Not enough people vote for it.  Only the sites with numbers have enough votes.  If it does end up getting enough votes I wouldn't be surprised if it went straight into the top tier.

From the moment stocksy contributors come to this forum and also report earnings.

When will we see Stocksy get out of the low earners section?

I'm not really sure how the Ratings work. I'd assume there is something factored in that considers the average across all voting members of the forum. In this case, I doubt Stocksy will ever show relevant numbers in there considering there are only around 1,000 members and most of them are not active on MSG.

For me personally, Stocksy in most month is the number 2 or 3 earner, way before iStock or Fotolia (I don't submit actively to Alamy, and I'm surprised and wonder how they suddenly made the second place in this ranking). And while Stocksy is far behind Shutterstock for me, I only have 300 images on Stocksy compared to 3,000 on Shutterstock. And I'm a rather small contributor at Stocksy.

So amongst those who submit to Stocksy, I would assume the majority would have Stocksy within the Top Tier.

Not enough people vote for it.  Only the sites with numbers have enough votes.  If it does end up getting enough votes I wouldn't be surprised if it went straight into the top tier.

if you place your mouse over stocksy you see that their earnings are largely by a chosen few.
in another thread, someone points this out
Quote from: 50% on Yesterday at 15:19
I fully understand your feelings and would feel the same. I'm still in full support of Stocksy but on a very personal level my financial results has been rather poor. People think they miss out big time but if you don't fit naturally in their concept your results will probably not be that great
alamy is no doubt the same thing,
whereas for ss and getty, the spread of the pie is more of a larger distribution...
in the same sense as blue chip vs penny stocks...
in the real big money stock market.

as mentioned below

Quote from: goober on March 23, 2016, 00:45

When will we see Stocksy get out of the low earners section?

I'm not really sure how the Ratings work. I'd assume there is something factored in that considers the average across all voting members of the forum. In this case, I doubt Stocksy will ever show relevant numbers in there considering there are only around 1,000 members and most of them are not active on MSG.

For me personally, Stocksy in most month is the number 2 or 3 earner, way before iStock or Fotolia (I don't submit actively to Alamy, and I'm surprised and wonder how they suddenly made the second place in this ranking). And while Stocksy is far behind Shutterstock for me, I only have 300 images on Stocksy compared to 3,000 on Shutterstock. And I'm a rather small contributor at Stocksy.

So amongst those who submit to Stocksy, I would assume the majority would have Stocksy within the Top Tier.

so, is your stocksy earning in proportion to your ss 300/3000

I've been with Getty, iStock, SS, and Alamy in the past.  None came close to the income I've been able to generate at Stocksy.

But recently Leaf implemented a little change that lets us see the ratings (and number of votes) for all agencies via simple mouse-over (hover your mousepointer over the agency name in the list, you'll see the numbers).

Thanks - I didn't know about the mouse-over thing.  Very interesting.

I am skeptical about the Alamy numbers but they have 120 votes so more than DP and Pond5.  If those numbers are accurate then self hosted is doing almost as well as SS, although of course over a much smaller number of contributors.

Quote from: etudiante_rapide on March 23, 2016, 09:47

so, is your stocksy earning in proportion to your ss 300/3000

On average on Stocksy I make about 30% of the royalties I make on Shutterstock. So the return per image is much higher on Stocksy. But it's really hard to compare because my portfolio on Stocksy is still so small that the royalties make huge jumps. One month I get only Small and Medium sales for $5 or $12.50 each; another month I get an Extended License for $275. So there is a lot of randomness in the earnings in Stocksy for me.

thx for response.  i get it. given that they are entirely different ports,
it is difficult to compare apples with oranges.
but i take it from you that per sales earning is higher than ss,
though ss is more consistent with daily sales.
it's good to have that balance you have...
so you are not entirely dependent on ss...

in case they pull the plug like istock did.

thx for response.  i get it. given that they are entirely different ports,
it is difficult to compare apples with oranges.
but i take it from you that per sales earning is higher than ss,
though ss is more consistent with daily sales.
it's good to have that balance you have...
so you are not entirely dependent on ss...

in case they pull the plug like istock did.

Exactly. I also have images I sell through a macrostock distributor (Westend61) which provides another completely independent source of royalties, and I am making about the same money as I do with Shutterstock if not a bit more. Both Stocksy and Westend61 have a stricter editing process, allowing me to add less images but the returns per image are much higher than in microstock, so it evens out.

I also have some images selling through EyeEm/Getty which I planned to also distribute through 500px this year. That plan needs some changes, I guess. 

But all in all I feel rather comfortable knowing that no company provides for more than 25% of my monthly royalties and I am able to address different segments of the market and tastes in images than just having microstock. I still couldn't just easily drop one those agencies tomorrow but at least I can slowly shift my efforts towards the more rewarding places over time.