Quote from: StockGuy on January 12, 2017, 17:57
it's over, stock media is dead, everyone pack up your bags and go home.

Except you and me who can clean up 

Quote from: littleny on January 12, 2017, 00:33
i have a portfolio of 3700 images and consistent revenue for the last 3 years.  In December my sales dropped to a low that I haven't seen in 4 years..down by 30%.  I chalked it up to holiday season but now 11 days into January I see no improvement, in fact, I'm its sunk even further.  My daily sales are about 50% down from my average daily sales for the last several years.  Has something changed in the algorithm or am i just having bad luck?

I think the design world is still recovering from the election, holiday, and weather ... we'll buy your images when we realize that the deadline is tomorrow. Until then, cool your britches.

Currently at 65% of December's earnings, and we're only 39% into the month. Can't complain.

and now Error 404 message when trying to access the site

404 Not Found
---------------------
nginx

I edited my earlier post to note that I now see the stupid, broken, new-and-improved image page. I've done a screen grab of one of the images I included in this morning's example to show just how buyer-unfriendly this change in "Same artist" choices is.

For a sunny, summery picnic basket image you now get winter and remodeling thumbnails instead of things resembling the one you're looking at (click for full size)

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on January 12, 2017, 23:32
I edited my earlier post to note that I now see the stupid, broken, new-and-improved image page. I've done a screen grab of one of the images I included in this morning's example to show just how buyer-unfriendly this change in "Same artist" choices is.

For a sunny, summery picnic basket image you now get winter and remodeling thumbnails instead of things resembling the one you're looking at (click for full size)

It seems "See all" is functioning as "Same artist" and vice versa. Looks like a bug and definitely should be fixed.

Quote from: flywing on January 13, 2017, 00:59

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on January 12, 2017, 23:32
I edited my earlier post to note that I now see the stupid, broken, new-and-improved image page....

It seems "See all" is functioning as "Same artist" and vice versa. Looks like a bug and definitely should be fixed.

I checked a few images and I think it's just blindly using the first keyword alphabetically from the image shown when you click on "Same Artist". As that is most of the time not the keyword you searched in the first place, you get seemingly ridiculous results.

This bad behavior is made worse when you have one of the images where our multi-word keywords were split up by SS's ingestion process - some of my images have "bar" and "air" for the first word (it was towel bar and air duct before they mangled it)

This is just good for a giggle. There's an image that showed up as "similar" to one of mine - a photo illustration of a witch! I selected that image to see its supposed "Similars" and I'm not the only older white woman that Shutterstock considers to be a witch!! Don't suppose the guy or any of the other women think of themselves as witches either...

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on January 13, 2017, 02:00

Quote from: flywing on January 13, 2017, 00:59

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on January 12, 2017, 23:32
I edited my earlier post to note that I now see the stupid, broken, new-and-improved image page....

It seems "See all" is functioning as "Same artist" and vice versa. Looks like a bug and definitely should be fixed.

I checked a few images and I think it's just blindly using the first keyword alphabetically from the image shown when you click on "Same Artist". As that is most of the time not the keyword you searched in the first place, you get seemingly ridiculous results.

This bad behavior is made worse when you have one of the images where our multi-word keywords were split up by SS's ingestion process - some of my images have "bar" and "air" for the first word (it was towel bar and air duct before they mangled it)

This is just good for a giggle. There's an image that showed up as "similar" to one of mine - a photo illustration of a witch! I selected that image to see its supposed "Similars" and I'm not the only older white woman that Shutterstock considers to be a witch!! Don't suppose the guy or any of the other women think of themselves as witches either...

I meant the lower two buttons set: "Same artist" and "See all".

I clicked the "See all" and I saw just my similar/same series images, nothing else.
Clicking the "Same artist" and my most popular images showed up.

It seems the "Same artist" and the "See all" buttons are switching each other's functions.
Because if i remember it right, "Same artist" used to show similar/same series images
and clicking the "See all" would jump to the artist's portfolio.

Or maybe somehow they now think the "Same artist" should show the artist's most popular
images and "See all" should show similar/same series images of the artist...

Is SS aware of this bug?

For what it's worth my earnings are almost the same as last year.
Up to now. Today's a bit grim 

I was just stressing about my declining sales, and explaining to my partner the implications, (as I see them), of this latest development. His advice to me was to be adaptable and to learn to 'play the game'.

I'm just wondering if anyone has figured out the rules? I'm ****ed if I know, and I'm getting really tired of chasing after the moveable goal posts.

 No more fb twitter sharing button, am i blind or what ? 

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on January 13, 2017, 02:00

Quote from: flywing on January 13, 2017, 00:59

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on January 12, 2017, 23:32
I edited my earlier post to note that I now see the stupid, broken, new-and-improved image page....

It seems "See all" is functioning as "Same artist" and vice versa. Looks like a bug and definitely should be fixed.

I checked a few images and I think it's just blindly using the first keyword alphabetically from the image shown when you click on "Same Artist". As that is most of the time not the keyword you searched in the first place, you get seemingly ridiculous results.

This bad behavior is made worse when you have one of the images where our multi-word keywords were split up by SS's ingestion process - some of my images have "bar" and "air" for the first word (it was towel bar and air duct before they mangled it)

This is just good for a giggle. There's an image that showed up as "similar" to one of mine - a photo illustration of a witch! I selected that image to see its supposed "Similars" and I'm not the only older white woman that Shutterstock considers to be a witch!! Don't suppose the guy or any of the other women think of themselves as witches either...

Doesn't the similar section just look at similarity in terms of compositions and colors? That's why buyers must be getting a white-haired guy portrait instead of an actual witch. Sometimes an algorithm does a half-assed guess. It happens, deal with it.
All in all, I don't think a buggy similars functionality really hurts sales that much. Where one contrubutor loses sales, another contributor gains. If buyer demand stays the same, it's a zero sum game.

Quote from: Stockmaan link=topic=29092.msg475895#msg475895

Me too. SS in Low Earners Tier now. On 123RF I have only 1/2 of my all images and sells AMAZING this year!!! Thank you 123RF

I am pretty sure 123RF has tweaked their algorithm.   I made the same each month, within a few dollars or so, for 4 years.  A couple months ago, overnight my income dropped to 1/4 of normal and its staying there.  Its lower than it was 7 years or so ago when I had only been at this a year and had  1/6 the images.

SS has dropped for me, but in my case its been a slow, steady decline over about 2 years. 

Quote from: Noedelhap on January 13, 2017, 21:36

Doesn't the similar section just look at similarity in terms of compositions and colors? That's why buyers must be getting a white-haired guy portrait instead of an actual witch. Sometimes an algorithm does a half-assed guess. It happens, deal with it.
All in all, I don't think a buggy similars functionality really hurts sales that much. Where one contrubutor loses sales, another contributor gains. If buyer demand stays the same, it's a zero sum game.

I think you're right about the behavior of the "Similar images". It's like Google's "Search by image" and I'm personally OK with its function.

But I think it's not quite a zero sum game here. If the "Same artist" works right (as before), the images in the same series or same idea with different executions from the same artist will be readily seen by the buyer. And SS will get more chance of sale than the current design because those images are more related to the image the buyer initially clicked.

They  seems to work on public contributor pages, sharing buttons are back.

I've discovered I can laugh and cry at the same time

Abysmal lack of sales. Nothing at the weekend and dead Monday with one tiny weeny 36 cent sale.

never seen this before, abysmal, completely down the toilet, i am now down about 66% on my earnings if this continues

what worries me most, lately i see a hard stop of sales around 6pm, i am based in the greater LA area,  i normally would have sales around the clock, although slowing down at certain times. but this stop i never had before.

I'm about half of where I'd normally be right now.

Quote from: flywing on January 14, 2017, 11:57

Quote from: Noedelhap on January 13, 2017, 21:36

Doesn't the similar section just look at similarity in terms of compositions and colors? That's why buyers must be getting a white-haired guy portrait instead of an actual witch. Sometimes an algorithm does a half-assed guess. It happens, deal with it.
All in all, I don't think a buggy similars functionality really hurts sales that much. Where one contrubutor loses sales, another contributor gains. If buyer demand stays the same, it's a zero sum game.

I think you're right about the behavior of the "Similar images". It's like Google's "Search by image" and I'm personally OK with its function.

But I think it's not quite a zero sum game here. If the "Same artist" works right (as before), the images in the same series or same idea with different executions from the same artist will be readily seen by the buyer. And SS will get more chance of sale than the current design because those images are more related to the image the buyer initially clicked.

I think you're right. It matches shapes and colors, ignores keywords. Now what it once was. The similar images is not by artist but by image match, not by keywords. When I click See All it shows 100 similar images by shapes and colors. This is not broken or a bug, it's the way they want it to be.

Same Artist I selected one of my unique photos, clicked See All and got this, Sorry, we couldn't find any matches. Not sure what that means, but click another, it came up with one keyword match Antique. Tried another, came up with a one word search for Addiction. Look when you click see all for artist and the first word, bold is what it searches.

Not sure if that's what they want or if it's broken.

But what we might want or any of the possible variations, isn't what they might want. Can't assume that best match will be by keywords again, instead of the AI shapes and colors. I'd agree I like the old one better.

For Same Artist it's nuts, picking one word, both times the first word? But we can't pick the word order on SS. If they allowed like AS and we could order the first seven words, then we could control that first word and make some intelligent decisions for what we wanted to show as similar.

How radical. Let artists control their own keywords and opinion or idea of similar images?

It's not a bug or broken if that's what SS intends it to be. It could be unfavorable, bad match or something we don't like, because it's illogical, but not a bug or broken. Don't forget how IS has taken over word order, eliminated our choice, added a broken CV that doesn't show words that do match, and now took away our rights to edit. That's worse.

Really weird glitch today. I have one file that had one sale, then an hour later 11 sales, then an hour later back to one sale again, and now 13 sales. It's not a particularly popular image, and it's off season right now, so 13 sales makes no sense. I guess by tomorrow morning it'll be back to one sale again. Weird-o-Rama.

Quote from: littleny on January 13, 2017, 12:17
Is SS aware of this bug?

Volunteering for a company which has necessary budgets and specialists to keep all this stuff on a decent level? For me it is clear that nothing will be done till their profits are not affected. Before that they will close eyes for all types of internal games. Contributors provided testing, signaling of bugs in programming and in business for free and for years.