Prediction: SV is done. The site is awful, they were down for 3 days, they pissed off a lot of contributors and probably a lot of buyers, and oh yeah, they don't sell many images.

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openpathdesign.com Microstock - A Crash Course

I don't think they are done. They were a beta site and had more sales than albumo who launched at the same time. They have been spending money on advertising, unlike the sites that fail. They are owned by Corbis, so not likely to run out of money. Fotolia messed up with v2 but the buyers stuck with them. They have disappointed so far but lets see if they can get going now.

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istock-Shutterstock-Bigstock-Mostphotos-Dreamstime-Stockxpert

Why the hard case against SV?

We have one site that goes down every weekend, three just closed, two new ones that don't sell anything and don't market, one that limits uploads to 15 a week, another just hired Atilla the reviewer... and people are angry at SV that just came out of beta yesterday?

In agreement, somewhat, you can't piss off the buyers by missing a weekend and one day very much, especially when there are hardly any buyers. And as for the sellers, pretty much the same. Hardly anyone has a ton of photos up or makes many sales, because the uploading system isn't activated yet. Not much to miss with three days down?

That puts me firmly in the wait and see category.

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I agree we should just wait a bit longer before bitching too loudly. They've been justifiably criticized since day one, especially by me. But since LO is gone who can I kick around anymore? YayMicro is too new. And they've done so many right things. So it's got to be SnapV. Let's give them another day or so grace period now that they've finally dropped the beta off the name.

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istockPhoto
Shutterstock
Dreamstime
Stockxpert
SnapVillage
Fotolia
BigStockP
FeaturePics
YayMicro
TheNextMicroWannaBe

Yep, it's very, VERY slow...

At the moment, I have more hope for SV than yaymicro. This is because SV do have buyers and have been getting them from day 1. They might be a success just through the scale of the advertising campaign and their link to Corbis. yaymicro seem to be following the LO model so far. They have a much better looking site with FTP but I read in the forum that they don't expect many buyers until after the summer and they are not going to use the conventional way to get them. That reminds me a lot of LO and I hope they change their minds quick and try to attract buyers before more sites take them away.

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istock-Shutterstock-Bigstock-Mostphotos-Dreamstime-Stockxpert

Corbis is the magic word here. It means that SV have financial backing.

The state of the economy on both sides of the Atlantic means that no other newbies are likely to have. I believe that LO was an example of how these sites try and market themselves. The budget more than likely comes from image sales of photographers that aren't likely to reach payout for sometime. Most of the spend is done with Google Adwords (10 minutes to set up and results the same day). And then it's down to hoping that the image sales continue to finance the advertising campaign AND pay out the contributers who reach the minimum threshold. Which on a new micro site isn't very many.

In this current financial climate nobody is going to get financial backing for a new micro site. So I firmly believe that it's down to the aforementioned way of raising funds. I think it's also quite possible that uploading to these sites is a shot in the foot for the photographer. If a customer buys your image on iStock you'll inevitably get paid. If they buy it on one of the new start ups you might not ever get paid AND you lose the sale at istock.

So SV is the only newbie that I'm giving any images to, because they're the ONLY one that's likely to have financial backing that isn't coming from me.

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JK

www.microstockphotography.info

I agree with you, JK. So far I've only uploaded a handful of images to SV and had two sales, but will be uploading my entire portfolio once a couple of other projects are complete. And it's because they have financial backing.

I'm so fed up with submitting images to sites that never get their footing and are long on promises and short on results. No longer am I going to waste my time uploading to a new site just to watch it fail on down the road. The loss of LO really sucked, and I don't want to suffer another blow to my income like that, so from now on I'm playing it conservatively.

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Photography by Karin Lau | SmugMug Pro Account | Shutterstock | Mostphotos | StockXPert | Dreamstime | iStock | 123RF | BigStock

I seem to have read that Yay had the backing of the GOVERNMENT of Norway. Maybe not as well heeled as Snap?

Oh. And did they take the whole weekend to program the Snap site to be the S L O W E S T possible? It can't be just my system can it?

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istockPhoto
Shutterstock
Dreamstime
Stockxpert
SnapVillage
Fotolia
BigStockP
FeaturePics
YayMicro
TheNextMicroWannaBe

I guess they meant a goverment financing. They do that in order to help start up companies, frequently run by young people, or minorities (like all women companies), or in depressed areas of the country. The do the same anywhere in Europe. You get a one off amount of money to start the company, then you can even go bankrupt, the money is yours anyway...

Here in Italy they have stolen billions that way. They plan a factory, get public money, build the exterior, then declare bankrupcy and disappear with the money. Entire areas are disseminated with these ghost factories.