Quote from: Robin@Symbiostock on February 14, 2016, 22:21

The best unified solution that is slowly gaining traction (and would benefit everyone quicker if all the professional yet disgruntled contributors hopped on) is Symzio.

For the first time there is a real option here - so don't keep complaining unless you've done everything you can to free yourself from the yoke of agencies. You control most of your own pricing, control your entire collection, have two new independent platforms to sell your stuff, and most importantly, keep a minimum of 70% of all revenue up to 90%.

No one is going to hand you a solution - you need to work for it. No matter how many posts you put up, no matter how many angry retorts or insults you upvote, and no matter how many programs you opt out of, the only feasible way to create a noticeable impact is to compete.

I agree with Robin. Thats why I've always said Micro is 20% + or - of my Income , It never was supposed to be more than that from Day one. Im a commercial Photographer and have been 25 Years before micro.....A gun for Hire, I do food menus,Seagrams,maytag,jewelry,Actor headshots and Furniture Catalogs,Glamour retouching for others,I teach,co-author Books ,Lectures and workshops around the country. And I Live Very well On the copyrights I own for 460TV shows,37 Films and 48 Music Albums. All of which I produced and own. I also have Major Interior designer contacts selling My paintings to Hotels, Banks,Whatever.. it's a business Guys and Im ALWAYS looking for opportunities..

And if your not ready or up to this? well then ya better get going or.....Take what they give or get out.

Thats the difference, You wanna be a working pro? get . out of this and do the work Promoting your work to clients. Ya, There still there and world wide  But, you have to go get them if you have the right stuff and that means being able to shoot and process More than one or 2 subjects.. And have the equipment necessary to do it for whatever comes along.  [A week ago, I shot a Insurance company Indoors...80 People scattered 2 floors on stairs.] 6 ..600 watt strobes 3 assistants.] Thats what it is. 5 hours for one shot.
I could never have made the money I need to live on Doing this alone and was always blown away by folks that could. Wanna know what makes me crazy?,, there are millions of great artists, Painters,Photographers,Musicians Dancers,actors..etc that will never be seen... Why?,, Because they dont possess the need to succeed, The drive,The self promotion and all the other stuff it takes.

I've said this a 100 times Shooting the Job is the easiest part. Getting the Job and keeping the job Is a 1000 times more difficult. especially since digital Came along.

If any of you can't or don't want to Promote yourselves....even a little. stick with Micro and accept whatever. Or...Put your foot down and say no More and make it a business. and as much as I respect Robin, Thats really Not the way either UNLESS you got some CHUTZPAH and go for it. Your the one that has to make it happen.

My Old friend Yuri was a textbook Perfect example of what Im saying He could have been anything he wanted. WORK ETHIC= Promotion=Just enough Talent.

Is there some BS involved?  Of course. Don't fool yourselves.


Here's the method. when you see a crack in a door, do you wonder whats on the other side and peep through the crack ? Or do you just Knock the * thing down and walk in?? It better be the latter guys. It's not like you found the cure for cancer, Your taking Pictures.....Like a Million Others. Selling Is the art part.

Do I send everything I do to Microstock??...Hell No.

i agree...100%...it's very difficult indeed begin now to build up a career than 25 years ago...
i am moving to quality also, rm fine art assignment, finding an agent, already with 2 rm news editorial big agency...microstock for me is just the way now to collect some money to finance gears and travel...and i upload what in lightroom i catalog one or 2 star maximum. everything unique, with quality, with a theme behind no way.
now time to upload footage especially aerial. planning to add 1000 1500 dollar every month till i can, in the time moving completely to other area of photography, so next year i could just collect money sometimes from micro stock.

When micro started, it was mostly 'amateurs' who were submitting, it's not a 'now' thing. In fact, iS started as a sharing site, with no money changing hands.

When micro started, it was mostly 'amateurs' who were submitting, it's not a 'now' thing. In fact, iS started as a sharing site, with no money changing hands.

You are right and people like Yuri Acurs spotted a business opportunity and turned it into a full time business .......it may be the last few years are an anomaly unfortunately.

Quote from: ShadySue on February 24, 2016, 09:58

When micro started, it was mostly 'amateurs' who were submitting, it's not a 'now' thing. In fact, iS started as a sharing site, with no money changing hands.

You are right and people like Yuri Acurs spotted a business opportunity and turned it into a full time business .......it may be the last few years are an anomaly unfortunately.

yuri had a shooting at maldives costing him thousand dollar...other traveled to exotic location...like antartica...many did photoshooting costing thousand of dollar...i'm talking of the second period of micro stock, from 2009 to 2012 probably ended...now who is doing this? considering that big agency are uploading their portfolio...and a lot of people from poorer country are uploading model shooting that cost nothing.

istock made its success early on because it motivated people with talent to produce sellable images. For the people that produced those types of images on a consistent basis, the returns were great.
The turning points always happen when the agency starts to abuse its relationship with the contributor and takes more than it deserves. It amazes me to see how clueless the people are that are running these agencies. It probably has to do with the fact that these people think the company's success is directly tied with whatever decisions they themselves make when in fact, they have very little or no impact because its the content and nothing else that is driving the sales.
When that content is all coming from certain areas of the world that is culturally different than the buying market, the buyers will start looking elsewhere.

They may be greedy grasping etc but I really don't think Shutterstock is clueless.....I think what tends to be overlooked is the marketing element you can have the best content in the world but if no one knows you've got it its worthless and I suspect if customers of SS start telling them they haven't got the right content they would act

Isn't microstock really meant to be about cheap and cheerful images as reflected in the price? The model of selling thousands of images to recoup huge outlay was never going to be sustainable.

That's what I always thought the intention was. If an ad agency or other company wanted excellent, high-dollar shots, they could go to the macro agencies. I thought microstock was to fulfill the low end of the market, the small to medium sized companies who couldn't afford $100-$200 per image and were ok with a little less quality. The original business model didn't change just because pro photographers thought it should compensate them for high-dollar shoots.

With that being said, as an early contributor to istock, then other agencies, I always thought that our earnings would increase as the years went by, not go down. 

Quote from: Pauws99 on February 24, 2016, 11:57

They may be greedy grasping etc but I really don't think Shutterstock is clueless.....I think what tends to be overlooked is the marketing element you can have the best content in the world but if no one knows you've got it its worthless and I suspect if customers of SS start telling them they haven't got the right content they would act

Only if it would make the stock jump.

Well of course why would you think they would do anything otherwise?

Isn't microstock really meant to be about cheap and cheerful images as reflected in the price? The model of selling thousands of images to recoup huge outlay was never going to be sustainable.

selling it cheap is not the problem. the golden M and KFC sold quick non-cordon bleu food cheaply
and is still thriving with lots of copycats.
the issue is not that microstock cannot sustain at low prices. the issue is when you give away lifetime-usage at low price. imagine a eat all you want for a lifetime $15 restuarant...
and you have ss is etc.
even at a so-called all you can eat at $15 still restricts you from coming in to eat
and taking away more food in a paper-bag. there is someone watching you to make sure you
do not replace yourself with your friend,etc... to make sure all you can eat
means all your stomach can eat without taking anything home with you.

you can go to the WC to puke it all out, and eat some more. but you cannot bring anything home .
microstock lets you bring all the food home too... after you ate and puke and ate and puke..

that is what makes microstock unsustainable

istock had a different strategy. With their upload limits, they severly limted the growth of the stock factories, while giving exclusive artists a real boost. I think 40% or more of the content on istock used to be exclusive.

The single artist, even if they work full time, will produce something between 150-300 files a month. Many quality artists only upload around 100 files a month. But as an istock exclusive, we had average download values of 4-12 dollars, plus excellent visibility. To encourage single artists to work fulltime for istock and invest strongly in their shootings was the clear goal of management and community.

But without upload limits, the single artists gets lost in the flood, demand is much lower than files coming in, the whole system of getting hundreds or thousands of downloads per file is dead.

So those who do stock fulltime are forced to move on to the places that encourage single, full time artists, not the stock machines.

I really don�t see how Shutterstock can get out of this dilemma. Single, full time artists need a special environment to work in, that they simply cannot provide.

Also I don�t really think they need us, the mix of stock factories and happy amateurs who just need a little gear money seems to work really well for them.

It would need very major changes, to make Shutterstock the first agency a full time stock artist will focus on. They will always be part of the mix that you upload to and seem to be the best of the micros, but unless the content is ultra, utra generic, I see no way you can justify investing in shootings for Shutterstock.

The number of full time stock artists seems to be going down anyway, so why cater to a dying breed. They can always get our content for Offset via specialized agencies.

Agree. they [The smart ones] Have been gone quite awhile.

^^ buy some shares from ss than you are on both sides.

[
The number of full time stock artists seems to be going down anyway, so why cater to a dying breed.

As usual you offer a thoughtful and good analysis....I just wonder if there is any evidence for you last statement?
[/quote]

Well, you can look at how many people are signing up to various boards, including this one. If there were more and more full timers, you would also have a lot more serious part timers, asking lots more questions etc..

Overall I don�t see many new people getting in, here and also on the facebook boards. There was a wave of new groups and boards popping up after fotolia and istock cracked down on artists, but otherwise if you walk around the online community, you see the same faces everywhere.

This was different when there was serious growth and people were optimistic about their earning prospects. We got tons of new people getting into the community, networking their way around.

And then I just look around my friends and longterm stock artists I follow, unless they made it into the small agencies - blend, stocksy,etc...they all seem to be working on plan B, getting back into assignment work or whatever else they did before doing stock fulltime.

I am sure there are still tons of people signing up, trying to make some money and with mobile uploads, there is a new group of people being reached. But at least in the community that I am active in, I don�t see a lot of interest of taking their stock journey further, they seem to be content with getting lucky and having some money for gear or a dinner with friends. And they certainly don�t plan and invest in productions.

But just following numbers of people registering here, should be a good indicator, this is still the biggest board in the English language community and if you are serious about making money with stock, you will always check back here.

Full time stock artists need a reliable income model to be able to streamline and finance their productions. That seems to be more and more difficult, even Yuri Arcurs and his huge team hit the wall and decided to try a form of exclusivity with Getty to make it work.

If the biggest stock machine in the industry is in trouble, the normal, single artist has no real chance. We cannot all transform into large studios with many employees to shoot more and more content.

Most of us are single entrepreneurs and don�t want to run a large business. So we have to adapt our stores to accept the flood, which means going after plan B or shifting attention to smaller agencies that will bundle our work and basically function as a stock factory under a brand name with many single artists.

If people make money, nothing puts them off. And the flood shows you how many people have signed up and are trying. But once they move towards taking it seriously, they start networking and will show up here and elsewhere.

I am not sure the agencies will miss us at all. The stock machines create great quality, so do the smaller cooperatives like Blendimages, westend61 etc...that distribute via the agencies.

So they will always get high quality from them.

Snapshot images come from hobby artists and mobile uploaders...no I think their main problem is how to subdivide the flood to make it easier for their customer to find what they need.

The only advantage of full time artists is that we often really explore one niche in depth over many years. Some become experts in just making cakes from all around the world, others focus only on disabled children, the next has a huge portfolio of always holding up the same cute object in front of the worlds landmarks...or just movement blurs of these locations. The in depth knowledge on a special theme, with lots of experience what customers really need (because I happen to be a horse breeder, or doctor or restaurant owner myself)...that is the real advantage of the full time single artists.

They see their portfolio as a business and really make a huge effort to offer a complete service to their customer.

But you need a platform that encourages people to see themselves as creative entrepreneurs and they need enough money to be able to really get into their niche.

So quality of files is not what they will miss, but diversity, that will certainly go down, because everyone is just playing it safe, shooting ultrageneric duplicates, if there is no money in specialization.