Quote from: cascoly on April 18, 2023, 11:26

Quote from: Wilm on April 18, 2023, 10:57
What's going on there? 5 minutes later + nearly 2 million files???

haven't you heard?  SS is now using chatGPT to generate their reports

What's going on there? 5 minutes later + nearly 2 million files???

It's interesting to compare the 2020 annual report (that's actually what it always looked like, in terms of appearance) and the 2021 annual report.

The Annual Report 2021 shows on page 44 that there were 400 million images and 24 million videos in 2021 in the database of shutterstock.

If I now go to the shutterstock startpage, 177 million images are displayed. Is this a display error? Or is that really less than half by now???

I also have some $0.33 and theoretically shouldn't have any income under $0.38 - but there's no way that's because of the tax form, because that's up to date. All this is now no longer transparent and traceable at all agencies.

Quote from: lenev on April 12, 2023, 16:21
Some more "cool" portfolios for you to enjoy 

https://www.shutterstock.com/g/LAINEBROWN
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Mahmoud+Morsi
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/GregoHQ
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Vector+Maechniq
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/joey+adrianto
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/SanMirza
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Megalaxy
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/MichaelBannon
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Karim_Osama
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/osm+shop
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/alperenyazganoglu
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/ceoJAHID
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Amr+Mahmo
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Silahkan
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Mahmoud_Sayed
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/DARLAETHERIDGE
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Amr+BS
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Trend+Stock
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/AmrMorsi
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/KASANDRACOOPER
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Amr+Azim
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Percy+Medeiros
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/DavidBlue
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/WillieGodfrey
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/RahmanQurashi
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/IsabelleDay
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/LindezaDigital
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Badridduza+Saud+Digonto
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Os+Azim
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/ZOHAIRMOHAMMAD
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/ZainKhalid09
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/NadineMeyer
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/ShanabShop
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/ALONDRACUEVAS
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/SarbjitSinghMatharu
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/AlAzizi
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/MiaBoone
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/JimmyBartell
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/GLENNMCCONNELL
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/ZINNAGRIFFIN
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/AmroMahmoud
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Sayedstock
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/MaikAachen
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Amr+Mah
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/please+help+share+recommend+and+promote+me+THANK+YOU?sort=newest&page=3

Especially those contributors from your series:
https://www.shutterstock.com/de/g/ZainKhalid09
https://www.shutterstock.com/de/g/MaikAachen
https://www.shutterstock.com/de/g/SanMirza

Quote from: Annie on April 10, 2023, 11:54

Quote from: Wilm on April 10, 2023, 10:50

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on April 10, 2023, 08:48

Quote from: Wilm on April 09, 2023, 17:45

This is more than impressing! How many images and videos do you have?

Thanks Wilm. I don't get too specific. My total portfolio is in the (very) low 10s of thousands. I have photos, illustrations and video. I never shifted to too much video; I saw from close to the outset that returns per DL were dropping far too quickly to make informed investment decisions.

At this portfolio size, your numbers are even more impressive. You seem to have good files. And in all modesty, you might want to think about whether "notjustanotherphotographer" would be a better fit. Maybe the untalented one will follow suit and rename himself "Alittlebitoftalent".

I love all these new nicknames you think up, Wilm! Very clever. The first time I saw you post "the untalented one" I burst out laughing.

Yes. NotJustAnotherPhotographer, indeed. 

 

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on April 10, 2023, 08:48

Quote from: Wilm on April 09, 2023, 17:45

This is more than impressing! How many images and videos do you have?

Thanks Wilm. I don't get too specific. My total portfolio is in the (very) low 10s of thousands. I have photos, illustrations and video. I never shifted to too much video; I saw from close to the outset that returns per DL were dropping far too quickly to make informed investment decisions.

At this portfolio size, your numbers are even more impressive. You seem to have good files. And in all modesty, you might want to think about whether "notjustanotherphotographer" would be a better fit. Maybe the untalented one will follow suit and rename himself "Alittlebitoftalent".

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on April 09, 2023, 12:13
Almost full time (still do some commission work). Stock earnings rolling months from February 2022 to 2023 (last completely reported month) $162,000 down from a $168,500 high rolling to April 2022.

Things are now sliding quick. I attribute my drop so far largely to Canva. I am making sales volumes comparable to my lifetime sales at SS every month for a tiny fraction of a cent each. Anyone who thinks at least a few of those aren't coming from customers who would have purchased on other sites (if Canva wasn't there) is crazy. It only takes a tiny percentage to make a big difference thanks to the massive volumes involved.

AI is the nail in the coffin. March looks likely to be $3000 or more down on last March. I can only see thing accelerating from here. Take a look at Adobe insights, most of the big selling ports are almost exclusively AI already and it has only been a matter of weeks...

Midjourney now lets you reverse engineer prompts that will give similar results to images you feed it. Anyone can reproduce equivalent portfolios very easily, or imitate best selling stock images in general. There'll be a gold rush for a few months, but we're done.

This is more than impressing! How many images and videos do you have?

Quote from: Noedelhap on March 14, 2023, 16:33
The only reason I can think of for relaxing the requirements:
- More approved submissions > increased assets
- Fewer guidelines for content reviewers > keep the cost for training and paying reviewers as low as possible, perhaps even downsizing the number of reviewers

Of course this means lower quality control and more copyright infringement, especially with auto-traced work and filtered photos. This was already difficult to check, if at all, now they simply absolve themselves of any possible infringement. Not a good sign.

I guess you've git a point there. I had very similar thoughts.

Quote from: SVH on March 10, 2023, 23:26

Quote from: wordplanet on March 10, 2023, 15:36

Quote from: SVH on March 08, 2023, 19:45

Quote from: eyewave on March 08, 2023, 08:31

Quote from: SVH on March 07, 2023, 21:27

You are getting a bit to emotional here and political as well. Totally unnecessary. The only point I'm making here is that if anyone with such a great audience place your art work it's worth thousands of dollars of promotion. Sure he doesn't pay for using your art but lot's of people will because he promoted your work and you will get a lot of attention of paying customers. And yes you can nag about things not being right but I personally would welcome something like this. And I will bet the artist in question will not be so unhappy as well. Even though she complains about not getting paid by Musk himself or being credited. C'mon think twice
But then still you can have another opinion. It's a free world still where we live, isn't it?

Can you tell me how in the world a microstock artist profits, when their work is stolen and published without mentioning the artist and linking to  their portfolio?

Let me try one last time

If you want to be succesful, with any product you sell, you have to reach a large audience. In that audience there are potential buyers. That is why we have advertisement on almost all media you use. You can make Coca Cola but if you don't tell people you have made this product nobody will buy your product.

So, if some lame ass with millions of followers tweets your photo then you get an enormous exposure.
In this audience you will have people that like this photo and will want to use it.
Among these people you have small players that might rip the photo of the tweet and use it and you get nothing. Not correct and a pity.

There will also be people that work for companies that have responsible policies and that obey the law of copyright. They will go and purchase the photo from the artist itself, or, in our case, from one of the agencies that sell our photo. Your photo will not be difficult to find and sales will be coming in.
Sales that never would have happened unless you would have spent a lot of money promoting your own work.

So that's why, even if it's fraudelent, wrong or whatever you want to call it, I (and again this is my personal opinion and you keep yours) would welcome any person that has millions of followers to expose my photo to his/her/it's audience, without them having bought the photo or credited me in the tweet.

Ask the artists in question if their revenues have gone up or down because of this. I am pretty sure that they will respond, if there are truthful, that it has gone up big time, even though they are whining about the wrongdoing.

edit:
So if this happens. You may want to sue the person, ask for a DMCA and get your photo as soon as possible of Twitter. I, on the other hand would let it stay there as long as possible. I might cause some trouble, to get even more exposure, but I would see it as a God given present.

The difference is, Coke doesn't get paid every time a photo of its soda is licensed. They make their money selling the actual can of soda. We make ours by licensing our photos, so "free advertising" and stealing/copyright infringement are one and the same. And they are not advertising our work for sale when they post it without consequences. They are using our work to get eyeballs on their own social media, and more likely encouraging others to repost with no $ to the photographer, and it sounds like no credit either, so there's really no way to call it "free advertising."

The guy isn't posting an image he bought to hang on his wall and saying, "Look at this art that I just bought" with a link to the artist's website. Even then, it may technically be a copyright violation to use the image, but it would also be a promotion for the artist and acceptable, to me.

Musk's tweets and attitude and actions are dangerous to our livelihood as photographers who make a part of our living from licensing. If there's a silver lining for this photographer, it will be because he's gotten a lawyer and sued. If he stayed quiet and said nothing, no one would know who he was nor would they buy or license his work, they'd just repost it if they liked it.

My opinion. Problem is, photographers who are happy for "the exposure" make it that much harder for the rest of us.

Musk didn't tweet the picture as saying he made this art. It's not stealing, like ripping something from Adobe and selling it as your own content at Shutterstock for example. Everybody these days are using images, sounds, in their social media that is not theirs and they don't pay for it, let alone credit it. Even celebrities. It's common life.

You as a microstock photograher would be happy to see your photo at the first page. That is the agency promoting you, willingly or because of their algorithm. It is exposure. For a good reason, honest reason or not. They do the advertisement for you towards the clients, if you deserve it or not.

Being on the first page will deliver you way more sales then being on the last page. You do not have any exposure if you are on the last page.

Anyone that helps getting you exposure will help your sales, if he is a prick or not.

Did you check by the way all of your buyers if they measure up to your moral standards so they are allowed, according to you, to use your image? Do you really care?

It's pretty simple math, the world isn't fair but it will have certainly helped these, poorly treated, artists to get their revenue up. Right or wrong, this is how the world works these days.

And that is why you should be glad if someone with a large audience posts your picture to an audience of millions instead of someone elses photo/art.

You can disagree with the world but I am trying to sell photo's and anyone that will help trying to expose my photo's to a larger audience and get me more sales, right or wrong, is a blessing in the sky.

And I really don't care I make it harder for you. My picture is either better then yours or not. But if my picture sells better because it is placed higher by the agency (even if there is no reason at all for it) or someone promotes my photo, though luck for you then. That is how it works these days apperently.

Roll with the dice and make use of it or you will be left behind with all of your good intentions.

You understand the problem perfectly - I'm sure about that, but you pretend not to understand it.

You are right about one thing: the lack of awareness about copyright is a sign of the times.

But the fact that one of the most famous and influential people of our decade supports this, even pushes it, cannot be accepted with any argument in the world. On the contrary - and this is what has been criticized so many times in this post: just a person with such influence is the most harmful thing that can happen to us, musicians, journalists, writers, directors, screenwriters and many others, when criticizing and undermining copyright.

You can be quite sure: it won't be good for your pictures and your finances either.

I had no intention of hurting anyone.

My own personal attitude: I don't want advertising by Elon Musk.

I don't like to be promoted by someone who allows my pictures to be stolen and uploaded to him and he enriches himself with it (even though he is already rich enough), just because I could - purely theoretically - get more attention by doing so, which I highly doubt in this context.

Above all, I don't like that he defines what happens to my pictures. I want him to follow the laws and not act like many autocrats do.

And, sorry, I don't consider myself to be Coca Cola. It's the most famous brand in the world that you can buy anywhere - and everybody know where. But I am not Coca Cola.

Quote from: SVH on March 07, 2023, 23:00

Quote from: Wilm on March 07, 2023, 22:53

Quote from: SVH on March 07, 2023, 21:27

Quote from: Wilm on March 07, 2023, 21:16

Quote from: SVH on March 07, 2023, 20:58
Elon Musk may tweet my photo's without any credit any day. It will bring a lot of attention to your portfolio for free. But just him and any other person with millions of followers. Don't really see the downside here, only the upside.

I do not like to read your words. In the past, it did not help any farmer if his potatoes were praised by the lord of the manor, as long as the lord of the manor earned money from them and not the farmer.
With this attitude and thinking Elon Musk increases his wealth on the back of other people. This is absolutely unacceptable!

It is also not about promoting a portfolio on Twitter. It's about the illegal use of images. Without paying.

I cannot understand how one can approve of a person with such global market power leveraging copyrights. That is illegal!

I also don't know until today why everyone picks on Bill Gates and worships Elon Musk so much. This man is dangerous from my point of view.

You are getting a bit to emotional here and political as well. Totally unnecessary. The only point I'm making here is that if anyone with such a great audience place your art work it's worth thousands of dollars of promotion. Sure he doesn't pay for using your art but lot's of people will because he promoted your work and you will get a lot of attention of paying customers. And yes you can nag about things not being right but I personally would welcome something like this. And I will bet the artist in question will not be so unhappy as well. Even though she complains about not getting paid by Musk himself or being credited. C'mon think twice
But then still you can have another opinion. It's a free world still where we live, isn't it?

I think you misunderstand.

Someone has a supermarket that makes him a lot of money. He goes to the neighboring bakery store and steals a few rolls there, which then lie in the display of his supermarket. No one will wonder where you can legally buy these rolls. They only serve to make the thief's offer more interesting. And if the baker comes and says that the Rolls are stolen, he will be banned from the supermarket.

Sorry, my conception of right looks different!

Really, you can't find your own photo? I have no problem at all finding it at all the agencies I placed them with if I do a google image search. But maybe my photos are more special then?

Why would anyone bother doing a search on Google to find paid images when you can seemingly get them for free on Twitter.

Who gives an individual - in this case Elon Musk - the right to put himself above the law? That's exactly the danger I was talking about before. Don't you recognize this danger?

Quote from: SVH on March 07, 2023, 21:27

Quote from: Wilm on March 07, 2023, 21:16

Quote from: SVH on March 07, 2023, 20:58
Elon Musk may tweet my photo's without any credit any day. It will bring a lot of attention to your portfolio for free. But just him and any other person with millions of followers. Don't really see the downside here, only the upside.

I do not like to read your words. In the past, it did not help any farmer if his potatoes were praised by the lord of the manor, as long as the lord of the manor earned money from them and not the farmer.
With this attitude and thinking Elon Musk increases his wealth on the back of other people. This is absolutely unacceptable!

It is also not about promoting a portfolio on Twitter. It's about the illegal use of images. Without paying.

I cannot understand how one can approve of a person with such global market power leveraging copyrights. That is illegal!

I also don't know until today why everyone picks on Bill Gates and worships Elon Musk so much. This man is dangerous from my point of view.

You are getting a bit to emotional here and political as well. Totally unnecessary. The only point I'm making here is that if anyone with such a great audience place your art work it's worth thousands of dollars of promotion. Sure he doesn't pay for using your art but lot's of people will because he promoted your work and you will get a lot of attention of paying customers. And yes you can nag about things not being right but I personally would welcome something like this. And I will bet the artist in question will not be so unhappy as well. Even though she complains about not getting paid by Musk himself or being credited. C'mon think twice
But then still you can have another opinion. It's a free world still where we live, isn't it?

I think you misunderstand.

Someone has a supermarket that makes him a lot of money. He goes to the neighboring bakery store and steals a few rolls there, which then lie in the display of his supermarket. No one will wonder where you can legally buy these rolls. They only serve to make the thief's offer more interesting. And if the baker comes and says that the Rolls are stolen, he will be banned from the supermarket.

Sorry, my conception of right looks different!

Quote from: SVH on March 07, 2023, 20:58
Elon Musk may tweet my photo's without any credit any day. It will bring a lot of attention to your portfolio for free. But just him and any other person with millions of followers. Don't really see the downside here, only the upside.

I do not like to read your words. In the past, it did not help any farmer if his potatoes were praised by the lord of the manor, as long as the lord of the manor earned money from them and not the farmer.
With this attitude and thinking Elon Musk increases his wealth on the back of other people. This is absolutely unacceptable!

It is also not about promoting a portfolio on Twitter. It's about the illegal use of images. Without paying.

I cannot understand how one can approve of a person with such global market power leveraging copyrights. That is illegal!

I also don't know until today why everyone picks on Bill Gates and worships Elon Musk so much. This man is dangerous from my point of view.

This is really incredible!!! 

Quote from: Uncle Pete on March 03, 2023, 17:59

Quote from: Wilm on March 03, 2023, 12:41
Could one of you US Americans please check what a 5 credit pack would cost you?

Here in Germany we pay 39.95 Euros excluding VAT.

$49.95

Thank you for the Information, Pete! Does that include VAT?

Could one of you US Americans please check what a 5 credit pack would cost you?

Here in Germany we pay 39.95 Euros excluding VAT.

Funny that you ask about it today of all days. AS has been running pretty consistently for me for years. The amount of downloads was rather below average in the last two or three weeks. But just today I have over $70 there. The absolute exception! But for me, AS has been the best agency for quite some time. Shutterstock was a disaster in February. It's still a while until Level 5, but even then, when it gets there, I'm not expecting anything more there.

Quote from: tätarätä on March 01, 2023, 20:08
Maybe interesting.
A comparison of average RPI from some stock photographers.
https://photutorial.com/how-much-can-you-make-selling-stock-photos/

Hmmm,

I find this source rather questionable.

"Key Takeaways
On average, stock photographers make $0.02 per image per month with stock photos, while professionals make $0.05-$0.25 per image per month."

Professionals, in my view, must be many times higher than $0.25. Some who are here on the forum are at ten times that without being professionals.

And I also find it very difficult to imagine that contributors create or shoot 10,000 images, keyword them and upload them to earn an average of $200. I think the data is wrong.

Holy cow! Amazing! Congrats!

The topic is as old as microstock itself.

The bottom line is that each contributor must decide for themselves.

My subjective view is that there has to be an acceptable ratio between the work I invest and the bottom-line monthly income.

One contributor makes $3,000 a month and the other makes $500. Maybe one just has significantly more images. Or significantly better images. Then the difference is quickly understandable.

The RPI and RPD actually start to matter when one contributor has to work 240 hours a month to do it and the other 10. Maybe because one is doing it as a full time job and the other is just doing it on the side.

In the end, it's like a paid hourly wage. And there are different claims there, too. One may be satisfied with $10, the other not until $100. One may be able to live on $10 an hour - perhaps because he/she lives in a place where that is already an above-average income. The other must have $50 an hour because otherwise he/she is unable to make a living with his earnings in the place where he lives.

In this respect, the relevance of RPD and RPI is absolutely subjective and depends on the personal life situation. And one's own demands.

Maybe you are right.

In my view, however, the wording should have read as follows:

If you wish to request a last payout in your current currency...

At the moment, this means a loss of a good 6%. A few days ago it would have been 10%.

If I understand it correctly, we can decide on 28 February that we want to continue to be paid in euros. This way we at least have the opportunity to save another 3% paypal exchange fee.

In times of inflation, this is really sad news! Another cut.

Quote from: fotoroad on February 19, 2023, 16:52
So Far best in this year 2023

Nice humor! 

Or this one. Left is mine, right is "inspired"...