Author Topic: Old member - not selling well on any agency? What happend? (Read 4835 times)

dinostock · « **on:** October 11, 2016, 00:50 »

Hello. I have been doing stock photography since 2007, I have about 8.000 images on Fotolia. I used to earn 1.000$ per month few years ago.... I stopped making photos 2012, and started again now. But seems I dont sell anyrthing now! And I have better equipment now than before. I dont get it, what changed since 2012? I sell mostly on FT, but SS is almost dead for me, I sell 1-2 image per day and mostly very old images, nothing new. And beofre I used to sell almost anythingg I upload the same day! DT is also almost dead like. What Am I doing wrong? I can not recover at all, my sales are lower and lower no matter how much I shoot. I made arround 500 new images in last 2 months, none sold.

Any advice? Is stock marked dead? I invested a lot of money in studio lighting and gear...

(Using EOS 6D, EF 70-200 f4L IS; EF 17-40 F4L)

Also I was member on this forum many years ago but I forgot username and pw, so I registered again.

danivince · « **Reply #1 on:** October 11, 2016, 02:17 »

You must upload more and more hi quality stuff

dinostock · « **Reply #2 on:** October 11, 2016, 02:49 »

But I feel it is not worth any more. I dont sell anything new. Just old crapy images (speaking for SS), and new more quality images are never sold.... dont get it.

SpaceStockFootage · « **Reply #3 on:** October 11, 2016, 03:08 »

More people entering the market uploading more and more stuff. The amount of sales doesn't match the growth of new contributors and images, so the pie is spread a lot more thinly than before.

The SS homepage says 100 million images with 800,000 new ones uploaded every week. Not sure what they had back in the day, but there's considerably more competition than back in the mists of time that was 2012.

danivince · « **Reply #4 on:** October 11, 2016, 03:32 »

Open a new account and see if anything differences

sharpshot · « **Reply #5 on:** October 11, 2016, 04:13 »

I'm sure FT have punished a lot of us old timers in the search. My sales fell off a cliff years ago and never recovered.

SS is different. Some months are great and some not very good. New images don't sell a lot but that's understandable with so many new uploads. I don't think its worth supplying subjects that are saturated, there's still plenty of gaps to fill and some subjects that always need new images.

dinostock · « **Reply #6 on:** October 11, 2016, 13:35 »

@fotovincek: I am Emerald contributor on FT, I wouldnt like to give that up.

@SpaceStockFootage: What? 100million?! When I starded there were 4 million. I remmber I sold anyting I uploaded on SS, but now, only crapy old images from 2010.... and barely 1-2 per day. Shame.

@sharpshot: I agree about FT.

I hear white backgrounds are no longer popular as they used to be?

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #7 on:** October 11, 2016, 13:55 »

In December 2012, SS had nearly 23 million images and was adding about 75K a week.

Today they report 103,920,334 images with 939,734 added this week

Between Jan 2015 and Jan 2016 there were 25.5 million images added - more than the total back in 2012

I looked at a couple of your groups of new uploads to see what competition they faced. There are about 27K images for supermarket shelves (just photos). There is some spam, so not all are really competition, but you're facing a stiff battle if you upload such well supplied categories.

Fruit pizza is less well supplied (about 3,500) but I doubt that's as in-demand a subject.

child toy isolated (with the people box checked; photos only) has 27K results. Bottom line, it's much harder than it used to be in 2012. The heavy focus on new images was more of a thing when SS was just subscriptions and it's since focused more on enterprise sales, on demand and custom licensing, etc.

New images do sell, but it's a lot harder to get a foothold, particularly in heavily supplied category. I uploaded images starting this spring after a break of a year or so and many of the remodeling images have sold reasonably well (a category in pretty consistent demand and where it's hard to just stage something in a studio).

axon_guru · « **Reply #8 on:** October 11, 2016, 14:13 »

Quote from: dinostock on October 11, 2016, 02:49

But I feel it is not worth any more. I dont sell anything new. Just old crapy images (speaking for SS), and new more quality images are never sold.... dont get it.

Shutterstock is likely using "robo" reviewers these days to increase the amount photos accepted with the same amount of human reviewers. It is simply not worth your time to tag the photos the old fashion way by hand. That's why we developed Axon Guru (http://axonguru.com) to help you automate as much tagging and categorizing as possible.

dinostock · « **Reply #9 on:** October 12, 2016, 02:25 »

I am using Microsofot Photo Tool for adding keywords and descriprtion for batch of images.

@Jo Ann Snover: Tnx for advices, but I just feel its not worth to invest money in creating images any more. I will shoot what is free.

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Author Topic: Old member - not selling well on any agency? What happend? (Read 4835 times)

dinostock

danivince

dinostock

SpaceStockFootage

danivince

sharpshot

dinostock

Jo Ann Snover

axon_guru

dinostock

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