Back to the OP's Question:

Getty have pulled Digital Vision and Photodisc RF images after failing to reach a new agreement, and the images are no longer being sub-distributed by Alamy, so that might account for the drop.

The positive being more chance for direct contributors to get a sale! 

David  

Wow this one is a roller-coaster and my first comment.

The topic is not really about the rejection, as the answer reviewers are just people that get �0.05 for each image they review and the make mistakes, and the solution to resubmit has been rejected.

As an independant supplier I can offer my products or services to anyone I want at any price point I want, the stock site as an agency or merchant is my customer, and I do not have a contract with them where they must accept all I produce, I understand they look at each offering and decide if it fits their requirements and if they would like to represent it, if they turn it down I will offer it to my other customers.

The cost to produce my product is not a concern of my customers, I have read thier terms & conditions and scale of rates, I have agreed to these, to enable me to register and trade with them, if at any point I am not happy with what they pay I can withdraw my products from their market place.

As I have agreed and accepted the rate I will receive from my customer, what the stocksite sells my product on for is not important to me that is how they trade.

Like every other supplier I would like more for my product, but this is affected by an over supply of similar products from other suppliers and the agressive marketing policies of my customers.

As there are so many suppliers of a product that is easy to produce and get to market, there is no chance of a cartel or union to protect my interests, so I am left with the choices to either stop producing and push trollies, change the products I produce to ones with a higher market value, be more selective with customers and where I place my products, keep suppliing and look for new markets.

As much as the OP has thought it through, it has been said many many times before, everyone would love more money for their product but the market is driving the prices and revenue, and once again a topic that was meant to unite photographers will as usual divide them, because we are competitors in the industry and have our own agenda.

David     

O.M.G.

I just had another look 2 sales in 4 days!  

Quick statistics:
Royalties today: $7.20
Royalties this month: $12.00
Royalties owed: $12.00
Total active products 86
Total product views: 2,005
 
The second sale is full size and an object not a people shot, $12 and I get $7.20, maybe as they are a 3d modeling website someone wanted it to base a a new 2d or 3d model on


David   (Now I might rush to do the IRS W-8 form)

I have just checked a dozen Istock images I purchased for my blog posts.

There is just one with copyright information and that is in the exif data, the IPTC data has been stripped out of all the images, this makes then quicker for web use.

David 

<...
>...
From the figures on that chart, it seems unlikely that many Alamy contributors could be making a living there alone.  If the top 100 are averaging $50-60k then the average across all users must be quite low!

Out of curiosity, do you think this is because there are just so MANY contributors there and so many images?  

To those of you who have long experience in stock, do you think the micros are headed the same way - high sales for the sites but low returns for individual contributors due to oversaturation?

How many make a living from just one site or even many sites with microstock it is likely comparable, Alamy has a rare mix of photographers from new to old hands with many supplying other macro sites like getty, corbis or niche collections, some are providing other photography services either through a historical customer base or via thier own outlets, some are looking towards microstock to add to thier income.

Just like the microsites there are also many part time photographers that have other jobs as well, there are to many contributors in all areas of the industry as entry level kits becomes more affordable this will still grow, a lot of the success of mirostock has as much to do with the affordable kit being available just at the right time.

Microstock has done it's bit for the industry as it has brought many first time customers and artists to the world of stock photography, they have done this just by making the images affordable to everyone, however the growth of customers is far outstripped by the growth of the artists and images, so the investment for the photographer being much lower in comparision to when it was an elitist industry, and the potential for earning good revenue is also smaller as well, the key is to have other avenues open for your skillset taking a bit of income from each.

That is just the way I read it.  

David

They may have been purchased RF by the Flickr user which allows website use, they have not made them downloadable or given descriptions where they claim to have taken the photograph themself, and they might well think that by putting them in a Folder with the website name they are giving credit and are ok.

3. Restrictions
(b) share the Work with any other person or entity except as expressly permitted under this Agreement;

(c) post the Work online in downloadable format, post the Work on an electronic bulletin board, or enable the Work to be distributed via mobile telephone devices. Include the Work in any electronic template or application, including those that are web based, where the purpose is to create multiple impressions of an electronic or printed product, including but not limited to website design, presentation templates, electronic greeting cards, business cards or any other electronic or printed matter;

(l) take any action in connection with the Work that violates or infringes the intellectual property or other rights of any person or entity, including, without limitation, the moral rights of the creator of the Work and the rights of any person who, or any person whose property, appears in the Work; or

B. By placing Flickr restrictions they are not allowing Download
C. Is Flickr an electronic bulletin board
I. Are they claiming IP they do not claim to have taken the images, you may argue that are they claiming IP by uploading the images to their stream, but view the Image Properties which they have not hidden and the copyright is Elena Elisseeva, so they have not claimed IP or copyright.

Agree it is against the terms & conditions of Flickr, but they are not offered for redistribution.

Flickr do not help with F.A.Q.'s like the one here, there is no firm message in the text:

Don�t upload anything that isn't yours.
This includes other people's photos, video and/or stuff you've collected from around the Internet. Accounts that consist primarily of such collections
may be terminated at any time.

As much as there might be a slight case for miss-use, a bigger question would be if I was the alledged offender and had purchased the images legally, then I might just talk to my lawyer having been publicly accused of theft by the OP.  

Maybe think of a better title for these type of topics, I know from my own forum experiences that you have to be careful with comments which can be read as accusations against a person, if they can prove that the deflamation has affected them they could come after you, under libel law the onus is on the accuser to prove that the statement is true, therefore you must prove that the image or copyright has been claimed stolen before you write words to that effect.

David

- An improved search experience will help customers filter search results by price with four tiers: Way Cheap (from $1), Cheap ($9-$100), Spendy ($49-$350), and Worth It ($49-$655).  
- Brian

Could have thought of better titles for the price bands, like Bronze, Silver, Gold & Platinum, as a buyer might be thinking 'you only get what you pay for', and not want to be labed as a 'Way Cheap Buyer'.

Just a thought 

David 

I would say for someone that is looking to start out in glamour it may be value added to give direction and aspiration, but from a stock imaging perspective there is not much to take away.

As a stock shooter I would be looking to come home with a set of good commercial images with releases, that I could prepare and upload to use longer term, just to return some revenue towards the costs.

The other benefits I would look for is the working location and environment, tips and tricks on content, a theamed shoot, and the stock models that I would normally not have access to due to the costs of setting up a shoot.

It might be a pitch to the wrong audience here, if you target macro or micro shooters then the value must be based on upping their skills and improving revenue streams on macro or microstock websites.

David just my view!    

Thanks for checking back with us, David.

We will be discussing some paid advertising soon, though our first stabs at it likely will be directed toward those who buy stock, but I will put the forum on the list for consideration as well.
<...
>...
If anyone has any suggestions for other places we should look for advertising, for buyers as well as photographers, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

Or if you have a great idea for improving our site or how we do things, we would love to hear from you!

Thanks!
[email protected]

The release question is a little more involved as Sean points out, I have flowers and plants now as editorial when they are really commercial:

It is Four options that decide where the useage sits:
Has People | Model Released | Has Property | Property Released | Licence
>>No <<  |  >>>No  <<<< | >>>>No<<< |  >>>>>No<<<<< | Commercial
>>Yes<<  |  >>>Yes <<<< | >>>>No<<< |  >>>>>No<<<<< | Commercial
>>Yes<<  |  >>>Yes <<<< | >>>Yes<<< |  >>>>Yes <<<<< | Commercial
>>Yes<<  |  >>>No <<<< | >>>>No<<< |  >>>>>No<<<<< | Editorial
>>Yes<<  |  >>>Yes <<<< | >>>>Yes<<< |  >>>>>No<<<<< | Editorial

<<..................>>
The Idea of the Forum Ad is so artists can find you without having to trawl through the forums, I have a 125x125px visible to all regular members and guests in all topics 1/4 of the time - your ad is rotated equally with 3 other ads for $30 a month

Much longer term Rights Managed option as well, some of us have RM commercial and editorial images on other websites so we cannot upload them as RF, there are a few other considerations to look at with RM as well!

RM has a number of other options like sector, country, usage SAA have a pack you can download as a guide!


David  

<..
>.. sjlocke: As funny as this sounds, we're not really overly concerned about money right now. ClusterShot is a side-project of long-time web development firm silverorange, inc (www.silverorange.com). ClusterShot has no staff, has no office space and has no huge overhead expenses. The only costs we incur are very small hosting and processing fees. Everything else is donated time from silverorange. Silverorange is committed to give ClusterShot the chance we feel the business model deserves and if that means floating it for a year or two then so be it.

You would need office and staff in time but there is nothing wrong while developing and carrying out proof-of- concept, that would need to be completed to fund a full service, I have looked at SilverOrange and the tools do look quite interesting, the small hosting and processing fees will soon grow if you get a few hundered thousand assets uploaded, this would be a few hundred thousand dollars so you should not expect that SilverOrange will meet all of the cost.

Our initial rational for creating the pro-level accounts is to provide photographers tools that they could use that most other picture takers wouldn't. A store to market (think Photoshelter but with fewer customizable options), watermarking, traffic statistics, etc. Obviously it would be nice to give these features away but we're not opposed to charging a nominal fee for them. We want to keep the costs low enough that it's not a serious commitment for anyone to try. If you can provide us with some good arguments on our pricing (or charging at all), we are definitely interested in hearing them.

I.M.H.O. many agree that we need new markets and services so you may not be flogging a dead horse, the first thing you need to look at is the legal side of things and how you protect the artists right through to the buyers, one paragraph of T&C's will not protect anyone, published full terms and conditions for artists, buyers and each licence type is a must.
if you want an open upload policy then you need to understand the different usages Commercial and Editorial and have a clear indicator on each image as to what it can be used for if it has property or model releases assigned, you may find that you can get advice here if you come back with a set of relevent questions after your research.

Forget becoming another Istock the market is already saturated and there is no real chance, offering the high 88% commission percentages might bring a few new or naive contributors but it will not bring seasoned contributors or more importantly customers, prices are already cut to the bone across the industry and customers are already established with agencies, the way to get contributors to submit is to find and open up new markets, they are there but the delivery tools are not as yet.

Pro-Level accounts are out there already Photoshelter doing a better job for stock artists than SmugMug do, and many artists have thier own webspace with just a portfolio of samples and links to thier stock portfolios.

Create a new service that gets our images from your website, our own webspace, PhotoShelter, Amazon S3, or SmugMug in a widgit to places like WP Blog Pages, Twitter and MySpace with an easy PayPal style payment process, where you charge a small transaction fee then you have my full attention.

I am sure some would agree and some will argue, that is the good thing about open forum debates      
  
David  

corareed: <..
..> It's important to point out that just like on Ebay you're not buying the photo from us, but from the photographer.  It's the photographer's responsibility to make sure they post sell-able content.

Thanks again to everyone for their feedback.

Nearly there, but your service is not like Ebay, if I take an image of "The London Eye" as the 'Primary Subject'  which has restictions for commercial use, I select and choose the "Buy Now" transaction, taking me through to PayPal from your website, your current system completes the transaction between Cluster Shot and the end client or Customer.

This is unlike Ebay that will just broker the transaction and send the supplier an Invoice at month end, as Ebay justs act as a merchant  and the transaction is between the Supplier and the Customer, as was proved in a US court Ebay were not responsible to police the sellers products, but this view has since been challenged in a French court $63 Million damages (see links below), so you are not on safe ground here, also your service holds uploaded assets and supplies the downloadable assets from your server, this means that your service has liabilities and responsibilities in any transaction.

Link: This is not legal advice just my analysis on why many think that content and usage is it just the buyers problem?

Link: eBay breaks bread with luxury goods firms (July 2008)

Edit:
As it stands with the French courts now eBay have again won the day, the court case run for 2 years, eBay would have needed to prove to the court that they are themselves proactive in stopping copyright violation, quote: �We are delighted that eBay�s meaningful efforts to fight counterfeits online have been recognised by the court..."  

David  

As the Saying Goes "Horses for Courses", as many are posting here there is no need to be singular in which model you support, micro style shots to the microsites, selected higher production commercial and niche market images to microstock collections like Vetta, midstock or macrostock agencies.

Local interest and more arty shots to online prints sales or a local gallery, you will not sell an image of a smiling customer services person in a gallery, but you might sell a print with a limited run and a local interest.

@puravida
As a matter of interest what was the $400 print size, mounting and image content?

David        

Don�t take this wrong, but here�s something we discussed at our last meeting that still puzzles us: You mention in your post that you had to upload your passport, and we know some sites require or request photo ID. It struck us as ironic that expert Photoshop folks are being to submit a photo ID online to verify something. If any of you wanted to, couldn�t you easily modify the passport or photo ID?

So what is being verified? Honestly, I am not trying to �stir the pot� but it doesn�t make sense to us so we must be missing something. We recognize that a web site�s requirements must be met if one wants to join that site, but what exactly is being verified and how is identity verified with a scanned document?

Lisa I agree it is good to take different perspectives,
Altering a passport or using someone elses passport as ID would be a serious criminal offence in most countries and most likely would attract a prison term if used for fraud, that is why some agencies will take nothing else as verification, as a company it would show that you had done due diligence on the supplier and everything possible to protect yourselves and your customers from falling prey to fraudsters, that would be the same with offering the correct data boxes for artists to enter the relevent assets data.

The most sophisticated and cunning fraudsters will take care to ensure that their information appears to be 'squeaky clean' and therefore they will pass with flying colours any tests of their credibility.

Scenario #1:
A fraud claim is made and a transaction is examined in detail, the circumstances of the supply and sale of the asset, and the knowledge which was in the possession of the website, the websites awareness of any fraud, as passports are often accepted as due diligence 'fraud indicators' this would likely be a good defence of any claim, also the model release information submitted by the fraudster would help defend any claim.

Scenario #2:
A claim is made and a transaction is examined in detail, the circumstances of the supply and sale of the asset, and the knowledge which was in the possession of the website, the websites awareness of any fraud, as no supplier verification was asked for as a 'fraud indicator' this would likely not be a good defence of any claim, also if no model release information was submitted by the fraudster.

In scenario #2 it could be claimed that the website did not carry out due diligence or a duty of care to the customer so was negligent in all matters, which is a different civil charge to deal with than the copyright theft.


David