Just went to check my BigStock earnings and was faced with a totally new looking site.

But it's so bare-bones my immediate thought was it's been hijacked by a hacker looking to capture our passwords.

I'm not going to log in until I'm convinced it's the real deal.

UPDATE/EDIT:  After scoping it out and feeling confident it was real, I logged in.  Not sure what I think yet.  I still think it's so spare that it almost doesn't look legit.  I  do prefer a "less is more" style, but even the fonts are plain and uninspired.  If I didn't know the site, my first thought would be that it can't be one of the big players.

It's been a while since we've discussed the recent pricing and commission changes at Dreamstime.  There was a lot of concern that contributors would end up losing out.  I think enough time has passed to be able to see how it affected us.  

I don't normally click on my Statistics button in the Dreamstime management area, but something possessed me to do so today, and I was surprised by what I saw.  My monthly sales line was on a pretty steady upward climb until the end of 09, when it took a dip then regained upward momentum but not as steep as before.  But at the same time, my revenue line shot up.  Now the two lines have a huge gap between them, with revenue sharply over sales, whereas they used to be right on top of each other.  This suggests to me that the pricing changes may have squeezed my sales but at the same time put more money in my pocket.

How have the changes impacted you?

I just saw a $.15 commission in Dreamstime.  Previously I thought the $.18 commissions I see once in a while in iStock were the lowest out there, but this one took the prize.  The Dreamstime $.15 was listed as "1 Credit (old)."  (I've actually been happy with my Dreamstime sales lately... I have a lot of "green" and "blue" level images now that land some pretty nice commissions... making this $.15 figure all the more shocking when I saw it.)

So is $.15 the lowest commission currently out there?  Anyone seen worse?

I vote for more stats.  I track my own stats every way imaginable to help make sure I'm on goal and identify areas where I'm doing something really right or really wrong.

I use this site to benchmark my progress against others to see if I'm on the right course.  I like the rankings that used to be running, and saw them as another motivator to keep me uploading.

I want to attack this question from a different angle.

Does microstock encourage or discourage lower design standards among contributors?

And how will this trend impact the quality of available artwork in the long run?

I believe that every image uploaded falls into one of two categories, which I'll call "commodity" images (those which offer nothing truly unique and are similar in subject and style to countless thousands of other images) and "unique" images.  And based on which type of image you primarily upload, you're either a "commodity" or "unique" contributor.

Microstock punishes the commodity contributor and rewards the unique contributor.  In theory, this encourages photographers and illustrators to think outside the box, knowing that if they simply upload more of the same, their work will be commoditized, and the only way it will sell is if it catches a buyer's eye at the top of the "most recently uploaded" search results.

Long story short, microstock encourages creativity among its contributors and could in the long run be ushering in a new era of outside the box thinking. 

Call me Mr. Glass Half-Full

I also had a sales spike yesterday... five sales for a total of $8.75.  Let's hope whatever they're doing, they continue it... for many of us to see a significant rise in sales in one day, my guess is they did some kind of huge email push to a list of designers.  Maybe a special offer on credits... buy one get one, 50% off, etc.

It's great to hear anecdotes of some big sales at Veer, but my experience so far discourages me from continuing to upload there.  I've done a grand total of $130 since late July.  The peak was right around August 1 to 10, and the overall trend has been a downward slope, with a few flukey days of significant sales sprinkled in.  I refuse to upload any more until I see a noticeable uptick in the sales trend, or until I hear that their reviewers have regained their senses.  It was getting pretty offensive.  One day a certain type of image would be accepted, and the next day an image in the same style or subject matter would be rejected as not commercial or poor quality.  Or a reviewer would reject an entire batch of diverse images as being too similar. Etc. Etc. Etc.

This has been addressed in the Dreamstime forum.  An administrator wrote:

"Yes the problem related with the stats server is still on and we are working to fix it.
There is nothing wrong with the sales, only the server that is displaying your stats pages is not synchronized. We expect that you will see the last 3 days sales on Monday evening.
Sorry for the inconvenience."

It's human nature....

Many of us have become too comfortable with still images.  We have our processes down pat and want to just keep doing what we know for the foreseeable future.  There's a fear of the unknown when it comes to video, which leads to a dismissing of video as something that won't (we hope) catch on.

But the writing is on the wall.  In the tech community, the big buzz around the iPad is that it will usher in a new world of opportunities for content creators.  Tomorrow's media devices and formats will explode today's notions of how we consume information and entertainment.  It's common sense that there will always be a need for still images, but that's not where the growth will be.  The smartest of us have seen this revolution coming and stuck our toes into the video pool already (though I'm not in that group... yet).

I disagree about video - I think it's a trendy fad that will quietly go away sooner rather than later. Those investing time and money into it are going to be very disappointed.

?!?!?!?!?!?

If you mean that microstock video is a fad and perhaps a flawed model in some way, that's a reasonable thing to debate.

But the presence of video in our everyday lives is in no way a fad, and we will certainly see more and more video on websites and in emerging media such as books and magazines reformatted for devices like the iPad and Kindle (future video capable versions of it anyway).  These and other expanding markets for video will create greater demand, and that demand will need to be filled, if not by microstock video, then by another model that will surely emerge.  Today's forward-thinking microstock contributors will be watching for that model and hopefully the first to profit from it.

Lately I've been thinking about not just how much I can grow my microstock revenues in the short term, but also about whether I can count on it in the long term.

When I started nearly a year and a half ago, I set short term and long term goals for myself.  I recently hit my short term goal, and if my rate of growth holds steady, I could hit the long term goal (which involves making microstock my main source of income) in a few years.

But with all the recent changes in the industry, I'm wondering how realistic it is to think that a microstock income could last me well into my golden years (another 20 or 30 years).  Of course evolution will be constant, and this market may look completely different in just a year or two.  But I also strongly believe that communication will only become more and more visual, and images will be relied upon more than ever to convey ideas.  Therefore good imagery will always be needed, and thus, valuable. 

So here's my prediction:  Globalization and the race to the bottom will make our returns become smaller and smaller, but if the rewards of doing this work become so insignificant that talented artists (or even the copycats) can't justify the effort, then the supply and demand equation will level out making it worthwhile at least for those who can do unique, quality work in volume.  Today, of course, we all aim to do "good, quality work in volume," but I think the future will redefine the meaning of that (think 5x or 10x what it takes today to make a decent microstock income).

What do you think?  Does microstock have a decent lifespan in front of it, and if not, what might replace it?

You may be right.  

For me, today has been a healthy day on StockXpert, but I noticed a surge starting around Jan 18 or so, and today has been similar to all the weekdays since then, likely to end up my #3 or #4 site for the day, as they've been for about a month.  I sure am going to miss them.  Just hoping those sales go to another site where my portion won't be too drastically reduced.

I only wish I was having a good day on all the other sites today... this is shaping up to be my worst Monday in the past few months (overall sales could be down by about 50% from my recent Monday average).  Is it a holiday somewhere?