Even if you could get data on sales, knowing what's profitable requires data no service could possibly give you - the costs of producing the images.

If you look at what is for sale, you'll see a range of types of work, from those where there were no costs beyond owning the equipment needed to make, process and upload the shots plus the contributor's time. Other work has locations and models that need to be paid for.

In the earlier days of microstock, many more sites did display download data, but as that led to attempts to copy success, you won't see that data now. Dreamstime does still show it, but they're not doing well these days so it won't really tell you much.

I can't imagine any legitimate purpose for a service offering such data and I can imagine that the largest and most successful contributors would lobby heavily to have any agency that made stats available stop it. Copying other people's work would not count as a legitimate purpose...

Quote from: Chichikov on January 20, 2017, 03:44

It happens when you have some notifications, as, for example, unread comments, photos older than 4 years and without sale, new tax form to approve, etc.

Yes, but I have nothing outstanding and nothing to action, and I'm wondering if it's blinking simply to alert me to the fact that my tax form is still pending?

Today, the arrow is blinking only when the stats summary is not showing - the opposite of yesterday.

My tax form is apparently still pending, but it was months ago that I submitted that, so the fact that it just started the flashing a day or two ago seems more like evidence of a bug than a feature. And why flashing in only one of the two states whatever the reason?

It's not just you

I see the same blinking if my account summary info is displayed (images in portfolio, current balance, etc.). If I click on the blinking arrow, the summary info goes away and the blinking stops.

I checked the tax center and it shows my tax info was submitted. I looked a bit in the "My account" section to see if anything else required attention and I can't see anything. I also looked at their forums and didn't see anything.

That arrow didn't blink before, so if this is a feature, they need to do some work so you have a clue what it's telling you. It's more likely some sort of bug, but as I'm just under $3 away from a payout, the only thing I care about is that the request payout feature works and the cash shows up in PayPal a few days later.

DT is largely something I ignore these days

I did see that (went to check after I saw your post) but not in all sets. I also kept getting "We're sorry, but we were not able to load this contributor's sets at the moment. Please try again. If the problem continues, please reach out to our customer support." but would then be able to navigate again to the page and see it.

Which images and which sets changes - it's not consistent. Also, I had one set with 98 images in it which shows only 8, one of which is someone else's illustration of a family of pigs! Another set of 40 images that has 38 images that don't belong to me plus 25 of mine. So the total number of images doesn't add up in addition to having the wrong person's images.

Something is clearly being "improved" with unfortunate side effects.

Thanks for pointing this out. I looked though the SS portfolio and don't see anything of mine. Only the copyrightholder can submit a DMCA infringement form so if anyone recognizes the authors of any of these, let them know.

Lots of food; a few batches of skies, planks of wood and blurry light backgrounds. How did this ever get accepted - even SS's own similars logic is picking up the originals...

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on January 12, 2017, 18:32

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...

These new tools have been "coming soon" since at least March 2016. Here are some of the discussions here about this:

http://www.microstockgroup.com/alamy-com/responsibility-for-setting-correct-licence/msg450581/#msg450581

http://www.microstockgroup.com/alamy-com/rf-editorial-coming-to-alamy!/

http://www.microstockgroup.com/alamy-com/responsibility-for-setting-correct-licence/msg463805/#msg463805

http://www.microstockgroup.com/alamy-com/keywording-system-not-changed/

The blog post from November (referenced in this week's email, but it's not a new post) led me to hope we'd be seeing the new interface, but I still see the old Manage Images. I'm really looking forward to an easier process with keywords and the option for RF editorial, but I haven't heard of anyone who's seen this yet (it's supposedly rolling out in phases?).

The new image page design has killed my sales. At first I was happy to see that there were twice as many "similar images" and "same artist" selections at the bottom of the page, but then I realized that they're now showing images from my port that their algorithm considers "most popular"...with a lag of several weeks. So no matter which of my images you're looking at, you see my Christmas images at the bottom of the page, which were popular a month ago and nobody wants or needs in January.

Also, "similar images," until last year, used to show some similars within my own port, but now purposely excludes them, showing only images from other artists. Last year they introduced their awful similars algorithm that goes by pixels rather than keywords, which suppressed my sales...and this new change has suppressed them even further.

After I read this I thought I'd have a look at my own port's "Same Artist" and "Similar Images" and although I don't see what you're seeing, it appears to have lots of breakage/bugs/very strange behavior

1. I have several images (of the ones I checked) that have more than one of my own images in the "Similar Images" section. Some have all 8! At first I thought I got one slot (the first) in the "Similar Images" row if the image was popular enough, but I have some cases where there's only one of mine in the "Similar" section but it's not the first slot.

2. I have a few images that have no "Same Artist" section at all. One has only one in that section; another has only three. All 8 slots are used for the "Similar Images" section though. This isn't just a one off - if you search for that image again or in a different browser, you get the same result.

3. Thinking about a buyer, the notion of similar is just broken - I have some Kauai images and in the similars are things with something mountainous and something watery but many are from very cold places and lakes not oceans. I can't imagine a buyer looking at Hawaii/Kauai images  wanting Alberta, the Swiss Alps or a Fjord!!

At one time, Dreamstime had said that they were factoring in the acceptance rate in search position, but I don't remember any other agency saying they were doing that. They don't generally talk much about how they arrive at search position though, so it's not likely you'd ever know if they did.

It always seemed like a truly daft idea to me to factor in acceptance rate (and not only because at that time DT was rejecting images for having a model release which seemed even crazier). From the buyer's point of view, they want to see good results and they don't care who produced them or all the other images that didn't get accepted. So wrecking the buyer experience for some internal reward system seemed completely misguided.

...I noticed, that images of retro car details and tools isolated on white sell well.
But last year i did a lot of insect macro - will it sell? Also, are Ukrainian traditional county houses pictures worth uploading? And what about food macro - is it worth trying?...

Almost everything sells - the question is how many and what the competition is. If you can get an image approved and it sells once in a decade, I'd argue that isn't really very interesting. Something that sells a few times a day year round, or a seasonal image that does very well for the 3 months or so it's relevant might be much more useful.

Tools on white are easy for just about anyone to do, so even if the demand is good (and some tools are used as metaphors, opening up the market a bit), sales may be limited for you.

I don't really know about demand for Ukrainian locations and homes, but I'm guessing that tourism there is currently not a big market and the images don't apply well to any other market (i.e. they look distinctly Ukranian). So there may be a small-ish market. A search on SS for ukraine house photos produced 33,000 results, so take a look at what's there to see if you have something to add. Agencies have been pushing for local content and things authentically of a certain place or culture, but the unspoken addendum to that is there needs to be demand from buyers for those cultures and places.

A search on SS for insect macro produced over 380k results (and probably many are not really macros, but still, it's a lot). Unless you have something really special, I'm not sure how you make a dent with so many already out there.

The good thing with insect macros or tools is that the images don't date quickly (unlike images of fashion or technology) Good luck

I'm assuming these are all one person's works? I have a property release for my own work - anything I paint or draw that ends up in a photograph I license. I use my own "universal" release and in the property description field it says:

"Painted backgrounds, painted props, cards, seasonal decorations and mixed media collages, gift tags, painted frames."

In the visual reference section I have small thumbnails of a selection of the works - but not everything. I use this release repeatedly for anything I create and so far, no agency has refused to accept it. If I uploaded a reproduction of Monet or Van Gough, I hope they'd call foul, but this is all craft-type stuff.

It may also be that as I'm both the "artist" and photographer they're less concerned about the catch-all release.

If you're talking about major works of art by someone other than you, I don't know if the agencies would be as accepting, but why don't you try it with a few and see?

I would strongly suggest that you don't attempt to license these images anywhere without a signed property release (and your father in law could sign just one and you could attach the different visual references.

You could see if the Getty property release was any more OK with him (and that could easily be modified to be your own universal release that any of the agencies will accept; that's what I do).

You have a couple of possible outcomes with sales - little to no interest, or the images sell really well. If they don't sell much, then it's a massive investment of your time for no return. If they sell really well, you increase the likelihood of future legal trouble (directly in proportion to the amount of money made).

Also, I don't mean to be morbid, but whoever is your father in law's legal heir will own the copyright in the future and without a release (and with good sales) you have to consider their attitude, especially as it's a he said/she said situation with respect to permission.

Licensing other people's work and holding it out to the agency as your own (look at the artist supply agreements and you'll see they generally include the terms you agree to with every upload) will get your account closed, which puts all your other income at risk.

Just say no