Quote from: Pauws99 on March 16, 2020, 03:13

The UK government is being dragged along by events and at least a week behind the curve. Individuals and even businesses are acting more responsibly than the govt. The UK used to be good at this stuff. The home sectretary should be protecting us...shes nowhere to be seen..........

The ones protecting us are the experts providing the government the advice, who happen to be leaders in the field of viral diseases. I trust them over you or I and we certainly don't know what's going on behind the scenes. I'd rather not see every Tom, Dick or Harry every 2 minutes repeating the same message, better that we see only the PM and the 2 experts for a daily Q & A while Ministers and experts work flat out behind the scenes sorting stuff out rather than sat in front of a TV camera.

Each and every country will be faced with a different set of problems that has to be balanced. There is zero point in comparing the requirements / response of one nation to another as borders, population balance, infrastructure and resources will all differ. Meanwhile, the media is doing a great job whipping up a frenzy of panic by quoting part statements that are misleading or, don't provide the full picture just to get views on their webpages and increase advertising revenue.

As far as business goes, SS is a little quieter but AS is doing really well this month.

There is every reason to compare what works or otherwise in every country thats how we learn and progress. "Our" experts until yesterday seemed at odds with the rest of the world's including the WHO. The next step will be closing schools which again will be reactive as many schools are taking it upon themselves to close.
I've taken the advice and limit social contact to a minimum will not go to pubs and restaurants  although my local ones remain open.
Getting back to issue of Microstock I can't see any significant change one way or the other as yet  but I reckon that is likely to occur in a month or two where budgets might be slashed or looking on the bright side different content might be needed to reflect the new reality.

It's wonderful how everyone from lawyer to photographer is now an expert epidemiologist. I have no idea what the best strategy for virus containment/herd immunity/healthcare impact spread is but I know if travel bookings are collapsing, airlines and booking companies are going to be advertising more and will buy pictures. What should we learn? All those companies who said their workers could not work from home now have employees working at home, which means the disabled people they didn't want to hire could also have been working from home. Oh, and public healthcare is maybe quite important, USA?

  Where are airlines and travel companies going get this money to advertise non existent flights and holidays from? I expect some major company failures and in the short term 2-3 years a contraction in travel. I have a cruise booked. The company have just ordered their ships to come home till 24 April. They are a small player, they bought two new ships only last year I would guess on borrowed money. I wouldn't bet on them ever sailing again. Hope I'm wrong.

Yes at "this point" in Global terms its minor. The way exponential growth in infections works though we can be pretty sure sitting back and doing nothing will ensure it wouldn't be minor pretty soon.

Question and there's lots of room below. What microstock agencies required any sort of test to be allowed to upload? Please name all of them. I'll start:

1) Shutterstock
2) iStock
3) Alamy (not microstock but close enough)

I'm pretty sure Fotolia did but maybe I'm wrong..I remember when I started I got lots of rejections and couldn't understand it as my friends all said how great my pictures were ;-).

Quote from: Pauws99 on March 06, 2020, 03:57

The root cause for me is that they have made it possible to become a contributor with zero knowledge of photography or stock photography creating an unmanagable tsumani of images. There was a time when at least you needed to demonstrate a reasonable level of competence.  The quicker in a process you filter out poor quality the cheaper it is. Can you imagine a supermarket using a supplier where 90% of their product has to be rejected as sub-standard? I'm pretty sure SS have such people.

Sorry, but that's not true. It was like this since the day one of Shutterstock and microstock itself. We can't pretend now that microstock was some kind of macrostock once upon a time. Microstock ruined macrostock and any appreciation of quality in photography years ago.

You had to have 7 out of 10 images approved. On Istock it was three but to high standard and if you failed you had to wait at least a month to be approved. Thats a fact.

No it wasn't Macrostock but a cetain level was required. I failed myself and had to up my game.

The question is the wrong way round if you want to have a commercially viable site. It starts with what is the ideal site for buyers? Which is an easy to use site that delivers quality relevant content at a fair price. I don't think most buyers want super cheap but would pay if a site saves them time in the search. So for me the only thing that could work is a step change in search capability or a business model no one has thought of yet. There is no room for another "me too" agency.

Total sales have not been falling the issue is that the number of suppliers as grown vastly quicker than sales. The pie is a little bigger but there are more wanting a slice so those slices are smaller. So SS are doing OK. I don't know much about the you tube model with advertising but I suspect similar fundementals of supply and demand are there.

For the first time my monthly sales at Adobe beat SS. Sadly not because Adobe sales were good (marginally above  average) SS have tanked for me Jan/Feb.

Shutterstock support very bad, mostly they no longer want to serve their customers. Maybe that's why recent sales have dropped!

Do you mean their customers or their contributors?

Quote from: Hannafate on February 24, 2020, 09:08

If you no longer rely upon income from your microstock, you have jumped.

What if I never did? 

Microstock paid for these:


and this:


I'm not sure I ever made a real profit, like a business would through legitimate bookkeeping, expenses against gains? I'm pretty sure I never got any useful income from Microstock, because I used money for discretionary spending. AKA squandered it on equipment and scotch.

I think there are many others who never relied on income from Microstock. Can't jump ship, if you never got on it? 

Or as George Best famous Irish soccer player said "I spent most of my money on women and booze and squandered the rest". I'm guessing only a tiny proportion of contributors ever had this as their sole or even main source of income.

That must be a PITA for those who opted out, having assured their models that their images would not be used in one/some/all of these contexts.

Especially when you have to delete individual photos as there is no batch facility. SS is a high tec company with world class IT it would be easy to create a facility to delete photos using certain (or all) model releases. Except they don't have world class IT and they don't care....

I just had 18 out of 20 accepted after trimming key words...though its probably not worth the time for that small task. I dare say the next batch will be rejected for bizarre reasons.

there is only one reason people bying content:
they need it.

its your fault if you offer too cheap.

if content gets withdrawn and put to a reasonable place,
buyers go there -simple as that

btw, just wondering, usually if someone comes up here with words like fair, idea, union...
this forum outrages freaking out

If your content is unique and only it meets customer needs which nearly all content isn't.