Quote from: dragonblade on February 06, 2024, 21:23

What's with all these youtubers heavily promoting Shutterstock in their videos?

Who? Are these recent videos or old ones when things were more profitable?

I'm not noticing as many these days but some were still being produced and uploaded after SS made the commission changes.

The thieves make money because they skim off better content. We all know that, as a general rule, 20% of the images make 80% of the money, but if they are selecting the best images, then they can certainly increase the sales percentage in their favour. It's always been quality over quantity, so if you steal 50 spectacular images, then they are likely to make more than a beginner with 50 snapshots of his back yard.

Valid points. I remember on the old SS forum, a thief was discovered and quite a few of us contributors were browsing through his port of stolen goods. The images selected were extremely high quality. Like the best of the best with all different kinds of subjects. It was quite a decent sized port too if I recall correctly. I wouldn't be surprised if this thief was making a ton of money.

Depositphotos may obtain special permission to distribute certain files under the Attributed Free License or another free license. By granting permission, the contributor waives the right to receive compensation for such distribution, which, with few exceptions, will not be credited to the contributor's level.

Yea so here's the thing with this one. I'm not sure if in this case, you can nominate particular files from your port for the 'free section.' Or could it be that by agreeing with the terms and conditions, you automatically give them permission to give away any of your files for free. Though they do say 'special permission' so perhaps it could be the former rather than the latter - hopefully. I'm not a contributor on DP but for those that are, perhaps there might be something visible that might appear on your dashboard maybe that would allow a contributor to select individual images for free use. If this is new, something like this might appear within the next few weeks (I could be wrong.) Of course if I joined up to DP myself, there is no way that I would give any of my photos away for free.

They gotta start caring about us creators if they want us to stick around.

Rolling out 10c subs and resetting levels annually were strong indicators that they don't care. Things can only get worse.

Quote from: dragonblade on January 29, 2024, 23:25

Ive no idea how to switch regions (or what region I'm currently set to) but I just did a test. I searched for three of my photos and I found them without any issues.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll find it at the left of the black bar.

Ah I see it on the contributor site but not the page that customers would search for stock imagery.

I just did another search for one of my photos and there is no sign of it. There is one page of search results and it is not there. This particular photo has sold once on AS. At first, I searched by 'relevance.' Then I searched by 'downloads.' No luck. By the way, this particular photo was taken in Spain and I am based in Australia.

designed to illustrate articles on current events and newsworthy topics

So it can be news related. Yes, it will be interesting to hear what Matt has to say.

By the way, I like the cow avatar, Pete.

I would only upload HD clips.

That's been my strategy on SS for a very long time - only submitting HD clips and sending 4k clips elsewhere. It's unbelievable that I may be forced to do the same thing with AS.

Ah thanks for the clarification. So these higher levels only really matter in the rare circumstances when we get non subscription sales. In the early days of being a DT contributor, I was really getting my hopes up about my images reaching higher levels.

When I first joined DT years ago and was reading through all the info, I thought I had a fair idea of how their levels system worked. If I recall correctly, each time a photo sells, it reaches a higher level and you end up being paid higher commissions (or higher amounts) each time. But that doesn't work in reality. My latest sale was for a photo that has sold at least four times before. And this photo usually earns me exactly the same amount each time - $0.33c (including this latest sale.) Obviously subscription sales. One time, this image did earn me $1.90 for one of the earlier sales (which surprisingly was also a subscription sale.)

So I'm wondering what is the point of this levels system at DT? No matter how many times a photo sells and what level it is, you usually don't get an increase in earnings. It will usually be the same or similar amount each time. 

I would advise you to stay away.  They were doing OK a decade ago, but I have not been able to paid for several years now.  Alfonso owes me several hundred dollars.  I'm not optimistic.

Uh oh, that is not good at all. A big red flag there. I assume that you have your tax information up to date?

I take it you removed those photos from Canstock and Agefotostock should have done the same?

Ive just stumbled across a stock agency that I'm not familiar with - Agefotostock. I wonder what kind of reputation they have. It looks like they sell both commercial and editorial photos. And videos as well. They say they are based in Spain and have offices in New York and Paris.

Got an e-mail notification from PayPal that they received payment from Adobe.