Interesting to note that the channel linked in this thread as an example uses an watermarked audio track, ironic that a video footage channel won't pay to use the music for their promo.

With the private equity/ stock market driven financial demands on the main agencies, with the let's pay as little as possible for as much as possible expectations of customers, and the ease of production of images by folk who will accept pennies for their hundreds of images, the industry has quite predictably gone to hell in a handcart. Customers are not winning, contributors are not winning, agency staff are not winning.

I largely gave contributing up 5 years ago after not inconsiderable previous success as I did not want to end up getting into the hamster wheel of more work for diminishing returns, and I guess more and more of the better producers have gotten out of that rat race over recent years, that being the very thing they thought they were getting out of by going into stock in the first place. I hope some of the names I still recognise here can keep at it but I don't envy your predicament.

Quality demanding buyers are going to have to come to the realisation that quality images are actually worth more than microstock prices and new agencies will enter the market one way or another with quality and user experience to the fore-front, it's started and I'm sure it will continue.

Point in case, Beers, after mass international consolidation of brewing companies producing identikit gassy tasteless 'product' there is a return to local, artisan and characterful brewing.

However there are still far too many consumers that utterly undervalue creative arts yet happily pay ridiculous amounts for coffee to tax dodging corporations.

Ho Hum here's to Entropy

Quote from: SSArtist on December 19, 2014, 17:24

Quote from: Microstockphoto on December 19, 2014, 17:11
What if you are not VAT eligible? Some countries offer a VAT free threshold for businesses. You are exempt from collecting VAT below a certain amount of revenue per annum.

Yes, for non-EU entity in the UK, if your VAT taxable turnover is more than £81,000 (the 'threshold') in a 12 month period you got to pay taxes and have 30 days to do so, once you go over this amount.
https://www.gov.uk/vat-registration/when-to-register

The VAT on digital sales to EU countries will kick in from January 1st and has to be applied REGARDLESS of the vat threshold in your country. You have to register with your countries VAT MOSS  ("Mini One Stop Shop ')scheme, you have to charge the recipent VAT at the rate that applies in their country. You have to have two agreeing and verifiable pieces of evidence of the country in which the purchaser resides. You have to keep this record for each sale for 10 years and do your VAT MOSS return quarterly ( in the UK at least)

Here is a link to a UK Facebook page on the matter

https://www.facebook.com/groups/DigitalVAT2015/

It is a clusterf**k of massive proportions

Quote from: SSArtist on December 19, 2014, 10:19

Quote from: thesentinel on December 19, 2014, 10:08

Quote from: bunhill on December 19, 2014, 09:45

Quote from: MichaelJayFoto on December 19, 2014, 08:54
The new rules (just like the old rules) only apply if you deliver electronic goods to consumers in EU countries.

Surely that depends on whether the client business is registered for VAT ? In some countries thresholds and exceptions apply/applied. So small turnover businesses may not be registered but then need to be charged. No ?

Read the comments after the Commissioners statement - and weep

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/2014-2019/ansip/blog/euvat_en

Such a great link and comments too - thanks for sharing thesentinel!

We should hope that agencies we submitted our work do comply with these new EU rules, OR maybe we should ask them directly prior to joining their long curatorial lines.

I'm following this due to the music downloads I'm involved with my band, as far as stock is concerned our main agencies should be dealing with this should have no consequences for us but any EU based member selling directly or by using symbiostock etc, needs to be aware of this - though it is quickly changing situation and seems to be interpreted in different ways by different countries. I would imagine some sort of moratorium being announced after the late in the day publicity this is now getting - fingers crossed.

Quote from: bunhill on December 19, 2014, 09:45

Quote from: MichaelJayFoto on December 19, 2014, 08:54
The new rules (just like the old rules) only apply if you deliver electronic goods to consumers in EU countries.

Surely that depends on whether the client business is registered for VAT ? In some countries thresholds and exceptions apply/applied. So small turnover businesses may not be registered but then need to be charged. No ?

Read the comments after the Commissioners statement - and weep

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/2014-2019/ansip/blog/euvat_en

Oh the irony that a thread about Fotolia is dominated by discussing Symbiostock

Quote from: Xanox on July 31, 2013, 03:55


you're all angry because Yuri was the living proof it was possible to make a living with microstock alone and now you're shocked and despaired to be told by the king himself that you better go back to macro agencies as micro is financially unsustainable as it is today.

There's plenty other living proof, most of whom keep quiet and don't need to draw attention to themselves.

"6.   Governing Law
This Agreement shall be governed in all respects in accordance with the laws of the State of without reference to its laws relating to conflicts of law principles."

Will that be in the state of confusion?

"Infamy infamy ! They've all got it in for me "

A cultural allusion that will be lost on most here!

Quote from: EmberMike on April 03, 2013, 15:28


Sorry, this thread just didn't feel right without all of the usual requisite doom-and-gloom.

Well there's the requisite quantity of visual tourettes , aka winking emoticons, so all is well.

Quote from: dbvirago on February 14, 2013, 14:10

I will be buying a clove of garlic this weekend.

Expecting Vampires? 

Quote from: elvinstar on February 06, 2013, 04:08
I just realized that Wordpress is probably one of the worst offenders. I can't count the number of times that I'm looking at website built on Wordpress and saw an image loading really slowly so I open it in a new tab to see the pixel dimensions. One that I looked at yesterday was 12MP!!

When your average blogger or small business owner uploads an image to their Wordpress site, they don't resize it first and Wordpress doesn't resize it for them. Bingo! Giant, unwatermarked, (hopefully!) paid images available in a Google Image search.

We need to educate the whole world! 

In Joomla content managed sites the automatically generated robots.txt file that is created on installation includes a disallow rule for the images directory, instructing the search engines not to search or index your images folder. Wordpress could also do this but don't. They don't because many "web-masters" don't want it as the default so their images CAN be searched for. ...... for whatever reason, good or bad.

In general it is lazyness and ignorance that lets designers and self taught users upload full size images to be resized on the fly, however with increasing screen resolutions - as far down the device chain to tablets - the existing licence rules for a max of 800px wide for example are being superseded by technological requirements. The shear volume of disregard of this requirement surely make it impossible to police.

Nanostock

Quote from: leaf on January 12, 2013, 10:23
Ok, got it fixed.

For those who are interested: The sql search was grabbing the most recent 50 threads but limiting it to only include threads that were posted within the last 175 posts.  There have been so many posts in the google/istock thread that most of the 175 posts were used up in that thread.  So, the 175 post max was reached before the 50 recent threads was reached.

Lol! Something else to blame Getty for.

With most of the deserved opprobrium being directed to Getty lets not forget the involvement of Google who's potential to disrupt the marketplace must be hovering like a sword of Damocles over the existing players.

I'm seeing about half the usual amount of topics, I think whether or not the bottom ones show as today or yesterday is down to your time zone setting.

Quote from: StanRohrer on January 11, 2013, 17:16

Quote from: incarno on January 11, 2013, 17:05

Quote from: Lawren on January 11, 2013, 15:35
I have 4 images there. They are from Getty/Flickr collection. Google bought them in 31-Oct-12. They paid $60 and I got $12 for each one.

And in 29-Nov-12, google bought another 2 images (Customer Name: Google: eC
ommerce & Google Dri), but can't find them there. Something different is that they paid only $30 for each one this time.

How do you feel about it? Is it a problem for you? Why isn't this discussed in the Flickr forums? Four pictures are quite a lot if I read the iStock forums there is a lot of outcry even from contributors that aren't affected at all.

Are any of the Getty/Flickr images in the Google set? If so, then certainly the media wind-up could be started at the Flickr forums. Even if we don't know, the Getty/Flickr contributors would likely want to go look for themselves to see if they have any orphans now loose.

The first one I traced back to the Getty Images site was from their Flickr collection.

Quote from: csproductions on December 12, 2012, 12:43
They must be using the same fuzzy math that homo depot is using...

I had no idea such shops existed on your side of the pond.

Quote from: ClaridgeJ on December 06, 2012, 15:46
Strange thinking here. Its seems as if many here which they would fall? malicious thinking is no good for microstockers. Remember: what goes around comes around.
Microstockers should instead invest their time producing not lend themselves to gossip and jealousy.

I'm not sure if the recent revamped version of MSG still has this info but a few months ago I found the hours that we'd all spent logged in here and thought how many more images we'd have produced if we'd stayed away, and how lower some peoples blood pressure may be.

Quote from: jsnover on December 05, 2012, 16:10

As far as the approach of being pretty literal with keywording, I think iStock has it close to right - putting sandwich on an uncut isolated loaf of bread just because it could be made into a sandwich is spam. Not as bad as putting "sexy woman" but still totally unhelpful to buyers.

Mmm spam sandwich, you sexy woman you !

Quote from: Freedom on November 14, 2012, 00:36
While I am not happy about the sales in November, keep in mind that a significant portion of E+ files have been moved to Getty. We may see some higher priced Getty sales either the end of November or later. Who knows.

3% of mine so far, so insignificant would be the word for me.

Mine was 24.87 if that's any consolation  (XL E+)

Quote from: cclapper on August 18, 2012, 03:00
Yesterday, someone turned me on to a music service called Spotify.
<snip>
I probably won't use the Spotify much. I'll stick to my iPod.

Please search for Spotify and Royalties - then maybe you will stick to buying rather than streaming.

Quote from: CarlssonInc. Stock Imagery Production on August 17, 2012, 06:35

Christian, hope you're having a nice summer! However, you're making me a bit confused - I read yesterday that you were just about to pull the trigger on going exclusive with iStock and this morning you sum them up as crap more or less and that you have given up on them - what happened in less than 24 hrs?

Another few bottles of single malt ?

Quote from: ShadySue on August 14, 2012, 14:16

Quote from: Reef on August 14, 2012, 12:24
Except maybe Lagereek who flip flops on everything.

It's probably the Lager that does it.

On the other hand the 'eek' seems more likely to be the culprit to me