have that be the largest image your camera shot. We think this is less confusing for customers as well and that's why the Ex License is just the large size but with a different usage license on it for those customers who need it. Right now our most popular sizes are the Medium and Large by a long shot.

m@m is correct, we've been around (year 14 now) in 3D for a while but stock is brand new as of late 2009 where our focus was mainly on finding contributors. 2010 is the year of customers and we've already had some good sales increases there but we, of course, still have a long way to go (and we will get there!).

Categories are being added to as we go, and we can add a category as needed. If anyone wants to suggest categories please let us know at [email protected] and we will try to add whatever makes sense. I think most people don't realize that we actually read our emails and act on them very quickly so don't be shy...I only ask that requests come in via email, not a forum post here (as I can't track them here as well).

It always surprises me when somebody mentions something about us that they wish other sites would do. Something as simply as paying every month with no minimums (via paypal) just seem obvious to me but I love hearing feedback like that. Really reminds me that we are doing this the right way.

I also love seeing all of the referral links and hope everyone that has a site, blog, facebook, twitter, etc is posting them there as well. Don't forget that you can get more affiliate links here...

http://www.the3dstudio.com/member_affiliate.aspx

...and they work for buyers and sellers! And, yes, we know that the above link needs a face lift, it's on our list For those running a site/blog we even provide RSS feeds and HTML search boxes that you can copy/paste to your site.

Actually, that's not entirely true. Years ago I actually had talked to several parties on this subject and that's how we originally learned how it needs to be done. One of the places I spoke with was the IRS and they made it very clear to us that we need the ITIN on the W8BEN if tax treaty benefits are being claimed.

We only reinvestigated this now as people asked because of how shutter decided to do it and we were hoping that maybe something in the law had changed. Now, from what I have found out (and maybe this isn't right but this is what all of my research concluded) shutter (etc) only recently started doing the royalty tax stuff at all (past couple of years?). In the beginning they didn't do any tax stuff (from what I could gather) so something must have led to them to suddenly start doing it so it's very plausible that they are simply doing it incorrectly (that's the nature of doing something new).

So, what is correct? Check out...

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,,id=96438,00.html

And read this part...

A reduced rate of withholding applies to a foreign person that provides a Form W-8BEN claiming a reduced rate of withholding under an income tax treaty only if the foreign person provides a U.S. Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) (except for certain marketable securities) and certifies that:

It is a resident of a treaty country
It is the beneficial owner of the income
If it is an entity, it derives the income within the meaning of Section 894 of the Internal Revenue Code (it is not fiscally transparent)
It meets any limitation on benefits provision contained in the treaty, if applicable

...right there they make it very clear as to what is required to claim the benefits of a reduced or removed rate. When you call the IRS they will actually confirm that as well. There are more articles and pubs that point to that information as well and when every tax pro we've ever talked to on this tells us the same thing it makes sense to listen. Tax laws are so complex here that is ALWAYS makes sense to have a tax pro give you advice beyond just what the IRS says...just getting a hold of them is a chore and even when you do chances are good you aren't getting somebody that knows your exact answer and even then they will ALWAYS cop out with the old "consult your tax pro" line. They're not about to put their neck on the line for anyone

If somebody knows of something, in writing, on the irs.gov website that explains the exceptions that shutter (etc) are making then I would love to have some links. I'd happily pay more tax pros more money to confirm it if it is there (the paperwork headache it would remove alone is worth a fortune to me!).

Finally, in most countries each person has to file some sort of yearly (or monthly) tax information and when you do that in your country it is likely that any tax you paid to the US Gov is deductible on your taxable income in your country. I am not giving out tax advice here so be sure to check with your own tax pros for your situation but for so many people I know that is the case. It's not as good as not having the tax in the first place but maybe better than nothing.

Unfortunately, we are actually handling the (potential) royalty tax and tax treaties the correct way.

After some questions about how other sites (shutter specifically) allow non-USA residents to claim tax treaty benefits without an ITIN we got all of our tax people involved again and had them re-investigate it with the IRS and other professionals who deal in that area a bit more and found that what we are doing is correct to how the IRS tax law is written.

The only way to claim tax treaty benefits, and thus remove or reduce the royalty taxes, is with a ITIN. I then took it a bit further and even said "But hey, these shutter people don't do that" and to that the tax people all said "Wouldn't want to be them when they get an audit". They all then promptly charged us outrageous fees and I believe have all since purchased private islands.

I know that many of the other sites who may allow you to have the reduced rate have likely just copied from other sites. I've seen situations like this before where one site may interpret the law a certain way and then others follow under the assumption that "Hey, they're a big site so they must be doing it the right way". The bottom line for us is that we can't blindly do something because somebody else does but have to do what our legal and tax people want (that's why we pay them after all).

I do know that we aren't the only site that has it this way, I know there are others who have had similar policies in place as well (hopefully having done their own research!)...this is an area where the 2D photo business is still catching up to what us 3D sites have known for a while. Also, it's important to know that ONLY orders placed by USA customers are EVER taxed. Any order placed by a non-USA customer is NEVER taxed (and this is where I think the other sites got confused). On that note, around 25% of our overall business (roughly) is from USA customers. So, for many contributors, only around 1 out of 4 orders ever carry any tax and even then many can have it reduced or removed with that ITIN.

I hope this all changes some day soon, as much as you all hate that tax we have to deal with it or all non-USA based sellers. It's a pain to explain, it's a pain to collect tax forms, it's a pain to collect and withhold the tax, it's a pain for us to pay that money to the IRS each month, and it's a huge pain each year when we send out tax forms to everyone. I promise you that nobody wants it removed more than I do

We actually have talked with the iSyndica folks about that in the past and it's something we are considering and looking into for a future update. We have some back end upgrades on our end that we are working on that will help make that sort of integration a little easier so it's on our wish list

Thank m@m!

As for FTP...we actually don't allow FTP into our data center due to the security risks involved with FTP in general. Instead, we have a very nice multi-file uploader where you can upload huge amounts of files all at one time with just a few clicks. It will even report the current status so you should be able to fire that up and let it go which really gives the same overall speed and benefits as FTP would.

Thanks for saying so, we really do appreciate that and everyone here tries to stay in touch with the community. I wish I had more time to read the posts here, I usually get sucked into a few every time I come back to respond

Hi everyone and Happy New Year to you all! Lisa mentioned that a few questions were posted here so I figured I would drop by and see what I can answer...

Adeptris (and others)...we really appreciate your support and the support so many in the community here are giving us. It's truly great to see that and we are confident that our business model will be great for everyone involved in the long run. This part of the business is new as Lisa mentioned so we always like to make sure everyone understands that it's a marathon and not a sprint for us but we think that our 60% commissions (70% with our loyalty program http://www.the3dstudio.com/help.aspx?id_help=23) will help turn the entire industry around and really put the money were it belongs...your pockets! I've had many people here email us about their growing sales recently and we're all really glad to see it start to pan out.

PixelBitch...I think the screen flashing you see is the ajax kicking in as you see the "please wait". It Does this rather than flashing the entire screen but I imagine that if you had a slower connection (it would be more noticeable there) and clicked the categories it could end up being a bit much on the flashing. I'll look into that on our end, we can probably remove the gray color and just leave the "please wait" message which would fix that. Good feedback, these are things we don't always see in our testing.

Eireann...submitting textures can be done in any image format. BUT...and this is a BIG one...it's important to understand what a texture is and isn't on The3dStudio.com. Since we were originally a 3D site we get a lot of photogs that have a different idea what a texture is. A texture (to be allowed on T3DS) is usually either a "cutout" type image (picture of a plant with the background cut out on a transparent layer) or a "seamless" texture. These seamless textures are the most common and are used in 3D software. Here is a great example of a texture...

http://www.the3dstudio.com/product_details.aspx?id_product=74123

...and they are usually in JPG format. If they contain transparency then PNG is usually preferred. But, I know that some photos take pictures of items that aren't then adjusted to be seamless, cutout, etc. So, a regular photo (regardless of the subject matter) shouldn't be posted as a texture...only a photo or drawing specifically manipulated to be a texture should be posted there. I hope something in there made some sense, I'm not so sure I explained that very well.

PERSEUS...while it seems completely logical to say "get customers" it's far more complex than that. Since this is new to us we first have to get photos online...after all, what good do customers do if they have nothing to buy? That's why our focus for the end of 2009 when we started this was mainly on contributors and even that is a costly undertaking (in time and money) but went better than we had planned. At the same time, we had to learn the industry as we jumped in which meant a lot of tweaking to our site, search features, advertising campaigns, etc. After all, there's no point in having customers and products if they can't find what they need. It's all a process and there is no simple "on" switch to make it happen overnight. So, right now our main focus is on buyers and it is working...but it won't happen overnight, this is a long term business for us and it will take many months, if not the better part of 2010, to grow it like we want. The good news is that we've done this before in many other categories of our site so it's a proven model for us. The bad news is that some contributors only upload if they know they will match sales from the "big 6" and so they'll miss out in the long run.

As always, you can contact us at The3dStudio.com at any time about anything, most of the time I am the one will reply to you as well

As always, a tough group to keep up with...

KB...yes, meant I don't understand, thanks...for some reason, the forum reply text box gets jumpy in IE8 for me and I keep clearing out words I didn't mean to That's a good point on not having enough for a payout, I can see that being an issue and the good news is (which you probably know but I will share for others to be safe) is that we have no minimum at all. We pay monthly via several means and if you choose PayPal you'd get paid any amount every month.

Anon...as already mentioned, the 20% if an affiliate commission if you refer a buyer to us. If you refer a seller then you get 5% as a referral fee for life. Our standard royalty rate for a sale is 60%...it goes as high as 70% if you join our non-exclusive loyalty program. and you are right, it's very confusing and our page layout there is crap. It's all changing soon though

LSD72, I never implied that you were giving partial support. The problem is that some contributors only put up a small portion of their collection to sell and that's not really enough to make this work. We can only be successful if large numbers of contributors give us their full support for a long period of time. We're not here to make every millions in the next 3 months or 6, this is a long term operation and I think all contributors who are serious about selling need to understand that.

Some won't add any until they "hear" some feedback from others first. Others only add a small portion of their collection and that's what I would call partial support. I understand why those people do that, but it's still partial support. We're all in this to get paid so I completely understand that money is the #1 motivator, but to get paid we just need full support from as many contributors as we can possibly get...once we have that setup the money will follow.

Some will add their images for a few months and then remove them and this is a strategy I understand. To me, once you've added them why would you want to remove them? You've done the hard work by that point and our reviewers have also put in a lot of time and effort. I've heard others say they don't want to spend time checking their sales on a site but my answer to that is simply "don't check" because the royalties will get sent to you no matter what

Hi Eireann,

Large view counts are normal, we get huge amounts of traffic and are well linked on the web. Right now the bulk of our sales are in 3D models but in time that will increase and you will see stock image sales increase. With that in mind, some views you see aren't 100% targeted to stock images so that will explain part of the high views and low sales issue (some 3d customers stumble into stock for example).

The next issue is our site design. It's outdated and the small thumbnails don't translate well to stock images. The good news is that we've known this for a while now and have a solution in progress. We've been beefing up the back end and are almost ready to announce a new front end (the part customers see). We will have better thumbnails (much larger) and an overall better design (cleaner, wider, easier to navigate, etc). All I can say is that those improvements are coming soon...on the order of weeks, not months.

We've really planned out our entrance into the stock image marketplace back to early this year and now we're just going through all of those steps exactly as planned. Rather than making a bunch of quick changes and decisions we usually stick to a slower, more thought out, plan that is more likely to have positive results in the long term (which is why we've been around for almost 14 years now!). This gives us time to learn as we go and avoid costly mistakes.

As for "what to shoot", well, that's hard to say right now. We will be posting more on this subject down the road but right now we are trying to get a large variety of stock images so we have all of the bases covered. Once we really increase sales and have a better idea as to what types of images sell then we will post that (generalized) data. Right now we are seeing sales in all categories and only a few stand out as being extra popular (like business people & situations, lifestyle images, "headline" images like those dealing with housing markets, various people photos, etc).

Very fair point sjlocke. I think that's the general problem with any forum, blog, site, etc...I don't think I can ever be clear enough for everyone to understand what it is I mean all the time. What makes perfect sense to me could make no sense at all to somebody else and it's easy for us (on this side of the business) to forget that everyone here isn't as up to date with our plans and vision as we are. So, good feedback, I appreciate that!

Magnum, thank you!

sjlocke, I think Adeptris actually said it very well. I think any time a company enters into an existing market space everyone assumes that company has to match the sales of other large competitors in that same space to succeed. I don't think that's the case at all and I don't measure success by comparing us to anyone else. We have a different model and most people will make more per sale with us than anywhere else. The overall dollars they get might not be the same for most right now but I think that will start changing as we grow. Growth takes time but we've done this before on the 3D side and will do it here.

epantha , we're not trying to fool anyone here and want to be completely honest as to what we are and aren't at all times. I think it's fair to say that we aren't the best fit for all contributors and we aren't here to make any a millionaire overnight. But please understand that a site like ours only works when we do have the full support of our contributors. The idea of "waiting on the sidelines" with partial support just doesn't work. I can't force you to keep adding your photos (nor would I want to!) but I know that it will be worth your time as we grow throughout 2010.

Somebody just asked me to comment here so I figured I would...

Our stock photo section took off like wildfire in just the last couple of months and we've had more submissions than we expected in such a short period. That's a good thing and we know many of these new images are from the members here on this forum. So, let me say thank you to those that are getting in on the ground floor with us...we appreciate your early support.

Now, the big question everyone has is on sales, or lack of in some cases, right? Just like we said from the start a couple of months ago, stock photos are new to The3dStudio.com and we never intended to be an istock overnight. We don't intend to ever be an istock for that matter, it's just not what we are about here, but I think our stock sales will see some great increases in the next few months as we ramp up our advertising campaigns.

In the past few weeks we've seen great increases in stock sales and we are very pleased with that trend but that doesn't always translate into 1000 sales for every single seller every month. Part of that is just simple supply and demand and our supply shot up almost overnight and now we are starting to focus on increasing the demand. I can sell 100 images in the next hour but that doesn't mean every photographer will get 10 sales or even 1 from that simply because we have a very large library from many contributors so the sales are more spread out than they worth 1-2 months ago.

Our intent from the start was to focus mainly on getting new contributors at The3dStudio.com for the last few months of 2009. We have been doing that while we continue to improve our stock upload tools, categories, search features, and so on. We've also added our "x-small" 400 pixel size for a $2 purchase along with an Extended License option that we think is an industry best and offers something other sites do not. Next up is a very major site design upgrade and this is very much focused on the custom side of the site as we continue to improve their experience...I can't give away too much yet but it will be a much cleaner design, will be wider, and will have increased thumbnail sizes. It's all coming soon.

From there our plan has always been to focus 2010 on bringing in customers and that plan is still 100% on track. We have some various advertising campaigns that will be starting then (some have already started) and this will help us bring in more customers.
I know some people like to "wait and see" and either won't add any images until they hear of increased sales or maybe they only had a small percentage of their collection until they see an increase. While I understand the logic behind that, the flip side is that the more images we have the larger we become and the faster we can bring in customers. If you have images to add then we would love to get them added, it's a very fast process and once you've done that you don't ever have to touch them again. You have nothing to lose but a little bit of your time, and a very small bit at that.

So, I will end this overly long reply with a thank you to those who continue to support us. It will be worth your time in the long run but we aren't here to compete against istock, shutter, or any other stock site. We're doing things differently and different can be good if you give it a chance.

Quote from: dirkr on August 29, 2009, 23:15
one more thing I stumbled across: Your regular licence has some restrictions (print run less than 500K, no items for resale) which is good, but I can't see any kind of extended licence allowing these things. Are you planning on introducing ELs or did I just miss them?

You didn't miss anything, there is no EL just yet. We are planning this for a future release as well as we are still researching the options of that (so we are open to feedback if anyone wants to comment there). We are a few months out from this and, as we always do, we will keep everyone update on our site, via a newsletter, and I will try to keep a post here updated as well if I can.

You bet, any time...I like the challenge of trying to keep up with you all

I am going to try and answer what I can in order that I see it here...

1. We do have a review process, but we aren't as strict as some other sites.  In fact, I've already heard from some members that images they submitted to us and sold through us were rejected by other agencies. It's entirely possible we will be more strict as time goes on but right now we are just looking for good images and rejecting anything that we think is sub-par.

2. Our upload software will use Active X controls if you run IE or Java for all other browsers.

3. All images are set to Editorial Only when added, we then review and upgrade to RF or RF with release as needed. We have two reviewers who do this all day long and 2 more than jump in during heavy times. You can read about our process at: http://www.the3dstudio.com/help.aspx?id_help=20 and this is what Eireann has mentioned as well....thank you for the kind comments as well!

4. Larger thumbnails are likely something you will see in the future from us once we re-work some other areas but this is a common request and one I can't argue with.

5. The 3D folks usually buy 3D models but a small portion buy stock images for backgrounds in their 3D work and some will buy isolated objects/people as well. We are starting to get more of a non-3D stock audience and that's what we are working on building up over the next 3-6 months as we build our available library up. As we get more data on what sells and what is requested I will be posting this in my blog as well and we will have new reports that everyone can pull up.

6. If you view your order product it will count a view, probably something we could fix easily but we are trying to keep views to be just that...views. If you view your product twice it counts 2 views. The idea is that we have enough traffic and will be getting much more that you really can't skew the results unless you wanted to refresh your product all day long.

7. One of the biggest keys to our system being a success (we think) will be the lack of a credit system. I know many people are used to credits and have learned to accept them, but I find that system flawed. I also think $1 pictures are too cheap for the work that goes into them and thus our idea was born. Oh, and somebody asked, we started this out of both buyer and seller demand...literally being requested weekly for years and if one person takes the time to make a request there are 100-1000 more just like them not taking the time to do so. At least that's my opinion. It also just seemed liked a natural extension of what we do already.

8. Sorry for anyone who hit the 25 upload limit...that will be changed by tomorrow...it's actually just some old settings from our preview system. It will actually let you upload more than 25 now, but if you have more than 25 left in your queue it won't let you upload more in some cases. Will be fixed soon

Wow...hope I covered everything in that one! As always, we really appreciate the support of our early adopters and as we grow this part of our site I think we can all benefit nicely from it.

I hope you will give us a try HermanM!

Hopefully we can sort the ITIN issue out in a few weeks. In the mean time, you can sell without having the tax stuff sorted out. Worse case, if you wanted to be paid without waiting, you could even accept the 30% tax rate without needing any ITIN and that 30% is only on USA orders. But, hopefully will know more soon on that.

Both Editorial and RF is accepted on our site as well just in case anyone else was wondering.

Quote from: Eireann on August 26, 2009, 04:40
One more question regarding illustrations. I understand that at this point in time EPS files cannot be uploaded. But what about the converted, JPEG files? Are they OK to upload? Do you need such files?

Good question, I should have pointed that out as well. YES, you can save your Vectors as JPG file as upload and sell those. We encourage that sort of use and have many doing it now.

RacePhoto: Thank you for that support, much appreciated. I'm not taking anything here as people picking on us but rather that it's general fear of the unknown. I think it's a combination of us being "new" to them along with the fact that we operate a little different than what everyone is used to in the world of stock. New and different usually has that reaction and I am glad that people at least get their concerns listed where we can go over them and (hopefully) put them to rest.

Still, I appreciate your support there and have had private messages and emails from people here basically saying what you have said as well and that they are very happy with our direction. From what I see, the number speak for themselves and we are getting tons of contributors and many via the referral links on this site and others. So, thank you all!

Thank you both!