Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on April 03, 2017, 13:17

It'd be nice if they'd give us another rise for hitting, say, $50,000. 

and 20K, 30K, 40K, 60K, 70K.....

The more the merrier... but I'm not very optimistic about it.

Quote from: encrenciel on April 03, 2017, 11:13

I remember reading somewhere for Shutterstock when you reach your first 100 downloads, your earning per download increase up to .33. Correct me if I'm wrong. I have now more than 1000 downloads but still gaining .25.


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You need to read stuff when you sign up

It's $500 then you go up

Yup I misunderstood the concept.


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Boggles the mind how many people sign up to micro sites without a clue of the terms theyre agreeing to
I cant remember if it was here or on the SS forum where some noob was flabbergasted that he received $0.25 for a sale of an image.
Really?

I wonder how much money the micros are sitting on from people that upload a few images, get disenchanted, and just basically quit leaving their images and whatever sales they make on the table.

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on April 03, 2017, 13:17

It'd be nice if they'd give us another rise for hitting, say, $50,000. 

And penalize you in the search results even more, because you're 'so much more expensive' than the newbies?
I suspect that a good position in the search results is more valuable than your base royalty per download.

The penalizing theory doesn't make sense because anyone that has a half decent portfolio will have hit the highest rate very quickly. More than 95% of downloads and sales go to the top 5% of contributors. Those that are persistently on the lower rates, especially with large portfolios tend to cost an agency more in support and from reviewing images than they actually earn.

Quote from: travelstock on April 03, 2017, 21:34

 Those that are persistently on the lower rates, especially with large portfolios tend to cost an agency more in support and from reviewing images than they actually earn.

Your logic is flawed. It doesn't matter what they cost in terms of support and reviewing, if they are on board, then apparently the agency wants to have them.
What matters is the profit per download. The agency earns more when a file from a lower-ranked contributor is sold. Therefore there is financial motivation to give them some kind of a boost. This boost may vary with each implementation of the search algorithm. You can't just deny that the incentive to tweak the search results exists.
And many new contributors are actually good and able to submit good files.

Sorry but your statements are typical of people here that don't understand the costs associated in the background, and make assumptions but really don't have a knowledge of the industry.

The vast majority of income comes from the top contributors. These are invariably on the highest rates. For those that are in the top at Shutterstock 5%, the highest rates amount to less than 2 months income from Shutterstock. Generally these contributors have very low review and administration costs associated with their accounts because they have successful portfolios that have already been reviewed. Administration costs measured per download for a $5000 payout are also much lower than someone that just scrapes in for $100.

In terms of the rates, those on the lower thresholds account for probably less than 1% of downloads: Take a look at the download distribution graphs published by stockperformer:



Source: https://www.stockperformer.com/blog/faq-about-our-market-performance-ranking/

There simply isn't any basis for asserting that the search is somehow rigged to give an advantage to low income earners, when the overwhelming evidence indicates the contrary.

The vast majority of income comes from the top contributors. These are invariably on the highest rates. For those that are in the top at Shutterstock 5%, the highest rates amount to less than 2 months income from Shutterstock. Generally these contributors have very low review and administration costs associated with their accounts because they have successful portfolios that have already been reviewed. Administration costs measured per download for a $5000 payout are also much lower than someone that just scrapes in for $100.

Again, at the moment of download, administration costs incurred by the contributor in the past don't matter. Irrelevant. What counts is only how much the agency earns with that particular download at that particular moment.

If they were concerned with administration costs, why did they practically abolish entrance exams? Now, they would accept even dogs who know how to press the shutter button and accept a gazillion files per minute. They want a bazillion contributors and a gazillion files per minute, therefore they don't seem to care about administration costs per contributor.

You don't understand causality. The reason why the top contributors bring the most income is simple! As a group, they have the most appealing images and customers want them, for crying out loud. That is the reason, and not the lower administration costs that they incur. And that doesn't exclude the possibility that the agency might try to increase short-term earnings by giving lower-ranked contributors a small push at certain times in certain markets, without making buyers too angry. The agency is concerned only with their bottom line. Obviously, they cannot kill top contributors in the search results, because the buyers would leave, but they do experiment every now and then and test which settings earn them most money.

Generally, store owners tend to promote products with the highest margins.

"If they were concerned with administration costs, why did they practically abolish entrance exams?" Because they cost money?

What costs more money? Reviewing 10 files from a contributor in an exam, or reviewing hundreds and thousands of potential c#%$ images from the same guy and thousands like him? (and storing them, using bandwidth, etc.)

Quote from: Pauws99 on April 04, 2017, 01:15

"If they were concerned with administration costs, why did they practically abolish entrance exams?" Because they cost money?

What costs more money? Reviewing 10 files from a contributor in an exam, than reviewing hundreds and thousands of potential c#%$ images from the same guy and thousands like him? (and storing them, using bandwidth, etc.)

You think the stricter review stopped a significant number of these people? they just kept submitting till they passed.

"If they were concerned with administration costs, why did they practically abolish entrance exams?" Because they cost money?

Perhaps more to the point, a lot of low-grade contributors each picking up a handful of sales but never reaching payout is a valuable asset for a stock site. Even I'm helping Crestock with $20 worth of sales over several years - money which I will probably never get (how many people have ever had a payout from that site?)
Years ago DT published statistics that made it possible to work out how many contributors had how many sales. Something like 90% of them had fewer than 100 downloads - and when I reported some of my analysis on SS it was quickly deleted by admin, leaving me to assume that the data from DT reflected what was going on throughout the entire industry.
If I remember correctly, something like half of all contributors had fewer than 10 uploads and would probably never reach a payout - or would have long forgotten the site when they got there and thus would never claim their cash. So speeding up the rate at which low-performing portfolios sell might end up with the sites having less unclaimed cash available to use.
The system is so advantageous to the stock sites that they really don't need to take the risk of messing it up to try to squeeze more cash out of it. The belief in someone doing us down because our wonderful files don't sell as fast as we think they should really strikes me as coming out of the same place as the old complaint that "my image was perfect the reviewers rejected it because they are stupid" - which almost invariably turned out to be wrong.

The system is so advantageous to the stock sites that they really don't need to take the risk of messing it up to try to squeeze more cash out of it. The belief in someone doing us down because our wonderful files don't sell as fast as we think they should really strikes me as coming out of the same place as the old complaint that "my image was perfect the reviewers rejected it because they are stupid" - which almost invariably turned out to be wrong.

In order for your theory to work, these guys must get at least SOME sales. If they don't get any sales, the system is not advantageous at all. If they are really so bad, they might use some help in the search results. You contradict yourself, to some extent.