I have been using microsoft software for about 20 years now with only a few minor problems.  I know lots of people who blame everything that goes wrong on microsoft when it is often down to operator error

I have been using microsoft software for about 20 years now with only a few minor problems.  I know lots of people who blame everything that goes wrong on microsoft when it is often down to operator error

I have been using MS products for almost as long myself.  Win 3.x "blue screen of death" was not an uncommon problem, though.  An IE has always been a source of security issues.

Advanced users of MS Word also suffered a lot in the upgrade (this hasn't been an issue in the latest versions). Macros for one didn't read well in the newer versions. My M.Sc. dissertation, typed in WinWord 2.0 (my favourite version ever) was unreadable in the next version - text ok, but formulae became a bunch of awkward symbols. Ok, Equation Editor was not a MS product, but was part of the installed software.

I wouldn't stop using MS software because, after all, it is a de facto standard, but it normally shows more flaws than one would expect from a high-priced piece of software from a big company.

Regards,
Adelaide

yeah, you make a good point.

if more sites does not mean more buyers (and there is no reason why it SHOULD mean more buyers), then uploading to more than X number of sites is just giving the customers too much choice.  Customers will go to different sites, just because of preferance, and they will use as many usefull sites as there are... BUT if we the photographers are not going to get swamped in the uploading process - for our sake, it would be best to have max 5 or 6 sites.... any more (or whatever the magic number is) and we are just creating more work for ourselves.

the more sites we upload to - the more choice we are giving the buyers where to shop and makes it so that we HAVE to upload to all the sites in order to get decent sales.  If EVERYONE uploaded to ONLY 3 to 5 sites then that is the only place the customers would go to and it would be less work for us.

But what is the magic number for how many sites to upload to???  i dunno...

Hmm, you guys are right. Just imagine people will stick to the big 5, much less work. That got me an idea, just a thought. Why does not microstock photographers build a kind of interest group. Imagine the power of a group of 500 photographers.
They could decide as a group to not upload to a new site. If the offer will be good, e.g. as a member of a group you get more percentage per download and if the leaders of the group thinks this new site is worth the effort, the group can decide to upload to the site. This will be declared official to all members and members will be encouraged to upload. Members can also be discouraged to upload to a specific site, if that site is not doing a good job representing the photographers work. However this would be on a voluntarily basis. And each photographers can still make his own descisions.
Just a thought. What do you think is that a possibility?

the idea of a union has bounced around in my head a number of times and i think it could be good for a number of reasons.

the union could possibly sway sites to give a decent percent of the image sale to the photographer
new sites would have to have to offer a decent amount, and too many sites could be stopped from coming into the business.
and probably other good ideas... the problem however is - why would a photographer WANT to be part of the union.  if prices go up at a stock site they would go up for everyone even the ones not part of the union.  i can't see a reason why a stock site would want to favor the union in any way.

the union could sway stock sites to raise the prices or something of the like, but that would only work if every photographer threatened and followed through with withdrawing their images.  That is a lot of work for each individual, and if only half of the people did it, it would be fruitless.

so hmm yeah.. a union is a good idea, but how to give advantages to the photographer? why would soneone want to join.  and what would be the point really... other than guidance or suggestions.

if people could submit to a site or not (even if the union was 'against' it) then it sort of defeats the purpose of the union.  that is like having a strike and telling people that if they WANT to go to work they can... if they want to picket, they can..... ...

Yes a union
Well, I think it allways depends how big the union is. I am convinced for start-up agencies you probably can make such a special deal just for union photographers. I want to say it must not be a big investment for the start-up agency. Just make the descicion to give the photographers 50% instead of 30%. As an agency I would prefer having twice as much images because of union photographers and giving them 50% instead of having half the amount of photographers and give them 30%. The first payouts will take a while anyway.
For the big agencies it cannot do much unless the union is really big.
Why should photographers join, if there wont be any special deals for union members? Maybe joint interest? But you probably would not get enough photographers in the beginning. After you have a certain number people you will gain momentum and probably more start to join the union I guess. You are right there must be something more to attract photographers.
Well to withdraw images is a  boarderline action I would say. Probably you wont find much photographers who will do that if you have a good income ther.  But you can build up pressure by hundrets of photographers stopping to upload images and instead keep uploading to other agencies.
Was just a thought.

Vague feeling is, amount of laws violated by cutting bigger percentage to unionized photographers will exceed amount of fingers on the hands on all union members... not a lawyer though, so maybe not.

But really, why would agency want to motivate contributors to unite and form a potentially threatening body? If anything, agency will want us to stay as we are. Which is not necessary a bad thing btw, the way unions impact business is quite controversial matter.

i think we do have a reasonably functioning interest group here allready... with a few people testing the waters is most every stock site, ... so we get to test every site collectivly without actually submitting images there ourselves.  Then the best of the sites, however many the individual wants to submit too are brought forward in our monthly updates, or just general discussion and in the end it seems each of us submits to the best X amount of sites he/she sees fit.

I if want to only submit to three sites and want the best sites, it wouldn't take me long to find out which ones they were if i read a couple threads here or asked a couple questions.

which... i think is one of the most helpful things about this community... that we can find out about all the new sites and if things are 'starting to happen' there without spending all the time of uploading and testing ourselves - the probably hundreds of sites there are now.

I can see the point of a union but the main point of it would be to stop new sites.  We already have enough.  I dont care what they offer, we dont really need any more.  Therefore what we need is a group (and it would need to include all the big names) to just say no to new sites.

New joiners could join them but with out all the good photos, they would eventually gravitate to the say 6-10 "union approved" sites.

Well that's what Adelaide was reffering to;  we had a thread about building a coop site few months ago.

That was a great idea but building a new site is I think a full time job!!!

And we would end up with another new stocksite 

Claude

I personally do not think people take us serious enough to consider the coop idea worthwhile.

For a start, I don't see any of the current site owners jumping over themselves to deal with us, and added to that, neither the camera manufacturers or Adobe seem to be all that interested in taking us serious, despite how much we spend with them.

Otherwise we would have Canon and Adobe keen to present themselves to us - here - and keen to get our feedback on new models etc.

Which is really weird to me considering there is supposed to be 40,000 stockies worldwide, and this site is probably one of the leading forums on the topic.

Quote from: madelaide on July 15, 2007, 16:16

This is the Microstock Coop forum section, for those who haven't followed this discussion:
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?board=39.0

Regards,
Adelaide

Is that section restricted access?? While I'm interested in the discussion about a photographers union, there would be significant problems, particularly if you started trying to effectively blackban new or existing sites. Still I don't really understand why people contribute to some of the smaller sites. Maybe with more images online you start to see money coming in - but the rate is so slow that I wonder sometimes. For me, only IS, SS and DT really seem to be worthwhile, with Fotolia fluctuating between marginal and mediocre.

Holgs, I agree with you about the futility of uploading to some of the smaller sites, however, I am suprised you don't submit to StockXpert, I find them at least on a par with DT, if not better.

next press release will be we dont currently have FTP support but will do once we implement FTP support.

Interesting that they are doing blog press releases on functions that they haven't yet released.  It may stop the moaning but will jsut start the questions, of when.  I am off to ask that now.