Quote from: MatHayward on November 03, 2021, 09:51

Quote from: YadaYadaYada on November 03, 2021, 06:39

Quote from: SVH on November 03, 2021, 01:23

Quote from: MatHayward on November 02, 2021, 18:51

Sales are displayed in your Adobe Stock statistics as they occur, in real time.

-Mat Hayward

Hi Mat, thank you for your insight and reply! Nice to hear that Adobe works this way. It would be also insightful and fun if you could see in which country the sale was made. Maybe something that Adobe can think about sharing as well in the activity overview? And an app for your mobile phone would be handy and welcome also, if I may suggest.

You can look back 13 months no more. Adobe data on image sales details is lacking.

Just a minor correction here @Yada. You can view any custom date range you select as long as it is within a 13 month period. It doesn't have to be the most recent 13 months.

thanks for the feedback,

Mat Hayward

How do I see lifetime earnings for my best photos? I can't find that, or lifetime download total.

Lifetime downloads can be seen when you go to your dashboard and select "Lifetime"  on the "Time frame" drop down menu on the upper left corner of your dashboard.

There is no easy way to see lifetime earnings for individual photos.

 From the dashboard click on the arrow on the right of your earnings, then you'll get to your statistics with your top sellers. You can't select single photos, you just get displayed them all from bestseller at the top. You can then select different timeframes of 13 month and then add the sum to get the total sum of what an image in the list has earned you.  But it's not really a very efficient way.

Just a note and I don't know if anyone else mentioned it, Alamy pays by bank transfer. Last time I collected for myself I got almost nothing, because of the fees.

Yes, they could find more, but then they take 50% (or something?) so I get less. BUT... if I have to pay the bank fees, and I don't have as much data, then, it's possible, they are getting me more, the same or maybe less. 

I get paid via PayPal. Would have prefered bank transfer, at least before Brexit, because there would not have been any bank transfer fees for me then (unlike with paypal) , but it didn't work. I didn't get paid at all in the beginning and upon asking what was up with that they claimed my bank data was incorrect and the money was returned, but no matter how often I double- and triple- checked, by bank data was correct (I always paste it from a document on my computer anyways, to make sure there are no typos), so I could not offer them any different "correct" bank data and had to switch to PayPal. 

Before I contact Alamy, can someone please take a look at this and tell me whether there is something I just don't understand?
How much of the amount that is listed as DACS payment should have been added to my balance? Half of it or is the shown amount already 50% of what Alamy collected? Are these two seperate payments that should both have been added to my account balance?
None of these were added to my account's cleared balance, even though they are listed as "cleared". One doesn't appear anywhere, the other is listed under "Balance carried forward", which I don't understand. Why is it carried forward (into the next month?) instead of being added to my balance now?

I am very confused about all of this, but I don't want to bother Alamy support if everything is alright and I just do not understand it.

but other than balances that have never cleared has always added up eventually.

But in this case the amount is already listed as "cleared", but hasn't been added to the sum of my cleared balance.   

 If they were as important as amazon they'd never get away with paying so badly.

Amazon is known for paying their employees extremely poorly.

Haven't experienced this at all. But I don't submit all that many landscape photos.

Quote from: Firn on October 25, 2021, 12:26

You might not be, but I am worried about other people's placement if it can have a negative impact on my placement, which then again can lead to me earning less money.


I did not assume buyers were stupid. These are your words. I just said some buyers will not care about whether their image has the best quality or simply illustrates whatever they need a picture of for an article. And on Shutterstock not the best image will be bought, but the one with the best placement.

Yes, complaining and worrying doesn't acomplish anything, yet we do it all the time, because that's part of what forums are for.

We will just have to agree to disagree on this topic, because we see things differently and I don't see this discussion going anywhere.

You worry too much about others and placement while you are insulting buyers saying not the best image will be bought. Write all you want on a forum, that changes nothing but feeding your worry. Is the best image yours or do you get your sales because of placement?

Not sure where you see me insulting buyers - that's your wrong interpretation, not what I said and certainly not what I meant. I can only repeat what I already wrote 2 times before: Some buyers will not care about whether their image has the best quality, but simply want something that illustrates whatever they need a picture of for an article. That has nothing to do with "stupid".  These are your words, not mine.
If I write, for example, an article about puppies being in demand during Corona for a local newspaper, I will just need "a" picture of a puppy. It doesn't have to be a photo with a perfect artistic composition, beautiful atmospheric light, a perfect pose. It just needs to be a freaking puppy. It's time efficiency. Searching for the best quality image of a puppy among hundred thousands of search results when you just need a random puppy image and could just take the first search result, that would be stupid.

I don't get the last question. Yes, I get my sales because of placement. Images that are on the first page of serach results for certain keywords of mine get frequent sales, images of better quality of mine with no placement on the first page get no or rare sales.  Some images that have great placement on some agencies get sold hundreds of times, but never sold on other agencies where they don't have a good placement. Selling images on microstock is 90% about good placement. Having images placed on the first page of search results for relevant often searched keywords makes a huge difference in sales.

And, I can say the exact same thing to you: "Write all you want on a forum, that changes nothing." So, why did you make that post, if it "changes nothing"? You don't have any right to tell me what I am allowed to worry about or not. Worry about what worries you, I worry about what worries me and I have the right to express these worries. You are not in a position where you have to worry about scammers and cheaters having an impact on what you earn a living with? Good for you!

I got mine on October 21st already - I did not get any notification mail about it though, so maybe you want to check your PayPal account (or whatever you use to receive your money).

I think all releases should be accepted on all agencies, they all contain the same information after all.
I use the one from Shutterstock and had it accepted on all agencies. On iStock you need to make sure to add a reference photo, while it's optional for other agencies.

Shutterstock disabled the forum on October 15th.

But I think the discussion also came down to, so what? His images aren't as good as many others on page one, so he's still not getting sales.

See, that's what I absolutely don't believe. Yes, he most likely is not getting anywhere near as many sales as the other images on the top of the search results, because there is such a big quality difference between his images and the others. But he will still get more sales than he would if his images were on page 5657. I've seen images of poor quality getting way more sales just because they rank high  compared to much better images that don't rank anywhere close to the first page just with my port alone. It happens and quite often. Some customers just don't care much about quality, just want "some" image that somehow fits the topic without having to search.
And even if he is getting much less sales compared to the other higher quality images in the top serach results, considering that he managed this with every singel one of his photos and even with the most essential keywords like "beach, dog, man", etc. I think that the sales accumulate to quite a high amount of sales.

Also - regardless of whether he is having sales or not - he is taking away multiple spots on the top search results from other contributors. Spots someone else of us could have, so sales we could have, but don't get. Instead the sales go to (either him or) any other of the images on the first page of the search results. My image could rank 105 because he is unrightfully  taking up space on the first page and most customers will not look past page 1 (just like no one ever looks past page 1 of google search results, unless you absolutely can't find what you are looking for on page 1 - but what's the chance someone looking for a random beach image won't find that on page 1?). So everyone of us could be missing out on sales because of him, so yes, of course it is bothering me.

With 2 images matching all the required search/metadata SS make a lot more profit if the level 1 image is bought vs the level 5.
Simple tweaks like ranking, display order and so on can easily lead the lower images into a position where they're more likely to be bought.
Especially as there may not always be a quality difference.

This theory can easily be debunked, because we all start out at level 1 in January. If SS tweaked the search algorithm to sell more images from level 1 contributors, everyone would continously sell less and less images when rising in level-
I had noticable more sales last month at level 5 than I had in January.

(Also, the difference in earnings between level 1 and level 5 is highly overrated. Most of my sales are 0.10-0.15$ sales. You get 0.10$ sales at level 1 just as you get them at level 5 and the 0.11, 0.12, 0.13$ etc. sales  make only a difference of a 1-3cents maybe. It's not really noticable. My income definitly did not go up in proportion with higher level and higher sale numbers. )

You're quite right Firn. On the other hand, there are many examples with too few or wrong words. Some insect photos have a lot of wrong names. Or no scientific name at all. When I photograph a seagull, tree, I find out what species it is. I also look for the name of windmills. A customer might just be looking for that windmill.
But you are right, I think very often it is luck if you are at the top with your photo.
Do you remember the thread on the Shutterstock forum, that we were talking about a man who was at the top with almost all of his photos? Which was impossible. I didn't hear anything about it after that.

Yes, of course, there are many topics were specific keywords are very important, mostly with animals, including insects, but also with plants and flowers, same as with places. Of course these things must be described accurately.
But there are also a lot of cases where it will not really matter much wether you have 10 or 50 keywords, as long as you have the most relevant and obvious ones. For the photo of mine I was talking about SS shows me the following as keywords that were used the most to find it: christmas, dog, pet, holiday, funny, clothes. Of course I have many other keywords that describe the picture accurately, but no customer really cares that the dogs are "fawn colored" or "small", etc. As you can see from this example, in fact, people didn't even care about the breed. There are certainly images where the breed of a dog is very important, for example when you want to show health issues that are assoicated with a breed, or a customer might need a photo of a certain breed to illustrate an article about an incident with a certain dog, but in the case of Christmas dog costumes, the breed isn't very important. You should still add it of course, but it's not going to be the keyword that makes the image successfull.

Yes, I remember the thread. There was also one about it here, but people weren't really any wiser about it. Oleg is still at the top for all keywords with his photos, so nothing changed about that. It's abslutely obvious to me that something isn't right about it, there is some kind of cheating involved that goes far beyond just using some clever keywords, but Shutterstock doesn't care, so fretting about it won't get us anywhere.