Be different.

Is there any advantage or disadvantage in either of these strategies?

Privacy. I don't like my different activities to be mixed up, like political actvism and microstock activity. If you're sometimes outspoken, you will attract the lowlife stalkers and they can do you much harm online, as Google is our enemy. On Google, you will have to present a clear simple concept, like photography, and when you mix it with other areas of interest, you might weaken your SEO.
I would separate personal/business by different domains. An extra domain is only 9$/year. If you pick one of the hosters that allow more than one domain on the same account, you don't need an extra hosting account.

I really appreciate your suggestions. I have discussed some of the issues you have presented here with the team. We agree there should be more than one option to send the release forms, and have added the option to send the release form via email. Also, for anyone who has applied and been accepted to sell photos in the marketplace we have upgraded them to a premium account that allows unlimited storage.

As we fine tune the website all of these suggestions will help us offer a better service.

Good moves. There is still the watermark issue, certainly for the marketplace pictures. Marketplace and "share" pictures should also not be mixed in searches, and notyet-approved marketplace images should not be available at all, certainly not in the "share" section. For releases, it would be handy to have a library where you can pick the proper release, and not upload it every time. The geotagging (if done like in Flickr) is a great tool in looking for images of a specific location: nature, landmarks, architecture. I also hope there will be some decent QC for the marketplace pictures, or you will attract all the straight-upload-from cam people with tens of similars.

@sharpshot: Mostphotos can work if you play the commenting game. The advantage of this site is the high reward and favorable commission. In principle, we should support sites like that, if they sell.

There are some very creative Swine Flu illustrations on DT.  Is it spamming to Title the image Swine Flu?

There is some very creative spamming too. This is on page 1 for "swine flu":



Keywords: absorbed adult airborne audio audiophile avian background black boy caucasian equipment facial flu hair head headphones headset leisure listen listening looking male man mask music pleased protection risk safety sickness sounds stereo studio swine toxicity upwards virus

Hey FD, good to know you're still alive and kicking and still liking it here at Tyler's CHeers I thought you decided to quit on us to do male porn 

Female porn is a bigger market. But for the adult market, you need a different brand, I have been told. batmandelights dot com is still free 

It all started with steam engines and evolution generating creationists. People should never have been evolved from trilobites : it was all so peaceful there when we relaxed as limestone on the bottom of Pangea.   

My name is Alexandra. I am the Community Manager at Snapixel.com, a new photo website that combines the social aspect of Flickr with stock photo sites like Istockphoto.

Plus:
- euro
- RF and extended at very good prices - 60% for the photog
- solid platform, well programmed
- IPTC, mass-upload
- clear business info with street address in the US

Minus:
- The mix of a social and a stock site didn't work for Mostphotos.
- "Snapixel offers 1GB of free storage or a premium package for unlimited storage." So it's a paying photohosting site where you can occasionally sell and "share". Hosting fee = 35 euro/year. On a free account, the resize quality of the thumbs will be inferior. @$%*&%$!
- "Free Accounts have 1GB of space (Approximately 2000 photos)" - that's incorrect: a 10MP photo in top jpg quality is around 5MB so it means 200 photos.
- Model Release Forms must be on file and faxed to Snapixel. Why can't we just email a facsimile like on all other stock sites, and do we have to do it with every person shot?
- Giant 640px wide unwatermarked "thumbs". (no comment about the "quality" and the liberal framing of this shot  )

I'm not sure sending out the membership to spread the word in this way is really a sensible idea.  If you want to grow your membership, you should buy an ad in the sidebar advertising it.

I feel we are a little harsh on this one. Maybe the photosecrets episode put us on our guard. I didn't see any referral link from the OP. Somebody mentioned this site two years ago as an extra way to monetize content since this link is still in my xmarks. After all, they are not trying to sell us something, but just offer an additional way to make money, like all microstock sites.

OK, no more insults, ok? I didn't mean it the way you construe it to mean.

It wasn't meant as an insult, you should know me better. I didn't even insult Betty Spam with her Ego-Rythm. 

Seriously, many views are from random traffic from Google. Not even from prospective buyers.

This one has over 3,000 views and just one download. And guess why? They see the long hair on the thumb and they figure it's a broad. They just want to zoom in to see the t%ts. Big disappointment from the Google droolers. Men are so predictable 

http://www.picniche.com/

I had it. Found it a useless gadget that slows my PC down, especially on Asian band-narrowness. The only plugins I use are xmarks and adblock, and of course the Youtube downloader. Couldn't miss the adblock, in which you can also block the slideshows on microstock sites landing pages and all flash content which slows down all terribly.

Am I mistaken, or isn't SV going to cease to exist in the near future?  Why put photos online that Veer doesn't want?

As well all know, SV was a failure by design right from the start. The programming was crap from day #1, the idea of keywording themselves was too costly and not needed by contributors that keyworded their port already - and better - for other sites. As Yuri mentioned once, after he met the responsible one for SV, "she was very nice but hadn't any clue about microstock".

Veer is clearly another cup of tea, and a very established and respected site that wants to expand into the microstock playground (where, incidentally, all the growth is). They will have their own rules of desired content, and my bet is that "the folding of SV into Veer Marketplace" is just corporate newspeak to prevent SV losing face. Nothing against that, it's important to be nice.

As soon as Veer is ready for contributors, I will certainly try them, but directly, not through SV. Let's see then what their content policy is. I hope though, when they reject, they will give a clear indication why the content is not desired and what the preferred type of content is. It's always possible to shoot more into the direction that they want.

If we register the domain with godaddy or namecheap, do the hosts use it without any problems further, if we want to move to another host?

Yes. That's the advantage of a separate registrar, contrary to a hoster that offers a free domain. In the latter case, the domain is most probably owned by the hoster, not by you. If for any reason you want to move to another hoster, you will lose your domain and all the associated SEO and links. In namecheap, you can easily change the nameservers to any hoster you like.

I read good things about Bluehost, Hostgator, Justhost and WebzPro.  At the same time I read severe complaints.  It makes it all so confusing! 

You've got good feedback about Hostgator and Bluehost here. Of course, fiddling with the cpanel of your server isn't for the faint at heart. That's were the specialized image hosters come in, like smugmug and photoshelter. You will have to pay for that service though... a multiple of the same space/bandwidth as on a raw server.

Hostgator cheapest plan costs US$4.95/mo only if I sign up for 3 years (and pay ahead for the 3 years, as I understand).  The regular monthly price is 8.95 though, not too bad, but others are cheaper.

With the cheapest plan, you only have one domain too. That's why I am on the 9$ plan and I pay monthly.

Justhost has also had good reviews lately. Their price is very good US$3.95 monthly - don't know if also requiring one or more years paid ahead.  I read they accept Paypal.

You might be on a resellers plan then. Nothing wrong with that except you will have to accept his running of the server, you will be allowed only one domain, and you will probably get just one Mysql database, which is fine for a single user.

Pardon my ignorance, but what a difference does a Linux Web Host vs a Windows Web Host makes?  Can I upload my HTML files normally to any of them?

The difference is the type of databases they allow and the Microsoft extensions. In general, a Linux host is considered to be more stable and general. If you just upload HTML, it doesn't make any difference. You won't need a database too then. But uploading a port of 1,000 shots can be a tedious HTML coding job. It's possible, but use an HTML generator then who generates the flat HTML gallery automatically. I used Arles of Digitaldutch a lot till 2004. It's still very popular.