MicrostockGroup

I'm selling extremely well on Shutterstock.  I know exactly how it works.  And I know that people who submit stuff that can't stand on its own will obsess over timing their submissions so they appear in New Uploads search results at peak buying times, and if the photos are lost after that, they blame it on the site.  Wrong.  If the photos get buried it's because there are too many like them and they are not needed.  

Is it Amazon's fault if you write a book on something extremely generic like "Making Money" and it is buried under 10,000 other books just like it and you never sell a single copy?  Maybe you should have created something more original, or at least put a unique spin on it to grab attention.  Don't blame the site, blame the author.

You wrote: "I had about 30 uploaded in a single batch and non ever sold.  In fact, I could not find them with a keyword search.  Then a day or two later they were there but no DL's.   shame we work so hard on creating images and get nothing in return."  To me, that sounds like you rely on getting into the "most recent uploads" search results to make sales.  If you do, I stand by my comments above.

All true.  But there still has to be a relationship between the commission structure and the cost of production.  Let's say I think of an unrepresented subject, but it will cost me $20 for objects in the shot, and take an hour to produce.  If after 2 years I've only made $20 on the shot, I wasted my time, even though there are obviously a few buyers who wanted this niche subject - and would probably have been willing to pay a few more dollars for it.

Some subjects might be unrepresented because it's not possible to make money on them at current prices.   That's a gap that sites like CC and GL might be expected to fill, but it doesn't seem to be happening yet. 

I do agree, but don't forget the images have to show up in the "recent" search before they can climb the "most popular" search. Shutterstock updates once a day I guess, and either you're lucky and have your images end up on the first page, or they end up at page 50+. I've tried both and it does make a huge difference sales-wise. It's not "sustainable" to entirely rely on this kind of luck of course, but the initial sales boost is very helpful to the images potential of going into the most popular search. SS has had bugs in the past that caused the images to show up several days after they were accepted, thus ending up at page 100 where no one sees them. Especially if the subject is a generic one like backgrounds.

Some people are talented enough to get their images in the most popular search regardless of their initial placement (Anja Kaiser for instance), but I'm sure it still makes a difference what page no. the images ends up at in the first place.

The fair solution imo, would be to update the library more often, once an hour or so. It would give buyers a chance to see all recent submissions, and better yet it would kill off any speculations and worries among contributors on what weekday to submit, how to spread uploads etc. but I guess it takes a lot of bandwidth or maybe buyers prefer it this way. It used to be okay I believe, but with this many contributions each day it requires a little more updating of the library

Not the case with me...but that being said, you obviously don't read the forums.  There is a known bug causing images to disappear.  Anthony has stated that they are aware of it and are working on resolving it.  So your assessment was wrong all along.