I've been experiencing a dramatic slowdown in review time at SS lately. My Friday submission wasn't approved until Sunday, and Sunday's submission is still in the queue. Very unusual.

Anyone else experiencing delays?

I am getting my files reviewed only once a week now and it is taking up to six days from the time I submit the files. I was guessing that maybe because of the summer time they had less reviewers available to them because of holidays!

Yep I was trying Sharply_done's only upload Saturday- Tuesday plan which wasn't working so well with the slow done. Batches just getting stuck together so i end up with 100 images in the queue.

I was quite surprised to have some files reviewed today being Independence Day.

Everything's relative.  We've just been spoiled by their extremely rapid turnaround for the past six months or so.  Remember when it was a week or more?  Just late last year.  It's still faster than it used to be and faster than most other sites.  Yeah, it's slower than it has been.  But still much better than it could be.

They are advertising for new reviewers, so maybe they lost a few.

http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22047

This week is also a huge holiday week where a lot of folks go on vacation in the US.

Wow, they need a committment of 30-40 hrs/wk - a lot of time to be looking at other people's images, that's for sure. I'd certainly consider it as a part-time job, but not full-time.

With a shortage of reviewer, I just had my worst day at SS.
I had a batch of 30 editorial approved 27 out 30 last week, and this week's batch of 35( of the same shoot ) being all rejected claiming no commerical value.
What kind of consistency they have, really bad way to treat a photographer's work so carelessly.

Yeah, my reviews have swung wildly in both directions. Often I can tell how the review is going to go based on the timestamp of the email.  Overall rate is staying the same, but one batch is 80/20 and the next is 20/80.

When I get a large batch of rejects I get the limited commercial value a lot. Hate those. Not fond of the composition ones either. Some of those are legitimate and some are subjective.

Ah well, shoot em, process em, upload em

Quote from: Karimala on July 05, 2007, 07:42
They are advertising for new reviewers, so maybe they lost a few.

http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22047

This week is also a huge holiday week where a lot of folks go on vacation in the US.

anyone know what they pay.  40 hours a week is pretty steep though... not much time to take photos with that much commitment.

I think after looking at other people's photos for 40 hours a week I would be sick of microstock and I would want to do anything else with the rest of my time.

on the other hand it is probably a great job for a person in a country where the minimum US wage is $3.00.... or someone stuck at home or something.

Dragging up an old thread here... but it seems like they are back to a fast review pace again.  Uploaded 2 last night and they were in my port this morning. 

Wow, is SS ever fast - I've had my last five batches approved within hours of submission!

On a semi-related note, their speed up coincides with the end of my  streak with them: 304 submissions without a rejection!

Quote from: leaf on July 16, 2007, 09:49

anyone know what they pay.  40 hours a week is pretty steep though... not much time to take photos with that much commitment.

They pay 0.05c per image reviewed.

Ohh thats why they have so fast reviews

Quote from: sharply_done on July 25, 2007, 19:34
Wow, is SS ever fast - I've had my last five batches approved within hours of submission!

On a semi-related note, their speed up coincides with the end of my  streak with them: 304 submissions without a rejection!

Well, I certainly can't claim a record like that, but the faster reviews have led to more rejections. Mostly the composition police.

I just can't help getting on board here and posting my comment.
Allow me to say this right from the beginning: Becoming a reviewer is a tedious, boring job.
Figure your worth per hour BEFORE you consider working as a reviewer. Is it $10.00, - $15.00, - Maybe $20.00 an hour?

After you have decided what your time is worth and hour, try to picture yourself on the same pay scale level as a 7-11 convenient store clerk.
Thats where a reviewers pay scale falls into. Your actual pay will vary from site to site, but it generally falls between 3- 5 cents an image.

If we break that down into an hourly basis this is my scenario:
1. Perfectly alone,  isolated with no one around to bother you, no disturbances.
In this case you can probably bang out about 5 images a minute...300 in 1 hour.
Remember, if you deny any images, you usually have to match up your denial with a "canned" response. Like "Too much noise"...."Not focused properly" etc.
300 X .05 = $15.00 an hour
300 X .03 = $9.00   an hour

2. Mild distractions, like going to the rest room, taking a break, stopping to eat, the phone rings....etc
Over an 8 hour period my guess is your average will drop down to about 3-4 images a minute.
180 X .05 = $9.00 an hour
180 X .03 = $5.40 an hour
----------------------------------------------------------------------

It's always been a concern of mine that SS takes it's reviewers strictly from their forum.
With limited knowledge about who they hire, and their particular skills, I have always thought
that SS reviewers were the worse in the industry.

On a more positive note, I see this as a perfect opportunity for any new photographer just coming into
the stock photography circle, to learn, learn, learn! You will see a vast number of images, and techniques
that will help you as a photographer. You can learn what pitfalls to avoid, and what works, and what does not.

Good luck to all applying for the job.

I wonder just how fast your 'net connection would have to be to get through 300 full res images in an hour as well.  Assuming 8Mp average?  About 4Mb for a detailed 8Mp jpeg, 1.2Gb of data, and that's just the images... 

Hmmmmm ... that seems very poor pay for what is, let's face it, quite a skilled job. (Or it should be skilled.)

And it must be mind-numbing too. I mean ... looking at all those pictures ...

Well-written software would be a huge boon to reviewers. Something that can examine an image for the usual technical gremlins (noise, oversharpening, blurriness, artifacts, dust spots, bad color balance, ...) and then show the suspect areas at 100% for verification would be a help. Come to think of it, it'd be a pretty nice tool for contributors to have as well.

Going by my recent IS submissions, it appears that they have a tiered system in place, where junior(?) reviewers weed out very obvious rejects, and senior(?) reviewers examine images that they judge to be potential "winners" - the rest are passed on to their main reviewing body. Pure speculation, of course, but one that's backed up by experience: some of my shots get accepted/rejected very quickly, while others sit in the queue for days and days.

Quote from: sharply_done on July 27, 2007, 06:52
some of my shots get accepted/rejected very quickly, while others sit in the queue for days and days.

Same experience here.  Majority knocked off in one batch and the rest seem to take upwards of a day or more later. ?     8)tom

I experience very slowed review on SS lately. i have images in pending for a week now... is a general situation or is just me ??

Wow, old post. 

The oldest file in my latest batch to be accepted was submitted two weeks prior.

Quote from: daveh900 on February 13, 2013, 19:16
Wow, old post. 

The oldest file in my latest batch to be accepted was submitted two weeks prior.

i know is an old topic... but  I believe that it is not necessary to open a new topic for this issue.

My last batch was reviewed in four days - not much slower than usual.