> Thanks, Ken. I'm still making enough to make the effort worthwhile, but
> just barely!
Yes, but my stuff sucks. That's why I'm making only lunch money and
that's if I eat off of the dollar menu. I get the McDouble, eat one
half and save the other for the next day. Fortunately, extra pickles
don't cost any more. I save those for dessert.
> Crowd-sourcing is also providing
> them with tons of photos for free. I can't afford to work for nothing!
With film, there was a cost of entry into the stock game that thinned
so much of the herd. No such barrier now. Just look at how many
millions of photos Alamy has on file.
> Micro-stock was the beginning of the end and royalty-free sealed the tomb!
I held off for the longest time before letting any images go RF. It
pains me greatly. In the end, the licensed shots weren't selling, so I
was forced into it. But the RF stuff is now going for $1-5 and I've
lost anyway. Stock photography was the one thing that was really
forcing me to upgrade my camera, but without sufficient income from
stock, it made no sense to even bother.
There is another parallel to this. It's the publishing industry. The
"vanity press" has always been, but now the big time publishers have
essentially forced everybody but a hand full of celebrities into it.
There are more books published now than ever before to smaller and
smaller audiences. There is no money in it at all unless you are in
the industry providing the ISBN numbers and a gateway to Amazon. (I
could name names on this one...)
--
Ken Norton
ken@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.zone-10.com
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
|