Quote from: Uncle Pete on March 25, 2022, 16:15

Quote from: fotorob on March 25, 2022, 14:30
It has been almost nine years since microstock superstar Yuri Arcurs announced his exclusivity contract with iStock/Getty Images.

However, around December 2021 a new portfolio from "peopleimages.com" (a Yuri Arcurs company) popped up at Adobe Stock:
https://stock.adobe.com/de/contributor/210716081/peopleimages-com

You can read more about it in my blog entry (in German, Google Translate will usually work for English translations):
https://www.alltageinesfotoproduzenten.de/2022/03/25/yuri-arcurs-ist-zurueck-peopleimages-com-portfolio-seit-vier-monaten-auf-adobe-stock/

Interesting. The German link on AS doesn't work in English for some reason. Here it is. 100 pages
https://stock.adobe.com/contributor/210716081/peopleimages-com?load_type=author&prev_url=detail

DT is interesting.
"Featured photographer between February 17, 2022 and February 24, 2022
51,679 files 234 sales"

And I'll just add this in case someone wants to look  at his own agency:  https://peopleimages.com/

Best to him and everyone.

Thanks.

The things that made SS great (in the good ole days) were volume and the occasional big SOD and/or EL. Starting 2022 it seems to me that all these factors have gone. For me the volume has dropped off a cliff and any days when there is a little volume it's all ten and teen cents when it used to be 38 cents. Haven't had a decent SOD or EL so far this year and only made payout in Feb because the sales were cumulative from Jan when I didn't make minimum payout.

On AS, I get less sales in numbers but for the majority of sales the minimum amount is $0.35 and I have many for $1.00 for which I need 8-10 sales at SS to make the same money.

SS this year so far is worse than pathetic and comes ever closer to my irritation-sufficient-delete-port level. (OK I haven't uploaded anything for 2 years)!

2021......Jan+Feb totals. Dls=367 Earnings=$188
2022......Jan+Feb totals (so far). Dls 255 Earnings=$58

I have to say that I'm happy with the move of the major camera manufacturers to mirrorless. All those people selling their little-used Nikon D800s for €500-600 which is less than half a new iPhone! Dunno how much better than the D800 the D850 is in image quality but at the moment the D850 used is still very expensive compared to the D800 and D800E.

Have to admit that for everything except commissioned work, the Sony A6000 (mirrorless) is a fantastic camera even with kit zoom lens and I use it all the time because it fits in my jacket pocket. If I were prepared to spend the money though.......I'd get an iPhone 12 or 13 because for most stock purposes it is the only camera I would need.

Let's face it, a major user of stock images/footage is never going to go to a 'free' site for images of recognisable people without model release and for a corporation, a SS yearly subscription is less than the CEO spends entertaining a client in one night!

Me a bit of a dummy...had 2 years of free (PS&LR) subscriptions and would have qualified again last year had I not forgotten to upload some files! Ah well....just have to pay this time but I am inspired to upload again (just not to SS)!

Quote from: Unamas on February 09, 2022, 22:03
STOP the Whining! Improve your food photos https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/instagrammable-food-photo-tips

Trouble with some parts of that article are.............."4. Shoot in Natural Light

Lighting can make or break a food photo—or any photo for that matter—and it's not something that can be fixed in Photoshop. Artificial light can make your food look unappealing and unappetizing, so it's typically best to avoid it when possible. That includes using a flash. "

Clearly, the author has never taken the trouble to learn how to use 'flash'/'strobe'. I think I can count on the fingers of one hand how many good-selling food shots I've taken using natural light! My food photography clients don't have windows facing the right direction...so I use artificial light and that's usually strobe! SS often has articles giving junk advice.

Quote from: Wilm on February 03, 2022, 08:00

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 02, 2022, 22:43

Quote from: Wilm on February 02, 2022, 21:09

The largest contributor - Africa Studio - did it. I have a lot of respect for that, because some employees have to be paid. I am sure that the decision was very difficult for them.

Africa Studio did what?

https://www.shutterstock.com/g/africa+studio   1,306,255 stock photos
New Africa https://www.shutterstock.com/g/newafrica  825,023 stock photos

Some people are doing better, but I'd agree, most are not. How can anyone replace 38 cents a download with 10 cents and make the same? The only saving part is, we are paid an increasing percentage for the sales. There's nothing about the reset that doesn't suck for everyone!

Hmmm, I was absolutely sure that they were no longer there. And when they didn't show up in riptok's analysis either, I saw that confirmed.
But you are absolutely right, I can definitely find them.

https://petapixel.com/2021/07/23/how-to-rank-on-the-first-page-of-top-queries-on-stock-photo-sites/

Something interesting in that article (but not really relevant to this discussion for which I apologize!).
....."A notable user account is "Designs Stock," which has only 3,300 images in their portfolio but has as much traffic as account "wavebreakmedia" with 570,000 images. Also, the "betto rodrigues" account has the most traffic in the list of all 14,000 authors that we analyzed."

Betto Rodrigues account has the most amount of traffic but seems to have no or very few sales on their first page of 'top images'. Bizarre!

Quote from: cascoly on February 01, 2022, 18:35
AS is consistently about 1/2 of SS income, (except for last month where AS & SS were about the same, due to an SS drop)

Same for me usually except this month when AS actually brought in more money than SS. Hardly surprising though at SS...reverting to Level 1 on Jan 1st not only means that almost every sub sale is 10 cents but ODDs and SODs are also around half what I'd normally get in Level 3 (usually achieved in Feb-March). For contributors it truly is a diabolical system intended to enrich the senior management and their stock options by boosting the SS Q1 profits. No doubt there's a huge amount of back-slapping and high-fiving at that first quarter's earnings announcement meeting!

Thanks Ralf. I must have felt inspired with my new and first full-frame DSLR and 85mm lens! I think the original shot got a big boost from eBay using it in a guide to pricing antique and vintage books.

Quote from: thijsdegraaf on February 01, 2022, 14:25

Quote from: RalfLiebhold on February 01, 2022, 12:25
I find it remarkable that Shutterstock runs so differently individually.
I upload regularly myself and Shutter is still in first place despite the reset.
I would be interested to know if those who have a bad Shutterstock experience still upload material at all?
Some have probably deactivated a certain time their portfolio, perhaps that also plays a role.

If you upload a lot of new photos, which are easy to find, a buyer can also see some older photos of you (listed there), which are in the same category. As a result, they may be bought more often and therefore sink less quickly.
Or is this a wrong theory? 

I had one really good-selling shot of old books and I later uploaded more shots of the same (but sufficiently different to pass the 'similars' rejection). The newer shots did tend to piggy-back on the original one but the big problem with SS compared to AS is that when you get a dl at SS, you'll see that a number of alternatives are proposed. These alternatives seem chosen by some similar visual only algorithm without heed to keywords or subject matter and there's often not one of your own 'similars' there. In this case there is one of my similars there but the other 6 are not. AS on the other hand does show your shots from the same series which, I think, gives you more chance.

January 2022. WME at SS by a long chalk. Came $5 short of minimum payout ($35) at SS with 132 dls (usually 160-200) and a totally pathetic $0.24 RPD. AS 52 dls and $0.69 RDP for Jan 2022. Still OK for no effort and no worries cuz January is commissioned work month...ka-ching, ka-ching! 

Quote from: cascoly on January 28, 2022, 02:16

Quote from: OM on January 28, 2022, 01:29

Quote from: cascoly on January 26, 2022, 23:53

Quote from: jamiehooper on January 26, 2022, 19:49... A bigger issue is that 2 years ago my most common royalty was $ .38.  Since SS "restructured their payments" that has changed to $ .10.
Do the math, and it's no surprise that I used to make twice my minimum payout every month and it now takes me 3 months to barely make it. ....

but what's your RPD? surely not $.10 - while the low-end may be most common, higher single sales bring my RPD to about 50c each month.. in absolute terms, my SS income is down about 30-40% over last 2 yrs - with only Canva showing a significant increase (due to their revenue sharing of subscriptions)

My monthly RPD (jan2022) at SS is $0.25 (lifetime is $0.69). This month's RPD at AS is $0.70. At SS earnings total for Jan 22 = $30 and at AS = $34. I first noticed that my uploads to SS were getting almost no traction in 2018 due to the massive volume of competition coming in every day/hour. Approved images that stayed on page 1 of new in 2014-2015 for a day or more were now disappearing from the first hundred new images (P1) within hours of approval and that's when I decided it was no longer really worth the effort of uploading...it had become a lottery instead of a business (with actual opportunities)! When your new images are gone from from P1 of new within hours of approval, you have little chance of ever selling them (just IMHO).
..

thanks for your details - so basically, you're getting $.25 for each DL, still not great

but how do you define 1st page?  if it's too generic, then you have millions in competition, the more specific your keywording, the higher you'll show up on less competitive combinations. if you're just looking at new images, there's no hope since you'll be swamped by the flood of newer images.  but how many serious buyers look at new images for their needs?

i don't spend time trying to game position on some mythical 1st page, since we really dont know what buyers are looking for, but my older images (some 10+ yrs old now) continue to find buyers

so i spend my time editing metadata, rather than trying to figure out a black box to which i have nonaccess.

I have to admit that since 2018, I've basically give up on microstock. You're right to focus on metadata because that is possibly the one thing that can give you the edge over the 'mob'. The trouble for me is that I'm spoiled with the couple of commissions I have each year. For effectively 6 weeks work per year, I can earn 10X what I get from SS per year. But it is hard (physically demanding) work when age counts against you. And it was one of my reasons to get into stock in the first place....when the time shall come that I cannot physically perform the commissioned work, I would at least have some (pension-like) payments from stock.

Had microstock at SS not gone the way it has, I would have continued expanding my port there in the expectation that with, say, 5K images (and around $10k/year income I could have dropped the commissioned work). Around 2015 (my retirement age) these were pretty reasonable assumptions of future income growth from microstock. At the time, I had 500-600 images at SS and AS and the income produced at SS was 3-3.5K/year. Whodathunkit that income could have dropped so much and so fast!!...still thankful for the commissions and to have the satisfaction of knowing that some businesses do still value the particular skills of a experienced photographer and are prepared to pay for them (unlike microstock where images are simply a commodity to be licensed for the lowest possible payment to the author)!

Yes, I know that this is a typical tirade of the old bogger that can't keep up with the times...and everything was better in the old days! But prior to 2015-2016 micro's were truly a business in which one could make reasonable business decisions for the future based on past successes/planning. When SS opened the floodgates to anyone with ONE acceptable image, the business went out of the window for serious contributors and it became a lottery. Alas, it's the way the corporate world works....everything to placate the stockholders and make the senior management rich. All that at the expense of everyone else down the food chain (and we really are at the bottom of that with regard to power and influence).

Quote from: cascoly on January 26, 2022, 23:53

Quote from: jamiehooper on January 26, 2022, 19:49... A bigger issue is that 2 years ago my most common royalty was $ .38.  Since SS "restructured their payments" that has changed to $ .10.
Do the math, and it's no surprise that I used to make twice my minimum payout every month and it now takes me 3 months to barely make it. ....

but what's your RPD? surely not $.10 - while the low-end may be most common, higher single sales bring my RPD to about 50c each month.. in absolute terms, my SS income is down about 30-40% over last 2 yrs - with only Canva showing a significant increase (due to their revenue sharing of subscriptions)

My monthly RPD (jan2022) at SS is $0.25 (lifetime is $0.69). This month's RPD at AS is $0.70. At SS earnings total for Jan 22 = $30 and at AS = $34. I first noticed that my uploads to SS were getting almost no traction in 2018 due to the massive volume of competition coming in every day/hour. Approved images that stayed on page 1 of new in 2014-2015 for a day or more were now disappearing from the first hundred new images (P1) within hours of approval and that's when I decided it was no longer really worth the effort of uploading...it had become a lottery instead of a business (with actual opportunities)! When your new images are gone from from P1 of new within hours of approval, you have little chance of ever selling them (just IMHO).

I leave what I have already had approved up at SS because it involves no effort for the $1,000+ the small port brings in every year and whilst  I have my reservations about Stan and Jon making all that stash off me but hey...it's $1K+ of free money/year for me and it contributes to my pension (again for no effort). If I thought I could get back to my old level of earnings of $3.5K (in 2014-15)by increasing my port size drastically, I would but I really don't thing that's realistic besides....that would be feeding the beast for Jon and Stan's benefit.

I'm lucky because for me January at SS (and the level reset) is the real pox but I don't care because January is my month of commissioned photography and SS earnings are less than pocket change in comparison. It is truly ridiculous how little stock at SS earns us compared to its value to the buyers/users and corporate SS of our images.

January 2022 dls = 113 so far.
January 2021 dls (full month) = 204
$$ (so far) less than half of last year.

Around 900 SS images. No uploads for 2+ years. AS (same number and same images) has brought in more $$ than SS this month so far with only 43 dls!

Quote from: DO on January 25, 2022, 20:15
Metaphysical memorabilia anyone?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60121538

Line from that article:

"With some NFTs changing hands for tens of millions of dollars, the value of the market in digital art and collectables is now approaching that of the global art trade."
Strewth!

Quote from: Level6 on January 02, 2022, 23:14

Quote from: DavidK on January 02, 2022, 21:51

Quote from: OM on January 02, 2022, 21:30
Level 6 be careful with trading the stock market/options/futures. If you think that microstock CEO's are greedy and grabbing, wait until the Wall Street Boyz hit you. I did stocks and options for a few years in the late 90's and early noughties. Made 20K in a couple of days just after 911 for a couple of hundred bucks in put options and had a few other successes in trading stocks at the time but the thing about the financial world is...they want it back and they'll usually get it and more!

Eventually I couldn't stand the stress.....losing a fortune by taking a toilet break can easily happen! The thing that really got me out was the way the big options traders could move the goalposts if the value of options went against them.

At around 2000 there was some 'guru'/fraudster who was telling the wealthy that the easiest way to make a lot quickly was to sell a very in-the-money 4-year index put option....index at 700...sell 4-year put 800 and get €10K +4 years time value (€2K). The prediction was that the index would go to 800 maybe even in a matter of months so you could buy back your put option for much less than you sold it for. Easy money! Except it didn't work out that way after 2001.
I took the opposite side of that trade and bought those 4-year mucho-in-the-money 800  puts when it was still a bull market. But when the index dived after 2001, those puts which I had and which I also used to cover some smaller short-dated puts I had written (for the premium) were no longer deemed to be covering so I couldn't do that any more. And the long dated in the money puts I had were not going up in value as the market declined because the time value of 4 years meant that in that time the market could go back up again and so my long-dated puts were now worth less than in the money puts at the next following expiration.

In the meantime the dealers who sold me those puts were trying to get me to sell them off. Because I could no longer use them to collect premium on other short-dated options I wanted to write, they also became pretty useless as a way of producing regular income. At some point I sold them for almost no profit whilst the market dive should have made them worth a lot more....but if the optionsboyz decide that they don't want to lose money then you have to. Had I had the mental courage plus enough valium and held out until expiration in 2004, I would have indeed made around 4X what I paid...but I didn't. At the urging of my wife I stopped all stock market activities in 2003, having given back around €80K. The big guys (with their nano-second executions and servers next to hubs) just love the small 'investors'/speculators and are really practiced at taking your money. The small guy is truly easy prey....so beware!

Lol, even the terminology sounds similar to what one might hear walking by the craps table on a busy casino night.

Yes, as it's so often said on Reddit on Wallstreet bets, "Sir, this is a casino"

And you know why they have 0 and 00 on the casino roulette wheels! I'm sure they'd love to have 000 (maybe they do?).

My theory about currencies and the need for the Euro...in the beginning you had the dollar and the yen for major currency speculators but with only 2 major currencies exchange commissions were limited....make a third one (Euro) and you've got your 000 on the roulette wheel!LOL.

Level 6 be careful with trading the stock market/options/futures. If you think that microstock CEO's are greedy and grabbing, wait until the Wall Street Boyz hit you. I did stocks and options for a few years in the late 90's and early noughties. Made 20K in a couple of days just after 911 for a couple of hundred bucks in put options and had a few other successes in trading stocks at the time but the thing about the financial world is...they want it back and they'll usually get it and more!

Eventually I couldn't stand the stress.....losing a fortune by taking a toilet break can easily happen! The thing that really got me out was the way the big options traders could move the goalposts if the value of options went against them.

At around 2000 there was some 'guru'/fraudster who was telling the wealthy that the easiest way to make a lot quickly was to sell a very in-the-money 4-year index put option....index at 700...sell 4-year put 800 and get €10K +4 years time value (€2K). The prediction was that the index would go to 800 maybe even in a matter of months so you could buy back your put option for much less than you sold it for. Easy money! Except it didn't work out that way after 2001.
I took the opposite side of that trade and bought those 4-year mucho-in-the-money 800  puts when it was still a bull market. But when the index dived after 2001, those puts which I had and which I also used to cover some smaller short-dated puts I had written (for the premium) were no longer deemed to be covering so I couldn't do that any more. And the long dated in the money puts I had were not going up in value as the market declined because the time value of 4 years meant that in that time the market could go back up again and so my long-dated puts were now worth less than in the money puts at the next following expiration.

In the meantime the dealers who sold me those puts were trying to get me to sell them off. Because I could no longer use them to collect premium on other short-dated options I wanted to write, they also became pretty useless as a way of producing regular income. At some point I sold them for almost no profit whilst the market dive should have made them worth a lot more....but if the optionsboyz decide that they don't want to lose money then you have to. Had I had the mental courage plus enough valium and held out until expiration in 2004, I would have indeed made around 4X what I paid...but I didn't. At the urging of my wife I stopped all stock market activities in 2003, having given back around €80K. The big guys (with their nano-second executions and servers next to hubs) just love the small 'investors'/speculators and are really practiced at taking your money. The small guy is truly easy prey....so beware!

Pete's #1...definitely me too. I rarely go back to visit by bike or on foot when I should.

Anyka and Thijs in same pension boat in NL. Fortunate to have retained a client from the past and working for them 6 weeks/year doubles my pension. Must get more organized in 22 and look carefully at the sort of stock that the non-micros want to see and whether I can get in there. Think I might go back to trying some high quality food shots of anything that's 'IN' before it's really 'IN' and done to death by everyone else!.
Like Anyka I too have cupboards full of props (much food related) and later this year I will be moving house and downsizing...so some stuff will have to go.

I've been revisiting my old travel photos (all 35mm slides) of which I have tens of thousands. Many are rubbish, some are OK and I think I would love to travel again but with a digital camera. Unfortunately (for me) there are just so many excellent travel photographers out there now and the competition is overwhelming. Anyway, travel photography frequently demands physical fitness and at 70+ mine isn't what it was so I think I'll just have to dream instead of doing.

Quote from: Brasilnut on December 24, 2021, 09:54
Looks like a 3 year old got hold of a camera and pressed the shutter button multiple times.

https://www.shutterstock.com/g/CharoensilpPhotoData?sort=popular&page=10

Probably the same contributor (both Thailand). When they get their SS payment for the bingo numbers, they go out and get utterly legless and fill a card with the blurs of the second contributor (same!). remember....you must distinguish yourself as an (p**s)artist! 

These high(er) value SODs are the only reason I leave my port up at SS. Haven't uploaded much for 3 years and nothing since the SS heist was put in place. If I were to get no dls larger than subs for a few months, I'd be inclined to delete my port there altogether. However, all SODs so far this year amount to 42% of my year's total earnings and, for absolutely no effort on my part, I'd be daft to toss it all away by deleting my port out of distaste at senior management's greed. In total, from SS and Adobe I get a nice little extra bit of passive income/pension of $1.5K/year.
 
Adobe has been pretty good for me this year this year.....and I don't have to swear at the screen as my lowest dl rate is £0.27 but many come in at £0.74 and above. Average this year per dl at Adobe works out at $0.95 and $0.60/dl at SS. Pity that Adobe is only 40% of the SS income but mustn't forget to include PS CC free for 2 years running which is a sort of €120 bonus each year!

Had one SOD for $66.69 (thought the devil bought that ) and another for $20+ this month so that keeps me 'Innit2Winnit' at SS for the time being.

Under the 'Wish I'd thought o' that at the time' category.......I wish I'd invested half my microstock earnings from the beginning in bitcoin when it was under $100. 

Quote from: Uncle Pete on December 21, 2021, 15:10

Quote from: Brasilnut on December 21, 2021, 11:23

This sums up SS...by the way, the port is full of stolen images.....

https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Rockkss

I loved the descriptions. I seriously doubt the claimed country of Canada? "this is the photo of mountains and white clouds." "this is the photo of a cute red bird which lives in water." Everyone else would have called it a Flamingo.  "this is how a iceland looks from the sky." It's a white sand island. In four portfolios?

This is one of the worst ever.

Quote from: HappyBunny on December 21, 2021, 15:00
Would it help if we all write to SS reporting them?

Yep. I love the one of 'Iceland from the sky'. It's just too ridiculous for words especially when genuine contributors get submissions rejected for the most unreasonable reasons.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on December 20, 2021, 15:32

Quote from: OM on December 20, 2021, 14:29
Here's some more examples of polymorphic me! 

I noticed that too, but didn't say anything. I saw my avatar on someone else's image when I looked at similar.

We should assume like past SS innovations, they will be fixing it for months, with minor variations, or dump it and revert to the old pages. 

That background color works for some images, but for the red, turning it into puke, it's sick.

Yep. They use a nice shade of grey on some and that's OK but even when the color is good, the look is still a bit amateur/cheapo.

Here's some more examples of polymorphic me! 

Dunno whether the new look has anything to do with it (doubt it) but I've had two SODs this month for a total of $85+. I can stand the ten- and teen-centers as long as these big sales come along now and again. Also had a couple of subs yesterday for $0.98 and $0.99 which presumably means buyers going for smaller (but higher value) subs packages.