MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Shutterstock.com => Topic started by: Microstockphoto on June 13, 2017, 00:45
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ss for me has no rhyme or reason, from the first day of june my sales have been back to normal and then some, the number of dls is still low, but the number of ELs and big SODs have dramatically increased. i have already made what i normally would make in a normal month and we are not even half way. if this continues i will double my BME. which is just plain weird. not complaining at all, just think they must have flicked a switch again
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haha! not here mate. Same old doom and gloom. You must be one of the lucky chosen. SS was the one for many years but I have sort of given up on micro nowadays and concentrate to 90 % on a couple of macro agencies. I do lots of assignment photography as well and its all very time concuming.:D
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in the last 3 months my sales declined to about 50-60% of what i consider a normal month. i already made more in june, than i did in each of the 3 previous months individually. the only reason i can think of is a change in the search results. unless june falls of a cliff and completely halts, i will have a BME. fingers crossed. knock wood. etc
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Yeah good luck to you! hope it comes true! :)
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Even I think they tested some change. My start of june was very well, then it suddenly dropped for few days.. and back up again to normal.
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Congrats! That is very good news to hear.
In a recent thread there were conspiracies of "capped earnings" - when you reach a certain point they turn your port off.
Let us know how the rest of your June goes so we can help prove or disprove these theories :) Will sales keep going great or fall off the cliff.
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Congrats! That is very good news to hear.
In a recent thread there were conspiracies of "capped earnings" - when you reach a certain point they turn your port off.
Let us know how the rest of your June goes so we can help prove or disprove these theories :) Will sales keep going great or fall off the cliff.
I think people carrying on believing what they want to believe.....good sales = "I'm a brilliant photographer" bad sales= "SS have a vendetta against experienced/high earning/American/new content"
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Congrats! That is very good news to hear.
In a recent thread there were conspiracies of "capped earnings" - when you reach a certain point they turn your port off.
Let us know how the rest of your June goes so we can help prove or disprove these theories :) Will sales keep going great or fall off the cliff.
I think people carrying on believing what they want to believe.....good sales = "I'm a brilliant photographer" bad sales= "SS have a vendetta against experienced/high earning/American/new content"
Sounds like a Chinese proverb! ;D
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Looking at the 3rd zero day, not happened since my 1st month 7 years ago.
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It seems my sales are back to normal after the second BME last month. I think it's more because of customer's side than the algorithm. New month, new situation.
I don't believe in the capping. Last month I saw a guy reaching $10000 milestone in less time than reaching his $3000.
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Congrats! That is very good news to hear.
In a recent thread there were conspiracies of "capped earnings" - when you reach a certain point they turn your port off.
Let us know how the rest of your June goes so we can help prove or disprove these theories :) Will sales keep going great or fall off the cliff.
I think people carrying on believing what they want to believe.....good sales = "I'm a brilliant photographer" bad sales= "SS have a vendetta against experienced/high earning/American/new content"
i think i just go by my experience and data. if you think otherwise, show me my comments where i claim to be brilliant or claim an ss vendetta. mr cynic.
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Congrats! That is very good news to hear.
In a recent thread there were conspiracies of "capped earnings" - when you reach a certain point they turn your port off.
Let us know how the rest of your June goes so we can help prove or disprove these theories :) Will sales keep going great or fall off the cliff.
I think people carrying on believing what they want to believe.....good sales = "I'm a brilliant photographer" bad sales= "SS have a vendetta against experienced/high earning/American/new content"
i think i just go by my experience and data. if you think otherwise, show me my comments where i claim to be brilliant or claim an ss vendetta. mr cynic.
To be fair your posts are quite balanced but yes I am cynical about many of the posts that talk about their misfortune and jump on posts like yours to identify some kind of irrational conspiracy. I don't doubt the search algorithms change and can have dramatic effects on sales.
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I much rather prefer a conspiracy! at least then we know why everything is just going wrong with SS these days!
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june as always goo d start slow in middle...good finish i 'm sure
last three days only subs. never happened. but ok.
dreamstime surprisingly this week better than ss and fotolia recovering.
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I much rather prefer a conspiracy! at least then we know why everything is just going wrong with SS these days!
Thinking you know is not really the same as knowing :o.
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I much rather prefer a conspiracy! at least then we know why everything is just going wrong with SS these days!
Thinking you know is not really the same as knowing :o.
... And you can never learn things you think you already know ... 8)
Sorry, I'm bored!
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Conspiracy is so much fun!!!
Free Cornwall!
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Congrats! That is very good news to hear.
In a recent thread there were conspiracies of "capped earnings" - when you reach a certain point they turn your port off.
Let us know how the rest of your June goes so we can help prove or disprove these theories :) Will sales keep going great or fall off the cliff.
I think people carrying on believing what they want to believe.....good sales = "I'm a brilliant photographer" bad sales= "SS have a vendetta against experienced/high earning/American/new content"
Must be that I'm brilliant all of a sudden. June is double the May total already. New files have no downloads, so my old ones are coming into style and I'm just brilliant and ahead of the curve. Or maybe people see ghosts in the shadows, aliens in the skies and believe that SS changes the search to benefit or punish us in some strange way?
They don't care about individuals, they care about the big picture, buyers and sales.
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awesome.
i dont think people are rewarded or punished though , but i do think tge search is tweaked all the time. i had a blasting 2 weeks. and in the last 5 days i made 30 dollar. go figure
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awesome.
i dont think people are rewarded or punished though , but i do think tge search is tweaked all the time. i had a blasting 2 weeks. and in the last 5 days i made 30 dollar. go figure
I think this is a good assessment. Currently, I am on the receiving end of poor sales. Just two weeks ago I was in the $40-$60 per day range and now I am consistently in the $12 per day range on stills and video is half or a third of what it is when I am doing well. I am sure their tweaks are meant to either cut costs or try new things that align to higher sales (algorithm pilot tests of sorts). One thing is for certain, I went into video to complement my still collection and sales have not grown one iota. I still make the same amount I did with stills. Perhaps I mitigated a drop in sales by adding video, who knows, but it is awful coincidental in such a short time that my sales would not jump with the addition of a new asset type. That is the anecdotal evidence I use to claim that revenue is generally fixed, but I have no proof other than the behavior of my portfolio.
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awesome.
i dont think people are rewarded or punished though , but i do think tge search is tweaked all the time. i had a blasting 2 weeks. and in the last 5 days i made 30 dollar. go figure
I think this is a good assessment. Currently, I am on the receiving end of poor sales. Just two weeks ago I was in the $40-$60 per day range and now I am consistently in the $12 per day range on stills and video is half or a third of what it is when I am doing well. I am sure their tweaks are meant to either cut costs or try new things that align to higher sales (algorithm pilot tests of sorts). One thing is for certain, I went into video to complement my still collection and sales have not grown one iota. I still make the same amount I did with stills. Perhaps I mitigated a drop in sales by adding video, who knows, but it is awful coincidental in such a short time that my sales would not jump with the addition of a new asset type. That is the anecdotal evidence I use to claim that revenue is generally fixed, but I have no proof other than the behavior of my portfolio.
I am very interested on this, would you mind to develop (portfolio size, etc.)?
I only did video until a couple of months ago and SS is my best selling agency by a country mile. In the last couple of months I have uploaded 600 pics.
So far I have not noticed any decrease on video sale, but of course it is too soon to tell.
I have heard other people saying that sale in pics make sales of footage go down and of course if that is true I would immediately erase all the pics uploaded
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awesome.
i dont think people are rewarded or punished though , but i do think tge search is tweaked all the time. i had a blasting 2 weeks. and in the last 5 days i made 30 dollar. go figure
I think this is a good assessment. Currently, I am on the receiving end of poor sales. Just two weeks ago I was in the $40-$60 per day range and now I am consistently in the $12 per day range on stills and video is half or a third of what it is when I am doing well. I am sure their tweaks are meant to either cut costs or try new things that align to higher sales (algorithm pilot tests of sorts). One thing is for certain, I went into video to complement my still collection and sales have not grown one iota. I still make the same amount I did with stills. Perhaps I mitigated a drop in sales by adding video, who knows, but it is awful coincidental in such a short time that my sales would not jump with the addition of a new asset type. That is the anecdotal evidence I use to claim that revenue is generally fixed, but I have no proof other than the behavior of my portfolio.
I am very interested on this, would you mind to develop (portfolio size, etc.)?
I only did video until a couple of months ago and SS is my best selling agency by a country mile. In the last couple of months I have uploaded 600 pics.
So far I have not noticed any decrease on video sale, but of course it is too soon to tell.
I have heard other people saying that sale in pics make sales of footage go down and of course if that is true I would immediately erase all the pics uploaded
I have about 3500 images and 1200 videos. Videos make up about 20% of the revenue. To be fair, I haven't produced traditional stock themes in a while because I am tired of working my butt off and not seeing any return on my investment. I have been submitting travel shots, which generally don't sell in the volume of classic stock (isolations, people-business, etc.). All of my SOD's (big sales) are of traditional, boring (more or less) stock images.
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awesome.
i dont think people are rewarded or punished though , but i do think tge search is tweaked all the time. i had a blasting 2 weeks. and in the last 5 days i made 30 dollar. go figure
I think this is a good assessment. Currently, I am on the receiving end of poor sales. Just two weeks ago I was in the $40-$60 per day range and now I am consistently in the $12 per day range on stills and video is half or a third of what it is when I am doing well. I am sure their tweaks are meant to either cut costs or try new things that align to higher sales (algorithm pilot tests of sorts). One thing is for certain, I went into video to complement my still collection and sales have not grown one iota. I still make the same amount I did with stills. Perhaps I mitigated a drop in sales by adding video, who knows, but it is awful coincidental in such a short time that my sales would not jump with the addition of a new asset type. That is the anecdotal evidence I use to claim that revenue is generally fixed, but I have no proof other than the behavior of my portfolio.
I am very interested on this, would you mind to develop (portfolio size, etc.)?
I only did video until a couple of months ago and SS is my best selling agency by a country mile. In the last couple of months I have uploaded 600 pics.
So far I have not noticed any decrease on video sale, but of course it is too soon to tell.
I have heard other people saying that sale in pics make sales of footage go down and of course if that is true I would immediately erase all the pics uploaded
I have about 3500 images and 1200 videos. Videos make up about 20% of the revenue. To be fair, I haven't produced traditional stock themes in a while because I am tired of working my butt off and not seeing any return on my investment. I have been submitting travel shots, which generally don't sell in the volume of classic stock (isolations, people-business, etc.). All of my SOD's (big sales) are of traditional, boring (more or less) stock images.
Thank you for sharing.
Wow, this is really surprising, there is certainly something strange there. Your percentage coming from video should be much higher, although sales in video take much more time to come, so if you have started footage recently may partly explain.
I have never done isolations and I don't have a single clip model released, but I do not complain with my results
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real there is still somebody that don't think ss and other agency are controlling the level of sale for any contributor?
do you think that company like monkey business for example, who employ 10 15 people and have cost of 200 thousand pound minimum year, still produce content without any insurance that at least they file will be positioned good? dreamer
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real there is still somebody that don't think ss and other agency are controlling the level of sale for any contributor?
do you think that company like monkey business for example, who employ 10 15 people and have cost of 200 thousand pound minimum year, still produce content without any insurance that at least they file will be positioned good? dreamer
No I don't think the agencies conspire to control or manipulate our income or sales.
No I don't believe that they insure sales and money to the big ones.
My sales go up and down. Some with the seasons, some for the time of year that images are needed, sometimes lower just because the whole market goes down. I upload more, I sell more, but it's not a direct ratio or relationship. Now and then I get a better image with more demand which takes off and sells over and over. We are up against a million new images a week, how does anyone expect we can continue to grow or hold our sales against that?
Instead of blaming the agency and making claims of agencies manipulating our sales or income, people should spend more time finding good, interesting, new subjects to upload. Making more of what there's all ready too much of, is just chasing your tail. Copying popular is also just chasing a bus that already left, and you missed it.
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real there is still somebody that don't think ss and other agency are controlling the level of sale for any contributor?
do you think that company like monkey business for example, who employ 10 15 people and have cost of 200 thousand pound minimum year, still produce content without any insurance that at least they file will be positioned good? dreamer
No I don't think the agencies conspire to control or manipulate our income or sales.
No I don't believe that they insure sales and money to the big ones.
My sales go up and down. Some with the seasons, some for the time of year that images are needed, sometimes lower just because the whole market goes down. I upload more, I sell more, but it's not a direct ratio or relationship. Now and then I get a better image with more demand which takes off and sells over and over. We are up against a million new images a week, how does anyone expect we can continue to grow or hold our sales against that?
Instead of blaming the agency and making claims of agencies manipulating our sales or income, people should spend more time finding good, interesting, new subjects to upload. Making more of what there's all ready too much of, is just chasing your tail. Copying popular is also just chasing a bus that already left, and you missed it.
Second that!
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Also interesting that Monkey business are based in Western Europe and appear to be doing quite well contrary to the opinion often expressed here that it is impossible. One look at their port and you can see they are spot on trend so good luck to them.
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Instead of blaming the agency and making claims of agencies manipulating our sales or income, people should spend more time finding good, interesting, new subjects to upload. Making more of what there's all ready too much of, is just chasing your tail. Copying popular is also just chasing a bus that already left, and you missed it.
Maybe this is true for still images, but footage market is a totally different market.
Some of my best seller are Eiffel tower or Tower bridge, done zillion of times, but I know that I can make them in timelapse with a different post production, a different angle, the best light, or approach them with a drone from a different side and still sell plenty of them.
In my case I have no doubt that there is a good deal of manipulation at SS, but I have never complained about that: SS is the best selling agency for me by country miles and almost every month for me has been BME.
Since they do extremely well, I am actually convinced that the manipulation is very well done and very useful and I am glad they do it, but I certainly cannot deny that there is manipulation.
I always note a pattern: I have more that 2,000 file and half of the time 100 sales come from 80 different files, so a broad distribution, with some sales repeated form the same files. The other half of the time it goes in a mode where 100% of my sales come from 1 single file; of course in this mode I get less downloads than usual, but I do get sales at incredibly high prices, so that I end up making the same amount of money.
I have been in this game for just two years, so I have very few well established files, certainly someone who has been in for more than 5 years will notice this variation much less than me.
But still I read about plenty of veterans commenting: "No way to sell new files!", or "Only new files sell, so that they pay lower commissions!"
It is a bit the same thing: the model switches between two modes. Why they do that? They often say that want absolutely to avoid to present all the time the same file to customers at the top of the search and it makes a lot of sense to me.
It is also said that they want to make as many contributor happy as possible, and this sounds reasonable too.
BTW when I hear more than one reliable contributors posting here that uploading photos hurts the sales of footage, in other word that number of download is capped, so selling still images make you lose a lot of income from footage, I do take it very seriously.
I would not hesitate one second to pull out my photo portfolio if I have any evidence of this (I must add that I just started adding photos a couple of month ago)
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real there is still somebody that don't think ss and other agency are controlling the level of sale for any contributor?
do you think that company like monkey business for example, who employ 10 15 people and have cost of 200 thousand pound minimum year, still produce content without any insurance that at least they file will be positioned good? dreamer
No I don't think the agencies conspire to control or manipulate our income or sales.
No I don't believe that they insure sales and money to the big ones.
My sales go up and down. Some with the seasons, some for the time of year that images are needed, sometimes lower just because the whole market goes down. I upload more, I sell more, but it's not a direct ratio or relationship. Now and then I get a better image with more demand which takes off and sells over and over. We are up against a million new images a week, how does anyone expect we can continue to grow or hold our sales against that?
Instead of blaming the agency and making claims of agencies manipulating our sales or income, people should spend more time finding good, interesting, new subjects to upload. Making more of what there's all ready too much of, is just chasing your tail. Copying popular is also just chasing a bus that already left, and you missed it.
Over the last couple years I sold on Istock content for more than 1 million dollars. For about two months I'm independent and for 99% I'm sure that shutterstock control sales and sets limits for new contributors. But this is just my opinion. I'll share with you when I'll have more data.
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real there is still somebody that don't think ss and other agency are controlling the level of sale for any contributor?
do you think that company like monkey business for example, who employ 10 15 people and have cost of 200 thousand pound minimum year, still produce content without any insurance that at least they file will be positioned good? dreamer
No I don't think the agencies conspire to control or manipulate our income or sales.
No I don't believe that they insure sales and money to the big ones.
My sales go up and down. Some with the seasons, some for the time of year that images are needed, sometimes lower just because the whole market goes down. I upload more, I sell more, but it's not a direct ratio or relationship. Now and then I get a better image with more demand which takes off and sells over and over. We are up against a million new images a week, how does anyone expect we can continue to grow or hold our sales against that?
Instead of blaming the agency and making claims of agencies manipulating our sales or income, people should spend more time finding good, interesting, new subjects to upload. Making more of what there's all ready too much of, is just chasing your tail. Copying popular is also just chasing a bus that already left, and you missed it.
u know my content? iso why u talk?
u complaint sometimes , for long time, then if u sale 3 files more makes this arrogant post.
point.
the path is clear and i can see it even month...i can predict for certain how much i will earn next month. hundred percent.
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real there is still somebody that don't think ss and other agency are controlling the level of sale for any contributor?
do you think that company like monkey business for example, who employ 10 15 people and have cost of 200 thousand pound minimum year, still produce content without any insurance that at least they file will be positioned good? dreamer
No I don't think the agencies conspire to control or manipulate our income or sales.
No I don't believe that they insure sales and money to the big ones.
My sales go up and down. Some with the seasons, some for the time of year that images are needed, sometimes lower just because the whole market goes down. I upload more, I sell more, but it's not a direct ratio or relationship. Now and then I get a better image with more demand which takes off and sells over and over. We are up against a million new images a week, how does anyone expect we can continue to grow or hold our sales against that?
Instead of blaming the agency and making claims of agencies manipulating our sales or income, people should spend more time finding good, interesting, new subjects to upload. Making more of what there's all ready too much of, is just chasing your tail. Copying popular is also just chasing a bus that already left, and you missed it.
Over the last couple years I sold on Istock content for more than 1 million dollars. For about two months I'm independent and for 99% I'm sure that shutterstock control sales and sets limits for new contributors. But this is just my opinion. I'll share with you when I'll have more data.
monkey business was before banana stock..sold for million dollar, with the know how to do this. they mostly shoot south aufrica cut cost...and clearly they have some good search position. they are one of the few big pure western company. and as i said i'd like to know one day what deal can have some company like this with micro stock agency. you think somebody risk million dollar every year of production cost salary, without any deal?
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real there is still somebody that don't think ss and other agency are controlling the level of sale for any contributor?
do you think that company like monkey business for example, who employ 10 15 people and have cost of 200 thousand pound minimum year, still produce content without any insurance that at least they file will be positioned good? dreamer
No I don't think the agencies conspire to control or manipulate our income or sales.
No I don't believe that they insure sales and money to the big ones.
My sales go up and down. Some with the seasons, some for the time of year that images are needed, sometimes lower just because the whole market goes down. I upload more, I sell more, but it's not a direct ratio or relationship. Now and then I get a better image with more demand which takes off and sells over and over. We are up against a million new images a week, how does anyone expect we can continue to grow or hold our sales against that?
Instead of blaming the agency and making claims of agencies manipulating our sales or income, people should spend more time finding good, interesting, new subjects to upload. Making more of what there's all ready too much of, is just chasing your tail. Copying popular is also just chasing a bus that already left, and you missed it.
Over the last couple years I sold on Istock content for more than 1 million dollars. For about two months I'm independent and for 99% I'm sure that shutterstock control sales and sets limits for new contributors. But this is just my opinion. I'll share with you when I'll have more data.
monkey business was before banana stock..sold for million dollar, with the know how to do this. they mostly shoot south aufrica cut cost...and clearly they have some good search position. they are one of the few big pure western company. and as i said i'd like to know one day what deal can have some company like this with micro stock agency. you think somebody risk million dollar every year of production cost salary, without any deal?
Are they exclusive to SS.....nope. You think SS would want to risk losing customers by passing off inferior content?
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real there is still somebody that don't think ss and other agency are controlling the level of sale for any contributor?
do you think that company like monkey business for example, who employ 10 15 people and have cost of 200 thousand pound minimum year, still produce content without any insurance that at least they file will be positioned good? dreamer
And which should be the agency interest doing this? Paying higher royalites, when they know that could have billions of good images paying less?
It's funny, this conspiracy idea is exactly the opposite of the other famous one, where the agency should distribute earnings to much more contributors to make them all happy. :)
So, is an agency interested to pay only big contributors, paying more royalties, or is it interested in paying less large number of contributpors, to earn more and make them happy? To be or not to be, this is the question
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If I'd run an agency, I'd rather pay more to well established image factories with good quality photos than newcomers whose images might not be so great. Paying more to image factories also makes sure, there is a constant flow of new good images.
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If I'd run an agency, I'd rather pay more to well established image factories with good quality photos than newcomers whose images might not be so great. Paying more to image factories also makes sure, there is a constant flow of new good images.
True. But OTOH all the image factory pics look pretty much the same,with that over lit, over saturated look and the fake models with dead eyes. There are customers that want more unique and realistic images and they should be able to find those too.
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If I'd run an agency, I'd rather pay more to well established image factories with good quality photos than newcomers whose images might not be so great. Paying more to image factories also makes sure, there is a constant flow of new good images.
If I'd run an agency, thinking that what you describe would be a good move, I'll pay that factories fixed prices for exclusive images. Surely I'd not leave door open to other contributors nor a chance for the factories to leave me for new professional horizon.
Your idea could be a choice, but in this case agency moves would be really different from what they actually do, in my opinion.
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If I'd run an agency, I'd rather pay more to well established image factories with good quality photos than newcomers whose images might not be so great. Paying more to image factories also makes sure, there is a constant flow of new good images.
If I'd run an agency, thinking that what you describe would be a good move, I'll pay that factories fixed prices for exclusive images. Surely I'd not leave door open to other contributors nor a chance for the factories to leave me for new professional horizon.
Your idea could be a choiche, but in this case agency moves would be really different from what they actually do, in my opinion.
Why? The current model is a brilliant one for the agencies they have no production costs and suppliers carry all the risk. Once you start paying up front its a different business.
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If I'd run an agency, I'd rather pay more to well established image factories with good quality photos than newcomers whose images might not be so great. Paying more to image factories also makes sure, there is a constant flow of new good images.
If I'd run an agency, I would constantly tweak the popular and relevant algorithms, to make sure customers get what they want, with minimal efforts.
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Dumc!! of course! and it stands to reason. In order to make sure of a constant flow of good and commercial images you have to nurse the ones producing them. This is old news and used to be the case in the old agencies long before micro stock came about.
Then you have the factories and distributors who needs looking after. The small single contributor is way down the list.
Make no mistake nowadays people who are unhappy will quit and take their portfolios with them placing them elsewhere and mostly in the macro market agencies where if its a niched portfolio you can negotiate a deal or something. This happens frequently and especially with agencies like SS and IS.
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Dumc!! of course! and it stands to reason. In order to make sure of a constant flow of good and commercial images you have to nurse the ones producing them. This is old news and used to be the case in the old agencies long before micro stock came about.
Then you have the factories and distributors who needs looking after. The small single contributor is way down the list.
Make no mistake nowadays people who are unhappy will quit and take their portfolios with them placing them elsewhere and mostly in the macro market agencies where if its a niched portfolio you can negotiate a deal or something. This happens frequently and especially with agencies like SS and IS.
I reckon if they are any good they don't need nursing.
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Dumc!! of course! and it stands to reason. In order to make sure of a constant flow of good and commercial images you have to nurse the ones producing them. This is old news and used to be the case in the old agencies long before micro stock came about.
Then you have the factories and distributors who needs looking after. The small single contributor is way down the list.
Make no mistake nowadays people who are unhappy will quit and take their portfolios with them placing them elsewhere and mostly in the macro market agencies where if its a niched portfolio you can negotiate a deal or something. This happens frequently and especially with agencies like SS and IS.
I reckon if they are any good they don't need nursing.
Nah youre wrong there believe me they need nursing weather good or bad. Just take GI as an example. Agencies like Blend, SPL and Photo-source always gets right up there in their search. Just common sense really if you want their tens of thousands im images. I would do the same if I governed an agency. Nothing wrong there its been done for years.
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Dumc!! of course! and it stands to reason. In order to make sure of a constant flow of good and commercial images you have to nurse the ones producing them. This is old news and used to be the case in the old agencies long before micro stock came about.
Then you have the factories and distributors who needs looking after. The small single contributor is way down the list.
Make no mistake nowadays people who are unhappy will quit and take their portfolios with them placing them elsewhere and mostly in the macro market agencies where if its a niched portfolio you can negotiate a deal or something. This happens frequently and especially with agencies like SS and IS.
I reckon if they are any good they don't need nursing.
Nah youre wrong there believe me they need nursing weather good or bad. Just take GI as an example. Agencies like Blend, SPL and Photo-source always gets right up there in their search. Just common sense really if you want their tens of thousands im images. I would do the same if I governed an agency. Nothing wrong there its been done for years.
I thought it was "newbies" and low earners who were favoured? I would expect them to be high simply because of their sales record/port size I doubt the algorithm would need to single out favoured agencies.
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I thought it was "newbies" and low earners who were favoured? I would expect them to be high simply because of their sales record/port size I doubt the algorithm would need to single out favoured agencies.
No no no, only 10 MSG forum members are pushed back in the search. Everyone else is favored. It's only logical. ;D
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I thought it was "newbies" and low earners who were favoured? I would expect them to be high simply because of their sales record/port size I doubt the algorithm would need to single out favoured agencies.
No no no, only 10 MSG forum members are pushed back in the search. Everyone else is favored. It's only logical. ;D
I was pushed back on Tuesday but luckily I'm at the front today ;-).
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Dumc!! of course! and it stands to reason. In order to make sure of a constant flow of good and commercial images you have to nurse the ones producing them. This is old news and used to be the case in the old agencies long before micro stock came about.
Then you have the factories and distributors who needs looking after. The small single contributor is way down the list.
Make no mistake nowadays people who are unhappy will quit and take their portfolios with them placing them elsewhere and mostly in the macro market agencies where if its a niched portfolio you can negotiate a deal or something. This happens frequently and especially with agencies like SS and IS.
I reckon if they are any good they don't need nursing.
Nah youre wrong there believe me they need nursing weather good or bad. Just take GI as an example. Agencies like Blend, SPL and Photo-source always gets right up there in their search. Just common sense really if you want their tens of thousands im images. I would do the same if I governed an agency. Nothing wrong there its been done for years.
This claim is ridicilous, I only have about 1200 images, and I have plenty of files on first page for main keyword, whether best match or popular...
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Dumc!! of course! and it stands to reason. In order to make sure of a constant flow of good and commercial images you have to nurse the ones producing them. This is old news and used to be the case in the old agencies long before micro stock came about.
Then you have the factories and distributors who needs looking after. The small single contributor is way down the list.
Make no mistake nowadays people who are unhappy will quit and take their portfolios with them placing them elsewhere and mostly in the macro market agencies where if its a niched portfolio you can negotiate a deal or something. This happens frequently and especially with agencies like SS and IS.
I reckon if they are any good they don't need nursing.
Nah youre wrong there believe me they need nursing weather good or bad. Just take GI as an example. Agencies like Blend, SPL and Photo-source always gets right up there in their search. Just common sense really if you want their tens of thousands im images. I would do the same if I governed an agency. Nothing wrong there its been done for years.
This claim is ridicilous, I only have about 1200 images, and I have plenty of files on first page for main keyword, whether best match or popular...
Sure! so do I. Not exactly what I meant though. ::)
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i am back to 8 dollar days
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i am back to 8 dollar days
Your lucky try $6.82 days :(
Whatever they did I wish they would stop
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i am back to 8 dollar days
Your lucky try $6.82 days :(
Whatever they did I wish they would stop
I'm in the same boat. Something changed that had a big impact on my sales. If this keeps up June will be the worst month I've had at SS for years. About half of last month, or a ˜$600 shortfall.
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i am back to 8 dollar days
Your lucky try $6.82 days :(
Whatever they did I wish they would stop
I'm in the same boat. Something changed that had a big impact on my sales. If this keeps up June will be the worst month I've had at SS for years. About half of last month, or a ˜$600 shortfall.
Same here...
I never had so much single & other downloads (20+).. But ALL are below 1 dollar. Today I have two 0.59 and 0.67 last month I have three all more than 50...
Hope you do better..
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1 OD in 24 days and 7 zero days, 80% down on any other month in the last 7 years. Think the've thrown my stuff out.
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Well if the conspiracy theories are thrown out then perhaps
SS have lost a ton of customers
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Well if the conspiracy theories are thrown out then perhaps
SS have lost a ton of customers
Highly likely thats exactly whats happening.
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Well if the conspiracy theories are thrown out then perhaps
SS have lost a ton of customers
Highly likely thats exactly whats happening.
These things happen overnight. It's not customers that drive this royalty behavior in that short of time. If anything they are playing with the search to yield some kind of strategic outcome. I would say that this is the most likely scenario because it's one of the levers they can easily manipulate and measure. If this is the case, some will win and some will lose until the next time, depending on the criteria they use in the search adjustment.
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I must say that so far this month SS has been on fire for me (but I do 98% video).
I am already at equal BME with a week to go and the other agencies have been below average, so SS has been sensational.
I expect zero sales next week though, because this is the usual behavior: after three weeks on fire you get one with zero sales
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Well if the conspiracy theories are thrown out then perhaps
SS have lost a ton of customers
Highly likely thats exactly whats happening.
it's seems all agency apart stock have lost tons of customer...people can easily find images free anywhere nowadays from flickr to instagram, that's another problem.
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Well if the conspiracy theories are thrown out then perhaps
SS have lost a ton of customers
Highly likely thats exactly whats happening.
it's seems all agency apart stock have lost tons of customer...people can easily find images free anywhere nowadays from flickr to instagram, that's another problem.
thursday best ever day in ss....with my first video sales with just 20 clips...then 4 days appalling...yesterday zero sales, first time ever in ss, today worst than saturday so far....i'm sure i will have another day crap then 2 days good one medium two crap to end month with just my quote of earning....and is like this since march 2016....if i had a crap month after one super sometimes followed by 2 3 normal it will be ok...the fact that practically every month behavior is the same makes me think that i have a quote of earning i can't overcome no matter what i upload.
when u see same pattern every month , month after month, you understand that no matter what..
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Actually Jonbull! that could be true. Istock is really climbing back and it could be that we are watching a change here! could be that Istock is gaining buyers from agencies such as SS and Adobe etc etc! just could be? almost everyone I know is seeing a huge rise in earnings at IS. Something is up thats for sure.
Maybe they have finally realized that looking after independents and long time members is the way to go.
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Actually Jonbull! that could be true. Istock is really climbing back and it could be that we are watching a change here! could be that Istock is gaining buyers from agencies such as SS and Adobe etc etc! just could be? almost everyone I know is seeing a huge rise in earnings at IS. Something is up thats for sure.
Maybe they have finally realized that looking after independents and long time members is the way to go.
i had a fall back in may compared to april but i see they sell...i'm growing my collection and i'm experiencing an improve in stock, also ss is bette than 2016.my complaint is that i would like to see a better increase, faster...but i have to say that i uploaded 1000 content this year in ss and they are giving me 95 dollar monthly so far ....so while i thought new content don't sell actually they are selling. so far they are selling like 0,50 cent for content...if they continue
anyway my june 2017 is 50% more than june 2016%, i'm shooting and uploading much more since 2016 and this show results, also i moved from more editorial to creative content.
today after i complaint 4 single in a row in ss...3 for 4,2 dollar.
focola
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Actually Jonbull! that could be true. Istock is really climbing back and it could be that we are watching a change here! could be that Istock is gaining buyers from agencies such as SS and Adobe etc etc! just could be? almost everyone I know is seeing a huge rise in earnings at IS. Something is up thats for sure.
Maybe they have finally realized that looking after independents and long time members is the way to go.
I doubt that. Many of us have left istock, not surprising that those remaining are selling more but that probably wont last long.
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Actually Jonbull! that could be true. Istock is really climbing back and it could be that we are watching a change here! could be that Istock is gaining buyers from agencies such as SS and Adobe etc etc! just could be? almost everyone I know is seeing a huge rise in earnings at IS. Something is up thats for sure.
Maybe they have finally realized that looking after independents and long time members is the way to go.
I doubt that. Many of us have left istock, not surprising that those remaining are selling more but that probably wont last long.
i doubt...according to alexa the stock is doing better than other micro stock...simply more customer are browsing the collection...byt he way my rperdownload is 0,75, much better than fotolia for example. i hope every complainer will left stock if this are the results.
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Congrats! That is very good news to hear.
In a recent thread there were conspiracies of "capped earnings" - when you reach a certain point they turn your port off.
Let us know how the rest of your June goes so we can help prove or disprove these theories :) Will sales keep going great or fall off the cliff.
I think people carrying on believing what they want to believe.....good sales = "I'm a brilliant photographer" bad sales= "SS have a vendetta against experienced/high earning/American/new content"
Angela, I like your stubborn artistic style, really. I'm not a conspiracy theorist of capped earnings, I'm highly paid IT engineer, specialist for BI and data mining. I am trained to recognize those patterns because my daily job is to do the similar things for some big internet retail companies.
Btw, in case you didn't read his answer here it is from another thread:
"i scraped bme, but 85% of my earnings happened in the first 12 days, the other 15% of the earnings took 18 days. absolute car crash, not complaining i made bme, but had the rate of the first 12 days continued then i would probably have doubled my bme. they tweaked the search in the first part of the month which benefited me, and then it was switched off again. probably a test or something. i remember an old thread where people came in happy reporting a spike in earnings and ss came in and said it was a mistake, an algorithm went live that wasnt supposed to go live, so there you go"
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We don't have enough highly paid engineers on this forum ;D
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No we dont! and neither does SS. In fact I recon the SS engineers construct their algorithms after getting zozzled in the Pub! I am sure of it.
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Time to open a new thread: July algorithm change?
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Time to open a new thread: July algorithm change?
June=july....horrible. No need for a new thread .....lol
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Agree, there is no need for a new thread because algorythm could be changed constantly.
It also could be tested locally on some "samples" (read: contributors and/or customers) and then applied globally.
Maybe it will be better to open "Data mining for dummies" thread if there are enough members interested in that.
As example:
After association rules learning (which is for example contributors behaviour), anomaly detection task kick in every time when something unusual happened.
That unusual could be contributors unexpected income which is treating like a data error and must be corrected in according to association rules.
In short, for every unexpected sales, most of the time you will be punished in the next period.
End of lesson one.
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Agree, there is no need for a new thread because algorythm could be changed constantly.
It also could be tested locally on some "samples" (read: contributors and/or customers) and then applied globally.
Maybe it will be better to open "Data mining for dummies" thread if there are enough members interested in that.
As example:
After association rules learning (which is for example contributors behaviour), anomaly detection task kick in every time when something unusual happened.
That unusual could be contributors unexpected income which is treating like a data error and must be corrected in according to association rules.
In short, for every unexpected sales, most of the time you will be punished in the next period.
End of lesson one.
I find what you are saying very interesting and I am waiting eagerly for next lesson.
I perfectly agree with lesson one.
But I find also that the reverse is true: when a month start as a disaster, like ten day without a single sale, then in the next 2 weeks there is a deluge of sales, some of which with incredibly high prices, in order to catch up.
I also find that the cap is in some way rolling, like slowly going up with the total amount of files.
Also there is a switch between:
Mode 1: all kinds of files sell, even new ones
Mode 2: only files with very high ranking sell
The switch is operated about every three weeks. But in Mode 2, even if the selling high-ranked file is just a single one, it will sell so often and at such high prices that the revenues under Mode 1 and Mode 2 do not differ very much
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If you have 10 days without a single sale, you should re-evaluate your images first, instead of trying to come up with some conspiracy theroies.
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thats just nonsense when clearly there are other factors to consider these days
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If you have 10 days without a single sale, you should re-evaluate your images first, instead of trying to come up with some conspiracy theroies.
Completely wrong recommendation if you have a selling port. What if I have a year of great sales then those same images stop selling altogether for 10 days? I am to attribute that to my portfolio? That's just funny man.
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If you have 10 days without a single sale, you should re-evaluate your images first, instead of trying to come up with some conspiracy theroies.
I have seen the figures you posted about your sales at SS and I sell over 10 times more than you.
And anyway I am not complaining at all: SS is by miles my best earner, I keep doing BME there constantly.
I don't call it conspiracy at all. They certainly manipulate the algorithm constantly, but I am very happy they do it and they do it really well, that is way they are number one
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The goal of every microstock agency must be to constantly change the search algorithm, in order to make sure customers get what they want. Those agencies failing to adapt to customer needs will not survive.
So get over it. For this very reason, search algorithm changes are regularly happening.
Everything else is just paranoia.
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If you have 10 days without a single sale, you should re-evaluate your images first, instead of trying to come up with some conspiracy theroies.
I have seen the figures you posted about your sales at SS and I sell over 10 times more than you.
And anyway I am not complaining at all: SS is by miles my best earner, I keep doing BME there constantly.
I don't call it conspiracy at all. They certainly manipulate the algorithm constantly, but I am very happy they do it and they do it really well, that is way they are number one
I have a good 1100 images and I have maybe 1 zero/day per month and its usually saturday or sunday. And my images arent very commercial or great. Ok, now I remembered, you mostly have video, right? Thats a different story....sory for that
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None of this makes any sense at all. How do you explain the incredible drop of exactly 50% straight down the line and almost to the penny hitting everyone I know that joined about 10 years back and all with commercial high-value portfolios including myself of course.
No not a conspiracy but certainly the search is manipulated killing off many contributors and aiding some other sections.
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None of this makes any sense at all. How do you explain the incredible drop of exactly 50% straight down the line and almost to the penny hitting everyone I know that joined about 10 years back and all with commercial high-value portfolios including myself of course.
No not a conspiracy but certainly the search is manipulated killing off many contributors and aiding some other sections.
I'm still not sure whether you consider SS geniuses for being able to construct such an amazing algorithm or idiots. I reckon if they can manipulate the internet market like that they should be nominated for the nobel prize for economics. is it exactly 50% over the same period?
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None of this makes any sense at all. How do you explain the incredible drop of exactly 50% straight down the line and almost to the penny hitting everyone I know that joined about 10 years back and all with commercial high-value portfolios including myself of course.
No not a conspiracy but certainly the search is manipulated killing off many contributors and aiding some other sections.
I'm still not sure whether you consider SS geniuses for being able to construct such an amazing algorithm or idiots. I reckon if they can manipulate the internet market like that they should be nominated for the nobel prize for economics. is it exactly 50% over the same period?
Big words, in reality they "manipulate" only with their own search engine to achieve their goals, financially related goals like maximizing profit and non-financial related like fighting against spam.
Btw all our newly uploaded images in compare to older ones are currently treated like a spam by SS search engine until proved otherwise (you have to get some sales to deserve non-spam ranking), which is the main reason why new images are rarely sold since 2016. Exceptions are new contributor's images and images which are very specific.
OK, time for data mining part 2:
Q:What is the reason of capped income?
A:To keep largest possible number of contributors satisfied (with dimes).
FACT: Despite the strong words, 99% percent of contributors will be satisfied with any income no matter how small it is.
COMMENT: Comrade Stalin wasn't stupid at all, he figured it out without computers and fancy search engine algorithms.
p.s. I'm doing just fine with monthly variation of income less than 2% for the last 12 months. May was exception and up because of two huge direct sales at the end of the month (last two days) but June was down for exactly the same percentage, and both combined had variation of less then 1% from monthly average. This is still good source of income for me, but I'm just a little unsatisfied because I'm not in control of anything anymore if I want to play legally. Just like * casino.
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None of this makes any sense at all. How do you explain the incredible drop of exactly 50% straight down the line and almost to the penny hitting everyone I know that joined about 10 years back and all with commercial high-value portfolios including myself of course.
No not a conspiracy but certainly the search is manipulated killing off many contributors and aiding some other sections.
I'm still not sure whether you consider SS geniuses for being able to construct such an amazing algorithm or idiots. I reckon if they can manipulate the internet market like that they should be nominated for the nobel prize for economics. is it exactly 50% over the same period?
Big words, in reality they "manipulate" only with their own search engine to achieve their goals, financially related goals like maximizing profit and non-financial related like fighting against spam.
Btw all our newly uploaded images in compare to older ones are currently treated like a spam by SS search engine until proved otherwise (you have to get some sales to deserve non-spam ranking), which is the main reason why new images are rarely sold since 2016. Exceptions are new contributor's images and images which are very specific.
OK, time for data mining part 2:
Q:What is the reason of capped income?
A:To keep largest possible number of contributors satisfied (with dimes).
FACT: Despite the strong words, 99% percent of contributors will be satisfied with any income no matter how small it is.
COMMENT: Comrade Stalin wasn't stupid at all, he figured it out without computers and fancy search engine algorithms.
p.s. I'm doing just fine with monthly variation of income less than 2% for the last 12 months. May was exception and up because of two huge direct sales at the end of the month (last two days) but June was down for exactly the same percentage, and both combined had variation of less then 1% from monthly average. This is still good source of income for me, but I'm just a little unsatisfied because I'm not in control of anything anymore if I want to play legally. Just like * casino.
Very interesting.
Perfectly agree with the above. Exactly what I have been trying to say for a while, but you expressed it much better than me (I am not native English speaker).
Let's go to lesson 3
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If you have 10 days without a single sale, you should re-evaluate your images first, instead of trying to come up with some conspiracy theroies.
Completely wrong recommendation if you have a selling port. What if I have a year of great sales then those same images stop selling altogether for 10 days? I am to attribute that to my portfolio? That's just funny man.
Exact.
And it is not always a question of the quality of the images.
It can be a question of the the quality of the description and keywords.
I had some good images not selling at all because the description was not accurate, and so the keywords.
6 - 8 months after I had edited the descriptions and the keywords these images have begun to sell.
Why 6 - 8 months, this is a mystery for me, but I think that it is the time needed to the system to reindex the full portfolio (?)
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None of this makes any sense at all. How do you explain the incredible drop of exactly 50% straight down the line and almost to the penny hitting everyone I know that joined about 10 years back and all with commercial high-value portfolios including myself of course.
No not a conspiracy but certainly the search is manipulated killing off many contributors and aiding some other sections.
I'm still not sure whether you consider SS geniuses for being able to construct such an amazing algorithm or idiots. I reckon if they can manipulate the internet market like that they should be nominated for the nobel prize for economics. is it exactly 50% over the same period?
Big words, in reality they "manipulate" only with their own search engine to achieve their goals, financially related goals like maximizing profit and non-financial related like fighting against spam.
Btw all our newly uploaded images in compare to older ones are currently treated like a spam by SS search engine until proved otherwise (you have to get some sales to deserve non-spam ranking), which is the main reason why new images are rarely sold since 2016. Exceptions are new contributor's images and images which are very specific.
OK, time for data mining part 2:
Q:What is the reason of capped income?
A:To keep largest possible number of contributors satisfied (with dimes).
FACT: Despite the strong words, 99% percent of contributors will be satisfied with any income no matter how small it is.
COMMENT: Comrade Stalin wasn't stupid at all, he figured it out without computers and fancy search engine algorithms.
p.s. I'm doing just fine with monthly variation of income less than 2% for the last 12 months. May was exception and up because of two huge direct sales at the end of the month (last two days) but June was down for exactly the same percentage, and both combined had variation of less then 1% from monthly average. This is still good source of income for me, but I'm just a little unsatisfied because I'm not in control of anything anymore if I want to play legally. Just like * casino.
Yep! that just about sums it all up. Capped earnings the whole charade. Good one! :)
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None of this makes any sense at all. How do you explain the incredible drop of exactly 50% straight down the line and almost to the penny hitting everyone I know that joined about 10 years back and all with commercial high-value portfolios including myself of course.
No not a conspiracy but certainly the search is manipulated killing off many contributors and aiding some other sections.
I'm still not sure whether you consider SS geniuses for being able to construct such an amazing algorithm or idiots. I reckon if they can manipulate the internet market like that they should be nominated for the nobel prize for economics. is it exactly 50% over the same period?
Big words, in reality they "manipulate" only with their own search engine to achieve their goals, financially related goals like maximizing profit and non-financial related like fighting against spam.
Btw all our newly uploaded images in compare to older ones are currently treated like a spam by SS search engine until proved otherwise (you have to get some sales to deserve non-spam ranking), which is the main reason why new images are rarely sold since 2016. Exceptions are new contributor's images and images which are very specific.
OK, time for data mining part 2:
Q:What is the reason of capped income?
A:To keep largest possible number of contributors satisfied (with dimes).
FACT: Despite the strong words, 99% percent of contributors will be satisfied with any income no matter how small it is.
COMMENT: Comrade Stalin wasn't stupid at all, he figured it out without computers and fancy search engine algorithms.
p.s. I'm doing just fine with monthly variation of income less than 2% for the last 12 months. May was exception and up because of two huge direct sales at the end of the month (last two days) but June was down for exactly the same percentage, and both combined had variation of less then 1% from monthly average. This is still good source of income for me, but I'm just a little unsatisfied because I'm not in control of anything anymore if I want to play legally. Just like * casino.
Yep! that just about sums it all up. Capped earnings the whole charade. Good one! :)
What happened to everyone going down 50%?
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I don't know what happened, but I think that they will go down as we eventually!
They are digging a hole for them self!
The buyers will go somewhere else if they don't have the quality. With this I don't think they have!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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MG! spot on! eventually they will not prevail on al the generic and garbage they now tend to accept. Contributors will eventually stop uploading commercial quality images, too expensive to produce and too much hassle with releases and everything and then buyers will start going elsewhere. I dont want to mention any names but I know for a fact many buyers who goes to certain RF-agencies prepared to even pay a bit more money for a certain picky they are looking for.
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So that is what is happening to new images, they are treated as spam. Makes sense now...
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So that is what is happening to new images, they are treated as spam. Makes sense now...
Yup! thats it Angela. Spam and it makes sense. Just look at some of the stuff they accept.
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I know for a fact many buyers who goes to certain RF-agencies prepared to even pay a bit more money for a certain picky they are looking for.
I can even see a business opportunity for a smart aggregation company.
Some customers would definitely pay a finder's fee, to get to choose what they need, from a smaller, but well curated collection, instead of spending their valuable time digging those big piles of garbage and similars for hidden gems.
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at this rate Adobe stock will be our number one company for most of us.
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Derek! Yes you right! That was my point to!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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None of this makes any sense at all. How do you explain the incredible drop of exactly 50% straight down the line and almost to the penny hitting everyone I know that joined about 10 years back and all with commercial high-value portfolios including myself of course.
No not a conspiracy but certainly the search is manipulated killing off many contributors and aiding some other sections.
I was looking at July sales today and holy cow. I will be lucky to make $300-$400 this month, compared to my normal three times that. Today I am at a under $150. I would give exact numbers but we are not allowed to share real data from SS. But you get the point. In June they changed something in the search and, well, you can do the math. I will be 66% down from my norm. Norm=last several years (except for a few search changes that adjusted back to "normal").
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Same here^^. However I am beginning to believe there are other forces at play here. Think about it all the old staff is gone. I spoke to an x-employee whom I have known long before he joined SS goes all the way back to the Image-Bank and there are tons of crap going on in that company with lots of internal problems all the time. I suppose when the beancounters took over the first thing they changed was the searches/algorithms in order to make a quick financial kill.
Its quite obvious listening to him thay dont give a * about the company or its members or contributors.
They are also struggling like mad with their Offset not producing half of what was expected.
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I know for a fact many buyers who goes to certain RF-agencies prepared to even pay a bit more money for a certain picky they are looking for.
I can even see a business opportunity for a smart aggregation company.
Some customers would definitely pay a finder's fee, to get to choose what they need, from a smaller, but well curated collection, instead of spending their valuable time digging those big piles of garbage and similars for hidden gems.
The Shutterstock Enterprise Team already search for their Enterprise clients when required, I guess when they can't find what they want on Premier Select, which you could say is a smaller curated collection. Enterprise buyers are certainly willing to pay a premium, that's where the high priced SODs come from, but maybe they can negotiate a discount as well.
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None of this makes any sense at all. How do you explain the incredible drop of exactly 50% straight down the line and almost to the penny hitting everyone I know that joined about 10 years back and all with commercial high-value portfolios including myself of course.
No not a conspiracy but certainly the search is manipulated killing off many contributors and aiding some other sections.
I was looking at July sales today and holy cow. I will be lucky to make $300-$400 this month, compared to my normal three times that. Today I am at a under $150. I would give exact numbers but we are not allowed to share real data from SS. But you get the point. In June they changed something in the search and, well, you can do the math. I will be 66% down from my norm. Norm=last several years (except for a few search changes that adjusted back to "normal").
How are you doing on other sites? Personally I seem to be experiencing a similar slowdown/crash nearly everywhere. Certainly since May my SS sales have fallen markedly.
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what i see is a clear tendency of jumping between new files and old one....last month especially last two weeks only new files seems to sell....now the last 5 days i practically sold only file from 2016 and older nothing with a 6 at beginning has sold....i sold file uploaded in 2008....i understand it can happen but when it happen often and constantly is clear that ss can change algorithm to drive sales where they need.
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None of this makes any sense at all. How do you explain the incredible drop of exactly 50% straight down the line and almost to the penny hitting everyone I know that joined about 10 years back and all with commercial high-value portfolios including myself of course.
No not a conspiracy but certainly the search is manipulated killing off many contributors and aiding some other sections.
I was looking at July sales today and holy cow. I will be lucky to make $300-$400 this month, compared to my normal three times that. Today I am at a under $150. I would give exact numbers but we are not allowed to share real data from SS. But you get the point. In June they changed something in the search and, well, you can do the math. I will be 66% down from my norm. Norm=last several years (except for a few search changes that adjusted back to "normal").
How are you doing on other sites? Personally I seem to be experiencing a similar slowdown/crash nearly everywhere. Certainly since May my SS sales have fallen markedly.
Youre right! but not everywhere. I see a rise at DT and DP but at nonbe of the main three.
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None of this makes any sense at all. How do you explain the incredible drop of exactly 50% straight down the line and almost to the penny hitting everyone I know that joined about 10 years back and all with commercial high-value portfolios including myself of course.
No not a conspiracy but certainly the search is manipulated killing off many contributors and aiding some other sections.
I was looking at July sales today and holy cow. I will be lucky to make $300-$400 this month, compared to my normal three times that. Today I am at a under $150. I would give exact numbers but we are not allowed to share real data from SS. But you get the point. In June they changed something in the search and, well, you can do the math. I will be 66% down from my norm. Norm=last several years (except for a few search changes that adjusted back to "normal").
How are you doing on other sites? Personally I seem to be experiencing a similar slowdown/crash nearly everywhere. Certainly since May my SS sales have fallen markedly.
Other sites are not anything like SS. They are 'maintaining' averages, IS down some but it is gradual. DT is very cyclic, I'll admit. One month I will pull $200 the next $100. But I have seen that for a long time. Overall, SS has a drastic 'something going on' for me (and it sounds like many others, too.). If SS stays like this, it's game over for me. I won't bother trying to build my portfolio any longer for micro stock.
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LOL i am still under 200 dollar ill probably end up 66% down of a normal month.
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LOL i am still under 200 dollar ill probably end up 66% down of a normal month.
Sorry to hear that. The thing is its not like customers just stopped buying on june 1. So since i think most of us agree that a search change was the most likely cause, then a subset of contributors have to be winning.
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from 1 to 12 june my sales were roaring and i made in 12 days what i would normally make in a full month, clips, big sods, ELs galore, and then it fell of a cliff to the horror show it is now
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Every month this year has been great, but july is simply terrible. At this pace 20% of average. :o. Sales basically stopped at july 1st. Weirdly pond5 is doing exceptionally well this month.
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BEAT the system??? Back in April I thought theres got to be a way to beat this crappy search etc so here is what I did. I picked 10 shots that had at least sold a few times each one I then deleted these and waited about a week and then re-uploaded these 10 shots re-arranging the keywords with new title/description and guess what. A few started to get almost immediate downloads and still is.
In the middle of June I did the same thing and with the same results!
So this seemed to work for me but of course there is no guarantee and since they constantly change the search it could be a bit of a hit and miss. The search dont know the age of a contributor and possibly give any new files a preference before old ones.
btw these 20 shots I experimented with are still selling much better then my old ones even better then the ones with thousands of downloads.
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My new images aren't selling at all. All my sales are from really old images and often ones that would of probably been rejected for LCV at one point. I might as well hold off on new uploads for now.
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And I thought I was the only one. I uploaded around 180 new images and got 0 sale from them. Old stuff is selling as normal.
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If the old stuff selling I wouldn't have problem.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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I didnt say new stuff sold well I said that if you re-upload an image with new data the search will of course treat it as a new image and all of a sudden it starts selling!
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None of this makes any sense at all. How do you explain the incredible drop of exactly 50% straight down the line and almost to the penny hitting everyone I know that joined about 10 years back and all with commercial high-value portfolios including myself of course.
No not a conspiracy but certainly the search is manipulated killing off many contributors and aiding some other sections.
I was looking at July sales today and holy cow. I will be lucky to make $300-$400 this month, compared to my normal three times that. Today I am at a under $150. I would give exact numbers but we are not allowed to share real data from SS. But you get the point. In June they changed something in the search and, well, you can do the math. I will be 66% down from my norm. Norm=last several years (except for a few search changes that adjusted back to "normal").
How are you doing on other sites? Personally I seem to be experiencing a similar slowdown/crash nearly everywhere. Certainly since May my SS sales have fallen markedly.
Youre right! but not everywhere. I see a rise at DT and DP but at nonbe of the main three.
I have had a rise at DT but my sales there are so few I think its a quirk.....Fotolia off a cliff at the moment....but it may average out.
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For July SS is my number 3 agent so far - Sure the ones ahead are due to one off sales, but nearly half way through the month SS should be ahead of them anyway. It isn't.
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None of this makes any sense at all. How do you explain the incredible drop of exactly 50% straight down the line and almost to the penny hitting everyone I know that joined about 10 years back and all with commercial high-value portfolios including myself of course.
No not a conspiracy but certainly the search is manipulated killing off many contributors and aiding some other sections.
I was looking at July sales today and holy cow. I will be lucky to make $300-$400 this month, compared to my normal three times that. Today I am at a under $150. I would give exact numbers but we are not allowed to share real data from SS. But you get the point. In June they changed something in the search and, well, you can do the math. I will be 66% down from my norm. Norm=last several years (except for a few search changes that adjusted back to "normal").
How are you doing on other sites? Personally I seem to be experiencing a similar slowdown/crash nearly everywhere. Certainly since May my SS sales have fallen markedly.
Youre right! but not everywhere. I see a rise at DT and DP but at nonbe of the main three.
I have had a rise at DT but my sales there are so few I think its a quirk.....Fotolia off a cliff at the moment....but it may average out.
I know DT is a strange place it can be dead for ages then suddenly comes droves of sales then dead again. Strange.
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If you have 10 days without a single sale, you should re-evaluate your images first, instead of trying to come up with some conspiracy theroies.
Completely wrong recommendation if you have a selling port. What if I have a year of great sales then those same images stop selling altogether for 10 days? I am to attribute that to my portfolio? That's just funny man.
Exact.
And it is not always a question of the quality of the images.
It can be a question of the the quality of the description and keywords.
I had some good images not selling at all because the description was not accurate, and so the keywords.
6 - 8 months after I had edited the descriptions and the keywords these images have begun to sell.
Why 6 - 8 months, this is a mystery for me, but I think that it is the time needed to the system to reindex the full portfolio (?)
As far as I know, new images and changes get indexed within 24 hours. It probably took a while for someone to download your image for the first time. When that happens, the ranking of that image changes and depending on how many competing images are there, your image can move up a lot or very little. Once it moves up the search results, it makes it easier for people to find, resulting in more downloads.
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None of this makes any sense at all. How do you explain the incredible drop of exactly 50% straight down the line and almost to the penny hitting everyone I know that joined about 10 years back and all with commercial high-value portfolios including myself of course.
No not a conspiracy but certainly the search is manipulated killing off many contributors and aiding some other sections.
I'm still not sure whether you consider SS geniuses for being able to construct such an amazing algorithm or idiots. I reckon if they can manipulate the internet market like that they should be nominated for the nobel prize for economics. is it exactly 50% over the same period?
Big words, in reality they "manipulate" only with their own search engine to achieve their goals, financially related goals like maximizing profit and non-financial related like fighting against spam.
Btw all our newly uploaded images in compare to older ones are currently treated like a spam by SS search engine until proved otherwise (you have to get some sales to deserve non-spam ranking), which is the main reason why new images are rarely sold since 2016. Exceptions are new contributor's images and images which are very specific.
OK, time for data mining part 2:
Q:What is the reason of capped income?
A:To keep largest possible number of contributors satisfied (with dimes).
FACT: Despite the strong words, 99% percent of contributors will be satisfied with any income no matter how small it is.
COMMENT: Comrade Stalin wasn't stupid at all, he figured it out without computers and fancy search engine algorithms.
p.s. I'm doing just fine with monthly variation of income less than 2% for the last 12 months. May was exception and up because of two huge direct sales at the end of the month (last two days) but June was down for exactly the same percentage, and both combined had variation of less then 1% from monthly average. This is still good source of income for me, but I'm just a little unsatisfied because I'm not in control of anything anymore if I want to play legally. Just like * casino.
Yep! that just about sums it all up. Capped earnings the whole charade. Good one! :)
What happened to everyone going down 50%?
Wait a week, he'll make up something new and avoid this weeks made up claims. Obviously we know different people, who upload new, not the claim that re-upload old with new words, from someone who says he doesn't upload at all? Plus I'm not down 50% and I know many other people who aren't and aren't capped, but are growing with new uploads and ideas.
My earnings are up, not for subs, which are lower, but because of OD sales for new and better images.
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New images sell, but contributors need to learn how the system works. You can't just upload something and then expect it sell when there are over 100 million images on SS. From what I've seen, new uploads does get some favorable treatment...they don't start at the bottom. They start somewhere above the middle of the heap and depending on whether it gets downloaded or not, it can rise or it can fall and make room for new images. Images with with a lot of downloads continue to occupy the top of the search results and rightfully so.
So for new images to sell, it has to be found. And for it to be found, it has to have good keywording. And for it to be downloaded, it has to have good execution and good commercial value. If it's missing one of the key ingredients, it won't sell well.
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New images sell, but contributors need to learn how the system works. You can't just upload something and then expect it sell when there are over 100 million images on SS. From what I've seen, new uploads does get some favorable treatment...they don't start at the bottom. They start somewhere above the middle of the heap and depending on whether it gets downloaded or not, it can rise or it can fall and make room for new images. Images with with a lot of downloads continue to occupy the top of the search results and rightfully so.
So for new images to sell, it has to be found. And for it to be found, it has to have good keywording. And for it to be downloaded, it has to have good execution and good commercial value. If it's missing one of the key ingredients, it won't sell well.
But thats far too logical and straightforward ;-)
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So for new images to sell, it has to be found. And for it to be found, it has to have good keywording. And for it to be downloaded, it has to have good execution and good commercial value. If it's missing one of the key ingredients, it won't sell well.
you're talking like you're a bigtime expert to all those contributors reporting a shortfall of 50% like you were with sh*tterstock longer than them . like as though they are green behind their ears and not know how to keyword properly. they were making lots of money for many years and then suddenly they forgot how to keyboard properly , except for you LOL
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New images sell, but contributors need to learn how the system works. You can't just upload something and then expect it sell when there are over 100 million images on SS. From what I've seen, new uploads does get some favorable treatment...they don't start at the bottom. They start somewhere above the middle of the heap and depending on whether it gets downloaded or not, it can rise or it can fall and make room for new images. Images with with a lot of downloads continue to occupy the top of the search results and rightfully so.
So for new images to sell, it has to be found. And for it to be found, it has to have good keywording. And for it to be downloaded, it has to have good execution and good commercial value. If it's missing one of the key ingredients, it won't sell well.
Far too logical and straight forward!
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you're talking like you're a bigtime expert to all those contributors reporting a shortfall of 50% like you were with sh*tterstock longer than them . like as though they are green behind their ears and not know how to keyword properly. they were making lots of money for many years and then suddenly they forgot how to keyboard properly, except for you LOL
In the beginning, you don't need to keyword properly. All you had to do was upload, put in some basic keywords and everything sells like hotcakes without much competition. It's no different than websites in the early days of the internet that doesn't require meticulous SEO like today. With so much competition today, mediocre keywording just doesn't cut it anymore.
I've looked at a lot of portfolios and majority of contributors don't know how to keyword properly. Most contributors rely on single keywords instead of longtail keywording techniques. Some use too few keywords. Many contributors treat keywording as a chore, so they put very little effort into it. So yes, you can still be inexperienced despite being in the game for a long time.
It doesn't matter to me if some people think I'm some pretend expert. Results are the only thing that matters to me. I had 3 large SODs a few days ago, all from the same set. If the buyer didn't find one of my images, he wouldn't have bought all 3. Those sales could have gone to someone else. I see keywording as being in the right place at the right time.
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So for new images to sell, it has to be found. And for it to be found, it has to have good keywording. And for it to be downloaded, it has to have good execution and good commercial value. If it's missing one of the key ingredients, it won't sell well.
you're talking like you're a bigtime expert to all those contributors reporting a shortfall of 50% like you were with sh*tterstock longer than them . like as though they are green behind their ears and not know how to keyword properly. they were making lots of money for many years and then suddenly they forgot how to keyboard properly , except for you LOL
I know! like all whose been with them for 10 years and more are just morons and all who are doing this full-time suddenly have forgotten how to take pictures. Little wonder the agencies treat us the way they do.
In these 20 years Ive been doing stock I have got to privately know people inside the actual business and owners of actual agencies I am even a sleeping partner in a smaller micro-agency and to top it all had my own library since the days of dawn but we know nada! :D
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you're talking like you're a bigtime expert to all those contributors reporting a shortfall of 50% like you were with sh*tterstock longer than them . like as though they are green behind their ears and not know how to keyword properly. they were making lots of money for many years and then suddenly they forgot how to keyboard properly, except for you LOL
In the beginning, you don't need to keyword properly. All you had to do was upload, put in some basic keywords and everything sells like hotcakes without much competition. It's no different than websites in the early days of the internet that doesn't require meticulous SEO like today. With so much competition today, mediocre keywording just doesn't cut it anymore.
I've looked at a lot of portfolios and majority of contributors don't know how to keyword properly. Most contributors rely on single keywords instead of longtail keywording techniques. Some use too few keywords. Many contributors treat keywording as a chore, so they put very little effort into it. So yes, you can still be inexperienced despite being in the game for a long time.
It doesn't matter to me if some people think I'm some pretend expert. Results are the only thing that matters to me. I had 3 large SODs a few days ago, all from the same set. If the buyer didn't find one of my images, he wouldn't have bought all 3. Those sales could have gone to someone else. I see keywording as being in the right place at the right time.
Good keywording is important but if the "Buyer searched for" info with DT is accurate, I don't think it needs to be as sophisticated as you think.
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you're talking like you're a bigtime expert to all those contributors reporting a shortfall of 50% like you were with sh*tterstock longer than them . like as though they are green behind their ears and not know how to keyword properly. they were making lots of money for many years and then suddenly they forgot how to keyboard properly, except for you LOL
In the beginning, you don't need to keyword properly. All you had to do was upload, put in some basic keywords and everything sells like hotcakes without much competition. It's no different than websites in the early days of the internet that doesn't require meticulous SEO like today. With so much competition today, mediocre keywording just doesn't cut it anymore.
I've looked at a lot of portfolios and majority of contributors don't know how to keyword properly. Most contributors rely on single keywords instead of longtail keywording techniques. Some use too few keywords. Many contributors treat keywording as a chore, so they put very little effort into it. So yes, you can still be inexperienced despite being in the game for a long time.
It doesn't matter to me if some people think I'm some pretend expert. Results are the only thing that matters to me. I had 3 large SODs a few days ago, all from the same set. If the buyer didn't find one of my images, he wouldn't have bought all 3. Those sales could have gone to someone else. I see keywording as being in the right place at the right time.
Good keywording is important but if the "Buyer searched for" info with DT is accurate, I don't think it needs to be as sophisticated as you think.
Yes I don't see why buyers would enter particularly complex search terms though I do wonder about the DT info..itsnot unusual for me to get sales totally unrelated to the image ;-). Its a shame more agencies don't provide this information
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I wonder if all my latest sales coming from below equator is a coincidence. Given the completely abnormal numbers I'm getting in my stats (my nearly 30k size portfolio produces half the sales of 2 years ago), I'm not convinced.
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why people don't simply accept that at 1 million new images added every week....millions of photos in instagrama and zillion in all web....it's clear that the cause of the falling of earning for single contributor is ue to this....people sold people sold a lot because there was zero competition...take lifestyle...in the last 4 5 yeats many big contributors have entered, a lot of talented have entered...nowadays if yuri arcurs began from scratch he would sell much much less...when he uploaded god lifestyle he was one of the best now he would be one of the bunch.
so the only way to keep up with earning is shooting and uploading content.
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why people don't simply accept that at 1 million new images added every week....millions of photos in instagrama and zillion in all web....it's clear that the cause of the falling of earning for single contributor is ue to this....people sold people sold a lot because there was zero competition...take lifestyle...in the last 4 5 yeats many big contributors have entered, a lot of talented have entered...nowadays if yuri arcurs began from scratch he would sell much much less...when he uploaded god lifestyle he was one of the best now he would be one of the bunch.
so the only way to keep up with earning is shooting and uploading content.
Wrong. While we accept that millions of images are being added, it does not explain the overnight circumscision of our income. If it were more gradual, then your hypothesis would be more acceptable. But we are talking nearly, almost literally, over night. That is pulling levers and kicking the tires.
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I know Yuri since many years back and make no mistake he is earning packets! so dont worry about him. He pulled his port ages ago at SS. I know somebody right now who might just go the same way and with a port of 60000 files not that it makes a dent at SS but when people with such big ports start removing ports and in favour of RF's well....makes you wonder dont it. Something is not right.
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why people don't simply accept that at 1 million new images added every week....millions of photos in instagrama and zillion in all web....it's clear that the cause of the falling of earning for single contributor is ue to this....people sold people sold a lot because there was zero competition...take lifestyle...in the last 4 5 yeats many big contributors have entered, a lot of talented have entered...nowadays if yuri arcurs began from scratch he would sell much much less...when he uploaded god lifestyle he was one of the best now he would be one of the bunch.
so the only way to keep up with earning is shooting and uploading content.
This can be one of the reason but not entirely acceptable.
You are correct with the million added every week and zillion in all web. But note there is no commercial license to all zillion web photos.
So we are left with million... if you watch closely almost 70% of the content is useless. Check the newest first and you will know.
Now, looking other side of the industry. Though the images database is increasing there is also increase in demand. Things are becoming digital and people need images to build their online presence. Millions of new blogs are formed every month, those bloggers somewhere look for royalty free images.
And then there is advertising market which is vast in itself. There are so many of new youngsters who want to build their identity and form new brands, they too need images.
There are so many new companies registered everyday and royalty free option is the best solutions for startups.
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This is true^^ I am seeing a constant rise at the RM/RF outlets and sales are not gigantic but they are plenty and good enough to actually leave micro-stock and put the portfolio there. Personally I am just waiting for an OK from one of my Macro agency to use some similars sister images and thats it. It will take a bit of guts I recon.
Youre right though looking at new and its like getting a coronary occlusion and it really makes you realize there is no chance. This is what we get and its not going to get any better.
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why people don't simply accept that at 1 million new images added every week....millions of photos in instagrama and zillion in all web....it's clear that the cause of the falling of earning for single contributor is ue to this....people sold people sold a lot because there was zero competition...take lifestyle...in the last 4 5 yeats many big contributors have entered, a lot of talented have entered...nowadays if yuri arcurs began from scratch he would sell much much less...when he uploaded god lifestyle he was one of the best now he would be one of the bunch.
so the only way to keep up with earning is shooting and uploading content.
This can be one of the reason but not entirely acceptable.
You are correct with the million added every week and zillion in all web. But note there is no commercial license to all zillion web photos.
So we are left with million... if you watch closely almost 70% of the content is useless. Check the newest first and you will know.
Now, looking other side of the industry. Though the images database is increasing there is also increase in demand. Things are becoming digital and people need images to build their online presence. Millions of new blogs are formed every month, those bloggers somewhere look for royalty free images.
And then there is advertising market which is vast in itself. There are so many of new youngsters who want to build their identity and form new brands, they too need images.
There are so many new companies registered everyday and royalty free option is the best solutions for startups.
it's a mix of things...sure the overzilion images is a key factor....this week i'm selling mostly images older than a year..last month i sold mostly images uploaded in 2016 2017...so it's clear that something happen in search engine...anyway hn i stop uploading content my sales get in stall mode...as soon as i upload everything improve...
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I know Yuri since many years back and make no mistake he is earning packets! so dont worry about him. He pulled his port ages ago at SS. I know somebody right now who might just go the same way and with a port of 60000 files not that it makes a dent at SS but when people with such big ports start removing ports and in favour of RF's well....makes you wonder dont it. Something is not right.
probably u not read good....i said that if yuri began right in this moment with that material he would struggle as many here...persoanlly he has a clean style but if i browse through content here or in stocks is not at all what i call somebody to follow.
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Yes I don't see why buyers would enter particularly complex search terms though I do wonder about the DT info..itsnot unusual for me to get sales totally unrelated to the image ;-). Its a shame more agencies don't provide this information
SS does provide some info. Look at the Insights > Top Performers screen. Some buyers have used combination keywords to find some of my images...and that's all I'm going to share.
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I don't think there is any difference if you have keywords with comma or not, for example "red, potato" or "red potato" and buyer searches for "red potato"
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Yes I don't see why buyers would enter particularly complex search terms though I do wonder about the DT info..itsnot unusual for me to get sales totally unrelated to the image ;-). Its a shame more agencies don't provide this information
SS does provide some info. Look at the Insights > Top Performers screen. Some buyers have used combination keywords to find some of my images...and that's all I'm going to share.
Thanks for reminding me of that I do take a look from time to time. I reckon 90% of the searches are the stunningly obvious but I will be testing some combination key words. Though I wonder if you have "red" "potato" and "red potato" is that considered key word spamming?
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I don't think there is any difference if you have keywords with comma or not, for example "red, potato" or "red potato" and buyer searches for "red potato"
I don't think it matters. I like to keep all my keywords separate as in red, potato. Some people just put the keyword 'potato' in there and calls it a day. There are over 550k results for 'potato' and 125K results for 'red potato'. I think it's obvious which one you have a better chance with.
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I don't think there is any difference if you have keywords with comma or not, for example "red, potato" or "red potato" and buyer searches for "red potato"
I don't think it matters. I like to keep all my keywords separate as in red, potato. Some people just put the keyword 'potato' in there and calls it a day. There are over 550k results for 'potato' and 125K results for 'red potato'. I think it's obvious which one you have a better chance with.
still 125K....understand?
the fact is that with such a large number of photos...most of customer simply look for popular...that's why old files keep selling well even after 10 years....
first of all old files were uploaded in a period where acceptance ratio was lower and inspector choose only the best, i remember how many files were refused for minimal flaw....so if one photo is popular is at least good enough....i
imagine a customer who begin browsing red potato clicking on new files tab? 125 most of them junk, most of them not having a single red potato....that0s the problem.
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search " black caviar"
23000 images of a kind off food that is pretty expensive.....
tab new....page of page of photos without a single gram of caviar.....search for popular first 10 page only caviar....if you are a customer what you do? search and got crazy or click popular and that's it?
so if this is the panorama new images will struggle forever.
in my opinion if ss will not check accurately keyword soon will be a total mess.
they ask contributors to make a step forward quality in years while making giant step backward.
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search " black caviar"
23000 images of a kind off food that is pretty expensive.....
tab new....page of page of photos without a single gram of caviar.....search for popular first 10 page only caviar....if you are a customer what you do? search and got crazy or click popular and that's it?
so if this is the panorama new images will struggle forever.
in my opinion if ss will not check accurately keyword soon will be a total mess.
they ask contributors to make a step forward quality in years while making giant step backward.
That's not black caviar. Who the heck serves black caviar with a metal spoon? What a disgrace!
More like salmon roe dyed black or just plain black couscous.
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search " black caviar"
23000 images of a kind off food that is pretty expensive.....
tab new....page of page of photos without a single gram of caviar.....search for popular first 10 page only caviar....if you are a customer what you do? search and got crazy or click popular and that's it?
so if this is the panorama new images will struggle forever.
in my opinion if ss will not check accurately keyword soon will be a total mess.
they ask contributors to make a step forward quality in years while making giant step backward.
Thats not what I find if I do a search surely a buyer would refine their search? if you do something so generic its not surprising if you get a wide range of results. Its a valid point but exaggerated in my view.
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Another change? Just gone from bad to absolutely terrible. Last 3 days.
:(
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Another change? Just gone from bad to absolutely terrible. Last 3 days.
:(
On the other hand my last three days are normal. I dont think 3 days sample proves much....this month so far for me is turning out like the last one awful start average finish. I suspect though there is a lot of tweaking of the algorithm.
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Another change? Just gone from bad to absolutely terrible. Last 3 days.
:(
It started pretty bad with july but things are getting back to normal from last few days. I agree there is some algorithm change.
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I can't see any positive changes in number of dls or enhanced licences on ss. Since half an year my ss income decreased about 50% percent from the average month income, I had the last two years. All the other relevant agencies are one the level they used to be. Video clip income has decreased dramatic also. More than photo.
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search " black caviar"
23000 images of a kind off food that is pretty expensive.....
tab new....page of page of photos without a single gram of caviar.....search for popular first 10 page only caviar....if you are a customer what you do? search and got crazy or click popular and that's it?
so if this is the panorama new images will struggle forever.
in my opinion if ss will not check accurately keyword soon will be a total mess.
they ask contributors to make a step forward quality in years while making giant step backward.
Thats not what I find if I do a search surely a buyer would refine their search? if you do something so generic its not surprising if you get a wide range of results. Its a valid point but exaggerated in my view.
well first if u search caviar u should find only caviare....that's what happen if u buy to stock food or other serious food agency...
microstock is so amateurish especially about food photography. personally if i were ss i would ask all contributor to check and fix keyword in all images in a period of 3 months.....after that run the test of 10 images casually if 5 show normal or totally wrong keyword the contributors will be deleted. i'm sure things would run better.
in dreamstime many searched for single terms when buy. same in ss.
i repeat the fact that new contributor most are amateur without ethic of work and competition, run to this res of images not relevant to terms.
i eat my hand cause i left 10000000 images sleep in my hd and only last year i rebegin upload. considering that i have 10 images at first page I'm sure if i had regularly uploaded since the beginning i would have 100 150 giving me enough money per month. right now i'm uploading good content who simply slip away in the sea of ugly images.
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today only one dl for 0,38 in ss...last 7 days appalling. after one very good month. it's clear for me they cap earning. POINt. is not possible to not manage to surpass some limits...i understand one month 0 one month 500 one month 200
but every month the same amount plus 10% is a statistic that speaks clearly that something is acting in the background.
for me ss clearly cap earning based on contributor portfolio visibility and importance. i bet what you want that since 15 i will see again a rise to download to reach a certain sum.
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I can't see any positive changes in number of dls or enhanced licences on ss. Since half an year my ss income decreased about 50% percent from the average month income, I had the last two years. All the other relevant agencies are one the level they used to be. Video clip income has decreased dramatic also. More than photo.
everybody seems doing videoclip...but the market for video is minimal compared to photo and the number of video files is growing exponentially.
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search " black caviar"
23000 images of a kind off food that is pretty expensive.....
tab new....page of page of photos without a single gram of caviar.....search for popular first 10 page only caviar....if you are a customer what you do? search and got crazy or click popular and that's it?
so if this is the panorama new images will struggle forever.
in my opinion if ss will not check accurately keyword soon will be a total mess.
they ask contributors to make a step forward quality in years while making giant step backward.
That's not black caviar. Who the heck serves black caviar with a metal spoon? What a disgrace!
More like salmon roe dyed black or just plain black couscous.
what u think people spend 200 dollar for 20 grams caviar to do photoset sold for 0,38:)
at least it rambles caviar. practically 75% are sushi photos.
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what u think people spend 200 dollar for 20 grams caviar to do photoset sold for 0,38:)
at least it rambles caviar. practically 75% are sushi photos.
I doubt that's how much residents of Volgograd (Russia) pay for it. If I remember correctly one kilo goes for 500 bucks (depending on the species, I presume). Perhaps even cheaper if poached. And they do eat it with silver spoons. And just with a regular dessert spoon if you are a hick like me. I bet they also have a fair share of photographers over there.
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what u think people spend 200 dollar for 20 grams caviar to do photoset sold for 0,38:)
at least it rambles caviar. practically 75% are sushi photos.
I doubt that's how much residents of Volgograd (Russia) pay for it. If I remember correctly one kilo goes for 500 bucks (depending on the species, I presume). Perhaps even cheaper if poached. And they do eat it with silver spoons. And just with a regular dessert spoon if you are a hick like me. I bet they also have a fair share of photographers over there.
well one kilo 500 dollar....yes for reselling:)....of the photos i saw of black caviar real caviare account probably for 0,02%:)
but at least even if it's fake caviare it's ok.....i don't want a masco mule in photo to have gin, you can use only soda...but at least that resembles a moscow mule....ss is a mess especially for food, unbelievable....i not blame customer who keep buying the same old stuff...how can you simply find a photo looking for new 2017 content if there is such a mess of keywords.
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well one kilo 500 dollar....yes for reselling:)...
Who do you plan to resell it to? To another resident of Volgograd? Good luck with that. Back in the days of my extensive travels, each time I was bringing with me a couple of 100 g jars of black caviar, all I was allowed by the customs. Paid peanuts for them, shared with friends. Not sure if I can bring any nowadays, with new rules, bans and all. Most of my pigging out on black caviar was on location. My hosts had a one liter jar in the fridge that I was just raiding every morning.
I am not sure how you can taste caviar just by looking at a picture. It all looks very real to me. You do know that black caviar from different species looks differently?
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Another change? Just gone from bad to absolutely terrible. Last 3 days.
:(
On the other hand my last three days are normal. I dont think 3 days sample proves much....this month so far for me is turning out like the last one awful start average finish. I suspect though there is a lot of tweaking of the algorithm.
LOL, i think it's more like "holy sh*t, we just reverted to giving money to established contributors!!! quick change the algo back to give sales to the newbies and our shareholders cousin's cousins cousins !!!" 8)
yes, it lasted on the first days of July ! now back to the same sh*t-terstock
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I guess everyone is different. July is a little lower than last 2 months for me, but nothing on the scale of the "the sky is falling!". Pretty much in line with other stocks. So far I interpret it as seasonal fluctuations.