I'm going to guess that the link in the email doesn't actually link to shutterstock.com.  That's the way these things usually work: by providing a link whose text looks correct but which really goes somewhere else entirely.

Quote from: yuliang11 on December 15, 2010, 05:40

so ? they must be joking if they are offering 17% commissions while stuffs at alamy is 50%. no way i'm putting editorial to istock  

50% looks better than 17% but 50% of what?

I like Alamy. They seem like decent people. I like the idea of higher commissions and higher prices. But for me Alamy performed about as bad as bottom of the barrel micros. The posts on their forums seem to back that up with a lot people saying they're earning a couple hundred dollars a month in sales from several thousand photos. That seems way below average compared to micro.

So what's more important? The percentage or the total dollars?

Heaven forfend that I should be seen as an apologist for iStock, but that Alexa chart

... suggests that they're spending more on marketing.
(yeah, yeah, then getting the punters in, they p*ss them off by a site that seldom works properly, bugs that take years to fix and slag them off on the forums)
But yes, I'd rather support Alamy's range of charities than JK's Manhattan flat.
But I WISH Alamy would set a simple 'Editorial only' button.
Added: thanks for your reminder about Alamy's charities. At the time I had a photo uploading to iStock and a horizontal 'similar' I was working on to remove 'possible' IP problems, i.e. iStock would always reject to 'be on the safe side'. I cancelled the upload, went back to the original RAWs and will upload to Alamy. Funny how you get into habits ... or 'muscle memory'. In fact, I think it's probably more of an Alamy/editorial image anyway, but I still find it hard to call beween them.

Quote from: lisafx on September 15, 2010, 07:31

If this is not the tipping point, I suspect that will come in January.  Kelly has promised the exclusives they will all be making more money.  Since royalties are being cut, that additional money will most likely come from yet another price hike...

Quote from: sharpshot on May 12, 2010, 07:13

I haven't noticed much of a change since I started.  Produce something that the buyers want and hasn't been done to death and there are lots of buyers.  There's still an infinite amount of subjects that haven't been covered.  Just avoid the over saturated subjects.

+1

If your income is slipping, that doesn't mean microstock's future is gloomy, but rather your future is gloomy.

People are still buying, in fact, more people are buying than ever before.

But there may be more contributors posting images just like yours than ever before.  And you may not be staying updated on what today's and tomorrow's buyers need.

The future of microstock belongs to contributors who don't just have expertise in photography, illustration, etc.  An expertise in marketing will separate the winners and losers.  If you can't study the market and figure out what is making people buy certain images and not others, where trends are headed, etc., success in microstock will be unattainable for you.