Quote from: Injustice for all on July 26, 2024, 08:22

..... but the answer to long waiting times could also be simpler,perhaps it simply depends on whether the content is useful or not.

as I said,I have no problem,as far as I'm concerned,all the reviews are done well below the current established times.

First of all, you deserve credit for being a very positive person. But somehow love seems to make you blind 

How can the reviewer assess the sales value of a picture right away? The value of a picture is made up of various aspects.

Just 2 concrete examples.

It took Adobe 2 - 3 months to review my images on the subject of fungal contamination in indoor air. The images were probably of little interest to the reviewers. Not so for the buyers. After activation, I had regular sales and Adobe lost me 3 months of revenue.

From my area, quite simple landscape images are doing very well with all agencies - and some of them have been waiting in the queue since May. For the reviewer, it's probably another forest, river or lake. For the buyer, these are images to represent a specific landscape that is popular with tourists.

The review times are disrespectful and there is no excuse for this. The problem has existed since the acceptance of AI images. A company like Adobe should actually have solutions for this.

first of all thank you! 

what you say certainly has its truth,certainly long waiting times can cause "damage" because the content is not for sale and potential sales can be lost.

but the point is that there may be reasons behind these excessively long times and we simply don't have the big picture to judge.

for me at the moment on Adobe I have 10% more sales number and 20% more earnings,compared to July 2023,but in any case I have to start calculating the quarters,as someone suggested,because comparing just one month to another doesn't give a very broad perspective.

I'm currently producing around 100 content per week,a mix of "hybrids" and "real" content,of course all hybrids are labeled as AI.

Can I ask you how much approved content you have had so far this year?

However,I think it is appropriate to make some clarifications.

my sales percentages for example can perhaps be deceiving.

Jan:+73%
Feb:+50%
Mar:+8%
Apr:+50%
May:-10%
June:+25%

these percentages,which are the number of sales,seem high but they are not.

50% more than a small number of sales is still a small number of sales,maybe someone sees 50% more and thinks it's a lot but it's not.

I don't make 500 sales a month,of which 50% more would be more than good,but that's not the case.

regarding the sales system,thinking that if you have the content that the customer is looking for,you make the sale,is an overly simplified vision,it's not that simple.

sell the content that the customer is looking for is only true if only you have this content,or very few contributors.

for most content however,it is all clearly managed by the sales system,if I have a Valentine's card and hundreds of thousands others have a Valentine's card,who decides which content is shown to customers?The sales system.

Yes,the best-selling contents are shown,but also the contents of contributors who need to make sales for the sales system.

What surprises me is that many of you who have much more experience than me still haven't understood such a simple thing?I find it really strange! 

as regards "changes in the algorithm", people who say that suddenly their contents that were at the top of the searches have disappeared,unfortunately this happens if you sleep on the contents already created,in reality you need to diversify a lot,as much as possible,only in this way you can ensure an increase or stability of income.

and Cobalt,I tell you honestly,I really don't know what you admire greatly in what i do,there's not much to admire! 

I hope to see better results in the near future,I would hate to abandon the microstock!

Cobalt,I think you don't understand anything of what I mean.

and I never said "Adobe will not allow you to grow your income"

I think exactly the opposite.

Adobe is the only agency that allows you to grow over time,but this growth is clearly regulated in a certain way.

I think you have a slightly oversimplified view of how sales work.

you think that what you produce is unique and inimitable,but that's not the case.

we all produce content that can be sold,what you do is no different from other hundreds of thousands of contributors,and therefore sales are managed by a system,it must be this way and it is right that it is this way.

regarding the missing contents you clearly didn't read what I wrote properly or perhaps I explained myself poorly.

then I don't understand why you think I'm negative?I'm extremely positive,it's clear that you don't know what the real problems are,but it's obvious,since you can afford to spend thousands of euros on Midjourney,what on earth do you want to know about real problems?

anyway no,you misunderstood,I have nothing against Adobe,and I perfectly understand why some things have to work in a certain way,and in reality you should already know this,but apparently you are not able to understand this either! 

while I really can't understand why you have to attack me and accuse me of a negative attitude,and you put things in my mouth that I didn't say,just because you didn't understand them,when I have always been polite,respectful and kind to you,I really don't understand this.

However,don't think you know things others don't know,we all know that missing content sells.

consider yourself lucky that you started more than 10 years ago and that you can afford to invest money in the microstock.

Quote from: Injustice for all on July 21, 2024, 05:17

yes,what I want to wait for is the last quarter of the year...

no need to wait (and last qtr may have always been significantly different from other) --> keep a running average of the last 3 completed months - then you'll aways be able to compare a current quarter vs 1 yr, etc ago

thanks for the advice,for a comparison with last year it is actually better,because a single month can actually be deceiving,an average of 3 months is better.

however the point here is simple,I need to see an improvement and I need to see it within this year at the latest.

the work I am doing and have done this year is certainly many steps ahead of the work I was doing before 2021,so it is time that I started to see a certain difference,if I don't see it it means that it will take longer than expected.

like I said,I can't afford to waste too much time,simply because I still don't have much ahead of me,not like if i was 30 years old.

I'm certainly not old,but I'm no longer young enough to afford to wait another 4/5 years or more before seeing a more substantial profit,and the situation in general doesn't allow me to.

I'll put it simpler and ask you a question,a question aimed at those who have had an Adobe account open for at least since 10 years:

"In your opinion,if you had opened your account in 2018,despite having the same portfolio you have today,perfectly identical,would you earn the same as what you earn today?"

I don't think anyone can answer yes,but let me know what you think if you want.

but these are results that can only be achieved with time,a lot of time,decades.

This worries me a bit because I'm more than sure that my earnings on Adobe will continue to increase,but too slowly and I'm no longer 30 years old.

also this month I am sure that I will end the month with an increase in earnings and in the number of sales,compared to July 2023.

the point is that this increase after one year is too little,the difference between one year and another it's not much.

so the thing is,if I were at least 10 years younger,I would have time to wait these 10 years before achieving results like "stocky" or at least getting close to that.

but time is not on my side,I can't afford to still wait many years to reach at least 50 sales a day,or close to this.

my hope,the reason why I'm continuing in the microstock,is that at some point there will be a clear improvement.

so I really think that I will evaluate in the next few months whether there will be interesting developments or not,because I can no longer afford to wait all this time.

I recently reported copyright infringements on 13 of my videos committed by the following account:

https://www.shutterstock.com/g/FootageFrontier/

Shutterstock has removed my videos, but they haven't closed the account. It's obvious that the account doesn't own any of the uploaded videos.

I've contacted a few other individuals whose content appears in that account, including Blackbox. They've also reported copyright infringements, but as of today, the account is still not banned.

I suggest that others check that account, as they may find their videos there.

there is no interest in this,and I think this has been clear for several years.

the fact that we need to report copyright infringement is already wrong,it is the agencies that should deal with it,not us.

The other day I accidently uploaded an image which had already been accepted. No big deal and it was rightly rejected (see below)

How the fk does a company worth more than 1 billion with 1,286 employees not have a way to identify images that have already been accepted (by other contributors)?

it's a real mystery,I don't think it takes much to develop a duplicate recognition software and take action on it and clean up the library of infinite duplicates.

the problem is that there are no financial reasons on the part of the agencies to act like this, i.e. the agencies do not earn anything in money by doing something like this.

this however does not fully explain why they don't do it, since having a "clean" library also favors customer searches.

Thanks for so much positive feedback! From my experience high quality sells well even in today's market. But I don't think it's worth investing time into creating high quality content for microstock any more - every agency except Adobe slashed their royalties and I expect Adobe to do the same soon and then it's game over for any content that takes longer than a few minutes to create.

I agree about quality, although in my opinion the right balance is more important, I also used to waste hours creating content,but it's better to look for a middle ground,in my opinion you have to work well but also quickly,quantity is also important,but with Adobe it's a slightly different matter because it also depends on the way the sales system manages you.

I disagree,and obviously hope you are wrong,about Adobe cutting royalties,I think they also know that another blow like this would be the end of the microstock,and almost no one will upload anything anymore.

ok,this explains everything!

those files have now sold so many times in the golden years of 2012 that they will always be ahead.

the time since you are a contributor also counts on Adobe,in fact I believe that even if I stop uploading now and then come back in 5 years and start uploading again,I will earn much more than now,simply because in the meantime 5 years have passed.

thanks for the reply!