Very nice images, especially the top one. I've actually never bothered to submit anything to Crestock to don't know what they're after.

To be honest these strike me as being as niche subject matter and therefore more suitable for RM stock at Alamy. I don't think they're the type of image that are going to sell in the volumes to justify offering them on microstock. Great work though!

ironic , i just came from another topic and gostwyck was there too.
gost, are you and whatalife some Istock mafia always coming in here to cyberbully another who disagrees with IS?

oh, attaching wiki's cyberbullying..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber-bullying

I see you're brand new here. This is called a 'forum' __ it's a place where folk come to discuss issues and sometimes they might have opposing views to each other. That's OK. Here's a Wki link for you being as you seem to like them so much;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_forum

If you'd actually this thread then you would be aware that I'm anything but an 'Istock mafia' __ as an indepedent contributor I'm quite the reverse in fact.

Have you any views regarding the topics of the threads on which you have added your irrelevant Wiki links?

Some of the errors I noticed in Smart Money's article:

"The stock-photo industry has two main branches. There�s the royalty-paying segment, for distinctive copyrighted photos like ..." I assume they're struggling to describe rights managed licensing

You 'assume' do you? That's hardly a 'factual error' is it?

"Then there is the less arty, rights-free segment for ordinary images..." I assume they mean royalty-free. I've never seen the term "rights-free" used anywhere else.

You 'assume' again. No factual error.

"He also used the Internet to do �crowdsourcing��making an open call for content. " Shutterstock was not open to anyone back when it was founded in 2003, it was only in October 2004 when it became clear he needed more volume that SS was opened for outsiders to submit. You can read a quote from SS about this in this article if you want more than my word for it. I joined SS in late October 2004 after reading that article.

He did use crowdsourcing from Oct 2004. The article does not give a timescale so no 'factual error'

"While Shutterstock and other so-called microstock houses like iStockphoto and Fotolia stole market share..." This makes it sound as though all this was happening at the same time, which isn't so. IS was around before SS and FT didn't start accepting submissions until the fall of 2005 and it didn't really start to gain any traction until Spring 2006.

The article does not mention who started first and it is certainly true that all 3 agencies were operating together so again no 'factual error'

"But Shutterstock�s technological head start helped it to build a thriving business..." This is misleading. SS didn't invent stock subscriptions, Photos.com was there several years earlier. SS didn't invent microstock, it tried to find a way to compete with IS and found subscriptions were the way to do that. SS had very primitive technology at the beginning (I was uploading while they tried to get FTP working; it was painful, although they get kudos for offering FTP and later, stored model releases). FT was the real leader in breaking into the non-English speaking market.

What's misleading? Once again you're attempting to claim that the article states facts that it clearly does not __ you're simply using your own misleading interpretations to make judgements. No factual error.

I wouldn't argue that SS is a thriving business, but I don't think it's got squat to do with a technological head start.

And as far as your snide comments on Smart Money's site about the objections coming from IS exclusives who have a vested interest, that's just unpleasant. I was an independent until last August and I objected because I was around for most of this and the story got it wrong. Impugning my motives is just a weak argument to make in rebutting any criticism.

Hardly. If anyone's being 'snide' then it has to be those who are making wild, inaccurate claims that they cannot validate __ whilst not happening to mention that they've got a strong vested interest in another agency.

I don't see that you've identified a single 'factual error' so far __ let alone 'bucketloads'. They could probably sue you for libel for making such absurd accusations and, if that's the best you can come up with, you wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

The article isn't a PhD thesis on the entire history of microstock __ it's a brief, newsy interview with one of the guys at the foremost of the microstock industry. It's also written for a general financial-oriented readership, not microstock photographers, so naturally they have to give light explainations of the different types of license, etc. I think they did quite well.

Anyone else experiencing that total sales revenue from StockXpert has been heading sharply south from about the time that our images were added to the collections at Jupiter and Photos.com?

My own sales revenue had been growing nicely up to Aug 2008 but have slipped badly since. The way this month has started suggests that revenue will have almost halved in the last 6 months.

I'm actually selling nearly twice as many licenses per month but almost all of them now are 30c sub sales, mostly at Jupiter and Photos.com.

I do take issue with the bucketloads of factual errors in a sloppily reported story.

Jo Ann,

Please can you point out just a few of the 'factual errors' out of the 'bucketloads' you have identified? I'm struggling to see any at all.


Despite all the hysteria on the IS forum I think it is quite a reasonable article. (NB: Is it actually part of the contract as an admin or inspector to rush out and and post appropriate woo-yahs or boo-hisses when called upon? Surely that sort of behaviour is far more myopic and biased?).

As far as I'm concerned Jon Oringer has arguably been more responsible than any other individual for the 'invention' of microstock. It was because of his aggressive marketing and referral programme that I first became aware of microstock (via a cheeky referral on Fred Miranda). I only found out about IS later, ironically enough, from the SS forums.

In over 4 years with SS I've sold more licenses than I have on IS, DT and FT combined.

SS was the first micro agency to offer subscriptions and most of the others have followed with their own versions but nothing like as successfully.

SS was the first micro agency to be available in multiple languages __ again most of the others have followed suit.

SS was the first micro agency to offer video footage __ again most of the others have followed suit.

SS was the first micro agency to offer editorial images. Quite a few have followed them.

SS is the first micro agency to arrange access and press passes to newsworthy events, etc.

They seem to have shut it down temporarily now, maybe that's a sign that it'll be fixed soon...  or am I just an eternal optimist?

I think they probably just tried 'Control+Alt+Del'.

It always seems to happen that way! Stop looking at your PC and you'll get more sales.

Total strawman argument.

Your argument is equally ridiculous. When IS was truly 'free' the cost of bandwidth alone rose to $10K PER MONTH __ that was the point at which Bruce decided to start charging for images.

Since then, you may have noticed, IS has been sold to Getty who happen to be a vast commercial enterprise not some Mom & Pop charity shop. IS occupies much larger offices premises too in order to house all those full-time employees that it didn't have when it was a free swap service.

Those are just a few of the million or so reasons why images cost more now than they did back then. You're not obliged to buy and you always have the option of taking your own images.

I use a lot of textures for backgrounds. Why should I pay close to $20 for something like that?

Because you need it?

Because you can charge it on to your client (with an almighty uplift)?

Because it is actually chicken-feed in relation to the cost of the overall project?

Because it used to cost you $100's just a few years ago?

Because you now have a fantastically wide choice of textures available to you because of the thousands of contributors working at their own risk and cost on your behalf?

Because you don't have to buy it. You can just go back to doing things the way you were before IS and the rest ever existed.

Etc, etc, etc.

You know what would be a good idea - if we had a buy/sell forum here.  Most of us are always in the process of buying and selling some piece of gear or other.  And buying from a fellow stock photographer who we at least sort of know might feel safer than buying from strangers on ebay. 

Fred Miranda's buy/sell forum is like that, but I don't hang around there enough to know anybody. 

To be honest Lisa I think I'd rather take my chances on eBay with the feedback system, etc.

As a microstocker I absolutely hammer my cameras both in terms of shutter operations and the way I treat them (like the tool that it is). I've had my 1Ds MkIII for exactly one year and had 65K-odd actuations. I think I'd rather buy an immaculate camera from a hobbyist which only gets used on high days and holidays __ and that's the vast majority of the cameras for sale.

Also there are relatively few of us on this forum, certainly in relation to the gteater eBay marketplace, and even fewer in the same countries to make such transactions practical.

I don't shoot RAW either and I know quite a few others (including some very successful microstockers) that also shoot JPEG. It's a myth that you need to shoot RAW if the final product is a JPEG. It takes extra time in processing and adds little or no value.

Funnily enough, the longer I do this the less paranoid I am about preserving "yesterday's work". To me the real value of my port is not what's sat on my HD, yet to be processed, but what has actually been uploaded and is earning me money. Really, until an image has been uploaded and proven its commercial worth, as far as I'm concerned it has little value other than sentiment.

I still really enjoy my photography but most of the enjoyment is in the actual process of taking the images, seeing the results and then watching the money roll in for months/years later.

After a shoot I find myself thinking much more how I can make improvements the next time I shoot the same subject rather than wallowing in what I have achieved so far. I guess to a large degree it's a function of doing microstock. Admittedly, if I was doing fine-art landscapes and had camped for weeks in rain and wind in order to capture a breathtaking moment in nature, I would probably feel different _ but usually that's not what i do.

I have a MyBook 2TB HD configured as RAID and transfer all new images to the A disk (which will then be mirrored on the B disk). I work entirely from that HD so that I am continually backed up.

My 3000-odd stock images would actually fit on 3 DVDs but I could download them back (for free from agencies like StockXpert) if the worse came to the worse.