The dog with the foggy background express what you tried to express. Yours, no at all. There's not any history in your shot, it's just a dog's headshot.

I was there. I've been every year. But Murphy's law says that if one year I don't reach it, they won't grandfather anyting.

Something doesn't add up for me in all this.

My 'PP sales' are on target to be almost double my royalties from Istock last month or roughly equivalent to my earnings from DT and FT combined. Where has all this 'new business' come from almost overnight?

The sales from which these PP royalties are derived must be in the tens of millions of dollars (annually it could be the equivalent of a new agency with $100M in sales revenue). How is it possible that the market for our work has apparently grown so much so quickly? It is not as if anyone is reporting an equivalent fall in their earnings elsewhere.

Could this be an error or could it be that historic under-reporting has been discovered and is now being corrected? If so why would these new sales be so evenly distributed throughout the month? It is all very strange.

Well, I really don't know, but in previous months tey were pushing very hard TS in the Getty's main page (don't ask me way they want to re-directed getty well paying customers to TS...)

I have said that SS has kept prices very low for years to gain market share.  Our cost's have risen via inflation, contributor quality has gone through the roof and image quality is light years better than it was in 2004.  SS has benefited from the competitive advantages its contributor base has given them and those gains have been fully funded by SS contributors.

Well put. That's the core of the matter.

Not much different from photographers trying to get away without paying models for commercial work.

Totally different. A model just does a TFCD swap if she/he wants.There's a agreement on both sides. But an image stealer doesn't make any agreement with the image author. It's no a small, its a huge difference, in case you didn't notice it.

Years ago, at shutterpint, image rating was an endless  source of conflict and wrath among pohotographers.

Quote from: gostwyck on October 17, 2013, 11:38

Quote from: grsphoto on October 17, 2013, 10:58

When a buyer buys a subscription they don't think to themselves, " I get these images for $.02"  they say to themselves I get access to the entire library for $xx per month/ year.  They have to really value all the images in the collection to commit to this amount.

From a business point of view subscriptions are great because you can budget cash flow.... they have a better idea of what they will receive in the following months.

Exactly.

Only a fraction of the average subscriber's allowance is ever downloaded (because otherwise the agency would lose money) and, most likely, an even smaller fraction of the downloaded images are ever actually used for anything more than comping.

A subscription, in the way that it is provided/used, is actually a service rather than a cost-per-item transaction. To talk of 'pennies per image' is to not understand the reality.

Don't you think it's strange that if a buyer downloads more than 9-12% of their allowance Bigstock (Shutterstock) loses money?  They are clearly pricing this at below cost.  Anyone know much about predatory pricing?

I'm tempted to buy one of these 99 dollar suscriptions and dedicate myself everyday to download all and each one of the 1.800 shots just for the h�ll. of it.

After a better September (specially first half) things are going South in my IS exclusive portfolio.

Judging by the number of files I have, and the number of files I sell monthly (even in this not very promising October) I cant't believe Yuri is jus selling 5.000 a month with a 70.000 highy commercial portfoilio. I would have 2x or 3x ratio over him, and my portfolio is not so commercial at all.

I would delete the photos. Forget the legal aspect, avoid possible trouble and let her have her career.

I have a variety of sources of income, but not in microstock itself. I consider relying just in microstock would be a really crazy and dangerous decision. There are too manyh common problems to ALL sites as a whole: the flood of new photographers/factories/photos, sites, the race to the bottom etc. When a site gets away with a cut, other sfollow. No, thanks; there's life beside  ms, and even beside photography. As I said, I consider to be in a much greater danger those that only do ms, no matter to how many sites they upload.

what does it means actually? in layman term..

is it shutterstock issue more shares to the market? it is usually a sign as they want more cash?

It means that they need money.

Sorry, selling moderately well here (money wise). On path of a +50% over August, beating also last year's Setember numbers.