Hmm. I uploaded just 5 photos like a year ago to Zymmetrical just to test the system. Wasn't impressed at the time and never really checked to see if they ever sold. Just took a look now.. got a $17.50 sale from 1 of them last month. Maybe I should upload more? How is everyone else doing at Zymmetrical? Maybe this is the place to take our little co-op idea and work with them (if they are willing).

I am still not convinced that setting up our own micro site is the best route. I don't think many contributors would want to put up content exclusively on a start up site. I think forming some sort of co-op would be less work and easier to manage. Whether it would be effective or not is still a question. One problem that exists in doing this is whether members would actually do what is decided upon. For example, say Fotolia made some change that made submitting each uploaded image take 2 minutes (think Istock x2). All other negotiations failed, and the co-op decided to try an uploading embargo. Would people actually follow suit and stop uploading for x-weeks or months? Or another example... say Dreamstime did something like cutting our commissions and the co-op decided to try a policy of having each member disable 1 image (or a % of their images) every day/week/month and suspend uploading until a fair compromise is offered. Getting the members to actually go through with stuff like that would be probably one of the biggest obstacles.

As for the question someone brought up awhile ago on how such a co-op would determine who could join. Possibly just something simple like having at least 50 or 100 images accepted to any Microstock site?

I found a nice one:

http://www.clustershot.com/sethanderson/photo210489

Royalty structure:

I haven't uploaded seriously in over a year now and my income on all but Shutterstock have remained somewhat steady and on some sites it has increased dramatically. (dreamstime -- this month is BME) Shutterstock has taken a huge hit though... only making about 1/3rd what I was during the good days. I'm just a small fry though so my stats don't mean much. 

Great work. I love them. Tell us have you tone mapped or detail enhanced?

Detail enhanced for all of them.

So far so good for me. Have seen an improvement.

Fun stuff.  I think the bright areas inside the eaves is an HDR giveaway, but the others are cool.  What software are you using? How many exposures?

3-5 exposures each (all adjusted in photoshop, just 1 photo used) and photomatix pro for the HDR. They are just old photos of mine that I played around with to see if I could make them more interesting.

I don't understand why it takes months upon months to move everything over. Seems like the typical Snapvillage half-ass everything method. I was hoping that things were finally changing.

Number of clicks on your referral link:     1282    (since 10-11-2005)
Number of sign-ups from your referral link:    36
     
Referral Commissions Earned:    $0.00

 

I just had a $20 sale as well. 

I guess I'm the youngest one here @ 18, or at least the youngest to take the survey. 

Well. I am getting the same amount of downloads as usual. They are just 100% subscription sales. Which means my income is down like 90%.  But then again I'm going down down down on all sites except Dreamstime and Crestock.