And you were right! as wirestock answered me today very clear:

Thanks for the questions. With our Instant Pay Program you receive a one-time advance payment of $4-5/image (minus Wirestock commission) from each agency that selects your images. The selected images may be listed for free download on the agencies that select them, and you will no longer be able to remove the images from those agencies after you have received the advance payment. However, nothing will change in regards to the other agencies you have submitted to before, you will still continue licensing your images through existing agencies as well as there will not be any issue with iStock. The time frame is 3-4 months.

Clear! Thanks for sharing this!

Because I newly know that ALL images submitted to Alamy (directly or via Zoonar/wirestock...) appear on Agefoto!
So, if you upload your images to Alamy AND Zoonar, your images will already online on Agefoto - maybe before Agefoto even view your images upload to Zoonar.
But finally still interesting, if Agefoto at all still check the images on Zoonar or not.

Valid point, yet, I would expect rejections in that case instead of pending reviews. I use Wirestock for submitting to Alamy and disabled distribution via Zoonar. Age is still enabled at Zoonar. So it's a matter who's first at reviewing submitted content, and how fast the distribution and further cascading takes place. Funny to read though how images are further distributed amongst agencies. Before the commission ends up in the contributor's account, two or three other parties already took their share.

Quote from: kall3bu on June 02, 2021, 12:46

dreamstime:

Yes, after 6 month, images turn down to Level O. These images we can delete without problems. Or NOW: only disable! After 12 month these disabled images will be deleted and taken out of their system.
Images younger than 6 month with minimum Level 1, are more difficult to delete, but possible: As I read from others: You cannot delete to many, there is a limit, but I never read, what this limit exactly is.

No offense, but that sounds like some rather important info you might want to check out before making firm plans. I've found many opinions on the forums might have incorrect info (my own included). Just my 2 cents...

Rather important indeed. Maybe I missed it, but I can't recall reading instructions from Wirestock to delete content on non-wirestock submitted agencies after an instant pay license. I didn't do that for the images I sold via instant pay, so they are still out there (and not selling, hence the instant pay strategy at Wirestock for some of my content).

All I know is that submitting to wirestock is non-exclusive, except the Adobe exclusive program.

I had sales via Wirestock on all agencies, including Alamy and the smaller ones like Dreamstime, DepositPhoto's, 123RF (which isn't supported anymore, I guess due to images not being reviewed) and Pond5.

But, don't expect your content to perform better via Wirestock.
Sales on smaller agencies are as slow as they are on personal accounts. At least, that's my experience.

They will react only when sales can be affected. It is not a problem to forge many attributes, for example, Yahoo is not able to stop bitcoin ads spam, everytime it is coming from different addresses etc.

Yes, that's why I said "I would assume". Not sure they have this fraud detection built in.

Should be easy to test, no? Let's pick a random low quality image from deep down the SS haystack which we find by using a certain keyword, start clicking it, and see if it rises up the ranks.

I think you are not alone, I can not collect minimum from October 2020 with many new uploads I think the need change minimum payment to $15.

Yeah, the 100$ threshold is ridiculous. They must be sitting on a huge pile of unpaid royalties due to the high payout threshold, and I guess that's what keeps them alive.

To answer the OP's question: just checked and my sales volume is pretty stable the last year with April even being a bit better. I did see a drop in RPD with even 0,12$ commissions passing by.

Conclusion - I think dear Oleg is a piece of AI masquerading as a person and is probably being used to test search functions and software as there is no way anyone could get the top slot in all of these search terms.

Little doubt the account is fake. It would be foolish to sign up with personal credentials and information when your goal is to manipulate the system, and violate the TOS. And manipulated it is. But whoever is behind it is not a lazy person, he/she sure took the time and effort to make it look as legit as possible. 

Brought up on the Shutterstock forum, but some of you might have missed it.

Check the guy's portfolio and then the ranking of his images
(not sure if I'm allowed to put up a link to his portfolio here, but you can find it on the SS forum in the One account phenomenon topic)
The guy has a lot of his images showing up on the first page for highly competitive keywords. (e.g. car, cat, beach, ...)

Now, I'm sure a lot of you have similar images in terms of quality of cars, cats, beaches and so on but most of them are probably nowhere near the first pages.
And he managed to get a lot of his content on the first page for highly competitive keywords. Not just a few lucky submissions which gained traction.
A bit too much to be a coincidence, and the balance between quality, competition and ranking seems to be off if you ask me.

So how did he do it?

My personal theory on this is that he paid clickfarm-like organizations to buy images from his portfolio until they reached on the first page.
Is it true? I don't know, but if it is, a lot of others are probably doing the same. 

Has anyone actually seen a sale or payment or is this all pages of guesses and knee jerk reactions? No I don't expect I'll be "excited" and happy when I do, but people closing accounts, removing images and we haven't seen one bit of how much we actually will or won't get?

To alter slightly: "Microstock is no longer a viable professional option for 98% of contributors." And hasn't been for some years. Why is this a surprise?

You are right Pete, we don't know the impact yet. And if the claim of Matt is right - Adobe aiming for additional, new customers who need big volumes - and regular plans remain untouched and none of those customers jump to the unlimited plan, than the effect on your Adobe Stock earnings might even be positive. Already quite some "if's"
But your RDP will go down. And that's point. Again a devaluation of content.

Sure, if customers shift from Getty or Shutterstock to Adobe, those 0,02$ at Getty or 0,1$ at Shutterstock commissions might be worth 0,15$ or 0,25$ at Adobe. Maybe. Still pennies though. Or 0,01$, also possible. We don't know.

And that's why people get mad.
No transparency. Hope for the best while you are being played.
No control for the contributor on opting out content for subscription plans or partnerships. I know, they all do that, and I still find that a real d*ck move.
And also, no alternative anymore, as Adobe was more or less the last one standing in microstockworld.

Everyone has seen similar moves by agencies too many times before. Did it ever turn out positive in recent history?
I don't need to remind you the SS debacle a year ago. Some even claimed "I actually think my earnings will go up by this"
Meanwhile we know they didn't, unless you worked really harder better faster stronger. 

So yeah, against one's better judgement: let's see how it plays out.
Deep down we already know: "exciting". 

 

No, everything seems to be fine.

Sorry to tell you the obvious, but contact their support.
They should be able to tell you what went wrong with your portfolio.

Quote from: Roscoe on April 13, 2021, 03:21

The site is up, but the sales are down.

Sales have been down for years 

Yeah. I reported the issue to their support. They told me it's a feature, and I have to work harder.

The only reason why one of the two would buy each other is to eliminate competition. Now, I'm anything but an economist, but from my point of view both of them seem be too big to buy, and there's no real benefit or added value for them as both are more or less doing the same. None of them needs extra content, they are fed more than they need.

What I do see happening is Getty/Istock or Shutterstock buying a company or startup that actually has something to offer.
This can be a technology (AI?) or a userbase (social media or creative software) with strong engagement towards images and video's covering trends outside regular stock.

10 cents / image?

Now seriously. I don't shoot models, but I do know that some of them, starters, are willing to do it for free in return for the images/video's which they can add to their portfolio.
If you're starting to shoot models too, and need to develop your skills, it might be a fair deal. But be cautious with subjects you shoot, and explain them very well what can happen with images when they end up on stock sites.
Read: https://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/sensitive-use-complaint/msg0

Professional models might be on the safer side in regards to future hassle, as you can expect them to know what they're doing, but more risky for you as you might never recover the investment.

I see many contributors using themselves or a close relative/friend as a model. I think this is the better option, but needlessly to say: explain what the consequences can be of modelling for stock. The image can be used in a context the model doesn't want to have any affiliation with.