Quote from: melastmohican on February 03, 2012, 17:55

I am not sure if this has changed in 2011 but I found  following requirement: "File Form 1099-MISC, Miscellaneous Income, for each person to whom you have paid during the year: At least $10 in royalties". So every freaking agency that sent me me at least $10 should sent this form.

http://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1099msc/ar02.html#d0e697

If they don't send it, it won't matter. It will just be unreported income. At that point, you have a choice about including it in you're declared income or not...

I would include them anyway so if I ever get audited they should audit agencies too :-)

I am not sure if this has changed in 2011 but I found  following requirement: "File Form 1099-MISC, Miscellaneous Income, for each person to whom you have paid during the year: At least $10 in royalties". So every freaking agency that sent me me at least $10 should sent this form.

http://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1099msc/ar02.html#d0e697

I do not know if they changed their policy but when I asked them to delete photos (I uploaded hundres of images without IPTC) they counted them as rejected. Rejected photos should expire over time but it never happened to me (maybe after two yeras???).

Isn't this typical? If you owe money to some institution you have to pay them immediately but when they owe you money they have n business days to process this transaction :-)

Minor cosmetic CSS changes should be called v2.1. Still they cannot compute statistics automatically. Why Action box takes 1/4 of real estate? Where are numbers upload/accepted/rejected photos? Disaster.

I wish they fix Image Gallery sorting. It's useless right now.

If this happens it actually might be good cause company's operations will be more transparent.

Let's theorize a little more. If SS search engine favors new images what happen to your sales if you stop supplying new ones (you really stopped or you got 100% rejections). You will be slowly moving toward low class if your portfolio is not large enough to generate enough sales for payouts every month. Stratification would be good for agency. They got more people in lower class and few of top middle class maybe push hard enough to jump into high class. Maybe it is become a pro or die strategy?

Quote from: melastmohican on June 28, 2011, 12:24

I start to believe that agencies try to get rid of "middle class" of contributors. They like newbies who never get payouts and high end pros who give them best quality. Everything in between is just a cost if contributors provide good enough images and receive regular payments.

While I agree partially, the low sales people conspiracy seems a little far fetched. I mean they still owe the money if it's CrapStock cashing out for $100 once a year or MS Mastermind cashing for $1000 a month? The "never make payout" may be something, but it's hard to bank on that. Legally they can't use that money, so there's no gain in not paying. The data still points to 50% of the people on IS have never reached payout. WOW! And they are tough to get accepted. SS used to be easier, probably have upped those standards also. 300,000 photographers, is enough, but there's always room for more Top Level additions. I can't see them taking poor images, over good ones, based on the contributor never collecting. Just can't buy that argument.

As for the other part, YES. Too many pictures, too many Middle Class and for that matter too many Low Class old images. (talking about myself in that last group) With 15 million, they can afford to be a little more selective.

No I don't get mass rejections and last image I sent in was reviewed in hours. Amazing. Maybe they are trying to weed out the dead collections, inactive contributors and people uploading P&S snapshots. I still can't explain my getting accepted in the first place, (IS or SS) making continued sales or the continuing acceptance which I find fair, but I'll take the payments and spare cash.

Oh yes, when I have had rejections and I'm not a bridge member, I have sent them to BS and most of the time they are accepted. I'd say that there's a little more margin for acceptance, not that BS is taking junk images. Very slightly more accepting. Once the bridge is built and people submit to one place, taking a step out of the work and process, I wouldn't be surprised to see BS get just as touch as SS. They have the good pictures coming in from one location and don't need to have two review standards or staffs.

I am not saying that agency is taking money from contributors who never reach payouts. How about calling it zero interest loan :-) Let's say that 50% of contributors every month do not get paid you can at least put the money on savings and earn interest from that :-)

IMHO none of microstock agencies has excellent logo. For example - I still don't know what is Shutterstock's green shape supposed to say.

I am not sure this is exact English equivalent for Polish proverb "Shoemaker goes without shoes" -> "The shoemaker's son always goes barefoot"

No not mass-rejections at all.

However, reviewers att ALL sites have IMO, a limited creative knowledge, they dont understand focal-points, i.e. if everything isnt in focus, they will reject it, not understanding creative focus, shallow depth of field, etc.
Also, toned images are in the dangezone, since most reviewers will take it for faulty WB.

Yes it is unfortunately quite poor creative knowledge among the reviewers at most sites. I got a feeling that its computer-geeks looking at our shots, really just educated to detect focal problems and noise.

A pro picture-editor would demand too much salary.

Before this month I usually never got 100% rejections. Reviewers are either on vacations or got fired and outsourced.

Still not working. Just tried this morning. Editorial was working first then it's broken like for normal images but I do not have any more editorials to submit.

I am using Firefox 4 on Mac OS X but I guess I tried at work with Firefox 4 on Windows XP and results were even worse. Here I at least can see animated image.

Also if this make any difference I am using AdBlock.

I just got accepted so at least for while I will not complain :-) I am going to upload until I reach couple hundred images there. At this point of time I might re-evaluate.