What difference does that make? I sell more than one kind of image. You act like that's where I get all of my downloads. It's not. A search for "town" returns 428,933 images. One of my recent photos is No. 16 most popular and rising. No. 16 out of more than 400,000 isn't too bad for an image that's barely a month old, and not a person in it.

Your premise is that people on the top tier automatically got their images demoted. There's two examples where I showed you that isn't the case. It's older images that lost out in the search change, not older contributors.

Quote from: robhainer on August 20, 2013, 00:08

Ron is an active stock contributor.

On the other hand, the theory that Shutterstock adjusted the search to benefit lower level contributors is just not true. I had a photo jump to No. 4 in popularity under "pets" (4 out of 427,724). It was submitted in mid May after the search change. I'm on the 38 cent tier. It would not have jumped that fast that far before the search change. The change helped new images, not new contributors.

That's as it should be. Old images should be less "popular." It's better for buyers, and it's better for contributors, unless you don't bother doing new work.

You can not use EITHER ~ OR thinking when talking about search "ranking" algorithms.  Are they steering all sales to new submitters? I would say no.  Are they steering more sales to new submitters?  Based on the collective feedback I have been getting from many long term submitters, I would say it is very likely.

You can also not judge what is happening with the search by example of what is happening with your own port and with one type of file. Especially when your port consists of images that most contributors are hesitant to submit.  Children images sell well on SS because many submitters do not want to expose their children to miss use issues. Therefore what you are experiencing in regard to sales is not the general experience of most submitters. In your case the pet image that went to a first page search most likely also included a child which also helped give it a boost.

You have to look at the global picture and talk to a large number of older contributors to see what they are experiencing. I can tell you that in general new files are not selling, our older files sell well but they have killed off our best selling images.  Does that mean that I never have images that hit first page searches? No I do, but in general that is happening less and less often since the search change and I am getting the same feed back from friends with large quality ports.

It is naive to think that now that SS has put ranking capabilities in place that they are not steering a percentage of sales to lower tier contributors when it makes sense for the long term and benefits the sites bottom line. Especially since a large portion of IS submitters who jumped ship have high quality files.

I don't think they are steering sales toward new contributors as much as they are steering sales toward new images. It just so happens that new contributors with large portfolios have all new images, so the end result is the same. That doesn't mean Shutterstock is trying to cut down earnings of people on the 38 cent tier. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to break in with some of my new photos like I have.  Besides, those new contributors with large portfolios will probably be on the top tier in a matter of months if not weeks.

I find that sales on SS nowadays are more concentrated on a few images that sell really well and the others that disappear down the sort-order before they get noticed.

Mine have always been like that. It's about breaking through on an image here and there that get regular downloads while others sorta disappear or get a hit every now and then. New images do sell, just not all of them. I don't expect them to all sell.

On the other hand, it looks like they've finally worked through the new istock contributors. Review times are back down to normal, so maybe there's a better chance of new images selling because there aren't so many. Either that, or they hired a bunch of new reviewers.

You can also download your own images there. Can be handy in a pinch. Worth contributing just for that.

Isnt a raise a reward for doing good work, so you get paid more for doing the same work? How is adding more and better images a raise for me? If more and better and newer images dont sell its even a waste of time and money. I can only agree with Gbalex here.

We're not employees. That's the difference. When you are self-employed, the only way to make more money is to produce more and produce better quality. It is all on you.  Asking Shutterstock for a raise "for doing good work" is like asking Shutterstock to give you paid holidays and health insurance. Might as well ask for those, too. You have about the same chance of getting them.

What suppliers? All I have is gear, which has been paid for by just stock earnings 10 times over, and all that I spent on it was deducted from my business taxes. I don't pay models, buy props or pay assistants. I've been using the same memory cards for two years. I don't travel to do stock shoots. My costs are negligible.

And my images don't get special treatment on Shutterstock. They're treated just like yours. I haven't been in a light box since they used to do a "New Artist" one.

On the other hand, I don't try to make microstock my main business. If that's what you mean, I can see your point. I don't think it's possible to rely solely on microstock income to support your family. In fact, I think the idea is a little absurd. I'm not sure how these factories do it. Microstock isn't designed to work that way. It's more for the millions of little people like me who have no costs, so that selling at subscription prices is little sacrifice.

That's not the way this business works. You get paid the competitive rate based on what your work is worth to others. We're not employees or union workers to sit around and whine about cost of living. We're individual business people. If there were more demand for our work and if the ability to create that work was more rare, we'd get paid more. Your expenses have zero to do with it. Besides, that's why you deduct your expenses on your taxes. Let the government pay for it.

Sure, I'd love more money if someone is just going to give it to me. But I'm not going to criticize Shutterstock on that front when it's the only site paying me anything worth more than a second's notice.

Also, looking at the amount you make as 38 cents is a total fallacy. It's an untrue statement to say that's all you make per download. Shutterstock offers different licenses. I'd bet nobody actually makes as little as 38 cents a download, even people on the lowest tier.

Finally, I know for a fact that if I improve my images and upload more of them, I will get a raise because I will sell more. Now that's a raise that's totally within my own hands. I don't understand how that doesn't make sense. I don't look at the my earnings on a download by download basis. I look at my earnings on a month by month basis. If it goes up from one month to the next, that's a raise. Seems pretty clear to me.

Every month for three years, Shutterstock paid me on the 7th of the month, unless the 7th fell on a holiday or weekend, and then it came sooner.

Sales are up for me. July was a BME in both earnings and downloads. I'm ahead of July pace for the first six days in both total downloads and earnings. July 1-6 (with one weekend day) was 272 downloads. August 1-6 (with two weekend days) is at 293. Two ELs, one on Aug. 1 and one on Aug. 2, are pumping up the earnings a little.  After tomorrow when I compare the complete weeks, I think August will be 60-80 images ahead.

I ended July with 1,435 total downloads. Had about 1,500 images in port. The pattern has been for me that the first week is a little slow and picks up as the month goes along with most of the downloads coming in the third and fourth weeks.

When did 123RF start giving 18 cents for earnings on small size credit sales? I had three of those today. Yesterday, I had a small credit sale and earned 39.6 cents. I'm on Level 4.

Quote from: robhainer on August 05, 2013, 00:00

I don't agree with the idea of stopping your uploads because you don't see some new sales. I have batches here and there that don't sell, then sometimes I get a hit that goes 7-8 downloads a day. You got to keep throwing out photos until you get some hits. You have to come up with new concepts or re-shoot to improve old ones. I just had a whole batch of 50 photos not get any movement, and I thought some were good. I'm uploading 25 more from a couple of new shoots today.

Not every photo is equal, and sometimes you just get some bad luck. It's a numbers game -- and if you stop pulling the lever, you will never hit jackpot.

Depends on the agency. I hear SS has, or at least had, a 'new photo' boost. At iStock, for about nine months now, new files have been hit really hard in the Best Match (which isn't working properly anyway), so pretty pointless unless it has near-unique main keywords.

Agree. I don't even consider iStock in my comments because I don't contribute there. I was more thinking about Shutterstock.

I don't know anything about Panthermedia, but the rest of it is 100 percent backwards.

I get most of my rejections from Fotolia. If it's not a photo of a person, it's got a 10 percent chance of approval at best. People photos usually get high approval otherwise, especially studio shots.

Fotolia's rejection reasons are confounding. "Quality issue" could mean a 1,000 things. At least with Shutterstock, you get a pretty good idea of why they rejected an image.

And Bigstock and 123RF? They earn me more than Fotolia. Twice as much now, as a matter of fact. Bigstock is actually fairly responsive and respectful if you have a question or concern.

Quote from: robhainer on July 30, 2013, 13:10

You'd rather have fewer credit sales over many sub sales? I don't see the difference. All that matters is how much you have in earnings at the end of the month. Shutterstock -- the subs site -- gets me 10 times what every other site gets me...

Can you grow your earnings at SS?

So far, yes. May and July were BME in both earnings and total downloads. June was a BME in total downloads. I still get about 1 download for every image in my port each month. I've added roughly the same number of images this summer to other sites, and I haven't seen much improvement except at Bigstock, which started doing subs.

Now I still have a small port at just over 1,500 images, so adding 100 here and there is a big increase. Though I think diminishing returns will start to set in. I would imagine that adding 100 images to a port with 10,000 images wouldn't mean as much growth, unless you get a really good seller or two.

Also, on Shutterstock, more than half of my monthly earnings this month isn't  from subs, but from ODs, ELs and SODs.