Quote from: sharpshot on August 20, 2010, 11:36

That's one of the reasons why I just couldn't go exclusive.  Must be depressing having all your earnings from one site and not selling anything.  Istock is very slow for me this week, today is like a weekend day but the other sites have picked up and August is looking OK now.

Yeah, I'm ready to throw in the towel.  I had big plans at the start of the summer.  I was going to shoot enough to upload no fewer than 5 images per day, with the intent of doubling my income by Spring.  Based on my past earnings per accepted image, it seemed pretty easy.

So the last month I've had over 100 images accepted, and I think 4 of them have sales while the other ~100 or so languish.  In the meantime my previous best sellers have tanked, and now I'm thinking that if I followed through on my plans, at best I might add 10% or so to my earnings once I rebuilt it to previous levels.

Today is the first time where I hit the wall and said, "This is a waste of time and effort."  So after a month of hard work generated absolutely nothing in returns, I'm not going to keep shooting/uploading.  I'll give it until Fall.  If things pick up, I'll get active again.  If they don't, I'll go independent and cut my losses.

Want to see how buyers/graphic designers think?

http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2830&highlight=free+stock

Here's a GD forum listing all of the free stock sites they can find.

They will first search the free stuff. Then, and only then, if they can't find what they need will go buy it somewhere. For every free image that is good enough for them to use, one of us contributors just lost a sale. So the more images contributors offer for free the more the probability contributors are losing sales for themselves.

In my previous incarnation I was a GD. I did exactly that, hunt free first. Sometimes because I was doing a pro bono project, or a non profit, or just had a cheap client. Sad, now I'm on the other side. But there will always be free somewhere. 

Why would anybody pay for something when they can get it for free. Now, if the free stuff didn't exist at all what would happen? They would need to create it themselves, steal it, or.... pay for it.

What super timing to see that great link you posted, Warren.

While talking with my daughters at hospital today, I reminded them how - when their grandma had been in hospital - I printed out a large photo of Mom as a 20-something opera singer, wrote her name under it, and then taped it on the wall over her hospital bed, to help staff see her not only as their elderly patient with limited ability to communicate, but also as the vibrant, beautiful young adult she had been.