Till death do you part…

Alas no, most of the times it doesn’t work like that: while between two people it takes plenty of patience, tolerance and forgiveness on both sides for a marriage to work fine until its natural end, between a person and a microstock agency things seem to be much harder – maybe because usually only one of the partners has a heart and a soul.
Be as it may, oftentimes the initial enthusiasm sooner or later drifts slowly into disillusion first, then into annoyance, and eventually into divorce.
Having gone through that unpleasant experience several times (with the microstocks, I mean – I still get along pretty well with my nasty old husband 🙂 ) I’ve learnt the hard way that even divorcing a microstock has a price, fair or outrageous depending on the agency. Let me share with you a few of those experiences, so that you may think twice before putting that confounded virtual ring on your finger.

First things first: why?

Because wasting time and toil for a few cents was never my favorite hobby, so I resolved to get rid of the agencies that in the last years had sold just a negligible number of my works.
Eventually I counted the dead: there were eight of them!

As a result I’m listing below the “won’t-miss-them” by star rating according to the smoothness of the parting.

Pond5:
The best. Smooth and gentlemanly parting.
Someone there asked me kindly why, I replied that all in all by them I wasn’t a best seller and parting was the best course of action. Soon after the same person sent me a kind email to confirm the account closure, a PayPal transfer notice to settle up and the promise that should I change my mind I’d be welcome back.
Worth a kiss!

Arcangel:
No hard feelings, with a frank and honest email exchange.
At first I had sold through them a couple of covers but that was it.
They were extremely choosy and I was increasingly skeptical because as a matter of principle they refused any job touched even remotely by AI, which at times like this doesn’t look very convincing to me.
But that’s not my problem, I wish them good luck.

Zazzle:
Simple and quick divorce, the only problem was to find the right web page, that as usual was well concealed.
I was making a little money by them but in the end personalizing various items using a rather cumbersome software wasn’t worth the time and toil. Too much work for too little.

FineArtAmerica:
Easy quick impersonal parting, no hard feelings (actually no feelings at all).
The last year I haven’t sold a hairpin by them, and no news from them.

Red Bubble:
Here too an easy fast impersonal parting, though somewhat sad on my side.
Through them I was selling some more than through other POD’s, I’ve been by them for several years and I was genuinely fond of them. But the day after they cut drastically the royalties I had no choice but leaving.

123RF:
No problem. Nor a word from them.

Dreamstime:
As a reply to my termination request I got an unpleasantly clear text:

“Please take into account that contributors are required to keep at least seventy (70%) percent of their portfolio online with Dreamstime.com for a period of at least six (6) months. You may disable all files older than six months from the date of review at any time. You will be allowed to disable a total of thirty (30%) percent of your total Media submitted within the past six (6) months. Media that was disabled and then enabled again will be counted as new submissions, no matter of their original upload date.”

Great: as punishment for my infidelity the images owned by me, on which I hold copyright, are held hostage for 6 months.
No doubt they are legally entitled to do so pursuant to some clause buried somewhere in the fine print that few contributors are likely to remember years later, but still…
They have been my first microstock agency, I stayed stubbornly with them until my royalties dropped below $100 a year, and even then I was saddened by the idea of leaving them. But as I read their reply my sorrow vanished like snow in the sun. Time flies…

Zoonar:
Same as above: apparently here too I’ve been a bad girl and thus my works are held hostage for 6 months.
I don’t remember for how long I’ve been keeping an account by them, however I found in my archive an email from Zoonar dated 12.05.2009.
Long story short: so far I haven’t attained their pay-off threshold yet — possibly also because quite a share of the images I submitted got usually rejected (and keep selling nicely on Adobe and elsewhere).
Such a pity that their communications concerning the cancellation of my account and the inherent restrictive conditions were not sent me per email as one would expect: if memory serves they only appeared fleetingly on my dashboard, and when I got back there to make a copy they weren’t available anymore. I also seem to remember a message about something concerning my PayPal account (also mysteriously vanished from my dashboard) that might prevent them from paying me off… a real financial catastrophe, but I think I’ll survive even without the €6.71 they still owe me 😀

Do I hear an “and what about Shutterstock?”
Well, embarrassing as it is, I still retain a tokenish account by them. Since they cut their royalties to a few cents/image all I left by them was the picture of a (never sold) toilet paper roll, but so far I never deleted my account there.
Why? Please don’t ask 🙂

Bear in mind

Unless you have stolen them, your images belong to you: you shot them, you processed them, you keyworded them, you uploaded them, you own the copyright.

Some agencies will be fair and acknowledge that, some will expect to hold them hostage for months – just like an obnoxious partner would do with the children, although in this case they didn’t even contribute to their birth.

An excellent reason to read carefully the fine print before signing in.
Just saying…