You're spreading too much. Anything below FT was not worth my time.
I'm still working with 6, but will stop uploading to DT, CS, BS.

The Top 3 is responsible for 93% of my revenue.
In time it will be Top 2... and then just SS... till the fun is over...

This is worse than DPC. More than once DP went behind our backs while they were extorting contributors. And this time around they confirmed the shady deal and are not even pretending to care. Let's remember that this is a minor agency that barely sells anything. If people knew they would get 3% of the higher priced sales most would never open an account in DP.

Some months ago I was one of those lamenting all the time about rejections.

Since this time I have changed some �little� things:
1) I have change my mind and my approach to stock photos
2) I have bought a better camera
3) I have bought good prime lenses
4) I came less on forums to complain and complain directly to [email protected]

The points 1 to 3 have led to produce better stock images. And maybe it tells me that the Shutterstock standards are growing.
The point 4 gave me the possibility to explain my point of view, and to get the point of view from the inspector with eventually some advice.

Finally:
> I get all the Images that I consider to be acceptable accepted
> I get the images that I consider borderline sometime accepted, sometime rejected, sometime accepted after some little adjustments based on the inspectors advices.
> I get the images �let�s try, who knows� rejected because they deserve to be rejected.

But it can happen that for incomprehensible reasons some acceptable images are rejected. In this situation I don�t even contact [email protected] or put a note to the inspector, I just resubmit the image as it is, and it is generally accepted.

So, before to always give the fault to the inspectors, what I did before, I think that it is better to try to be more objective about the own work, and maybe wait some days before to submit the images because with a little more reflection it is always possible to change the own vision.

That is great advise. I now have about 90% approval in SS, it used to be 10%.

But they still have ridiculous reviews. I had a whole series approved, and the last 4 were rejected for composition. I found that unreasonable and I submit again. This time composition was fine but they needed "editing" whatever that means. So I resubmit them a third time explaining the situation only to find out the sole reason for rejection is noise - THERE IS NO NOISE!

I feel offended when something like this happens.

Is it over? About 1/3 less downloads than expected.

I already have more DT sales in August than July (because July was horrible).

But SS on the other hand... just awful this month, so many days with 0 or 1 downloads.

They still inspect keywords, but this whole keywording system is a big waste of time.
But as far as I know, no other agency inspect keywords so I'll give them credit for that.

When I was starting micro in february I did a test myself with a handful of ancient pictures with a P&S from the early 2000's - just to see where would be the acceptable standards. Really bad quality images, nice composition but rasterized, with noise, and not that much in focus. They were all approved. And sold quite a few times, hopefully in small size. Needless to say, all the other agencies rejected them.

There is absolutely NO quality inspection, zero. At first I thought it was better than SS with their subjective reviews but now I realize IS went waaay too far. And they do reject quite a lot of my images due to potencial copyright and missing releases, normal stuff that other agencies would take. So it's all backwards, I don't know how TS is my top seller. With the given time, customers will migrate to SS and FT.

Yeah it's not like they sell much anyway... I'm also cutting down some agencies.

July was great wth plenty of OD, but this month is ridiculously low... hope it's just the weekend.

I like CS but July was a total blank - 0 sales. Better to focus on the Top 3.

Yes FT is doing well. The higher subscription values made them my 2nd highest RPD after IS.
Overall the earnings are not comparable to SS and IS, but still miles ahead of DT and the rest.

Recently I'm having quite a few images pending forever... subjects that a regular reviewer would have no problem figuring it out. But most importantly, this is likely to become my worst month ever at CS (even worst than my first month). Zero sales with 500 files, I'm tempted to stop uploading there.

Scam machine.