it's ridiculous that FT even allows XL to sell for 36 cts.

That's still 1 cent more than Dreamstime. 

What watermark? 

we grow up in Canada learning about Flander's Fields, hopefully your government is not going overboard and forgetting what the expected standard of freedom is..

In taxes, love and war, all is allowed. The only freedom that counts is the state's one to mingle in people's business and tax them till they almost drop. The US will soon experience what a socialist system means with Yeshecan. Subsidizing cars that can't hold the road and ship them to China is just a start. You can't beat the system but you can stay out of Facebook and Tweet. And tweak your radar a little higher please. 

It sounded like you were being snarky about it but maybe that's just how it seemed rather than how you meant it. I use my actual name in posts too.

I'm sorry if it sounded snarky but it wasn't intended like that. I was just so amazed that you brought the anonymity issue up in a rather off-topic way in this discussion. As I said before, it's very easy to contact a member here by a private message, that's how forums work. In that case, you are also sure it's the person you were dealing with, while an email, certainly a buffer email on yahoo, gmail or hotmail, might not be the same person. It's also much faster and more direct to send a private message on the forum.

I have never and still don't understand all the secrecy in forums--not just here--and the paranoia about email addresses. I believe most people are good natured and wiling to help others if given half a chance. Sure, now and then you get burned, but I personally have had much more good than bad in my life so it's working for me.

The net is not always a nice place. As to this forum, it's frequently visited by site managers and reviewers, and taking clear stances can be adverse for business. Microstock is a crowd phenomenon. A site like Shutterstock for instance has 200,000 contributors. Relations between contributors and the site inevitably can't be as cordial and personal as on a 3D-modeling artists site were the artists are highly skilled and few. So probably, the kind of relation is totally different.

Also, there is just one or two leading 3D sites, while there are many microstock sites. Most microstocks have a much better attitude towards their contributors than others, so this forum about microstock is also about testing the good sites against the not so good ones, concerning attitude and sales. Once again, anonymity can help to be more clear and honest in this. If it's used to degrade a site, the community will correct that soon in a very clear and frank way.

Finally, this forum reflects on Google. Some people here have different lives and areas of interest. Some people might have a high profile in some other area, like for instance politics. Google can be your enemy if some creep start to combine info on Google.

My subs had always been marginal - 15-20%, 30% on worst months.  But now...

Open this subject on the Dreamstime forum now. They are all sleeping in Bucharest. By 9am CET the topic gets filled up, then it will be gone mysteriously around 10am CET.  
Thanks to the Lord for the microstock group.  

No joke, Dreamstime will have noticed this trend too. They are not Fotolia and actually they take care of their contributor's worries. I guess it's a seasonal phenomenon of buyers finishing off their subscription packages before going on holiday. If it is becoming permanent, I'm sure Dreamstime will do something about it.

Midstock and Gold do not have to be exclusive (I read that twice already, I don't know where you guys are reading that from).  They can not be in microstock sites - that's the real requirement.

No one with more than one braincell would put pictures exclusive at FP. If we are talking about microstock only, yes FP requires exclusivity for its higher priced images. I joined FP because I could price all my maximum sizes 10$. Now, looking at my port, I see them for grabs at "0.25$ subscription" and I only get 50%, not 70%. That was not the deal I joined with.

As a consequence, FP ceased to exist and it became just another new microstock. They suddenly are competing with the established large sites, which is hopeless. I stopped uploading last March, mainly for the collapse of sales. It's on hold for now, but my finger was hovering around the cancel account trigger for a while. Now they are playing the price competition game too, they'd rather come up with some decent volume sales in the fall, so I'll just wait and see till end of 2009.

sadly the local government planning and regulations, and the business rates (local taxes) in the UK would not make such a large project viable!

Do you mean local taxes are on square meter and they account for a lot?

http://www.crestock.com/profile/boss.aspx
Here is the executive manager of Crestock's portfolio. it looks like he has cleaned up his own portfolio. He used to have some really BAD shots in it but I see they are gone.

If the really BAD shots are gone, what you call this?


It would even be rejected at YAY, the garbage bin of microstock. Is the guy married to Judge Ross perhaps?

I just had a large batch of 70 reviewed. I had great hopes since all my 10 application photos were accepted without any problem. The result is that 35 were rejected as "non suitable for stock". I am not finicky about rejections at all, if the shot is technically borderline, if it falls beyond the type of collection the site wants to build, or if it's borderline commercial.

But my problem with Veer's rejections is the total inconsistency. I tried to compare the rejected vs the accepted and there is no line to draw. I would have preferred if they had rejected the technically borderline ones, low sellers at other sites, or certain types of content consistently. Then it would have been clear what they want.

Now, it's not. They reject - and accept - isolated studio business shots, they reject - and accept - lifestyle and in situation, they reject - and accept landscapes and nature. It just makes no sense to see what they accept and reject from the same shoot, except they rejected good sellers at other sites (included iStock) and consistently accepted the boring or technically borderline ones.

My conclusion is that they employed Atilla and his entire family as reviewers, and/or that the reviewers are totally uneducated or clueless right now. Hopefully that will get better later. That will teach me a lesson: don't upload large batches, just small and varied ones of 10. If you fall on Atilla, at least the rest of a particular shoot isn't ruined.

For the moment, I'll just stop uploading. Their workflow is very slow if you want to do it seriously (going through the suggested keywords) - it took me a full day to upload and submit 100 photos. iStock's workflow is much faster, and at least I feel comfortable with iStock's rejects. Veer's acceptance and rejects are erratic for the moment. So better put that time in iStock for the moment again.

Thanks for answering my question about why so many of you hide your email addresses.

1. Where is yours?
2. All forums, included this one, have private messaging that goes faster and is more secure. An email can be from anybody, even a competitor in disguise.

Perhaps you should consider using yahoo and hotmail email addresses to protect your personal email address from more spam, and also to help keep your various enterprises/personas separate.

We all do that for many years, but thanks for reminding us.

Although our company has been around 14 years, we haven't been in stock that long--we started with 3D models--but our sales increase each month so there is no need for us to abuse our Members.

What is your company name and website?
www.the3dstudio.com by any chance?

This is a snapshot (Image Deleted).

"Erupting volcanoes are a very well covered subject in our data base or the subject of your image is too specific. We are looking for images that exceed the technical quality and creativity of the images already online. Please take a few minutes to browse through the best selling images online (on this subject) and go deeper, play, have a more creative, more personal approach to it, like extinguishing the volcano, girls with headset playing on top in the lava, the volcano top covered with a hardhat or handholding businessmen dancing around the base cheering and waving fire extinguishers."

I'm regularly looking at freebies at Microstock and I used to stockpile them for later use. I never looked who made the shot, I just harvest. A few times I couldn't find what I wanted, I bought it at Dreamstime by a fresh search, but never (unless by coincidence perhaps) in the portfolio of the Mother Theresas that are so naive to give away their shots for free on Microstock.  

Of course it doesn't help.