"Tony" writes:

Both are obvious scam sites. I would avoid them at all costs.

A friend of a friend (yeah...but a specific named friend of this
friend of mine, not just a random story making the rounds) says she's
making over $400 a month from Shutterstock. And reading their
policies and procedures there's nothing that trips *my* "scam
detectors".

I can understand how people may not like the payment terms -- it's
$.20/download. However, the membership terms are also structured so
that downloads will be much more common than final uses -- basically
people signed up as users get a *large* number of downloads a month
for their basic fee, so they end up working with actual photos for
comping rather than watermarked copies, and the money ends up getting
split between the photos considered instead of all going to the one
finally chosen.

I suspect it's a very bad deal for people with photos already
successful in traditional stock situations. However, traditional
stock situations are unreasonably expensive for lots of places where
stock photos could be of some use.

The times, they are a-changing.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, , http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
RKBA: http://noguns-nomoney.com/ http://www.dd-b.net/carry/
Pics: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/ http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/
Dragaera/Steven Brust: http://dragaera.info/