Saniphoto,
In that case, the growth at FT must be incredible. I'm growing around 50% compared to last year, and still I'm apparently growing less than the average.

As for winners and losers: 3 years is nothing. I expect to be active in this business for another 20 years (started around 3 years ago as well), and with the fluctuations I've seen through this year, anything can happen within that period of time.

Just to draw a couple of parallels: remember Alta Vista? Netscape? Have you used them lately? No? Neither have I, but ten years ago, that was the way I accessed the internet, more or less 100%. Ten years ago, nobody had heard about Google.

Things change on the internet. Technology changes, ownership changes. An investor with more money than brains can destroy any microstock agency within a year, and a genius with the right ideas can build a concept from scratch to world wide coverage even faster.  Three years ago, I hadn't heard about Dreamstime and Shutterstock. Now, they pay my rent. Good, isn't it?

All figures compared to December 2007.

SS 34%, up 1%
DT 24%, up 61%
FT 14%, up 56%
IS 13%, down 48%
BS 5%, up 17%
StockXpert 3%, down 60%
123 3%, down 4%
Yay 2%, no sales last year
Cre 1%, up 20%
Scanstock 1%, down 60%

Total down 4% since last year, down 39% since November.

These are the most dramatic changes I've seen so far in my microstock career. I'm obviously very happy about DT. FT is a puzzle, since my sales are increasing at a healthy rate, while my FT ranking is going down. StockXpert is pure disaster, and IS is almost as bad. The numbers from SS hide the fact that volume is down 25%. They are saved by on demand sales.

2009 will be interesting indeed. It's becoming obvious that there are no untouchables in this business, and staying with only a couple of big agencies is probably very risky.

Update, year in total, 2008 and 2007:

SS 35% - 40%
IS 17% - 18%
DT 16% - 16%
FT 11% - 8%
StockXpert 7% - 6%
BS 5% - 4%
123 3% - 3%
Scan 2% - 1%
CS 1% - 1%
FP 1% - 1%
Cre 1% - 1%
SV 1% - 0%

Sales increase from 2007 to 2008: 26%

To me, editorial at the micro agencies looks more and more like "events". I've had a number of photos rejected as "not editorial" because they don't relate to a particular event, while newspapers and magazines often use photos that only describes a place or situation in general terms.

The second reason is that many editorial photos are very low volume. Having a photo selling once or twice at a micro agency is no use. Then it's better to take the chance, and maybe wait for a couple of years, before it sells on Alamy or another traditional agency for a higher price.

2nd BME after Nov.

Interesting. Are you in or out of subs and photos.com?

December is no indication unless you compare with December last year, since it's usually a slow month for most, but I agree, StockXpert is falling like a stone. If nothing dramatic happens during the last two days of the month, which is very unlikely since one of them is New Years Eve, I'll get a result 75% below that of last year with StockXpert.

I'm opted out from subs and from photos.com, and the only explanation I can see is that they are letting StockXpert die to concentrate on photos.com. That would be very easy to explain:

- photos.com is a very nice domain name, and they get a lot of marketing for free just as a result of that fact.
- photos.com is mainly a subscription agency which (probably) generates a much higher profit per customer than StockXpert does.
- The weak part of photos.com was the portfolio, but by transferring the StockXpert images to photos.com, they fix that.

If I'm right, the photographers are the ones getting screwed. Most of us had nice, increasing commissions from StockXpert, and they seemed to value our efforts more than most others. photos.com seems to be just another "we're cheaper, so we must be good" run-of-the-mill website. Very sad indeed.

Quote from: epixx on December 28, 2008, 22:18

I'm now an official member of the SS Reject Club (SSRC) as well. 15 out of 18 rejected in less than six hours, and on a Sunday 

Oh well, there are other important things in life, like.... ummmm..... ok, I'll tell you when I think of something more important   

don't take it too hard  epixx,
the reviewer probably had a bad christmas, maybe Santa didn't come !!! 

Oh, but I'm Santa. My images were the gifts for him. Unfortunately, he didn't like them. Spoiled kids nowadays   

I'm now an official member of the SS Reject Club (SSRC) as well. 15 out of 18 rejected in less than six hours, and on a Sunday 

Oh well, there are other important things in life, like.... ummmm..... ok, I'll tell you when I think of something more important   

I use Carbonite..

Cheap and above all, unlimited storage for almost no money!  http://www.carbonite.com/raf/signup.aspx?RAFUserUID=336374

I've been using it for quite some time and it seems to be working great! It does not slow down the internet connection while backing up.

It might be worth a try 

/Flemming

That works well as long as they don't go bankrupt. Lots of photographers got problems when digitalrailroad.net went bust a couple of months ago without any warnings.

I run a backup routine to a second HD a couple of times every week, and always after taking a new batch of photos. In addition, I burn DVDs that I keep at another location. Earlier this year, one of my HDs crashed, and the only thing I needed to do, was to buy another disk and copy from the backup. At the moment, I have disks in separate firewire enclosures, but the next time I upgrade, I'll invest in a unit with space for four or eight disks and RAID.

Rather quiet the last months, but so have a few of the other agencies. I keep on uploading. It's easy, and whenever I get a sale, it generates a healthy profit.

Fair enough. He can still sell his image but needs to change the license type to RF.

Alamy states very clearly on their image management page that the license type cannot be changed once selected. I don't know how they are going to do with this particular case, but the obvious action would be to delete the images in question.

Just had an SMS from Moneybookers. Crestock just paid 

Merry Christmas everybody!

All of them, but don't mess with heads, even from back it's unacceptable



This one accepted everywhere

I would accept her as well   

You think you do! I checked with Alamy a while ago. Why don't you check with them again and post your results? I think we can all benefit from that info.

I don't know what you're on about. This case is a clear break of Alamy's terms for licensed images. I've received a response from them btw.:

"Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We shall contact the contributor regarding this. Much appreciate it.

Kind Regards"

Just in case you thought they didn't care.