So by now most of you know that Bigstock is no longer BigstockPhoto and 123RF has also redesigned.  I’m surprised for a few reasons:

* Shutterstock (who owns Bigstock now) said the redesign proves they want to move forward with BSP.  What’s the idea of that?  Just keep stock photo buyers happy?  I like it but I wish they’d let us submit to one place and distribute on both networks.  I have many images on BSP that aren’t on SS – I’d like them combined.

* Both 123RF and Bigstock went for the black/white/grey look.  Very simple, clean, easy designs. I’ll be honest – I like both.  But they look VERY similar now!

I’m glad stuff is where I’m used to finding it, somewhat.  Bigstock’s bulk tool seems to be gone, replaced with a much better one at a time engine.  Still wish it worked more like Canstock or even SS.  Submissions are so much easier at those places without the “delay” of javascript.  I don’t want smooth transitions – I want SPEED.

Bigstock listed a lot of new changes here.  I want to look at a few more closely.

• A new and enhanced search engine (interesting – will have to search my stuff later)
• Additional search engine optimizations for Google and others
• Improvements to the collection: checking metadata and enhancing the search algorithm

I’m interested to see how their changes play out.  I would love for BSP to kick it up a notch and remain a player, even growing.  We just saw IStock kill StockXpert and the contributor side of that pretty much sucked (told you I’d be honest!)  I would be grateful and glad to see Shutterstock market and push Bigstock for one-off downloads.

As far as 123RF, their official twitter (does Alex run this ship?) says “The redesign of 123RF is NOT the END, it’s only the beginning!”  I sure hope so!  I’d like to see the beginning of shorter wait times for reviews, less of the truly bad “poor lighting” rejects and of course more dollars and cents.  PS: Note to 123RF, fix the “Check FTP uploads” screen – it doesn’t scroll right.  It looks a right mess.

What do you think of the changes?  Good, bad, indifferent?

Ok so the previous record for funniest rejection reason belonged to Dreamstime for an image that had people in it but no visible faces.  I wanted to stay safe and therefore uploaded the model releases for those subjects as I had releases for everyone in the photo.

Rejected: No model release needed.

Now that’s hilarious stuff.  I’m impressed with the high comedy of a rejection for adding an extra release to an image with those people in it.  However, today, all has been surpassed.  In fact, I’m not sure this one from Shutterstock can EVER be topped.

Not approved. Reason: Approved.

Now it only took me a minute or two to realize “OHHHHH I already submitted the same image!”  That’s so rare for me that I make this kind of mistake I was in shock!  I have a very good organizational system and so it never crossed my mind.  But Not Approved: Approved.  That one made me laugh a GREAT BIG laugh!

Ahhhh!  I love this business.  Thank you funny reviewer.

Shutterstock announced recently that it now has 10 MILLION images for sale.

“In a typical week, Shutterstock adds 80,000 new images – a rate of nearly eight images every minute”

I wonder what this means for our future.  Will Shutterstock eventually stop carrying images that are 3+ yrs old and have never sold?  How can the collection be refined to provide better results and better images without growing so large any search result inevitably looks like the pages & pages & pages found on Google?

Alamy has grown so big it has basically swallowed itself.  Zazzle offers almost 30M products for sale yet very few ever sell.  Where is the balance between having these huge collections and having absolutely unfindable material?

I’m interested in what Shutterstock will do about the size of the gallery.

Another thing Shutterstock announced was “Shutterstock has delivered over 125 million image downloads to customers since its founding in 2003.”

Let’s do a little math (numbers should be close but obviously are not internal or “accurate”).  That amounts to 6 full years.  20 million image downloads a year = 1.6M a month = 60,000 a day everyday for 6 years.

Over 12,000 sales I have averaged .40 per download.  Assuming this is fairly close to their own numbers (12k isn’t a small sample) then Shutterstock has paid out $5,000,000 to contributors over 6 years.

Approximately 1/2 of 1% of the gallery is downloaded on a typical day.  We know it’s not that spread out but that’s the amazing potential we have in microstock.

Hi & welcome back! NiltoMil is officially off and running again – I’m keywording, submitting, pushing images and then working on shooting some new today.  I’m going to be pushing some older images even though I know they won’t sell as well as I’d like simply because I want the momentum to begin NOW not in a month when I get new stuff edited.

I’m ready for 2010!  January will be a very poor month since I’m starting so late but February should show some recovery.

In the last 6 months when I was mainly gone:

• Shot weddings – and we have 4 other photographers who shot during that time as well.
• Sold my house/bought a new house – a fixer-upper.  We’ve been working on it almost everyday since Nov 20th for 12+ hours per day.
• Delved into the food styling/preparing/photo world.  I’ve read almost every post on Still Life With, Matt Bites, and many other foodie blogs.  I’ve devoured four entire food photography books including Rinder/Smith’s new book and Lou Manna’s classic.
• Redesigned our business brand
• Traveled to Maine, twice.  Traveled to NYC.

Now that I’m back my goal is to create an income that will pay my mortgage first, other bills later.  Our mortgage is $680.  This is an achievable goal that I do have to reach for. I’ll do a more extensive goals post in the next week or so but that’s the start of it.

Current BME: $575.46, July 2008

As if wedding season here wasn’t busy enough, we just bought a new house!

So here’s my shoot idea:  I’m going to shoot the ENTIRE thing.  Shoot the packing the moving out, the empty new place, cleaning it up, boxes packed, the moving van/truck, new colors on the wall, colors half on the walls as its being done – all sorts of moving concepts.

I’m very excited to get back to work.  The summer months are always an incredibly difficult time for me to concentrate on stock – we shot 20 weddings in 15 weeks and we have 4 more over the next 2 weeks.  After that, I’m FREE!  NiltoMil will be BACK and ready to rock.

Anyhoo – so BSP is now a part of the SS empire, SXP is part of the Getty universe.  It really is going to come down to those 2 until it starts to fracture again, isn’t it?  I love business – it’s so predictable.  Fracturing, consolidation, aging, breaking apart…

What’s up in your lives since the beginning of the summer?  Just update me – products (ISyndica? Lookstat?), people, places you’ve gone – I’m just interested in the people part of having this blog right now – what have YOU been doing since we last really caught up? 

Ah June.  Smells of bbq, flowers and sales worth dog poop.

As always my chart (which was done on the 1st btw!) is here.  And for Lee who is self-proclaimed lazy, I’m posting a June chart:

The work … well … let’s see.  For the month I started strong and have had a terrible last two weeks.  I had some personal stuff come up that has interfered with “work.”  I would say for the month I did about 4 days of uploading at about 2  hrs a day so 8 hrs of work.  My income increased from last month by $47 and I earned a total of $455.02. I did no shooting for stock in June and added only about 160 new images to my galleries.  That’s consistent with the time I think I put in.  So my income increased slightly on very little work.  Eh.

Two BME’s – StockXpert continues to burn up the charts, continuing in 3rd on my charts behind only SS and DT.  CutCaster also earned $4.02 breaking the previous high of $3.19.  Heh.   Other notes: Canstock had another Fotosearch DL, the 5th one in 5 months.  I like that.  I have many non-earners that may get permanently removed very soon.

At the halfway point of the year I think it’s important to take a look at where I am.

I’m not shooting enough.
I’m not editing enough.
I’m not uploading enough.

That about sums it up – decent return for almost no work I’ve done but wow, ok.  I am done playing around now.

According to PR Web, stock use is up – and that’s good for us.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/StockPhotography/CutsCosts/prweb2512104.htm

“Thanks to Shutterstock’s extensive library of over 7 million premium images, our subscribers always know that they’ll be able to find the perfect photo, vector or illustration for their creative projects,” Shutterstock President Adam Riggs said.

The stat?  Over 40 percent of designers are using more stock photography to lower costs in 2009 compared to last year. What does that mean?  Bad news for Chase Jarvis, good news for us, I guess.  So get shooting!

My upload strategy of late has been momentum.  I think if we upload consistently rather than doing Power Week then nothing, we’re going to be better with sales and have a better acceptance ratio.  So far that has proven to be true.  I am now almost a full week into this consistent strategy and what I’m finding is that sales on SS, DT and SXP are rising.  Fotolia always takes awhile and BSP/123RF don’t sell enough to notice trends yet.  This consistent approach is also good for my portfolio.  Let’s take a look at where I was/am as an update.

• Shutterstock 1/1 – 1441
• Shutterstock 6/7 – 2395




• Dreamstime 1/1 – 1570
• Dreamstime 6/7 – 2346




• Fotolia 1/1 – 646
• Fotolia 6/7 – 1696




• StockXpert 1/1 – 1365
• StockXpert 6/7 – 2758




• Bigstock 1/1 – 1540
• Bigstock 6/7 – 2857

5 full months of uploading has nearly doubled my gallery on many sites, +700 or 900 new images on many other sites.  However, I’m nowhere near where I need to be on images, sales or earnings to get what I want.  So this change, along with some other new things I will be doing, will hopefully get me closer to goal.

So from now on, I’m uploading 25 a day 5 days a week, every week.  I think 500 new approved images a month is going to have to be a “good enough” goal.  If I can manage that, by the end of this year I will have 3500 new images or over 5000 on every site (except IS of course!)

Another goal that will happen this month – I’m adding at least a couple batches to DeepMeta for Istock, submitting more to Fotolia and trying to create some images that may sell better than things I have now.  We need to improve out quality to keep up with the best in this business!

Just an update for some of you who have been waiting for information from me or Shutterstock.  I will continue to add to this at the bottom of this list so please check back.

* The email Shutterstock sent is *not* being received as “an official signed letter” and it is very likely at this point that Shutterstock will need to mail you one.  Please do not file your ITIN until this is resolved as you may waste time & money.

* We are still waiting on the answers to two important questions: 1) will US sales only be counted? and 2) what percent of sales are US based?  I will update those AS SOON as I get the information.

* You will receive a form 1042 at the end of the year to show your withheld earnings.   This may be used to reduce taxes in your own country, depending on your tax laws.  It is proof of withholdings in the US.  http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1042.pdf

* Please see my previous post for a country-by-country list of threads on Shutterstock to help you deal with the situation.  I will keep it updated for as long as possible/reasonable.

* If you have a SSN or EIN you should contact support@shutterstock.com with that information.  It is possible you do not need an ITIN because all three are “id numbers” which is basically what you need.

* The best step-by-step tutorial on this so far is here.  Your specific country thread may provide more info.

* If your country is not on the treaty list in this thread, do not apply for an ITIN because it will not help you.  You are subject to 30% withholding from the US.    Sorry.

* For help in Russian, visit http://www.zastavkin.com/forum for German, see FotoTalk

Yikes!  Ok, full disclosure I am a photographer in the US so all of this new tax & Shutterstock doesn’t apply to me.  I would bet it applies to many of my friends and readers though so I want to cover this to the best of my ability so you guys get some clear, exact answers in one place.

If you post your questions here, I will do my best to get an answer and post it here as well.  I’ve read all 75 pages of the long thread as well as many of the other threads and have seen a lot of answers already.

Edit to add: Shutterstock just emailed me to let me know that whatever questions you post, we can try and get answers to.

What is the issue?

First, read the original post.

If you are not a US citizen or resident, and you do not obtain an ITIN and provide Shutterstock with a Form W-8BEN, US law requires them to withhold 30% from your earnings. If you are a member of one of our tax treaty countries you will have less withheld, sometimes 0% extra.  If your country is not on the list, you will have 30% withheld for income on Royalties.

Why?

US tax law imposes a 30% withholding tax on US source passive income, such as royalties, that are paid to persons who are not citizens or residents of the United States. US tax law requires the person paying the royalties to withhold the tax and pay it to the US Internal Revenue Service. If the person receiving the royalties is a resident of a country that has an income tax treaty with the United States, the withholding tax may be reduced or eliminated. However, to take advantage of the lower withholding tax US tax law requires that the person receiving the royalty payments provide a properly completed Form W-8BEN. US tax law also requires that the person who provides a Form W-8BEN for this purpose have an ITIN.

A lot of people are wondering “why do we pay this – what benefit do we get in the US?”  The answer, although you won’t like it, is that you get the benefit of selling your work in the US and under IRS tax law, you ARE doing business in the United States if you sell to US companies.

More Details

If you are in a country with no tax treaty with the US, you seem to be stuck paying 30% no matter what.

The payouts going out for May will not be affected but June’s may be affected.

If you wish for your account to be removed, the SS CEO is offering to remove it for you.

Yes, US residents pay their tax – we pay it in April as income tax.  We know you pay yours in your home country too.

At the end of the year, you will get a Form 1042 from Shutterstock.  This can be found here: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1042.pdf  You will know your tax liabilities in the US.

ITIN Info

• ITIN FAQ’s in English
• ITIN FAQ’s in Spanish
• Obtaining an ITIN from Abroad
• Publication 1915, Understanding Your Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (PDF)

So what can we do?

Step By Step Tutorial

Armenia

Australia

Canada

Czechs

Croatia

France

Germany post

Greece

Italy

Latvia

Lithuania

Malta

Malaysia

Mexico

Netherlands

Poland

Russia

Romania

Serbia

Sweden

UK

How to Notarize a passport (copy) info (multiple countries)

A bit of info in Spanish

All questions for Shutterstock about taxes can be directed to their new forum on tax questions.

Again, if you post your questions here, I will do my best to get an answer and post it here as well.  I’ve read all 50 pages of the long thread as well as many of the other threads and have seen a lot of answers already.