Pure Reviews

So Fotolia is at it again...yes, pissing off their contributors. They are now allowing high-res images to be downloaded via the cheap subscriptions. This is all great and dandy for the customer, but a hit in the pocket book for the photographers. I am sure they will loose some major photographer accounts, but overall will not be as badly affected. They are giving an opt out option for exclusive photographers only. Read the good news below: NEW YORK, NY, July 27, 2009 – When a membership of over one million speaks; Fotolia listens. The result: Fotolia is the first microstock company to launch a premium subscription plan, which gives members all-inclusive main collection access to high resolution vectors and images, and high definition videos. Fotolia users now have millions of reliable videos, vectors, and images at their fingertips for as little as $249/month. Oleg Tscheltzoff, co-founder and president of Fotolia, LLC, explains, “We made downloading high-definition videos al...

SnapVillage doors are finally closing. Starting on Aug. 1st the lights go dark on the little guy, but don't worry...all the action has been moved over to VEER. Photographers will have all their remaining balances paid out no matter what you are owned. Also you will have access to your images for 30 days and on Sept. 1st all files will be removed. Below is the company write up. R.I.P. SnapVillage Hello SnapVillagers, We are fast approaching the final stages of the transition from SnapVillage to Veer Marketplace. After transferring many SnapVillage contributors over to Veer Marketplace in the Spring, we’re now working to finish transitioning customers as well. As we’ll be wrapping this process up very soon, we will be shutting down www.SnapVillage.com this Saturday, August 1st. As of August 1 st , SnapVillage.com will no longer be available and visitors will be redirected to Veer Marketplace. Any remaining unpaid royalties will be paid out on September 15th. We will pay out ...

Another blow was dealt to StockXpert with Getty Images choice to have Stock.Xchng run by the guys over at iStock Photo . First let’s give you a little background about Stock.Xchng. The site is a free stock photography site, currently with just under 400,000 images, all for free. Most of these images are not very high quality that you would find at a micro site that charges per download. However, the site is geared to small business owners, students, etc....and most contributors are just standard hobbies photographers that just get a kick out of someone using their image. Jupiter bought over Stock.Xchng and turned it into a traffic generator for its micro stock site StockXpert. How this works is every time you did a search for a free image, it would show you a list of images you could pay to download at the StockXpert site…call premium images. Natrually those images where of a higher quality and would attach designers or other users that did not mind doing a ...

Dreamstime launched a cool new little application that is for facebook users. You can now link your facebook account with your dreamstime account. Its as easy as clicking a few buttons and instant access to your wall. You can post your latest sales, new images, downloads, and even blog posts. All this of course links back to your Dreamstime account and uses your referrals link. If you have not checked it out yet...log in or sign up at Dreamstime A word from the staff: For the busy social person in you, we've designed a new application allowing you to connect Dreamstime with Facebook account and update your wall based on your latest Dreamstime activity (your most recent uploads or newest blog articles). It's not the next best thing after sliced bread, but it will surely help you promote your portfolio faster and easier. Your Facebook wall will be updated according to how often you access and use our site (F5 addicts will update their wall with a single click). Everyone...

Veer Marketplace is officially live. For those new to Veer, they have been a traditional licensed site until now. Veer stepped into the micro-stock world with the transitioning from SnapVillage to Veer Marketplace. Below are also several updates from their news letter. - The tens of thousands of awesome images that contributors like you have uploaded over the last month. Buyers can now search and license your images, and newly approved content will be added to the site daily. - Credit-based pricing and payment, available in pay-as-you-go credit packs or through subscriptions. - Images will be highlighted more prominently in veer.com search results with a new dual search pane that puts microstock next to traditional rights-managed and royalty-free images. - An improved search experience will help customers filter search results by price with four tiers: Way Cheap (from $1), Cheap ($9-$100), Spendy ($49-$350), and Worth It ($49-$655). Now that credit-based pricing and...

Quick voting ends today... iStockphotography 2009 Worldwide Punctum Day Awards will dish out $45,000 We all love images: it's why we're here. We love photographs that stop us in our tracks, make us forget whatever we were just doing, and force us to just sit and stare. We love getting lost in the world of a video, losing ourselves in a sound, marveling at an illustration. Some of us even love a good Flash drop-down menu. (Really.) We all know the feeling, even if we don't know the name for it. That'd be Punctum: to be punctured, wounded even, by an aesthetic moment. It's a sharp metaphor (courtesy of Roland Barthes ). It's the perfect word for the feeling we crave when we turn to art. Around these parts, Punctum is something else: our very own holiday. Join us on August 19th for our 3rd annual celebration of all things arresting and puncturing here at iStockphoto. It's your chance to vote for your favorites from each of our file-families. So the next time a ...

FeaturePics is overhauling their pricing to better compete in the stock photography market. Their old system was the name your base price for the original and auto adjusted from that if you selected to resize. Starting July 17th however they will be converting all their images into a preset price for buyers. I personally think this is a smart move as it makes it easy for the buy to know what the images are going to cost...no guess work. For photographers it will take out the hassle of pricing each image and making sure you have the best price for the most resize options. I say, "welcome to the business world FeaturePics, may the sales start to roll in." Below is the break down of the new pricing, note this is for standard category only. Images in the Mid and Gold levels are still prices by the photographer. Sub Sales = $0.25 (must by a plan) 0.4MP = $0.80 (Volume download plan) 0.7MP = $1.00 (Volume download plan) 1 - 4MP ...

Latest news letter from Cutcaster about upcoming changes. They are a great team to work with, maybe it will help them grow and bring in some exposure. "With summertime in full swing and the Fourth of July fireworks now just a distant memory or your most recent photo-shoot, we wanted to share our Cutcaster plans that are in full swing for expanding the amount of unique content buyers are asking and searching for at Cutcaster as well as improving the customer experience so more buyers learn about how simple and time saving Cutcaster is to use. A few updates: More and more creatives are discovering how easy to use and organized our Cutcaster Buyer Accounts can make their work lives. They offer the most flexible ways to pay and save buyers both money and time. The buyers accounts have been refined based on feedback we have gotten with regards to streamlining/customizing the invoicing process, creating sub-accounts and downloading comp’ed images. The ability to buy different photo s...

Fotolia is launching premium subscription plans for their stock photography site. After several request from their customer base they have agreed to allow downloads of high-resolution images, vectors and video clips. Currently their subscription services only included lower resolution images for the cheaper prices. I personally allow most sites to offer my photos as a subscription item, but as in the past will several sites it will be intresting to see the photoghers feedback. Photographers will get a higher sale count for these images over the standard plan. Below is the new commission rates for the premium sales only Ranking Premium Subscription White 0.35 credit Bronze ...

I would like to welcome MoodBoard to my stock photography family. Over the past several months I have been working at getting my portfolio through there review process. Feel free to check them out as I am now 100% live on their site. Above is just one example of a image available. Speaking of fireworks, I hope everyone had a great 4th of July holiday if you are in the United States.

Its that time again, how did we do this month. Well, not to shabby...could have been better though. Big drop sense last month, but overall consistent for the year. Take a gander at the chart below (click to enlarge) and see how well the sites stacked up with you. Dreamstime took the pie this month followed by 123RF and BigStockPhoto . Like always if the site is not listed, I had no sales. You can find a complete list of sites I sell on at my website, click the June Sales title to be redirected. So how did you do?