Someone at Stock Submitter Coalition captured the tweet below before it was deleted. It's a chilling reminder of what we are. We are the slaves, and we should keep working no matter what the pay is. I'm no Communist, but this is the very reason why Karl Marx published Das Kapital back in 1867. We are back in the same situation as industrial workers of the 19th Century together with Uber drivers and other participants of the growing gig economy.

"You have the freedom to work, to create value, as much as you want. We have the obligation to pay you as much or as little as we want, if at all, whenever we want."

It's time to create a new United Artists, a new Magnum Photos, a new artist owned cooperation to sell our content. We are many enough to do that, but we would need to organise and establish a management group to lead such a project.

Usually when I get rejections, I just move on. Most or all of my photos are accepted by most of the agencies anyway, so usually I don't waste time trying to get it accepted everywhere. However, this time I've received one from SS that makes me scratch my head. It reads:

"Title -- Title must be descriptive of the subject matter and must be in English. Titles cannot contain special characters, spelling/grammar errors, or repeat words/phrases in excess."

The title of the photo is:

"Reclining Buddha in Myeik, Myanmar"

Here's the photo:

Maybe I'm not too smart, but it's typical that this happens at iStock and nowhere else. Where on earth do I find my portfolio om iStock. Is there any way at all to see the performance of each image?

Interestingly, I can now log in to ESP with my old password (through iStock) and my new password (through Getty). Is there some deeper purpose of this that is beyond my comprehension as well?

Yes, I have stopped uploading there, and I guess it's time to leave.

I recently uploaded some shots of 450 year old Buddha images from an old temple ruin in the Rakhine State in Myanmar. They were immediately rejected at SS with the claim that I need a property release. Has anybody experienced that before? I mean, the artist must have been dead for at least 400 years and with the the current state of affairs in Myanmar, getting a property release for these is probably as simple as negotiating a peace treaty in the Middle East.

I'm going to register with a couple of new stock agencies, and can't figure out how to find my US Tax Identification Number (I've just moved, so papers are well hidden in boxes). Any idea?

Earlier, I've been reluctant to upload editorial photos to micro agencies, but last autumn, I decided to give it a go to see if there was any change. There was. Particularly SS is selling editorial photos at a healthy rate now. I don't know yet if it really pays off long term, but so far, it looks promising.

The requirements, particularly at SS are rather strict, and they mostly accept photos from current events, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they won't sell in the future as well. DT is another candidate for this, but their upload volume restriction is an obstacle. They also review slower.

When I try to access Crestock, I get a page with the following message up:

"Our servers will be down from 6.00am GMT until 6.30 GMT for routine maintenance"

This has lasted for a day or two now. Anybody else?

Yes, they do actually. I had my first one today, on a Saturday, no less. But it says something about my sales there that one $50 sale ($15 commission) generated an instant BME, all by itself   

I'm not sure if they are up and coming or down and going, but I wonder if anybody are selling there. I registered there a while ago, but haven't uploaded anything yet.

Yesterday, the balance of my IS account suddenly jumped 10 dollars for no apparent reason. No regular sales and no EL. Has anybody had the same experience?

My worst fears are about to become reality at DT. Subs represent practically 50% of my sales there now, and earnings per sale so far in July is down to $0.59, which is the lowest since I started there two years ago and down from $1.22 in January. My maximum was $1.49, in August last year.

So far this month, DT is my sixth best earner, down from a very steady third place over the last two years. Even FP is better for me (50% more) so far in July.

From being one of my favourite agencies, DT has reduced themselves to one of the mediocre once. If the trend continues, I can easily see myself stop uploading to them, since they are reducing the value of my microstock portfolio.

Sorry for the rant, but reality doesn't look nice at DT at the moment, and no symbolic rise is going to change that.

Since Fotolia has jumped on the subscription bandwagon as well, I found it interesting to have a look at what has happened at DT after they did the same. I've used one image as example, which isn't fair of course, but it's still a good example what can happen when customers have the possibility to buy images for next to nothing.

The image in question is a vector, which represent some of my most profitable objects. Here's the sales development:



So far this year, the total of all sales combined is less than each of the two last sales of 2007. Each of those sales generated 20 times as much as a subscription sale at DT. What I fear will happen now after all the major agencies have joined the subs, is that they will start competing on price. It's a stupid thing to do, but so far, none of them have shown much intelligence.

There's only one place to send the bill for a price-war: to the contributors. I'm not going to accept that. I will still keep my microstock accounts alive for the time being, and upload a few images each month, but my main emphasis will be on macrostock. I may not gain much to start with, rather the opposite actually, but I see this as an investment in future sales.

I'm considering uploading RM only to macrostock, leaving the option open to go exclusive at IS for RF content, if they maintain a healthier view on subscriptions. Time will show.

Just to illustrate how things are developing in total at DT for me, here are my sales statistics:



My portfolio at DT has increased with more than 50% the last 12 months, and the quality of my photos is much better than a year ago.