The real expense of lighting equipment isn't the purchase price. It's more like: Expense = Purchase price - reparations - selling price.

If you buy crappy gear from a suspicious brand for $500, you can sell them for $100 or $0 (if they break)
If you buy better gear for $1000, you might sell them for $600 (if they break, they might be worth repairing, there are spare parts available etc.)
If you buy used better gear for $600, you might get $400 when you sell them

When you buy studio gear (especially strobes), you should think of it as buying a system. If you need light modifiers to some obscure system you might not find any. Or you don't find the thing you need. You would'n buy an obscure brand DSLR either if it had some strange bayonet and a lacking range of accessories?

I think buying used (good quality-) gear is a good option. If it's professional equipment with really light use, they will last very long. Hobbyists doesn't really know how much use good flashes can endure (I'm guessing some of my older Swiss made Elinchroms from 2005 have popped at least 100 000 times, with only one failure, and that was a minor one, replaced power switch). Just remember not to buy really old stuff, anything 2000-> should be good.

here is the rules on copyright here int he United States.

http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

Who ever said 1884 does not know they were talking about, the year was 1923

Yes, it's 1923 in the USA. But because the images are made and used also in other places 1884 is a much safer bet. You americans are always lagging behind... you don't even have metric system
Here is some story about european copyright legistlation (the Berne Convention 1886) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works

Congrats to the win! But unfortunately ruxpriencdiam is correct IMO. A light tents is no good! In fact its not good at all despite what you've seen on youtube. You'll have no control of the ligt and the images will look flat and unappealing.

You CAN control the light in a light tent somewhat by moving the lights (both position and distance). You can also use black cards to add some contrast/shadows.

The funny thing is, that we never get to see the images in question (the illustration and the watermarked image for "comparison purposes only"). My hunch is they look a bit alike...

Three for me (SS, IS, DT)
FT, Veer and Alamy are just below 10%.

I tried instagram briefly, but now - bye bye!
https://instagram.com/accounts/remove/request/

I don't think you should keyword wrong locations at all. If they buyer thinks that a country or state near by will do, he/she propapbly can search for it.

As a buyer I get very upset when "wrong" images pop up when I'm searching. Thanks to keyword spammers, many times the wrong images are a majority in search results. Yes, the sellers might get a few extra sales, but as a whole keyword spamming is a huge problem. In the long run accurate search results benefits us all.

A tomato is technically a fruit.. does that mean you should leave out the keyword vegetable?  In reality it seems like spam to use the keyword fruit as buyers will most likely be searching for vegetable and tomato if the image is of a tomato you eat.
How about if you have a shot of a Mule, would you use the keyword Donkey?  They aren't the same animal.
Or if you had a spider, would you keyword it with insect?
How about shooting a heifer, would you keyword with cow? A heifer isn't a cow

Tomato - yes - I would, keyword "vegetable".

Mule - is not a "donkey", I would leave that one out.

Spider - not an insect, I would leave that one out. if someone searches for "insect", I'm pretty sure there are already enough REAL insect pictures to choose from.

Heifer - If I understand correctly, a heifer is a young cow. So keywording "cow" would be totally right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heifer

I try to include both spellings (british/american) and some misspellings like plural for tomato is both "tomatoes" and "tomatos"

Can't see the image(?)...

If we could manage to coordinate something like that, and it were widespread,

How about organizing "a week without uploads"... or a month? What if they would get only half of the uploads they usually get? Maybe that could scare them a bit?

This year I had a goal for making a certain amount of images. I didn't quite accomplish my goal, but I have thought that measuring the quantity of images makes no sense and might prevent me from creating more time-consuming imagery.

So next year I will have only a goal measured in earnings. Depending on how much I earn in december, the goal is somewhere in the +20%...+24% region for next year.

My goal is also to do less commissioned shoots this year, that leaves more time for stock and more freetime.

Can't access my stats page... is something finally happening?

Jees, Suomesta ollaan...

Jarih, mik� on yhti�muoto? Itsell� toiminimi ja verotus "individual"-periaatteella, sill� sit�h�n toiminimi on...