I'm not really in a position to say much as I have an extremely tiny video portfolio on less than a few sites. Though I will say that P5 is doing significantly better for me than SS with regards to video sales. I actually can't even remember the last time I had a video sale on SS. It would have been a long time ago.

This morning, I was able to log into the SS main website as usual no problem. Though I can only log into the forum temporarily to view the list of sub forums. As soon as I click on a particular sub forum like Contributor Experience, I'm logged out again. Don't know if it's a technical issue or if I'm being punished by SS for some reason. As far as I know, I haven't been suspended. And I notice that contributors who have accumulated a significant number of red arrows are no longer posting on the forum. Coincidence? Maybe they get an automation suspension when their popularity ranking gets too low. I haven't had any red arrows for a while (I'm still in the green as far as I know.)

Just curious if anyone else has gotten this or something similar? I just got a sale notification from Pond 5 via e-mail though as it turned out, it wasn't really a new sale after all. Apparently, it relates to one of my videos that previously sold before. This one has sold three times in the past. Someone paid extra money to upgrade to another kind of license for it's usage. This particular license is called a 'Netflix Premium License.' I got $15.84 for it. Judging by the name, I assume the clip's going to be used on Netflix.

Thankyou both of you.

make sure automatically send payout when balance reaches $25 is selected

I thought I recall reading that the minimum payout was $50 on P5. I made significantly higher than that with the four sales so no worries.

Dont waste your  time

I should have taken your advice. Another one of my posts over on the DT forums has mysteriously vanished. This time, there was no e-mail notification informing me of it's removal. All I was doing in that post was explaining the difference between commercial and editorial images to a newcomer to stock photography. Then the next time I visit the forum - bam! Gone! This is ridiculous.

With my first four sales on P5, I'm well above the minimum payout level. Though what happens now? I guess the payment is not automatic like on SS. Do I have to notify P5 that I want my payment?

I haven't used Stocksubmitter in a while and used it again just recently to submit some editorial content. And I just noticed that I got a rejection on Shutterstock for a video I sent through Stocksubmitter. This particular rejection was for the editorial caption. I checked the metadata of the file within SS and noted that the editorial caption which I had typed into the description field on Stocksubmitter was not copied over into the description area on SS. What happened instead was the title was copied over on to the description area - hence the rejection. This is quite surprising. Since SS uses descriptions rather than titles, I thought the description field from Stocksubmitter would be copied over. It's annoying too because Ive since submitted some other editorial videos and I guess they'll be rejected for the same reason. I guess the only thing I can do is copy and paste the description / editorial caption into both the title and description fields on Stocksubmitter.

To my complete surprise, one of my posts was recently deleted on the forum over at the Dreamstime site. I was replying to a poster who had just recently joined DT and was asking how to get some sales and views. For the last few days, this person has had a total of one photo in their portfolio. And it's still currently one photo. My reply was as follows: "Adding more photos to your portfolio would be a good start."

Not long after that, I received an e-mail notification informing me that my post had been deleted. And possible reasons for deletion can be any of these things - "We delete duplicate posts, posts in other languages than English, spams or any post that may be considered as violation of the message board rules."

Obviously, my post was written in English, it was not a duplicate post or spam and did not break the rules which are outlined below:

https://www.dreamstime.com/thread_4521

All I was doing was offering helpful advice in that thread started by the newcomer. Logically, the only way to get sales is to have a decent sized portfolio containing quality images that are useful to clients. Having more than one photo in your port is certainly a step in the right direction if you do want sales.

These DT mods are really out of control. Some of them, especially the female mods, seem to be on a power trip.

By the way, I have had other posts of mine disappear from the DT forum in the past but I did not receive e-mail notifications about them.

I only joined SB a short time ago and had uploaded 70 videos there. I'm about to delete them all. I joined Pond 5 at about the same time and have a similar sized port over there and have had a few sales as well. No sales on SB at all. Well, my relationship with SB was brief and non-eventful.

So you "know that SS are not happy about contributors submitting content that is already in their port", and when you've submitted duplicate content SS "says that this photo is already in my port and doesn't accept it", but...  you "don't recall reading that rule" that they don't accept duplicate content? I would of thought it was obvious from your experiences, whether you'd read the rule or not?!

I think you're getting confused. I was referring to instances of submitting content that was previously in my port. Not submitting content that also existed in my port at the same time. I had no intention of submitting another copy of the same image that was already in my port and keeping both of them in there. And yes, due to those rejection reasons, I learned that SS did not want to have more than one copy of the same image in someone's port. Regardless, I don't recall reading that this was some kind of strict rule that one had to abide by when signing up and that violations of this rule would lead to the disabling of a person's account.

Quote from: dragonblade on July 29, 2019, 00:12

I just made my third video sale on P5. Totally out of the blue.

They rarely give you a heads up that you might be getting a sale... they're always 'out of the blue'! 

Good point!

I was referring to the SS forum at the SS website - the main one called 'Contributor Experience.' Sue, when you said that the post was the fourth one down the page, I thought you were also referring to the forum at SS. And that made me extremely puzzled because I was trying to work out why I could no longer see it but you could.

And yea I did see the recent post here on the MSG website about suing. It's a fair chance that it was made by the same individual but one cannot be 100% sure. The post on the SS forum made no mention of what kind of company they were dealing with.