I hope someone who participates will come back here with some answers about keywords, the weighting and the search. I'm working at that time, and can't participate, couldn't even watch. Noise and safety issues.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on September 09, 2019, 14:19

Perfect example of proof by using a terrible example. One word search for Landscape? Are you joking?
What buyer would do that? Landscape 

Consider I did not want to test a buyer vision, I just wanted to observe recent submissions.
Try this :
https://www.shutterstock.com/fr/search?sort=newest&image_type=photo

Better for you?
Your perspective may be different considering you entered here late 2017, I started microstock mid 2004. Maybe I'm not that stupid regarding query and search engine.

LOL another invalid conclusion. Because I joined here in what? That's my third time, I closed my account because of being frustrated with how the forum had gone down hill. Better now. Would you care that I started in Microstock in 2007 or so? I mean would that mean my opinion would be more valid to you? 

A one word search doesn't represent what any intelligent buyer is going to search and the word landscape is even worse because it's so vague. Just pointing out that one word search to prove something, does not prove anything.

I did click the link, what was I supposed to see? Recent submissions, I get that, what's your point? If you mean SS is accepting junk, yeah I'd agree. The whole review process seem to fall apart in about 2012 when they went for "we have the most photos". But just in case, can you be specific what I should be looking at in recent uploads?

Here's a good three word search that should make you wonder what SS is thinking...  https://www.shutterstock.com/search/sliced+vegetables+isolated?sort=newest&image_type=photo
446,334 sliced vegetables isolated stock photos - and it's most recent since you suggested that.

Seems that the limit is around four similar images, although we both know that reviewers are luck, chance and some are more vigilant about enforcing strict rules. (in other words, full of a false sense of power)  Some will probably reject twp images as similar, because they are outsourced and many are just making money, without the concept of what their job is. To review and accept suitable images. Instead they see it as, finding things wrong and rejecting images.

So anyway, tell me what I'm supposed to be seeing in recent uploads, I'm unclear what your point was?

Hello Uncle Pete,
Yes I can do the reordering, just I'd like to move 2 or more up the list at the same time, rather than doing one and scrolling back down again.
 

Of course, I was answering the first question, without understanding that on FT you could grab and move multiple images. Sorry. But easy yes, you can click and the image goes to the top, no marking multiple just click once on anything and it's moved. Actually less work than marking and dragging?

Some days I look at older images and re-order words, but like I wrote before, I try to put them in the right order when I upload, even though SS makes them Alpha sorted. Then I did some searches on AS and words that were adjusted, showed for the same main words as those that had the words down the list, and I mean well past 10-11-12 place. Makes me wonder about how important the first 5 (or 7 in some versions of the guide) really is, unless it's some boost for those words, if someone searches, those words, exactly.

I did that my own images, some sorted for main keywords, some sorted for other keywords. What I mean is, they all showed up the same. 

When ordering keywords, in Fotolia you could select a few and move to the top. Is there anyway to do this in Adobe?
It is a small detail but on several files - anything to save time!
Suzie

I generally try to order them ahead of time but if not, yes, you can click and move to the top, or drag and drop. The first 5-7 are supposed to be most important, but from what I can see, after that is not ignored, they are still searched.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on September 06, 2019, 15:59

Quote from: charged on September 04, 2019, 13:59

Just wondering if anyone knows what is happening with Yuri Acrus's business? For the longest time he was THE mega selling photographer. He shoots great stuff. He had a huge staff. I can only imagine his earnings has collapsed like everyone else's. In the era of low prices, I can only imagine his high production costs no longer works. I know some of you are not a fan of him. Let's not say negative things about him. Thanks!

He has a very successful photo business with, interns, students and apprentices. He gets big contract jobs because he has the staff, crew, make-up, studio, location scouts and everything needed.

He's an IS exclusive but I doubt that Yuri gives a hoot about Microstock.

Very smart, he played it right, got know, recognized, and moved up.

There's no reason for Yuri to be blogging or posting on these Microstock forums.

Not sure how that citizen journalist site of his ever went.

Best wishes and here's to his continued success.

yuri arcurs in the world of big contract advertisement is zero. you don't know clearly what talks about....he's is still am icrostock with huge cost and falling revenue as everybody...those shooting advertisement, big, big money contract don't even know what is micro stock.

Thanks for the helpful insight and detailed answer



https://www.mystockphoto.org/yuri-arcurs-new-studio/

Those who want to share will already have them linked in their signature.

And in my case, nothing of interest to anyone serious, so I don't advertise, but I'm easy to find.

http://crapstock.com/

Does this mean that SS is planning to reverse sales that are returned images, or ones purchased through fraudulent credit cards?

I fear more �good news� is on the way!

Or they are planning on documenting and showing us any adjustments, to make the earnings page balance.

Nothing new or "exciting" just showing us what wasn't showing in the past?

Not showing on mine yet, but when it does, maybe I'll see if I ever had any adjustments?

Quote from: Brasilnut on September 03, 2019, 10:12

The following makes for depressing reading...but as always, there's light at the end of the tunnel....

https://brutallyhonestmicrostock.com/2019/09/03/declining-earnings-in-microstock-veterans-pov/

I'd hate to burst your bubble... you say in your article "you have to face the fact that the �good old days� are long gone by at least 3-5 years, maybe even longer" and as an industry veteran I can say "maybe even longer", the slide really began circa 2007 for the industry as a whole. The industry shift to microstock was the warning shot across the bow. It's a sad day when you have to sell 30 photos at Adobe or SS or IS and even GI just to pay for your monthly Cloud Subscription and note that is before taxes.

And someone with longer experience that kept records by year, say starting in 2005, would so an even more depressing bar chart. I'm not that person because I didn't start "big" and after the initial interest, I didn't keep detailed records after about 2009. Most of my volume uploads were in 2012 - 2013, which means the graph would be skewed.

If I did do since 2012, I'm not sure that would be accurate or a fair view, because of the areas of interest I upload and my scattered periods of effort that dwindled into boredom/lethargic uploads. I can add that since I'm essentially working with two agencies, and the rest are dormant, my stats would also be invalid for anyone else to view.

I would say though, that anyone new or getting into Microstock, should really take the reports here to heart and find something else. This is NOT a growth business nor growing market and hasn't been for possibly five years. To start now and make what some people did, working hard for the last ten years, is an uphill battle against the volume and existing competition.

There's not a very likely expectation of success in terms of earnings for effort and investment.

I had a talk with them last Night. was Informed they weren't going anywhere. But it's been tough for awhile and suggested I hang In there. Appreciate their words. Always Liked the simplicity of the site. fingers crossed.

So for 50 downloads a month you're willing to sit and watch them wither some more? 

Maybe they are hanging on for a settlement from Google in the last phase of the lawsuit. LOL

I still have an account, my effort is a worse joke than the earnings. As I've said before, I get what I deserve, based on my level of effort. I can't blame them for that.

What I mean is, if I closed my account, they could keep the pitiful accumulated earnings and I wouldn't feel any sadness for the loss. I also had hoped they could somehow recover. I was wrong.

Dreamstime recent photo:

Quote from: Uncle Pete on September 03, 2019, 09:31

Brasilnut, if the Alamy incorrect was re-billed, shouldn't that update at a new rate or did that mean, nothing changed except the reference to how it was licensed and you got no additional payment?

Thanks for the detailed stats.

I've followed up with Alamy and waiting to hear back. At the moment nothing has changed.

There should be a refund of the original sale, followed by a re-purchase with new license terms. Will update the blog post accordingly when this happens, hopefully soon.

That's my guess, I've had some of those, a refund and new license. BTW always lower, but they do make adjustments. 

Quote from: Uncle Pete on September 01, 2019, 21:10

Quote from: trek on August 30, 2019, 14:01

Quote from: georgep7 on August 30, 2019, 13:54

Why should they delete products that payed people to curate and stored for a long time? Further why should upset people that spend time to shoot, upload keyowrk and list them?

Bulk sales, lowest prices and resolutions seems a better idea. Guess this already happened?
After all, deleting all unsold would actually reduce marketplaces to a big reset point.

Why.. to get rid of insanely redundant low quality material that frustrates buyers.  If it hasn't sold in 10 years I say trash it.

Not going to say I really want or believe this, but why not get rid of artists with poor collections, loads of redundant poor selling images and spammed up keywords? Lets say, people who don't make many sales and are just taking up space with poor images that will never sell. Asking because at what point does the remove someone else's work, come down to remove someone else, and maybe remove someone who's here and cares?

The problem would be would they remove the "right" people. We already know how inconsistent their reviewing is.

Thank you for understand the bottom line. Who decides which of us is allowed to stay or who is removed. If the reviews are so terribly inconsistent, who would decide which images stay and what's removed? Who decides what's relevant or who should be allowed to upload?

The mistake was lowering standards, building numbers for the sake of "we have more images". I don't think there's a way to reverse the past, but there is a way to build for the future. That would be, image standards, selective content and quality over volume.

Or just keep going the same direction, let the buyers decide and accept with soft review. I still don't know how this new hard line on similar images is going to turn out. Right now there has been an over compensation.

Along the lines of the other opinions and history, my best selling are from the early years, most of the time. A couple are from after the standards changed, when I uploaded previous rejections that I thought had potential. Some have sold, some the reviews were right.

Do we want to let the buyers decide, or let the reviewers decide what the buyers will see? If one chooses to trust the reviews, then there's no way to complain when we disagree. If we want the buyers to have the final decision, then we can't complain so much about Crapstock that doesn't get filtered.

Personally I think the agency, whatever one wishes to step up, should set their own quality and subject standards and stick with that. But then again, we see a fear of failure, where agencies try to please everyone and allow too many sub-standard subjects and marginal quality.
 

Quote from: Uncle Pete on August 21, 2019, 21:40

Quote from: fritz on August 21, 2019, 12:35

Explore over 300 million royalty-free images, stock footage clips, and music tracks...

Right

I still can't fathom why people don't understand the concept of more competition, and how that increase will always equal less sales.  More choices, better, newer images, less sales. Is there some kind of denial that ignores that we are producing a commodity which is provided in floods of millions, not like anything was ten years ago. But the question is "why have my sales dropped". 

Agencies keep selling more, we are selling less. What could it be?

Competition, sales dilution.

Depends on the situation.  For me I typically make $800 + each month.  All of a sudden I will make $250 this month. The is not the addition of a bazillion images.  It is something else. Probably summer slump together with search changes.  Either way I have about 5,000 assets and to see a drop like this is not related to the influx of images per se.

I'm not going to say there's one answer and that's going to explain everything.

Another part that I see is, we see a good month and say, that's the way it's supposed to be, then a lower month and say, Oh they did something to make it lower. I see it as there are some regular sales and there's some consistency, while there is also some randomness. The real base number is the reliable sales, which are dropping.

The good sales or months are more unpredictable. I think I just had two weeks of subs and then a day with and OD and an EL? More income comes from SO, EL and OD, which most downloads are from subs.

I don't do video but I can only imagine how that area has taken a much bigger earnings hit with volume and new uploads, than photo. Every time something is popular and better earning, it gets slammed with collectives or groups that produce for stock.

I just don't see anything getting better or any stable income that's dependable. I think at this stage, nearly everyone is willing to accept that as an individual, none of us can keep up with, or compete with, the influx of new images, illustrations or video.

The days of upload anything and get sales are long passed. Not only is there more competition, but they keep getting better and smarter. I don't know what anyone else expects, but I don't see growth or much room for income improvement. More likely, drops and less downloads, that I can see.

If someone believes that income and uploads should stay level or gain, maybe they can explain why and how?  I mean instead of saying, how everything is dropping, maybe explain why everything shouldn't be dropping? Business and marketing kind of reasons.

Quote from: morfon on August 23, 2019, 00:22

This thread is not about falling sales. It�s about all sales suddenly coming to a complete halt. I�m pretty sure they tweaked their system.

your evidence for such tweaking?

YMMV - but like many others, I still see sub sales every day, tho EL are rarer

sadly every time someone sees reduced sales they assume the search has changed - the simple fact is you're competing against millions of other images

And then today I get an EL and an OD.  None of this is as predictable as it was in the past. So I guess the tweak was a boost for Pete tweak? 

Quote from: cascoly on August 22, 2019, 01:56

Quote from: StockDaebak on August 21, 2019, 23:56

I think it's the suddenness and longevity of the drought that is throwing some producers for a loop, I do video and it's been at least six days on SS since I had a sale as well but one came in today, could always be worse, could be pond5 and zero sales for longer than six days.
�.

it's not sudden -- sales have been declining for more than a year

People have been reporting falling sales for the 7 years I've been on this site. The trend is accelerating and some will buck it but on average sales will decline.

Looking at all three, I'd say, I can agree. But the drought isn't just one place, it's pretty much everywhere. The drop has been more than a year and seven years is more than a year.

I'm not going to try to point to a cause when I don't know. While people that toss out, search change or a conspiracy, or some other theories about how the agencies manipulate the sales, are just guessing. Over the years, we've heard "a well informed inside source says..." but never any solid facts or proof, or who's that source. Anyone can make up an inside source that confirms what they are guessing.

Pretty hard to cover up the truth across an entire industry. That truth would be that it's all rigged.

I can not like the way sales are going and not like the income drop or not like the way the agencies have changed commissions or levels or ended programs and promises. I don't like those. But I also don't see some trick or game involved. It's just the way this industry has been sorting out and we are the ones who get cut out first. Everything is directed at making buyers happy so they come back. Everything is designed for making the company a profit.

If any agency says they are our friend, they care about us, or they are trying to help us make money, don't believe them. We are the last thought.