MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Dreamstime.com => Topic started by: Rinderart on October 06, 2015, 14:54
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WOW, Thats a first..
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WOW, Thats a first..
Yup - was just looking at my earnings history there. Scary picture - I am right now at 30% of what I used to earn there... while growing my portfolio. I think I will hold off uploads until I see an upswing of that curve. Right now it's just not worth the time.
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I agree fellow Old Timer.DT at one time was a major Player for me. with half the Images I have.The boys got fairly wealthy on us. Maybe they just don't wanna play anymore?
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DT year to year comparison --
2009 +71% vs 2008
2010 +13% vs 2009
2011 +29% vs 2010
2012 +12% vs 2011
2013 +7% vs 2012
2014 +6% vs 2013
2015 -9% vs 2014 (thru Sept)
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Actually 2 of the top 4 are really middle tier - DT have dropped to 5 because pond seems to have moved higher than I remember
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I agree fellow Old Timer.DT at one time was a major Player for me. with half the Images I have.The boys got fairly wealthy on us. Maybe they just don't wanna play anymore?
Not sure. Could be they are losing market share or could be their search results manipulation - didn't they say they "rotate" contributors, so everyone's getting an equal "opportunity" in search results... which could result in everyone's getting equally sad returns...
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I agree fellow Old Timer.DT at one time was a major Player for me. with half the Images I have.The boys got fairly wealthy on us. Maybe they just don't wanna play anymore?
Not sure. Could be they are losing market share or could be their search results manipulation - didn't they say they "rotate" contributors, so everyone's getting an equal "opportunity" in search results... which could result in everyone's getting equally sad returns...
My income was cut literally in half in July. I emailed them last week and they told me they made a "permanent search adjustment to make it fairer for all contributors". So their message to me was that its the new norm, get used to it.
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Perhaps buyers want more choice. Perhaps buyers want the simulars they have been rejecting.
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Dreamstime rejects way too many images. They think everybody wants complex vectors, but that's far from the truth. Buyers want everything, from simple to complex to practical. They lost a huge part of the market to other sites because they refuse to support it.
Admittedly, I've had the best month so far, but they're still way behind Fotolia and the top dogs.
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On the other hand they also seem to accept quite a lot of poor quality stuff. Looking through the latest uploads I see lots of pictures that are dull, poor lighting, poor composition, LCV. Even looking at some searches by 'relevance' shows work of questionable quality.
I like Dreamstime because they are honest and trustworthy. However, the management haven't got the entrepreneur spirit that Istock, Shutterstock and Fotolia had, and Dreamstime simply failed to make the same growth as the others during those years when the market was hot. Now they appear to be copying the others by going for massive portfolio growth. But without customer growth all that will happen is massive dilution of every portfolio and incomes will decline for everyone.
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Everyone's mileage will vary.
My DT numbers tell a different story. They're solidly my #3 and have been for several years. Trend line is healthy.
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Seems your in the minority. as they have dropped and not even top 4 anymore. Enjoy it my friend.
A few years ago 500/600 a month was easy. 2000 more images and Lucky If 1/3 that. All I know.This entire business from the start for me has been about cost effectiveness as per time spent.that has switched for me to FT.
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Never been top 4 for me number 5 and slowly declining with the odd flicker of hope from time to time. Think with fotolia upping its game they may become one of the first casualties.
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I am not surprised. They have been on autopilot far too long.
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They seems to be back at top tier, but for how long....?
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They seems to be back at top tier, but for how long....?
The poll here is totally irrelevant and I must say, it's very misleading, especially for new contributors. With just a few votes, everybody interested can push the results up.
In the last two month (for me) Dt should be in low earners category, almost as ineffective as CT.
In the past, even without sales, I could see many views on new uploads, while in the last two month view are as sparse as at CT. That clearly means no exposure.
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They seems to be back at top tier, but for how long....?
The poll here is totally irrelevant and I must say, it's very misleading, especially for new contributors. With just a few votes, everybody interested can push the results up.
In the last two month (for me) Dt should be in low earners category, almost as ineffective as CT.
In the past, even without sales, I could see many views on new uploads, while in the last two month view are as sparse as at CT. That clearly means no exposure.
It may be but no more misleading than any individual's experience. For me its roughly correct. If any one knows any better source I would love to know.
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They seems to be back at top tier, but for how long....?
The poll here is totally irrelevant and I must say, it's very misleading, especially for new contributors. With just a few votes, everybody interested can push the results up.
In the last two month (for me) Dt should be in low earners category, almost as ineffective as CT.
In the past, even without sales, I could see many views on new uploads, while in the last two month view are as sparse as at CT. That clearly means no exposure.
It may be but no more misleading than any individual's experience. For me its roughly correct. If any one knows any better source I would love to know.
Aren't votes "any individual's experience" as well?
I was talking about DT being in top-tier (and I quoted), not the rest of the agencies.
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They seems to be back at top tier, but for how long....?
The poll here is totally irrelevant and I must say, it's very misleading, especially for new contributors. With just a few votes, everybody interested can push the results up.
In the last two month (for me) Dt should be in low earners category, almost as ineffective as CT.
In the past, even without sales, I could see many views on new uploads, while in the last two month view are as sparse as at CT. That clearly means no exposure.
It may be but no more misleading than any individual's experience. For me its roughly correct. If any one knows any better source I would love to know.
Yeah, percentage of income is roughly correct for me as well. And it's not just few votes, there need to be at least 50 votes.
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I agree fellow Old Timer.DT at one time was a major Player for me. with half the Images I have.The boys got fairly wealthy on us. Maybe they just don't wanna play anymore?
Not sure. Could be they are losing market share or could be their search results manipulation - didn't they say they "rotate" contributors, so everyone's getting an equal "opportunity" in search results... which could result in everyone's getting equally sad returns...
My income was cut literally in half in July. I emailed them last week and they told me they made a "permanent search adjustment to make it fairer for all contributors". So their message to me was that its the new norm, get used to it.
Great, now we have socialism even in private companies. No wonder DT is fading away.
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A slight decline for me over the years, but still stays solid in 2nd place behind SS.
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At least in the past the DT search has been too influenced by the contributor so that if you had a heap of pictures in the same search they would all come in a row. This makes similars annoying so instead of fixing the search they didn't accept what they thought were similars. I am guessing the search became too much of a positive feedback system with new images never seeing the light of day, so rather than fix that, they started rotating portfolios. While these fixes sort of hide the problem, they don't really fix it and in the long run are detrimental.
DT has had some really poor months for me, but they usually are in the top 2 to 4.
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A slight decline for me over the years, but still stays solid in 2nd place behind SS.
This has been my situation too for a long time.
But Adobe/FT is rising fast for me right now, despite being new there and still on the bottom tier. (And that's going to change very soon.) I'm pleased with what Adobe's doing with FT.
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I agree fellow Old Timer.DT at one time was a major Player for me. with half the Images I have.The boys got fairly wealthy on us. Maybe they just don't wanna play anymore?
Not sure. Could be they are losing market share or could be their search results manipulation - didn't they say they "rotate" contributors, so everyone's getting an equal "opportunity" in search results... which could result in everyone's getting equally sad returns...
My income was cut literally in half in July. I emailed them last week and they told me they made a "permanent search adjustment to make it fairer for all contributors". So their message to me was that its the new norm, get used to it.
Gee, and here I thought FAIR was everyone having a chance to earn their way up on merits. Now I learn at DT they redefine fair to cut the legs out of high performing files and contributors. Fair is suppose to be reward in line with effort. Not at DT anymore. This sounds more like communism then fairness, In agreement with my definition of fair, I guess DT don't get any more of my files.
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DT are doing fine for me. Slow increase in sales over the months/ years. If there's a general trend I would say that it's less sales on the smaller sites and more on the big ones. Of these DT is the only one offering a decent rpd. The main problem is the decline in IS income/ appalling compensation for contributors.
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DT are doing fine for me. Slow increase in sales over the months/ years. If there's a general trend I would say that it's less sales on the smaller sites and more on the big ones. Of these DT is the only one offering a decent rpd. The main problem is the decline in IS income/ appalling compensation for contributors.
Would you mind telling how many images you have in your portfolio on DT and how many sales you've had over the years? Just to see a clearer picture of what's going on there. I have, as of this moment, 13,324 files on DT (all shot and processed by me) and 97,455 total sales. And my earnings were cut to 30% of my previous earnings there - I guess, as a "reward" for all my hard work...
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They seems to be back at top tier, but for how long....?
Not for a long time if they cannot fix their payment security. Refunds become more often than at FT
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"Aren't votes "any individual's experience" as well?"
Except they are averaged as a total so as to smooth out the extremes.
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Another old timer perspective. I've been with DT for 10 years, the high points for me were the years 2007 to 2009, after that a gentle slope downwards, where today income is about 30% to 50% of the peak period with steady portfolio increase.
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DT are doing fine for me. Slow increase in sales over the months/ years. If there's a general trend I would say that it's less sales on the smaller sites and more on the big ones. Of these DT is the only one offering a decent rpd. The main problem is the decline in IS income/ appalling compensation for contributors.
Would you mind telling how many images you have in your portfolio on DT and how many sales you've had over the years? Just to see a clearer picture of what's going on there. I have, as of this moment, 13,324 files on DT (all shot and processed by me) and 97,455 total sales. And my earnings were cut to 30% of my previous earnings there - I guess, as a "reward" for all my hard work...
No problem, I am at about 7000 files. Total sales around 40,000. My income on DT now is just into 4 figures on the good months, just below on the bad.
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DT still top 4, it settles when the months get older, people havent all submitted their earnings yet
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Everyone's mileage will vary.
My DT numbers tell a different story. They're solidly my #3 and have been for several years. Trend line is healthy.
Statistics put in perspective:
They are solidly my #3 Microstock agency as well. However, I only contribute to 4 in total and #1 and #2 bring in about 95% of the bacon each month.
In all honesty, my income there has been stagnant for the past 3 years or so - on a rather low level.
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Would you mind telling how many images you have in your portfolio on DT and how many sales you've had over the years? Just to see a clearer picture of what's going on there. I have, as of this moment, 13,324 files on DT (all shot and processed by me) and 97,455 total sales. And my earnings were cut to 30% of my previous earnings there - I guess, as a "reward" for all my hard work...
I meant to ask, have you been able to maintain your database exposure? I have just about so far. Maybe if that is in line with your drop it could just be that the database is growing faster than your portfolio.
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My quarterly revenue from DT. Growing or falling?
Last year or so definitely downhill. Maybe, just another cycle ...
Uploaded files 7000+, total sales 24000+
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Would you mind telling how many images you have in your portfolio on DT and how many sales you've had over the years? Just to see a clearer picture of what's going on there. I have, as of this moment, 13,324 files on DT (all shot and processed by me) and 97,455 total sales. And my earnings were cut to 30% of my previous earnings there - I guess, as a "reward" for all my hard work...
I meant to ask, have you been able to maintain your database exposure? I have just about so far. Maybe if that is in line with your drop it could just be that the database is growing faster than your portfolio.
I was not following that number (database exposure) since I am not sure what that means. My current number is 0.04%. Someone who's currently a featured photographer on DT with about 2,800 files has a database exposure of 0.09% - so this can't be just number of files relative to the whole database. Do you know how this number is calculated? or is it just arbitrary set?
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I was not following that number (database exposure) since I am not sure what that means. My current number is 0.04%. Someone who's currently a featured photographer on DT with about 2,800 files has a database exposure of 0.09% - so this can't be just number of files relative to the whole database. Do you know how this number is calculated? or is it just arbitrary set?
Elena, your number is 0.4%, not 0.04%
:-)
database exposure = portfolio size / total number of files on DT ?
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I was not following that number (database exposure) since I am not sure what that means. My current number is 0.04%. Someone who's currently a featured photographer on DT with about 2,800 files has a database exposure of 0.09% - so this can't be just number of files relative to the whole database. Do you know how this number is calculated? or is it just arbitrary set?
Elena, your number is 0.4%, not 0.04%
:-)
database exposure = portfolio size / total number of files on DT ?
Ah, right:)
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I am not sure if the stat in the table works because it is different to the graph above on the DT stats page. Could you isolate the line for database exposure on the graph (untick all the other lines) and see if it has been going down with your earnings? I would be interested to know if it is to do with not being able to grow your portfolio as quickly as the library in percentage terms as it gets bigger.
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I am not sure if the stat in the table works because it is different to the graph above on the DT stats page. Could you isolate the line for database exposure on the graph (untick all the other lines) and see if it has been going down with your earnings? I would be interested to know if it is to do with not being able to grow your portfolio as quickly as the library in percentage terms as it gets bigger.
Thanks for explaining - I've done that, and looked closer at the data. Although it's true, by database exposure number have been gradually declining since 2012 (no surprises here since all photo libraries started to grow more rapidly around that time), it does not correlate at all with the sudden and very significant drop in earnings in the second half of 2015. My DB exposure number right now is pretty constant and fluctuating around 2-1.8% since beginning of 2015. So there's definitely been a change in serving search results and, sadly, I somehow ended up on the bottom:(
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I am not sure if the stat in the table works because it is different to the graph above on the DT stats page. Could you isolate the line for database exposure on the graph (untick all the other lines) and see if it has been going down with your earnings? I would be interested to know if it is to do with not being able to grow your portfolio as quickly as the library in percentage terms as it gets bigger.
Thanks for explaining - I've done that, and looked closer at the data. Although it's true, by database exposure number have been gradually declining since 2012 (no surprises here since all photo libraries started to grow more rapidly around that time), it does not correlate at all with the sudden and very significant drop in earnings in the second half of 2015. My DB exposure number right now is pretty constant and fluctuating around 2-1.8% since beginning of 2015. So there's definitely been a change in serving search results and, sadly, I somehow ended up on the bottom:(
I have experienced the same drop as you Elena. I have 6k+ images there and tho sales showed a slow decline the past few years, they nearly stopped since this summer. I use to get 40 or more sales a day and now I get around 6-8. Sometimes less! And this does not match my database exposure at all either.
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For me, Dreamstime is best now a days. Previously I was very happy with FT but DT took over in last few days.