Dear Elena, you first comment was:

Is it even worth trying out? With prices going down and sales being slow, will I ever see my 50 bucks per image back? Anyone has experience with this?
All comments are welcome,

I wander so often in the stock, how low the photographers have economically gotten and how high their quality of work is.

Read your line, it says : will I ever see my 50 bucks back.

So is this the level on wich stock photographers are wiling to work now? if they see their money back, and maybe a couple of hundred dollars per year for a dozen photos?

I honastly must say, it is time the artistic league  is geting some kind of association that sets some kind of humane ground, like minimum sallery , cost profit equations etc. Suggestions here are welcome. Lisas4aethotmaildaetcom

If a photograhper has 10.000 Dollars, puts the 10.000 on a bankaccount, the intrest lets say 5%, that is what you get on a online long terme savings account, the intrest is 500 Dollars.

What about your investment, depreciation of cameras etc, model cost, fuel car, shoelaces, etc.

Why is it generally accepted, that a stock photographer, that works 6 hours per day on photography and uploading etc, shouold not make a decent income to live a compfortable life?

I can only say, we need some type of lobby, because if this trend continues, not only the photo industry will deminish and look like a dynamically positioned, plastic ,vivid and sterile clean scam, no, the entire creative community will suffer, no photos with meaning and reallity no more, no photographers with thought and weight no more. Only surface conceptual messages out there, like bad salespeople, that try to sell you something you don't need, like a man, who hits on you with lame and old jokes.

Photographers, try to be yourself, make dark and  light pictures sharp and unsharp, do not mold your creativity into this stock requirements cage, try to be what you are supposed to be, artists and don;t sell yourself short.
Look around yourself, if there are some businesses, offer them your work, you can moke easy 300 to 500 dollars per shooting, put this on your account and earn intrest, dont waste your time with * rich website owners, with their imbalanced concepts.
But honastly its not the websites that are so bad, they have to compete, it always end with the leak of protection for the artist, no lobby that iniciates laws for an photographer. A kindergarden teacher has more rights than a photographer.

The scam is, first the websites claimed, to host only amateurs, than they entered into professional quality but left the protection of the professional out. And the dumm photographer complied, provided higher and higher quality, but unfortunately the demand kept beeing steady. Ok, one website makes more this year, but you will find others making less. the number of consumers is more or less steady.

I could write hours about this pulling one after the other point to describe the situation, at the end, Lisa, you make great photos, well tuned to the microstock comunity, do you really believe, your work, from envisioning a photo to finding the model and incredients for your envisioned shot, to realising it, paying the downpayment on the equipment, touching up and keywording to uploading and submitting, do you realy think, all this effort of yours is worth so little?

Add all your cost together, than add the hours worked on a decend hourly sallery, than you have your basic internal cost. Add insurnces, retirement payments rent and leases, and than double this number, than you have the money you shoould earn. Thats the sales price of your work.
But again, the market salesprice (equilibrium), - value of a product is generated by supply and demand.

Submitting more and more, selling licensed is the real sceam. The demand in relationship to the supply is suddenly minimal, and the market value of stock photos is close to nothing.

Its like you sell a car, but when the owner pics it up, istantaniously a clone of the car falls from the sky. So there are infinite cars. The cars are worth nothing no more, all factories go bancrupt and people have to look for new jobs.

Ok, lets offer a solution. The divers have padi, they make the rules and make sure there is always a market.
We need some kind of rule setting association, that controles the handling of rights. Licensed images need to be limited in their resale. For example one photo can only be licensed ten times. Than the rights are sold, to those ten people. Wait, everybody should screme now, whaaat.
Photogrphers, please take some time, a photo is not a unique diamond, its manufactured by a photographer. You can always make a similar one again. The difference is only on the surface, because by limiting their license photos suddeny become a valuable comodity, and their equilibrium price rises in the relationship the supply decreases.
Photograpers, you are making photos anyway, the trick is to get the phots as fast as possible off the market, to get back a balance of work and income visa equilibrium price.

This little change would suddenly create a big result and a new foundation for photographers to leave a decent live again.

Thank you very much

Lisa

Lisa, trying to make yourself look all smart by typing a bunch of numbers and then insinuating he does his stock work while he is doing his other job, not only makes you look dumb, but also childish and catty.  I suggest you go back to your still life work and stop trying to edjumacate us.

So you think he is not doing this at least partially at work? Are you sure?
Did you ask him?
Just run some numbers yuorself instead of getting all emotional. If he doesnt do it at work, he has do to it off work. Security guards have 8 to 12 hour shifts.  4 hours preparation and uploading/ day , shooting, family life, normal life, 8 hours sleep, mmm, how many hoours does a day have? Sounds not enjoyable to me.

It seems basic economic principles are not understood by all this creative hart working wonderful people....
I must say I am embarrassed for how little photographers are working, this is worse than slavery.

Not really...I knew nothing about photography 4 years ago.. so far I made $41,000.00 and still growing.
 See my thread "Happy day for a security guard" for a better response.
Probably only the top 1% of micro contributors are making enough to make a living. Maybe 2-6% are making a good supplemental income, but is that not the truth for all artistic or sports endeavors . I guess after a while if you can�t make that top 6% it is up to you to give up and do something else. It is that simple. 

Denis
[/quote]

Dear Denis, I looked at this blog and found it interesting. Yoou write: I have 1100 photos online exept Istock 960. Does this mean yu have around 2000 pics online?
Would it be fair to say , that you took around 1 hour per picture to prepare, touchup, scan and upload etc ?
Ok, I calculate 2000 images times 1 hour makes 2000 hours. And the average rejectionrate on Istock is something like 50% as I was told, but we don't want to get picky. So lets say its 50 and forget about the rejections from all other sites.  So we end up with 3000 Hours pur sidework.
That is an interesting number. Lets assume you work 200 Days a year, so in 4 years you have worked 800 days. 3000 hours devided by 800 days makes you a constent contribution of 3.8 hours every working day to stock.

so you do dayly uploading etc of around four hours. You can do this, because you get payed for this 4 hoours becuase you are watching over someones property. i think this is a great concept to make use of your valuable time while doing this job. if youo are lucky yu have a night shift and are free of distraction to do this.

Beside this, you make nice good photos that are saleable. I am proud of your focus and happy for your success.

Cheers, lisa

Thank you to everybody for responding to my post. It shows, there is at least some type of thinkingprocess going on.

Through, i found many responses extreme emotional ignoring just any facts i mentioned, or taking them out of context, I respect them very much.
I belive you people have to work a lot for your money and that makes you kind of tense.

One reader mentioned: Great stuff.  Nothing I like better than hearing from yet another Long Time Professional who's threatened by change and thinks she can get the old world back by shouting at us to stop making small money so she can go back to making it big.  You've inspired me, Lisas4.  Think I'll stop by a Catholic church and tell them how they've got God all wrong.  That should go well.

I love this statement. I ask you guys and girls please think abouot it, :  whats bad with making big money? What is bad with that?
Isn't it rather true, if the market is changed, so I can make big money, that all of you will make big money as well. Wouldn't this be great.
Or a bit more realistic expressed, would this be a step in a good direction?
There are plenty of examples out there in the world how to archive this. If there is a overproduction of Oranges, the ones that are to many get eliminated. Because putting them on the market would destroy a market and that doesn't help anybody.
The price would go down and medium and small producers will go bankrupt. The big ones that are well diversifyed will suvife and controle the market afterward, to compensate their losses they.....

But you guys are all so smart, do not need to learn anything from an old pro, who makes stupid big money, and oranges do not comply with photography anyway, am i right?.

Shure, if I have a tree, the tree produces me multipple sales, and an orange cost 50 cents, thats more or less what a sold picture makes. That is according to you emotional guys just ok. Am i right? And we all know, those pictures grow on trees like oranges, so they shuold be sold on a similar price level.

cheers, Lisa

Wow this one is a roller-coaster and my first comment.

The topic is not really about the rejection, as the answer reviewers are just people that get �0.05 for each image they review and the make mistakes, and the solution to resubmit has been rejected.

As an independant supplier I can offer my products or services to anyone I want at any price point I want, the stock site as an agency or merchant is my customer, and I do not have a contract with them where they must accept all I produce, I understand they look at each offering and decide if it fits their requirements and if they would like to represent it, if they turn it down I will offer it to my other customers.

The cost to produce my product is not a concern of my customers, I have read thier terms & conditions and scale of rates, I have agreed to these, to enable me to register and trade with them, if at any point I am not happy with what they pay I can withdraw my products from their market place.

As I have agreed and accepted the rate I will receive from my customer, what the stocksite sells my product on for is not important to me that is how they trade.

Like every other supplier I would like more for my product, but this is affected by an over supply of similar products from other suppliers and the agressive marketing policies of my customers.

As there are so many suppliers of a product that is easy to produce and get to market, there is no chance of a cartel or union to protect my interests, so I am left with the choices to either stop producing and push trollies, change the products I produce to ones with a higher market value, be more selective with customers and where I place my products, keep suppliing and look for new markets.

As much as the OP has thought it through, it has been said many many times before, everyone would love more money for their product but the market is driving the prices and revenue, and once again a topic that was meant to unite photographers will as usual divide them, because we are competitors in the industry and have our own agenda.

David     

This is very nice you are writing, and the idea you would make more money by producing better photos is very cute. Is like at school. But boy this is only true in the short , very short run. Because as you prop up the quality level of your submitted images, others, many others will go along. The competiion is still similar, and the prices have not changed. The agency has better images to sell and makes more money, but the photographer competes as stongly with all those hight quality conpetitors. The price is regulated by the amount of supply. And supply is insane in Microstock. The demand side is caved out by the licensing principles and has little influence on the price.

Hello everybody, I started this blog to give some inside into microstock.
but first things first. Are you a great amateur photographer, that wants to make additional money by selling stock. Microstock sites are a great way to do this.
But are you a professional photographer who wants to base your children education and your health and life on making money with photos, than run. Run as fast as you can, and never, never discredit yourself by selling out your hart and valuable work on Microstock.

Now this is a hart statement, and some would say, wait a minute. I make money.
Again I will ask you to differentiate your work. Look at it from the balcony.

You must know, that every professional produced photo sold on a Microstock site is one job less given to a photographer, one job less for a photo model, one job less for a stylist, and one job less for an art director etc. Now selling your professional photo multiple times, is a disaster for the industry.You can draw the picture here youself. It results in a insane decline on the demand for professional photography.

I am a professional photographer for 30 years in stillife, and recently bought a digital SLR to have some fun. I learned as a consequence a lot of what is going on on the internet and must say it is depressing.

It seems basic economic principles are not understood by all this creative hart working wonderful people.
They recognise often way to late what is going on, and than it is getting suddenly very hart to pull of the expensive productions from the  Micro stock sites. They no very well why they don't want you to easy delete your submitted pics.

Stock photography is a old thing, and it exists basically since photography was utilised in advertisements. It was always very conceptual but seldom really specific. Many things have changed. Nowadays photographers are suddenly competing globally.
Any smart lobbyist would immediately pull the emergency break here, the OPEC would reduce its oil output drastically to stabilise prices, the unions would establish minimum wages to ensure that the workers can still feed their families.

The microstock is a cone, carried out by the photographers themself.

The entire Microstock phenomenon is based on the opportunity to sell your creative work several times. That lures the photographer in. Now wait a  Minute, if I can sell my artwork several times, doesn't this mean there is more demand? And if there is more demand, should i not get more money than usual? Why do we get so little for our artwork and productions. Millions of photos are competing with each other, given to this stocksites for nothing. through this huge oversupply of photos the value of each foto is down to nothing.
Sites need to get as many photos as possible to create a sufficient base. Than they start separating the ash from the corn. They try to leave the area of amateur contributor and enter into a more professional level.
Istockphoto is the best example. And every professional sold photo on stock is one job less for a professional photographer.

I read several times this week in several blogs photographers discussing their income from stock sites. I must say i am embarrassed for how little photographers are working, this is worse than slavery. There are few, very  very few Microstock photographers that can make a living from it. Many People have 500 photos on a site and get 2 or three times a payout per year. Thats sounds great, but it is actually nothing, its probably less than the upload time has taken calculated in hourly minimum wage. not to speak about the production of the photo. this is em baressing. Please forgive me my English i am German.

So think twice, before you sell out your work on microstock. And if you sell your professional production shots on stock, don't blame others when no agency wants to pay your Daily honorar anymore.

But there are positive ways to market your pictures. Get a unique stile, and offer this photos exclusively for royalty on a site. Art directors are sitting in the same boot, they are the next target by those modern slavemakers. Do not worry, they will stop using Microstock as they see advantage for their industry by paying good money and supporting their industry.

Sincerely, Lisa

Yeas, lets extend this sceme from Photographer slavery to Model slavery.

Illustrater will have to work now also for charity.

Cheers, lisa

Hello everybody, I started this blog to give some inside into microstock.
but first things first. Are you a great amateur photographer, that wants to make additional money by selling stock. Microstock sites are a great way to do this.
But are you a professional photographer who wants to base your children education and your health and life on making money with photos, than run. Run as fast as you can, and never, never discredit yourself by selling out your hart and valuable work on Microstock.

Now this is a hart statement, and some would say, wait a minute. I make money.
Again I will ask you to differentiate your work. Look at it from the balcony.

You must know, that every professional produced photo sold on a Microstock site is one job less given to a photographer, one job less for a photo model, one job less for a stylist, and one job less for an art director etc. Now selling your professional photo multiple times, is a disaster for the industry.You can draw the picture here youself. It results in a insane decline on the demand for professional photography.

I am a professional photographer for 30 years in stillife, and recently bought a digital SLR to have some fun. I learned as a consequence a lot of what is going on on the internet and must say it is depressing.

It seems basic economic principles are not understood by all this creative hart working wonderful people.
They recognise often way to late what is going on, and than it is getting suddenly very hart to pull of the expensive productions from the  Micro stock sites. They no very well why they don't want you to easy delete your submitted pics.

Stock photography is a old thing, and it exists basically since photography was utilised in advertisements. It was always very conceptual but seldom really specific. Many things have changed. Nowadays photographers are suddenly competing globally.
Any smart lobbyist would immediately pull the emergency break here, the OPEC would reduce its oil output drastically to stabilise prices, the unions would establish minimum wages to ensure that the workers can still feed their families.

The microstock is a cone, carried out by the photographers themself.

The entire Microstock phenomenon is based on the opportunity to sell your creative work several times. That lures the photographer in. Now wait a  Minute, if I can sell my artwork several times, doesn't this mean there is more demand? And if there is more demand, should i not get more money than usual? Why do we get so little for our artwork and productions. Millions of photos are competing with each other, given to this stocksites for nothing. through this huge oversupply of photos the value of each foto is down to nothing.
Sites need to get as many photos as possible to create a sufficient base. Than they start separating the ash from the corn. They try to leave the area of amateur contributor and enter into a more professional level.
Istockphoto is the best example. And every professional sold photo on stock is one job less for a professional photographer.

I read several times this week in several blogs photographers discussing their income from stock sites. I must say i am embarrassed for how little photographers are working, this is worse than slavery. There are few, very  very few Microstock photographers that can make a living from it. Many People have 500 photos on a site and get 2 or three times a payout per year. Thats sounds great, but it is actually nothing, its probably less than the upload time has taken calculated in hourly minimum wage. not to speak about the production of the photo. this is em baressing. Please forgive me my English i am German.

So think twice, before you sell out your work on microstock. And if you sell your professional production shots on stock, don't blame others when no agency wants to pay your Daily honorar anymore.

But there are positive ways to market your pictures. Get a unique stile, and offer this photos exclusively for royalty on a site. Art directors are sitting in the same boot, they are the next target by those modern slavemakers. Do not worry, they will stop using Microstock as they see advantage for their industry by paying good money and supporting their industry.

Sincerely, Lisa