Will wait until I'm paid for May then I'm out. Pointless.

As George Carlin (RIP) once remarked, " You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. " 

In 2012 I started on SS having been on AS/FT since 2008. I have almost the same number of images on both (5% more on AS). Almost no editorial and SS even today makes consistently 3-4X more than AS for me in an average month and that used to be 10X. AS sometimes brings a surprise with a $50 custom sale but they're less frequent than $20-$50 SODs at SS. New images seem to have more 'chance' at AS but with SS 'new' is pretty hopeless. (In the good old days with SS 'new'  submissions found a place on the first page of new for a day or so). Now that's down to a matter of minutes or hours before they're deluged under a pile (in the non-niche categories) never to be seen again.

If I take RPD over lifetime with both AS and SS, I see that both are around 0.70; the only difference being that AS is in GBP (£) and SS is in USD ($). With 4 years less at SS, I have a factor 3-4X as many dl's at SS compared to AS.

Paypal used to be 2.5% for USD to EUR but in the course of the years they've upped it to 4% (Preypal). I usually just try to pick a time to convert my USD and GBP to EUR when the exchange rate is favourable. Still lose the egregious 4% to the sharks but it seems less painful when the USD is high against the Euro.

Occasionally, I'll buy something on Ebay UK with my GBP (usually stuff coming from China!!).

Not Anglo-Saxon notation. Funny, never occurred to me before as I've lived in NL for 40+ years. I imagine that SS adjusts the notation depending on the country of contributor. Soooo....for you:
US$18,808.80

A sterling month for me at SS with the best sales in more than than one year.

Really peeving though is an example of what I would call 'blown pallindrome syndrome'.......missed by one friggin' cent 

Quote from: Bad Robot on January 28, 2020, 19:11

Quote from: Brasilnut on January 28, 2020, 14:41
How SS accepted these without a (legitimate) press pass is beyond me.

Whole account comprises of stolen images...

https://www.shutterstock.com/g/RJ-studio

How shutterstock went from a decent agency to an outfit that can't control jack sh*t is also beyond me

Pure WallStreet GREED....that's how!

Quote from: Brasilnut on December 01, 2019, 13:03
Within 5 mins I spotted more than dozen thieves proliferating at SS...

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/red-apple-covered-rain-drops-1522140569?src=-1-1

Just follow the peach trail and it will lead you to many accounts that lead to many more into infinity...

Yep. Something weird about a couple of those thieves' accounts and that is that their account name doesn't appear in the space where it should......... just a grey pulsating rectangle!! Hovering over that grey rectangle with the cursor reveals 2 weird account names...'think4321' and 'OuSs-911'

Quote from: trek on December 24, 2019, 18:05

Quote from: Uncle Pete on December 24, 2019, 16:34

Quote from: OM on December 24, 2019, 07:38
With that name, I'm surprised he's not going for 14,400...nomen est omen! 

Took me a while to figure that one. No habla Latin. 

Joe is still going for the 10K I hope he makes it, but I want to make it perfectly clear, I think he's misguided to think that the only import fact of microstock is how many images anyone has. I've watched for long enough to see that the plain and obvious answer is not counting how many images but what are the images.

One of the sales mottoes, back when, was don't work harder, work smarter. In Microstock that means uploading good, useful content and not wasting time trying to make number quotas.

I also believe, to each their own, so as independent business people, anyone can do anything they want. Not my business to tell them how, but I can observe and say for myself and many others, uploading 10,000 nice images will earn no more than 500 carefully planned, designed, thoughtful, market appropriate images.

Nevermind... 

I respect his work ethic.. especially since I only produce about 100 shots a month.  However his port is profoundly un-commercial.  Some of the editorial content should sell (open mouthed politicians are in season).  Overall I wonder if he is going to break even on his transportation and equipment costs... or produce 10,000 shots at a loss?

That point about return on time/money/costs invested seems to be lost on many of the new generation of stock shooters. They will always reply that nobody knows whether their shots will become massive sellers in the future....so it's worthwhile to them!

All I can go by is what I see and that is that my meagre port on 2 agencies (<1,000 images) has brought in $20K+ in the last 7 years. All my best-sellers are kitchen table/wall stuff that cost nothing to produce and still sell every week. I'm old and pretty lazy. Never had to sign a model or property release. Haven't submitted any more than 15 new images in the last 6 months because in the 6 months prior to this, almost nothing I did submit sold (conclusions: I've either lost my touch or it's getting buried under a mountain of crap). Old stuff still sells and brings in ~$150/month which is pocket money compared to 2016/2017 when the same but slightly smaller port brought in $300-$400/month. Still, it is pocket money for nothing and I'm not complaining!

Today, micro just seems like too much effort and cost for the reward. Fine if you're in employment and get to travel, eat exotic food and shoot when a company is paying most of the bills but when things have to be funded from your own future micro licensing, I'm not sure there's a viable future in that (except perhaps when you're young with a load of young friends who hang out/go on vacation together and everyone is prepared to sign model releases for free!).

I suppose you just have to find the 'Next Big Thing' before it becomes the next big thing and milk the fad for all it's worth whilst looking out for the NBT after that!

With that name, I'm surprised he's not going for 14,400...nomen est omen! 

They don't care about stolen photos but are mustard on stolen footage. This took a while to get up to speed but after the OP came with examples of genuine and stolen, the port of 7K videos was gone quite quickly.

https://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/topic/98957-marinionelamari-username-is-selling-my-videos/

Quote from: Clair Voyant on November 27, 2019, 22:28
the rejections lately are so random and ridiculous it makes me wonder if it is even worth my time to submit anymore. there is literally no rhyme or reason to the rejections. it makes me wonder if the powers that be over at SS are even aware of how ridiculous this is.

The only thing the SS PTB worry about is their stock price which I suspect is intricately linked to the growth of the archive...show growth and Wall Street luvs ya. BS baffles brains..never mind the quality feel the width.

I relised a few years ago that resubmits to SS are pretty pointless. Many years ago I did re-submit some images that I was convinced were OK and they became best-sellers but now it just seems there's no point. Everything new gets buried under a pile of ..... and has no chance to be seen anyway. Just IMO.....saves getting peeved and annoyed. If they reject it, they don't deserve it..move on.

Quote from: Not Today on November 26, 2019, 14:45

Quote from: OM on November 26, 2019, 11:34
Had an interesting rejection at Adobe recently whilst the shot was already accepted at SS. Grounds were copyright infringement on a coin with QEII head.....so I thought 'what the........?'

Turns out that Adobe were right (sort of) because when I checked with the SS disallowed list I saw that British coins are OK but coins of China, Macao and Hong Kong are not and this is an old HK dollar coin (pre-1997 when HK was still a UK Crown Colony). Silly me, I put HK dollar coin in the keywords and description.
Dunno whether the copyright claim by China is recent (in which case they can't really claim copyright on a coin made by the Brits?) but the coin is still legal tender apparently. Unusual to find SS accepting something that Adobe rejects.

QEII is probably the only person in the world that managed to copyright herself, so any image or representation of her isn't allowed for commercial use 

Absolutely untrue! QE2 coins of UK are no problem for commercial stock...Only Canada and China (HK & Macao included) have copyrighted their coins whilst China has no right to copyright the head of the UK sovereign but has done so anyway!

Had an interesting rejection at Adobe recently whilst the shot was already accepted at SS. Grounds were copyright infringement on a coin with QEII head.....so I thought 'what the........?'

Turns out that Adobe were right (sort of) because when I checked with the SS disallowed list I saw that British coins are OK but coins of China, Macao and Hong Kong are not and this is an old HK dollar coin (pre-1997 when HK was still a UK Crown Colony). Silly me, I put HK dollar coin in the keywords and description.
Dunno whether the copyright claim by China is recent (in which case they can't really claim copyright on a coin made by the Brits?) but the coin is still legal tender apparently. Unusual to find SS accepting something that Adobe rejects.

The speed with which I just had 5 pics reviewed tells me that mammalian reviewers do not enter into it. I sent the files off from one laptop and when I went to look at my contributor page (within 2 minutes), I had nothing pending and all 5 had already been reviewed reviewed with one rejection for over/underlit. I never resubmit rejections to SS so I'll see what Adobe does with the same 5.

Anyone who has ever gone to the buyer page of SS, entered something into search, chosen an image and then scrolled down to see what SS AI suggests as 'similars' will know that AI at SS only goes on visual patterns and does not take any keywords into account because often the 'similars' are nonsense and bear absolutely no relation to the keyword used to search. 

Quote from: Uncle Pete on October 07, 2019, 16:20

Quote from: fotorob on October 07, 2019, 07:26

Quote from: Uncle Pete on August 20, 2019, 17:36
but the classic worst recently was a guy with a GoPro, driving down the street in Saigon or someplace similar, shooting time lapse through the windscreen, and uploading each as an individual image. They are fuzzy and terrible, but also hundreds if not thousands of images. I doubt that he will get more sales than if he had taken 2 good shots and uploaded them.

do you have a link to that portfolio?

It's been linked many times under spamfolio and on SS too. I'm not sure if it's OK to post the link here, but it's not anyone on the forums. 

Some people call out spam for multiple images, similar images, but for example, here's what I'm calling as spam, not just picking on people for their personal choices and how many of something they upload. Yes I like singles and a few of any setup, while others do well uploading dozens of well thought out variations. The later is not spam... this is! 

https://www.shutterstock.com/g/fiqahanugerah?page=2&section=1&sort=newest&search_source=base_gallery&language=en

https://www.shutterstock.com/g/CharoensilpPhotoData?page=10&section=1&sort=popular&search_source=base_gallery&language=en

https://www.shutterstock.com/g/fernandocomet?page=1&section=1&searchterm=chinese%20dragon&measurement=px&sort=newest&safe=true&search_source=base_gallery&language=en&saveFiltersLink=true

for example.

A whole long thread for Spamfolios.  https://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/topic/94721-spamfolio%E2%80%A6-post-here-the-link-of-spammy-portfolios-you-find-on-shutterstock/?tab=comments#comment-1690960

Clearly Mr Fuzzy continues unperturbed by the similars policy.....P1 of recently uploaded:

https://www.shutterstock.com/g/CharoensilpPhotoData?search_source=base_gallery&language=en&page=1&sort=newest&measurement=px&safe=true

Don't really understand how they get unsharp pics of bird behind glass door approved either (bottom P1).

It wouldn't surprise me if Canva went public soon, if tricks like reducing the payment to content contributors is anything to go by. Must be the Wall Street bean counters that come in and tell them to up the profit margins to maximise the take for the venture capitalists/stock holders at the IPO.

Surely, they must have thought after buying Pixabay that their reward to photographers was excessively generous....why pay when you can geddit free (or almost free via subscriptions)? 

Glad I stopped uploading to SS 6 months ago...have peace of mind now and no hassle every month for sales that used to be worthwhile but that are now just pocket/wine money! Hic 

Quote from: Uncle Pete on October 15, 2019, 14:11

Quote from: OM on October 15, 2019, 01:37
Well, I think that SS is happy that someone had the gumption to collate all these publicly available images in a coherent collection so that they all could make some moolah! All that free stuff in one place  to save everyone's time....it's almost a public service!

Remember...the rules do not necessarily apply to everyone!

And I remember that SS makes the rules, and runs the place, so they can do whatever they want. 

They have contracts with other suppliers, that essentially uploaded entire large collections to SS, reviewed lightly if at all, and they compete with us, with a favored status. We get restricted and they get to supply things that buyers actually want. Not fair, I don't like it, but back to SS runs the show.

As many have written before, nothing is about us or caring if we do better or make money, the only goal for SS is to make themselves more money. So if they favor someone else, change the search or do something else that lowers our earnings, no one should take it as a personal attack. SS only cares about the bottom line, making more money.

Absolutely.

Well, I think that SS is happy that someone had the gumption to collate all these publicly available images in a coherent collection so that they all could make some moolah! All that free stuff in one place  to save everyone's time....it's almost a public service!

Remember...the rules do not necessarily apply to everyone!

Mostly subs at Adobe but the amounts vary between £0.27 and £2.47. Most subs seem evenly split btween £0.74 and £0.27. I see the occasional £0.49 and I've had a few custom sales recently at around the £10 mark but the one tonight really takes the biscuit at £49.01! Yippee!

Quote from: jonbull on October 01, 2019, 13:48
subberstock...and adobe subs...20 % more download than last year combined 30 % less money.....it's clear that people who need credit or on demand photos are looking elsewhere.

My theory is that the big users still buy their subs every month but the smaller independent grahpic designers etc who used to buy an ODDs package as needed per job, now go first to Unsplash and Pixabay etc and only when they're unsuccessful do they return to SS/Adobe.

Probably explains why SS and Adobe advertise on those free sites...and help keep them in business Eejits!

Reviewing other posts here, I'm sure SS changed their algo in September. Good news for some but bad news for others like moi! Had a 4% increase in downloads but a 28% decrease in earnings compared to August; almost entirely due to lack of ODDs in September.

Due to lack of sales of new work, haven't uploaded anything since March/April. Seems pointless.

To my mind most changes in market conditions happen relatively slowly (except in the case of total market meltdown...not yet evident). My sales dropping over the last 3 years from an average of $300/month to $100 in August 2019 is entirely due to market forces and to be expected as I haven't added much of 'commercial value' in the last 2 years.

A drop from $100 last month to (maybe) $50 this month is not something I would expect to be caused by market forces and more likely to be due to 'algo/searchmessing'.

'Algo/searchmessing' at FT was the reason for my joining SS in 2012.....sales at FT were progressing nicely and one image in particular had sold 500X in a couple of years and was selling almost every day. Then suddenly within a period of 2 weeks all my sales dried up and my best-seller never sold again. It had been on the first page of search and suddenly it was gone (beyond page 20).
I deleted that best-seller there and went to SS where it also quickly became my best-seller and has now had 3,500 dls. It still sells regularly at SS which leads me to conclude that there was nothing wrong with the quality of the image or that it was just 'hot' for a short period of time. FT simply messed with their algo/search and ruined my sales. As everything in those days was onward and upward, I'll assume that FT replaced the sales I lost with more sales from someone else...which I assume to be the case now at SS.

"de een zijn dood is de ander zijn brood"