Shutterstock has flaming lost their mind!  .10 cents and image and the level resets to that every January.

Look, the microstock world is pretty much crap.  We all know it and I know you just have to get on here and let of f some steam.  I get that.  The reason we all keep doing it is because it is so dang easy to do.  It's the passive income that we are really after.

Here is what is sad for me and probably many of you:

I go out (as a wildlife photographer) and shoot for days.  I get up at 4am, lay in the mud, crawl through fishy bird poop, ticks clinging to me, and get sun burns, but I can't see myself doing anything else as a photographer.  I love it.

After doing all that, I post a great shot and get at most a two dollar commission.  When I am really lucky I get an extended sale.  That my friends just ain't right so they say, but it is what the market will hold right now.  Yeah there is always full blown editorial writing/photography, but that sure isn't passive and takes a ton of marketing and smooth talking.  Most of us don't have the time and salesmanship to pull that off.

I guess what it all boils down to is we keeping hoping against all hope this thing will suddenly take off, but that isn't what is going to happen.  We either keep posting images and are happy with that or we leave.  For now, I am hanging in there because it's better than nothing.  Sad, but true.

Quote from: angelawaye on August 01, 2016, 12:34

The only Macro site I know is Alamy. I took my 3 best sellers off micro and listed them on alamy (exclusive) and not one download yet.

I hope you have them RF on Alamy and not RM - once you've sold them on the micros you can't sell them as RM on Alamy or anywhere else, because you have no idea how they are being used.  If someone thinks they are getting exclusive use and then they find it all over the place they could sue you.

If they are RF on Alamy then you also can sell them on the micros so there is no need to be exclusive.  It is safer to leave your best sellers on the micros and just put new images exclusive on Alamy.  However, I think you will be disappointed at sales volume on Alamy.

I sell several a year at Alamy, but that is pretty much it.  As far as RM, it is up to you to remove the image form the micros if they want exclusive use. Other than that you are fine.

I had not really given PhotoDune a second thought until I saw this thread.  So I submitted a few of my best images to see what happened.  A very high rejection rate considering the amount of payout they offer.  You are better off focusing on SS, IS and for mid-stock Alamy.

Good luck!

As far as ear tags go, it really depends on the ear tag.  I have submitted images of wild Elk that were ear tagged and radio collared by the US Park Service and they went through fine.  Unless there is legible writing on the tag or brand, how can you prove who the animal belongs to.  That is just stupid.

It seemed like for a couple months IS was on the move again then last month and this month went back in the toilet.

I had a long discussion via email with them on their review problems and they just blew me off.  I think it is time I part ways with Pond5, not that they will care or even notice, but purely on the principle that what they are doing is just bad business practice and a waste of my time.

How it all started:

1.  I purposely submitted and extremely sharp image of an Anhinga( bird).
2.  It was rejected for focus
3.  I called them on it
4.  They sent me bad an unsharp part of the image where the depth of field had shifted.
5.  When I submitted the eye of the bird and head at 100% and totally sharp they just dropped the conversation.  They knew I was right but didn't want to back off their decision.  That my friends is just bad business.

I think DT has pretty much flopped and it seemed to happen about the same time as the Adobe/Fotolia purchase.  I don't know if it had anything to do with that, but it does seem like more than a coincidence.  I always liked DT and Pond5, but both of them are totally worthless right now to me.  I'll keep my port going because of the occasional EL, but other than that, I think they shouldn't even be a consideration.

Since the Adobe takeover, my sales with Fotolia have increased every month and for the most part outperform SS now.  If it wasn't for extended license sales FT would have crushed SS.

This, I think is because my photographs appeal more to the Adobe crowd and because Adobe is better at marketing overall than SS.

Took me two months to get a review on a batch.  Today they rejected one batch of 17.  The entire batch.

Reason:  noise   I can tell you that maybe one or two of these images had noise and I am no noob photographer either.  There were at least a half dozen that were primetime images with no noise, sharp and great composition.  Looks like they are so behind they are slicing through with large cuts.

The only reason it fried my butt was because it was just a lady probably in a hurry and just ripped right through them just to get onto the next batch because they are so far behind.

The original post was "lets talk" and I say talk is cheap. Actions however are a whole different thing.

Yeah I agree talk is cheap, but talking is the first step to action.  What action have you done?  You are still with an agency that supports .28 subs just like I and many others.  If you truly believed in what you say then you would dump IS. 

They have adopted the same strategy as the other micros.  The problem is the market has bottomed out.  I am a software dev in my day job and it kind of reminds me of the arguments which were used when apple introduced .99 games.  The market was used to selling even cheap games for 9.99 and they were kind of panicky.  Now the games have come up a bit as the quality increased and the big boys are playing in the phone marke.

I guess the next question is...

Why are you on here then?

I have been hearing from many that the future of Microstock might not be entirely sound.  I can't help but wonder if it would be useful to try and have some kind of an agreement among agencies not to put pricing below a certain threshold and also have a serious conversation about subscriptions.  We do this with oil to a certain degree through governing agencies and so forth.

I know, I know, this is not exactly the free market system, but I would like to see all parties represented and some kind of solution hammered out to benefit all parties.  The agreement should benefit buyers, stock houses and photographers/artists.  In the end if all parties don't feel like they are getting a good deal then the future may very well be in jeopardy.

I know this is a very simplistic idea and probably talked about frequently, but I just wanted to say my piece about it.  I don't think we need unions or anything crazy like that but certainly some kind of solid representation would be useful.