MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: namussi on February 19, 2018, 03:21
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C'mon then.
Show us your spreadsheets. Show us your graphs. Show us your workings.
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Good luck with that one. The really interesting questions to me are. If there IS a cap so what? If you think there is a cap and its unethical are you really so desperate that you continue to work with such a disgraceful outfit?
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People shouldnt forget that it is against Shutterstock rules to publish our earnings... I see people breaking it all the time but I wouldnt.
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People shouldnt forget that it is against Shutterstock rules to publish our earnings... I see people breaking it all the time but I wouldnt.
You don't have to post the actual numbers. Just the relative numbers.
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People shouldnt forget that it is against Shutterstock rules to publish our earnings... I see people breaking it all the time but I wouldnt.
You don't have to post the actual numbers. Just the relative numbers.
Im not going to post anything, the "cap" debate is irrelevant to me and no matter what anyone posts here, the debate will not end (it is naive to think that you can just shut down some subject..).
I just wanted to point out what many contributors seem to forget about Shutterstock - that they have literally forbidden us to show our earnings. Thats all.
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Good luck with that one. The really interesting questions to me are. If there IS a cap so what? If you think there is a cap and its unethical are you really so desperate that you continue to work with such a disgraceful outfit?
Interesting questions. But please don't hijack THIS thread -- start another one.
I want some of the "cap" believers to give us proper evidence of the cap.
Don't let them off the hook.
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People shouldnt forget that it is against Shutterstock rules to publish our earnings... I see people breaking it all the time but I wouldnt.
You don't have to post the actual numbers. Just the relative numbers.
Im not going to post anything, the "cap" debate is irrelevant to me and no matter what anyone posts here, the debate will not end (it is naive to think that you can just shut down some subject..).
I just wanted to point out what many contributors seem to forget about Shutterstock - that they have literally forbidden us to show our earnings. Thats all.
Fair points. But please don't hijack the thread and therefore let the cap believers off the hook.
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Where's Derek?
You think caps are real. Let's see the data that proves it.
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Lol. Anonymous people asking others to divulge their earnings (against Shutterstock's terms).
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Good luck with that one. The really interesting questions to me are. If there IS a cap so what? If you think there is a cap and its unethical are you really so desperate that you continue to work with such a disgraceful outfit?
Interesting questions. But please don't hijack THIS thread -- start another one.
I want some of the "cap" believers to give us proper evidence of the cap.
Don't let them off the hook.
and if they did put figures up would you believe them? I'm not sure ANY conspiracy theory has ever been accepted as proved wrong by the believers....some people still believe the earth is flat for example ;-)
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some people still believe the earth is flat for example ;-)
I thought it was all in jest.
I don't think anyone's sales can prove (or disprove) an artificially imposed cap. Some people can reach a limit of their monthly earnings, doesn't mean anyone did it to them. Nothing short of the search engine source code can prove or disprove anything.
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also i don't know but if i had evidence that they cap me i will sue them as soon as possible cause it will be clearly something unwritten in contract....or am i wrong.
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also i don't know but if i had evidence that they cap me i will sue them as soon as possible cause it will be clearly something unwritten in contract....or am i wrong.
I am not a lawyer, but I doubt you can sue anyone for how they run their business. Nothing is promised with respect to [equally] promoting anyone by an agency.
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also i don't know but if i had evidence that they cap me i will sue them as soon as possible cause it will be clearly something unwritten in contract....or am i wrong.
I am not a lawyer, but I doubt you can sue anyone for how they run their business. Nothing is promised with respect to [equally] promoting anyone by an agency.
There are various competition laws around the world. But it would take a legal expert to know if any laws have been broken. I thought the poster you quoted did have evidence as he said it was obvious to everyone except us imbecile amateurs.
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I don't think anyone's sales can prove (or disprove) an artificially imposed cap. Some people can reach a limit of their monthly earnings, doesn't mean anyone did it to them. Nothing short of the search engine source code can prove or disprove anything.
You can't 100% prove it, but you can show STRONG data supporting a hypothesis, or not supporting it.
Anyone with just a tiny, tiny bit of analytical interest would of course save the sales data over 6 months to a year in the spreadsheet app of their choice, along with screenshots of searches (logged in, logged out), showing that their items are hidden once they reach their cap.
The thing is, most of these conspiracy theorists don't seem to have any analytical ability at all - only emotional ability, which almost always lies.
They also don't understand that there is a NATURAL cap on sales. They will not grow to infinity. Once you reach a certain point it will take just as much effort just to keep sales the same, and not fall. This is true for most things.
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Lol. Anonymous people asking others to divulge their earnings (against Shutterstock's terms).
1. You don't need to show any earnings. Just changes in earnings.
2. This isn't in the Shutterstock forum - any capping evidence from any site would be welcome.
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I don't think anyone's sales can prove (or disprove) an artificially imposed cap. Some people can reach a limit of their monthly earnings, doesn't mean anyone did it to them. Nothing short of the search engine source code can prove or disprove anything.
You can't 100% prove it, but you can show STRONG data supporting a hypothesis, or not supporting it.
Anyone with just a tiny, tiny bit of analytical interest would of course save the sales data over 6 months to a year in the spreadsheet app of their choice, along with screenshots of searches (logged in, logged out), showing that their items are hidden once they reach their cap.
The thing is, most of these conspiracy theorists don't seem to have any analytical ability at all - only emotional ability, which almost always lies.
They also don't understand that there is a NATURAL cap on sales. They will not grow to infinity. Once you reach a certain point it will take just as much effort just to keep sales the same, and not fall. This is true for most things.
And how do you define which data are STRONG support and which aren't? It's a matter of consensus of data experts, which very few people are, and even less people are willing to share their expertise. Like I already said, it's not academia, if someone is wrong about their conclusions, it's a cause of quiet celebration, not a heated public argument.
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Shutterstock's terms forbid you from disclosing earnings anywhere, not just in their forums.
If you had enough sales to see patterns, you'd be able to see how Shutterstock pushes newbies to the top of the search...because you'd have enough top sellers to see when they suddenly stop selling, and then when you looked at the most popular search for those keywords you'd see that your images were moved from page one to page ten overnight, while a newbie photographer now has 20 nearly identical photos from the same shoot suddenly on page one—and there's just no way 20 photos that are virtually the same would all appear on page one organically.
Or you'd see that Shutterstock switched page one in most popular for page two, because you've checked pages one and two often enough to be familiar with the order of the most popular images, generally speaking.
Or you'd know when Shutterstock was changing the search algorithm because the floodgates would open for a day or two and your sales would suddenly be back to "normal," only to be suppressed again when they switched to the new algorithm.
It only makes sense that Shutterstock would purposely promote newbies, because it increases their take. Better for them to keep 80% than 70%, so they'll play with the search as much as possible to get as close as possible to that 80% without depressing sales too much by pushing newer content that isn't as attractive to buyers. And they'll switch pages and images around to make page one appear "fresh."
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also i don't know but if i had evidence that they cap me i will sue them as soon as possible cause it will be clearly something unwritten in contract....or am i wrong.
I am not a lawyer, but I doubt you can sue anyone for how they run their business. Nothing is promised with respect to [equally] promoting anyone by an agency.
There are various competition laws around the world. But it would take a legal expert to know if any laws have been broken. I thought the poster you quoted did have evidence as he said it was obvious to everyone except us imbecile amateurs.
will definitely require a legal expert. the existence of a gazillion competing agencies will not make this easy.
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It only makes sense that Shutterstock would purposely promote newbies, because it increases their take. Better for them to keep 80% than 70%, so they'll play with the search as much as possible to get as close as possible to that 80% without depressing sales too much by pushing newer content that isn't as attractive to buyers. And they'll switch pages and images around to make page one appear "fresh."
I am sure they do it, but it's not my definition of a cap.
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C'mon then.
Show us your spreadsheets. Show us your graphs. Show us your workings.
I can't because there are no caps. Show me proof of Nessie, the Bermuda Triangle, Vampires, shape shifting birds, or a yeti. You can't because just like caps, they are a children's fairy tale or belief based on repeated false evidence. There's no proof and that's why believers defend so much. They toss out other myths to prove the first one, like new people are pushed to the front. But wait, I'm on the first page of a number of searches and have been for those same for a long time. I guess SS like me better. :)
I think they read this forum and punish people who write bad things. So you better watch out, they're making a list and checking it twice, Gonna find out who's naughty or nice. SS caps are coming to town. Then they will change the search so only people here drop down and push horrible new cheap images to the front so buyers will say, SS has terrible photos, we need to go someplace else.
Just because somebody makes a claims and a small minority of believers agree and make the same claim, that don't make it proof. Just false rumors. The number of wrong people doesn't make evidence, it just means more people who have no sense.
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It only makes sense that Shutterstock would purposely promote newbies, because it increases their take. Better for them to keep 80% than 70%, so they'll play with the search as much as possible to get as close as possible to that 80% without depressing sales too much by pushing newer content that isn't as attractive to buyers. And they'll switch pages and images around to make page one appear "fresh."
I am sure they do it, but it's not my definition of a cap.
Why wouldn't they promote new contributors? completely different from a cap. Who says newer content isn't as attractive its no more "fair" to put established best sellers at the front of the queue than fresh new content.
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also i don't know but if i had evidence that they cap me i will sue them as soon as possible cause it will be clearly something unwritten in contract....or am i wrong.
I am not a lawyer, but I doubt you can sue anyone for how they run their business. Nothing is promised with respect to [equally] promoting anyone by an agency.
There are various competition laws around the world. But it would take a legal expert to know if any laws have been broken. I thought the poster you quoted did have evidence as he said it was obvious to everyone except us imbecile amateurs.
i didn't say this....let say an employe of shutter stock is fired and is angry and he reveals that shutter stock cap earning promoting unfair competition..
i repeat there is always a clear path in earning...sure if you earn 50 100 dollar is difficult you see this.
my point....if you earn 500 dollar you have more data simple....if you earn 1000 2000 much more.
i still have to understand why every big sales is ALWAYS and i mean ALWAYS 100% of time followed by 3 4 crap days. ALWAYS. when something happen always it's not a coincidence. and this is experienced by many authors.
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Good luck with that one. The really interesting questions to me are. If there IS a cap so what? If you think there is a cap and its unethical are you really so desperate that you continue to work with such a disgraceful outfit?
Interesting questions. But please don't hijack THIS thread -- start another one.
I want some of the "cap" believers to give us proper evidence of the cap.
Don't let them off the hook.
I have been there since before 2006 with over 10k photos. I certainly am not making things up or hypothesizing without solid stats. But I am not giving some random stranger my data nor making it public. I have read enough of your posts to know that you wouldn't believe it anyway and trying to convince you seems like a pretty useless waste of time to me.
You seem really exercised about the whole topic. Why is that?
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It only makes sense that Shutterstock would purposely promote newbies, because it increases their take. Better for them to keep 80% than 70%, so they'll play with the search as much as possible to get as close as possible to that 80% without depressing sales too much by pushing newer content that isn't as attractive to buyers. And they'll switch pages and images around to make page one appear "fresh."
I am sure they do it, but it's not my definition of a cap.
Why wouldn't they promote new contributors? completely different from a cap. Who says newer content isn't as attractive its no more "fair" to put established best sellers at the front of the queue than fresh new content.
It might not be a cap, but it has the effect of stopping, capping or even reversing your growth when you've reached a certain level of success, because your content is then targeted to be pushed back in favor of newer contributors'.
I used to think this cap stuff was nonsense until it happened to me, and now I just see how naive I was until two years ago, when my earnings started dropping instead of growing and I started paying attention to why that was.
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C'mon then.
Show us your spreadsheets. Show us your graphs. Show us your workings.
I can't because there are no caps. Show me proof of Nessie, the Bermuda Triangle, Vampires, shape shifting birds, or a yeti. You can't because just like caps, they are a children's fairy tale or belief based on repeated false evidence. There's no proof and that's why believers defend so much. They toss out other myths to prove the first one, like new people are pushed to the front. But wait, I'm on the first page of a number of searches and have been for those same for a long time. I guess SS like me better. :)
I think they read this forum and punish people who write bad things. So you better watch out, they're making a list and checking it twice, Gonna find out who's naughty or nice. SS caps are coming to town. Then they will change the search so only people here drop down and push horrible new cheap images to the front so buyers will say, SS has terrible photos, we need to go someplace else.
Just because somebody makes a claims and a small minority of believers agree and make the same claim, that don't make it proof. Just false rumors. The number of wrong people doesn't make evidence, it just means more people who have no sense.
Since it took you about 100 years to get to what—is it 36¢ now?—you clearly don't make enough sales to see patterns, and your images aren't popular enough to be affected by changing algorithms.
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C'mon then.
Show us your spreadsheets. Show us your graphs. Show us your workings.
I can't because there are no caps. Show me proof of Nessie, the Bermuda Triangle, Vampires, shape shifting birds, or a yeti. You can't because just like caps, they are a children's fairy tale or belief based on repeated false evidence. There's no proof and that's why believers defend so much. They toss out other myths to prove the first one, like new people are pushed to the front. But wait, I'm on the first page of a number of searches and have been for those same for a long time. I guess SS like me better. :)
I think they read this forum and punish people who write bad things. So you better watch out, they're making a list and checking it twice, Gonna find out who's naughty or nice. SS caps are coming to town. Then they will change the search so only people here drop down and push horrible new cheap images to the front so buyers will say, SS has terrible photos, we need to go someplace else.
Just because somebody makes a claims and a small minority of believers agree and make the same claim, that don't make it proof. Just false rumors. The number of wrong people doesn't make evidence, it just means more people who have no sense.
Since it took you about 100 years to get to what—is it 36¢ now?—you clearly don't make enough sales to see patterns, and your images aren't popular enough to be affected by changing algorithms.
At least I'm not capped like some other people here. ;D
And I don't have enough sales to see a pattern but you can't see my sales so what imagination does that come from. I think it's simple, they are out to get you. Now you have gone from debating imaginary caps to personal attacks again. Weak
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Why wouldn't they promote new contributors? completely different from a cap. Who says newer content isn't as attractive its no more "fair" to put established best sellers at the front of the queue than fresh new content.
Of course they are within their rights. If a person produces the same content but is cheaper, why not promote this person? I can't speak for everyone, but I myself do the same thing, I pay more attention to customers who pay more. Can CanStock hold it against me and sue me for unfair competition if my portfolio on Canstock is smaller than on SS?
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It might not be a cap, but it has the effect of stopping, capping or even reversing your growth when you've reached a certain level of success, because your content is then targeted to be pushed back in favor of newer contributors'.
I used to think this cap stuff was nonsense until it happened to me, and now I just see how naive I was until two years ago, when my earnings started dropping instead of growing and I started paying attention to why that was.
Exactly. It's not a cap.
Why on earth would you assume that your sales should keep growing forever? They (generally) won't! And especially not as the competition has been growing exponentially.
Just because you sold 10,000 images per day before, doesn't mean you should always do that. You had less competition before. Trends change. It's as simple as that. When you reach a certain level, you need to work really hard just to stay at that level. Just as hard as when you were still growing. This is natural. The sales potential is not infinite!
And why would they not promote new contributors? That seems like a very natural thing to me.
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i still have to understand why every big sales is ALWAYS and i mean ALWAYS 100% of time followed by 3 4 crap days. ALWAYS. when something happen always it's not a coincidence. and this is experienced by many authors.
I experience exactly this with a lot of frequency for the past years. After a great day it's almost certain that the following days will be a disgrace.
I'm a microstock "veteran", with many thousands of images and a level of income that's relatively solid. I always noticed the seasonal changes or the big holidays in US or Europe like most people, but apart from that things were more or less stable.
But from some time now I get what it's mentioned above. Some days are terrible without any reason, and almost certain to happen after a great one. And in the end of the week the number of downloads end up being more or less the same of the previous weeks.
In fact, even before people started to talk about this in MSG I had noticed it but never said anything, and one day my wife (who works with me) also commented how odd things were happening and then we started to pay attention.
I was to post a graphic (even had the screen-capture made), but after reading the concerns about SS terms I will not do it. But I can guarantee you that it's really obvious what is happening. (I edited this paragraph since I believe it disclosed some information that SS could interpret and who knows link to me, and I'm not in a position to have problems with SS)
I've noticed several other things too, but I cannot bother too much with them since it will change nothing. And who knows, maybe I'm even being benefited in this scheme and I am protected by SS guaranteeing me a slice of the pie! Without it maybe I would drop like a stone? Who knows?
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Exactly. It's not a cap.
Why on earth would you assume that your sales should keep growing forever? They (generally) won't! And especially not as the competition has been growing exponentially.
Just because you sold 10,000 images per day before, doesn't mean you should always do that. You had less competition before. Trends change. It's as simple as that. When you reach a certain level, you need to work really hard just to stay at that level. Just as hard as when you were still growing. This is natural. The sales potential is not infinite!
And why would they not promote new contributors? That seems like a very natural thing to me.
To use your own argument, shouldn't our sales fluctuate then? Mine are steady. Rock steady. And when they are in the thousands and measured over years, you can absolutely see the consistency. I make xx amount each month. Regardless of what sells and when and how much I upload or don't upload. If I get high SODs then my sales after balance it out so I make virtually the same every month. If that is random chance, every month for years, then just... wow. Nothing more to be said here.
I am happy to compete with others. That inspires and promotes doing a better job. But if I can not grow or advance through no fault of my own, it gets a bit frustrating. I am currently off looking for greener pastures and not uploading there and you know what? Sales are exactly the same there.
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To use your own argument, shouldn't our sales fluctuate then? Mine are steady. Rock steady. And when they are in the thousands and measured over years, you can absolutely see the consistency. I make xx amount each month. Regardless of what sells and when and how much I upload or don't upload. If I get high SODs then my sales after balance it out so I make virtually the same every month. If that is random chance, every month for years, then just... wow. Nothing more to be said here.
I am happy to compete with others. That inspires and promotes doing a better job. But if I can not grow or advance through no fault of my own, it gets a bit frustrating. I am currently off looking for greener pastures and not uploading there and you know what? Sales are exactly the same there.
I can attest to the same. A lot of consistency, with new uploads, no uploads, etc. If I upload new images that start selling than the old ones stop so the total is always more or less the same.
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Cap???? whats that?
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It's been like ... a whole week of you guys arguing about the same thing.
Can we move on to like .... #fergienationalanthem or something?
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I'll bite but you are only getting percentage growth rates
2014 2015 2016 +2017
+516% +69% +1% -7%
Even though I added images regular as clockwork avoided similars improved quality diversified add editorial it didn't change anything
2016 was within a handful of dollars of 2015.
Since 2015 sales have constantly bounced between an upper and lower control limit
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People shouldnt forget that it is against Shutterstock rules to publish our earnings... I see people breaking it all the time but I wouldnt.
Confidentiality
By submitting any Content to Shutterstock, you acknowledge that you will acquire certain confidential and proprietary information, including but not limited to royalty rates, royalty payments and earnings data (collectively, "Confidential Information"). You agree to keep Confidential Information confidential and to not disclose Confidential Information to any third party other than representatives, agents, attorneys, accountants, auditors and advisors with a bona fide need to know, who shall first agree to keep the terms confidential.
https://submit.shutterstock.com/legal/terms
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Exactly. It's not a cap.
Why on earth would you assume that your sales should keep growing forever? They (generally) won't! And especially not as the competition has been growing exponentially.
Just because you sold 10,000 images per day before, doesn't mean you should always do that. You had less competition before. Trends change. It's as simple as that. When you reach a certain level, you need to work really hard just to stay at that level. Just as hard as when you were still growing. This is natural. The sales potential is not infinite!
And why would they not promote new contributors? That seems like a very natural thing to me.
To use your own argument, shouldn't our sales fluctuate then? Mine are steady. Rock steady. And when they are in the thousands and measured over years, you can absolutely see the consistency. I make xx amount each month. Regardless of what sells and when and how much I upload or don't upload. If I get high SODs then my sales after balance it out so I make virtually the same every month. If that is random chance, every month for years, then just... wow. Nothing more to be said here.
I am happy to compete with others. That inspires and promotes doing a better job. But if I can not grow or advance through no fault of my own, it gets a bit frustrating. I am currently off looking for greener pastures and not uploading there and you know what? Sales are exactly the same there.
How is your X amount figured? Is yours different from Derek or Shelma1 or Microvet. Some of us aren't capped, then how do SS decide who is capped and whos not and what's my cap?
(https://i.imgur.com/lZ3e4On.jpg)
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If you are not capped then congratulations. Who knows why? How many years have you been there? Are you top tier? How long at top tier? How big is your portfolio?
My graph looks nothing like that. But hey, must be something else to dictate why I get a fraction of sales consistently after a SOD until I am within my narrow band of consistent earnings month after month, year after year.
This is pointless. I'm out.
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This is a joke! none her bar JimP and perhaps sammy have experienced the cap. You can show graphs the lot it dont mean a thing, you have to experience it and for many not here but over at SS whos been upplying for over 10 years it came down like a brick just over night, no warning nothing but just over night about a year back!...and these peoples earnings were cut in half, exactly by 50%, ALL of us down with exactly 50%.....why? how? nobody knows but it did happen.
I can personally shake up over 25 people long time suppliers over ten years who will verify this. Thats that. Now weather some people here believe it or not well frankly I dont give one single iota! and thats the end of story.
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This is a joke! none her bar JimP and perhaps sammy have experienced the cap. You can show graphs the lot it dont mean a thing, you have to experience it and for many not here but over at SS whos been upplying for over 10 years it came down like a brick just over night, no warning nothing but just over night about a year back!...and these peoples earnings were cut in half, exactly by 50%, ALL of us down with exactly 50%.....why? how? nobody knows but it did happen.
I can personally shake up over 25 people long time suppliers over ten years who will verify this. Thats that. Now weather some people here believe it or not well frankly I dont give one single iota! and thats the end of story.
Do that I'd like to see those 25 people. It's not dropping like a brick, cut in half, it's capping, remember?
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This is a joke! none her bar JimP and perhaps sammy have experienced the cap. You can show graphs the lot it dont mean a thing, you have to experience it and for many not here but over at SS whos been upplying for over 10 years it came down like a brick just over night, no warning nothing but just over night about a year back!...and these peoples earnings were cut in half, exactly by 50%, ALL of us down with exactly 50%.....why? how? nobody knows but it did happen.
I can personally shake up over 25 people long time suppliers over ten years who will verify this. Thats that. Now weather some people here believe it or not well frankly I dont give one single iota! and thats the end of story.
Do that I'd like to see those 25 people. It's not dropping like a brick, cut in half, it's capping, remember?
Call it what you want mate! the rest I let you have an educated guess at. :)
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If you are not capped then congratulations. Who knows why? How many years have you been there? Are you top tier? How long at top tier? How big is your portfolio?
My graph looks nothing like that. But hey, must be something else to dictate why I get a fraction of sales consistently after a SOD until I am within my narrow band of consistent earnings month after month, year after year.
This is pointless. I'm out.
Is this like trying to explain what does popular mean on ShutterStock? We don't know and they won't tell us. ;D Now we're trying to guess who's capped and why? I'd agree it's pretty much pointless if we can't change anything.
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Is this like trying to explain what does popular mean on ShutterStock? We don't know and they won't tell us. ;D Now we're trying to guess who's capped and why? I'd agree it's pretty much pointless if we can't change anything.
If there's no cap, then there's nothing to change.
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This is a joke! none her bar JimP and perhaps sammy have experienced the cap. You can show graphs the lot it dont mean a thing, you have to experience it
How do you know if you've experienced it then?
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I'll bite but you are only getting percentage growth rates
2014 2015 2016 +2017
+516% +69% +1% -7%
Even though I added images regular as clockwork avoided similars improved quality diversified add editorial it didn't change anything
2016 was within a handful of dollars of 2015.
Since 2015 sales have constantly bounced between an upper and lower control limit
Do you have the percentage growth rate of your portfolio, and the percentage growth rate of SS as a whole to go with your earnings figure? Your 2013 figures would be handy as well.
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FYI :)
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I'll bite but you are only getting percentage growth rates
2014 2015 2016 +2017
+516% +69% +1% -7%
Even though I added images regular as clockwork avoided similars improved quality diversified add editorial it didn't change anything
2016 was within a handful of dollars of 2015.
Since 2015 sales have constantly bounced between an upper and lower control limit
Do you have the percentage growth rate of your portfolio, and the percentage growth rate of SS as a whole to go with your earnings figure? Your 2013 figures would be handy as well.
Yes I do and as I said that's all I am publishing here on an open forum
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I am not sure if there's a cap.
My RPI trend mirrors SS's library downloads per image almost exactly over a period of almost ten years which makes me think it must be the same for most people that reach a certain portfolio size, or it's a heck of a coincidence.
That doesn't necessarily mean there isn't a cap (it could be the cap keeping me at that rate for example).
I do remember Yuri used to complain about what amounts to cap on the SS forum. I will try and find the posts, can't remember if SS actively denied or admitted it at that time.
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Here's a real example, although with fictional numbers.
Lets say you have an average of about 50 downloads per day on a weekday. And that these 50 DL are from a portfolio that hasn't received new images in a while.
Then, you upload new content that does no compete with your old one, and you start selling about 10 images per day from these new images. It would be expected that you'd start to have 60 DL per day, no? At least for a while, since you've got images in the New filter and some may even get to the Popular.
Yet, what happens is that you still get about 50 DL per day, even with the 10 you get from the new content! That means that somehow your older images stopped being seen by buyers when in the previous period they sold regularly. How does this happen? And so often?
This has been happening to me. Almost half of my daily sales are from new content and my average is the same as before I uploaded them.
I've also had new approved images, missing from the New search for days several times, killing them at birth. And as mentioned before, I've seen new members with many similar images with terrible quality which I doubt had sales in front of the Popular search while my images which had downloads in the first days never got near to it. And I'm not talking about very competitive subjects.
Anyway, it's hard to discuss this subject when some people discussing it may have 100 images and others have 10.000. When someone who submits for about 3 months gets absolutely ecstatic because he/she made $50 in a month and contradict people that have data going back 12 years or more and make many hundreds or thousands of dollars per month.
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For those who are capped why not stop uploading and use the time more productively? If your content is really so good SS will see declining sales and customer dissatisfaction and do something about it.
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The thing with these percentage increases on sales though... they're going to be somewhat in-line with how many items you're uploading. Not exactly, but in the same kind of ballpark. So lets say for example that you had 100 images in 2013 and you uploaded 416 images between then and 2014. That would equate to your 516% increase.
Then if you're uploading regular as clockwork, it stands to reason that you'll upload another 416 images the next year. So that would be an 80% increase on the previous year. Do the same the next year and you've got a 44% increase. Then 30%, then 23% and so on and so forth. So unless you're doubling your portfolio every year then you're bound to see a drop in your percentage increases. But who can upload 400 new images in 2013, 800 in 2014, 1600 in 2015, 3200 in 2016, 6400 in 2017 and 12800 in 2018? Not your average one-man band. The longer you're at it, the harder it becomes.
That's going on the assumption that all your content is exactly the same with regards to commercial appeal/quality etc... which they rarely are. So why are your percentage increases less than my figures? Because they don't take into account the continual increase in authors and the amount of images/videos on the site. Even if your portfolio did increase by 100% every year, you wouldn't see a 100% growth in sales every year. And if you didn't upload anything since 2013, your 0% increase year on year would rapidly head into negative figures as your sales declined.
Unfortunately, that's just par for the course, and there's no way to avoid it to a certain extent. Work on improving quality and diversity like you say, and try to upload more this year than you did the last... but if everyone keeps doing what they're doing, then you're never going to keep getting steady growth in sales figures.
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Anyway, it's hard to discuss this subject when some people discussing it may have 100 images and others have 10.000. When someone who submits for about 3 months gets absolutely ecstatic because he/she made $50 in a month and contradict people that have data going back 12 years or more and make many hundreds or thousands of dollars per month.
Perfectly fair points.
Which is why I suggested that cap-theorists publish more details of their findings.
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For those who are capped why not stop uploading and use the time more productively? If your content is really so good SS will see declining sales and customer dissatisfaction and do something about it.
Spoken like a true, clueless and ignorant hobbyist.
People who are professional and look at this as a business cannot simply abandon one of the major, if not the biggest earner of all their agencies.
Maybe you're in stock just to pay for a couple coffees, and despite that you are not shy about making ignorant comments towards professionals. But for a lot of people to abandon SS it means having to chose between paying the rent or buying food because half of their income would be lost.
Do you see why some people actually have reasons to take this issue seriously?
And this is the problems in these discussions. Some wannabees who need a year to make what professionals make in a month or even week think they have the same data and knowledge as them.
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The thing with these percentage increases on sales though... they're going to be somewhat in-line with how many items you're uploading. Not exactly, but in the same kind of ballpark. So lets say for example that you had 100 images in 2013 and you uploaded 416 images between then and 2014. That would equate to your 516% increase.
Then if you're uploading regular as clockwork, it stands to reason that you'll upload another 416 images the next year. So that would be an 80% increase on the previous year. Do the same the next year and you've got a 44% increase. Then 30%, then 23% and so on and so forth. So unless you're doubling your portfolio every year then you're bound to see a drop in your percentage increases. But who can upload 400 new images in 2013, 800 in 2014, 1600 in 2015, 3200 in 2016, 6400 in 2017 and 12800 in 2018? Not your average one-man band. The longer you're at it, the harder it becomes.
That's going on the assumption that all your content is exactly the same with regards to commercial appeal/quality etc... which they rarely are. So why are your percentage increases less than my figures? Because they don't take into account the continual increase in authors and the amount of images/videos on the site. Even if your portfolio did increase by 100% every year, you wouldn't see a 100% growth in sales every year. And if you didn't upload anything since 2013, your 0% increase year on year would rapidly head into negative figures as your sales declined.
Unfortunately, that's just par for the course, and there's no way to avoid it to a certain extent. Work on improving quality and diversity like you say, and try to upload more this year than you did the last... but if everyone keeps doing what they're doing, then you're never going to keep getting steady growth in sales figures.
The people who've experienced the "cap," or having their images pushed back in the search, are pointing out things that the rest of you choose to ignore.
You all keep bringing up competition, image quality, how many images you upload, the size of the SS portfolio, etc. And we keep bringing up similar images from newbies placed high in the search, best-selling images being pushed back from page 1 to page 10 overnight, floodgates opening for a day or two when our sales suddenly jump back to "normal," images that don't appear on the site for days after approval, etc.
Yes, we all know there's competition. Yes, the SS portfolio is growing like crazy. Yes, you need to always improve your image quality. But those factors are in addition to the specific machinations we see that purposely suppress the sales of contributors who've reached the top royalty tier and have a good number of top-selling images.
I think people who haven't experienced it want to believe it will not happen to them, so it's easier to think the more experienced contributors are imagining things, or that newbies get higher placement simply because they "work harder" or "improve their images." That explains why you all keep ignoring the very specific things we're talking about.
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Could not have said that any better. Like you, I began to think I was immune to all of this. Now I know better and so will everyone eventually. Let the apologists continue to live in their naive fantasy world (like I used to) while they can. Sooner or later the harsh reality of this business will become apparent to them as well. Count on it.
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Anyway, it's hard to discuss this subject when some people discussing it may have 100 images and others have 10.000. When someone who submits for about 3 months gets absolutely ecstatic because he/she made $50 in a month and contradict people that have data going back 12 years or more and make many hundreds or thousands of dollars per month.
Perfectly fair points.
Which is why I suggested that cap-theorists publish more details of their findings.
And you still haven't figured out why SS has in their terms the prohibition to make public info about our own earnings, right?
Here's a clue... it's because of discussions like these and to make impossible to present factual data, so people like you can keep repeating that we're a bunch of conspiracy theorists.
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I think people who haven't experienced it want to believe it will not happen to them, so it's easier to think the more experienced contributors are imagining things, or that newbies get higher placement simply because they "work harder" or "improve their images." That explains why you all keep ignoring the very specific things we're talking about.
Except you aren't specific at all. You are vague.
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I think people who haven't experienced it want to believe it will not happen to them, so it's easier to think the more experienced contributors are imagining things, or that newbies get higher placement simply because they "work harder" or "improve their images." That explains why you all keep ignoring the very specific things we're talking about.
Except you aren't specific at all. You are vague.
OK, so it's not worth discussing anything with you. You seem hell bent on getting people to share their earnings, and it ain't gonna happen.
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For those who are capped why not stop uploading and use the time more productively? If your content is really so good SS will see declining sales and customer dissatisfaction and do something about it.
Hahahoho! Paws that kind of crap you come up with can ONLY come from a part-timer who really havent got the slightest clue or idea what full-time photography is all about.
If life was that simple as it seems to be in your make believe world.
Your day-job really cant be much to take to a drycleaner since youre always hanging around here waffling all over the place with such "good" advice! Do me a favour pal!
You need not bother to respond because I am without doubt not tapping into this imbecile cretin thread again!
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For those who are capped why not stop uploading and use the time more productively? If your content is really so good SS will see declining sales and customer dissatisfaction and do something about it.
Spoken like a true, clueless and ignorant hobbyist.
People who are professional and look at this as a business cannot simply abandon one of the major, if not the biggest earner of all their agencies.
Maybe you're in stock just to pay for a couple coffees, and despite that you are not shy about making ignorant comments towards professionals. But for a lot of people to abandon SS it means having to chose between paying the rent or buying food because half of their income would be lost.
Do you see why some people actually have reasons to take this issue seriously?
And this is the problems in these discussions. Some wannabees who need a year to make what professionals make in a month or even week think they have the same data and knowledge as them.
If you have reached your cap why would your sales go down if you stop uploading...Isn't that the whole point? As you are taking the issue seriously what are you actually doing about it? Did I say abandon? nope just stop uploading until a point when you feel resuming will actually bring an improved return. Seems perfectly sensible to me...perhaps you can tell me what I've missed?
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for me the cap is not about the level of growth...im growing eat year, this year so far is better than last....i would grow much more that's the problem, and i see is impossible.
for me the cap is clear from my graph ...i straight line with 10% growth constant...the fact that every big sale is followed by crap days...every 2 good weeks are followed by 2 crap weeks just to reach a decided level of earning....
if is ee the fotolia or stock graphs is like a mountain, unpredictable. one month superb another crap one good....that's what i consider stock photography, in shutter stock is everything predictable. i can already have an idea of my earning this year.
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For those who are capped why not stop uploading and use the time more productively? If your content is really so good SS will see declining sales and customer dissatisfaction and do something about it.
Hahahoho! Paws that kind of crap you come up with can ONLY come from a part-timer who really havent got the slightest clue or idea what full-time photography is all about.
If life was that simple as it seems to be in your make believe world.
Your day-job really cant be much to take to a drycleaner since youre always hanging around here waffling all over the place with such "good" advice! Do me a favour pal!
You need not bother to respond because I am without doubt not tapping into this imbecile cretin thread again!
Result :o
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C'mon then.
Show us your spreadsheets. Show us your graphs. Show us your workings.
I can't because there are no caps. Show me proof of Nessie, the Bermuda Triangle, Vampires, shape shifting birds, or a yeti. You can't because just like caps, they are a children's fairy tale or belief based on repeated false evidence. There's no proof and that's why believers defend so much. They toss out other myths to prove the first one, like new people are pushed to the front. But wait, I'm on the first page of a number of searches and have been for those same for a long time. I guess SS like me better. :)
I think they read this forum and punish people who write bad things. So you better watch out, they're making a list and checking it twice, Gonna find out who's naughty or nice. SS caps are coming to town. Then they will change the search so only people here drop down and push horrible new cheap images to the front so buyers will say, SS has terrible photos, we need to go someplace else.
Just because somebody makes a claims and a small minority of believers agree and make the same claim, that don't make it proof. Just false rumors. The number of wrong people doesn't make evidence, it just means more people who have no sense.
Since it took you about 100 years to get to what—is it 36¢ now?—you clearly don't make enough sales to see patterns, and your images aren't popular enough to be affected by changing algorithms.
That's your proof, attack me? Did you ever consider answering anything I post to you, instead of evading?
I have to say I'm really flattered that someone as important and busy as you, takes the time to follow me around the forum to post lies and fabrications about me. I asked but you won't answer. Why do you say I live in Canada and put a city of my home? Why do you say I have a blog, when I don't?
Post the message that I wrote about my blog or where I live as you claim. You can't. You're wrong. And to say you aren't stalking me I'll quote you,
You're not anonymous. And starting a thread with a joke about a specific person isn't particularly funny.
You've been complaining on this forum since 2009. You have a blog complaining about Getty. And you started a thread here complaining about what I'd been saying on the SS forums. I don't believe I've ever started a thread about you...have I?
Nope but you follow me like a little lost puppy and Brazilnut too, looking for a way to pee on our foot.
Why don't you tell us who you are, and we can compare successes? I'm assuming since you're on the SS forums you're not McBurney, but you sure sound like him.
Never mind, figured it out.
All false, but you are so convinced that you won't admit you are wrong. Here's your chance, put up or shut up. Who am I? Where's my blog? Link to the post where I wrote that information. You can't because I didn't. You figured it out, that's not reading my posts as you claim, is it. Troll and stalker covers it.
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For those who are capped why not stop uploading and use the time more productively? If your content is really so good SS will see declining sales and customer dissatisfaction and do something about it.
Spoken like a true, clueless and ignorant hobbyist.
People who are professional and look at this as a business cannot simply abandon one of the major, if not the biggest earner of all their agencies.
Maybe you're in stock just to pay for a couple coffees, and despite that you are not shy about making ignorant comments towards professionals. But for a lot of people to abandon SS it means having to chose between paying the rent or buying food because half of their income would be lost.
Do you see why some people actually have reasons to take this issue seriously?
And this is the problems in these discussions. Some wannabees who need a year to make what professionals make in a month or even week think they have the same data and knowledge as them.
If you have reached your cap why would your sales go down if you stop uploading...Isn't that the whole point? As you are taking the issue seriously what are you actually doing about it? Did I say abandon? nope just stop uploading until a point when you feel resuming will actually bring an improved return. Seems perfectly sensible to me...perhaps you can tell me what I've missed?
But why should I stop uploading to SS? That does not make sense. After all I would still keep producing images to the other agencies who represent the other ~50% of my income. So, I already have the images why should I not send them to SS?
As another member already said, the other agencies are much more volatile and work differently from SS, and still close to what SS was in the past. I mean, in the other agencies if you upload new content you actually see your sales increase like it has always been, despite the competition.
Plus, nobody said that sales don't go down. There's still competition from new members and images that make the income split among more people.
The problem is that extremely hard to stop this downfall. As I mentioned, if new images are uploaded they take the place of the older ones that were selling. So, there's no progression here. You may at best maintain your income. If I were to stop uploading nothing guarantees that the income wouldn't fall.
And since no one can predict the future it's better to have a large portfolio than a small one.
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Years ago it was called the wall, now it's called capped. Nothing changed, except the name and some new theories about why. Remember the wall?
Remember diminishing returns. Upload more and earnings were almost flat? Makes me ask how is that promise of $2 RPI that people talked about years ago? I don't know about others but mine is more like 50c now.
I upload new in hopes that some will catch on and make more, but mostly everything is pretty flat and even, good days and bad, good months and bad, year to year about the same. Currently each year gets a tiny bit better because I keep uploading more and new.
I'm not capped, I'm just up against the wall of competition which has no signs of slowing down. Unsustainable? That's what this business is for artists.
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The talk of the "wall" had a lot more mathematical plausibility to me rather than a cap - and does cap mean that your sales are lifted up if they fall below this cap? It seems if the cap was real you need to just open up another account - and why not stop submitting if your earnings don't change?
I am not denying search changes squashing sales overnight. There are all kind of search shenanigans going on - based on image age, size, location, and who knows what else. (I certainly wouldn't put it past them to push .25 images up in the search, or images from newer contributors, which is pretty similar).
But if every good day is followed by down days, how do you get good weeks? or good 2 weeks to be followed by bad 2 weeks? I suppose they could program a random time period to turn sales on and off to level things out, but then why not do it on a larger time frame so that nobody would think there was a cap anyway?
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The talk of the "wall" had a lot more mathematical plausibility to me rather than a cap - and does cap mean that your sales are lifted up if they fall below this cap? It seems if the cap was real you need to just open up another account - and why not stop submitting if your earnings don't change?
I am not denying search changes squashing sales overnight. There are all kind of search shenanigans going on - based on image age, size, location, and who knows what else. (I certainly wouldn't put it past them to push .25 images up in the search, or images from newer contributors, which is pretty similar).
But if every good day is followed by down days, how do you get good weeks? or good 2 weeks to be followed by bad 2 weeks? I suppose they could program a random time period to turn sales on and off to level things out, but then why not do it on a larger time frame so that nobody would think there was a cap anyway?
I'm sure sites manipulate search algorithms which has intended and unintended consequences including "demoting" popular images either to "freshen" the site or save a bit on commission maybe they think buyers don't want to keep using the same images that have been seen thousands of times all over the world? What I can't visualise is SS either having the inclination or programming know how to drill down to individual contributor level and design a customised Cap that appears to have different consequences for each contributor.
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The talk of the "wall" had a lot more mathematical plausibility to me rather than a cap - and does cap mean that your sales are lifted up if they fall below this cap? It seems if the cap was real you need to just open up another account - and why not stop submitting if your earnings don't change?
I am not denying search changes squashing sales overnight. There are all kind of search shenanigans going on - based on image age, size, location, and who knows what else. (I certainly wouldn't put it past them to push .25 images up in the search, or images from newer contributors, which is pretty similar).
But if every good day is followed by down days, how do you get good weeks? or good 2 weeks to be followed by bad 2 weeks? I suppose they could program a random time period to turn sales on and off to level things out, but then why not do it on a larger time frame so that nobody would think there was a cap anyway?
No idea of the how's or why's. Some people don't believe it and that's fine, but for some of them, I really don't understand the over the top reactions when someone disagrees with them (not you Tom :) ). They seem to take it so very personally.
I just know that I can accurately gauge my earnings month to month, regardless of how much or little I upload. There is virtually no improvement and no fall off. I stay within a narrow 5-10% every month. If my sales are consistent I sell the same amount of licenses. If I make a few hundred in SOD's, then yes, the following weeks my sales are negligible until I end up with the same amount, month after month. I stopped uploading recently since there seemed to not be much point, but I just got laid off from my job a few days ago so I am working on video now and uploading again. Maybe a different medium will break my stagnation. Time will tell. At least it gets me looking at other agencies to upload more.
I don't believe one can have multiple contributor accounts there, but I am not sure and going through the TOS today doesn't seem like much fun.
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For those who are capped why not stop uploading and use the time more productively? If your content is really so good SS will see declining sales and customer dissatisfaction and do something about it.
Spoken like a true, clueless and ignorant hobbyist.
People who are professional and look at this as a business cannot simply abandon one of the major, if not the biggest earner of all their agencies.
Maybe you're in stock just to pay for a couple coffees, and despite that you are not shy about making ignorant comments towards professionals. But for a lot of people to abandon SS it means having to chose between paying the rent or buying food because half of their income would be lost.
Do you see why some people actually have reasons to take this issue seriously?
And this is the problems in these discussions. Some wannabees who need a year to make what professionals make in a month or even week think they have the same data and knowledge as them.
If you have reached your cap why would your sales go down if you stop uploading...Isn't that the whole point? As you are taking the issue seriously what are you actually doing about it? Did I say abandon? nope just stop uploading until a point when you feel resuming will actually bring an improved return. Seems perfectly sensible to me...perhaps you can tell me what I've missed?
Your sales would go down if you stop uploading for the same reasons everyone else's would.
If you stop uploading, at what point, exactly, would resuming uploading make a difference, do you think? How would anyone be able to figure that out? I'd like to know how you'd figure it out. Say you stop uploading today. Exactly which day this year or this week or this month would be the magic day resuming uploads would make a difference?
And why would stopping and then resuming change anything? You'd still be at the top tier royalty rate, still subject to the same algorithms that are suppressing your sales in favor of contributors with lower royalties.
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But if you are capped there is latent demand for your images which has been suffocated so that would take you to your cap without any need for new images. If SS had fewer contributors and complaining customers then they would have to react. You'd work out any changes in their algorithm by loading test images and measuring the result.
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Blimey I cant belieeeeeve how silly some people can get this to be?? haha! this is NOT a so called cap for each and every contributor, how can it be with about 50K contributors and lets forget the word cap for a second.
One "cap" so called is when the agency algorithm promotes 0.25c and thereby saving them millions of bucks in payouts. Another type of cap is the "fair" game. New contributors are sometimes favoured in the algorithm so that they dont get fed-up and calls bollocks to it all!
Yet another type of cap is to favour in algorithm the so called factories with some 100.000 plus images in files, then you have the aggregators, distributors etc. All in all these things reflect very badly on many peoples payouts.
No one have said Oh I personally and nobody else but me is punished ::) ::) ::)
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Thought you'd had enough? that didn't last long...so not a cap at all then? “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
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Thought you'd had enough? that didn't last long...so not a cap at all then? “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
Youre full of crap pal and you know it! end of story!
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Here's a real example, although with fictional numbers.
Lets say you have an average of about 50 downloads per day on a weekday. And that these 50 DL are from a portfolio that hasn't received new images in a while.
Then, you upload new content that does no compete with your old one, and you start selling about 10 images per day from these new images. It would be expected that you'd start to have 60 DL per day, no? At least for a while, since you've got images in the New filter and some may even get to the Popular.
Yet, what happens is that you still get about 50 DL per day, even with the 10 you get from the new content! That means that somehow your older images stopped being seen by buyers when in the previous period they sold regularly. How does this happen? And so often?
This has been happening to me. Almost half of my daily sales are from new content and my average is the same as before I uploaded them.
Is there anyone here who knows some basics of a science call Statistics? 😊
I'm reading a lot of nonsense here.
Too much nformations are missing to prove what you are saying. How many other images are added in meantime? For which reason on the earth you should think that your old 50 dl months will be reproduced forever and you simply add new dl to old dls?
This is a complete nonsense.
YES there is a cap! It's called statistics pyramid, more you go up harder is the next step and when you reach the top, that's your personal cap.
Want to double it? Just build a new pyramid, don't ask to add a stone more on the original one 😁
Sorry for my poor English
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I think there is enough sensible people around, with sufficient sales data and longevity in the industry, not to completely ignore what they are saying about having their sales capped.
Whilst I have never subscribed to the capping theory (Why? How? Who to? Why would SS do it?) I think there may be another plausible explanation. I reached top tier back in 2014, and my sales kept going up and up until end of 2016, so I don't think its that. But something big happened to me in the beginning of 2017, a massive 50% drop in photo DLs, that has never really recovered. SS went from 50% of my total microstock sales, to around 30%, and if I hadn’t started video before that, I would have suffered deeply. This also affected a number of other people I know who made good sales. They saw the same significant % drop as well.
This takes a while to explain, so please bear with me, and forgive the long post.
Now, this is the other possible explanation that I think of. SS is big on having very complex algorithms. They pride themselves on it, in fact. right? Also keeping in mind that one of the biggest problems that clients have is seeing the same images every time at the top of searches. This drives the buyers nuts – and away. Even building in a function of time into their algorithm probably doesn’t cut it.
Also keeping in mind that SS has some big buyers – the very large advertising agencies or whatever, that probably come in and buy up 10,000 photos or whatever for their needs. Now SS can’t afford to lose these guys. So, what if they wrote another algorithm just for them. If it was my business, I certainly would. And what if, that algorithm included, ‘if you have seen or purchased this image before – don’t show it!’ ?? And what about the consequences to all the contributors who have sold a hell of a lot of images in their past? How much of their port would automatically disappear from view from these big buyers?
We can’t prove the individual capping theory because when we look our images are still there. But what if there are special algorithms for special big buyers??
So, my question is to others – did you also notice a sudden drop at a particular time? And are there other people here who also experienced a significant drop in January 2017? I have been racking my brains the past 12 months as to what happened. Where did the buyers go? Not noticeably to other agencies. So, I am very, very interested in what others say. More contributors and more images being added to their database would not have resulted in such a big sudden drop, it would have been more gradual.
(To explain how much data I have to collect, I started Microstock in December 2012, now have 8,000 photos, and for the past 3 years have earned over $30,000, every year, from microstock. Also, I keep RPIs and stats on just about everything, and up until January 2017 they were always very predictable. I specialised in Holidays and Events, which makes it even more predictable.)
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Forgot to say, I don't see any actual capping on my day to day sales. Just a sudden drop in overall percentage starting in January 2017.
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While I'm way too small be be taken seriously I would say that it's quite possible. Although I suspect the explanation is simpler and SS made a dramatic change to their algorithm that had a very serious effect on a small number of big suppliers...perhaps to reduce their payment costs or to encourage new entrants...I can fully grasp that and it makes sense. Not at all like a "cap".
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Thanks.
My theory would only make sense if it happened to a significant number of contributors at the same time.
And yes - its not a cap, but may feel like a cap to some people.
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I recall that years and years ago many contributors to iStock were complaining about 'good days followed by bad days'. I experienced it myself - a couple of really good days would be followed by a sudden bad day. It all smacked of income limiting and was very obvious at the time.
But they didn't do it by manipulating the search. Search positions remained stable but sales dropped significantly. It seems the way they did it was to limit what registered buyers could see - in other words the search results seen by individual buyers were not necessarily the same as the results seen by contributors or visitors. iStock themselves confirmed that they could 'tailor' the search results for all registered buying accounts.
And this is probably what is happening at Shutterstock. Yes the search might move around a bit generally, but if they really want to control sales they simply have to remove or reduce certain results seen by particular buying accounts. They know which accounts are subscriptions, on-demand etc, and they know which contributors have had a run of above average sales or SODs. It would be a simple process to pull back those contributors from visibility to certain buying accounts. None of this will ever be seen by contributors or visitors - only by the registered buyers.
Interestingly I've noticed a similar situation on Dreamstime. With their famous 'three good weeks followed by two bad weeks' again the search doesn't seem to change, yet sales can be dramatically different. Again I suspect they are able to tailor results to particular buyers accounts. For instance in January I had a very good month of on-demand sales. Very good. For the last couple of weeks though, all I've had is subs. Somehow the on-demand sales have completely disappeared, more than just coincidence. They only way they can do this is to 'remove' my portfolio from the registered on-demand customers temporarily. Of course only the customers will actually see the changed search results.
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I recall that years and years ago many contributors to iStock were complaining about 'good days followed by bad days'. I experienced it myself - a couple of really good days would be followed by a sudden bad day. It all smacked of income limiting and was very obvious at the time.
It may have "smacked of income limiting" but did you do any statistical analysis of the numbers?
It sounds like it could just be mean reversion/regression to the mean. In other words, that unusually high or low figures are usually followed by figures that are closer to the average figure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean)
And this is actually about finance, but I think it could apply to stock sales as well.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/meanreversion.asp (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/meanreversion.asp)
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We can’t prove the individual capping theory because when we look our images are still there. But what if there are special algorithms for special big buyers??
Of course there is, and many other strange algorithms rules are hidden.
So what's the relationship with contributors?
If you are so good to fill the algorithms needs you'll always have a first place, sometimes with one image, sometimes with other.
These has nothing to do with the author of the image.
I'm generally speaking, not about your thoughts Millefiore, you seems really reasonable :)
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So, in summary.
1) No-one has shared any data that clearly shows a cap.
2) People seem to have very different ideas about what a cap is anyway. Some seem to say a cap is a decline in sales, and not a ceiling on income. They're very different things.
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We can’t prove the individual capping theory because when we look our images are still there. But what if there are special algorithms for special big buyers??
Of course there is
"Of course"? Any evidence?
Or do you just "know" that there is?
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We can’t prove the individual capping theory because when we look our images are still there. But what if there are special algorithms for special big buyers??
Of course there is
"Of course"? Any evidence?
Or do you just "know" that there is?
I mean it's really reasonable 😊 it would be strange if the search engines would ever simply give same answer to everyone everywhere. Too simple
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We can’t prove the individual capping theory because when we look our images are still there. But what if there are special algorithms for special big buyers??
Of course there is
"Of course"? Any evidence?
Or do you just "know" that there is?
I mean it's really reasonable 😊 it would be strange if the search engines would ever simply give same answer to everyone everywhere. Too simple
But that's a different point. It's a weaker claim.
Your claim was that there were different -- presumably you mean deliberately different -- results for big buyers of images.
Why would the stock agency want to create a different algorithm for big buyers?
What's the return on that effort?
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"Of course"? Any evidence?
Or do you just "know" that there is?
I mean it's really reasonable 😊 it would be strange if the search engines would ever simply give same answer to everyone everywhere. Too simple
But that's a different point. It's a weaker claim.
Your claim was that there were different -- presumably you mean deliberately different -- results for big buyers of images.
Why would the stock agency want to create a different algorithm for big buyers?
What's the return on that effort?
It seems logical to me, but I haven't did any test.
It seems logical that a big buyer could ask to agency for "special" or "curated" search instead of loosing hours searching on zillions of similar images.
Also for normal buyer it seems logical that some searches results change: let's say for example I'm an asian buyer and I'm searching for "women" or "people". It's logical that algorithm gives more relevance to images with "asian" in keyword. Or not?
Anyway this is only my though.
And it's a side question, not linked to your original question: in fact, there could be or not differences in search, but this is only from buyer side, not from the author side.
So, about the cap, it doesen't matter, this issue has no relevance :-)
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"Of course"? Any evidence?
Or do you just "know" that there is?
I mean it's really reasonable 😊 it would be strange if the search engines would ever simply give same answer to everyone everywhere. Too simple
But that's a different point. It's a weaker claim.
Your claim was that there were different -- presumably you mean deliberately different -- results for big buyers of images.
Why would the stock agency want to create a different algorithm for big buyers?
What's the return on that effort?
It seems logical to me, but I haven't did any test.
It seems logical that a big buyer could ask to agency for "special" or "curated" search instead of loosing hours searching on zillions of similar images.
Also for normal buyer it seems logical that some searches results change: let's say for example I'm an asian buyer and I'm searching for "women" or "people". It's logical that algorithm gives more relevance to images with "asian" in keyword. Or not?
Anyway this is only my though.
And it's a side question, not linked to your original question: in fact, there could be or not differences in search, but this is only from buyer side, not from the author side.
So, about the cap, it doesen't matter, this issue has no relevance :-)
Good points. BTW I'm in East Asia. I just did a search for "woman" on iStock. Only a few of the pix on the first page were not of East Asian females.
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But that's a different point. It's a weaker claim.
Your claim was that there were different -- presumably you mean deliberately different -- results for big buyers of images.
Why would the stock agency want to create a different algorithm for big buyers?
What's the return on that effort?
It seems logical to me, but I haven't did any test.
It seems logical that a big buyer could ask to agency for "special" or "curated" search instead of loosing hours searching on zillions of similar images.
Also for normal buyer it seems logical that some searches results change: let's say for example I'm an asian buyer and I'm searching for "women" or "people". It's logical that algorithm gives more relevance to images with "asian" in keyword. Or not?
Anyway this is only my though.
And it's a side question, not linked to your original question: in fact, there could be or not differences in search, but this is only from buyer side, not from the author side.
So, about the cap, it doesen't matter, this issue has no relevance :-)
Of course, big buyers can ask for "special" or "curated" search and results, that is why SS Premiere and other VIP services exist.
Theoretically, all our images can be a part of these VIP services at SS's discretion:
As a Shutterstock contributor, your content is already available to Premier clients if you have opted into both Enhanced License and Sensitive Use. This includes your Shutterstock editorial content, which will appear on the Image tab, rather than on this new Premier Editorial tab.
Regarding our Premier Editorial offering, photographers who contribute to the Premier Editorial collection have been selected by the assignment team based on their prior work in the news, sport and entertainment industry. While we are not currently accepting applications, we do evaluate contributors on shutterstock.com and in the past we have selected contributors to be a part of our Premier Editorial team.
https://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/topic/92730-launching-a-new-premier-editorial-tab-on-shutterstockcom/?do=findComment&comment=1650025 (https://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/topic/92730-launching-a-new-premier-editorial-tab-on-shutterstockcom/?do=findComment&comment=1650025)
https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/what-premier-select-means-for-shutterstock-contributors (https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/what-premier-select-means-for-shutterstock-contributors)
Cap or not cap, we are not treated equally, neither are buyers.
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But they didn't do it by manipulating the search. Search positions remained stable but sales dropped significantly. It seems the way they did it was to limit what registered buyers could see - in other words the search results seen by individual buyers were not necessarily the same as the results seen by contributors or visitors. iStock themselves confirmed that they could 'tailor' the search results for all registered buying accounts.
Hi, I can verify your claim. I work in an advertising agency and regularly buy pictures at SS. What I have noticed is that when you are logged in the results change completely. I would even say that they are sometimes worse and do not deliver what you are looking for. Therefore, we are always looking for photos when we are not logged in and only log in for the purchase process. Unfortunately I do not know exactly when it started.
(https://i.imgur.com/jayJi6il.jpg)
https://imgur.com/a/ufAaZ#jayJi6i (https://imgur.com/a/ufAaZ#jayJi6i)
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It doesn't have to be a cap to be a change. Many good answers like location, which we've found before, or customer, or changes for different exposure. No I don't think any of this is down to an individuals or earning group, just a planned change how things work, that changes all the time. No one is being penalized personally. Remember if one picture goes down, another must go up. You won't see me complaining when I get four times my usual daily downloads.
https://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/topic/73071-answers-to-the-questions-for-scott-thread/
"Our search rankings are complex and based on a number of factors. Keywords, freshness, and popularity (downloads) all factor into search results. We focus on providing customers with the best image that matches their needs and we don't favor specific contributors or portfolios. Location can be a factor when the search query calls for it (for example, "streets of New York"), or when region-specific results are appropriate.
We believe that if we always match the best possible media with a customer, over time this will lead to more satisfied customers, and in the end more downloads (and more royalties) for our contributors. That belief has delivered over 400 million paid image licenses to date.
Search is powered by a set of services that include machine-learning algorithms: a type of software that is able to improve over time. In a very simple sense, the goal of an algorithm is maximize downloads. To get the right media in front of a customer, the algorithm takes many factors into account, such as how well the keyword matches a search query, or the past success of this particular photo, music clip, or video. For some search queries, customers are looking for newer content or content that has not been used before, and the algorithm will leverage factors such as the age of the media; for other queries, age is less important. There are many, many other factors that the algorithm takes into account, and we are adding more every day. One of the ways we improve our algorithm over time is to add new factors. We are also frequently making small changes in how the algorithm weighs these factors."
Maybe not specific but the idea is not as simple as lets cut down someone who makes more and promote people who make less. Not as easy as setting a limit/cap on earnings. Ideas that many people have included in this thread are confirmed, region, buyer,has it sold before, freshness, age, and it's always changing. Sometimes it could favor some of us, other times lower earnings of some of us. We don't know, they aren't telling. No agency tells us how they actually present search results to a buyer. All this might have an effect of producing a level or earnings or a personal drop, but that's not their intention.
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Ok, I'll bite.
Is there any sign of a cap in this graph?
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I don't believe in caps in the slightest, but if I did, and I was trying to discredit your evidence, I'd have to say:
That's a three month period that happened several months ago. Is there a reason you're not showing more months, or more recent months? Maybe they don't fit with the steady growth shown in your small excerpt?
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A longer time
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I recall that years and years ago many contributors to iStock were complaining about 'good days followed by bad days'. I experienced it myself - a couple of really good days would be followed by a sudden bad day. It all smacked of income limiting and was very obvious at the time.
But they didn't do it by manipulating the search. Search positions remained stable but sales dropped significantly. It seems the way they did it was to limit what registered buyers could see - in other words the search results seen by individual buyers were not necessarily the same as the results seen by contributors or visitors. iStock themselves confirmed that they could 'tailor' the search results for all registered buying accounts.
And this is probably what is happening at Shutterstock. Yes the search might move around a bit generally, but if they really want to control sales they simply have to remove or reduce certain results seen by particular buying accounts. They know which accounts are subscriptions, on-demand etc, and they know which contributors have had a run of above average sales or SODs. It would be a simple process to pull back those contributors from visibility to certain buying accounts. None of this will ever be seen by contributors or visitors - only by the registered buyers.
Interestingly I've noticed a similar situation on Dreamstime. With their famous 'three good weeks followed by two bad weeks' again the search doesn't seem to change, yet sales can be dramatically different. Again I suspect they are able to tailor results to particular buyers accounts. For instance in January I had a very good month of on-demand sales. Very good. For the last couple of weeks though, all I've had is subs. Somehow the on-demand sales have completely disappeared, more than just coincidence. They only way they can do this is to 'remove' my portfolio from the registered on-demand customers temporarily. Of course only the customers will actually see the changed search results.
Exactly! glad you remembered!! I got a buyer that I personally know at Y&R Ad-agency on the other side of the world to look for a specific pic of mine, in his search he found it, 14th pic on page 16. In my search is was 7th pic on page 3.....IS did actually admit to this many years back!
This infentile part-time ghost-busting brigade actually think they physically put a cap, a lid on a jar on the whole thing, hahaha! . On the other hand who can blame them theyre fresh in the game.
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A longer time
That looks a lot like a cumulative revenue chart so it will increase over time.
I have one just like that but it tells nothing about revenue caps.
Are more interesting chart would be a monthly revenue chart i.e. how much earned each month.
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A longer time
That looks a lot like a cumulative revenue chart so it will increase over time.
I have one just like that but it tells nothing about revenue caps.
Are more interesting chart would be a monthly revenue chart i.e. how much earned each month.
Surely a accumulated revenue chart should show a cap, as the accumulated revenue would stay static for a while when the cap was active.
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That's better!
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A longer time
That looks a lot like a cumulative revenue chart so it will increase over time.
I have one just like that but it tells nothing about revenue caps.
Are more interesting chart would be a monthly revenue chart i.e. how much earned each month.
Here you are. Any sign of a cap?
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A longer time
That looks a lot like a cumulative revenue chart so it will increase over time.
I have one just like that but it tells nothing about revenue caps.
Are more interesting chart would be a monthly revenue chart i.e. how much earned each month.
Surely a accumulated revenue chart should show a cap, as the accumulated revenue would stay static for a while when the cap was active.
The accumulated revenue would increase in a linear fashion unless the cap was zero. Either way graphs on their own prove nothing as an individual might think for some reason the cap applies specifically to them or a few other people. People will go on believing what they want unless SS come out and say "yes folks there is a cap.......so what?"
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A longer time
That looks a lot like a cumulative revenue chart so it will increase over time.
I have one just like that but it tells nothing about revenue caps.
Are more interesting chart would be a monthly revenue chart i.e. how much earned each month.
Here you are.
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A longer time
That looks a lot like a cumulative revenue chart so it will increase over time.
I have one just like that but it tells nothing about revenue caps.
Are more interesting chart would be a monthly revenue chart i.e. how much earned each month.
Here you are.
Well that looks capped to me the monthly revenue is flat so thanks for the proof :D
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The main question for me is... if there is a cap, why is everyone's different? Surely the general level of sales that somebody gets based on the number of items they have, the quality of those items, how much commercial appeal there is in those items, how much the person markets them and how well they title, describe and keyword them... is what sets the 'cap'?
And how would one identify the difference between that kind of cap, and one that is enforced by the agency?
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A longer time
That looks a lot like a cumulative revenue chart so it will increase over time.
I have one just like that but it tells nothing about revenue caps.
Are more interesting chart would be a monthly revenue chart i.e. how much earned each month.
Here you are.
Well that looks capped to me the monthly revenue is flat so thanks for the proof :D
You really think that shows a cap? You mean I'm wrong?
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The main question for me is... if there is a cap, why is everyone's different? Surely the general level of sales that somebody gets based on the number of items they have, the quality of those items, how much commercial appeal there is in those items, how much the person markets them and how well they title, describe and keyword them... is what sets the 'cap'?
And how would one identify the difference between that kind of cap, and one that is enforced by the agency?
If there were a cap you would expect to see less variation so every month close to $1k or whatever it happens to be. Unless the figure is exactly $1k then it becomes a matter of opinion if its natural variability or a result of manipulation. The discussion will never end.........(it seems some also think its a cap on rate of growth but same principle).
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The main question for me is... if there is a cap, why is everyone's different? Surely the general level of sales that somebody gets based on the number of items they have, the quality of those items, how much commercial appeal there is in those items, how much the person markets them and how well they title, describe and keyword them... is what sets the 'cap'?
And how would one identify the difference between that kind of cap, and one that is enforced by the agency?
Listen to Hatman! in a previous post, thats the way it works. Its not like a cap for each individual that Pawsy69 is ref to and its not like a lid on a marmelade-jar. Its different orchestrations of the algorithms that in the end will deteriorate many peoples incomes. In many geographical searches many peoples ports are not even included. A chinese buyer of lets say office-workers will have very little interest in lets say African workers obviously they like to see chinese workers and vice versa!
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At the start of this if someone had said do agencies change algorithms which boost sales of some contributors and reduce them for others? I doubt there would be much disagreement.
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Well if Chinese buyers prefer to buy images of Chinese workers... then surely it's the contributors fault for not having photos of Chinese workers in their port? Changing the algorithm may mean the Chinese buyer is less likely to see those African worker images, but as you say... would they buy them even if they were near the top of the list?
That's not a cap... that's effectively marketing to your buyers and making sure you're presenting them with relevant results.
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Well if Chinese buyers prefer to buy images of Chinese workers... then surely it's the contributors fault for not having photos of Chinese workers in their port? Changing the algorithm may mean the Chinese buyer is less likely to see those African worker images, but as you say... would they buy them even if they were near the top of the list?
That's not a cap... that's effectively marketing to your buyers and making sure you're presenting them with relevant results.
Correct clever marketing! only the different algorithms do hurt many peoples earnings. Cap as such?? no not the kind of cap that some here are talking about and for each and every contributor that would be impossible and of course highly ethically questionable.
There was one agency trying for something like that some years back, they got done but re-surfaced under a different name!
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A longer time
This proves absolutely nothing. Any of us could show a chart from our first few years and it would show steady growth. Nobody's debating seeing growth up to a certain point.
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I have an amazing idea. It may not settle the cap argument once and for all, but it might come close... one way or the other. Just need to do the math and run the numbers, but I'm mildly excited.
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I have an amazing idea. It may not settle the cap argument once and for all, but it might come close... one way or the other. Just need to do the math and run the numbers, but I'm mildly excited.
Please don't. I hate knowledge.
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C'mon then.
Show us your spreadsheets. Show us your graphs. Show us your workings.
I can't because there are no caps. Show me proof of Nessie, the Bermuda Triangle, Vampires, shape shifting birds, or a yeti. You can't because just like caps, they are a children's fairy tale or belief based on repeated false evidence. There's no proof and that's why believers defend so much. They toss out other myths to prove the first one, like new people are pushed to the front. But wait, I'm on the first page of a number of searches and have been for those same for a long time. I guess SS like me better. :)
I think they read this forum and punish people who write bad things. So you better watch out, they're making a list and checking it twice, Gonna find out who's naughty or nice. SS caps are coming to town. Then they will change the search so only people here drop down and push horrible new cheap images to the front so buyers will say, SS has terrible photos, we need to go someplace else.
Just because somebody makes a claims and a small minority of believers agree and make the same claim, that don't make it proof. Just false rumors. The number of wrong people doesn't make evidence, it just means more people who have no sense.
Another failure of the (incomplete) "inductive logic" so dear to Namussi ;)
Another turkey lost his head. ;D
There is nothing wrong in promoting fresh content.
Actually, most probably, this is what many old SS customers, bored by the "same old, same old" are asking for.
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A longer time
This proves absolutely nothing. Any of us could show a chart from our first few years and it would show steady growth. Nobody's debating seeing growth up to a certain point.
Well, I've shared data. Now it's your turn....
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The main question for me is... if there is a cap, why is everyone's different? Surely the general level of sales that somebody gets based on the number of items they have, the quality of those items, how much commercial appeal there is in those items, how much the person markets them and how well they title, describe and keyword them... is what sets the 'cap'?
And how would one identify the difference between that kind of cap, and one that is enforced by the agency?
It's the wall, just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
You built the system, you supported the crime, and now the system owns you, and that's the crime. The Micros own you. They are like a drug that took over your life, made you dependent and then stole your soul. Break the addiction, leave micro, stop the punishment and abuse, you are being a self exposed victim. You can leave, just go, don't you see, it's over now, not the same.
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The main question for me is... if there is a cap, why is everyone's different? Surely the general level of sales that somebody gets based on the number of items they have, the quality of those items, how much commercial appeal there is in those items, how much the person markets them and how well they title, describe and keyword them... is what sets the 'cap'?
And how would one identify the difference between that kind of cap, and one that is enforced by the agency?
It's the wall, just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
You built the system, you supported the crime, and now the system owns you, and that's the crime. The Micros own you. They are like a drug that took over your life, made you dependent and then stole your soul. Break the addiction, leave micro, stop the punishment and abuse, you are being a self exposed victim. You can leave, just go, don't you see, it's over now, not the same.
Ok, you go first.
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I think there is enough sensible people around, with sufficient sales data and longevity in the industry, not to completely ignore what they are saying about having their sales capped.
Whilst I have never subscribed to the capping theory (Why? How? Who to? Why would SS do it?) I think there may be another plausible explanation. I reached top tier back in 2014, and my sales kept going up and up until end of 2016, so I don't think its that. But something big happened to me in the beginning of 2017, a massive 50% drop in photo DLs, that has never really recovered. SS went from 50% of my total microstock sales, to around 30%, and if I hadn’t started video before that, I would have suffered deeply. This also affected a number of other people I know who made good sales. They saw the same significant % drop as well.
This takes a while to explain, so please bear with me, and forgive the long post.
Now, this is the other possible explanation that I think of. SS is big on having very complex algorithms. They pride themselves on it, in fact. right? Also keeping in mind that one of the biggest problems that clients have is seeing the same images every time at the top of searches. This drives the buyers nuts – and away. Even building in a function of time into their algorithm probably doesn’t cut it.
Also keeping in mind that SS has some big buyers – the very large advertising agencies or whatever, that probably come in and buy up 10,000 photos or whatever for their needs. Now SS can’t afford to lose these guys. So, what if they wrote another algorithm just for them. If it was my business, I certainly would. And what if, that algorithm included, ‘if you have seen or purchased this image before – don’t show it!’ ?? And what about the consequences to all the contributors who have sold a hell of a lot of images in their past? How much of their port would automatically disappear from view from these big buyers?
We can’t prove the individual capping theory because when we look our images are still there. But what if there are special algorithms for special big buyers??
So, my question is to others – did you also notice a sudden drop at a particular time? And are there other people here who also experienced a significant drop in January 2017? I have been racking my brains the past 12 months as to what happened. Where did the buyers go? Not noticeably to other agencies. So, I am very, very interested in what others say. More contributors and more images being added to their database would not have resulted in such a big sudden drop, it would have been more gradual.
(To explain how much data I have to collect, I started Microstock in December 2012, now have 8,000 photos, and for the past 3 years have earned over $30,000, every year, from microstock. Also, I keep RPIs and stats on just about everything, and up until January 2017 they were always very predictable. I specialised in Holidays and Events, which makes it even more predictable.)
@Milleflore
I had a similar drop in sales some six month before your reported drop, and I know of many large port, long term contributors noticing the same phenomenon of sales dropping by 40-50% virtually overnight. At the time, I sought answer on forums but was slapped down. A number of contributors who had not been affected just told me I needed to work harder and study the market more, believing that the problem must be something I was doing wrong. It was very upsetting to be suddenly losing several hundred dollars per month, but also distressing to be reaching out to a community to share experiences, only to be told that the fault was mine and I needed to wake up and smell the coffee.
Those who have experienced this will be entirely sympathetic to your plight, and will also be looking for answers. Those who haven't yet found themselves in this position will be quietly - or maybe not so quietly - smug. It doesn't matter which camp you are in, as neither side will be able to give you answers. Those who have experienced a drop with be looking for reasonable theories to explain things, and those who are still riding high will shout those theories down.
I don't buy in to the 'cap' conspiracy theory per se, but I do believe that we are victims of arbitrary search changes and, once you start to lose ground in the rankings, it's a slippery slope to the bottom.
I'm also sure that Shutterstock employ a good team of behavioural psychologists to analyse not just buyer behaviour, but also to anticipate contributor behaviour. When your sales dropped what was your instinct - quit, or work harder to get back to where your were? Are you still contributing a year on? Do you set yourself deadlines of 'if this doesn't improve by month end I'll stop uploading', only to be thrown a large SOD just when you are ready to throw in the towel? Are you telling yourself that you need to diversify to grow, trying new media or searching for an elusive niche? Have you adjusted your monthly expectations down, and effectively accepted the new 'norm'?
Look at the behavioural science behind the forming of habits - it only takes about 21 days for an action to become a habit - and we will continue this habit while we are being rewarded, making it deep-seated and harder to break. Companies know how to hook us, and have changed their reward pattern from regular to random, which keeps us engaged and makes us crave reward. On the flip side, an as many of us know, breaking a habit is difficult, even if we know it's something really bad for us. Many of us have joked about the addictive nature of this business, and I think that's exactly the truth. I'm 10 years into this, so it's a big life-shift to give it all up.
We are nothing more than hopeful lab rats craving a reward, and we are totally at the mercy of these big corporations to throw out a treat. They can, and will, do what they like, because their advisers tell them that, in reality, 80% of the hardened contributors will moan but carry on working. For those they lose, there is a queue of newcomers stepping over each other to get in the door.
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The overwhelming majority of stock -photographers are Bipolar and many of these are on the verge of Borderline. No its not a pretty business. I agree.
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I don't buy in to the 'cap' conspiracy theory per se, but I do believe that we are victims of arbitrary search changes and, once you start to lose ground in the rankings, it's a slippery slope to the bottom.
I'm also sure that Shutterstock employ a good team of behavioural psychologists to analyse not just buyer behaviour, but also to anticipate contributor behaviour.
Arbitrary search changes are simply a natural jobs for agencies
They have to sell more images, simply.
They are working for you, for me or for anybody who is able to produce good images that sells.
There is nothing wrong in this.
I really doubt that Shutterstock or any other agency want to invest in hours and people psychologist team that analyse contributor thoughts....
Shutterstock, and others, are not "psychology". They have zillion of files and simpy want to have maximum earnings return, so they try different way. And it's exactly the same as contributors do (or should do).
if I own shutterstock, I would never think to spend money and time for a specialist psychologys team ;-)
Believe me... more industry is big. less is worried about the base economy
They don't really care about YOU. They knows about entire world of contributors, and it's really diferent thing.
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I don't buy in to the 'cap' conspiracy theory per se, but I do believe that we are victims of arbitrary search changes and, once you start to lose ground in the rankings, it's a slippery slope to the bottom.
I'm also sure that Shutterstock employ a good team of behavioural psychologists to analyse not just buyer behaviour, but also to anticipate contributor behaviour.
Arbitrary search changes are simply a natural jobs for agencies
They have to sell more images, simply.
They are working for you, for me or for anybody who is able to produce good images that sells.
There is nothing wrong in this.
I really doubt that Shutterstock or any other agency want invest in hours and people psychologist team that analyse contributor thoughts....
Shutterstock, and others, are not "psychology". They have zillion of files and simpy want to have maximum earnings return, so they try different way. And it's exactly the same as contributors do.
if I own shutterstock, I would never think to spend money and time for a specialist psychologys team ;-)
Believe me... more industry is big. less is worried about the base economy
They don't really care about YOU. They knows about entire world of contributors, and it's really diferent thing.
I think you misunderstand me, and assume I am criticising Shutterstock for their actions. I'm not - I'm merely stating things as I see it. I, and others, may see a negative impact from an algorithm change, but others will see a positive. This kind of shift actually backs up the random reward theory. It's very good for business from Shutterstock's perspective and keeps more contributors engaged for longer.
As for doubting whether Shutterstock, or any other large agency would invest in analysing contributor behaviour, I'd be very surprised if they didn't. It's common practice for companies to assess the productivity of their staff in this way and, as Shutterstock is totally reliant on their contributors to provide a steady flow of new, quality work, they are unlikely to leave things to chance and misjudge the mood of their suppliers.
I don't expect them to care about ME, I expect them to care about their business, which is what they are doing.
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I think there is enough sensible people around, with sufficient sales data and longevity in the industry, not to completely ignore what they are saying about having their sales capped.
Whilst I have never subscribed to the capping theory (Why? How? Who to? Why would SS do it?) I think there may be another plausible explanation. I reached top tier back in 2014, and my sales kept going up and up until end of 2016, so I don't think its that. But something big happened to me in the beginning of 2017, a massive 50% drop in photo DLs, that has never really recovered. SS went from 50% of my total microstock sales, to around 30%, and if I hadn’t started video before that, I would have suffered deeply. This also affected a number of other people I know who made good sales. They saw the same significant % drop as well.
This takes a while to explain, so please bear with me, and forgive the long post.
Now, this is the other possible explanation that I think of. SS is big on having very complex algorithms. They pride themselves on it, in fact. right? Also keeping in mind that one of the biggest problems that clients have is seeing the same images every time at the top of searches. This drives the buyers nuts – and away. Even building in a function of time into their algorithm probably doesn’t cut it.
Also keeping in mind that SS has some big buyers – the very large advertising agencies or whatever, that probably come in and buy up 10,000 photos or whatever for their needs. Now SS can’t afford to lose these guys. So, what if they wrote another algorithm just for them. If it was my business, I certainly would. And what if, that algorithm included, ‘if you have seen or purchased this image before – don’t show it!’ ?? And what about the consequences to all the contributors who have sold a hell of a lot of images in their past? How much of their port would automatically disappear from view from these big buyers?
We can’t prove the individual capping theory because when we look our images are still there. But what if there are special algorithms for special big buyers??
So, my question is to others – did you also notice a sudden drop at a particular time? And are there other people here who also experienced a significant drop in January 2017? I have been racking my brains the past 12 months as to what happened. Where did the buyers go? Not noticeably to other agencies. So, I am very, very interested in what others say. More contributors and more images being added to their database would not have resulted in such a big sudden drop, it would have been more gradual.
(To explain how much data I have to collect, I started Microstock in December 2012, now have 8,000 photos, and for the past 3 years have earned over $30,000, every year, from microstock. Also, I keep RPIs and stats on just about everything, and up until January 2017 they were always very predictable. I specialised in Holidays and Events, which makes it even more predictable.)
@Milleflore
I had a similar drop in sales some six month before your reported drop, and I know of many large port, long term contributors noticing the same phenomenon of sales dropping by 40-50% virtually overnight. At the time, I sought answer on forums but was slapped down. A number of contributors who had not been affected just told me I needed to work harder and study the market more, believing that the problem must be something I was doing wrong. It was very upsetting to be suddenly losing several hundred dollars per month, but also distressing to be reaching out to a community to share experiences, only to be told that the fault was mine and I needed to wake up and smell the coffee.
Those who have experienced this will be entirely sympathetic to your plight, and will also be looking for answers. Those who haven't yet found themselves in this position will be quietly - or maybe not so quietly - smug. It doesn't matter which camp you are in, as neither side will be able to give you answers. Those who have experienced a drop with be looking for reasonable theories to explain things, and those who are still riding high will shout those theories down.
I don't buy in to the 'cap' conspiracy theory per se, but I do believe that we are victims of arbitrary search changes and, once you start to lose ground in the rankings, it's a slippery slope to the bottom.
I'm also sure that Shutterstock employ a good team of behavioural psychologists to analyse not just buyer behaviour, but also to anticipate contributor behaviour. When your sales dropped what was your instinct - quit, or work harder to get back to where your were? Are you still contributing a year on? Do you set yourself deadlines of 'if this doesn't improve by month end I'll stop uploading', only to be thrown a large SOD just when you are ready to throw in the towel? Are you telling yourself that you need to diversify to grow, trying new media or searching for an elusive niche? Have you adjusted your monthly expectations down, and effectively accepted the new 'norm'?
Look at the behavioural science behind the forming of habits - it only takes about 21 days for an action to become a habit - and we will continue this habit while we are being rewarded, making it deep-seated and harder to break. Companies know how to hook us, and have changed their reward pattern from regular to random, which keeps us engaged and makes us crave reward. On the flip side, an as many of us know, breaking a habit is difficult, even if we know it's something really bad for us. Many of us have joked about the addictive nature of this business, and I think that's exactly the truth. I'm 10 years into this, so it's a big life-shift to give it all up.
We are nothing more than hopeful lab rats craving a reward, and we are totally at the mercy of these big corporations to throw out a treat. They can, and will, do what they like, because their advisers tell them that, in reality, 80% of the hardened contributors will moan but carry on working. For those they lose, there is a queue of newcomers stepping over each other to get in the door.
Thank you for posting this, Kat! Excellent post. I agree with you. And as for the behavioural psychology - I believe you. This is part of any research and marketing that large firms should do, anyway. Probably more for buying patterns - but who knows?
As for what I did, I stopped shooting specifically for photos last year. And now just focus on video. Any photos that I uploaded the last 12 months came from my video shoots. I figured, I might as well keep feeding the beast. LOL. But I spent less than 1/2 day per week on editing and uploading photos. I don't think it warrants any more of my time than that. But now I hope and pray that the same thing doesn't happen to video. So far, they have seemed to have left the algorithms alone for footage, and don't mess around with them like they do for stills.
But I did jokingly say to a friend the other day about the demise of photo sales ... "Maybe there is a shelf-life for all contributors, and the algorithms will get you in the end!" LOL (But maybe its not so much of a joke????
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@KuriousKat
Sounds just like my story. It was a shock to have my sales plummet very quickly. I tried to upload more but it didn't help. I have given up after 11 years. I went out to an event yesterday and it was the first time I wasn't shooting like crazy for stock. I got an empty feeling for sure.
I still like to hang around the forums though. You guys are pretty fun :)
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I'm also sure that Shutterstock employ a good team of behavioural psychologists to analyse not just buyer behaviour, but also to anticipate contributor behaviour.
That doesn't scare me. I am a tarot reader.
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The overwhelming majority of stock -photographers are Bipolar and many of these are on the verge of Borderline. No its not a pretty business. I agree.
Show us the statistics that back that up.
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The overwhelming majority of stock -photographers are Bipolar and many of these are on the verge of Borderline. No its not a pretty business. I agree.
Show us the statistics that back that up.
I cant since there is a CAP on these conditions! ;D
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@KuriousKat
Sounds just like my story. It was a shock to have my sales plummet very quickly. I tried to upload more but it didn't help. I have given up after 11 years. I went out to an event yesterday and it was the first time I wasn't shooting like crazy for stock. I got an empty feeling for sure.
I still like to hang around the forums though. You guys are pretty fun :)
Thats sad to hear and I know the feeling. did trad stock for many, many years before micro even came on the scene in 2004 and from years of commissioned work I also have my own small trad library run in the trad way offline.
See this is what you want to do, to get the incentive back you have to go down two avenues one for micro and the other more in the traditional way now that way you can always alternate and spend time with the ones paying back and only work with agencies whos output can match your input and if they cant well then just get rid of them. Then theyre a waste of space. :)
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The overwhelming majority of stock -photographers are Bipolar and many of these are on the verge of Borderline. No its not a pretty business. I agree.
Self-knowledge is a beautiful thing.
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I recall that years and years ago many contributors to iStock were complaining about 'good days followed by bad days'. I experienced it myself - a couple of really good days would be followed by a sudden bad day. It all smacked of income limiting and was very obvious at the time.
But they didn't do it by manipulating the search. Search positions remained stable but sales dropped significantly. It seems the way they did it was to limit what registered buyers could see - in other words the search results seen by individual buyers were not necessarily the same as the results seen by contributors or visitors. iStock themselves confirmed that they could 'tailor' the search results for all registered buying accounts.
And this is probably what is happening at Shutterstock. Yes the search might move around a bit generally, but if they really want to control sales they simply have to remove or reduce certain results seen by particular buying accounts. They know which accounts are subscriptions, on-demand etc, and they know which contributors have had a run of above average sales or SODs. It would be a simple process to pull back those contributors from visibility to certain buying accounts. None of this will ever be seen by contributors or visitors - only by the registered buyers.
Interestingly I've noticed a similar situation on Dreamstime. With their famous 'three good weeks followed by two bad weeks' again the search doesn't seem to change, yet sales can be dramatically different. Again I suspect they are able to tailor results to particular buyers accounts. For instance in January I had a very good month of on-demand sales. Very good. For the last couple of weeks though, all I've had is subs. Somehow the on-demand sales have completely disappeared, more than just coincidence. They only way they can do this is to 'remove' my portfolio from the registered on-demand customers temporarily. Of course only the customers will actually see the changed search results.
Your post should get more upvotes. It's the simplest "non-conspiracy" explanation and like yourself have noticed, it's not SS exclusive. I have tried searching for my images using proxies but they yield the same results. All non logged users see basically the same all over the world. It would be interesting to see the experience of contributors who also have buyer accounts.
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The overwhelming majority of stock -photographers are Bipolar and many of these are on the verge of Borderline. No its not a pretty business. I agree.
Self-knowledge is a beautiful thing.
Yep!!
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So my idea, which I;d do myself, but I'm pretty rubbish at Excel... is to create a kind of calculator. Here's your boxes:
- Sales for 2016
- Average number of items you had in 2016
- Average number of items you had in 2017
- Average number of items SS had in 2016 (video number if you just do videos, photo if you just do photos, combined if both)
- Average number of items SS had in 2017 (video number if you just do videos, photo if you just do photos, combined if both)
- Expected sale for 2017 (based on 2016 sales multiplied by increase in your content, divided by amount of new competition)
- Actual sales for 2017
- Difference between the two
And that last one is the big one. We'll call that X. You see, currently, everyone has different amounts of items, that sell better or worse than everyone else... and everyone is uploading new items at a different rate, so it's really hard to make comparisons. So people's experiences, rightly or wrongly, come off more as opinions rather than facts. Mainly because nobody really wants to, or can be bothered to, share all their data.
With this calculator, all you have to do is share that last figure, hopefully over multiple years. So (for ease of maths) if you make $1000 from 1000 items in 2016 (And SS have a total of 10,000 items), and you have 1500 items in 2017 (And SS have a total of 20,000 items) then your expected earnings would be $750. So if you make $375 then X is -50% and if you make $825 then X is +10%.
I could be wrong, but I've got a vague feeling that X might be pretty much the same for most authors. Give or take. Any increases over you expected earnings could be explained by more exposure to your items over time, for example... and any decreases could be attributed to people already having bought your item or it not being as relevant any more. I/e/ if somebody sells mainly images of people holding mobile phones, they're going to notice a bigger drop in older items than somebody who does photos of landscapes and the like.
If everyone's percentage increase/decrease is around the same, then it's very likely that there isn't a cap. If the results are all over the place then it's possible there is one. I just think there's too many variables for any comparisons to be drawn with people just giving anecdotal evidence. A lot of times you'll get stuff like this that people take at face value when there's a bit more to the story...
"I can't believe I've only had 5 sales this month!". Yeah, but you normally get 6 a month, so it's not all that crazy.
"My sales have dropped 50% in the last year!" Yeah, but did you forget you deleted half of your portfolio this year?
"Sales have steadily been decreasing year on your". That's understandable since you haven't uploaded anything in five years.
So yeah... if anyone wants to make the SSFSSSC* then that would be great. Then there's no "ooh, but this", or "ahh, but that". We can say... "what's your X%? Give us the numbers"
*Space Stock Footage Shutterstock Sales Calculator
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ss content went up by 46% last year my content nothing like that and I pretty much maintained sales. I think your model is flawed as it assumes upload quality remains unchanged. Given changes in acceptance criteria I think we know much of whats being uploaded is unsellable and distorts the figure. Also the "cap" theory is that it applies only to the top 1% or whatever the figure is therefore the evidence that 99% don't get a cap doesn't prove anything.
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There's lots of things it doesn't account for. Unfortunately it's not a grand unified theory of everything to do with Microsoft sales... just hat it means there will be a point of reference when comparing increases and declines.
At present there's far too many variables to draw any kind of useful data from peoples' anecdotal evidence of how they are doing. This would still leave variables, but it would eliminate the big ones... like how much somebody normally makes, how much new stuff they have uploaded over the past year, and how many more files they're competing against. So theres a bit more of an even playing field when discussing performance.
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There's lots of things it doesn't account for. Unfortunately it's not a grand unified theory of everything to do with Microsoft sales... just hat it means there will be a point of reference when comparing increases and declines.
At present there's far too many variables to draw any kind of useful data from peoples' anecdotal evidence of how they are doing. This would still leave variables, but it would eliminate the big ones... like how much somebody normally makes, how much new stuff they have uploaded over the past year, and how many more files they're competing against. So theres a bit more of an even playing field when discussing performance.
Fair enough though the thread started about the "Cap".
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Also the "cap" theory is that it applies only to the top 1% or whatever the figure is therefore the evidence that 99% don't get a cap doesn't prove anything.
There seem to be several types of cap under discussion.
One is "trust me I've been doing this a long time" cap for earnings. Apparently the little people will never suffer this.
Another is a short-term thing: once you've earned so much in a week or a month you earn little or nothing more during the rest of period
Another is the good-day-followed-by-several-bad-days cap.
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Also the "cap" theory is that it applies only to the top 1% or whatever the figure is therefore the evidence that 99% don't get a cap doesn't prove anything.
There seem to be several types of cap under discussion.
One is "trust me I've been doing this a long time" cap for earnings. Apparently the little people will never suffer this.
Another is a short-term thing: once you've earned so much in a week or a month you earn little or nothing more during the rest of period
Another is the good-day-followed-by-several-bad-days cap.
And a third is
Its an adjustable cap used to explain any downturn in sales ;-).
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I just go by the heuristic principle otherwise known as Occam's razor. If there are easier ways to explain something, in the absence of evidence, there is no need to complicate the explanation. On the other hand, I understand the frustration, and if a belief, however random, makes it more bearable, go for it.
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Also the "cap" theory is that it applies only to the top 1% or whatever the figure is therefore the evidence that 99% don't get a cap doesn't prove anything.
There seem to be several types of cap under discussion.
One is "trust me I've been doing this a long time" cap for earnings. Apparently the little people will never suffer this.
Another is a short-term thing: once you've earned so much in a week or a month you earn little or nothing more during the rest of period
Another is the good-day-followed-by-several-bad-days cap.
And a third is
Its an adjustable cap used to explain any downturn in sales ;-).
I just go by the heuristic principle otherwise known as Occam's razor. If there are easier ways to explain something, in the absence of evidence, there is no need to complicate the explanation. On the other hand, I understand the frustration, and if a belief, however random, makes it more bearable, go for it.
Group therapy "let's make ourselves feel better" approach vs rational discussion . I know for sure which one doesn't stand a chance ;D