Ok. I have been microstocker since nearly its inception. That means since 2007? I really cannot remember aleardy. Alamy was a site I started quite late as they have always been somewhat complicated comapred to the other sites. But a fat sale here and there made the effort worth it. But latest sale for 80 USD, 80% Alamy cut leaving me 15 bucks... WHAT ? I do not upload there anymore but now considering pulling my images out. Despite all that work during their clunky upload system.

Hi, first I am a long-term contributor (over 15 years) so know the basics... I have requested payment from Canstockphoto. This time money arrived but Instead of 230 dollars I received just 217USD. Paypal says they deducted transaction fee 12.7 USD. What is this??? I have never had to pay this fee. Is it new? They ask over 3% as a conversion fee and another 5% as a transaction fee??? Does anyone know what is this?

They chose the right time to do it... USD tumbles against Euros big time. So we loose even more. Of course they did not have balls to do it last year when USD was stronger than EUR.

I had a good forum chat with him multiple times. He helped me understand some issues with my earlier photos. He was able both to praise my work and express critique. I wish him just the best. He might be complicated for some people but helped to form MS community in its golden age...If you see him, send him our best wishes :-)

Soon they will have to shoot pictures themselves

So, in other industries firms are rising pay as people combat with inflation and demand more money. We constantly loose. Wicked. With inflation over 10%, rising costs everywhere we keep getting less and less. Images or video, does not matter

Hi Mat, once approved, will my newly free images be sold under my name (that means will the customer see my contributor name?) and might these free ones help promote my paid portfolio somehow?

Exactly 1/2 of previous floating average. Very strange and bad...

Down some 40-50%... Terrible

Fair would be possibility to choose the currency. Or stop it and have just one like all the other sites - same rules for all

I would love that. But it is still not possible. Some 12 years ago I created Pound account - being European photographer, there even was not euro possibility for me at that time. And since than I am suffering from unfavorable exchange rates and poor 0,75 credits/Pound ratio  They refuse to change it although I know it used to be possible. Only solution Adobe offerd me was creating new EUR-based account and start uploading there from scratch. From the first level (emerlald now) with 0 size port... Guys having euros have the most from their images... This from my point of view even surpasses advantages of Payoneer. Think of it - if you have Euro-based account, you receive 20% more than I in UK zone

Surge of 0,1 downloads. Absolute disaster for my stock bussiness. Sales are approx. 30% of what it was before and approx. 5-10% what it was in my peak in 2015. Time to leave. Shame after 12 years in the bussiness.

Thanks guys. It jus made me wonder "what if". Sales go to hell in new files so I'm looking for clues what to improve...

Hi everyone. To dilute heavy Shutterstock topic with one less serious. I am focused on travel photo but often come across one question - does putting capital letters in keywords limit sale potential when buyer spells the word just in lower case letters? Example: I have just been keywording some photos from Barcelona, explicitly Bishop's Bridge. When I spell the name in capital letters in keyword field and buyer spells lower case does my picture pop up in search? I mentioned capitals are being shown as phrases among keywords in MS sites. I know I could use lower case in all situations but I simply do not like twisting grammar and sometimes like to copy long and complicated names of places around the world to avoid writing it from scratch.   

Same here, cannot log in...

Down. Worst month since 2012. Income reduced to some 30% of the best month in 2014 and some 50% of long average (2008-2016) But at that time my port was a less then half of todays size (some 8000 images).

Yup, it came through yesterday as well...

Anyone did not get their payment? Mine (44USD) was due to be paid on the 18th to my Paypal and still nothing... I see all of you have already received your pay. Is there any point in contacting them or they simply do dot react?

I am having slow uploads last 5 months - 20kbs :-( My internet speed is 20Mbit, so upload should be some 512kbs and it used to be much faster... So yes, there is a problem. Do you say it was corrected after request?

Nope, its on and kicking... Perhaps connection issue?

If you are successful in adding the account to your Paypal account you will not get your dollars without a conversion. The Paypal solution to this is the biggest rip-off possible. Double conversion :-) First Paypal converts your dollars to local currency (2,5% fee), than when your money comes to your USD bank account it is again converted by your bank to dollars. Double conversion and a huge conversion fee...

It won't help you. Even with dollar account you will not be able to accept dollars from Paypal. As I said earlier, Paypal does not allow it. You would have to open account in the USA to do this... I have tried it, have dollar account with my local bank but Paypal allways converts the money I send to my local currency

Quote from: Noedelhap on August 10, 2015, 16:12
I like the idea of opening a USD ("foreign currency") account at my local bank, and then withdraw from PayPal directly to my USD account, so I'd save on the Paypal conversion rates. However, my local bank charges me a monthly fee for having a USD account, so I wouldn't really profit from it.

But Paypal won't allow you to withdraw USD to these accounts directly... They only allow withdrawing in the local currency of the state where you have your local address. So if I am from the Czech Republic I can only withdraw in the Czech crowns despite the fact I also may have dollar account in my local bank. But Paypal will not send me money there. This is their fabulous rip off strategy how to get more money as you have to convert from USD to the local currency with extra 2,5% fee. See conversation above... The only workaround is USD account in the USA, Visa credit card (but there is a fee and 500 USD daily limit), in past there was a Payoneer workaround as well but when Paypal found out they are losing money as people are able to send USDs to Payoneer and than cash them out for example when visiting the USA in the ATM and thus they forbid synch with Payoneer...

Quote from: canbedone on August 10, 2015, 15:38
you can open bank account in Europe in currencies different from euro. I am sure.

You can only withdraw from Paypal to USD account in the US Bank... And opening account in the USA for Europeans is quite difficult. If you have USD account in Europe, the money would be converted from USD to local currency and from local currency to USD :-) I would love to open an account in the USA - which is not impossible even for non residents without SSN but the effort and costs would be probably higher than gains.

Quote from: canbedone on August 10, 2015, 15:10
The alternative is open an USD account.....trasfer USD from PayPal to this USD account....and convert USD in euro at the bank of the above mentioned USD account. If i am not wrong in this way you can avoid 2,5% loss by Paypal and avoid rate of PayPal.

Thanks, so if you have USD account and Visa card you can get your dollars without conversion just for a small fee of 2,5-5USD?

Quote from: Sebalos on August 10, 2015, 14:41

Quote from: Fyletto on August 10, 2015, 14:30
Does this work just for Visa? Or credit cards instead of debit?

Only with VISA/VISA Electron but no matter if is credit or debit card.