If you only do Adobe then yes, but if you have well established quality ports in many places, even if income is currently going down, there still are a lot of full time stock families.

Maybe not living in central London or New York, but 1200 - 3000 dollars can feed many families. And production is also a lot cheaper, hiring models and actors is very affordable in many countries.

The full timers often also have access to some of the high end agencies where sales volume is less, but the individual sale is higher.

But most people doing stock full time have gone dark on public forums. They do keep talking in closed little groups on social media.

But this thread is helpful to give people realistic expectations. It can help to balance the screaming youtube influencers.

Stock is very hard work and often better as a hobby than a full time job.

We don�t know how many people share a rank.

It could be 10 000 people or more sharing the rank 1000

There are a lot of old timers with huge portfolios that never post publicly.

There are also very large Russian or Asian language stock communities.

Progressed from weekly position of 11,000 to 10,700 with 14 further sales. Not great but RPD is better and above average. I knew early on when I started MS in 2019 I was not going to be able to achieve high volume like the above contributors, so pivoted focus to video - my recommendation for any beginner in stock with no or little collection of photos or specialized niche in demand as there more earning potential with overall fewer files.

That is a very good return for only 45 sales. Video is apparently really worth it. Much better average than photos.

Congratulations.

This is for today Friday

It is probably best to look at Sunday evening stats

for me it is 16:9,  but I try to make sure it can be easily cropped into a useful 3:2.

Quote from: amabu on February 29, 2024, 11:05

Freepik
Vecteezy
Dreamstime

Oh thanks.  I may try Dreamstime.

they don�t even take santa clause or vampires. also no people done as watercolors or art unless you are down to just silhouette outlines

i guess it is their way to avoid legal issues, they don�t have a big legal department and insurances like adobe.

but they take everything else and they accept files in 30 minutes.

sales are slow but it does grow over time.

more downloads, more money

when i reached pos 250 very briefly over the holidays i was earning a lot more and had over 100 sales a day.

then i dropped back down because i did not have enough content for january

my port is still very small, so i have drastic swings. with more content and more diversification there will hopefully be a more stable and higher weekly rank.

the rank also helps to see how overall downloads are doing. sometimes i move up although sales volume goes diown. then i know it is an overall drop.

a better factor would be a sales to port size indicator. that would give me visually the efficiency of my port.

Dreamstime and Deposit have small but regular sales and especially deposit inspite of basically not uploading for years. I don't see them going anywhere.

Alamy is a very old and specialized agency with a lot of editorial and great client connections. They will still be around as they are not really microstock.

Eyeem was just bought, so we will see what freepik does with it. Give them 3-5 years and then we will see.

Can't really comment on the others because I either don't or hardly supply them.

While these are all small agencies (any many others), I know a lot of people who would say that 30-40% of their income comes from many of these smaller places. As individuals they don't look like much but all of them combined, as a bundle of 10 places or more, it becomes genuine income they don't want to miss.

Maybe some will be bought and then absorbed or retired, but as individuals they don't move the needle. But as a group I think they still matter.

I think the more interesting question would be where are the new agencies, perhaps specializing in ai, or maybe even specializing in only authentic film/analogue, a new interesting video agency etc...

Which small little gems do you know and think are worthy of support?

There are many smaller places out there - which have an interesting concept and are worth supporting and pushing by the contributor community?

It would be a lot more expensive to pay professionals for custom shootings upfront.

This way they get all the content for free.

And they will keep needing daily life content shot by normal people, because for social media advertising you often need real life content "editorial style" not high end glamour shots.

They just need a stream of fresh content with enough variety for their ai training from the entire planet. Keeping a base microstock agency open will deliver that.

Half the usual uploads is probably fine, maybe even could drop another 50% without affecting their ai business.

But they could lower royalties again, especially if going forward their main focus is not growing the stock business.

It is an easy way to make more money instantly and inspite of the complaints, uploads will continue.

And if high end content is missing, I wouldn't be surprised if they can generate that out of the mass content with the help of ai. Maybe employ a few specialised designers who keep maing high end content out of the "authentic"/amateur upload streams.

I would also be good for advertising the skills of their ai engine.

I find the uploads really easy. I keep hearing that having some exclusive content with them will increase exposure and downloads. Might try that.

They went from 42 million to 35 million yoy for the same quarter. They lost 50% of uploads.

They give no guidance that they plan to revive their stock business. All the focus they talk about is ai and expecting great things for it.

They will still make more money than dreamstime or deposit. They will always get uploads from somewhere in the world.

Just read their own statements.

I would prefer if they had a strong increase in stock sales and proposed brilliant plans to revive. their stock business.

It would be better for producers if pond5 and SS thrive and grow. 4 strong marketplaces are better than just 2.

But their numbers show that is not the case.

We will see what they report next quarter.

You are assuming that every customer wants to spend time playing and learning ai.

I know a lot of people with agency plans that tried it but quickly gave up.

Especially when you really are not sure what you are really looking for and need, it is a lot faster to browse a very large database and pick out a few files.

I do believe people will use ai to adapt what they download.

You need to have a basic understanding of photography or video to even prompt what you want. If you don�t know what rembrandt lighting is, how different lenses affect an image, what color processing you might prefer etc�there are endless variations. Differences between acrylic and oil color painting or even a percentage wise mix of different art media�it is very complex.

Plus a lot of the people with an agency plan are normal people, not media professionals with years of training.

Again, those who believe it is all over, it is probably best if you readjust your income sources.

But it is not over for everyone.

Sorry to read this.

I wonder if people from some regions of the world have a higher problem with these fraudulent downloads because there are simply are a lot more fraudsters active in that region.

Perhaps being spurred on by some youtubers sharing "tips" how to get "free" content by abusing the trial periods.

But Adobe should look into the individual case and only terminate if they have a genuine reason to suspect that the producer is somehow involved.

I hope there is a real human involvement in termination.

Because no artist can prevent abusive downloads.

I hope they can help you. Because it seems to be that only Adobe has these massive amounts of portfolio closures on the artists side.