Impact on sales may be questionable at first glance, but if it can (at least theoretically somehow) help in sales and driving possible buyers to site than � why not � it is good.

But I guess it will be probably used more by photographers than by buyers.

Anyway overall it is interesting feature, if for nothing else than just out of curiosity it is interesting to browse all of those photos by cameras and lenses.
I like it.

Isn�t there Moneybookers (now renamed to Skrill) supported in Russia?

At times when PayPal wasn�t supported in Slovakia I used Moneybookers as replacement.
It was supported by many agencies and it was good alternative to PayPal at that time.
But when PayPal started to be supported in Slovakia years ago I didn't used Moneybookers since than, so I am unsure how it is with Moneybookers now.

I want to ask, how it will be with payments from Pond5 after merge, for people based in European Union? Will be those payments handled through Pond5 company based in USA, or will be payments to European Union countries handled by Czech branch office now?

In some countries like the one where I live � Slovak Republic (European Union) - it makes a BIG difference, from bureaucratic, tax/law point of view, whether you make business with (whether you receive money from) company based in USA or company based in another member state of the European Union.

Czech Republic is member state of the European Union so from point of view of Slovak Republic (which is also member state of European Union), Czech Republic is another member state of European Union and thus paradoxically when you make business with (when you receive money from) company in Czech Republic (or any other member state of the European Union) it is MUCH MORE complicated from bureaucratic tax/law point of view!

On the other side to make business with company based in USA is something absolutely easy and simple from bureaucratic tax/law point of view when copared to making bussiness with company based in European Union.

So how it will be now?
Thank you for your answer!

2. When Google figures out (and they will) that a website is scamming their system by putting in fake dimensions, they will punish the website by decreasing their ranking or removing them from search altogether.

Don't follow this example unless you want to play with fire.

Of course real higher resolution images needs to be used! No fake dimensions! If real resolutions and real dimensions of images are present on portfolio website there is no reason to get punished by search engine.

If rulles are followed, for what could get those websites punished?
For having real high resolution images avaleable on pages? No ...

1.  It's Not Working. You might see a lot of their images in Google, but how are their sales? Mid Tier at best, so it isn't translating to success.

Rankings and image sales depend on various factors and business strategies.

But traffic is one of very important factors. Because any traffic counts! Get more and more traffic to your websites and soon or later, this time-frame depends on traffic quality, your images, etc., you will bump into some buyer(s)! This concept is really easy as that! You will maybe not get tons of buyers, so you will probably not became top tier as big as those 4 ,  but anyway you will have more buyers than before! <- Every singe new buyer who finds your images located on your websites counts, doesn�t he/she?
For me definetely counts!

Slow review times.

I have good sales there considering I am just enthusiast photographer.
I take photos of nature, cultural heritage (such as photos of castles, outdoor museums, historic towns, etc.) and animals mostly.
Not typical stock photos.

My recent stats at DP:
Online Files: 431
Sold Files: 280
- By Credits: 56
- By Subscription: 216
- By SMS: 8

My portfolio at DP:
http://depositphotos.com/portfolio-1002040.html

Mine is here:

Name of Site: Jareso Stock Database
URL: http://www.jareso.com
Owner/Artist/Photographer: Boris Jaroscak (jareso)
A brief one or two sentence description: Personal website of enthusiast photographer. Website features selected photos of landscapes, animals and architecture.

Plus I added yours:
MyStockVectors, Real Stock Photos, Clip Art Candy
To "links" section of my website. Here:

http://www.jareso.com/links/

If anyone else wants to exchange links with me please let me know!

More of my personal website(s) is here:
http://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/do-you-have-your-own-stock-site-%28or-sites%29/msg283073/#msg283073

For now I have just about 20 personal portfolio websites aimed at direct promotion of my stock portfolios.
Such as:
1.) http://www.jareso.sk for Slovensk� republika
2.) http://www.jareso.cz for Česk� republika

You may read here why I have so many language versions of my website(s) if you want.
http://www.microstockgroup.com/selling-direct/keywording-on-your-website/msg277460/#msg277460

I also received similar offer from DP today.
They offered me that they want to assist me with my unfinished files.

Really nice from them, but I politely refused because I want to have full control about texts I have in titles, descriptions, keywords of my images and videos. Same goes for categories.

But interesting that they offer such service for free!

I don�t have direct selling type of my portfolio websites, I only have "traffic sender" type of portfolio websites. When I keyword my photos and graphics on these websites of mine I use my real name as well as nickname. Mostly due copyright reasons, to let my visitors know the proper copyright of my images.
Such as example:
http://www.jareso.com/photo/316/strbske-pleso-in-high-tatras-at-summer/
And there is:
Copyright Note: � jareso (Boris Jaroscak) | www.jareso.com

In my case my name and nickname affects traffic coming from search engines in minimal way. Just very few people actually search my real name (Boris Jaroscak) or my nickname (jareso) in search engines. And when they do search for it, they are usually not images buyers at all.
Such as they are my old classmates, etc.
People just looking for way how to contact me for example.

If you want to include your name or nickname because you believe it will help your sales I will probably disappoint you. It doesn�t work in most cases.
It works/may work for top sellers whose names and nicknames are wide known, but not for 98% of contributors.

Most of buyers usually don�t leave the agency where they are used to buy images. They will simply not put your username, nickname or real name to search engine(s) just to find other sources where your images might be available for purchase. It may happen sometimes, but not so often as you might imagine. Buyer finding you by your name, first finding your images in some stock agency and than going and searching for your name in search engine is very unlike scenario.

I know these statistics also from other projects (not personal portfolio websites) that I run. Simply, searches for user names are rare and if there are searches for user names these are in most cases done by authors searching for themselves not by buyers looking for authors!

Best way to attract buyers are titles and descriptions describing your images in detail. I personally prefer long "story like" descriptions of my images.

Such as:
http://www.jareso.com/photo/283/rare-manor-house-in-pribylina/
http://www.jareso.com/photo/269/famous-orava-castle-slovakia/

Long descriptions bring traffic from search engines. Of course most of traffic are people that are not image buyers (for now), they can be just searching for example for some facts about Kremnica town in Slovakia and they can be brought to preview page of my image:
http://www.jareso.com/photo/324/church-and-fountain-in-kremnica/

But the more visitors you get, the bigger will be your chances for finding some buyer.
It is simple game of numbers, nothing more!
When you will have some traffic you will soon or later bump into some buyer in some time-frame.
And when you multiply amount of that traffic 2x times, in same time-frame, your count of buyers will raise 2x times.
If 4x times, than 4x times. And so on, and so on.
It is simple as that!
Of course there may be some fluctuations, depending on various circumstances, such as traffic quality, etc.
But overall, it works like that.

My personal portfolio websites are also human translated to many languages as part of my little marketing experiment with my portfolio websites.

Btw. I am always looking for more translators, if anyone wants to make some $$.
http://www.microstockgroup.com/ranting-general-stock/%28paid%29-looking-for-translators-for-my-personal-stock-photo-website/msg251966/


Such as I have English version:
http://www.jareso.com

And than version for:
1.) (jareso.sk) Slovensk� republika
2.) (jareso.cz) Česk� republika
3.) (jareso.pl) Polska
4.) (jareso.it) Italia
5.) (jareso.se) Sverige
6.) (jareso.ro) Rom�nia
7.) (jareso.dk) Danmark
8.) (jareso.de) Deutschland
9.) (jareso.gr) Ελλάδα
10.) (jareso.be) Belgi�
11.) (jareso.fr) France
12.) (jareso.es) Espa�a
13.) (jareso.hu) Magyarorsz�g
14.) (jareso.bg) Република България

And more are on the way.

My personal portfolio websites are far from fully translated. Parts that are not translated are temporally running in English.
My aim is to have it 100% human translated, including, titles, descriptions, keywords of my images.

But why I mention it?

Because human translation of portfolio website is by far the easiest and most powerful way how to multiply traffic.
Depending on count of languages and respective language popularity, it can multiply traffic of your websites many times!

So when thinking about creating of your portfolio website don�t forget about translations!
The amount of traffic that can be brought from search engines in this way is usually very underestimated!

As I told my portfolio websites are still not fully translated. Especially most of titles, descriptions and keywords still need translation.

For now my jareso.(xy) portfolio websites receive about 1000 unique human visitors a day, various people that visit my portfolio.
I mean 1000 unique human visitors a day is counted for all jareso.(xy) domains collectively.

So about 30 000 uniques a month for all jareso.(xy) domains (language versions of my portfolio websites).
Considering the count of jareso.(xy) domains 30 000 uniques a month for all of them collectively is not that much.
I plan to get it to higher numbers.

Also not all jareso.(xy) domains are fully translated so there is much more space for traffic rising.
I mean domains where almost everything is fully translated to respective language bring the most of the traffic.

Such as on:
(Also most of titles, descriptions and keywords are in respective language there.  Thus these attract various searches.)
http://www.jareso.cz
http://www.jareso.sk
http://www.jareso.com

On the other side, those jareso.(xy) domains where there are minimum of translated parts bring much less traffic.
And thus there is a space to boost traffic on them once when their content will be fully translated.
Also, I have done minimum in field of promotion of most of my jareso.(xy) domains. So there is space for traffic rising for most of them also in this field.

So. I am not sure if this answered your initial question.

But this is my opinion to the topic.

Want traffic boost? Translate, translate, translate!
It is game of numbers. With enough traffic on your website(s) you will (soon or later) meet some buyers.
(Pssst ... it is secret, don't tell anyone!   )

I have just 394 online files at DP with 228 total sales.

I used to have very good sales there considering that I am just enthusiast photographer photographing mostly landscapes, architecture or animals.
Not top-wanted stock photos.

Last month(s) sales dropped. There were days when I used to have several downloads a day in the past at DP.
But now my sales are unfortunately very rare.  I am not sure what happened and whether this is permanent change or just some market fluctuation.

Here are my sales statistics:
Sold Files: 228
By Credits: 52
By Subscription: 168
By SMS: 8

I also offer free images on my personal websites (http://www.jareso.com, http://www.jareso.sk, http://www.jareso.cz etc.) and it seems to be good idea. I am just hobbyist photographer so my photos are not typical stock photos that drive most of the traffic, but I receive visitors from search engines for free photo searches. I mean people looking for free photos typing keyword phrases such as: "free photo" + thing (keyword) they are looking for in specific language, etc.
(My website is available in many languages.)

And some of these people are sometimes transformed to real stock buyers.

I offer all of my images that are present on my website(s) for (kind of) free.

Free are just small (360 pixels) non-watermarked preview images from my "Large preview pages":
Such as:
http://www.jareso.com/photo/283/rare-manor-house-in-pribylina/
http://www.jareso.com/photo/291/church-and-mountains-in-bobrovec/
http://www.jareso.com/photo/285/wooden-bell-tower-in-pribylina/
Etc.

But 360 pixels is (still too) small so I prepare section(s) of my website(s) where I will give away much higher resolutions of my images for free. Maybe even my whole portfolio (with certain limitations). I am still undecided. (I will still earn money from it. [Indirectly <� through referral.] And also through sales of higher resolutions and extended licenses of my images.) Simply I will do some kind of transformation of my personal website to free stock photo resource website (consisting of my stock photos). But probably not more than 800x800 pixels in resolution. I believe 800x800 pixels is big enough for website to be promoted and useable as free stock photo resource. I plan also to create some wallpapers from my photos (lets say about 50+ or so) in full resolutions for various displays, etc.
I have various plans, will see what impact it will have on my traffic and visitors...

All I wanted to say is that free photos are not necessary always "evil" <- they still can earn money indirectly.
Of course under certain and controlled conditions.

Thank you. Yes, I realized than, that probably I will not get much responses here to such specific question. But I wanted to give it a try anyway. Who knows maybe someone from here could have experienced similar problem.

But I will try to post my question on Olympus specific forums to see whether someone will help.

I think the problem you're running into is that the lens you're using is pretty slow and isn't one that is really intended to use with teleconverter in the first place, even if its technically possible on the original 4/3 format.

I am not sure if this could be the case of speed of lens. If it was only slow, than there should be at least SOME light changes on resulting image if the lens is pointed into very intensive light source, such as into light bulb, with long exposure set. Shouldn�t it?   But the black image in viewfinder, also image on preview display or image itself is not changed. Never! No matter what I do with it, or how long exposure I set. The result is always black, as if NO light reaches sensor. When I demount the configuration from E-M5, I mean configuration like this, without camera:
[MMF-2] > [Olympus EC-20 Tele Converter 2,0x] > [Zuiko Digital ED 70-300mm/1:4.0-5.6 EZ-7030]

And look through it, aperture is wide open and I can see light through it without any problems.

But when mounted on E-M5 it seems to close absolutely somehow, or whatever happens to it, because NO light seems to pass through it.
If the configuration was left untouched when mounted on camera, I mean aperture untouched and left wide open this configuration could be usable even without any electronics. The lens itself has button that can switch it to manual focus.
But once when mounted on E-M5 camera, the light seems NOT to reach sensor COMPLETELY...
And that is odd behavior which I don�t expected...