terrible july sales....half of normal

Quote from: Microstockphoto on July 19, 2016, 02:26

in the end us pros ruined our own business by submitting content to the micros, dont blame the amateur, blame your fellow pro shooters, like me, made a bundle in micro but its getting tougher, no business lasts forever, unless you are coca cola

Most pros had no choice. With amateurs submitting pro quality work to micros, macro dried up, and you could either join and make pennies or find something else to do other than stock photography.

Exactly. Furthermore, depending on your field of expertise and market, an exponentially expanding microstock library made it much easier and a whole lot more economical for a pros existing client base to find imagery that was "close enough" to their needs that a bread and butter custom shoot was no longer a necessity. A lot of pros saw the writing on the wall years ago, resisted as long as they could,  but ultimately had little choice but to hop aboard.

Quote from: Fudio on July 19, 2016, 07:18

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on July 19, 2016, 06:45

Quote from: Microstockphoto on July 19, 2016, 02:26

in the end us pros ruined our own business by submitting content to the micros, dont blame the amateur, blame your fellow pro shooters, like me, made a bundle in micro but its getting tougher, no business lasts forever, unless you are coca cola

Most pros had no choice. With amateurs submitting pro quality work to micros, macro dried up, and you could either join and make pennies or find something else to do other than stock photography.

Exactly. Furthermore, depending on your field of expertise and market, an exponentially expanding microstock library made it much easier and a whole lot more economical for a pros existing client base to find imagery that was "close enough" to their needs that a bread and butter custom shoot was no longer a necessity. A lot of pros saw the writing on the wall years ago, resisted as long as they could,  but ultimately had little choice but to hop aboard.

That is kind of like saying a person who has gone to medical school and is a surgeon and loses their job has little choice but to get a job at Walmart instead of looking for jobs in his/her own field. And then expecting Walmart to match the salary the surgeon was making as a surgeon.

Too bad the pros didn't see the writing on the wall that agencies were never going to increase commissions, and that they should never have quit their day jobs to depend on microstock as a full time job. The good news is there are now at least mid and macro agencies and other avenues of generating revenue where a pro can at least make better money to recoup the cost of expensive equipment and high-dollar shoots.

Note that I said "find something else to do other than stock photography". Old stock photo pros probably shifted toward other photography like commercial shoots, real estate, weddings, or whatever. I've noticed some saying there's no money in photography anymore as a full time profession and they've had to go get a non-photography job.

I think there are plenty of pros and amateurs who were able to recognize the shifting trends, adjust, and do very well. It's the people who were either unable or unwilling to make the necessary shift who completely got out of photography. There's still plenty of opportunity and money in photography for people with the right mindset and skills.

I think macro and mid-stock is only viable for a small percentage of contributors who can produce unique work that's not already heavily covered by microstock. On macro sites, anything that resembles micro is being sold a micro prices.

Quote from: Fudio on July 19, 2016, 07:18

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on July 19, 2016, 06:45

Quote from: Microstockphoto on July 19, 2016, 02:26

in the end us pros ruined our own business by submitting content to the micros, dont blame the amateur, blame your fellow pro shooters, like me, made a bundle in micro but its getting tougher, no business lasts forever, unless you are coca cola

Most pros had no choice. With amateurs submitting pro quality work to micros, macro dried up, and you could either join and make pennies or find something else to do other than stock photography.

Exactly. Furthermore, depending on your field of expertise and market, an exponentially expanding microstock library made it much easier and a whole lot more economical for a pros existing client base to find imagery that was "close enough" to their needs that a bread and butter custom shoot was no longer a necessity. A lot of pros saw the writing on the wall years ago, resisted as long as they could,  but ultimately had little choice but to hop aboard.

That is kind of like saying a person who has gone to medical school and is a surgeon and loses their job has little choice but to get a job at Walmart instead of looking for jobs in his/her own field. And then expecting Walmart to match the salary the surgeon was making as a surgeon.

Too bad the pros didn't see the writing on the wall that agencies were never going to increase commissions, and that they should never have quit their day jobs to depend on microstock as a full time job. The good news is there are now at least mid and macro agencies and other avenues of generating revenue where a pro can at least make better money to recoup the cost of expensive equipment and high-dollar shoots.

Nope. Not like saying that at all. Not even remotely. Unless of course Walmart has opened a box hospital in a strip mall somewhere near you where they are tapping into an overabundant global supply chain of doctors,  and succesfully  outsourcing medical procedures to anyone who can perform them well enough. I would be the last person to compare photography to surgery.

Nor did I say any pro I know ever gave up their day job to pursue microstock full time. My point was that microstock has not only irrevocably changed the nature of stock photography in general, but indeed the nature of the photography industry as a whole.

"I think there are plenty of pros and amateurs who were able to recognize the shifting trends, adjust, and do very well. It's the people who were either unable or unwilling to make the necessary shift who completely got out of photography. There's still plenty of opportunity and money in photography for people with the right mindset and skills." Wasn't that always the case? Hasn't it always been a very hard profession to be successful in?

Very well explain the business   couldn't agree more

Quote from: Pauws99 on July 19, 2016, 08:56

Hasn't it always been a very hard profession to be successful in?

What creative profession is "easy" to be successful in?

There are thousands of musicians, actors, artists, writers, etc, trying to break out in their industry. Some can make money at it, even a decent income, but very few will ever reach the top.

And the reasons why they reach the top don't always have much to do with raw talent. Many other factors are at play in creative success, including luck, timing and connections.

The profession of photography is no different from any other creative endeavor except that digitization has increased its ability to be crowd-sourced. And therein lies our current tale.

and of course business nous....I never Liked Yuris pictures much (OK I hate them) but as a business man he spotted an opportunity and made the maximum out of it.

amateurs were making a bundle with their crappy shots

Well, if I may quibble just a bit more�

Not all amateurs were then or are now producing "crappy shots." Some of us use fine "pro" equipment and are serious about producing "pro-level" images.

As I understand the term, a "pro" is usually described as someone who makes a complete living at his/her art, craft, business, profession, etc.  An "amateur" (or "advanced amateur" or "semi-pro") is somebody who may be very skillful but whose primary income comes from another field of endeavor. Even retirees from another profession (like me) can produce "semi-pro" work capable of competing well with what the "pros" produce.

And many of us "amateurs" are not johnny-come-latelys either. We aren't the reason SS's sales have dropped this year.

My first stock site was iStock, where I applied in 2008 and was accepted on the first round. The next year, I applied to Shutterstock, and was also accepted on the first round. For 3-4 years, my port was accepted (*always on the first round*) by iS, SS, FT, Adobe/FT, DT, P5, Veer, and Envato/PhotoDune. I've since dropped out of all but SS and DT, and dropped-out-and-come-back-in-again at FT/Adobe, because of the way the others treated their contributors.

Guess that's the biggest luxury of not being a "pro" and earning all my income from photography. I don't have to put up with the agencies' cr*p.


EDITED: I originally wrote "Verio" when I meant "Veer" and have corrected that.

Quote from: Microstockphoto on July 19, 2016, 10:32

amateurs were making a bundle with their crappy shots

Well, if I may quibble just a bit more�

Not all amateurs were then or are now producing "crappy shots." Some of us use fine "pro" equipment and are serious about producing "pro-level" images.

As I understand the term, a "pro" is usually described as someone who makes a complete living at his/her art, craft, business, profession, etc.  An "amateur" (or "advanced amateur" or "semi-pro") is somebody who may be very skillful but whose primary income comes from another field of endeavor. Even retirees from another profession (like me) can produce "semi-pro" work capable of competing well with what the "pros" produce.

And many of us "amateurs" are not johnny-come-latelys either. We aren't the reason SS's sales have dropped this year.

My first stock site was iStock, where I applied in 2008 and was accepted on the first round. The next year, I applied to Shutterstock, and was also accepted on the first round. For 3-4 years, my port was accepted (*always on the first round*) by iS, SS, FT, Adobe/FT, DT, P5, Verio, and Envato/PhotoDune. I've since dropped out of all but SS and DT, and dropped-out-and-in-again from FT/Adobe, because of the way the others treated their contributors.

Guess that's the biggest luxury of not being a "pro" and earning all my income from photography. I don't have to put up with the agencies' cr*p.

well written response, martha.

what some myopic individual refuse to see the point here is not about rinder and others coming in here to whine and complain about something "non-factual".
simply because the sordid pro is making money these days does not mean the rest of the experienced contributors are suddenly becoming incompetent.
that is such an imbecile mentality or at worst, haughty-taughty.

remember, rinder and the majority here ... were making SODs regularly
before their port fell off the cliff and SODs disappeared.

no doubt , when the market crashes, someone is still making money.
to say the rest of the people here should smarten up is a bit cocky, if not naive.

cheer on my myopic friend ! rinder is not just crabby for his own interest.
if many of the old contributors have seen a shortfall in comparision to the "olden day" (2015)
as cathy coins it,
it is not a good omen for us...
neither is it a good omen for you . 

we are all in the same boat, and if you think you alone are doing well
enough to ignore the fact ,
when the boat sinks, you will be the first one to be dragged down as well.

paulie, when you check the first images submitted to shutterstock, you will see it wasnt high quality, it was never the case that amateurs submitted higher quality than pros, if there was high quality, it was from the pros jumping in when they found out amateurs were making a bundle with their crappy shots. if so, we are to blame, not the amateurs. Macro was a closed shop and pros were sitting on their high horses, wich ultimately led to the creation of low priced images in a different payment model

Again, note that I said "pro" quality not "high" quality. Different terms and definitions.

From what I've seen pro quality varies and I think it has been totally redefined over the past decade. I've seen some old pros talking about how bad things have gotten. When I looked at their ports I saw a lot of walkaround snapshots of trees, buildings, and basic stuff that could easily be replicated by anyone with a cellphone. At one time those kinds of pros probably made big money because agencies had full control over limiting contributors and the image supply which allowed them to set pricing very high. I've seen old pros with some amazing highly saleable work. But I've also seen amateurs with amazing sellable work. Crap sells as long as it's cheap enough.

So to your point, even if all pros refused to join micro, the pricing downfall would have happened anyway but probably a bit slower. There were, and are, plenty of amateurs who would have produced saleable work that would have caused buyers to shift from pro macro to micro anyway. And a lot of pros would still need to either join micro or starve. I still see a few holdouts who always said "RM or die" and now they seem to be giving in or giving up.

For the pros who jumped in early, along with the flood of amateurs, what do you expect? A few years ago contributors were bragging about making crazy money, posting free how-to-succeed-at-micro blogs, and on and on. The world got invited to the goldrush and now it's turning into a ghost town.

We're all responsible for where things are at today.

andres rodriguez was a web designer before the became a photographer. he was an amateur photographer when he joined shutterstock in 2004, this is one of his first images, super talented guy, but crappy photos to start with, this was the level found on ss in the early days, this is not high end nor pro commercial stuff



i wonder how many sales he got on that one, haha

I didn't notice until today because the numbers aren't that significant, but the other site that is running at about half normal for me is BigStock. My other micro sites are normal or above normal.

Coincidence?

"For the pros who jumped in early, along with the flood of amateurs, what do you expect? A few years ago contributors were bragging about making crazy money, posting free how-to-succeed-at-micro blogs, and on and on. The world got invited to the goldrush and now it's turning into a ghost town." With hindsight its pretty obvious that this wouldn't last I think (hope) we are in for a period of slow decline so its a case of how best to cope in that environment.

Not even hindsight. Trends were showing years ago where things were headed. I went with Plan B in 2013. Glad I did.