What about this image. This species of hummingbird is endangered.
It was rejected for: "Your photograph did not reach our desired level of aesthetic quality."

Yes, I'd agree with that reviewer's sentiment, too.

The shot of the bird itself is fine, but the image as a whole needs work. If it was me I'd crop and rotate the image so that the bird was vertical with his beak pointing to the top left - this would give him a reason to be placed where he is. Next I'd get rid of the other branches and clone out the distracting spots on the remaining branch. As a finishing touch I'd make the sky light blue and use levels to make the branch a dark green, which would give the image a nicely strong graphical element. Here's what two minutes in Photoshop can do:

Yes, I'll give you that it may be 'stockworthy', but this looks like a snapshot to me - like you were driving along the highway, saw the turbines, stopped the car, and made a few camera clicks. Looking at it even closer leads me to think that because the turbines aren't all facing the same direction, some of them aren't working - not exactly ideal conditions, don't you think? The minimal effort put into this image is easily apparent, and given the number of almost identical images to this available, as a reviewer I'd have rejected it. Sorry to be so harshly critical, but in my eyes you don't have a leg to stand on by complaining that images like this are rejected. If you want to increase your income, you'll need to put in more effort than you've shown here.

Generally speaking, it's only the amateurs/part-timers who have the "encourage and increase competition" mindset. Trust me, luissantos84 and deyu16, your attitude will change once or if your earnings increase enough to become your sole source of income - you'll be playing your cards much closer to your chest when that happens.

After reading the bad news from Yuri i made some calculations and found out...there's no way to discuss the numbers without knowing how he comes to his conclusions. Did he meant a profit of $3 or 4,5 after rent, equipment, etc. and taxes or did he meant a sales volume p.P. ?

At the moment i found out i have a sales volume of more than 5$ p.P. without any deductions.

It's commonly understood that RPI means Revenue per Image per Month.
You calculate it on a monthly basis by dividing income by portfolio size for each agency you contribute to, then sum up the individual RPIs to get your gross RPI.
RPI is a general measure of the income potential of your imagery, and does not take into account production costs.

I have no idea what you mean by "a sales volume p.P." - sounds like you made up this term by yourself.

Yuri's profit margin may be shrinking, but his business model plays a *huge* part in it. The last time I looked, he had *three* studios, *ten* staff members, and took everyone on extended working vacations to South Africa and/or Hawaii.

... I have seen another person make some nasty posts but I think that might of been a one off, it looked like a drunken rant and hasn't happened again.

Heh, I remember that, too. Definitely written while a little tipsy - I think he even wrote it on New Year's Eve!

... Sure, we're all in competition but the American Olympians train together to get better. They have a common goal of beating the Canadians at hockey (AND SUCCEEDING!)  I'd like to see this group have more of a common goal of being the best at what we do.
...

Not a very apt analogy - hockey is a team sport, so the athletes must practice together. It's not uncommon for elite athletes in individual sports to train in isolation - just look at Shaun White, Shani Davis, Lindsey Vonn, etc.

Expecting buyers to wade through pages and pages of irrelevant material is down and out unprofessional. I dont get it?  why dont they do something about i?
...

I think it's a principle at DT to 'share the wealth' among as many contributors as possible, and the way they do this is to weight the exposure any individual contributor gets. This explains, in my mind at least, why so many 'low ball' contributors are happy with their performance on DT.

After a bit of research, I do believe it's his daughter.

That's what I thought, too.
She visited here once before, saying she couldn't believe that people were saying nice things about him. She also said something very disparaging, which stuck in my head and I won't repeat.

My sales are down *hugely*, but only for today.

?!?!?!?!?!?

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.

Yes, I was of course referring to stock video, which is inherently dull and bland. While video may be the hot thing right now, I think that with time people will find it too intrusive and designers will find it too limiting. If there's a future in video for microstock, I think it'll be with designers using still images to create faux video - zooming and panning around an image before homing in on a "sweet spot". I'm seeing this with increasing frequency, and when it's done well it can be far more engaging than a static ad. And that's the whole point, isn't it?

I think, too, that iPad and Kindle will not be successful - I applaud the effort, but the technology just isn't there yet.

... Apparently Yuri has been named within PDN's list of 'The most influential photographers of the decade'.
...

Well, yeah ... kinda.
That poll suffered (hugely) from unregulated internet voting - if Stephen Colbert had heard about it he could have had himself voted as #1.