If you quote a fair price based on hourly rate (anywhere between $50 to $150 per hour) and the client says no, you have lost nothing. It is not worth your time to work for any less than that. Just because the photo sold for cheap doesn't mean your time is not worth anything. Chances are the client will have no problem with the cost. He/she won't find the service any cheaper elsewhere. Unless they figure out a way to get hold of madelaide!    

Do it free or charge appropriately - but nothing inbetween!

I don't think you should be surprised about the response. We all get emails or hear sad stories about people needing money for all sorts of seemingly legitimate reasons. And we each individually determine which we believe to be true and deem worthy to support. In this case you are close to your information, and you have a gut feeling that it is real. This is great, and your efforts are surely appreciated by Vanessa. But for everybody else, or at least for me it is another story. Maybe it's real. Maybe not. I have no way of knowing. And because I don't have the friendship you have with Vanessa, I can't have that 'gut' feeling you have, and it would be difficult to communicate it . The fact you got a poor response does not mean people are not generous or caring. I personally give of my time and money to an assortment of causes. If I have to choose whether to help your cause, or to help the cause I am much closer to and feel more secure in helping - I am going to choose the one where I KNOW my money or time is going somewhere it is needed. This world is not a trusting place, therefore it is a lot to ask for people to support this. Having said that, I admire your efforts in trying to help your friend, and I hope that you succeed in raising funds. And I wish the best to Vanessa and her mother.

Sidenote - The majority of microstock shooters work very hard and make very little for their efforts. Not the best crowd for finding charity dollars!

Writing for any other industry would be paid based on hours or wordcount - but not microstock!
Everything is free in microstock - If rates keep dropping, soon photos will be free too!

I think this is a great idea. The biggest thing slowing me down is the submitting process. I have hundreds of images waiting, but I run a design studio as a 'real job' and getting my submissions up is the biggest hurdle. I would consider doing this.

For people like me that are perpetually busy with work, and bill by the hour - taking a few hours out to submit photos every week costs me a few hours at my billable hourly rate, because I could be spending that time on clients and getting paid for it. The more I think about this, the more it makes sense.

Flemish - in response to your post #53 above...

I will defend Beate Chelette to this extent. She does not claim to teach people about the business of microstock. Her goal is to teach people about the business of photography - which reaches far beyond microstock. She saw a forum of photographers (her target audience) and she went after it. It's called marketing (the business we are all in as Zeus pointed out). The majority of microstock contributors are photographers first, and microstock shooters second or third. For many it is a way to make a few bucks on the side, while they make their real money doing something else. I think she has every right to post here and promote herself, especially when she makes no apologies for what she is doing. As you have a right to tear her apart, and I have a right to comment about it. Yes it would be nice to see more of her work, but again she is promoting a course on the 'business of photography'. Whether she herself is a great photographer or not isn't important, she doesn't necessarily need to be a great photographer to be an authority on this, she just needs to know the difference and know what she claims to deliver - the business side of photography. Many great design firms or ad agencies are not necessarily run by great designers, but by people who know 'the business' of design and advertising.

Granted, her website is tacky and her approach is not what I would typically respond to. Criticize her for that, but to suggest she does not know her business because she doesn't have her own microstock portfolio is not relevant to the argument.  And to say a microstock shooter doesn't need to know the business side of photography is to assume all microstock photographers are happy to just shoot microstock. How many would be thrilled to be out shooting commercially two or three times a week in addition to (or instead of) microstock.  I think you could cut her some slack. Let her post and promote, and let people choose for themselves what they feel is good information for where they want to go with photography.

Stacy, With your portfolio, the downloads you are getting seem too low! Your images are good.
I started with the expectation to go exclusive at IS, but then, just as I passed the 250 download mark, the best match shake happened and I was very turned off. I said to hell with it and joined some other sites in January. Figured I'd give non-exclusive a chance first and then decide instead of always wondering. For what it's worth, my portfolio of 102 images on shutterstock consistently gets between 4 and 8 downloads per day. But that is at $0.30 each. I would thing you could expect 20 times that amount, so maybe it's worth it. The trick with shutterstock is not to dump everything there all at once. Send a few a day every day over a long period and the sales will remain steady. But other sites don't do nearly as well for me. Some say to give it time. On each of BS, FT, SX and DT I am hanging between $10 and $40 total, so they don't seem to be doing well. But others rave about DT and FT. Hey Stacy - I am a canuck too (Calgary), and have clients in your town that you probably know!

If there is a big secret to Fotolia I'd like to know it! I get a mere 2 or 3 sales a month. Plus a lot of rejected files.

Stockastic - your IS experience is not uncommon. Same happened to me where I got accepted with three photos and then two out of the three were rejected when submitted. I believe that the acceptance process is judging the composition, sense of stockworthiness, and basic things like that. Once they deem you worthy to supply stock to them, then they hammer you on the little details artifacting, purple fringing and model release etc. - assuming you have the basic stock skills and now just need to refine the details. It works because I quickly learned to deal with those little nasties and now my approval rating at IS is quite strong compared to what it used to be. And if you can crank out some vectors, they can be very lucrative. I have just a handful and the sell very well!

Photosecrets - as you can see you found a tough crowd here. Remember that there are hundreds who read and do not post, so I have no doubt that you have achieved your goal of picking up some customers here. Admirably, your responses to the mean-spirited bashing have been respectful and professional, when you could have easily retaliated with similar tone. I wish you well!

Flemmish - I took a look at your script, but I don't think I understand it. How will it change how I currently input data to an image? - Maybe I am missing something, I will look at it again. thanks.

Lisafx, I always like to read your posts because they come from experience.

Markbkk - I have the same experience as you - with approx 100 images across six sites, and SS has earned $150 in two months, compared to fotolia selling only $23. IS sells better than SS with over $200 in the same timeframe (but more images there - I started earlier). DT, BS and SX all are in the toilet, not just fotolia. I am hoping that what lisafx says rings true eventually, and that sales will improve on the slower sites after some time. My plan is to give them all a year to gauge whether it is working. lisafx, do you think that is enough time to determine where the revenue comes from?

There are a lot of exclusives at istock providing high quality images. I don't think they need to open the gates to get more images or better images. As others stated, the restrictions on non-exclusives make sure that istock stays unique - with exclusive files, and only the better files from non-exclusives. I think they have it figured out, and I would be surprised if they made any changes making it easier for non-exclusives. There is no shortage of contributors - exclusive or non-exclusive. Don't hold your breath for changes to non-exclusive at istock.

I have 100 files up and have barely sold anything since starting in January with them - I do much better on other sites like SS and IS. I hope this change at DT might be a good thing and bring about some sales for those of us that have seen nothing so far. But as of today - still no improvements, still at $9 for weeks now.