My search funds is a great program to make the odd buck whilst searching normally the internet. Setting it up takes <5min and then you have to use only their toolbar to do your normal internet searches. One tip: To make each search count at least 1min has to pass between two searches. They pay via paypal, min is $20 and, also if it is only a few cents you get per search, every little helps. I’ll post again when I reached my first pay-out (just started some days ago!) SY
Photographic Freedom - the first international microstock forum just re-gained its PR3 back 
We had to remove some time ago the sitemap and google didn’t like that ;-( Lesson learned: Protect your site map with your life!
We also converted to be a Adsense and YPN Revenue Sharing Forum, means that members can now benefit from the ads running on the forum. More news to come soon, SY
So Lucky Oliver is closing down, another microstock site bites the dust ;-(
In case you are one of many, many people that are dreaming to open up their one microstock sites, do us all a favour and don’t commit the following mistakes:
Accept every image submitted just to get images, buyers are not attracted by crap.
Fight key word spamming/ bad key wording from the beginning, buyers want to find their dream image fast and not wade through tons of images that have nothing at all to do with their search.
Make your site slick and fast loading, time is money, especially on the internet.
Keep your site on line at all cost, a site that is down one time, is one time too often down, the buyer will never come back.
Keeping your artists happy is fine, but they are the happiest if they have sales. So make the buyer’s happiness your utmost priority and everything else follows.
Market your site, this is why we the contributors give you a share in our commissions, not for image hosting without results=sales. For this we can use flickr and the like.
Have a nice day, and in case you want still to start your own microstock site / project don’t hesitate to contact me I am available for consultancy, alpha and beta-testing for new microstock venues Have a nice day, SY
Oh, and btw bnpsworldwide closed also earlier this month, who is next?
Just spend several Million $$$$$ on a mansion? Have a look at this blog post Most Expensive Luxury Interiors for inspiration! Fancy a toilet covered with crystals or open fire place made from glass? Here you find it! Gorgeous photos also by the way So now I have to see where I put my platinum credit card… SY
Crestock came up with a good and funny April’s Fool Joke and what is doing Corbis? Threading with legal action! Down with Billy! Support the Norwegian Dwarf! SY
Read all here:
http://photographicfreedom.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=1469.0
Getty Images, and therefore Istock got sold to Hellman&Friedman (funny name combination hell-man & peace-man (fried(e)=peace in German) for the lump sum of $2.4bn. But what has actually happened, what changes are to expect for us contributors to Istock? What has happened is that all the big guys at Gettys apparently have kept their jobs, including Bitter, the original founder/ CEO of Istock. What has changed is the way things are financed, not the way things are managed, so again, snafu….
Here some links for further reading:
The Hell-man&Peace-Man web site with the newest press release.
The Reuters news, as always dry and short and straight to the point.
Thomas Hawk doesn’t hesitate to state his opinion.
And our forum discussion is here. SY
Hubs are similar to Squidoo lenses but the interface is far easier to manage and I personally find it easier to write on Hub pages then on Squidoo, but this is certainly a personal preference. I haven’t written a lot of hubs until now but it is on my long list of things to do My latest write-up was an answer to a request and you can read it here (What to do with a food aggressive dog). Hub requests are questions posted by hubbers and answered by hubbers, a great source of inspiration if you have the famous writers-block and great fun to do because they warranty some additional traffic. Some hubbers are really great, like Lissie, that has already published 52 hubs! I really admire people that have a goal and go for it! One of my favourite hubs by her is “Light Notebooks-Review of the 5 lightest laptops” when I am up for the next laptop upgrade, I will certainly go to her hub for more information!
LuckyOliver´s previous payout was $100 but from today, the company is rolling out a new, two tiered payout system. Standard payout will drop to just $25, the lowest no-fee payout in the industry. In addition, the company is launching its new $1 Valentine’s Day Score.
All members with LuckyOliver sales royalties of $1 or more can request a Valentine´s Day payout via PayPal or MoneyBookers until the end of the month.
“As long as you´ve entered your payment details on your account page, if you´ve got $1 or more in LuckyOliver sales, we’ll pay you on Valentine’s Day, this year and every year.” Read more here
or discuss this development here. SY
Here the original link and here our forum discussion. So what? Gettys is up for sale? Better said for auction, but not on ebay! Anybody having 1.5 billion $$$$$$ to spare? Personally I am more concerned about Istock’s future then about Gettys itself, aren’t I am selfish My personal guess is that the whole lot is bought up by Bill Gates’ imperium that includes corbis and craphamlet, pardon me, wanted to say Snapvillage already. Boys and Girls we are up for interesting times with this one! SY
As they say…watch this space! http://myluckyoliver.com
There is something very interesting to come… SY (hospitalera)
