MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Shutterstock.com => Topic started by: Rinderart on July 14, 2016, 02:11
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OK. been in 11 Years .......newbies before march 12th 2012 need not Post Or who cares if ya do.... But, Sales after that date was the telling Point for me that something was amiss...........search went crazy. Most Popular disappeared and all hell broke loose. Some noticed nothing..... Probably due to small noncommercial work, BS or super small Ports. OR... the wooHoo crowd thinking Buyers love there work....?. And when i first took Notice Because Up until that date the slight variations were normal. Lots Of posts along the way since then. But Just for me and many swings that were quite large ...this july 2016 is a total Joke I mean serious Joke after uploading no less than 100/200 a month going On what I've told newbies you must do.. Im sorry I don't believe that crap anymore and Im tired and the Koolaid is getting distasteful and I apoligize to anyone I said that to.
This july has be a disaster. Less than My commissions from 10 Years ago.
Go Ahead Jon...Farm all the 25 cent folks you can. this is getting so Out of control. I Pray a new site comes in and "SCARES THEM STRAIGHT" I doubt it. ego and Money has Changed My Old friend. the mistakes they are making. ????? they don't even know about.
Sorry About the Rant. Thats what a veteran does. I don't know. I leave the critique forum and after 11 years in one week Fools are critiquing Others that have no clue what there doing themselves. MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOA. I guess I have to let this go and Move on. It's tough But I will. I see crap people are posting and it's Mind Blowing. HEY LEAF.............Heads up ,here come your new forum Posters. they will be here real soon. I won't, I'll be out making Money, these fools have no Idea about that part because we know How.........
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Thanks for that update - its good to hear from a pro that things are down (its not just me!)
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Amen to that!
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I have great respect for Laurin. Also for David. They have taught me a lot about stock photography, especially food photography. I thought that it's just me who go so bad because of my port or I belief that adding no more than 100 / 150 pictures per month it's the problem.
I try to be more optimistic but, for now, I don't see how. I began to work on another project with my photos, maybe I will do much better than stock photography, who knows ?!... I hope that Laurin, David and other great people from this industry also find another niche.
Cheers !
:)
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its good to hear from a pro that things are down (its not just me!)
No, it is not good. If things are down because of oversaturation it is much, much worse than in the case when you or somebody else are having a poor month or a quarter.
In the second case, things could always improve for you, you may increase your port, etc. In the first case it is more or less Game Over. I have seen quite a few sites fade away but I have never seen a site making a spectacular come back.
Therefore I'd rather have a situation when "it's just me" than when "it is bad for everybody".
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OK. been in 11 Years .......newbies before march 12th 2012 need not Post Or who cares if ya do.... But, Sales after that date was the telling Point for me that something was amiss...........search went crazy. Most Popular disappeared and all hell broke loose. Some noticed nothing..... Probably due to small noncommercial work, BS or super small Ports. OR... the wooHoo crowd thinking Buyers love there work....?. And when i first took Notice Because Up until that date the slight variations were normal. Lots Of posts along the way since then. But Just for me and many swings that were quite large ...this july 2016 is a total Joke I mean serious Joke after uploading no less than 100/200 a month going On what I've told newbies you must do.. Im sorry I don't believe that crap anymore and Im tired and the Koolaid is getting distasteful and I apoligize to anyone I said that to.
This july has be a disaster. Less than My commissions from 10 Years ago.
Go Ahead Jon...Farm all the 25 cent folks you can. this is getting so Out of control. I Pray a new site comes in and "SCARES THEM STRAIGHT" I doubt it. ego and Money has Changed My Old friend. the mistakes they are making. ????? they don't even know about.
Sorry About the Rant. Thats what a veteran does. I don't know. I leave the critique forum and after 11 years in one week Fools are critiquing Others that have no clue what there doing themselves. MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOA. I guess I have to let this go and Move on. It's tough But I will. I see crap people are posting and it's Mind Blowing. HEY LEAF.............Heads up ,here come your new forum Posters. they will be here real soon. I won't, I'll be out making Money, these fools have no Idea about that part because we know How.........
every 3 months you write a post like this but you never leave, seen your rants for years, even before 2012, and your first sentence shows your true character, why not be a gracious old man.
hit the bong man, think of your heart, take a rest, its nearly 1 am
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Most of my sales with SS are from old images. My earnings month to month have wild swings because the big single and other sales make a huge difference. This month is grim so far. There is another site that's almost making up for it, but it would be stupid to tell people what site that is, because then everyone starts uploading there and my earnings shoot down. So I better not say it starts with C, ends in a and has anv in the middle, that would make me really dumb :) If I don't mention it, lots of other people will and already have, there's no secrets in this business, or are there?
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OK. been in 11 Years .......newbies before march 12th 2012 need not Post Or who cares if ya do.... But, Sales after that date was the telling Point for me that something was amiss...........search went crazy. Most Popular disappeared and all hell broke loose. Some noticed nothing..... Probably due to small noncommercial work, BS or super small Ports. OR... the wooHoo crowd thinking Buyers love there work....?. And when i first took Notice Because Up until that date the slight variations were normal. Lots Of posts along the way since then. But Just for me and many swings that were quite large ...this july 2016 is a total Joke I mean serious Joke after uploading no less than 100/200 a month going On what I've told newbies you must do.. Im sorry I don't believe that crap anymore and Im tired and the Koolaid is getting distasteful and I apoligize to anyone I said that to.
This july has be a disaster. Less than My commissions from 10 Years ago.
Go Ahead Jon...Farm all the 25 cent folks you can. this is getting so Out of control. I Pray a new site comes in and "SCARES THEM STRAIGHT" I doubt it. ego and Money has Changed My Old friend. the mistakes they are making. ????? they don't even know about.
Sorry About the Rant. Thats what a veteran does. I don't know. I leave the critique forum and after 11 years in one week Fools are critiquing Others that have no clue what there doing themselves. MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOA. I guess I have to let this go and Move on. It's tough But I will. I see crap people are posting and it's Mind Blowing. HEY LEAF.............Heads up ,here come your new forum Posters. they will be here real soon. I won't, I'll be out making Money, these fools have no Idea about that part because we know How.........
Have you considered the possibility that some of the newbies might actually be good and meeting the market's current needs better. I sniff a sense of entitlement here...no one can make people buy images they don't want.
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Rinder: It might just be your work not only competition. I don't understand why people are blaming the stock agency's. Look at some ports of best selling contributors like this one:
http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-91282p1.html (http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-91282p1.html)
I don't see any of that kind of work, style in your portfolio. You are ranting and complaining all the time but if you look at your work from before 2012 and now you are standing still wile the competition is getting better and better. And yes. There are many newbies, graphic designers and young creative talents that are doing much, much better commercial work. THAT is why some people are loosing sales.
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I see more works which need more expensive setup, paid models, travel etc. Not a lot of countries have prices levels which can balance this well. BTW ss is too much slow today.
Personally i have more demands for group shots, only beautiful people of different ages, and this is going as work for hire, not for stock, otherwise here i will not cover my expenses.
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Ghastly June and July looks even worse - but I can't check because the bloody site is down AGAIN!!
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Rinder: It might just be your work not only competition. I don't understand why people are blaming the stock agency's. Look at some ports of best selling contributors like this one:
[url]http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-91282p1.html[/url] ([url]http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-91282p1.html[/url])
I don't see any of that kind of work, style in your portfolio. You are ranting and complaining all the time but if you look at your work from before 2012 and now you are standing still wile the competition is getting better and better. And yes. There are many newbies, graphic designers and young creative talents that are doing much, much better commercial work. THAT is why some people are loosing sales.
I see no more than bluish images in the old Yuri Arcurs style……
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It's not the point if he's better or worse than someone else at the moment. He can improve, he can be better than he used to be. But, he (we) can't improve infinitely. Just like we can't keep increasing portfolio at the same rate, we can't improve our skills forever, and we can't keep reducing costs forever. And when we do everything we can to make successful stock business and things are still going downhill, it is a good indicator that it is, like someone said earlier, game over.
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It's not the point if he's better or worse than someone else at the moment.
Thats exactly the point
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I guess misery loves company, but I am at least reassured by the fact that it's not just me.
I am not a huge player in this, but have built up a portfolio over several years that has been consistently earning me a four-figure sum at Shutterstock each month. Now in July, I am lucky if I make $100 a week.
What the f*** happened? Am I just buried under a slew of crappy icons and shots of weed?
Shutterstock appears to be on a course to self-destruct. What incentive is there to submit there anymore? Assuming of course, that the site is actually accessible to upload, which it currently isn't.
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I guess misery loves company, but I am at least reassured by the fact that it's not just me.
I am not a huge player in this, but have built up a portfolio over several years that has been consistently earning me a four-figure sum at Shutterstock each month. Now in July, I am lucky if I make $100 a week.
What the f*** happened? Am I just buried under a slew of crappy icons and shots of weed?
Shutterstock appears to be on a course to self-destruct. What incentive is there to submit there anymore? Assuming of course, that the site is actually accessible to upload, which it currently isn't.
Like it or not the published and audited figures coming out of S stock are far from indicating any kind of imminent self destruction though I expect competition to get stiffer
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And yes. There are many newbies, graphic designers and young creative talents that are doing much, much better commercial work. THAT is why some people are loosing sales.
That's true and that is the real threat for oldies and also the hidden reason of their complaint.
I'm old too, I don't complain, just envy them. It's a new world!.
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OK. been in 11 Years .......newbies before march 12th 2012 need not Post Or who cares if ya do.... But, Sales after that date was the telling Point for me that something was amiss...........search went crazy. Most Popular disappeared and all hell broke loose. Some noticed nothing..... Probably due to small noncommercial work, BS or super small Ports. OR... the wooHoo crowd thinking Buyers love there work....?. And when i first took Notice Because Up until that date the slight variations were normal. Lots Of posts along the way since then. But Just for me and many swings that were quite large ...this july 2016 is a total Joke I mean serious Joke after uploading no less than 100/200 a month going On what I've told newbies you must do.. Im sorry I don't believe that crap anymore and Im tired and the Koolaid is getting distasteful and I apoligize to anyone I said that to.
This july has be a disaster. Less than My commissions from 10 Years ago.
Go Ahead Jon...Farm all the 25 cent folks you can. this is getting so Out of control. I Pray a new site comes in and "SCARES THEM STRAIGHT" I doubt it. ego and Money has Changed My Old friend. the mistakes they are making. ????? they don't even know about.
Sorry About the Rant. Thats what a veteran does. I don't know. I leave the critique forum and after 11 years in one week Fools are critiquing Others that have no clue what there doing themselves. MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOA. I guess I have to let this go and Move on. It's tough But I will. I see crap people are posting and it's Mind Blowing. HEY LEAF.............Heads up ,here come your new forum Posters. they will be here real soon. I won't, I'll be out making Money, these fools have no Idea about that part because we know How.........
....or maybe the people you keep calling newbs, trying a bit too hard be condescending, are indeed uploading way better stock than you do. Which not that hard to do, to be honest.
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Yup, this year something's definitely up. SS is clearly being set up for a sale, IMO. They opened the floodgates to lower-quality work when they loosened the entry standards; went after huge ports of similar, very simple icon images that they then uploaded all in one day; allowed spammy titles all over the place to disrupt the search; either did something weird to the search or the search broke and they haven't bothered to fix it. I think they also changed the algorithm to favor newer ports over older ports in the extreme, so they'd pay out less in royalties (paying 25˘ is better for them than paying 38˘, after all).
Clearly they're trying to quickly inflate the library while keeping a larger percentage of the royalties.
Oringer has little incentive to stay tied to the site. He's a programmer, not a stock artist, and he started the site to make money. It must have been exciting to identify that market niche and grow his own huge company so quickly, but now he is beholden to investors and has to listen to them. If I were him I'd have taken my billion dollars and skipped out years ago.
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And yes. There are many newbies, graphic designers and young creative talents that are doing much, much better commercial work. THAT is why some people are loosing sales.
That's true and that is the real threat for oldies and also the hidden reason of their complaint.
I'm old too, I don't complain, just envy them. It's a new world!.
I agree with this, but only to a certain extent. Whilst it is obviously true that work submitted several years back is often inferior in quality, and there are a lot of new talented artists joining, I don't believe that this is the main reason people are losing sales. It will certainly account for a gradual decline, as more contributors are taking a slice of the same pie, but it won't account for sales halving overnight, which is what has happened to me since the 1st July.
We all know that in this industry it is important to keep producing and uploading new, quality work, but I am noticing that hardly anything new is selling - sales are generally coming from older work, which must therefore be more visible and favoured in the search.
Also, there may be a lot of real talent joining but there are also plenty of new contributors who think they will get rich quick from this industry. I came across a new contributor this morning who has uploaded a portfolio of 18000 icons images this year, of very average quality. I actually looked up the contributor's portfolio on the Top 100 Shutterstock Authors site, and calculated that they have sold just 1.6% of their portfolio. At 25c a sale, (assuming that like the rest of us the ODs, ELs & SODs are a bit thin on the ground), so this means their 18000+ portfolio has earned them a grand total of $72. I doubt that would even pay the cost to employ a reviewer to process 18000 images!
IMO, Shutterstock has opened the flood gates and lowered the standards, and this is clearly working for their bottom line profits in the short term. Longterm, the question is will they manage to keep contributors engaged if the contributor only earns $72 for 18000 images? Eventually, they will only manage to keep the contributors producing mediocre content, as the rest of us will have sought out alternative opportunities for revenue. I sincerely hope they realise the path they are on is not sustainable before it's too late.
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snip
IMO, Shutterstock has opened the flood gates and lowered the standards, and this is clearly working for their bottom line profits in the short term. Longterm, the question is will they manage to keep contributors engaged if the contributor only earns $72 for 18000 images? Eventually, they will only manage to keep the contributors producing mediocre content, as the rest of us will have sought out alternative opportunities for revenue. I sincerely hope they realise the path they are on is not sustainable before it's too late.
Most definitely there is a problem with SS that doesn't have anything to do with whether one is old or young, or has a new portfolio or has been there for years. Some of the previous posters think it's "cool" to disrespect someone like Laurin, who has more talent in his left pinky than they will in their entire lives, but the bolded statement above says it all. The cream of the crop talent will find other more profitable venues, and the low to mediocre talent will remain in microstock, dispelling the theory that one has to be a "hipster" just to produce saleable, relevant content. Good is good no matter how old you are or how long you have been in the business.
I see the word entitlement being thrown around...and yet the notion that "old" people should go rest and smoke their bongs and leave the real talent to the young hipsters, to me, is the epitome of the definition of entitlement. Maybe a little humility would go a long way. Some of you hipsters might have to go google that word. ;)
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The best are the people who disparage others' ports while remaining anonymous themselves.
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Most of my sales with SS are from old images. My earnings month to month have wild swings because the big single and other sales make a huge difference. This month is grim so far. There is another site that's almost making up for it, but it would be stupid to tell people what site that is, because then everyone starts uploading there and my earnings shoot down. So I better not say it starts with C, ends in a and has anv in the middle, that would make me really dumb :) If I don't mention it, lots of other people will and already have, there's no secrets in this business, or are there?
looks like we are on the same tandem. i thought it was me, but like you if not for my oldest images
and regular sellers i am in zero days since this month.
in the past like stockastic pointed out then, if not for the 28 , 85 and 102 single commission
it would also be dead duck for me.
now with the disappearance of those single large commissions, zero days are all over the place.
it can't be my portfolio is suddenly redundant as i have increased my portfolio 3000
but in spite of how hard i try, i just can't seem to find someone in my city to sell me marijuana
so i could flood my port with still life shots of this stuff that ss so love to have...
buf !!!
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Many oversee that Shutterstock itself DOESNT HAS A PROBLEM AT ALL. When i read this it looks like Shutterstock is dying. But Shutterstock is growing every year. There is no way in near future that SS goes out of business. I guess they will only upgrade and expand. The problems mentioned here have nothing to do with Shutterstocks position.
It is a contributors problem. More competition.... more images....
Anyway i dont like in general that contributors are all the time pointing at other contributors. Complaining that there are to many and so on...... SS is for everyone and everybody has right to register and submit photos.
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I will say this. First, Shelma is right. For me I do not attack others, disparage others because I choose to be anonymous. But I will fire back when someone disparages me, it's human nature. That being said, several posts here are spot on. Rinder, like others, are very frustrated. I have about 10 years in this business and 38 years in a specialty area of photography, but Rinder, for example, has a lifetime in this business. I can completely empathize with him, but I don't necessarily agree with everything he says. Some newbies are killer artists and ARE willing to accept 38 cents.
For me, I consider my port to be what seems to be called here "average". Aside from some of my underwater work, as an average quality & concept producer in this for 10 years, I see huge declines, and SS is on that list. I am getting $6 days, then $80 days, but mostly now $13-$18 days with almost 5,000 assets on SS. But, listening to my business side (I do continuous improvement and business process design for a living) I have made shifts in my strategy to create a wider breadth of subject matter and have delved into video to help offset what amounts to a 30% decline in revenue for my still work. So even as an AVERAGE producer I am feeling the pinch of ROI. This is not an "old timer", super experienced contributor issue. I think most everyone who closely follows their business sees some decline....I said mostly not all. I think Rinder looks at others' work and compares it to his knowledge and talent and puts it in a category, whereas the artist is submitting something that is good in their eyes and, in fact, could be a nice seller even though it is called mediocre work by some.
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i am just thinking of branching out...
find someone to supply me with marijuana so ss ppl will flip the switch for my portfolio
increase my sales in exchange i supply them with the stuff they have been smoking for months.
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I'm a newbie. I'm still learning a lot of things about lighting, titles, keywords, color grading, stock sites and English language :) Thanks to this great forum. But I've already learnt one thing for sure: there are no eternal businesses or market niches. 15-year old with his or her iphone sometimes makes technically much better pics and videos than highly paid pro's in late 1990's (no offense to anybody). It's useless to complain your candle business is sinking with light bulb invented.
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There are three things you can do with frustration. Change it, accept it, or leave it.
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Many oversee that Shutterstock itself DOESNT HAS A PROBLEM AT ALL. When i read this it looks like Shutterstock is dying. But Shutterstock is growing every year. There is no way in near future that SS goes out of business. I guess they will only upgrade and expand. The problems mentioned here have nothing to do with Shutterstocks position.
It is a contributors problem. More competition.... more images....
Anyway i dont like in general that contributors are all the time pointing at other contributors. Complaining that there are to many and so on...... SS is for everyone and everybody has right to register and submit photos.
I think you're reading things that aren't there. None of us "old-timers" (I've been with SS for 4 years) are saying all new work is bad (some of it is great), nor are we saying we're the greatest (I'm sure not, though I'm fairly successful); we're pointing out recent changes to the site that have been adversely affecting more established contributors.
Those of us who've been with the site for several years and have relatively large portfolios can spot issues because we've been at this for a bit and pay careful attention to our rankings, new work, competition, industry trends, and the functionality of the site. If you have hundreds or thousands of sales per day it's more obvious when sales suddenly plunge 25% after years of steady growth, and if you're familiar with the way sales trend over the year (slower after xmas and in summer, etc.), you can spot when there's an anomaly.
Rinder probably made the comment about newbies because new people just haven't been around long enough to have a feel for the market and see the anomalies. I sure wouldn't have been able to see them four years ago.
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Many oversee that Shutterstock itself DOESNT HAS A PROBLEM AT ALL. When i read this it looks like Shutterstock is dying. But Shutterstock is growing every year. There is no way in near future that SS goes out of business. I guess they will only upgrade and expand. The problems mentioned here have nothing to do with Shutterstocks position.
It is a contributors problem. More competition.... more images....
Anyway i dont like in general that contributors are all the time pointing at other contributors. Complaining that there are to many and so on...... SS is for everyone and everybody has right to register and submit photos.
We know that Shutterstock doesn't have a problem with it's bottom-line profit. They are making more money than ever, when the contributors are seeing declining sales due to increased competition, both from other stock sites and an ever-growing library. That's business!
The point is though, that business strategies can be great in the short term and damaging in the long term. Sometimes a business needs to take a longer term view, and I really think this is one of those times, unless of course, they are looking to sell out and let a new owner sort out the mess they are making.
On a side note, I used an example portfolio to illustrate a point, and took care not to indicate in any way who the contributor was. I also don't like laying blame onto other artists or complaints of 'too many contributors' - competition is healthy and it forces us to strive for excellence, which is always a good thing. My problem here has never been to do with other contributors uploading 18000 icons - that is their prerogative provided they are staying within the guidelines set by the site. My problem is purely with Shutterstock's tactical change which now allows this to happen.
As a contributor who is also a buyer I find myself turning elsewhere for material, because the Shutterstock search presents me with pages and pages of images with minuscule variations, and my 'paid client work' doesn't afford me the time to wade through all of this in the hopes that I'll find what I'm looking for.
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I just was completely inactive last month due to personal reasons (i mean i dont upload any image), so it is pretty logic for me to have a very low incoming.
I believe all of you when say that the business is going down for contributors; but i have a question... in one hand i never totally understand how Microstockgroup Earning Rating is calculated (the column that you can see at your right), in the other I had never seen SS so high in the Earnings Rate, is at 105,6 now! it was always between 85-95.
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I will say this. First, Shelma is right. For me I do not attack others, disparage others because I choose to be anonymous. But I will fire back when someone disparages me, it's human nature. That being said, several posts here are spot on. Rinder, like others, are very frustrated. I have about 10 years in this business and 38 years in a specialty area of photography, but Rinder, for example, has a lifetime in this business. I can completely empathize with him, but I don't necessarily agree with everything he says. Some newbies are killer artists and ARE willing to accept 38 cents.
For me, I consider my port to be what seems to be called here "average". Aside from some of my underwater work, as an average quality & concept producer in this for 10 years, I see huge declines, and SS is on that list. I am getting $6 days, then $80 days, but mostly now $13-$18 days with almost 5,000 assets on SS. But, listening to my business side (I do continuous improvement and business process design for a living) I have made shifts in my strategy to create a wider breadth of subject matter and have delved into video to help offset what amounts to a 30% decline in revenue for my still work. So even as an AVERAGE producer I am feeling the pinch of ROI. This is not an "old timer", super experienced contributor issue. I think most everyone who closely follows their business sees some decline....I said mostly not all. I think Rinder looks at others' work and compares it to his knowledge and talent and puts it in a category, whereas the artist is submitting something that is good in their eyes and, in fact, could be a nice seller even though it is called mediocre work by some.
Well said
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snip
IMO, Shutterstock has opened the flood gates and lowered the standards, and this is clearly working for their bottom line profits in the short term. Longterm, the question is will they manage to keep contributors engaged if the contributor only earns $72 for 18000 images? Eventually, they will only manage to keep the contributors producing mediocre content, as the rest of us will have sought out alternative opportunities for revenue. I sincerely hope they realise the path they are on is not sustainable before it's too late.
Most definitely there is a problem with SS that doesn't have anything to do with whether one is old or young, or has a new portfolio or has been there for years. Some of the previous posters think it's "cool" to disrespect someone like Laurin, who has more talent in his left pinky than they will in their entire lives, but the bolded statement above says it all. The cream of the crop talent will find other more profitable venues, and the low to mediocre talent will remain in microstock, dispelling the theory that one has to be a "hipster" just to produce saleable, relevant content. Good is good no matter how old you are or how long you have been in the business.
I see the word entitlement being thrown around...and yet the notion that "old" people should go rest and smoke their bongs and leave the real talent to the young hipsters, to me, is the epitome of the definition of entitlement. Maybe a little humility would go a long way. Some of you hipsters might have to go google that word. ;)
If you are referring to my comment above, I think you are overreacting but that is my fault.
First of all, I have a great respect for Laurin and his work.
Second, when I say old (in this context), it doesn't mean less valuable, it only means that the new generation has much more tools for creative work from an early age on. Graphic design (without being hipsters) takes many years of study and much, much time to learn, which older people don't have. Uploading vectors along with photos diversifies a port big time. So, it's no need to make a mountain out of a molehill for the use or the word "old".
No, old people should NOT "go rest and smoke their bongs......", they should try to learn diversify their port if they still can and kip up with the trend. This is what I need and find it very hard to accomplish.
On a side-note, this is an international forum where not all of us are English speakers. No offense, it would be nice to use a simple vocabulary instead of sending people to g00gle but it's just my 5c.
It's obvious that you are an intelligent person, I, on the other hand have some limitations when it comes to correctly express what I think in English.
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... because I choose to be anonymous. .
Mr. Mantis, I'm afraid you are not really anonymous as long as you publish the same profile picture here and on iStock. ;)
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If you are referring to my comment above, I think you are overreacting but that is my fault.
First of all, I have a great respect for Laurin and his work.
Second, when I say old (in this context), it doesn't mean less valuable, it only means that the new generation has much more tools for creative work from an early age on. Graphic design (without being hipsters) takes many years of study and much, much time to learn, which older people don't have. Uploading vectors along with photos diversifies a port big time. So, it's no need to make a mountain out of a molehill for the use or the word "old".
No, old people should NOT "go rest and smoke their bongs......", they should try to learn diversify their port if they still can and kip up with the trend. This is what I need and find it very hard to accomplish.
On a side-note, this is an international forum where not all of us are English speakers. No offense, it would be nice to use a simple vocabulary instead of sending people to g00gle but it's just my 5c.
It's obvious that you are an intelligent person, I, on the other hand have some limitations when it comes to correctly express what I think in English.
As has been already mentioned, it doesn't matter if you use your phone or an expensive, high end camera, or are young and new to microstock, or have been here for years...talent is talent. The problems at SS are a combination of things, mostly WAY out of the contributors' control.
As far as diversifying one's port, there are plenty of people who are doing that, and sales are STILL tanking. Blaming Laurin or any other contributor for the problems just doesn't make sense. If you are critiquing a person's port one-on-one, diversifying might be a perfectly legitimate criticism. But the sales problems are so widespread among all different portfolios, I just don't think that is what is going on here.
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its good to hear from a pro that things are down (its not just me!)
No, it is not good. If things are down because of oversaturation it is much, much worse than in the case when you or somebody else are having a poor month or a quarter.
In the second case, things could always improve for you, you may increase your port, etc. In the first case it is more or less Game Over. I have seen quite a few sites fade away but I have never seen a site making a spectacular come back.
Therefore I'd rather have a situation when "it's just me" than when "it is bad for everybody".
it isn't really a saturation point. anymore than having 10 supermarkets in the same district. there is always sales to be made.
the problem here, as lauren points out to consensus widely, the switch is off the established contributors ie those who earns a higher %age of commissions.
we still make, but make only as much as we did as a newbie in our earliest years, even though
our port has lifted the bar to much higher and numbers abound, our sales do not reciprocate to our inventory and standard.
as lauren says it so implicitly, "Jon, go please the 25 cts brigade ...of marijuana and apple and repititious vectors ports...
push the factories ...
penalize the ones who made ss where it is today.
..
all that to please some major shareholders now getting ready to short the ss stock.
by the time they take profit and go elsewhere to scavenge and leave ss as yet another roadkill,
you too will not be there to rescue Oringer.
he too might pull an Istock and leave with the money in his wallet
and all we will be left with is fotolia, alamy, whatever...
sorry sight. apocalypse now !!!
-
As a contributor who is also a buyer I find myself turning elsewhere for material, because the Shutterstock search presents me with pages and pages of images with minuscule variations, and my 'paid client work' doesn't afford me the time to wade through all of this in the hopes that I'll find what I'm looking for.
I have been saying for years this will be the ultimate problem with all microstock. The complete lack of editing and the crowd source model will devour itself and dilute the collection to a needle in a haystack. The other thing that will devour itself is the 5hitty royalty rates paid combined with the saturation of imagery = less money to the average contributor. I think the real talent will go to where they get paid accordingly and the skim on the surface will remain on micros.
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Many oversee that Shutterstock itself DOESNT HAS A PROBLEM AT ALL. When i read this it looks like Shutterstock is dying. But Shutterstock is growing every year. There is no way in near future that SS goes out of business. I guess they will only upgrade and expand. The problems mentioned here have nothing to do with Shutterstocks position.
It is a contributors problem. More competition.... more images....
Anyway i dont like in general that contributors are all the time pointing at other contributors. Complaining that there are to many and so on...... SS is for everyone and everybody has right to register and submit photos.
I think you're reading things that aren't there. None of us "old-timers" (I've been with SS for 4 years) are saying all new work is bad (some of it is great), nor are we saying we're the greatest (I'm sure not, though I'm fairly successful); we're pointing out recent changes to the site that have been adversely affecting more established contributors.
Those of us who've been with the site for several years and have relatively large portfolios can spot issues because we've been at this for a bit and pay careful attention to our rankings, new work, competition, industry trends, and the functionality of the site.
well said shelma, you read my mind.
and for those smug newbies who think they are doing well ,
let us remind you, all newbies are given a honeymoon where they too think they
are suddenly as good as yuri , sjlocke,etc..
sell big time.
but that's only because you are given that flip of the switch to make it look like you are the
flavour of the month.
once you fed the beast with more new work, you will not be as smug as you are now,
the moment they flip your switch and give that honeymoon suite to the next
newbie batch.
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Been in the business since 2008... man i thought I'm invisible from all the gloom and doom thing people posting until these past several months. these time it is real.
Good luck everyone.
Plan B, plan B... no I don't have fckin plan Beee!
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As has been already mentioned, it doesn't matter if you use your phone or an expensive, high end camera, or are young and new to microstock, or have been here for years...talent is talent. The problems at SS are a combination of things, mostly WAY out of the contributors' control.
As far as diversifying one's port, there are plenty of people who are doing that, and sales are STILL tanking. Blaming Laurin or any other contributor for the problems just doesn't make sense. If you are critiquing a person's port one-on-one, diversifying might be a perfectly legitimate criticism. But the sales problems are so widespread among all different portfolios, I just don't think that is what is going on here.
I agree with everything you said here, except one thing: nobody attacked Laurin before he attacked others, in his very first sentence.
As I said before, I admire Laurin and learned a lot from him just by reading his posts during the years. Most of all, I admire his ability to revigorate and create commotion on both forums.
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Yup, this year something's definitely up. SS is clearly being set up for a sale, IMO. They opened the floodgates to lower-quality work when they loosened the entry standards; went after huge ports of similar, very simple icon images that they then uploaded all in one day; allowed spammy titles all over the place to disrupt the search; either did something weird to the search or the search broke and they haven't bothered to fix it. I think they also changed the algorithm to favor newer ports over older ports in the extreme, so they'd pay out less in royalties (paying 25˘ is better for them than paying 38˘, after all).
Clearly they're trying to quickly inflate the library while keeping a larger percentage of the royalties.
Oringer has little incentive to stay tied to the site. He's a programmer, not a stock artist, and he started the site to make money. It must have been exciting to identify that market niche and grow his own huge company so quickly, but now he is beholden to investors and has to listen to them. If I were him I'd have taken my billion dollars and skipped out years ago.
WE HAVE SEEN IT ALL BEFORE, NO???
read my lips...
ISTOCK ! dejavu
the writing is on the wall.
-ignore the experienced contributors
- ignore the CONTACT US (yes, no reply for almost a month already)
- reject the experienced contribution with the slightest error ( poor composition, wb, blur,etc)
yet flood the new images with tons of similars in vector and factory works of weeds,
poor exposure, LCV, etc.
there is a double standard , definitely,
and this is the same thing as the owner of a sh*thole apartment rental property
filling his bldg with full vacancy of welfare recipients and druggies
so the buyer thinks he is getting a great deal,
without knowing that there are repairs overdue for months hidden behind the walls
and ceilings ready to cave-in due to water-damage.
same method of whitewash, different business... but same method.
... we have xxx xxx xxx xxx new images every day (mostly weed and simplistic vectors)
i reiterate,
read my lips... deja vu ISTOCK!!!
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SS since 2006 - 8000 files, and yes, in the same boat as Rinder. Declining sales since 2012. One difference however : I ALWAYS expect declining sales (even in 2012), simply because I'm a pessimist in nature. So when everybody is talking about diversifying, I do that, but not within microstock, not even within stock photography. When I left my day job end of 2011, I did not have the guts to put all eggs in 1 basket, so I started a portrait business. Right now, I spend 90% of my time photographying belly&baby portraits and I love it. And when I see an opportunity to shoot something fresh/new, I will shoot it and submit to SS and other agencies. So I submit less than the early days, but no typical stock stuff anymore. I'm glad I did, because if the decline in stock (not just SS!!) goes on like this, I'll be so happy I still have those bellies & babies ;)
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... because I choose to be anonymous. .
Mr. Mantis, I'm afraid you are not really anonymous as long as you publish the same profile picture here and on iStock. ;)
As I have said previously, anyone who wants to find my port can do so pretty easily. Fotolia did and now we have no relationship. I'm not really hiding, just don't post all my links here, not that they are special.
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I think it's an interesting phenomenon that some veterans seem to think the work of a veteran is automatically of higher quality than the work of a newbie could ever be.
This can't be further from the truth, whether we're talking music, photography, videography, etc...
The simple truth is that the tools are now available to almost anyone who wants to record music or take professional quality pictures. That was not the case 20-30 years ago when the so called veterans started and there was virtually no competition compared to today.
I see many talented 15-year-olds creating amazing high quality work while the work of some veterans looks like they discovered the Shadows and Highlights sliders in Lightroom for the first time and applied them to all their work...
As someone here posted a while back (don't remember who) - the time of making serious $$$ selling mediocre images is over, but the industry is definitely not doomed!
Up your game, competition is serious.
-
I think it's an interesting phenomenon that some veterans seem to think the work of a veteran is automatically of higher quality than the work of a newbie could ever be.
This can't be further from the truth, whether we're talking music, photography, videography, etc...
The simple truth is that the tools are now available to almost anyone who wants to record music or take professional quality pictures. That was not the case 20-30 years ago when the so called veterans started and there was virtually no competition compared to today.
I see many talented 15-year-olds creating amazing high quality work while the work of some veterans looks like they discovered the Shadows and Highlights sliders in Lightroom for the first time and applied them to all their work...
As someone here posted a while back (don't remember who) - the time of making serious $$$ selling mediocre images is over, but the industry is definitely not doomed!
Up your game, competition is serious.
Show us your work. ;)
-
I think it's an interesting phenomenon that some veterans seem to think the work of a veteran is automatically of higher quality than the work of a newbie could ever be.
This can't be further from the truth, whether we're talking music, photography, videography, etc...
The simple truth is that the tools are now available to almost anyone who wants to record music or take professional quality pictures. That was not the case 20-30 years ago when the so called veterans started and there was virtually no competition compared to today.
I see many talented 15-year-olds creating amazing high quality work while the work of some veterans looks like they discovered the Shadows and Highlights sliders in Lightroom for the first time and applied them to all their work...
As someone here posted a while back (don't remember who) - the time of making serious $$$ selling mediocre images is over, but the industry is definitely not doomed!
Up your game, competition is serious.
Show us your work. ;)
Why?
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I think it's an interesting phenomenon that some veterans seem to think the work of a veteran is automatically of higher quality than the work of a newbie could ever be.
I don't think that anyone is trying to imply that. There are fabulous and poor contributors, be they newbies or veterans.
I would consider myself a veteran, as I've been a submitter for over 10 years. The only advantage I have over a newbie is meaningful statistics over time with which to back up my arguments.
We all know the heady days of uploading the contents of your hard drive for instant gratification are long since over. But time in this industry gives me an insight into past and new trends, sales patterns, seasonal uploading, etc. that a newbie has yet to experience. Upping my game has been something I've striven to do every step of the way, both in terms of content quality and business strategy.
When my income halves overnight, and I now longer earn sufficient to cover my outgoings, I am most certainly going to attempt to up my game. However, as many will attest to, the new stuff isn't selling - it is getting buried in searches under a slew of mediocrity. It doesn't really matter how much you 'up your game' if your work never sees the light of day.
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I think it's an interesting phenomenon that some veterans seem to think the work of a veteran is automatically of higher quality than the work of a newbie could ever be.
I don't think that anyone is trying to imply that. There are fabulous and poor contributors, be they newbies or veterans.
I would consider myself a veteran, as I've been a submitter for over 10 years. The only advantage I have over a newbie is meaningful statistics over time with which to back up my arguments.
We all know the heady days of uploading the contents of your hard drive for instant gratification are long since over. But time in this industry gives me an insight into past and new trends, sales patterns, seasonal uploading, etc. that a newbie has yet to experience. Upping my game has been something I've striven to do every step of the way, both in terms of content quality and business strategy.
When my income halves overnight, and I now longer earn sufficient to cover my outgoings, I am most certainly going to attempt to up my game. However, as many will attest to, the new stuff isn't selling - it is getting buried in searches under slew of mediocrity. It doesn't really matter how much you up you game if your work never sees the light of day.
Excellent post.
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The simple truth is that the tools are now available to almost anyone who wants to record music or take professional quality pictures. That was not the case 20-30 years ago when the so called veterans started and there was virtually no competition compared to today.
You are joking right? or is this just your complete inexperience talking? The competition was much more fierce 20-30 years ago than today.
The entry into selling stock today and being a "professional" is one image accepted, and my cat can do that with her tail tied in a knot.
Back then rejection was completely normal, not like the entitled shooter of today with everything accepted and no editing in place. To get into any agency back then you really had to have your game on, or else get rejected. What did you do? You kept going on and getting better until you go accepted because the competition was based on merit and ability.
That is not to say the work is any better back then or today, there has always been some really great shooters and there still is. The only difference between 20-30 years ago and the current times is the overall quality has actually dropped immensely on average. Most of what is on any microstock site today is mediocre at best. They sure as 5hit might have 80 Million +++ images, but considering most of it is crap says a lot.
Back in the good old days if you got 10% acceptance on any agency your were doing well, now if you are getting one image rejected it's an ordeal that fills pages of "support" on forums from the "pros".
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When my income halves overnight, and I now longer earn sufficient to cover my outgoings, I am most certainly going to attempt to up my game. However, as many will attest to, the new stuff isn't selling - it is getting buried in searches under a slew of mediocrity. It doesn't really matter how much you 'up your game' if your work never sees the light of day.
that's true!
except for the handful here who insist you /we old f@rt$ should learn to make better images
since we do not have the clout to be cousins' cousins' cousins of those
elites who are immuned from mass rejections regardless of the slew of mediocrity they produce.
but they also refuse to show their portfolio here to back their walk is as loud as their talk
...
c'mon cousin, we need to learn where we are going wrong!
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The simple truth is that the tools are now available to almost anyone who wants to record music or take professional quality pictures. That was not the case 20-30 years ago when the so called veterans started and there was virtually no competition compared to today.
You are joking right? or is this just your complete inexperience talking? The competition was much more fierce 20-30 years ago than today.
The entry into selling stock today and being a "professional" is one image accepted, and my cat can do that with her tail tied in a knot.
Back then rejection was completely normal, not like the entitled shooter of today with everything accepted and no editing in place. To get into any agency back then you really had to have your game on, or else get rejected. What did you do? You kept going on and getting better until you go accepted because the competition was based on merit and ability.
That is not to say the work is any better back then or today, there has always been some really great shooters and there still is. The only difference between 20-30 years ago and the current times is the overall quality has actually dropped immensely on average. Most of what is on any microstock site today is mediocre at best. They sure as 5hit might have 80 Million +++ images, but considering most of it is crap says a lot.
Back in the good old days if you got 10% acceptance on any agency your were doing well, now if you are getting one image rejected it's an ordeal that fills pages of "support" on forums from the "pros".
The nature of the competition has changed once it was it getting images accepted by the agencies now it is directly in the hands of the customer who actually is often far less concerned about technical quality than photographers. Its a business not a photographic or artistic competition . In terms of images available vs sales the ratio I suspect is vastly higher than it once was therefore competition is "higher". Experience and knowledge comes from other sources as well being a photographer.
-
the customer who actually is often far less concerned about technical quality
ding ! WRONG ANSWER.
if this is so, the rejections of old contributors with
- poor composition
- wrong wb
- LCV
would not be so abundant.
read my lips again...
DOUBLE STANDARD !
one standard for relatives and friends of the reviewers and shareholders cousin.
another standard for the rest of the world.
-
Couple of comments based on what I see. I'm not a huge player although I've been with SS a long time (since 2004 with a hiatus for 3 years from 2008-11 while I was exclusive at iStock). I do this part time and my portfolio is essentially following my life around. Places I go, my home, garden and me.
My best month ever at SS was just shy of $1K and as I mentioned in an earlier thread about changes over the last couple of years, the biggie is that the money is decreasing even though the downloads are holding. For June, downloads were up 4% over 2015, but $$ were down 36% - almost all relating to SODs all but vanishing.
What I have noticed is that new work for me is selling, a very pleasant surprise. It can't be that they're just turning off things for those at the 38cent level (not saying that it's not happening; just that it's not that broad).
Last year we did a big remodel and I took tons of pictures (and blogged about it (http://blog.snovers.com/2015/04/2015-remodel)). Although I uploaded a handful of images at the end of last year, I've been working through more of those this year - plus a few from a Spring trip to Kauai. What has been pleasing - even though I know remodeling is a good topic for sales - is that these new images have been selling and are getting good search position in a category with over 20K images (depends on what you search for as to exactly the number).
My older best sellers are still showing up in the daily sales (which is good; not complaining, just noting it). There was a day last month (I'd check details, but the site is just gonzo today and I can't get it to load) where nearly a third of the day's sales was from new remodeling images uploaded in the last few months.
I don't know what SS is up to - although I am very concerned that they're trashing their long term future in the rush to make things look good short term to keep Wall Street happy - but it isn't as simple as turning off search position for the 38 cent tier.
-
the customer who actually is often far less concerned about technical quality
ding ! WRONG ANSWER.
if this is so, the rejections of old contributors with
- poor composition
- wrong wb
- LCV
would not be so abundant.
read my lips again...
DOUBLE STANDARD !
one standard for relatives and friends of the reviewers and shareholders cousin.
another standard for the rest of the world.
Not saying you are wrong in that respect that's a different point.
-
Couple of comments based on what I see. I'm not a huge player although I've been with SS a long time (since 2004 with a hiatus for 3 years from 2008-11 while I was exclusive at iStock). I do this part time and my portfolio is essentially following my life around. Places I go, my home, garden and me.
My best month ever at SS was just shy of $1K and as I mentioned in an earlier thread about changes over the last couple of years, the biggie is that the money is decreasing even though the downloads are holding. For June, downloads were up 4% over 2015, but $$ were down 36% - almost all relating to SODs all but vanishing.
What I have noticed is that new work for me is selling, a very pleasant surprise. It can't be that they're just turning off things for those at the 38cent level (not saying that it's not happening; just that it's not that broad).
Last year we did a big remodel and I took tons of pictures (and blogged about it ([url]http://blog.snovers.com/2015/04/2015-remodel[/url])). Although I uploaded a handful of images at the end of last year, I've been working through more of those this year - plus a few from a Spring trip to Kauai. What has been pleasing - even though I know remodeling is a good topic for sales - is that these new images have been selling and are getting good search position in a category with over 20K images (depends on what you search for as to exactly the number).
My older best sellers are still showing up in the daily sales (which is good; not complaining, just noting it). There was a day last month (I'd check details, but the site is just gonzo today and I can't get it to load) where nearly a third of the day's sales was from new remodeling images uploaded in the last few months.
I don't know what SS is up to - although I am very concerned that they're trashing their long term future in the rush to make things look good short term to keep Wall Street happy - but it isn't as simple as turning off search position for the 38 cent tier.
Rational post as ever ;-). Thanks.
-
The simple truth is that the tools are now available to almost anyone who wants to record music or take professional quality pictures. That was not the case 20-30 years ago when the so called veterans started and there was virtually no competition compared to today.
You are joking right? or is this just your complete inexperience talking? The competition was much more fierce 20-30 years ago than today.
The entry into selling stock today and being a "professional" is one image accepted, and my cat can do that with her tail tied in a knot.
Back then rejection was completely normal, not like the entitled shooter of today with everything accepted and no editing in place. To get into any agency back then you really had to have your game on, or else get rejected. What did you do? You kept going on and getting better until you go accepted because the competition was based on merit and ability.
That is not to say the work is any better back then or today, there has always been some really great shooters and there still is. The only difference between 20-30 years ago and the current times is the overall quality has actually dropped immensely on average. Most of what is on any microstock site today is mediocre at best. They sure as 5hit might have 80 Million +++ images, but considering most of it is crap says a lot.
Back in the good old days if you got 10% acceptance on any agency your were doing well, now if you are getting one image rejected it's an ordeal that fills pages of "support" on forums from the "pros".
The nature of the competition has changed once it was it getting images accepted by the agencies now it is directly in the hands of the customer who actually is often far less concerned about technical quality than photographers. Its a business not a photographic or artistic competition . In terms of images available vs sales the ratio I suspect is vastly higher than it once was therefore competition is "higher". Experience and knowledge comes from other sources as well being a photographer.
I agree, the nature of competition has changed. But I still find it easy today compared to the past. Serious buyers of photography have perhaps become more sophisticated as they have more options and creating good quality work regardless of your genre is key to success, which in many ways is nothing new. But the so called social media and bloggers are as you mentioned less concerned about quality and there is a market for that as well, which is where microstock finds it's place. My prediction is microstock will always be a money maker for the agencies themselves, but will slowly but surely become less and less profitable for the contributor, and the contributors who have their game on will migrate to the midstock and macro stock sites.
I think one of the biggest mistakes from a lot of microstock shooters is that they actually don't understand "stock photography". And that is where the nature of competition has changed, if you understand "stock photography" then the nature of the game is easier.
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What I have noticed is that new work for me is selling, a very pleasant surprise. It can't be that they're just turning off things for those at the 38cent level (not saying that it's not happening; just that it's not that broad).
.................
I don't know what SS is up to - although I am very concerned that they're trashing their long term future in the rush to make things look good short term to keep Wall Street happy - but it isn't as simple as turning off search position for the 38 cent tier.
As for your first point Jo Ann, I have to agree that I also don't buy into the switching off of Top Tier contributors conspiracy theory, but I do think there is a stock rotation going on that may have a really negative effect if you are unlucky enough to be rotated down.
As for your second point above, I share your concerns and fear they are trashing the long-term stability for short-term returns.
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My prediction is microstock will always be a money maker for the agencies themselves, but will slowly but surely become less and less profitable for the contributor, and the contributors who have their game on will migrate to the midstock and macro stock sites.
In order for the agencies to stay profitable they will need suppliers. If they don't nurture the suppliers, they will eventually be left with a library of dated, sub-standard images. If they want to remain in the game, they need to start taking a longer view to protect their position.
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"I agree, the nature of competition has changed. But I still find it easy today compared to the past. Serious buyers of photography have perhaps become more sophisticated as they have more options and creating good quality work regardless of your genre is key to success, which in many ways is nothing new. But the so called social media and bloggers are as you mentioned less concerned about quality and there is a market for that as well, which is where microstock finds it's place. My prediction is microstock will always be a money maker for the agencies themselves, but will slowly but surely become less and less profitable for the contributor, and the contributors who have their game on will migrate to the midstock and macro stock sites.
I think one of the biggest mistakes from a lot of microstock shooters is that they actually don't understand "stock photography". And that is where the nature of competition has changed, if you understand "stock photography" then the nature of the game is easier." I pretty much agree except that I think Mid and macro sites will decline fast so there may not be so much of a market. I think slow decline is a reality but not the doom so widely predicted.
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KuriousKat as per your two replies above they are tied into the same thing I am suggesting. Long term/Short term and fuelling suppliers. The current subscription model and royalties do not enable this to happen. That is why I am suggesting that many of the contributors that more or less have the prerequisites of 20-30 years ago will move and upgrade to midstock and macro stock. I am not with Stocksy, but the model is great, decent pricing for imagery and decent royalties. Getty is similar but the royalties are lower but the difference I feel is they sell more and usually for a higher price.
Getty said it long ago, it's not sustainable in the current model and I agreed with them then and still do.
-
the customer who actually is often far less concerned about technical quality
ding ! WRONG ANSWER.
if this is so, the rejections of old contributors with
- poor composition
- wrong wb
- LCV
would not be so abundant.
read my lips again...
DOUBLE STANDARD !
one standard for relatives and friends of the reviewers and shareholders cousin.
another standard for the rest of the world.
Not saying you are wrong in that respect that's a different point.
thank you !
i like to think we are all rooting for the same team , not us vs them.
but the short term gains outlook of ss presently ,
it's working into the jaws of the shareholders planning to short the stock soon
to take profit and run.
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My prediction is microstock will always be a money maker for the agencies themselves, but will slowly but surely become less and less profitable for the contributor, and the contributors who have their game on will migrate to the midstock and macro stock sites.
In order for the agencies to stay profitable they will need suppliers. If they don't nurture the suppliers, they will eventually be left with a library of dated, sub-standard images. If they want to remain in the game, they need to start taking a longer view to protect their position.
yes, but the major shareholders are NOT interested in long term.
if you are in the game to short the stocks and take profit, you really don't care if ss
becomes another istock case.
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My prediction is microstock will always be a money maker for the agencies themselves, but will slowly but surely become less and less profitable for the contributor, and the contributors who have their game on will migrate to the midstock and macro stock sites.
true true. even if ss decides to be a social media, they still make money.
maybe the silver lining is a nudge for experienced contributors to start looking elsewhere
..
and maybe someone will come in to give us a midstock and macro site
that is viable for everyone
not just an elite few who owns the company.
ie. we have all long been having our head in the poophole
thinking ss or nothing.
maybe it's time we face reality , like pauliewalnut says,
if you don't like it, leave !!!
if enough old timers leave,
the millions growing daily will not be that amazing looking.
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My prediction is microstock will always be a money maker for the agencies themselves, but will slowly but surely become less and less profitable for the contributor, and the contributors who have their game on will migrate to the midstock and macro stock sites.
In order for the agencies to stay profitable they will need suppliers. If they don't nurture the suppliers, they will eventually be left with a library of dated, sub-standard images. If they want to remain in the game, they need to start taking a longer view to protect their position.
True, but how long will it take to get to that point where things get stale? Doesn't seem like we're even close. At what point do contributors as a whole stop submitting because it just isn't worth it? As it is now things seem to keep getting worse for contributors but SS is reporting record library growth.
-
True, but how long will it take to get to that point where things get stale? Doesn't seem like we're even close. At what point do contributors as a whole stop submitting because it just isn't worth it? As it is now things seem to keep getting worse for contributors but SS is reporting record library growth.
consider it a divorce...
but most of us don't know whether to pack up and leave...
because the most likely place now is the street, sleeping under a bridge,
a cardboard box for bed, etc..
or stay home in a warm bed , big house...and continue to be abused !
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My prediction is microstock will always be a money maker for the agencies themselves, but will slowly but surely become less and less profitable for the contributor, and the contributors who have their game on will migrate to the midstock and macro stock sites.
In order for the agencies to stay profitable they will need suppliers. If they don't nurture the suppliers, they will eventually be left with a library of dated, sub-standard images. If they want to remain in the game, they need to start taking a longer view to protect their position.
True, but how long will it take to get to that point where things get stale? Doesn't seem like we're even close. At what point do contributors as a whole stop submitting because it just isn't worth it? As it is now things seem to keep getting worse for contributors but SS is reporting record library growth.
Contributors will stop submitting when it isn't worth it. Simple economic rules will have stock agencies aiming for that sweet spot of high income and low payout.
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OK, sales are down. What is your solution? complaining alone isn't going to solve anything, it never does and it never will.
Nobody is entitled to anything. Millennials are not entitled to a job because they have a degree. The veterans are not entitled to better sales because they were there first. "The World is Flat" is a great book detailing the leveling of the playing due to ease of access to education & technology.
No matter how good we are, we can always improve and gain different perspectives. Competition is one of the great constants of life. Just recently, some Amazon seller was complaining about how Chinese sellers are producing similar products and destroying her sales. The other day, a woman told me how a guy dumped her to date another woman. And just yesterday, we had to reject 5 designers because we made an offer to a more talented designer.
There are solutions to competition. Work hard, come up with new ideas, learn new skills, keep up with market trends, or enter new markets. And yes, I subscribe to my own advice.
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OK, sales are down. What is your solution? complaining alone isn't going to solve anything, it never does and it never will.
Nobody is entitled to anything. Millennials are not entitled to a job because they have a degree. The veterans are not entitled to better sales because they were there first. "The World is Flat" is a great book detailing the leveling of the playing due to ease of access to education & technology.
No matter how good we are, we can always improve and gain different perspectives. Competition is one of the great constants of life. Just recently, some Amazon seller was complaining about how Chinese sellers are producing similar products and destroying her sales. The other day, a woman told me how a guy dumped her to date another woman. And just yesterday, we had to reject 5 designers because we made an offer to a more talented designer.
There are solutions to competition. Work hard, come up with new ideas, learn new skills, keep up with market trends, or enter new markets. And yes, I subscribe to my own advice.
well said.
there is also another saying that says, "the wise don't look at an impasse as the end,
but more of a motivational push off the cliff to see an opportunity".
i remember awhile back when the whole world was in turmoil over the twin towers,
and everyone packed up to return home.
at that time, i made the most money because it left a big hole in the supplier of the
skill i majored in. i ended up getting the contracts of those ppl who packed up and
went home to USA.
yes, i think we all have been desensitized to a comfort level to accept
what little there is left. as the peanuts meant for monkeys
become bread crumbs, we become beggars from once we were monkeys..
and we are happy just to lie under the table to catch whatever scraps that fall off the table.
eventually, we have to come to realise that there is no next worse thing to happen
except to lick off the spit from the floor.
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OK, sales are down. What is your solution? complaining alone isn't going to solve anything, it never does and it never will.
Nobody is entitled to anything. Millennials are not entitled to a job because they have a degree. The veterans are not entitled to better sales because they were there first. "The World is Flat" is a great book detailing the leveling of the playing due to ease of access to education & technology.
No matter how good we are, we can always improve and gain different perspectives. Competition is one of the great constants of life. Just recently, some Amazon seller was complaining about how Chinese sellers are producing similar products and destroying her sales. The other day, a woman told me how a guy dumped her to date another woman. And just yesterday, we had to reject 5 designers because we made an offer to a more talented designer.
There are solutions to competition. Work hard, come up with new ideas, learn new skills, keep up with market trends, or enter new markets. And yes, I subscribe to my own advice.
So true!
Besides, for me, May was a massive BME. June, a massive second best.
AND the first 2 weeks of July are much better than the average: I got almost daily, either ELs (even more than 1) or large SODs (even more than 1) or clip sales (even more than 1) or even combinations of the above. ;D
Whatever SS did, may they continue to do more of the same, because that really works very well for me!
:P
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It could be a sign of things to come, or it could just be the market adjusting itself. I've definitely had concerns about the long term sustainability this year, but things will probably just shift again like they've done before. Who knows? I guess, in the end, I'll still have all the images, so I can just sell them out of the back of a van. Time to look at the classifieds to find a van. ;D
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There are solutions to competition. Work hard, come up with new ideas, learn new skills, keep up with market trends, or enter new markets. And yes, I subscribe to my own advice.
As previously stated, I too subscribe to this advice. How are you finding it? I find that I am working harder, learning more skill, striving to develop new ideas, uploading better and more diverse work, but I'm still buried in the search.
This isn't about complaining, although sometimes it does help to get it off your chest, it's about trying to gauge what others are experiencing and trying to establish a sense of whether everyone is reporting the same issues, similar issues or if this is unique to me.
My work ethic hasn't changed, and my last photoshoot cost me $2400. I'm worker harder than ever and investing more time and money into my business but, from 1st July 2016, my sales fell off a cliff. Not a gradual decline due to increased competition - I could accept it if my Shutterstock sales dropped from a daily average of 100 downloads to 90 to 80, etc. - that has been the pattern for the last couple of years.
From 1st July 2016, my daily sales have dropped to 40%of my daily average of June 2016 - literally overnight. Can someone please explain that without telling me I should work harder? If the issue was just about the quality of my work, I would be seeing similar declines across all the sites I contribute to, but this sudden change, at least for me, is unique to Shutterstock.
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Well Rinder, I have read your posts and thus far feel you've been pretty honest about your perspectives on SS. As far as I remember, you were there right from the start.
I hope this may be sufficient motivation to hedge your bets and join us over at Symbiostock - the more passionate contributors we have launching their independent media stores, the less reliant we will all be on third parties to maintain income stability.
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There are solutions to competition. Work hard, come up with new ideas, learn new skills, keep up with market trends, or enter new markets. And yes, I subscribe to my own advice.
As previously stated, I too subscribe to this advice. How are you finding it? I find that I am working harder, learning more skill, striving to develop new ideas, uploading better and more diverse work, but I'm still buried in the search.
This isn't about complaining, although sometimes it does help to get it off your chest, it's about trying to gauge what others are experiencing and trying to establish a sense of whether everyone is reporting the same issues, similar issues or if this is unique to me.
My work ethic hasn't changed, and my last photoshoot cost me $2400. I'm worker harder than ever and investing more time and money into my business but, from 1st July 2016, my sales fell off a cliff. Not a gradual decline due to increased competition - I could accept it if my Shutterstock sales dropped from a daily average of 100 downloads to 90 to 80, etc. - that has been the pattern for the last couple of years.
From 1st July 2016, my daily sales have dropped to 40%of my daily average of June 2016 - literally overnight. Can someone please explain that without telling me I should work harder? If the issue was just about the quality of my work, I would be seeing similar declines across all the sites I contribute to, but this sudden change, at least for me, is unique to Shutterstock.
I find that it works for me. I can't say it'll work for everyone since everyone has a different portfolio, but I know it works for me. I know that a lot of people work hard, but are not producing results. My guess is that one part is not coming together and it's usually commercial value or keywording.
Someone posted a SS tracking website before he took it down not too long ago. When you look at the top 100 selling images, the most popular images on that list were related to business, marketing, family, technology and concepts that are currently trending, like feminism and empowerment. Those are the type of images that sell well.
If you have quality work and you believe it will sell, then maybe keywording needs improvement. That's one of the most critical mistakes that many contributors make. They don't think it through and see it as a chore, so they don't put their best effort forward. I don't believe my work is amazing, but I know that my keywording is top notch because of my knowledge in SEO and marketing.
I'm always thinking about new concepts and there are new emerging concepts everyday. Some are temporary, some are permanent. A fellow contributor here recently made a killing on Brexit, because he was first and had quality work. Even saw his work on a news site I regularly visit. If you're first to market and you have quality work, not even copy cats can displace you.
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Wait... so if the talented newbies are much better than us old farts - then why is it our OLD images that keep selling?
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My prediction is microstock will always be a money maker for the agencies themselves, but will slowly but surely become less and less profitable for the contributor, and the contributors who have their game on will migrate to the midstock and macro stock sites.
In order for the agencies to stay profitable they will need suppliers. If they don't nurture the suppliers, they will eventually be left with a library of dated, sub-standard images. If they want to remain in the game, they need to start taking a longer view to protect their position.
True, but how long will it take to get to that point where things get stale? Doesn't seem like we're even close. At what point do contributors as a whole stop submitting because it just isn't worth it? As it is now things seem to keep getting worse for contributors but SS is reporting record library growth.
I think it is already happening many premium contributors are out. It is a matter of where you live. Right now if you live in London or New York you have a very difficult time being a solo micro contributor. It is a waste of your time ....better direct you energy to other more profitable paths. If you are based in Bangkok or Kiev that's a different thing. So microstock is heavily under the laws of globalization and world competition. I live in Europe and I tell every photographer that I met to stay away from micro even macro. The times to be here making money are over. That's it people might like it or not but very very few are going to survive on this the next 3 years.
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There are solutions to competition. Work hard, come up with new ideas, learn new skills, keep up with market trends, or enter new markets. And yes, I subscribe to my own advice.
As previously stated, I too subscribe to this advice. How are you finding it? I find that I am working harder, learning more skill, striving to develop new ideas, uploading better and more diverse work, but I'm still buried in the search.
This isn't about complaining, although sometimes it does help to get it off your chest, it's about trying to gauge what others are experiencing and trying to establish a sense of whether everyone is reporting the same issues, similar issues or if this is unique to me.
My work ethic hasn't changed, and my last photoshoot cost me $2400. I'm worker harder than ever and investing more time and money into my business but, from 1st July 2016, my sales fell off a cliff. Not a gradual decline due to increased competition - I could accept it if my Shutterstock sales dropped from a daily average of 100 downloads to 90 to 80, etc. - that has been the pattern for the last couple of years.
From 1st July 2016, my daily sales have dropped to 40%of my daily average of June 2016 - literally overnight. Can someone please explain that without telling me I should work harder? If the issue was just about the quality of my work, I would be seeing similar declines across all the sites I contribute to, but this sudden change, at least for me, is unique to Shutterstock.
I find that it works for me. I can't say it'll work for everyone since everyone has a different portfolio, but I know it works for me. I know that a lot of people work hard, but are not producing results. My guess is that one part is not coming together and it's usually commercial value or keywording.
Someone posted a SS tracking website before he took it down not too long ago. When you look at the top 100 selling images, the most popular images on that list were related to business, marketing, family, technology and concepts that are currently trending, like feminism and empowerment. Those are the type of images that sell well.
If you have quality work and you believe it will sell, then maybe keywording needs improvement. That's one of the most critical mistakes that many contributors make. They don't think it through and see it as a chore, so they don't put their best effort forward. I don't believe my work is amazing, but I know that my keywording is top notch because of my knowledge in SEO and marketing.
I'm always thinking about new concepts and there are new emerging concepts everyday. Some are temporary, some are permanent. A fellow contributor here recently made a killing on Brexit, because he was first and had quality work. Even saw his work on a news site I regularly visit. If you're first to market and you have quality work, not even copy cats can displace you.
I think you are missing my point here, and I fully understand and agree with exactly what you are saying about commercial value, the importance of keyboarding, etc.
I know I am producing consistently good work, because up until 30th June, it was selling very well on all sites. From 1st July it continues to sell well on all other sites, it just nosed-dived on Shutterstock. Why? The quality of my 6000+ images didn't change overnight, so something else did.
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Do you guys...meaning all you guys Old and new have any Idea How many Have given Up and left? A LOT and I mean A LOT. And i don't mean Just the forums. Im talking inactive Ports. never deleted. WHY should they. The forums?? 90% Posting currently are new. and of course asking and experiencing the same things we did. Just different names. And the reason I left the critique forum after 11 years. The quality Level has dropped dramatically, The questions are off the charts amateur. Folks with No desire whatsoever to do the work themselves. I enjoyed helping someone along that showed thay wanted this are were willing to do the work and get out of the box. Thats gone and so am I. I still work with achievers Privately with PM.
There is no work ethic at least None I see. And the things I read on the forums and experiencing Myself uploading is embarrassing to say the least.
The review staff is really....really non functional. I had some issues Last week with 12 or so Images that I had to submit 6 times without changing anything until I stumbled acroos someone who read what I was doing. simply amazing.
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I think you are missing my point here, and I fully understand and agree with exactly what you are saying about commercial value, the importance of keyboarding, etc.
I know I am producing consistently good work, because up until 30th June, it was selling very well on all sites. From 1st July it continues to sell well on all other sites, it just nosed-dived on Shutterstock. Why? The quality of my 6000+ images didn't change overnight, so something else did.
It's hard to know without knowing what's in your portfolio. I haven't seen any changes in the search algorithm for any of the sections. What I do know is that they added roughly 2 million new images since July 1st.
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I think you are missing my point here, and I fully understand and agree with exactly what you are saying about commercial value, the importance of keyboarding, etc.
I know I am producing consistently good work, because up until 30th June, it was selling very well on all sites. From 1st July it continues to sell well on all other sites, it just nosed-dived on Shutterstock. Why? The quality of my 6000+ images didn't change overnight, so something else did.
i don't think they are missing the point...
they are just in denial
even when already repeatedly mentioned by so many experienced contributors
that we had our portfolio suddenly fell off a cliff
- even with consistent new images
- even when for months we had single earnings regularly of 28 to 102 dollars
i don't know what it is we keep saying that hit a brick wall to so many
experts trying to say we all suddenly contracted alzheimer
and forgot how to produce sellable images.
it's like some wet behind the ears kid off the block
telling an experienced sailor he has to learn how to swim ,
steer a boat, study the stars to navigate,etc..
hell, we have already done that since we too were first wet behind the ears.
as Kurious Kat said it..
From 1st July it continues to sell well on all other sites, it just nosed-dived on Shutterstock. Why? The quality of my 6000+ images didn't change overnight, so something else did.
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My sales at SS continue to rise slowly - had my BME in March. Having said that, July is shaping up to be my worst month there in 2 years. No ELs, and only FB SODs.
Can't blame it on search algorithms as my evergreens and new sellers still come up where they should. One month has to be the worst, so hopefully this is just that and not a trend.
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Well Rinder, I have read your posts and thus far feel you've been pretty honest about your perspectives on SS. As far as I remember, you were there right from the start.
I hope this may be sufficient motivation to hedge your bets and join us over at Symbiostock - the more passionate contributors we have launching their independent media stores, the less reliant we will all be on third parties to maintain income stability.
Hi Robin. well I sold my first stock shot in 1968 so this ain't my first Rodeo. I have always said even in the good times that Micro or Macro accounts for maybe 20/25% of what I need to Make with My expenses. And for the time spent...20/25% i was getting a fair return. Im a working Photographer, I have 35 year clients. I can do 50 Headshots a day where I live and make a LOT of money But I don't Like them...To many rules for me. If stock ended completely tomorrow I would be Just fine. I could easily Pick up the 20/25% elsewhere. I do Lots of different things. Thank goodness. I feel Bad for those that only do this. And I would advise them to get ready for some serious Stuff coming and diversify and take...Taking Pictures more seriously than Penny stock.
Also. you said I should do the symbiostock thing? well truthfully I've looked at it for a Long time. The Principle Looks and feels Fine and kinda reminds me of some very old concepts that were tried Long before. Also I haven't met, read or talked to anyone that does well doing Symbio. Unless you have some Links to Look at or folks to talk to. Seems Kinda Pie in the sky. I remember the first conversations about this and it was very exciting. seems to have gone to sleep unless Im Missing something/
We all know 80% of all Images being used are being stolen, I also think "This business" as we know it or used to know it is very soon gonna change again. good or Bad? Don't know and actually don't really care. I have no faith anymore. No feeling of belonging to anything anymore, no feeling the entire business cares less about us and Now a serious feeling of no community at all. The new folks have no clue what it was so they don't know. And they just float around with the "shutterfly" attitude uploading the stuff we did because it looks new to them. LOL Thats fine. what ya gonna do? ....Nothing.
Robin, If ya have some stats or Ports that do well. I would love some Links, To me the work always speaks Loudest.. Pls send to [email protected]
Thanks for writing.
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I think it has a lot to do with SS adding nearly 1 Million images PER WEEK (2 million since July 1st). We don't know what is in those 2 million images and how it affects existing portfolios.
There is more competition than ever on SS and that's just the reality of it. Some contributors are more affected than others.
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I think you are missing my point here, and I fully understand and agree with exactly what you are saying about commercial value, the importance of keyboarding, etc.
I know I am producing consistently good work, because up until 30th June, it was selling very well on all sites. From 1st July it continues to sell well on all other sites, it just nosed-dived on Shutterstock. Why? The quality of my 6000+ images didn't change overnight, so something else did.
i don't think they are missing the point...
they are just in denial
even when already repeatedly mentioned by so many experienced contributors
that we had our portfolio suddenly fell off a cliff
- even with consistent new images
- even when for months we had single earnings regularly of 28 to 102 dollars
i don't know what it is we keep saying that hit a brick wall to so many
experts trying to say we all suddenly contracted alzheimer
and forgot how to produce sellable images.
it's like some wet behind the ears kid off the block
telling an experienced sailor he has to learn how to swim ,
steer a boat, study the stars to navigate,etc..
hell, we have already done that since we too were first wet behind the ears.
as Kurious Kat said it..
From 1st July it continues to sell well on all other sites, it just nosed-dived on Shutterstock. Why? The quality of my 6000+ images didn't change overnight, so something else did.
+1000
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My sales at SS continue to rise slowly - had my BME in March. Having said that, July is shaping up to be my worst month there in 2 years. No ELs, and only FB SODs.
Can't blame it on search algorithms as my evergreens and new sellers still come up where they should. One month has to be the worst, so hopefully this is just that and not a trend.
Fingers crossed Old friend. July is absolutely Horrible.
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I think you are missing my point here, and I fully understand and agree with exactly what you are saying about commercial value, the importance of keyboarding, etc.
I know I am producing consistently good work, because up until 30th June, it was selling very well on all sites. From 1st July it continues to sell well on all other sites, it just nosed-dived on Shutterstock. Why? The quality of my 6000+ images didn't change overnight, so something else did.
It's hard to know without knowing what's in your portfolio. I haven't seen any changes in the search algorithm for any of the sections. What I do know is that they added roughly 2 million new images since July 1st.
The point is that my portfolio, with the exception of some recent additions, was the same in June as it is now.
June sales were fine.
July sales are in the toilet.
The addition of a million images a week is nothing new, and was happening throughout June, in just the same way as it has for the first two weeks of July. This cannot be rationally explained away by saying that 'competition is tough so up your game'.
My gut feeling on this is some sort of rotation, and I'm currently on the bottom of a cycle. Holiday period, site outages, etc. can explain fluctuations, but not a 60% loss of earnings overnight.
Just as an observation, I would say there is plenty up with the search. I just checked one of my very recent uploads, which is of a very specific and hard to come by subject, and found it is already on page 4 when searching by new. I wouldn't mind if the 300+ images ahead of it actually pertained to the same subject, but only about 35-40% were relevant.
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The point is that my portfolio, with the exception of some recent additions, was the same in June as it is now.
June sales were fine.
July sales are in the toilet.
The addition of a million images a week is nothing new, and was happening throughout June, in just the same way as it has for the first two weeks of July. This cannot be rationally explained away by saying that 'competition is tough so up your game'.
My gut feeling on this is some sort of rotation, and I'm currently on the bottom of a cycle. Holiday period, site outages, etc. can explain fluctuations, but not a 60% loss of earnings overnight.
Just as an observation, I would say there is plenty up with the search. I just checked one of my very recent uploads, which is of a very specific and hard to come by subject, and found it is already on page 4 when searching by new. I wouldn't mind if the 300+ images ahead of it actually pertained to the same subject, but only about 35-40% were relevant.
My sales are down for July. I'm on pace to earn about 20% less compared to June. Historically, July has not the best month for microstock sales on SS. I know a number of people on vacation and some people are out there catching their Pokemon.
I'm not too concerned about it. When August comes around, sales will pick back up again.
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I don't think it's problem with lots of new contributors, or lots of good new stuff.... I think that it is problem with closed ports, and we can't see it because site search engine is not the same for contributors and buyers. Lots of my work is on first page by popular but it is not selling.
July is the WM since my first year here.
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My "So Called Most Popular" is so far from being My most Popular it's amazing. Most Popular when??.. this week.Month,Year?
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Yes I know that. But it is on first page and the people can see they and buy it. It's not disappeared into the crowd.
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that most popular algorithm changed over a year ago if not longer, has been explained countless times it is not about sales only, but keep complaining about it, that helps
we are sharing the pie with a lot more people than when we joined, simple math, you get less per head, it will never go back to the golden days, accept it or move on
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Then what is the problem with differences between sales July and June. It's very big differences!!!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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that most popular algorithm changed over a year ago if not longer, has been explained countless times it is not about sales only, but keep complaining about it, that helps
we are sharing the pie with a lot more people than when we joined, simple math, you get less per head, it will never go back to the golden days, accept it or move on
yes, sadly, greed change people.
the analogy would be my landlord. when he first inherited the bldg, he says to the tenants,
i only want good tenants, quiet, pay the rent promptly. i won't even think of raising the rent much.
4 years later, he caught sniff of money and he found out instead of renting , he would make 4 times more but converting each apartment into a rooming house.
he started to ignore request to repair and replace worn out windows, broken appliances.etc
iow, i now cannot kick you all out , but i can get you irate enough to leave.
same thing with getty and ss. we no longer need you. our main priority now is to attract
buyers , and suppliers are no longer figured in their list of important people.
the writing is on the wall, we are seeing istock being replayed.
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I don't think it's problem with lots of new contributors, or lots of good new stuff.... I think that it is problem with closed ports, and we can't see it because site search engine is not the same for contributors and buyers. Lots of my work is on first page by popular but it is not selling.
July is the WM since my first year here.
As far as I can tell, the search engine is the same. When I click on my images and put in a search subject, I am taken to the generic buyer's search page, http://www.shutterstock.com/etc... (http://www.shutterstock.com/etc...)
If I spend any time there at all, I will get a popup asking me to sign up for an account.
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Then what is the problem with differences between sales July and June. It's very big differences!!!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
It is a big difference for me...WAYYYYY down. Today I made $12 with 5000 assets.
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I have over 14400, today I made only $10. This is over 50% lower then June.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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I don't think it's problem with lots of new contributors, or lots of good new stuff.... I think that it is problem with closed ports, and we can't see it because site search engine is not the same for contributors and buyers. Lots of my work is on first page by popular but it is not selling.
July is the WM since my first year here.
As far as I can tell, the search engine is the same. When I click on my images and put in a search subject, I am taken to the generic buyer's search page, [url]http://www.shutterstock.com/etc...[/url] ([url]http://www.shutterstock.com/etc...[/url])
If I spend any time there at all, I will get a popup asking me to sign up for an account.
Yes, but you are not log in as buyers. I think that this is a catch. We can always see our portfolio, but buyers can't or the search is changes in some time period.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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I have over 14400, today I made only $10. This is over 50% lower then June.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
WOW, how is that possible? Your port is beautiful.
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I have over 14400, today I made only $10. This is over 50% lower then June.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
WOW, how is that possible? Your port is beautiful.
Tnx
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Hi Rinder,
Look, as Andre has alluded to on numerous occasions, which I am firmly in agreement with, if you are someone who wants and intends to truly try to change the state of affairs, it is plainly irresponsible to stand on the sidelines, complain, and wait for someone else to do all the work for you so that you can then hop on the bandwagon.
I'm not saying this is you, but I'm re-iterating that the mentality should not be 'pie in the sky' - it may very well be a 'pie in the sky', but that's not what's important. What's important, for your sanity, for your professional future, is that there is the possibility that it will work, the best possibility, and in pursuing that best possibility, you are doing everything you can to offset this awful progression of contributor extortion.
If you're standing there asking for stats and proof instead of spending $10 a month to get some of your best images on Symbiostock and Symzio, it seems plainly counter-intuitive. I've clearly demonstrated, the entire Symbiostock team has demonstrated, a serious and dedicated desire to create massive and powerful infrastructure that serves to assist professionals exactly like you.
And as predicted, slowly, but surely, people are starting to see some results:
http://www.symbiostock.org/forums/topic/sale/ (http://www.symbiostock.org/forums/topic/sale/)
If you take a look at this, you'll see that it's certainly not earth shattering (yet), but some contributors may be making upwards of 30 to 50 dollars a month on average through these sales. And these are only the contributors that are actively telling us about their sales. Some are on Symzio, some are through their independent sites.
30 to 50 dollars a month is more than a lot of people make through agencies such as Dreamstime, Fotolia, DepositPhotos etc. So you see that it becomes a real and true addition to your agency workflow.
Most importantly:
1) That money is NOT as a result of $0.25 subscriptions. These individuals either made 70% of the sale price, 80% of the sale price, or 100% of the sale price.
2) They know their clients and their clients know them
3) There is nothing but positivity as a result of the sale, because of the aforementioned reasons
4) They control the licensing terms of their media on their independent sites
I urge you to explore, if you are genuinely interested in funneling some of this negative energy into a positive mechanism, a cost effective manner of getting your port on Symbiostock, and join us on the forums, if even on a semi-passive basis. Other contributors and the entire marketing arm of Symbiostock and Symzio will passively promote you as well, as we do each other.
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that most popular algorithm changed over a year ago if not longer, has been explained countless times it is not about sales only, but keep complaining about it, that helps
we are sharing the pie with a lot more people than when we joined, simple math, you get less per head, it will never go back to the golden days, accept it or move on
A year ago?????????? Try march 12th 2012 man. Thats when the so called switch was thrown. I dont want less and I won't accept less and I don't want Myself or my friends who have done the work and helped Build SS accept Less.. if you want to be fatalistic about this and say thats the way it is. your part of the Problem.!!! Period. We had the chance to do something 4/5 years ago and we simply didn't we were very Busy trying to stop the DFC at fotolia. which was a joke.. Myself and others could have done so much more. maybe you weren't here then. maybe you were. being anonymous makes it hard to tell. Ya never know if your talking to some veteran or some kid sitting on his parents computer in Tulsa Oklahoma submitting tomatoes.
lets see your port. the work speaks, words don't. Heres Mine.http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?gallery_id=7918 (http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?gallery_id=7918) and google.https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=laurin+rinder&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-003 (https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=laurin+rinder&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-003)
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Hi Rinder,
Look, as Andre has alluded to on numerous occasions, which I am firmly in agreement with, if you are someone who wants and intends to truly try to change the state of affairs, it is plainly irresponsible to stand on the sidelines, complain, and wait for someone else to do all the work for you so that you can then hop on the bandwagon.
I'm not saying this is you, but I'm re-iterating that the mentality should not be 'pie in the sky' - it may very well be a 'pie in the sky', but that's not what's important. What's important, for your sanity, for your professional future, is that there is the possibility that it will work, the best possibility, and in pursuing that best possibility, you are doing everything you can to offset this awful progression of contributor extortion.
If you're standing there asking for stats and proof instead of spending $10 a month to get some of your best images on Symbiostock and Symzio, it seems plainly counter-intuitive. I've clearly demonstrated, the entire Symbiostock team has demonstrated, a serious and dedicated desire to create massive and powerful infrastructure that serves to assist professionals exactly like you.
And as predicted, slowly, but surely, people are starting to see some results:
[url]http://www.symbiostock.org/forums/topic/sale/[/url] ([url]http://www.symbiostock.org/forums/topic/sale/[/url])
If you take a look at this, you'll see that it's certainly not earth shattering (yet), but some contributors may be making upwards of 30 to 50 dollars a month on average through these sales. And these are only the contributors that are actively telling us about their sales. Some are on Symzio, some are through their independent sites.
30 to 50 dollars a month is more than a lot of people make through agencies such as Dreamstime, Fotolia, DepositPhotos etc. So you see that it becomes a real and true addition to your agency workflow.
Most importantly:
1) That money is NOT as a result of $0.25 subscriptions. These individuals either made 70% of the sale price, 80% of the sale price, or 100% of the sale price.
2) They know their clients and their clients know them
3) There is nothing but positivity as a result of the sale, because of the aforementioned reasons
4) They control the licensing terms of their media on their independent sites
I urge you to explore, if you are genuinely interested in funneling some of this negative energy into a positive mechanism, a cost effective manner of getting your port on Symbiostock, and join us on the forums, if even on a semi-passive basis. Other contributors and the entire marketing arm of Symbiostock and Symzio will passively promote you as well, as we do each other.
Robin; the first mistake photographers make is to sell their images for a 0.25c royalty and expect results, and applaud it.
You talk of contributor extortion... only so if you allow it, and many have. Why? because the new generation of photographer knows no better. Also agencies today know this, hence the success of the likes of SS.
I am very truly surprised that Rinder even accepted these terms, especially as he claims to be a veteran of this industry. He should know better and never have settled to sell his work for such a pittance.
I am not sure what you are bringing to the table apart from another outlet to have the dream to success.
$30-$50 per month is nothing.
You are selling dreams to wannabee's who are hobbyists at best.
Sorry for the negativity, but the industry is going to walk all over you.
But thousands have, this is the new reality of today's stock industry.
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that most popular algorithm changed over a year ago if not longer, has been explained countless times it is not about sales only, but keep complaining about it, that helps
we are sharing the pie with a lot more people than when we joined, simple math, you get less per head, it will never go back to the golden days, accept it or move on
A year ago?????????? Try march 12th 2012 man. Thats when the so called switch was thrown. I dont want less and I won't accept less and I don't want Myself or my friends who have done the work and helped Build SS accept Less.. if you want to be fatalistic about this and say thats the way it is. your part of the Problem.!!! Period. We had the chance to do something 4/5 years ago and we simply didn't we were very Busy trying to stop the DFC at fotolia. which was a joke.. Myself and others could have done so much more. maybe you weren't here then. maybe you were. being anonymous makes it hard to tell. Ya never know if your talking to some veteran or some kid sitting on his parents computer in Tulsa Oklahoma submitting tomatoes.
lets see your port. the work speaks, words don't. Heres Mine.[url]http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?gallery_id=7918[/url] ([url]http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?gallery_id=7918[/url]) and google.[url]https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=laurin+rinder&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-003[/url] ([url]https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=laurin+rinder&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-003[/url])
I'm sorry to hear about the drop, but I don't think anyone could have stopped SS, not even an organized group of talented contributors. There are always people ready to take their place. They are over 30,000 contributors on SS right now. Even if 1000 of them leave, there are still 29000 of them.
Remember 500PX? They're gaining ground again. Their traffic dropped after the royalty cut. That was in June. Now their traffic is the highest it has ever been. There is simply no stopping most agencies...unless it's Getty cause they like to shoot themselves on the foot constantly.
I think we like to see ourselves as bigger and more important than we really are. We're all contributors, playing by the same rules, feeding the same machine. I don't think anger and negativity is the solution. Anger clouds the mind, misdirect priorities and makes you lose motivation.
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rinderart, this dicussion has nothing to do with what ones port looks like, you slag off newbies without seeing their port, someone trying to get in doesnt count. if youd paid attention to what i post here youd also known i hve been around for a lot longer, maybe just as long as you. and i know for fact that you were moaning about your footballers image had dropped a lot later than march 2012, i cant be bothered to look up your comments on the ss forum. as for building up ss, no one is entitled to anything, if you dont understand that more images and more people is less earnings per head, you will keep getting disappointed, and if you are sooooooo worried about contributor well being, why are you submitting to dp and bragging about how good they are for you ..........selling off your work through api at 3% royalty !!!!!!!!!! you talk from your behind,
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minsc, 100000, not 30000,
thats, what I mean people dont seem to get that if you triple the suppliers, your part is one third
Edited
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symbiostock is funny, they sell work of copycats,,, my word
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SS is still way ahead in the earnings ratings here, so I do think earnings are being spread out more than they were a few years ago. Was there ever a time when we really had the power to do much with sites that we don't own? We could get together and buy a controlling stake in one of the smaller sites. I don't like Symbiostock, tried it and it didn't work for me.
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SS is still way ahead in the earnings ratings here, so I do think earnings are being spread out more than they were a few years ago. Was there ever a time when we really had the power to do much with sites that we don't own? We could get together and buy a controlling stake in one of the smaller sites. I don't like Symbiostock, tried it and it didn't work for me.
Spreading out the earnings isn't by definition a "bad thing" some people might say the "established" players had in their own way with their images unduly prominent.
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After this couple of months I don't think it will be!!
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The simple truth is that the tools are now available to almost anyone who wants to record music or take professional quality pictures. That was not the case 20-30 years ago when the so called veterans started and there was virtually no competition compared to today.
You are joking right? or is this just your complete inexperience talking? The competition was much more fierce 20-30 years ago than today.
.....
Back in the good old days if you got 10% acceptance on any agency your were doing well, now if you are getting one image rejected it's an ordeal that fills pages of "support" on forums from the "pros".
So you're telling me there were MORE people all over the world trying to make a living doing stock photography 30 years ago than today?
I didn't say anything about how easy or not it is/was to get stuff accepted. There are WAY more stock photographers today and everyone is competing against the entire world. How is that NOT more competition???
Sure, there is a lot of crap, but among the hundreds of thousands of contributors there is some true talent that would never have had the chance of even talking to an agency 30 years ago. Do you think a kid from nowhere in Russia even had the chance to get into a New York agency? Today, those kids can, and some of them have talent.
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Then what is the problem with differences between sales July and June. It's very big differences!!!
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It is a big difference for me...WAYYYYY down. Today I made $12 with 5000 assets.
This kind of ties into the other comments I made about getting to the point of it not being worth it. I only have a few hundred images on SS. It took a ton of time to create, edit, keyword, upload, and then go through all of the SS configuration stuff to get the images live. It must have been a massive effort and expense to do 5,000 images.
I'm not directing this question at you but in general for all people who are getting similar results. Is this level of effort worth the return for you?
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Then what is the problem with differences between sales July and June. It's very big differences!!!
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It is a big difference for me...WAYYYYY down. Today I made $12 with 5000 assets.
This kind of ties into the other comments I made about getting to the point of it not being worth it. I only have a few hundred images on SS. It took a ton of time to create, edit, keyword, upload, and then go through all of the SS configuration stuff to get the images live. It must have been a massive effort and expense to do 5,000 images.
I'm not directing this question at you but in general for all people who are getting similar results. Is this level of effort worth the return for you?
No. In fact I haven't done a still studio shoot for micro in nearly two years. I have personally been shooting video in the last two years because it is fun and I make more than 38 cents a DL. But to your point, it is not worth the time to set up shoots, especially if they require funding. I do plan on shooting in the studio soon just because I miss it, but not because I feel the need to develop new content. Your point is spot on as far as I'm concerned. To be honest, there was a time I would spend $100's a month on props. Those days are long gone.
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Then what is the problem with differences between sales July and June. It's very big differences!!!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
It is a big difference for me...WAYYYYY down. Today I made $12 with 5000 assets.
This kind of ties into the other comments I made about getting to the point of it not being worth it. I only have a few hundred images on SS. It took a ton of time to create, edit, keyword, upload, and then go through all of the SS configuration stuff to get the images live. It must have been a massive effort and expense to do 5,000 images.
I'm not directing this question at you but in general for all people who are getting similar results. Is this level of effort worth the return for you?
yes, i am from your school of thought. i remember in your istock days too, you were saying the same thing. 5,000 is alot for me too, never mind 70,000.
all in all if you consider 70,000 with 20 agnecies to earn 350k a year or so extrapolating mantis and tara 5,000+- @ 100 a day 36k p.a.
i can see the possibility of pushing 5k images to ss to earn 36k
but if i had to create 70k , would the time, expense and effort be better paid
pushing photos outside of microstock???
didn't Yuri once said he was at one point reaching a 20% net profit of 350K?
would that really be viable?
i am interested to invite Mr Arcurs back here to see if he is still making 20% net these days.
then again, if i were Mr. Arcurs, i would have branch out a long time ago
and say eff..it to all this bs!!!
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OK, sales are down. What is your solution? complaining alone isn't going to solve anything, it never does and it never will.
Nobody is entitled to anything. Millennials are not entitled to a job because they have a degree. The veterans are not entitled to better sales because they were there first. "The World is Flat" is a great book detailing the leveling of the playing due to ease of access to education & technology.
No matter how good we are, we can always improve and gain different perspectives. Competition is one of the great constants of life. Just recently, some Amazon seller was complaining about how Chinese sellers are producing similar products and destroying her sales. The other day, a woman told me how a guy dumped her to date another woman. And just yesterday, we had to reject 5 designers because we made an offer to a more talented designer.
There are solutions to competition. Work hard, come up with new ideas, learn new skills, keep up with market trends, or enter new markets. And yes, I subscribe to my own advice.
So true!
Besides, for me, May was a massive BME. June, a massive second best.
AND the first 2 weeks of July are much better than the average: I got almost daily, either ELs (even more than 1) or large SODs (even more than 1) or clip sales (even more than 1) or even combinations of the above. ;D
Whatever SS did, may they continue to do more of the same, because that really works very well for me!
:P
Short update, in line with the above: today's 5 x $24 SODs makes today a good day by most standards, especially when all these sales come from port slightly larger than 800 items.
July is definitely on track to be a good month. Sorry guys, but I can't be happier than this with SS performance!
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I do plan on shooting in the studio soon just because I miss it, but not because I feel the need to develop new content. Your point is spot on as far as I'm concerned. To be honest, there was a time I would spend $100's a month on props. Those days are long gone.
me??? i am just looking to buy weed. it's illegal in my country so very hush hush, and an old f@rt going around asking for weed is too conspicuous.
the way i figure , this should be the best win win solution for most of us old-f@rts..
- get some weed
- photograph it... (set it on self timer and multiple shooting all day, continuous 24 hours or until battery runs out)
- smoke some
- wake up next morning, or when battery is dead
-upload all the photos to ss
your weed images will get you back into earning $$$ again
send ss a bunch of weed complimentary to thank them .
win win solution, everybody's happy!!!
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btw,
anybody knows where to score some grass???
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btw,
anybody knows where to score some grass???
You can get it legally in the Netherlands, in a coffeeshop where they sell everything but coffee ::)
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btw,
anybody knows where to score some grass???
Ask him:
http://www.shutterstock.com/g/JeremyNathan?page=1&safesearch=1&sort_method=newest (http://www.shutterstock.com/g/JeremyNathan?page=1&safesearch=1&sort_method=newest)
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I do plan on shooting in the studio soon just because I miss it, but not because I feel the need to develop new content. Your point is spot on as far as I'm concerned. To be honest, there was a time I would spend $100's a month on props. Those days are long gone.
me??? i am just looking to buy weed. it's illegal in my country so very hush hush, and an old f@rt going around asking for weed is too conspicuous.
the way i figure , this should be the best win win solution for most of us old-f@rts..
- get some weed
- photograph it... (set it on self timer and multiple shooting all day, continuous 24 hours or until battery runs out)
- smoke some
- wake up next morning, or when battery is dead
-upload all the photos to ss
your weed images will get you back into earning $$$ again
send ss a bunch of weed complimentary to thank them .
win win solution, everybody's happy!!!
ROFLMAO. Good post.
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Short update, in line with the above: today's 5 x $24 SODs makes today a good day by most standards, especially when all these sales come from port slightly larger than 800 items.
July is definitely on track to be a good month. Sorry guys, but I can't be happier than this with SS performance!
July is already BME for me at SS thanks to some nice footage sales (some 4k). Hopefully it goes on like this. VB fell off the planet though for some reason...
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How do you have bme, and the rest of us wme. I' talking about years. I do not understand?
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btw,
anybody knows where to score some grass???
You wont find any weed here, but you will find a lot of dickweeds...
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How do you have bme, and the rest of us wme. I' talking about years. I do not understand?
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If "everyone" is having a wme and shutterstocks income is increasing which it has consistently reported then its hardly surprising that some people are having bme's. They must be selling someones pics.
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How do you have bme, and the rest of us wme. I' talking about years. I do not understand?
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To continue the "logic" of this thread, we have BMEs and very good months because the search algorithm has been changed in our favor :o
It is definitively NOT because some picture or video is more in demand than other. ;)
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Doing microstock since 2005, 15000 images in portfolio. 60% down from normal earnings this July. June wasn't stellar either but this is special.
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I have been on stock for six months and I a already tired of Laurin's ranting. Laurin, how many problems in stock have you solved by ranting? Move on man! You are better than this!
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I think the one subject that people are afraid to talk about... because it may hurt the feeling of some contributors is that not all portfolios are created equal and to further extend that, not all photographers and not all designers are equal. Some people use duration of time spend on something as a measure of skill and ability. It isn't.
It's been demonstrated time and time again that you don't need to spend 20 years or even 10 years on something to be good at it. It doesn't matter if someone is newbie. If they have the skills, they have the skills. I'm fortunate enough to be in a position to see young kids as young as 18 outperforming people with 20 years of experience in a number of fields. It's crazy to see, but it's reality. One reason is because they're optimistic and they open their mind to knowledge as opposed to cynicism developed over years of frustration and a closed mind because they think they know everything.
There is a reason why Zuckerberg is a billionaire and I'm not. There's a reason why Jon Oringer at age 42 (founded SS at the 'inexperienced' age of 29) is the billionaire owner of SS and people much older than him are not. There's a reason why some people's small portfolios are performing beyond expectations while others with large portfolios are barely performing. Sometimes an adjustment of mindset is all you need to become more successful at something. Telling someone to "up their game" may sound harsh, but it's also a brutally honest suggestion.
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True dat. Like, some people are driving cars all their lives and yet, they still can't drive....
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I think the one subject that people are afraid to talk about... because it may hurt the feeling of some contributors is that not all portfolios are created equal and to further extend that, not all photographers and not all designers are equal. Some people use duration of time spend on something as a measure of skill and ability. It isn't.
................ Telling someone to "up their game" may sound harsh, but it's also a brutally honest suggestion.
I think you are totally missing the crux of the matter here.
No one is denying that there are some outstanding small portfolios that will outstrip many of the larger ones every day of the week, or that there are young and inexperienced 18 year olds oozing talent that some of us will only ever dream of - that's a given.
However, what you are failing to address here is that many of us are seeing sudden sales anomalies.
I measure the success of my portfolio by number of downloads achieved, and that has suddenly shifted, while my portfolio has remained 'equal'. Coming to this forum is to see if anyone has any tangible reasons that may explain this shift, is a sensible way to try and find either a solution or a method to address the problem, it is not about having a moan for the sake of it.
Telling people to 'up their game', whilst it may be 'harsh and brutally honest', is inappropriate in this set of circumstances.
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I think the one subject that people are afraid to talk about... because it may hurt the feeling of some contributors is that not all portfolios are created equal and to further extend that, not all photographers and not all designers are equal. Some people use duration of time spend on something as a measure of skill and ability. It isn't.
It's been demonstrated time and time again that you don't need to spend 20 years or even 10 years on something to be good at it. It doesn't matter if someone is newbie. If they have the skills, they have the skills. I'm fortunate enough to be in a position to see young kids as young as 18 outperforming people with 20 years of experience in a number of fields. It's crazy to see, but it's reality. One reason is because they're optimistic and they open their mind to knowledge as opposed to cynicism developed over years of frustration and a closed mind because they think they know everything.
There is a reason why Zuckerberg is a billionaire and I'm not. There's a reason why Jon Oringer at age 42 (founded SS at the 'inexperienced' age of 29) is the billionaire owner of SS and people much older than him are not. There's a reason why some people's small portfolios are performing beyond expectations while others with large portfolios are barely performing. Sometimes an adjustment of mindset is all you need to become more successful at something. Telling someone to "up their game" may sound harsh, but it's also a brutally honest suggestion.
Its a very hard thing to adjust to when something that has worked for you many years stops working. It happened to me and the choice was "up your game (do it our way)" or do something else you enjoy I chose the latter.
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theres been many factors why sales are dropping and cumulatively all these factors are hurting our earnings at SS. constant algorithm changes, more contributors, lowering of acceptance criteria, rapid increasing number of images, new competition from Adobe, lowering of royalties, you name it. and wanting the old days back is understandable, but never will happen, so really, accept it or move on. constantly ranting about is not going to help anyone, look at Paulie Walnuts, hes not ranting, hes changing his ways, and is now picking the fruits.
as for entitlement as cathyslife calls it, i dont think many people here think they are entitled. i certainly dont feel entitled to anything, the Op sounds entitled to me though. i dont respect people that think they are better than others, out with the old, in with the new, we need a change of guard in this business, its like bread, old bread goes stale, its not nice anymore, it needs to be fed to the ducks (pun intended)
PS: this communication from shutterstock explains some of why people see changes in their sales
Posted 11 September 2015 - 03:38 PM by vincent shutterstock
The search engine algorithm is proprietary, and there are numerous reasons why we are not going to share what it is. The algorithm is constantly tested and changed (several times a year, not just once every few years) with the simple goal of increasing downloads for all contributors.
Why and how we change the search engine algorithm is very simple: we test a new algorithm in a select market or on a random part of our customer base. If the new one gets more downloads we change it for all customers, if the new one does not result in more downloads we revert to the old one. We will always choose the algorithm that gets the most downloads.
Ultimately our goal is to keep it fresh and keep the customers interested (i.e. downloading) so an image showing on top of the search result for 8 years may be good for Laurin, but it is very bad for everyone else because customers do not want to see the same image every time for 8 years and will go elsewhere if it does as our tests have shown.
some links from our support center:
[url]http://support.shutt[/url] ([url]http://support.shutt[/url])...bat02/000006579
[url]http://support.shutt[/url] ([url]http://support.shutt[/url])...bat02/000006621
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theres been many factors why sales are dropping and cumulatively all these factors are hurting our earnings at SS. constant algorithm changes, more contributors, lowering of acceptance criteria, rapid increasing number of images, new competition from Adobe, lowering of royalties, you name it. and wanting the old days back is understandable, but never will happen, so really, accept it or move on. constantly ranting about is not going to help anyone, look at Paulie Walnuts, hes not ranting, hes changing his ways, and is now picking the fruits.
as for entitlement as cathyslife calls it, i dont think many people here think they are entitled. i certainly dont feel entitled to anything, the Op sounds entitled to me though. i dont respect people that think they are better than others, out with the old, in with the new, we need a change of guard in this business, its like bread, old bread goes stale, its not nice anymore, it needs to be fed to the ducks (pun intended)
PS: this communication from shutterstock explains some of why people see changes in their sales
Posted 11 September 2015 - 03:38 PM by vincent shutterstock
The search engine algorithm is proprietary, and there are numerous reasons why we are not going to share what it is. The algorithm is constantly tested and changed (several times a year, not just once every few years) with the simple goal of increasing downloads for all contributors.
Why and how we change the search engine algorithm is very simple: we test a new algorithm in a select market or on a random part of our customer base. If the new one gets more downloads we change it for all customers, if the new one does not result in more downloads we revert to the old one. We will always choose the algorithm that gets the most downloads.
Ultimately our goal is to keep it fresh and keep the customers interested (i.e. downloading) so an image showing on top of the search result for 8 years may be good for Laurin, but it is very bad for everyone else because customers do not want to see the same image every time for 8 years and will go elsewhere if it does as our tests have shown.
some links from our support center:
[url]http://support.shutt[/url] ([url]http://support.shutt[/url])...bat02/000006579
[url]http://support.shutt[/url] ([url]http://support.shutt[/url])...bat02/000006621
Sums it up well that quote is interesting
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theres been many factors why sales are dropping and cumulatively all these factors are hurting our earnings at SS. constant algorithm changes, more contributors, lowering of acceptance criteria, rapid increasing number of images, new competition from Adobe, lowering of royalties, you name it. and wanting the old days back is understandable, but never will happen, so really, accept it or move on. constantly ranting about is not going to help anyone, look at Paulie Walnuts, hes not ranting, hes changing his ways, and is now picking the fruits.
as for entitlement as cathyslife calls it, i dont think many people here think they are entitled. i certainly dont feel entitled to anything, the Op sounds entitled to me though. i dont respect people that think they are better than others, out with the old, in with the new, we need a change of guard in this business, its like bread, old bread goes stale, its not nice anymore, it needs to be fed to the ducks (pun intended)
PS: this communication from shutterstock explains some of why people see changes in their sales
Posted 11 September 2015 - 03:38 PM by vincent shutterstock
The search engine algorithm is proprietary, and there are numerous reasons why we are not going to share what it is. The algorithm is constantly tested and changed (several times a year, not just once every few years) with the simple goal of increasing downloads for all contributors.
Why and how we change the search engine algorithm is very simple: we test a new algorithm in a select market or on a random part of our customer base. If the new one gets more downloads we change it for all customers, if the new one does not result in more downloads we revert to the old one. We will always choose the algorithm that gets the most downloads.
Ultimately our goal is to keep it fresh and keep the customers interested (i.e. downloading) so an image showing on top of the search result for 8 years may be good for Laurin, but it is very bad for everyone else because customers do not want to see the same image every time for 8 years and will go elsewhere if it does as our tests have shown.
some links from our support center:
[url]http://support.shutt[/url] ([url]http://support.shutt[/url])...bat02/000006579
[url]http://support.shutt[/url] ([url]http://support.shutt[/url])...bat02/000006621
I thank you for posting this, as I hadn't seen it before.
It gives me a reasonable explanation for why I see a sudden change, as opposed to gradual changes brought about by market factors. That was all I was asking for.
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When they are playing we are loosing!!! Loosing big!!! And I don't think that that is good for both of us in long term!!!
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There are three things you can do with frustration. Change it, accept it, or leave it.
There is a fourth thing that seems to be the choice of a few: hang on to it, complain, bitch, rant, lament and blame. :-[
I wonder how many positive things in photography could be done in the time one spends ranting. Particularly those who have experience, equipment and "know what they are doing". There's money to be made in photography, for those who are in a position to do so. Go and grab it.
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When they are playing we are loosing!!! Loosing big!!! And I don't think that that is good for both of us in long term!!!
"We" is not everyone. Just the contributors that have been fortunate to have good search visibility for a while, and now don't anymore. The sales just go to someone else. What is fair can be discussed in all eternity.
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I think the one subject that people are afraid to talk about... because it may hurt the feeling of some contributors is that not all portfolios are created equal and to further extend that, not all photographers and not all designers are equal. Some people use duration of time spend on something as a measure of skill and ability. It isn't.
................ Telling someone to "up their game" may sound harsh, but it's also a brutally honest suggestion.
I think you are totally missing the crux of the matter here.
No one is denying that there are some outstanding small portfolios that will outstrip many of the larger ones every day of the week, or that there are young and inexperienced 18 year olds oozing talent that some of us will only ever dream of - that's a given.
However, what you are failing to address here is that many of us are seeing sudden sales anomalies.
I measure the success of my portfolio by number of downloads achieved, and that has suddenly shifted, while my portfolio has remained 'equal'. Coming to this forum is to see if anyone has any tangible reasons that may explain this shift, is a sensible way to try and find either a solution or a method to address the problem, it is not about having a moan for the sake of it.
Telling people to 'up their game', whilst it may be 'harsh and brutally honest', is inappropriate in this set of circumstances.
Then I'll also suggest a solution. If your old images are not selling, consider updating the keywords. Nobody does it right the first time. If the algorithm changed and no longer favor your old images, then make some changes to the metadata. The system may see it as an updated image and re-sort its ranking. I've done it before and I've seen results.
While it may be boring, it's a lot cheaper and less time consuming than creating new content. If you have total confidence in your work, then it will rise up the rankings. I believe that the best will always rise to the top on SS. It's only a matter of time.
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Then I'll also suggest a solution. If your old images are not selling, consider updating the keywords. Nobody does it right the first time. If the algorithm changed and no longer favor your old images, then make some changes to the metadata. The system may see it as an updated image and re-sort its ranking. I've done it before and I've seen results.
While it may be boring, it's a lot cheaper and less time consuming than creating new content. If you have total confidence in your work, then it will rise up the rankings. I believe that the best will always rise to the top on SS. It's only a matter of time.
Thats a very good suggestion. Back in 2005, the word on the street was to include anything you could see in the photo. Since then, search algoritms have become more sophisticated and keywords need to be focused on the main subject of the image. I have been going back and looking at my keywords, and particularly the early ones have many extraneous keywords that are just interfering with a good search.
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Thats a very good suggestion. Back in 2005, the word on the street was to include anything you could see in the photo. Since then, search algoritms have become more sophisticated and keywords need to be focused on the main subject of the image. I have been going back and looking at my keywords, and particularly the early ones have many extraneous keywords that are just interfering with a good search.
This is different on every site. They all have different algorithms so you really have to do your research and do it differently for each agency if you want to maximize your SEO.
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I think the one subject that people are afraid to talk about... because it may hurt the feeling of some contributors is that not all portfolios are created equal and to further extend that, not all photographers and not all designers are equal. Some people use duration of time spend on something as a measure of skill and ability. It isn't.
................ Telling someone to "up their game" may sound harsh, but it's also a brutally honest suggestion.
I think you are totally missing the crux of the matter here.
No one is denying that there are some outstanding small portfolios that will outstrip many of the larger ones every day of the week, or that there are young and inexperienced 18 year olds oozing talent that some of us will only ever dream of - that's a given.
However, what you are failing to address here is that many of us are seeing sudden sales anomalies.
I measure the success of my portfolio by number of downloads achieved, and that has suddenly shifted, while my portfolio has remained 'equal'. Coming to this forum is to see if anyone has any tangible reasons that may explain this shift, is a sensible way to try and find either a solution or a method to address the problem, it is not about having a moan for the sake of it.
Telling people to 'up their game', whilst it may be 'harsh and brutally honest', is inappropriate in this set of circumstances.
Then I'll also suggest a solution. If your old images are not selling, consider updating the keywords. Nobody does it right the first time. If the algorithm changed and no longer favor your old images, then make some changes to the metadata. The system may see it as an updated image and re-sort its ranking. I've done it before and I've seen results.
While it may be boring, it's a lot cheaper and less time consuming than creating new content. If you have total confidence in your work, then it will rise up the rankings. I believe that the best will always rise to the top on SS. It's only a matter of time.
Good suggestion. I will take a look at a selection and monitor the results.
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Considering how often these sites change their search engine criteria, I don't see any point in rekeywording or otherwise doing SEO on your port, unless there are real problems with the way you did it the first time.
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I would also suggest everyone spends lots of time reviewing their keywords on old images.
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Old images that I probably key worded badly seem to be the only ones selling for me with SS. I used to like uploading new stuff for the boost in sales but that stopped years ago. Not surprising seeing how many new images they get each week now. Having seen how earnings can be almost switched off by istock and FT in the past, I'm relieved that most months SS has provided me with a fairly steady income. This month is dreadful so far but its only half way through, so I'm not panicking yet.
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I went back and looked at my stuff that's selling. They all have one thing in common. They're all somewhat difficult to get shots or have higher production costs. All of it is probably older than 2011 when I stopped shooting for micro.
It's interesting that even with buffet style subscriptions none of my old newbie snapshot stuff is getting downloaded. It's all stuff that probably would have been good as macro a few years ago.
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For me this is a recent trend too. Not only in one agency.
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I went back and looked at my stuff that's selling. They all have one thing in common. They're all somewhat difficult to get shots or have higher production costs. All of it is probably older than 2011 when I stopped shooting for micro.
It's interesting that even with buffet style subscriptions none of my old newbie snapshot stuff is getting downloaded. It's all stuff that probably would have been good as macro a few years ago.
my old sellers still sell, but the large single earnings have disappeared.
and you are right, none of my new images are even getting a look-see,
it is almost as if i have them on Alamy, dreamstime, crestock,etc.. instead of ss, LOL
but like you say, if not for the regular sellers , images of 2011+-
i would be seeing zero days.
even more strange is that there are some strange downloads coming from images i forgot i had.
and although i welcome that sort of rotation,
i still feel this rotation of getting undiscovered images
are what is killing all of our portfolios.
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I don't think that is rekeywording will help!!! I did that with my images couple mounts ago and I didn't got results. And that is a very big job!! After 7 years and more then 14400 files it is almost impossible!!!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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The bottom line with all the open agencies is, "It can always get worse".
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The bottom line with all the open agencies is, "It can always get worse".
Except Yay unless they come round my house and rob me
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The bottom line with all the open agencies is, "It can always get worse".
Except Yay unless they come round my house and rob me
;D ;D ;D
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even more strange is that there are some strange downloads coming from images i forgot i had.
and although i welcome that sort of rotation,
i still feel this rotation of getting undiscovered images
are what is killing all of our portfolios.
Exactly. Better images - which usually sell - are not selling....... because they are not being seen?
:(
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OK. been in 11 Years .......newbies before march 12th 2012 need not Post Or who cares if ya do.... But, Sales after that date was the telling Point for me that something was amiss...........search went crazy. Most Popular disappeared and all hell broke loose. Some noticed nothing..... Probably due to small noncommercial work, BS or super small Ports. OR... the wooHoo crowd thinking Buyers love there work....?. And when i first took Notice Because Up until that date the slight variations were normal. Lots Of posts along the way since then. But Just for me and many swings that were quite large ...this july 2016 is a total Joke I mean serious Joke after uploading no less than 100/200 a month going On what I've told newbies you must do.. Im sorry I don't believe that crap anymore and Im tired and the Koolaid is getting distasteful and I apoligize to anyone I said that to.
This july has be a disaster. Less than My commissions from 10 Years ago.
Go Ahead Jon...Farm all the 25 cent folks you can. this is getting so Out of control. I Pray a new site comes in and "SCARES THEM STRAIGHT" I doubt it. ego and Money has Changed My Old friend. the mistakes they are making. ????? they don't even know about.
Sorry About the Rant. Thats what a veteran does. I don't know. I leave the critique forum and after 11 years in one week Fools are critiquing Others that have no clue what there doing themselves. MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOA. I guess I have to let this go and Move on. It's tough But I will. I see crap people are posting and it's Mind Blowing. HEY LEAF.............Heads up ,here come your new forum Posters. they will be here real soon. I won't, I'll be out making Money, these fools have no Idea about that part because we know How.........
I guess, given the model, we all knew this was coming. Last year was my best. This year, my tenth with SS, will be awful. I have no justification for complaining since, unlike some of you, I am not attempting to make a living with SS. The only surprise for me was the rapidity with which the situation changed.
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Yep, sales in July have absolutely collapsed on SS. Uploading high quality work doesn't have the effect it had - even in the recent past. Only those in emerging economies will be able to find this game worthwhile from here on in....
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Been following this thread and this time around I have to agree with all comments. I cant accept this is all due to "testing" the search, trying to find some magical combination that works for both agency and contributors nor that the market is saturated, it was saurated years back. Sounds really hollow to me.
My eight years with Shutterstock have produced great, good and bad times but always with a comeback.
Now this combined with all other site issues show all hallmarks of a company in turmoil, internal problems perhaps a new admin? that don't know how to deal with all issues even losing buyers perhaps? we will never know.
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Some months ago i experimented with ss search API. I can tell that stops of selling for some keywords were in synch with days when search with API didn't retun any images for that keyword. I had empty resultsets for images existing in portfolio in such days. Many other things were revealed about search behavior, not positives.
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Some months ago i experimented with ss search API. I can tell that stops of selling for some keywords were in synch with days when search with API didn't retun any images for that keyword. I had empty resultsets for images existing in portfolio in such days. Many other things were revealed about search behavior, not positives.
Its a fact yes. Its also a fact and confirmed there is one search for us but a completely different search for buyers in most countries.
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Like others my download numbers are up but income looks to be down this month down thanks to SOD, ELs and On Demand drying up.
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I just have to wonder how much longer these agencies think they'll be sustained by that flood of talented, enthusiastic new contributors. For anyone thinking about investing time in microstock, 10 minutes of Googling should make it clear there's just about zero chance it will ever pay off. And I'm not just talking about MSG.
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There are three things you can do with frustration. Change it, accept it, or leave it.
There is a fourth thing that seems to be the choice of a few: hang on to it, complain, bitch, rant, lament and blame. :-[
I wonder how many positive things in photography could be done in the time one spends ranting. Particularly those who have experience, equipment and "know what they are doing". There's money to be made in photography, for those who are in a position to do so. Go and grab it.
ok, i have to admit, the only time rinder comes in here or ss is to rant and say how experienced he is.
i also have to admit that the retaliatory remarks to tell him to face up and improve himself
does not hold water either,
as already pointed out by consensus that the new images uploaded by established contributors
are not being downloaded, or to quote the most recent comments
Yep, sales in July have absolutely collapsed on SS. Uploading high quality work doesn't have the effect it had - even in the recent past. Only those in emerging economies will be able to find this game worthwhile from here on in....
Exactly. Better images - which usually sell - are not selling....... because they are not being seen?
:(
I guess, given the model, we all knew this was coming. Last year was my best. This year, my tenth with SS, will be awful.
"not being seen"
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For me this is week three with making only a few bucks a day. 15-30 subs. That's about it.
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Today is little bit better, but I for our future on SS!!! :-(
How we can survive in this way, long-term.
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I am back to earnings levels 4 years ago but double My portfolio
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Each week I think, "Okay, next week it will bounce back," and each Saturday morning I'm amazed to see yet another drop. :(
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July my worst month since about 2013 - Granted I have been seeing a gradual decline since mid 2015 - but this is an abyssal drop in the order of 40% off where I should be....even in this new era.
Time to put the cat on half rations...
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a.
Time to put the cat on half rations...
... and you eat the other half with rice??? LOL
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There's no denying that something different is happening. At least for me, I never had such a large drop in sales (-50%). Since 2006 my sales were growing and now suddenly a fall like that. Has nothing to do with new talent and bla bla bla... my sales were increasing at all microstocks including the SS until last month >:(
Correcting my comment above. Except iStock and Fotolia, the SS was growing slowly since 2006. iStock and Fotolia since 2012 had a big gradual drop in sales until the end of 2014. Beginning 2015 my sales come back increased again (iStock and Fotolia) and Shutterstock in the same rhythm. Now July this abrupt fall only on SS... :o
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it is the holidays period
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I'm mostly a niche image-maker, and I've seen the same decrease as Rinder and others in this thread. Up until this month, the decrease in both downloads and money had been gradual, but something drastic has been going on in July. It's more than just the summer slowdown. I'm on track to have 50% less downloads than July 2015, and 25% less downloads than last month. My recent daily earnings are roughly the same as what Mantis has stated, quite a substantial decrease from my average. I've been doing this since 2006; long enough to see major trends.
Too many of us are observing the same patterns; something has changed independent of portfolio quality and time of year IMHO.
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I'm mostly a niche image-maker, and I've seen the same decrease as Rinder and others in this thread. Up until this month, the decrease in both downloads and money had been gradual, but something drastic has been going on in July. It's more than just the summer slowdown. I'm on track to have 50% less downloads than July 2015, and 25% less downloads than last month. My recent daily earnings are roughly the same as what Mantis has stated, quite a substantial decrease from my average. I've been doing this since 2006; long enough to see major trends.
Too many of us are observing the same patterns; something has changed independent of portfolio quality and time of year IMHO.
yet another person to testify.
i think this thread has run its course. the verdict is unanimous that while dls may or may not be up,
FACT -earnings is down by 50% or so for many,
FACT - single earnings 28 -102 dollars have vanished
regardless of quality of new images being uploaded
FACT - new images are not being dl because they are not being seen
in spite of the fact that based on the proliferation of factory and large numbers of poor composition
LCV images added daily
FACT- many experienced contributors port are falling off the cliff
finally, there is also a handful of denials coming from whoever they are
FACT- who insists "nothing is going wrong... i am doing really well"
but yet no one wants to provide rinder and his colleagues any definite proof that
they are in fact doing well.
so, perharps , they are part of the floor that is responsible for the terrible incidents
that have plagued this once great microstock #1 agency...
and only one scapegoat has been sacrificed.
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Just today, the 18th of July, I saw my first SOD of the month, for a vast $3.64 US. All other sales, such as they are, are 36˘ subs.
In the "olden days" (ie, 2015) a much higher SOD came along at least every 1-2 days, sometimes several times a day.
So yes, things at SS are grim. I'm lucky… not doing this for a living. But I feel sad for those of you who are.
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All other sales, such as they are, are 36˘ subs. I'm lucky… not doing this for a living. But I feel sad for those of you who are.
At 0.36 per sale for a commercial use you will never make a living at this. This particular mindset has completely ruined it for those of us that do it for a living.
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All other sales, such as they are, are 36˘ subs. I'm lucky… not doing this for a living. But I feel sad for those of you who are.
At 0.36 per sale for a commercial use you will never make a living at this. This particular mindset has completely ruined it for those of us that do it for a living.
Sorry, Rose, but I have as much right to offer my images for sale as you do.
And unless you happen to be photographing wild creatures and wild places, I'm not taking anything away from you.
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All other sales, such as they are, are 36˘ subs. I'm lucky… not doing this for a living. But I feel sad for those of you who are.
At 0.36 per sale for a commercial use you will never make a living at this. This particular mindset has completely ruined it for those of us that do it for a living.
You think constantly moaning about it helps? I would rather we all sold for higher prices but that horse bolted well over a decade ago. I don't think its accurate either, some people do very well selling at microstock prices. Before microstock, it was like a closed shop that most of us couldn't get in to. That left the market open for istock and the rest is history. The problem now is that we have no control and the sites can do whatever they like. They obviously want to make more and more money but they aren't concerned about how much we make because there's an oversupply.
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I'm mostly a niche image-maker, and I've seen the same decrease as Rinder and others in this thread. Up until this month, the decrease in both downloads and money had been gradual, but something drastic has been going on in July. It's more than just the summer slowdown. I'm on track to have 50% less downloads than July 2015, and 25% less downloads than last month. My recent daily earnings are roughly the same as what Mantis has stated, quite a substantial decrease from my average. I've been doing this since 2006; long enough to see major trends.
Too many of us are observing the same patterns; something has changed independent of portfolio quality and time of year IMHO.
yet another person to testify.
i think this thread has run its course. the verdict is unanimous that while dls may or may not be up,
FACT -earnings is down by 50% or so for many,
FACT - single earnings 28 -102 dollars have vanished
regardless of quality of new images being uploaded
FACT - new images are not being dl because they are not being seen
in spite of the fact that based on the proliferation of factory and large numbers of poor composition
LCV images added daily
FACT- many experienced contributors port are falling off the cliff
finally, there is also a handful of denials coming from whoever they are
FACT- who insists "nothing is going wrong... i am doing really well"
but yet no one wants to provide rinder and his colleagues any definite proof that
they are in fact doing well.
so, perharps , they are part of the floor that is responsible for the terrible incidents
that have plagued this once great microstock #1 agency...
and only one scapegoat has been sacrificed.
What we don't know is why have so many people had a big lowering in earnings and aren't selling new images? The most obvious answer to me is that Shutterstock make more money if they sell images from contributors that are on the lower percentages. It looks like that's what FT did a few years ago. If this low sales goes on for a few months, I will be moving on from microstock.
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etudiante, dont post made up facts, I still get 90 dollar SODs, 2 in the last 19 days, just not enough of them
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in the end us pros ruined our own business by submitting content to the micros, dont blame the amateur, blame your fellow pro shooters, like me, made a bundle in micro but its getting tougher, no business lasts forever, unless you are coca cola
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a.
Time to put the cat on half rations...
... and you eat the other half with rice??? LOL
That is catism and catophobic! >:(
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terrible july sales....half of normal
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in the end us pros ruined our own business by submitting content to the micros, dont blame the amateur, blame your fellow pro shooters, like me, made a bundle in micro but its getting tougher, no business lasts forever, unless you are coca cola
Most pros had no choice. With amateurs submitting pro quality work to micros, macro dried up, and you could either join and make pennies or find something else to do other than stock photography.
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in the end us pros ruined our own business by submitting content to the micros, dont blame the amateur, blame your fellow pro shooters, like me, made a bundle in micro but its getting tougher, no business lasts forever, unless you are coca cola
Most pros had no choice. With amateurs submitting pro quality work to micros, macro dried up, and you could either join and make pennies or find something else to do other than stock photography.
Exactly. Furthermore, depending on your field of expertise and market, an exponentially expanding microstock library made it much easier and a whole lot more economical for a pros existing client base to find imagery that was "close enough" to their needs that a bread and butter custom shoot was no longer a necessity. A lot of pros saw the writing on the wall years ago, resisted as long as they could, but ultimately had little choice but to hop aboard.
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in the end us pros ruined our own business by submitting content to the micros, dont blame the amateur, blame your fellow pro shooters, like me, made a bundle in micro but its getting tougher, no business lasts forever, unless you are coca cola
Most pros had no choice. With amateurs submitting pro quality work to micros, macro dried up, and you could either join and make pennies or find something else to do other than stock photography.
Exactly. Furthermore, depending on your field of expertise and market, an exponentially expanding microstock library made it much easier and a whole lot more economical for a pros existing client base to find imagery that was "close enough" to their needs that a bread and butter custom shoot was no longer a necessity. A lot of pros saw the writing on the wall years ago, resisted as long as they could, but ultimately had little choice but to hop aboard.
That is kind of like saying a person who has gone to medical school and is a surgeon and loses their job has little choice but to get a job at Walmart instead of looking for jobs in his/her own field. And then expecting Walmart to match the salary the surgeon was making as a surgeon.
Too bad the pros didn't see the writing on the wall that agencies were never going to increase commissions, and that they should never have quit their day jobs to depend on microstock as a full time job. The good news is there are now at least mid and macro agencies and other avenues of generating revenue where a pro can at least make better money to recoup the cost of expensive equipment and high-dollar shoots.
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in the end us pros ruined our own business by submitting content to the micros, dont blame the amateur, blame your fellow pro shooters, like me, made a bundle in micro but its getting tougher, no business lasts forever, unless you are coca cola
Most pros had no choice. With amateurs submitting pro quality work to micros, macro dried up, and you could either join and make pennies or find something else to do other than stock photography.
Exactly. Furthermore, depending on your field of expertise and market, an exponentially expanding microstock library made it much easier and a whole lot more economical for a pros existing client base to find imagery that was "close enough" to their needs that a bread and butter custom shoot was no longer a necessity. A lot of pros saw the writing on the wall years ago, resisted as long as they could, but ultimately had little choice but to hop aboard.
That is kind of like saying a person who has gone to medical school and is a surgeon and loses their job has little choice but to get a job at Walmart instead of looking for jobs in his/her own field. And then expecting Walmart to match the salary the surgeon was making as a surgeon.
Too bad the pros didn't see the writing on the wall that agencies were never going to increase commissions, and that they should never have quit their day jobs to depend on microstock as a full time job. The good news is there are now at least mid and macro agencies and other avenues of generating revenue where a pro can at least make better money to recoup the cost of expensive equipment and high-dollar shoots.
Note that I said "find something else to do other than stock photography". Old stock photo pros probably shifted toward other photography like commercial shoots, real estate, weddings, or whatever. I've noticed some saying there's no money in photography anymore as a full time profession and they've had to go get a non-photography job.
I think there are plenty of pros and amateurs who were able to recognize the shifting trends, adjust, and do very well. It's the people who were either unable or unwilling to make the necessary shift who completely got out of photography. There's still plenty of opportunity and money in photography for people with the right mindset and skills.
I think macro and mid-stock is only viable for a small percentage of contributors who can produce unique work that's not already heavily covered by microstock. On macro sites, anything that resembles micro is being sold a micro prices.
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This is the worst month ever for me in last eight years. Last july I sold 7x more images than this one. Last year I didn't upload and this year I am uploading almost all days in last 6 months
Enviado desde mi iPhone utilizando Tapatalk
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in the end us pros ruined our own business by submitting content to the micros, dont blame the amateur, blame your fellow pro shooters, like me, made a bundle in micro but its getting tougher, no business lasts forever, unless you are coca cola
Most pros had no choice. With amateurs submitting pro quality work to micros, macro dried up, and you could either join and make pennies or find something else to do other than stock photography.
Exactly. Furthermore, depending on your field of expertise and market, an exponentially expanding microstock library made it much easier and a whole lot more economical for a pros existing client base to find imagery that was "close enough" to their needs that a bread and butter custom shoot was no longer a necessity. A lot of pros saw the writing on the wall years ago, resisted as long as they could, but ultimately had little choice but to hop aboard.
That is kind of like saying a person who has gone to medical school and is a surgeon and loses their job has little choice but to get a job at Walmart instead of looking for jobs in his/her own field. And then expecting Walmart to match the salary the surgeon was making as a surgeon.
Too bad the pros didn't see the writing on the wall that agencies were never going to increase commissions, and that they should never have quit their day jobs to depend on microstock as a full time job. The good news is there are now at least mid and macro agencies and other avenues of generating revenue where a pro can at least make better money to recoup the cost of expensive equipment and high-dollar shoots.
Nope. Not like saying that at all. Not even remotely. Unless of course Walmart has opened a box hospital in a strip mall somewhere near you where they are tapping into an overabundant global supply chain of doctors, and succesfully outsourcing medical procedures to anyone who can perform them well enough. I would be the last person to compare photography to surgery.
Nor did I say any pro I know ever gave up their day job to pursue microstock full time. My point was that microstock has not only irrevocably changed the nature of stock photography in general, but indeed the nature of the photography industry as a whole.
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"I think there are plenty of pros and amateurs who were able to recognize the shifting trends, adjust, and do very well. It's the people who were either unable or unwilling to make the necessary shift who completely got out of photography. There's still plenty of opportunity and money in photography for people with the right mindset and skills." Wasn't that always the case? Hasn't it always been a very hard profession to be successful in?
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"I think there are plenty of pros and amateurs who were able to recognize the shifting trends, adjust, and do very well. It's the people who were either unable or unwilling to make the necessary shift who completely got out of photography. There's still plenty of opportunity and money in photography for people with the right mindset and skills." Wasn't that always the case? Hasn't it always been a very hard profession to be successful in?
Very well explain the business :) couldn't agree more
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Hasn't it always been a very hard profession to be successful in?
What creative profession is "easy" to be successful in?
There are thousands of musicians, actors, artists, writers, etc, trying to break out in their industry. Some can make money at it, even a decent income, but very few will ever reach the top.
And the reasons why they reach the top don't always have much to do with raw talent. Many other factors are at play in creative success, including luck, timing and connections.
The profession of photography is no different from any other creative endeavor except that digitization has increased its ability to be crowd-sourced. And therein lies our current tale.
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Hasn't it always been a very hard profession to be successful in?
What creative profession is "easy" to be successful in?
There are thousands of musicians, actors, artists, writers, etc, trying to break out in their industry. Some can make money at it, even a decent income, but very few will ever reach the top.
And the reasons why they reach the top don't always have much to do with raw talent. Many other factors are at play in creative success, including luck, timing and connections.
The profession of photography is no different from any other creative endeavor except that digitization has increased its ability to be crowd-sourced. And therein lies our current tale.
and of course business nous....I never Liked Yuris pictures much (OK I hate them) but as a business man he spotted an opportunity and made the maximum out of it.
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paulie, when you check the first images submitted to shutterstock, you will see it wasnt high quality, it was never the case that amateurs submitted higher quality than pros, if there was high quality, it was from the pros jumping in when they found out amateurs were making a bundle with their crappy shots. if so, we are to blame, not the amateurs. Macro was a closed shop and pros were sitting on their high horses, wich ultimately led to the creation of low priced images in a different payment model
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amateurs were making a bundle with their crappy shots
Well, if I may quibble just a bit more…
Not all amateurs were then or are now producing "crappy shots." Some of us use fine "pro" equipment and are serious about producing "pro-level" images.
As I understand the term, a "pro" is usually described as someone who makes a complete living at his/her art, craft, business, profession, etc. An "amateur" (or "advanced amateur" or "semi-pro") is somebody who may be very skillful but whose primary income comes from another field of endeavor. Even retirees from another profession (like me) can produce "semi-pro" work capable of competing well with what the "pros" produce.
And many of us "amateurs" are not johnny-come-latelys either. We aren't the reason SS's sales have dropped this year.
My first stock site was iStock, where I applied in 2008 and was accepted on the first round. The next year, I applied to Shutterstock, and was also accepted on the first round. For 3-4 years, my port was accepted (*always on the first round*) by iS, SS, FT, Adobe/FT, DT, P5, Veer, and Envato/PhotoDune. I've since dropped out of all but SS and DT, and dropped-out-and-come-back-in-again at FT/Adobe, because of the way the others treated their contributors.
Guess that's the biggest luxury of not being a "pro" and earning all my income from photography. I don't have to put up with the agencies' cr*p.
EDITED: I originally wrote "Verio" when I meant "Veer" and have corrected that.
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etudiante, dont post made up facts, I still get 90 dollar SODs, 2 in the last 19 days, just not enough of them
just because one sod is making his BME does not erase the FACT that many others are seeing their earning dive and SOD vanish.
you cannot live in a myopic world just thinking you are selling well today you can call the other people situation "made up facts".
look beyond your nose!
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amateurs were making a bundle with their crappy shots
Well, if I may quibble just a bit more…
Not all amateurs were then or are now producing "crappy shots." Some of us use fine "pro" equipment and are serious about producing "pro-level" images.
As I understand the term, a "pro" is usually described as someone who makes a complete living at his/her art, craft, business, profession, etc. An "amateur" (or "advanced amateur" or "semi-pro") is somebody who may be very skillful but whose primary income comes from another field of endeavor. Even retirees from another profession (like me) can produce "semi-pro" work capable of competing well with what the "pros" produce.
And many of us "amateurs" are not johnny-come-latelys either. We aren't the reason SS's sales have dropped this year.
My first stock site was iStock, where I applied in 2008 and was accepted on the first round. The next year, I applied to Shutterstock, and was also accepted on the first round. For 3-4 years, my port was accepted (*always on the first round*) by iS, SS, FT, Adobe/FT, DT, P5, Verio, and Envato/PhotoDune. I've since dropped out of all but SS and DT, and dropped-out-and-in-again from FT/Adobe, because of the way the others treated their contributors.
Guess that's the biggest luxury of not being a "pro" and earning all my income from photography. I don't have to put up with the agencies' cr*p.
well written response, martha.
what some myopic individual refuse to see the point here is not about rinder and others coming in here to whine and complain about something "non-factual".
simply because the sordid pro is making money these days does not mean the rest of the experienced contributors are suddenly becoming incompetent.
that is such an imbecile mentality or at worst, haughty-taughty.
remember, rinder and the majority here ... were making SODs regularly
before their port fell off the cliff and SODs disappeared.
no doubt , when the market crashes, someone is still making money.
to say the rest of the people here should smarten up is a bit cocky, if not naive.
cheer on my myopic friend ! rinder is not just crabby for his own interest.
if many of the old contributors have seen a shortfall in comparision to the "olden day" (2015)
as cathy coins it,
it is not a good omen for us...
neither is it a good omen for you .
we are all in the same boat, and if you think you alone are doing well
enough to ignore the fact ,
when the boat sinks, you will be the first one to be dragged down as well.
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We may all be in the same boat but were all in competition for life jackets. I am waiting for SS figures for some verifiable facts. I suspect the boat is still getting bigger but not as fast as the number of passengers and the amount of luggage they carry.
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paulie, when you check the first images submitted to shutterstock, you will see it wasnt high quality, it was never the case that amateurs submitted higher quality than pros, if there was high quality, it was from the pros jumping in when they found out amateurs were making a bundle with their crappy shots. if so, we are to blame, not the amateurs. Macro was a closed shop and pros were sitting on their high horses, wich ultimately led to the creation of low priced images in a different payment model
Again, note that I said "pro" quality not "high" quality. Different terms and definitions.
From what I've seen pro quality varies and I think it has been totally redefined over the past decade. I've seen some old pros talking about how bad things have gotten. When I looked at their ports I saw a lot of walkaround snapshots of trees, buildings, and basic stuff that could easily be replicated by anyone with a cellphone. At one time those kinds of pros probably made big money because agencies had full control over limiting contributors and the image supply which allowed them to set pricing very high. I've seen old pros with some amazing highly saleable work. But I've also seen amateurs with amazing sellable work. Crap sells as long as it's cheap enough.
So to your point, even if all pros refused to join micro, the pricing downfall would have happened anyway but probably a bit slower. There were, and are, plenty of amateurs who would have produced saleable work that would have caused buyers to shift from pro macro to micro anyway. And a lot of pros would still need to either join micro or starve. I still see a few holdouts who always said "RM or die" and now they seem to be giving in or giving up.
For the pros who jumped in early, along with the flood of amateurs, what do you expect? A few years ago contributors were bragging about making crazy money, posting free how-to-succeed-at-micro blogs, and on and on. The world got invited to the goldrush and now it's turning into a ghost town.
We're all responsible for where things are at today.
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We may all be in the same boat but were all in competition for life jackets. I am waiting for SS figures for some verifiable facts. I suspect the boat is still getting bigger but not as fast as the number of passengers and the amount of luggage they carry.
good point Pauws!!!
like streeturchins scrambling on top of each other for the crumbs falling off the table.
well-said!
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andres rodriguez was a web designer before the became a photographer. he was an amateur photographer when he joined shutterstock in 2004, this is one of his first images, super talented guy, but crappy photos to start with, this was the level found on ss in the early days, this is not high end nor pro commercial stuff
(http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/1294/1294,1102043635,24/stock-photo-brazilian-filla-with-a-hat-51105.jpg)
i wonder how many sales he got on that one, haha
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"For the pros who jumped in early, along with the flood of amateurs, what do you expect? A few years ago contributors were bragging about making crazy money, posting free how-to-succeed-at-micro blogs, and on and on. The world got invited to the goldrush and now it's turning into a ghost town." With hindsight its pretty obvious that this wouldn't last I think (hope) we are in for a period of slow decline so its a case of how best to cope in that environment.
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I didn't notice until today because the numbers aren't that significant, but the other site that is running at about half normal for me is BigStock. My other micro sites are normal or above normal.
Coincidence?
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The barrier for entry has gotten significantly lower over the years. Today's mobile phone cameras can produce photos better than semi-pro cameras from 10 years ago. Today's mirrorless cameras are very affordable and they produce high quality photos that be used for almost anything. Give anyone a decent lens that can defocus the background and a lesson in basic composition and most people won't be able to tell if the photo is taken by a pro or an amateur. Well, most pros can, but some the buyers won't.
But pros are uploading some high quality work to SS. I can probably find anything on SS that can rival most of Getty's premium work. The quality gap is getting smaller by the day and there will come a point where the buyer will only notice the huge price difference. Buyers have it good. They have ridiculous variety to choose from and sometimes they only need 1 photo. So 1 person get lucky and 10,000 others won't.
Let's do a search for pets on a Getty and SS site:
http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?search_source=base_lohp&searchterm=pets (http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?search_source=base_lohp&searchterm=pets)
http://www.gettyimages.com/photos/pet?family=creative&license=rf&phrase=pet&sort=best&excludenudity=true#license (http://www.gettyimages.com/photos/pet?family=creative&license=rf&phrase=pet&sort=best&excludenudity=true#license)
One can argue that images on SS have more commercial appeal with quality to match. Pros and talented semi-pros are making SS looking better by the day and I don't think anyone can stop it. That is what happens with any competitive environment, regardless of field.
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"For the pros who jumped in early, along with the flood of amateurs, what do you expect? A few years ago contributors were bragging about making crazy money, posting free how-to-succeed-at-micro blogs, and on and on. The world got invited to the goldrush and now it's turning into a ghost town." With hindsight its pretty obvious that this wouldn't last I think (hope) we are in for a period of slow decline so its a case of how best to cope in that environment.
Not even hindsight. Trends were showing years ago where things were headed. I went with Plan B in 2013. Glad I did.
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The barrier for entry has gotten significantly lower over the years. Today's mobile phone cameras can produce photos better than semi-pro cameras from 10 years ago. Today's mirrorless cameras are very affordable and they produce high quality photos that be used for almost anything. Give anyone a decent lens that can defocus the background and a lesson in basic composition and most people won't be able to tell if the photo is taken by a pro or an amateur. Well, most pros can, but some the buyers won't.
But pros are uploading some high quality work to SS. I can probably find anything on SS that can rival most of Getty's premium work. The quality gap is getting smaller by the day and there will come a point where the buyer will only notice the huge price difference. Buyers have it good. They have ridiculous variety to choose from and sometimes they only need 1 photo. So 1 person get lucky and 10,000 others won't.
Let's do a search for pets on a Getty and SS site:
[url]http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?search_source=base_lohp&searchterm=pets[/url] ([url]http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?search_source=base_lohp&searchterm=pets[/url])
[url]http://www.gettyimages.com/photos/pet?family=creative&license=rf&phrase=pet&sort=best&excludenudity=true#license[/url] ([url]http://www.gettyimages.com/photos/pet?family=creative&license=rf&phrase=pet&sort=best&excludenudity=true#license[/url])
One can argue that images on SS have more commercial appeal with quality to match. Pros and talented semi-pros are making SS looking better by the day and I don't think anyone can stop it. That is what happens with any competitive environment, regardless of field.
you are right too.
but one thing that is even more true is that buyers do not really care who took the photograph;
just as you said, they only need one picture.
to be honest, i have alot of images that i thought would be my best seller...
for obvious reasons..
- i spent a lot of time setting up the lights
- i chose the best quality of food, fruit,etc.
- i post-processed it to make it look so much tastier
etc etc etc
or
- it is an image that is difficult to replicate
due to
- weather
-lighting
-location
etc etc etc
i repeat, obvious reasons...
but to whom??? to me !!
finally, guess what image(s) sold and made the most money for me to date???
-a picture of a tomato
-a picture of an onion
-a picture of...
which i merely plopped on a white background and shot it with bounced lighting
no other special technique, props,etc..
need i go on???
who needs a pro to do that???
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Let's do a search for pets on a Getty and SS site:
[url]http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?search_source=base_lohp&searchterm=pets[/url] ([url]http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?search_source=base_lohp&searchterm=pets[/url])
[url]http://www.gettyimages.com/photos/pet?family=creative&license=rf&phrase=pet&sort=best&excludenudity=true#license[/url] ([url]http://www.gettyimages.com/photos/pet?family=creative&license=rf&phrase=pet&sort=best&excludenudity=true#license[/url])
One can argue that images on SS have more commercial appeal with quality to match. Pros and talented semi-pros are making SS looking better by the day and I don't think anyone can stop it. That is what happens with any competitive environment, regardless of field.
Is it just me or do the Getty images look a bit dull/washed out compared to the SS images? On my monitor at least, SS looks both cleaner and brighter.
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etudiante, dont post made up facts, I still get 90 dollar SODs, 2 in the last 19 days, just not enough of them
just because one sod is making his BME does not erase the FACT that many others are seeing their earning dive and SOD vanish.
you cannot live in a myopic world just thinking you are selling well today you can call the other people situation "made up facts".
look beyond your nose!
Just because one sod is making his worst month ever does not erase the FACT that many others are seeing their earnings increase and SOD on the up.
You cannot live in a myopic world just thinking you are selling badly today you can call the other people situation "made up facts".
look beyond your nose!
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This July every day is like a weekend. WAY down on usual.....
It is as if my port is just buried or off. Even reliable sellers aren't selling.
I'm on top tier, not an ace photog, but this performance of my port is NOT normal swings and roundabouts.
I'm increasingly feeling that 25c is cheaper than 38c and what would you do if it was your business with squillions of images, most fairly acceptable, to hand?
Up my game? Great idea if I thought new pics would sell (I see little evidence) but even for 38c I can't afford models, props etc.
Mega demotivated.
:(
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Sunday sales on a Tuesday for me.....Of course both SS and BS are down AGAIN in the UK "site can't be reached".
Get it sorted SS and stop wasting money on hippy stuff like yogurt vending machines and "collaborative work spaces where the essence of powering connectivity is interwoven into the design approach......"
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Sunday sales on a Tuesday for me.....Of course both SS and BS are down AGAIN in the UK "site can't be reached".
Get it sorted SS and stop wasting money on hippy stuff like yogurt vending machines and "collaborative work spaces where the essence of powering connectivity is interwoven into the design approach......"
To be fair there's an internet problem across UK not actually SS's fault.
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The barrier for entry has gotten significantly lower over the years. Today's mobile phone cameras can produce photos better than semi-pro cameras from 10 years ago. Today's mirrorless cameras are very affordable and they produce high quality photos that be used for almost anything. Give anyone a decent lens that can defocus the background and a lesson in basic composition and most people won't be able to tell if the photo is taken by a pro or an amateur. Well, most pros can, but some the buyers won't.
But pros are uploading some high quality work to SS. I can probably find anything on SS that can rival most of Getty's premium work. The quality gap is getting smaller by the day and there will come a point where the buyer will only notice the huge price difference. Buyers have it good. They have ridiculous variety to choose from and sometimes they only need 1 photo. So 1 person get lucky and 10,000 others won't.
Let's do a search for pets on a Getty and SS site:
[url]http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?search_source=base_lohp&searchterm=pets[/url] ([url]http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?search_source=base_lohp&searchterm=pets[/url])
[url]http://www.gettyimages.com/photos/pet?family=creative&license=rf&phrase=pet&sort=best&excludenudity=true#license[/url] ([url]http://www.gettyimages.com/photos/pet?family=creative&license=rf&phrase=pet&sort=best&excludenudity=true#license[/url])
One can argue that images on SS have more commercial appeal with quality to match. Pros and talented semi-pros are making SS looking better by the day and I don't think anyone can stop it. That is what happens with any competitive environment, regardless of field.
you are right too.
but one thing that is even more true is that buyers do not really care who took the photograph;
just as you said, they only need one picture.
to be honest, i have alot of images that i thought would be my best seller...
for obvious reasons..
- i spent a lot of time setting up the lights
- i chose the best quality of food, fruit,etc.
- i post-processed it to make it look so much tastier
etc etc etc
or
- it is an image that is difficult to replicate
due to
- weather
-lighting
-location
etc etc etc
i repeat, obvious reasons...
but to whom??? to me !!
finally, guess what image(s) sold and made the most money for me to date???
-a picture of a tomato
-a picture of an onion
-a picture of...
which i merely plopped on a white background and shot it with bounced lighting
no other special technique, props,etc..
need i go on???
who needs a pro to do that???
People really needing a pro don't go on microstok sites……
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Let's do a search for pets on a Getty and SS site:
[url]http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?search_source=base_lohp&searchterm=pets[/url] ([url]http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?search_source=base_lohp&searchterm=pets[/url])
[url]http://www.gettyimages.com/photos/pet?family=creative&license=rf&phrase=pet&sort=best&excludenudity=true#license[/url] ([url]http://www.gettyimages.com/photos/pet?family=creative&license=rf&phrase=pet&sort=best&excludenudity=true#license[/url])
One can argue that images on SS have more commercial appeal with quality to match. Pros and talented semi-pros are making SS looking better by the day and I don't think anyone can stop it. That is what happens with any competitive environment, regardless of field.
Is it just me or do the Getty images look a bit dull/washed out compared to the SS images? On my monitor at least, SS looks both cleaner and brighter.
It's not really "dull", it's just more artsy, with desaturation, wash, matte effects etc, I like it.
Stocksy collections look even "duller" ;D
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People really needing a pro don't go on microstok sites……
you and pauw sum it all "For the pros who jumped in early, along with the flood of amateurs, what do you expect? A few years ago contributors were bragging about making crazy money, posting free how-to-succeed-at-micro blogs, and on and on. The world got invited to the goldrush and now it's turning into a ghost town." With hindsight its pretty obvious that this wouldn't last I think (hope) we are in for a period of slow decline so its a case of how best to cope in that environment.
along with the red flag ss waved to us literally in our face,
but all of us in denial still do not get it...
-lowering of payout to 35 bucks
-lowering of the entrance 7/10 bar
it zipped right passed most of our brains...
when oringer with the compliments of the major shareholders tell us
"read our lips, you will be getting less and less...
and even if you leave, we won't notice
because like telemarketing business
there are more waiting in line at the gravy chain
than you "experts" going elsewhere or giving up
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Let's do a search for pets on a Getty and SS site:
[url]http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?search_source=base_lohp&searchterm=pets[/url] ([url]http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?search_source=base_lohp&searchterm=pets[/url])
[url]http://www.gettyimages.com/photos/pet?family=creative&license=rf&phrase=pet&sort=best&excludenudity=true#license[/url] ([url]http://www.gettyimages.com/photos/pet?family=creative&license=rf&phrase=pet&sort=best&excludenudity=true#license[/url])
One can argue that images on SS have more commercial appeal with quality to match. Pros and talented semi-pros are making SS looking better by the day and I don't think anyone can stop it. That is what happens with any competitive environment, regardless of field.
Is it just me or do the Getty images look a bit dull/washed out compared to the SS images? On my monitor at least, SS looks both cleaner and brighter.
It's not really "dull", it's just more artsy, with desaturation, wash, matte effects etc, I like it.
Stocksy collections look even "duller" ;D
Shutterstocks style has always been more vivid bright and shiny imho. Of course they're all converging with the reduction of exclusive content but I think SSs presentation is more vivid.
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rapide, you said "FACT - single earnings 28 -102 dollars have vanished"
no they havent, it is an incorrect statement and not a fact, no other way about it
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rapide, you said "FACT - single earnings 28 -102 dollars have vanished"
no they havent, it is an incorrect statement and not a fact, no other way about it
I have always found when people type FACT in uppercase it never is........fact
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We may all be in the same boat but were all in competition for life jackets. I am waiting for SS figures for some verifiable facts. I suspect the boat is still getting bigger but not as fast as the number of passengers and the amount of luggage they carry.
I look at it more like we all own our own boats and use a travel agency to get paying passengers. There are a limited number of paying passengers and hundreds of new boats are showing up daily to provide services. Because of this, each boat is getting less and less passengers even though the travel agency sees an increase in passenger volume and sales. It's simply supply outpacing demand and some good or bad luck with agency algorithms. Competition at it's finest.
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I look at it theres more images and contributors every day to share the earnings with, or is that too complicated? haha
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I look at it theres more images and contributors every day to share the earnings with, or is that too complicated? haha
Too complicated. People relate to boats. And cats. And cats in boats. If you could go ahead and write something about cats in boats that would be great.
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Well ... I guess I was right to start Plan Bee then .... http://shutterstock.com/g/Photografiero (http://shutterstock.com/g/Photografiero) ;)
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I look at it theres more images and contributors every day to share the earnings with, or is that too complicated? haha
The only other factor is that SSs earnings are still rising but not as fast as images, not sure about contributors. So on average contributors income must be going down but within that there will be winners and losers.
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We may all be in the same boat but were all in competition for life jackets. I am waiting for SS figures for some verifiable facts. I suspect the boat is still getting bigger but not as fast as the number of passengers and the amount of luggage they carry.
I look at it more like we all own our own boats and use a travel agency to get paying passengers. There are a limited number of paying passengers and hundreds of new boats are showing up daily to provide services. Because of this, each boat is getting less and less passengers even though the travel agency sees an increase in passenger volume and sales. It's simply supply outpacing demand and some good or bad luck with agency algorithms. Competition at it's finest.
I don't buy this theory. There is no hundreds of boats from one month to other. For me June was not a bad month but july was worst month ever. It is not possible going near zero from june to july. I think there is another reason.
Enviado desde mi iPhone utilizando Tapatalk
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It maybe that a change in the search algorithm may have had a very severe effect on some contributors. Whether thats "fair" or not is not really relevant to SS they will look at their revenue. it is possible that their algorithm now favours profit over total income i'e promoting smaller contributors. Think we have no way of knowing but there is some anecdotal evidence for this. It would be a quite rational thing for them to do.
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I would rather have a level playing field, we all get the same amount per download and there's no bias in the search. When FT turned my downloads off, I lost all motivation with them. IF SS are doing the same thing, microstock will be dead to me. The only site I still have confidence in is Alamy. They will probably be bought by Getty the way things are going :)
Hopefully SS will change the search again but I doubt it because things never seem to get better with sites when they start thinking about short term profits instead of a sustainable long term strategy.
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Right now compared to last month SS down $.450 Adobe up $.325. is this a sign or something?
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We may all be in the same boat but were all in competition for life jackets. I am waiting for SS figures for some verifiable facts. I suspect the boat is still getting bigger but not as fast as the number of passengers and the amount of luggage they carry.
I look at it more like we all own our own boats and use a travel agency to get paying passengers. There are a limited number of paying passengers and hundreds of new boats are showing up daily to provide services. Because of this, each boat is getting less and less passengers even though the travel agency sees an increase in passenger volume and sales. It's simply supply outpacing demand and some good or bad luck with agency algorithms. Competition at it's finest.
I don't buy this theory. There is no hundreds of boats from one month to other. For me June was not a bad month but july was worst month ever. It is not possible going near zero from june to july. I think there is another reason.
Enviado desde mi iPhone utilizando Tapatalk
Okay, don't buy my theory. Aliens? Pokemon?
There could be hundreds of different reasons one person is seeing a drop is sales.
I mentioned supply/demand and algorithm change. Supply/demand would cause a steady change in sales for contributors unless there was a demand spike. Algorithm tweak would cause an immediate change in sales for contributors. My sales have been steady but July I'm trending way up. Algorithm tweak seems like a reasonable cause for both of us. And yes there are hundreds or more new contributors (boats) joining every month you have to compete against for the same buyer.
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I am crying. Today I sold one image (with 10 years old more or less).!
Congrats Paulie if your sales are good, not mine. I'm not a prophet to know what is on SS mind but i see somethig different with almost all people
Enviado desde mi iPhone utilizando Tapatalk
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And yes there are hundreds or more new contributors (boats) joining every month you have to compete against for the same buyer.
You may be right, Paulie, but this statement makes me wonder.
Given the world's overall population growth, is there any reason why the number of contributors and the number of buyers doesn't remain roughly in balance?
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And yes there are hundreds or more new contributors (boats) joining every month you have to compete against for the same buyer.
You may be right, Paulie, but this statement makes me wonder.
Given the world's overall population growth, is there any reason why the number of contributors and the number of buyers doesn't remain roughly in balance?
Maybe because the number of cheap cameras owners grows faster than the number of buyers?
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And yes there are hundreds or more new contributors (boats) joining every month you have to compete against for the same buyer.
You may be right, Paulie, but this statement makes me wonder.
Given the world's overall population growth, is there any reason why the number of contributors and the number of buyers doesn't remain roughly in balance?
Absolutely a great point. When I saw some of SS recent financials I got the impression library growth was outpacing sales growth which is why I keep mentioning supply/demand. But again it's only my impression. The numbers would need to be analyzed to verify that. Again could be dozens of possible causes.
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And yes there are hundreds or more new contributors (boats) joining every month you have to compete against for the same buyer.
You may be right, Paulie, but this statement makes me wonder.
Given the world's overall population growth, is there any reason why the number of contributors and the number of buyers doesn't remain roughly in balance?
Absolutely a great point. When I saw some of SS recent financials I got the impression library growth was outpacing sales growth which is why I keep mentioning supply/demand. But again it's only my impression. The numbers would need to be analyzed to verify that. Again could be dozens of possible causes.
still, if supply /demand are of the kind of images created by say rinderhart, mantis,etc (viz those who came here to say their sales have plunged)
it would account for the sudden drop in earnings of these experienced contributors.
but if you say the supply increased manifolds of marijuana, landscape, flowers,etc..
that still does not explain why rinderhart and everyone here in this thread and corresponding threads
at ss are experiencing a sudden drop in earnings.
and this is my/their impression, which is very real from their side of the story..
.. which may not be a FACT to some, but it's hurting them in the pocket
and there is no one out there coming in to explain why these experienced contributors
are in fact IN FACT seeing their portfolio vanished
along with their prior regular earnings of 28 to 102 dollars which they had
before all these flipping about started
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It maybe that a change in the search algorithm may have had a very severe effect on some contributors. Whether thats "fair" or not is not really relevant to SS they will look at their revenue. it is possible that their algorithm now favours profit over total income i'e promoting smaller contributors. Think we have no way of knowing but there is some anecdotal evidence for this. It would be a quite rational thing for them to do.
+100. Sales don't collapse overnight without something like that happening and they do admit that they play with the algorithm. I was making $40 -$100 a day. Now I am making $7 to $15 for the last three weeks.
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It maybe that a change in the search algorithm may have had a very severe effect on some contributors. Whether thats "fair" or not is not really relevant to SS they will look at their revenue. it is possible that their algorithm now favours profit over total income i'e promoting smaller contributors. Think we have no way of knowing but there is some anecdotal evidence for this. It would be a quite rational thing for them to do.
+100. Sales don't collapse overnight without something like that happening and they do admit that they play with the algorithm. I was making $40 -$100 a day. Now I am making $7 to $15 for the last three weeks.
good of you to be so honest about it. usually it is someone who will tell how successful they are
but would never admit they are losing money overnight.
and many have already said they have been missing those single earnings of 28 to 102 dollars overnight for over a year now.
it may not have disappeared for one or two, but for many who came here to admit it,
it has. and that does not erase the fact that it did for them.
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For me, it has nothing to do with the search algorithms. All of my images that have come up high in searches still do. My normal sub purchases are at or higher than ever.
Where my earnings have dropped, and I think for many others, it's the loss of the ELs and SODs that used to boost our income. I don't think that had anything to do with search algorithms, but changes in marketing and licensing. Changes to licensing made fewer people need to buy ELs, changes in marketing has acquired more sub customers, which means less OD and SOD customers.
I can't do anything about any of this, so I will keep doing what I have been doing for 10 years. Shoot, process upload, rinse and repeat.
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No what you see in your search is not what the buyers see and in different parts of the world depending on where they don't even see your port. It is from time to time a complete switch off of portfolios. Nothing new its been going on for some time. In certain parts of Europe especially during nights its a complete stand-still.
Lower royalty members are favoured in the sort order meaning of course that agency is saving millions in payouts every month. Its laughable really because its become a way to punish prominent suppliers of stock, the more successful you are the less you are favoured in the search.
Its not a nice game anymore. :)
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sorry but who buys images at night?
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sorry but who buys images at night?
European nights are business hours in America, South-America etc. and of course vice-versa.
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the most downloads come from europe and the states, at 5pm in the US theres basically no one working till 9am in europe.
also, shutterstock has roughly 12.5 million downloads per month. if those would all be subs and go to 25 cent portfolios they would make 1.5m usd more per month, not millions. but many 38 cent portfolios still getting sales,
your statements are emotional rather than factual
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This kind of pointless rants has been going on for years and it will only get worse. In 2 years most of you will dream about today's stock income. Blaming the agencies, newbies, etc. - so pointless, such a waste of time.... Basic economic fact is: there is too many suppliers and the share of the cake is getting smaller and smaller for each supplier. What is the way to survive? Writing useless rants and continuing to pump your assets into an unsustainable system? Continuing to sell rope to agencies with which they will hang you? No, the only way to think about survival is stop feeding the current system and try to create an alternative system where the number of suppliers is limited and the content is of high quality and exclusive.
Stocksy got it right: hard limit on the number of members. Stocksy also got many other things right and now reap the rewards.
I cannot understand the "pros" who continue to pump their content into the system that will eat them, instead of trying harder to come up with a better system. Stocksy has proved that it is possible, only very difficult.
All right, for this post you may grab your pitchforks and chase me, but I am sure if I come back in 1 year, 2 years, there will be exactly the same kind of useless rants, only the income level of most people will be much lower.
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This kind of pointless rants has been going on for years and it will only get worse. In 2 years most of you will dream about today's stock income. Blaming the agencies, newbies, etc. - so pointless, such a waste of time.... Basic economic fact is: there is too many suppliers and the share of the cake is getting smaller and smaller for each supplier. What is the way to survive? Writing useless rants and continuing to pump your assets into an unsustainable system? Continuing to sell rope to agencies with which they will hang you? No, the only way to think about survival is stop feeding the current system and try to create an alternative system where the number of suppliers is limited and the content is of high quality and exclusive.
Stocksy got it right: hard limit on the number of members. Stocksy also got many other things right and now reap the rewards.
I cannot understand the "pros" who continue to pump their content into the system that will eat them, instead of trying harder to come up with a better system. Stocksy has proved that it is possible, only very difficult.
All right, for this post you may grab your pitchforks and chase me, but I am sure if I come back in 1 year, 2 years, and there will be exactly the same kind of useless rants, only the income level of most people will be much lower.
What this implies though is increased income for the chosen few at the expense of those excluded. It may work well for some but doesn't really address the supply issue. Seems to me its an outdated model ...will be interesting to see where Stocksy is in a year or two as well.
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This kind of pointless rants has been going on for years and it will only get worse. In 2 years most of you will dream about today's stock income. Blaming the agencies, newbies, etc. - so pointless, such a waste of time.... Basic economic fact is: there is too many suppliers and the share of the cake is getting smaller and smaller for each supplier. What is the way to survive? Writing useless rants and continuing to pump your assets into an unsustainable system? Continuing to sell rope to agencies with which they will hang you? No, the only way to think about survival is stop feeding the current system and try to create an alternative system where the number of suppliers is limited and the content is of high quality and exclusive.
Stocksy got it right: hard limit on the number of members. Stocksy also got many other things right and now reap the rewards.
I cannot understand the "pros" who continue to pump their content into the system that will eat them, instead of trying harder to come up with a better system. Stocksy has proved that it is possible, only very difficult.
All right, for this post you may grab your pitchforks and chase me, but I am sure if I come back in 1 year, 2 years, and there will be exactly the same kind of useless rants, only the income level of most people will be much lower.
What this implies though is increased income for the chosen few at the expense of those excluded. It may work well for some but doesn't really address the supply issue. Seems to me its an outdated model ...will be interesting to see where Stocksy is in a year or two as well.
The only alternative are ever shrinking earnings for everyone. The ones that are "excluded" (as you say) on one site may join other sites. It was also pretty much like this when e.g. entrance tests at SS mattered. Only the entrance barriers should be higher now and the membership limited.
I don't think you should even try to address the oversupply issue. Hopeless! It's like with lightning strikes. A lightning rod is not supposed to solve the issue of lightning strikes but it prevents your house from being destroyed when it hits you.
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This kind of pointless rants has been going on for years and it will only get worse. In 2 years most of you will dream about today's stock income. Blaming the agencies, newbies, etc. - so pointless, such a waste of time.... Basic economic fact is: there is too many suppliers and the share of the cake is getting smaller and smaller for each supplier. What is the way to survive? Writing useless rants and continuing to pump your assets into an unsustainable system? Continuing to sell rope to agencies with which they will hang you? No, the only way to think about survival is stop feeding the current system and try to create an alternative system where the number of suppliers is limited and the content is of high quality and exclusive.
Stocksy got it right: hard limit on the number of members. Stocksy also got many other things right and now reap the rewards.
I cannot understand the "pros" who continue to pump their content into the system that will eat them, instead of trying harder to come up with a better system. Stocksy has proved that it is possible, only very difficult.
All right, for this post you may grab your pitchforks and chase me, but I am sure if I come back in 1 year, 2 years, and there will be exactly the same kind of useless rants, only the income level of most people will be much lower.
What this implies though is increased income for the chosen few at the expense of those excluded. It may work well for some but doesn't really address the supply issue. Seems to me its an outdated model ...will be interesting to see where Stocksy is in a year or two as well.
The only alternative are ever shrinking earnings for everyone. The ones that are "excluded" (as you say) on one site may join other sites. It was also pretty much like this when e.g. entrance tests at SS mattered. Only the entrance barriers should be higher now and the membership limited.
Thats all true maybe i'm a fatalist but I just don't think it will work....look around at every digitally based industry. Ultimately its buyers who determine what quality is. Sometimes I think people forget no one can force them to buy anything.
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LDV81, please explain why people suddenly see a massive drop one day to the next, as happened in this july for a lot of people ?
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LDV81, please explain why people suddenly see a massive drop one day to the next, as happened in this july for a lot of people ?
I would have thought the only answer is a change in search algorithm.
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This july is heading for the worst july for me since I started uploading to SS in 2010.
Subs look normal in numbers,- it's the OD's and SOD's that are missing.
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yes pauws but ldv says its just basic economics, supply and demand
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yes pauws but ldv says its just basic economics, supply and demand
I don't know why people can't accept that it's obviously a change in the search. The same has happened with other sites when they changed their search. The only other logical explanation I can think of is that they have had a technical error recording sales and they would probably of told us about that by now.
Some people don't get hit by a change in the search and some do better but a lot of us see a massive fall in sales and if this is like the way Fotolia did it, we are unlikely to see our earnings ever recover. It hurts much more than the slow decline from over supply that had been happening for years and is possible to cope with.
If SS are now penalising contributors that have reached the higher tiers, it should be bad news for everyone, as eventually, others will reach the higher tiers and they will suffer the same fate.
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yes pauws but ldv says its just basic economics, supply and demand
Yes so if someone else can provide an image that equally meets the needs of the buyer then its only the rolling dice (weighted or otherwise) that means that some images sell over others.
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sorry but who buys images at night?
for your information when it's night in your part of the sewer
there is day and someone else is waking up to do his / her thing in the loo
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sorry but who buys images at night?
European nights are business hours in America, South-America etc. and of course vice-versa.
yes, i already told msp that, but in their mindspeak
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Basic economic fact is: there is too many suppliers and the share of the cake is getting smaller and smaller for each supplier.
Continuing to sell rope to agencies with which they will hang you?
I cannot understand the "pros" who continue to pump their content into the system that will eat them
exactly the same kind of useless rants
What this implies though is increased income for the chosen few at the expense of those excluded. It may work well for some but doesn't really address the supply issue.
all very good points...
except there is no such thing as a useless rant..
a rant helps to vent the frustrations...
since they can't all raid ss H.O. with pitch forks and rope to hang them ... or hemp... to offer the "ganja gods of ss " and appease them, depending on which method of persuasion you prefer)
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LDV81, please explain why people suddenly see a massive drop one day to the next, as happened in this july for a lot of people ?
The agency may change the search algorithm whenever they want. I noticed that after a very good day at SS I am now usually punished with pathetic sales on the next day. It feels like they switch off parts of my port in certain markets. Some of the other sites also seem to have a kind of "rotation".
And that's the whole point I am trying to make. They have no obligations towards contributors only towards shareholders. THERE'S TOO MANY SUPPLIERS, so they can afford to lose some. For crying out loud, you can't change that. That's the way it is. What do you want do? A hunger strike? No point complaining, got to adapt and find alternatives.
That is why successful and smart co-ops with limited memberships and exclusive images are the only way for full-time contributors to survive in the stock business in the long run.
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LDV81, please explain why people suddenly see a massive drop one day to the next, as happened in this july for a lot of people ?
The agency may change the search algorithm whenever they want. I noticed that after a very good day at SS I am now usually punished with pathetic sales on the next day. It feels like they switch off parts of my port in certain markets. Some of the other sites also seem to have a kind of "rotation".
And that's the whole point I am trying to make. They have no obligations towards contributors only towards shareholders. For crying out loud, you can't change that. That's the way it is. What do you want do? A hunger strike? No point complaining, got to adapt and find alternatives.
That is why successful and smart co-ops with limited memberships and exclusive images are the only way for full-time contributors to survive in the stock business in the long run.
red - statements your points
i) glad you agree there is some kind of manipulation unlike some handful who insist
it's not happening
ii) why would ss encourage the established contributors to exodus to stocksy,etc???
would they not be chopping off their own feet?
otoh, shareholders plan is short-term and really do not care if tomorrow , after they short their holdings , ss no longer exists, ... sort of a repeat of istock.
i try to see your point though. since we are not able to storm ss HO for not being
a native in that city, luckily for them most of us are not,
there is really nothing else we can do...
but vent !!!
ranting does send out a message to other potential shareholders
that all is not good at ss.
this will drop the share prices ,
so it is not useless rant as you say it is.
you can still hit them in the pocketbook by ranting here and ss forum
to show other shareholders it is not long-term that ss current look for.
iow, you go in now, and you will be left holding the bag
when the majority shareholders sell and take profit at your expense.
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LDV81, please explain why people suddenly see a massive drop one day to the next, as happened in this july for a lot of people ?
The agency may change the search algorithm whenever they want. I noticed that after a very good day at SS I am now usually punished with pathetic sales on the next day. It feels like they switch off parts of my port in certain markets. Some of the other sites also seem to have a kind of "rotation".
And that's the whole point I am trying to make. They have no obligations towards contributors only towards shareholders. For crying out loud, you can't change that. That's the way it is. What do you want do? A hunger strike? No point complaining, got to adapt and find alternatives.
That is why successful and smart co-ops with limited memberships and exclusive images are the only way for full-time contributors to survive in the stock business in the long run.
red - statements your points
i) glad you agree there is some kind of manipulation unlike some handful who insist
it's not happening
ii) why would ss encourage the established contributors to exodus to stocksy,etc???
would they not be chopping off their own feet?
otoh, shareholders plan is short-term and really do not care if tomorrow , after they short their holdings , ss no longer exists, ... sort of a repeat of istock.
i try to see your point though. since we are not able to storm ss HO for not being
a native in that city, luckily for them most of us are not,
there is really nothing else we can do...
but vent !!!
ranting does send out a message to other potential shareholders
that all is not good at ss.
this will drop the share prices ,
so it is not useless rant as you say it is.
you can still hit them in the pocketbook by ranting here and ss forum
to show other shareholders it is not long-term that ss current look for.
iow, you go in now, and you will be left holding the bag
when the majority shareholders sell and take profit at your expense.
Stocksy is limited to a few hundred photographers. There will be no exodus to them... unless they change the rules.
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LDV81, please explain why people suddenly see a massive drop one day to the next, as happened in this july for a lot of people ?
The agency may change the search algorithm whenever they want. I noticed that after a very good day at SS I am now usually punished with pathetic sales on the next day. It feels like they switch off parts of my port in certain markets. Some of the other sites also seem to have a kind of "rotation".
And that's the whole point I am trying to make. They have no obligations towards contributors only towards shareholders. THERE'S TOO MANY SUPPLIERS, so they can afford to lose some. For crying out loud, you can't change that. That's the way it is. What do you want do? A hunger strike? No point complaining, got to adapt and find alternatives.
That is why successful and smart co-ops with limited memberships and exclusive images are the only way for full-time contributors to survive in the stock business in the long run.
Correct! no obligations at all only all their 80 mil so called assets belong to us.
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so now it is the algorithm? boy you are confusing
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the most downloads come from europe and the states, at 5pm in the US theres basically no one working till 9am in europe.
your statements are emotional rather than factual
LMAO and yours are not???
who are you really?
that you see and hear all things between 5pm US and 9 am in EU???
some kind of one-eyed genie LMAO
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sorry but who buys images at night?
European nights are business hours in America, South-America etc. and of course vice-versa.
the most downloads come from europe and the states, at 5pm in the US theres basically no one working till 9am in europe.
your statements are emotional rather than factual
waaaa, for someone so myopic who has apparently not been able to see beyond the tip of your nose,
it's amazing how you can see so far beyond to know
such FACTS
at 5pm in the US theres basically no one working till 9am in europe.
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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so now it is the algorithm? boy you are confusing
yes, i am sure it must be ...
confusing ...
for someone who confuses ss buyers for mall-rats
who doesn't work between 5pm and 9 am
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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LDV81, please explain why people suddenly see a massive drop one day to the next, as happened in this july for a lot of people ?
The agency may change the search algorithm whenever they want. I noticed that after a very good day at SS I am now usually punished with pathetic sales on the next day. It feels like they switch off parts of my port in certain markets. Some of the other sites also seem to have a kind of "rotation".
And that's the whole point I am trying to make. They have no obligations towards contributors only towards shareholders. For crying out loud, you can't change that. That's the way it is. What do you want do? A hunger strike? No point complaining, got to adapt and find alternatives.
That is why successful and smart co-ops with limited memberships and exclusive images are the only way for full-time contributors to survive in the stock business in the long run.
red - statements your points
i) glad you agree there is some kind of manipulation unlike some handful who insist
it's not happening
ii) why would ss encourage the established contributors to exodus to stocksy,etc???
would they not be chopping off their own feet?
otoh, shareholders plan is short-term and really do not care if tomorrow , after they short their holdings , ss no longer exists, ... sort of a repeat of istock.
i try to see your point though. since we are not able to storm ss HO for not being
a native in that city, luckily for them most of us are not,
there is really nothing else we can do...
but vent !!!
ranting does send out a message to other potential shareholders
that all is not good at ss.
this will drop the share prices ,
so it is not useless rant as you say it is.
you can still hit them in the pocketbook by ranting here and ss forum
to show other shareholders it is not long-term that ss current look for.
iow, you go in now, and you will be left holding the bag
when the majority shareholders sell and take profit at your expense.
Stocksy is limited to a few hundred photographers. There will be no exodus to them... unless they change the rules.
Exactly. Stocksy also plays in a "parallel" market with different style, different price range, different concept.
But there is room for other co-ops serving SS's market. Even then SS would not care, at least at first. It is a BUYER'S MARKET, so suppliers must come up with a smart model, or they will go out of business. SS does what they think is good for their bottom line "at the moment", and it is their right and it will not change anytime soon.
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but vent !!!
ranting does send out a message to other potential shareholders
that all is not good at ss.
this will drop the share prices ,
so it is not useless rant as you say it is.[/color]
you can still hit them in the pocketbook by ranting here and ss forum
to show other shareholders it is not long-term that ss current look for.
iow, you go in now, and you will be left holding the bag
when the majority shareholders sell and take profit at your expense.
Rants on MSG or SS Forum are interesting only to other contributors. The impact of a 10 thousand page long thread would be negligible.
The world outside does not follow MSG or SS Contributors' Forum.
And rant against what??
- that the search algorithm changed or changes, or the changes might possibly be not in your favor?
- that there are too many contributors at the top agency?
These two things won't change, so you have to adapt and learn to live with them. In other words, think how to survive lightning strikes, invest in a lightning rod and don't try to eliminate thunderstorms or rant against them.
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Rants on MSG or SS Forum are interesting only to other contributors. The impact of a 10 thousand page long thread would be negligible.
The world outside does not follow MSG or SS Contributors' Forum.
And rant against what??
- that the search algorithm changed or changes, and the changes are not in your favor?
- that there are too many contributors?
These two things won't change, so you have to adapt and learn to live with them.
things may not change,
but do not unestimate the power of the rant
bill gates once said to his employees,
when one person is happy with our product, he tells one person;
when one person is unhappy with our product, he tells a hundred (or whatever the number).
to say adapt and accept it, is to work to the gull of the culprit.
you may be willing to adapt, but others here like rinderhart,etc
prefer to let it be heard.
that too is not going to change..
nothing in a forum is negligible
if you can say one page says more than 1000 pages,
fine with you..
but others beg to differ.
a long time ago in Holland , as it used to be called, someone said the same thing
about a tiny hole in the dyke.. "negligible"
and it ended up drowning alot of people.
The world outside does not follow MSG or SS Contributors' Forum.
...is just what you perceive ...
others disgree with you ,
like you disagree with them.
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These two things won't change, so you have to adapt and learn to live with them. In other words, think how to survive lightning strikes, invest in a lightning rod and don't try to eliminate thunderstorms or rant against them.
very wise words,
but way before Franklin went out to fly a kite in a thunderstorm,
many people got together and caused a great wall to crumble with their "rant" in unison. ;)
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let's make one thing clear,
i am not here to cause a great divide between the rinderhart, mantis, ...
and the micro,LDV,...
and the pauw,etc..
we are all in the same boat.
if an agency $cr*ws rinderhart, mantis,etc...
they will eventually $cr*w the micro, LDV, pauws, too...
in spite of the division, to the amusement of the shareholders.
if i were the manipulative major shareholders who is out to make a killing soon to short my stocks
of ss and see them go the way of istock,
i would at the meeting point out boldly IN RED
since when have the contributors been united enough to cause a revolt?
they always end up adapting to our whims,
and to eat $h*t we crap on them...
there will always be a majority who will say nothing and kiss our rear ends
sure, we can keep adapt and learn to set up a lighting rod instead of ranting
but be careful, if you f*rt around too much with your lightning rod
to adapt every time to the whims of the shareholders,
you might end up causing the lighting to do a curve-ball
and end up
striking you in your rear end.
then, instead of having a brown-nose,
you will end up with an @r$eh*le
the size of a crater.
and no major shareholder is going to come visit you at the gyno clinic
nor subsidize you for your faithfulness like a lapdog.
(meanwhile, just make sure to keep a good supply of lubricant)
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the most downloads come from europe and the states, at 5pm in the US theres basically no one working till 9am in europe.
your statements are emotional rather than factual
I wondered if anyone else would pick up on this ridiculous statement. Talk about non factual. Perhaps your port only sells at the times you note, but others are much more diversified.
Assuming you mean 5pm at SS HQ, that's 2PM on the west coast, middle of the working day. It's also the start of the day in Australia and other Pacific nations and people in eastern Asia are just waking up, preparing to start their days. I have sales from all over the globe, including the above mentioned Pacific nations, as well as much of Asia and the Indian sub-continent. I assume much of these come before 9am in Europe. Which brings up the question what do you mean by "Europe?" There are three to four different time zones across the European continent, so which do you mean? By the time it's 9am in London, people in other parts of Europe have already been at work for some time.
You are probably correct for most of us stating that the majority of sales come from the US and Europe. However, for myself at least, I'd estimate the between 10 and 20 percent of my sales come from other areas of the world. So while you are snuggled tightly in bed, dreaming of all the EL's and SOD's to come, the rest of the world's several billion people are hard at work, including, for some of them at least, buying images from SS and other agencies.
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you are contradicting yourself and then actually confirm what i said,
have you ever seen this infograph? http://www.shutterstock.com/blog/contributor-earnings-report (http://www.shutterstock.com/blog/contributor-earnings-report) or read an annual report http://investor.shutterstock.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=251362&p=proxy (http://investor.shutterstock.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=251362&p=proxy)
it is not weird to think that during the european night there is not as much activity on a portfolio predominantly containing western images
maybe your portfolio is selling as much during your evening and early night, as it does during the day, mine isnt, which is not weird
NA and EU together have 73% of ss sales, ROW has 27%
lets say 5pm in LA, is 3am in romania, so for 6 hours there is no one working in the us and eu, which is what i said in not so many words
so no, my statement is not ridiculous and based on facts, i never said there are no downloads during the night,
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What an annoying topic.
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the most downloads come from europe and the states, at 5pm in the US theres basically no one working till 9am in europe.
your statements are emotional rather than factual
I wondered if anyone else would pick up on this ridiculous statement. Talk about non factual. Perhaps your port only sells at the times you note, but others are much more diversified.
Assuming you mean 5pm at SS HQ, that's 2PM on the west coast, middle of the working day. It's also the start of the day in Australia and other Pacific nations and people in eastern Asia are just waking up, preparing to start their days. I have sales from all over the globe, including the above mentioned Pacific nations, as well as much of Asia and the Indian sub-continent. I assume much of these come before 9am in Europe. Which brings up the question what do you mean by "Europe?" There are three to four different time zones across the European continent, so which do you mean? By the time it's 9am in London, people in other parts of Europe have already been at work for some time.
You are probably correct for most of us stating that the majority of sales come from the US and Europe. However, for myself at least, I'd estimate the between 10 and 20 percent of my sales come from other areas of the world. So while you are snuggled tightly in bed, dreaming of all the EL's and SOD's to come, the rest of the world's several billion people are hard at work, including, for some of them at least, buying images from SS and other agencies.
+10
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LDV81, please explain why people suddenly see a massive drop one day to the next, as happened in this july for a lot of people ?
The agency may change the search algorithm whenever they want. I noticed that after a very good day at SS I am now usually punished with pathetic sales on the next day. It feels like they switch off parts of my port in certain markets. Some of the other sites also seem to have a kind of "rotation".
And that's the whole point I am trying to make. They have no obligations towards contributors only towards shareholders. THERE'S TOO MANY SUPPLIERS, so they can afford to lose some. For crying out loud, you can't change that. That's the way it is. What do you want do? A hunger strike? No point complaining, got to adapt and find alternatives.
That is why successful and smart co-ops with limited memberships and exclusive images are the only way for full-time contributors to survive in the stock business in the long run.
Correct! no obligations at all only all their 80 mil so called assets belong to us.
+10
i am not as astute as you are,
but you summed it all up so much better than i can in one sentence.
well said.
naturally, to a handful here, this single sentence is going to go pass their brain so fast,
they still won't get what either of us and rinderhart are trying to say.
dogs will believe anything ... and tweedle dee and tweedle dum will always contradict
everyone else.
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etudiante_rapide, i think you should relax...
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etudiante_rapide, i think you should relax...
LOL, thx...
must be all that marijuana i sniffed at the national day parade .
strong stuff !!!
have a good weekend ;)
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😎
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istock was changed their prices too low a couple years ago by the subscription plan, do you think why you need it? sure due to other low priced microstock agencies... now I want to ask you guys, why you upload your pictures and allow to sell your images so low prices other agencies before, when istock has pay you much more royalties? now istock is one of them, too... low prices, low commission pays, this is the cause of your symptoms. I know here is SS forums... These are linked to each other ... These are my thoughts...
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...This july has be a disaster. Less than My commissions from 10 Years ago...
...heads up, here come your new forum posters. they will be here real soon. I won't, I'll be out making Money, these fools have no idea about that part because we know how...
Rinder I've gotta ask the obvious question... Why bother? Why even post the rant if things are so bad and you know how to really make money elsewhere?
I'd have just moved on to something else if I knew a better way.
No offense meant, just really wondering. Usually when people go on a rant here (myself included) it's because we believe things can still get better. It doesn't sound like you believe that anymore.
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he does that for other contributors, so things get better for them, hence hes insulting them in the process, he also doesnt need the money, stock is only 20% of his income, thats why hes submitting to DP for 3% royalty, hes said he'll leave SS after hes hit 50000 posts on the forum, he loves helping newbies, which he thinks are fools, it all makes sense. ... :o
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The SS number continues to rise on the right side. Why would it rise if people aren't reporting high earnings?
The vocal minority doesn't represent everyone. Some people are doing very well and some are not. Just the nature of competition.
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etudiante_rapide, i think you should relax...
LOL, thx...
must be all that marijuana i sniffed at the national day parade .
strong stuff !!!
have a good weekend ;)
I thought marijuana was supposed to mellow people out... :o
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Well, I just found out why my sales were down slightly for the month of July.
Found an infringer with over 100 pieces of my work on SS. It was some of his best sellers too. This guy literally took my work, changed some colors and re-uploaded them. Just unbelievable. Who'd thought that one of my competitors would be... myself.
If your sales are down, I suggest you do a search for your best sellers with the exact same title. These guys are too lazy to do their own titles and keywords. They copy everything word for word because they can't do it themselves.
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Well, I just found out why my sales were down slightly for the month of July.
Found an infringer with over 100 pieces of my work on SS. It was some of his best sellers too. This guy literally took my work, changed some colors and re-uploaded them. Just unbelievable. Who'd thought that one of my competitors would be... myself.
If your sales are down, I suggest you do a search for your best sellers with the exact same title. These guys are too lazy to do their own titles and keywords. They copy everything word for word because they can't do it themselves.
We need to be paid the money these people make. If SS just kick them off and pocket the money, what incentive do they have to stop this happening? It should be easy for SS to spot this, if they are using almost identical images with the same titles as the originals. Have you asked how much money this person made and when SS are going to pay you? Maybe they inform every buyer that they are using stolen images and need to buy the correct one but we are never told if that happens.
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Well, I just found out why my sales were down slightly for the month of July.
Found an infringer with over 100 pieces of my work on SS. It was some of his best sellers too. This guy literally took my work, changed some colors and re-uploaded them. Just unbelievable. Who'd thought that one of my competitors would be... myself.
If your sales are down, I suggest you do a search for your best sellers with the exact same title. These guys are too lazy to do their own titles and keywords. They copy everything word for word because they can't do it themselves.
Tell me how this works. Are we assuming that the guy actually bought all 100 images from SS, at full size? Any idea what that would cost? The other possibility is that it's done by, or with the help of, an insider. And given the screwy portfolios now turning up - like the one with thousands of bags of pot - I don't find that hard to believe.
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Look, the microstock world is pretty much crap. We all know it and I know you just have to get on here and let of f some steam. I get that. The reason we all keep doing it is because it is so dang easy to do. It's the passive income that we are really after.
Here is what is sad for me and probably many of you:
I go out (as a wildlife photographer) and shoot for days. I get up at 4am, lay in the mud, crawl through fishy bird poop, ticks clinging to me, and get sun burns, but I can't see myself doing anything else as a photographer. I love it.
After doing all that, I post a great shot and get at most a two dollar commission. When I am really lucky I get an extended sale. That my friends just ain't right so they say, but it is what the market will hold right now. Yeah there is always full blown editorial writing/photography, but that sure isn't passive and takes a ton of marketing and smooth talking. Most of us don't have the time and salesmanship to pull that off.
I guess what it all boils down to is we keeping hoping against all hope this thing will suddenly take off, but that isn't what is going to happen. We either keep posting images and are happy with that or we leave. For now, I am hanging in there because it's better than nothing. Sad, but true.
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when i upload a similar image to ss they reject it they tell me because i already have that image in my portfolio.
ss also uses propriety software to review images
why dont they use that software then to scan their database (instead of my portfolio only) for similar images and when a flag goes up, they can review what is the matter
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Found an infringer with over 100 pieces of my work on SS. It was some of his best sellers too. This guy literally took my work, changed some colors and re-uploaded them. Just unbelievable. Who'd thought that one of my competitors would be... myself.
r u serious??? so what happened to that slime? did ss remove the thief?Well, I just found out why my sales were down slightly for the month of July.
Found an infringer with over 100 pieces of my work on SS. It was some of his best sellers too. This guy literally took my work, changed some colors and re-uploaded them. Just unbelievable. Who'd thought that one of my competitors would be... myself.
If your sales are down, I suggest you do a search for your best sellers with the exact same title. These guys are too lazy to do their own titles and keywords. They copy everything word for word because they can't do it themselves.
Tell me how this works. Are we assuming that the guy actually bought all 100 images from SS, at full size? Any idea what that would cost? The other possibility is that it's done by, or with the help of, an insider. And given the screwy portfolios now turning up - like the one with thousands of bags of pot - I don't find that hard to believe.
good point. i doubt the thief actually bought the full size and copied it.
what's the benefit , without certainty of making money from it???
i would believe the other possibility ie. insider.
with all the dirty stuff happening these past years, i wouldn't be surprised most of the
unidentifiable cause of the losses of experienced contributors
has everything to do with "insider".
including fan boy coming in here to call everything that says loss of 50% as mere ranting.
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Look, the microstock world is pretty much crap. We all know it and I know you just have to get on here and let of f some steam. I get that. The reason we all keep doing it is because it is so dang easy to do. It's the passive income that we are really after.
Here is what is sad for me and probably many of you:
I go out (as a wildlife photographer) and shoot for days. I get up at 4am, lay in the mud, crawl through fishy bird poop, ticks clinging to me, and get sun burns, but I can't see myself doing anything else as a photographer. I love it.
After doing all that, I post a great shot and get at most a two dollar commission. When I am really lucky I get an extended sale. That my friends just ain't right so they say, but it is what the market will hold right now. Yeah there is always full blown editorial writing/photography, but that sure isn't passive and takes a ton of marketing and smooth talking. Most of us don't have the time and salesmanship to pull that off.
I guess what it all boils down to is we keeping hoping against all hope this thing will suddenly take off, but that isn't what is going to happen. We either keep posting images and are happy with that or we leave. For now, I am hanging in there because it's better than nothing. Sad, but true.
LOL, thx 4 helping us see the lighter side of this madness.
u r right, though!!!
only last month, at a sporting event i met several credential photographers and after that at the pub we talked about each others career and non-careers, good project, eff-up projects,etc..
i mentioned micro stock as an eff-up. but one of them said, how is it an eff-up? you only shoot and upload , and if there is long time passing, the money still comes in.
even if it's not as much as you used to make, it's still money coming in from doing nothing .
see you it like that too.
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Found an infringer with over 100 pieces of my work on SS. It was some of his best sellers too. This guy literally took my work, changed some colors and re-uploaded them. Just unbelievable. Who'd thought that one of my competitors would be... myself.
r u serious??? so what happened to that slime? did ss remove the thief?Well, I just found out why my sales were down slightly for the month of July.
Found an infringer with over 100 pieces of my work on SS. It was some of his best sellers too. This guy literally took my work, changed some colors and re-uploaded them. Just unbelievable. Who'd thought that one of my competitors would be... myself.
If your sales are down, I suggest you do a search for your best sellers with the exact same title. These guys are too lazy to do their own titles and keywords. They copy everything word for word because they can't do it themselves.
Tell me how this works. Are we assuming that the guy actually bought all 100 images from SS, at full size? Any idea what that would cost? The other possibility is that it's done by, or with the help of, an insider. And given the screwy portfolios now turning up - like the one with thousands of bags of pot - I don't find that hard to believe.
good point. i doubt the thief actually bought the full size and copied it.
what's the benefit , without certainty of making money from it???
i would believe the other possibility ie. insider.
with all the dirty stuff happening these past years, i wouldn't be surprised most of the
unidentifiable cause of the losses of experienced contributors
has everything to do with "insider".
including fan boy coming in here to call everything that says loss of 50% as mere ranting.
It's likely that he bought a 1 month subscription and downloaded as much as possible everyday. If he downloaded 25 images everyday, that's 750 images a month.
I'm just waiting right now. It may take some time to resolve it.
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It's likely that he bought a 1 month subscription and downloaded as much as possible everyday. If he downloaded 25 images everyday, that's 750 images a month.
mm, thx! still, the thief must expect some kind of returns for paying for the sub.
or else, what would be the incentive to steal your work???
methinks you have a competitor (conflict of interest insider) in there that does not want you to succeed ;)
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when i upload a similar image to ss they reject it they tell me because i already have that image in my portfolio.
ss also uses propriety software to review images
why dont they use that software then to scan their database (instead of my portfolio only) for similar images and when a flag goes up, they can review what is the matter
When I walk in Central Park I'm guaranteed to see at least a half dozen photographers taking the same shots from the same vantage points of the same iconic landmarks. With so many millions of images there's just bound to be lots of overlap.
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when i upload a similar image to ss they reject it they tell me because i already have that image in my portfolio.
ss also uses propriety software to review images
why dont they use that software then to scan their database (instead of my portfolio only) for similar images and when a flag goes up, they can review what is the matter
When I walk in Central Park I'm guaranteed to see at least a half dozen photographers taking the same shots from the same vantage points of the same iconic landmarks. With so many millions of images there's just bound to be lots of overlap.
True, but they can also scan the title and keywords. An image that looks like another is a coincidence. A similar image with the exact same title is a miracle. A similar image with the same title and keywords...that's an impossibility.
Thieves are too lazy to create their own work and they're too lazy to create their own metadata. If SS does it right, they can easily identify who is legit and who is not.
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Well, I just found out why my sales were down slightly for the month of July.
Found an infringer with over 100 pieces of my work on SS. It was some of his best sellers too. This guy literally took my work, changed some colors and re-uploaded them. Just unbelievable. Who'd thought that one of my competitors would be... myself.
If your sales are down, I suggest you do a search for your best sellers with the exact same title. These guys are too lazy to do their own titles and keywords. They copy everything word for word because they can't do it themselves.
We need to be paid the money these people make. If SS just kick them off and pocket the money, what incentive do they have to stop this happening? It should be easy for SS to spot this, if they are using almost identical images with the same titles as the originals. Have you asked how much money this person made and when SS are going to pay you? Maybe they inform every buyer that they are using stolen images and need to buy the correct one but we are never told if that happens.
SS can keep the money and use it to fund and develop some kind of system to identify infringements quickly. All I ask for is for them to keep legit contributors safe from thieves. I found 3 people stealing my work this year and it's getting tiresome. At first, I kinda feel bad for the 1st person I reported, but now I have no sympathy.
I was able to find all 3 of them just by searching for my images. They copy my titles and keywords word for word. Some of the images show up near my search results which made it ridiculous easy to spot.
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yes Metadata is part of the search when looking for similar images, CanStockPhoto and dreamstime use it as well
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Well, I just found out why my sales were down slightly for the month of July.
Found an infringer with over 100 pieces of my work on SS. It was some of his best sellers too. This guy literally took my work, changed some colors and re-uploaded them. Just unbelievable. Who'd thought that one of my competitors would be... myself.
If your sales are down, I suggest you do a search for your best sellers with the exact same title. These guys are too lazy to do their own titles and keywords. They copy everything word for word because they can't do it themselves.
We need to be paid the money these people make. If SS just kick them off and pocket the money, what incentive do they have to stop this happening? It should be easy for SS to spot this, if they are using almost identical images with the same titles as the originals. Have you asked how much money this person made and when SS are going to pay you? Maybe they inform every buyer that they are using stolen images and need to buy the correct one but we are never told if that happens.
SS can keep the money and use it to fund and develop some kind of system to identify infringements quickly. All I ask for is for them to keep legit contributors safe from thieves. I found 3 people stealing my work this year and it's getting tiresome. At first, I kinda feel bad for the 1st person I reported, but now I have no sympathy.
I was able to find all 3 of them just by searching for my images. They copy my titles and keywords word for word. Some of the images show up near my search results which made it ridiculous easy to spot.
Make sure you check all the sites for the same images, do a reverse image search. Usually the infringer will have uploaded the same rip offs to all the major micros.
You will also probably find the same images on various warez sites, that's often where they will have gotten the originals from. These sites often respond well to an email threatening to tell your agent (insert name of site usually SS) where they make their ad and affiliate earnings
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It's likely that he bought a 1 month subscription and downloaded as much as possible everyday. If he downloaded 25 images everyday, that's 750 images a month.
I'm just waiting right now. It may take some time to resolve it.
At least, now you know, where your sales are coming from....
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Make sure you check all the sites for the same images, do a reverse image search. Usually the infringer will have uploaded the same rip offs to all the major micros.
You will also probably find the same images on various warez sites, that's often where they will have gotten the originals from. These sites often respond well to an email threatening to tell your agent (insert name of site usually SS) where they make their ad and affiliate earnings
Thanks. Did a search on a number of sites and luckily nothing turned up. It's hard to find on FT because they don't search titles, but nothing has turned up so far.
SS is the only place I've seen them show up. Haven't tried warez sites yet, but I'm sure it's out there somewhere.
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It's likely that he bought a 1 month subscription and downloaded as much as possible everyday. If he downloaded 25 images everyday, that's 750 images a month.
I'm just waiting right now. It may take some time to resolve it.
At least, now you know, where your sales are coming from....
A download is a download, right? And every download help the images move up in the search results.
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It's likely that he bought a 1 month subscription and downloaded as much as possible everyday. If he downloaded 25 images everyday, that's 750 images a month.
I'm just waiting right now. It may take some time to resolve it.
At least, now you know, where your sales are coming from....
A download is a download, right? And every download help the images move up in the search results.
minsc - you kidding aren`t you?