Three posts have been removed from this thread for name calling.  If your post was removed and you feel it had other good points (besides the name calling which was not a good point), you will have to re type what you said in a new post.

You're a gobshite and a spineless one at that. If ever an avatar was truly representative of an individual, your cows arse is more than fitting.

This thread raises many of the same old questions that have been asked since microstock first reared its ugly head many moons ago.

Are we undervaluing our work? Have we sold ourselves short? How much exploitation should we tolerate before saying is enough is enough?

Everyone will answer those questions differently but no matter how you argue the toss, that few gigs of pixels sitting on your HD is better off earning its keep than doing nothing at all. Or is it?

Personally, I wished I'd never got into MS and for 2008 I'm seriously looking at diversifying and NOT having any more 20c portfolios floating around that will ultimately do me damage over the long term.

I think 'free' sites will expose the huge difference in quality between 'free' and 'professional' and I think prices will rise.  In five years time the average price for a 'professional' microstock will be 100% higher than today.

It is extremely difficult to come up on lower pricing than vice versa and that is well documented. It all ties in closely with perceived value, over subscription, over duplication and many other variables that ultimately lead towards a consumer driven market.

While the notion that MS will enjoy growth of 100% over the next 5 years is an interesting one, I cannot see how that can possibly happen based on recent trends.

Mass market consumerism has seen prices drop worldwide with no evidence of recovery except in cases of scarcity.

Let's face it, there's only so many ways you can photograph a duck but when 3,000 other photographers are doing exactly the same shot, rejection rates increase, prices drop further and contributor revenue falls.

That decline has already started. Sites like StockXpert, SS, etc are now sitting on their laurels turning down stock that only 2 years ago would have been seen as perfectly adequate. The evidence of over subscription is there if you want to look at it. Gone are the days of 200 - 300 photos being accepted on upload, now you're lucky if the average contributors gets a hit rate of 2/10 which will only result in perfectly good snappers becoming disenchanted and then giving it away in response to mass rejections.

You can't see that happening? Well I certainly can and those sites are already there.