The PhotoShelter Collection is closing down on 10 October, 2008. I had a few images there, spending hours on processing, uploading, waiting and, not least, keywording, which was a lengthy process at best. I feel sorry for the substantial amount of people who uploaded hundreds of images, all for nothing. The people at PSC managed to whip up a mass anger at the whole microstock business, in the process convincing an army of mediocre photographers that their work was worth as much as that of the pros. We can only hope that their utter failure (shutting down after less than a year and just after their “Shoot the day” competition) will act to set all the artificially inflated egos right. The most realistic scenario, though, is that PhotoShelter will manage to convince the same people that they will make lots of money if they buy storage space at their site. They will probably provide a seamless migration from PSC to the PhotoShelter archives. I’m leaving that site for good.
On a brighter note, I’ve had my first sale at SnapVillage.
The image on the left was sold at the extortionate price of $10, which gives me a handy $3, enough to buy three waffles at lunch today. Ok, so now we know that SnapVillage can attract buyer(s). They have a few things going for them. Their uploading process is very fast (although they don’t provide FTP batch uploads), they will keyword for you, you can set your own prices and they are owned by Corbis. This latter fact has baffled me for a while. You’d think they had the resources to shape up their web pages more than they have. They’ll have to step up quite a bit to keep afloat with iStock and the others dominating the game. Good luck to them; now I’ll consider uploading more of my portfolio (at least I would if they had an FTP server, how hard can it be?).
My first sale at 123rf.com also went through a couple of days ago. My fourth waffle will be purchased with the $1.29 I made from that transaction. No, seriously, this site looks promising. I’ve seen around the web that other people are enthusiastic, too. Maybe I will start uploading for real now.
