All points here are correct.  You can't watch the numbers so closely and read too much into it or you'll go crazy.  And the larger your portfolio gets, the more you'll be able to notice actual trends.  But even though my portfolio has grown nicely (approx 750 pics after 13 months of tracking) I still fall into the trap of expecting a day to go a certain way and getting disappointed when it doesn't.  For instance, I had my best weekend ever this past Sat (27 SS downloads) and Sun (24 downloads) and expected to have a better than normal Monday, but it turned out well below average.  I try to just care about the monthly totals, and charted out those show a pretty straight and steady line upward, but I still have F5-itis and all the lunacy that brings.

I'm confused.  Are we talking about sales in general, or a particular site?

Sales are about normal for me everywhere but BigStock, where they are bad for the second month in a row.

For me, sales are normal everywhere (up slightly in general vs. Oct) but BigStock up 100% from last month.

This is baffling.  I'm definitely seeing a significant and consistent increase, and not sure why.  Seeing numbers unheard of for my portfolio (which is just over 700 images).  Looking into it further, I see a fairly steady stream of 2.00 and 3.00 commissions starting on or around Nov 5.  Something must be happening, and whatever it is, I like it... unless it permanently replaces ODs from SS, which would be a net loss for me.  However, I'm also seeing a good amount of ODs at SS the last few days, which of course could be unused credits before the OD option was taken away. Hmmmmm...

From April to October, downloads are not change too much, even if online pics are five times.

Looking at your SS port, it's clear that you do great work.  Problem is, there are many contributors doing similarly great work on the same subject matter.

Most new contributors experience a "honeymoon" at SS, in which they start with a bang making a good number of sales, then things slow down despite consistently uploading new pics.  The problem is two-fold: 

1) When you post new material, it shows up highly on the page when a buyer is ranking by newest pics.  You get good sales because your pics are newer than the many near identical shots from your competition.  But then as your stuff ages, other near identical shots are added and your once-hot pics fall into oblivion.  The solution is to offer an extremely unique take on the subjects -- come up with your own style that isn't similar to anyone else and isn't easily duplicated.

2) If you're focusing on just a few subjects, you end up competing with yourself.  For continuous growth, you need to not only tackle different subjects, but search out niches that are currently underserved.

I've kept these two points top of mind when uploading new stuff to SS and all the other sites, and for me, it's working.  I've had consistent growth over the past year from my first month (288 sales at SS) to last month (1351 sales).  Watch your RPI (return per image) like a hawk... if it's sliding like yours has been doing, you can either apply the two points above to get it to stabilize, or you'll simply be watching it fall further.

Good luck!

I upload two images a day to StockXpert, and typically they were always reviewed within a day or two.  For the past few weeks, those two dialy uploads accumulated until I had 24 awaiting review.  They were finally all reviewed (approved!) yesterday morning, so they're definitely still reviewing and approving, if much slower than usual. 

As for Photos.com and JUI, I've continued to see sales there everyday, with no sign of a slowdown.  Many showed up in my account breakdown today, but like others are saying, the true test will be what shows up tomorrow.

Actually, SS has chimed in via its forum:

"Hello:
We are currently testing different product lineups for a small subset of our visitors and that we will, of course, make an announcement if anything changes permanently.
We appreciate your continued patience and support.
Sincerely,
Anthony Correia
Shutterstock"

Hoping to hear that these tests showed SS they stand to lose big money by eliminating OD sales and we'll go back to business as usual.  I was getting great OD sales up until yesterday.

Are they redirecting traffic to BigStock?

ED:  Are they redirecting OD traffic to BigStock?

If they are, I'm sure not seeing any bump in BigStock sales today.  And even if every SS on-demand sale turned into a BigStock sale, we're still looking at a 2.70 commission being reduced to something like .50 or 1.00.  Arrggghh!

Well, there's the confirmation.  This is sure to be a rocky transition.  I can't see getting the same number of additional downloads on BigStock to equal my loss of ODs on SS, at least in the short term.  Plus, for each of those downloads, I'll likely get $.50 or $1.00 for a download I would have received $2.70 for before the switch?  This is going to result in a BIG drop in my numbers.

I've had 26 downloads today so far, no ODs.  Looking over my stats over the past few months, I've never had a day with a ratio of subscription downloads to ODs greater than about 15:1.   Suggests something is going on, but I'm still hoping this proves to be nothing.

I'm hoping there's nothing to this, but right now in the Shutterstock forum, everyone is up in arms about the possibility that SS has dropped On-Demand downloads.  I'm not even sure how to verify this, but I do know that I haven't seen any ODs yet today, which is odd at this point in the day for me.  These typically account for about 20 - 30% of my SS revenue, so that would be awful!

Anyone know what's going on at Crestock?

OK, so they've had this posted for the past several weeks: "Please note that we are currently experiencing significant delays to our image inspections.  While we hope to return to normal as soon as possible, the waiting time the moment can unfortunately be up to four weeks. We apologise in advance for the inconvenience and disappointment this will inevitably cause. Thanks for your patience in the meantime."

I've been uploading two or three images daily.  Maybe I should have given up on them, but lately Crestock has actually been performing well for me, so I've kept them in my upload routine.  But now I'm up to 74 images waiting for review, and it appears nothing has been reviewed in at least a month. 

I downloaded two more today and got this message: "1 processing errors: There is not enough space on the disk."  what?

I'm very encouraged by Oct so far.  SS, FT and DT doing especially well. 

My big disappointment for the past several weeks as been StockXpert.  It was tearing things up for several months as my #2 site, and for the past several weeks, it's been #5.  I'm still getting the JupiterImages and Photo.com sales, so the mix of my sales there is the same, but StockXpert overall is only doing about two-thirds what it used to do, while the others are all showing healthy increases. 

Companies don't buy competitors to keep them up and running, offering buyers a multitude of choices and keeping prices down.  Look outside the microstock world for the proof.  Typically when one company buys its competitor it is buying market share, expecting to absorb the customer base as it either gradually phases out the competing product lines or drops them immediately.  Like just about everyone here, I hope BigStock is allowed to thrive, even grow with a new marketing push, but I'd be shocked to see this.  Disagree? Find an example of one widget company buying another widget company and keeping both products on the shelves.  If the product lines are complementary, the purchased product line may be integrated into the parent company's current offerings, but if they're redundant, the product deemed by the new owner to be the weakest in terms of sales and profits will get the axe.