Funny thing is, there are so many things not covered even a little. Common things! Even today I was working on some images of a specific meal, a common meal but geared toward health with some basic substitutions that I have seen in magazines, often.

I did a search to see how many I'd be competing against on SS.

Not even 30. And most were from one shoot.

Woot. And no, they are not in my portfolio yet.

I have a couple also, where the ones they have are incorrect, or wrong keywords for a very specific item. Another is a food item that has very specific ingredients and origins. Something for the Winter when I'm not busy running all over, chasing cars. 

Like this: 407 (name a common menu item here) stock photos, vectors, and illustrations are available royalty-free.

247 (another item) stock photos, vectors, and illustrations are available royalty-free, the first page is mostly misidentified and NOT the common item.

This isn't rocket science and I still contend that happy handshake, or sliced tomatoes, or snapshots of a walkabout, are going to get accepted and die! Time to work smarter not harder.

Good luck with your ideas. I'm shooting IMSA this weekend, worked Xfinity last, a vintage event and INDYCAR before that. Having a wonderful time and getting a nice tan. Oh look I can see some shadows 

Quote from: pkphotos on August 01, 2018, 19:39

There's only one solution, everyone stop uploading! If QC eliminated NCV subject matter, similars and average content, the collection could be halved.

Well everyone except me ;-). Halved? More than that I reckon 80% at least  of new content never sells.

Well everyone, stop uploading anything that I shoot would be my plan? 

As far as pk and half, I think if they limited ncv and dupes and similars the collection might be 25% or less of what it is now. Just start looking for ideas and areas where you can find something, no well covered or over covered, even if 90% are unmarketable crap. You should start to see how many images are nothing but numbers and have no hope of ever getting a download, if the buyer has minimal sense and any perception.

SS could stop accepting uploads and start culling out the junk, imagine that, just the good stuff. I know we'd disagree if ours were removed, but in the end, the entire collection might be a few million select images. Imagine that, buyers wouldn't have to wade through a cesspool to find what they want. 

Nope, not going to happen and 10 million new images every two months, looks like the level that can be input and processed. That could change. ANyone else wonder how many rejections go along with 10 million new images, or how bad they had to be to fail. LOL

Microstock is dead, only masochists would be pursuing it going forward.

Thank you for the break in the yes it is, no it isn't debate. 

I have a personal feeling that the cap is just what you wrote. A result of the flood of new images, and market flat-lining.

Microstock is dead or at best smells fishy and stinks. The growth era and new product stages are past, so now we have stagnation. Along with that anyone who isn't adding more and pushing for any possible gain, will be dropping. Most will lose because of competition, the best of old and popular themes, will go flat. Some will still be able to create new ideas and marketable images, but the easy money, easy sales, are long gone.

Contrary to some opinions, the answer is not "quantity makes more money" for any of us, as individuals. Quality does. Yes the early days, numbers counted, now they do nearly nothing.

I'm not going to spend hours and hours, editing and uploading, just to find, the competition has added another 10 million images at the same time I could add a couple hundred. The exception is, when I have something that there are not already 50,000 or 100,00 examples, I may do some work. The day of uploading best selling, common topics, concepts type images is over. Now we need to upload narrow market images that have a demand.

Good going Steve and anyone else who can continue to make any income growth in this cold market.

They already have many of my images. Another partner site?

Yes looks that way. I can't tell which, but nothing of mine shows. NOT SS, AS, DT, IS. Maybe they have QC and I don't pass.  Lucky for me...

Might be Alamy? I see a bunch of Zuma sports images and they upload to Alamy from their agency. I don't see my Alamy photos on PxBee

Worst ever: (Alamy sale)
    30 July 2018    Editorial royalty-free    899KB
679 x 452 pixels
91KB compressed
China Editorial Website, Bulk discount, Flat rate per image    $ 3.96

Shutterstock Milestones:

September 21, 2006 - Shutterstock surpasses one million stock photos
February 20, 2009 -Shutterstock reaches 6 million photos, (5 million 2.5 years)
February 14, 2010 - Shutterstock reaches 10 million Photos (4 million 12 months)
June 19, 2012 - Shutterstock reaches 20 million stock Images (10 Million 28 months)
October 30, 2013 - Shutterstock reaches 30 million images (10 million 15 months)
August 4, 2014 - Shutterstock celebrates 40 million images in it's collection. (10 million 10 months)
December 31, 2014 - 46.8 million images in the collection. (1 million new files per month)
March 3, 2015 - 50 Million Image mark is reached (10 million in 7 months for those watching)
August 12, 2015 - 60 Million Images (10 million in 160 days. 62,500 new files a day)
December 15, 2015 - 70 Million Images (four months)
March 26, 2016 - 80 Million
June 16, 2016 - 90 Million (10 million under three months)
Sept 8, 2016 - 100 Million
February 2017 - 110 Million
October 28, 2017 � 160 Million
December 29, 2017 - 170 Million (10 million new two months)
April 16, 2018 - 190 Million (20 million new in 3.5 months)
June 10, 2018 - 200 Million (10 million new in 55 days)
August 1, 2018 - 210 Million (10 million new in 53 days)

Has the limit for intake of newly accepted files, finally been reached? September 23rd 220 Million? 

My uploads have been light and this month is the worst since the second month after I started in 2013.

I tend to think that some people think this is a personal issue, while I'd say if you are down and I know what quality and diverse work you do, the whole business is suffering and depressed. I have a portable drive, filling with new files, that I haven't gotten around to editing or uploading. No motivation. But that's a personal issue. 

I think I took one shot this week, one the road back from Xfinity in Iowa, that I like. Now I need some buyers to like it?

OK, so we reach a level where image sales stay the same month to month without dropping or increasing no matter how much or how little I upload. I have never heard of that before and have never seen it in the more than a decade of doing this until recently.

Weird, but ok. Problem solved.

Actually mine change month to month, more consistently depending on what month it may be, but the yes was, there are more than a few different issues and questions, all being lumped together into "controlled revenue". I kind of liked the one where, if it's controlled, down, then it must also be controlled, up, so things stay the same? 

I wouldn't compare my best to your broad collection. Sorry, you win by default or is that I concede defeat without a battle. 

Would be worth seeing whether your July 2017 figures were lower than your March 2017 figures.

July, that's my guess as all of the answers are pretty much just a generalized guess.

If there is controlled revenue, then how come each contributor's plateau lies somewhere else? Say, Person A has a plateau of $200 monthly (i.e. he won't ever make more than that, no matter how hard he tries) but Person B has a plateau of $1000. Seems rather arbitrary, doesn't it? How is that number decided then?

Now, a gradually decreasing profit is very normal in most businesses and fields. Your revenue plateau is most likely just a combination of 1) your own personal effort 2) port quality 3) competition in your subject matter 4) buyer numbers 5) changing trends.

Each factor has numerous parameters that ultimately determine your port performance.
Your profit may rise, plateau or even decrease as years go by, depending of how favorable market conditions are. And that's all there is to it. No conspiracy, no secret SS department closely monitoring your personal port, no devious algorithms designed to screw you over on a personal level.

Not a controlled limit for for the reasons you mention, but I also ask why are the limits different? The answer I'd say is this, there is a plateau for earnings for the content each of us has for sale. Mine is different, no models, no studio, so the demand for that is lower than someone who shoots with models. Also the performance of each of us, is based on our type of content and subjects.

It's just as natural as a little corner store, selling less of a variety of products, while a Walmart has many more. But the Walmart has an predictable and stable sales each month. So does the little store. They aren't the same, but once a business reaches it's capacity, or maximum potential for what it's marketing, there's you flat growth point. Adding more of the same photos, against a growing competition, will not produce the one time growth that we once saw.

So, aside from conspiracy theories, and imaginary conclusions from personal observations (not data collection and study), there are basic economic factors that would predict that Microstock would become a flat market for us as individuals. The agencies are also finding the market is saturated, buyer numbers will grow, but not as fast.

Meanwhile we have competition, millions of new images a week. For the agencies the competition is dropping, not growing.

There is nothing unusual about stable returns for a portfolio in a market that has reached it's limits for demand and sales. I'm actually surprised that some incomes haven't dropped more, against the new competition and files that are flooding in. Contrary to some, this isn't hurting my sales much, because low quality or common subjects, aren't going to interfere with my best selling images. They will cause a drop in my common or Crapstock shots that have been online for a decade.

What I mean overall is I don't see a bright future or growth for myself. I'm happy to have a stable return on what I do. I don't see anything unusual about reaching the point where growth of sales has gone flat. The same thing happens to any new product once it has reached the market capacity.

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on July 10, 2018, 20:51

Quote from: mynameis on July 10, 2018, 10:55

I wonder why people put photos on flickr and similar "show only" sites and then cry if image "borrowed"?

Uh well, because if the image is All Rights Reserved it's show-only. If it has one of the ridiculous Create Commons licenses then it may be okay to "borrow".

I wonder why people put cars in car shows and similar "show only" shows and then cry if car "borrowed"?

A big difference. If I borrow your car, you can't use it. But if I borrow your digital photo, you can continue to use it.

And this is why we aren't getting the protection we deserve. A digital asset is not the same a physical piece of property. That's why, to answer my own hypothetical about shop lifting, someone stealing a candy bar, risks arrest or at least a fine and someone stealing a digital file, gets to say, "Oops sorry, I didn't know."

I don't say that it's right, but that's why one case, the store can call the cops and we can't. There are laws that protect property and the same laws don't offer us the same protection for computer text writings, digital photos, or digital graphics. Then someone might ask, but MP3s and music are protected? Yes because Sony, Capitol, Disney and the rest, had the expensive lobbyists and lawyers, go after that protection.

In other words, someone with a reason (lost profit), power and the money, could get us the same protection as music. Until then we get some weak, ineffective, reporting system, where most of the time, the worst that happens is the website gets a take down notice. And outside the countries that care, the crooks just laugh, because there's nothing to stop them.

SS is dead, Completely flatlined since Friday. It's over folks.

At least your view of Micro hasn't changed in 7-8 years?

Still absolutely dire. Really really awful sales. I am on target to earn the lowest amount in nearly 2 years. I have pretty much written Istock off as they have basically destroyed most of what was good about them.

I'll just jump in as the same. I make about ten times more on SS than Adobe, more on Adobe a year, than Alamy.

Lifetime RPD Adobe is .82, SS .69, Alamy around $50. Earnings SS are about 10X Adobe or Alamy. IS is probably between SS and FT, but less sales.

To be fair, mostly different images on all, maybe 10% overlap. I've got many more on SS than Adobe and stopped uploading to Alamy just because of the time involved. But the reason I upload more to SS, first, than anywhere else, is because the return is highest in real money. I get to other places as I have time. I buy equipment and Scotch or whatever, with dollars not statistics.