Quote from: Tuilay on January 29, 2009, 14:25

you're giving away all the secrets, and all these newbies will out sell me. already, i am crapping in my trousers 

AND last word, I wish you ppl don't get Tu so riled up to crap in his pant. I'm tired of having to scrub it 

Good one!!

Instead of writing articles about attracting more photographers, why not write about attracting more buyers.. You still get refferals there too..

 I keep reading the replies, and it seems people are just so focused on the "why can't we share info" . "were here to share so why criticize people for sharing"?

 You are still soo off target.. This is the 3rd and last time I will write this AGAIN..

 It is not about sharing.. We all love Leaf, he has a website for sharing.. I love the article exposurepro wrote about how to take photos of lightning.. I LOVE SHARING.. AVAVA shares a lot and I really love reading and interacting with his posts.. I know that some people don't appreciate his sharing, but I am not one of them.. The point is, for me I LOVE SHARING TOO.. LAST TIME, I DO NOT appreciate people writing about how easy it is to make money in micro and here are my secrets on how and here is were you sign up and welcome to the piece of the pie.. TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS about the great money, and get me some refferals.. IT IS NOT ABOUT SHARING, we all share here on MSG about how to better light subjects on how to better expose and what is shady about a websites admins etc. etc.. But every new person that signs up is that much less of the pie.. Unless you are equally out drumming up buyers you are helping to take food and medicine and other stuff from my son.. So SHARE AWAY and I will be there chiming in.. But do not expect me to cheerfully jump up and down that you are pumping in more micro wannabe's for a few cents of refferals.. Sorry not gonna happen..

Even though we sell our work through micro agencies, let's not become so micro minded that we are shamelessly self-serving. It surprises me that some people point finger at the people who wish to profit from a web blog, and call that greed, do you realize that the protectionist approach is just as greed? We must recognize that we each need to make a living but we must allow other people make a living too.

Missing the point I think.. Sharing making money off of your blog etc. is great, I'm all for it.. But I and I think others are not that keen on the advertising of make money in micro doing nothing or your snapshots or images collecting dust.. It's not micro minded it's reality that this is not really the whole truth.. People may make a few bucks here or there doing snapshots, but we all know micro does not pay unless you really work hard at it.. And all these false hopefulls add to the oversaturation that takes food off of our tables.. I guess if you don't shoot micro seriously and are not in it for the money, than it doesn't matter to you.. But for the people that work at this like a job, it does matter because it takes food from their families.. Like I said in my last post, I like a lot of his other posts, just not big on the micro pimping the do "nothing" and making money stuff.. Sorry if my opinion offends anyone, that's just how I feel..

Seriously, I think that you are shooting yourself and everyone else in the foot by pumping up the you can make money in micro and here's my secret how stuff.. Sharing is one thing, trying to advertise your refferals and create more competition to make .03 is one of the reasons this market has become so saturated in the first place.. Why don't you advertise this (the truth) if you work your but off for a couple of years you might make a slight dent in your financial status.. I am kinda tired of looking at these you can make good money just by taking photos in your spare time bits, sign up here to make big bucks.. Thanks for the tips!!

because it is inside a room, where potentially the owner could recognize his property.. StockXpert is one of the hardest on these things.. I have also had this issue before, I think it's overboard, but that is most likely the issue..

I too wish for Dreamstime to be Next Istock, and it is for me.. #2 to SS, I have always been happy with DT, they have never pulled anything shady like FT or StockXpert and I make fairly good sized sales most of the time not $.30 usually between $1 - 3 per sale.. Although IS has started selling again for me a little, but that has happened before and then it goes away then comes back again (I think best match switches up somehow)..

I had a pretty decent day today.. SS was back up to decent levels, DT gave me some $1 - 2 sales and StockXpert had some sales and I even had a decent sale at IS today as well, a few strgelers at the others.. so at least for today, things seem to be going decently..

I think the problem of the ever-growing number of contributors will sort itself out with the higher standards. Current contributors already see increasing difficulty getting images accepted. Imagine just starting out and getting that same onslaught of rejection. That will slow the growth numbers significantly.

For current contributors, though, the race to keep up with increasing standards will require more time and money invested in microstock. The golden days of microstock may very well be over, and I highly doubt that anyone starting out today could reach Yuri or Andres status. The massive growth of a few years ago is over. Sure people can still do very well in this business, but it will be tougher and require more time and effort to do what previously could have been done with much less.

 I agree with Helix.. I think that the micros are starting to raise the bar on quality, which will keep out many of the wanna be contributors, which is good.. The only problem I see is that with standards rising and prices staying low micro prices, it will be hard to make the quality and get a decent return on your time/money invested.. There will need to be an equilibrium or there will be problems, as there will be nowhere other than macro to see ruturns on images.. Micros want macro quality but it doesn't come cheap for the production to get that quality.. So it will be harder to get the returns and either micros will need to offset that or contributors will start to shy away from the micros and it will only be amatuers that don't do it for the money that will stay.. I think things will work themselves out though, Micros are businesses and I imagine that the Powers that be notice these things as well and will adjust accordingly.. If they don't they will eventually fade away..

Quote from: tubed on December 24, 2008, 03:28

Quote from: Zeus on December 24, 2008, 02:31

I've submitted to AGE for many years, although not that much the past couple years or so. They pay 50/50 for their RF sales which is very unusual in this business for a trad agency. I like them. They have been around a long time and are still essentially a mom and pop business although mostly a pop business since I've never heard of a mom there. They sell reasonably well but have no where near the clout of the bigger trad agencies like Getty of Corbis. Things can take a little longer there than I like.

Peter

Good info.. Thanks..

Better or worse than Alamy?

I don't know, it really depends on what you shoot. If you shoot a higher quality commercial image I'd say you would be better off at AGE but if you are a high volume editorial photographer I'd say Alamy. Alamy is non exclusive so you can seek your own clients or other outlets to sell through while AGE is image exclusive. Then comes the decision whether you should submit to AGE or Pixtal , the RF arm of AGE. I make more money from Alamy right now than AGE but then I have more images at Alamy than AGE that are suited for Alamy.

No uploading just catching up on backlogs that I have been neglecting..

Hi Zeus,

 You have a healthy batch of grapes there. I have heard the same for months now. Why or where it will go is a mystery just like so much of our future in this industry. Getty only has two owned RR sites Iconica and The Image bank all the rest of their RR is third party. I would love to see them move there RR owned companies into the RM brand and push the rest of their third parties to Macro RF. If you do a side by side comparison it seems they have kept their own brands much more like their RM as where the third party looks a lot like Macro RF. Hard to say, maybe they will pull the collections apart related to past sales and place some in RM and some in RF, just crossing my fingers at this point. I can say that there will be an onslaught of Macro shooters moving into Micro if this happens. Don't think they will just go away they don't many more places to go.

Best,
AVAVA

nice shoot Jon.. thanks for sharing..

Yeah, I havn't been ready to get excited yet.. But yes I have noticed a slight increase in sales activity as well.. Still not as good as it used to be though, and who knows how long it will last or if it's just a fluke..

What I still don't understand about Alamy: are you allowed to upload microstock RF images to their RF category? I have a few images there already but those are completely different images and they are in the RM. But I would be happy to upload my RF images as well.

 You will be despised by all the original and most other Alamy contributors, if you do.. Up to you =)..