Quote from: increasingdifficulty on August 03, 2018, 10:32

I can guarantee that 90-100% of the capping theorists here are nowhere near $2,500 per month from Shutterstock. 

Maybe change "capping theorists" to: "people who have seen their income straight-line for one reason or another".  As I said earlier in one of the threads or this one, I don't actually believe SS is maliciously targeting specific portfolios. I think there is some software glitch or algorithm that is tweaking earnings some of us.

Case in point, this past July I was on track to eat some crow since my sales plummeted. Any change, however negative it might be, would show I was not being affected. On the 31st, my day was filled with high value SODs (after zero sods all month long) to bring me right up to my level.

High value SODs are dealt with personally by someone in the Enterprise Team so that would be unaffected by software glitches or algorithms.  By raising your income for the month on the last day to your allotted level would suggest you are right in saying it is not malicious, but it does look benevolent, a safety net.

Microstock is dead, only masochists would be pursuing it going forward.

Thank you for the break in the yes it is, no it isn't debate. 

I have a personal feeling that the cap is just what you wrote. A result of the flood of new images, and market flat-lining.

Microstock is dead or at best smells fishy and stinks. The growth era and new product stages are past, so now we have stagnation. Along with that anyone who isn't adding more and pushing for any possible gain, will be dropping. Most will lose because of competition, the best of old and popular themes, will go flat. Some will still be able to create new ideas and marketable images, but the easy money, easy sales, are long gone.

Contrary to some opinions, the answer is not "quantity makes more money" for any of us, as individuals. Quality does. Yes the early days, numbers counted, now they do nearly nothing.

I'm not going to spend hours and hours, editing and uploading, just to find, the competition has added another 10 million images at the same time I could add a couple hundred. The exception is, when I have something that there are not already 50,000 or 100,00 examples, I may do some work. The day of uploading best selling, common topics, concepts type images is over. Now we need to upload narrow market images that have a demand.

Good going Steve and anyone else who can continue to make any income growth in this cold market.

Good going Steve and anyone else who can continue to make any income growth in this cold market.

Steve is proof that there's plenty of life in this "stinking fish". Really inspirational and I trust that his income will continue to grow for the near-future. He must be on the non-capped privileged list

As for the algos, I have noticed that in the past 2 months there's been a surge of never-before-sold images from at least a year ago which have started selling. At first I thought was just noise / anomaly, but this trend is holding strong. Why would a relatively generic image from 2 years ago only start selling now? Not complaining, just trying to understand. Has anybody noticed this as well?

Steve is proof that there's plenty of life in this "stinking fish". Really inspirational and I trust that his income will continue to grow for the near-future. He must be on the non-capped privileged list

He is capped  but you don't see it.
The truth is outhere, beyond facts, obvious and common sense! 

I have a couple also, where the ones they have are incorrect, or wrong keywords for a very specific item. Another is a food item that has very specific ingredients and origins. Something for the Winter when I'm not busy running all over, chasing cars. 

Like this: 407 (name a common menu item here) stock photos, vectors, and illustrations are available royalty-free.

247 (another item) stock photos, vectors, and illustrations are available royalty-free, the first page is mostly misidentified and NOT the common item.

This isn't rocket science and I still contend that happy handshake, or sliced tomatoes, or snapshots of a walkabout, are going to get accepted and die! Time to work smarter not harder.

Good luck with your ideas. I'm shooting IMSA this weekend, worked Xfinity last, a vintage event and INDYCAR before that. Having a wonderful time and getting a nice tan. Oh look I can see some shadows 

Happy shooting Pete! And no, not rocket science at all. The good part for me is that I have to eat, so taking an extra minute or so to monetize that is no hardship at all.