That is when they transfer the payment to next month.

It just seems that making money from microstock gets harder and harder. For everyone.

Quote from: wordplanet on July 16, 2022, 17:11

At the Grand Canyon if you hike down to the bottom and can't make it back up, and need a rescue they charge you something like $30,000 - wonder if the Italians do the same?

They are likely to do so. Rescue helicopters are very expensive in service. In some cases a travel insurence will pay, but if these tourists wanted to avoid the 10€ entrance fee, they might not be the sort of people who are insured.

Predicting buyer behaviour can end up in something misleading.

I experienced that assets aimed at small/one person companies appear more likely to sell by on demand licences, but would not get into guessing why, or if this is a mere coincidence. 

Then what determines where the buyer goes sockshopping. Most customers have subscription plans at one agency. Their Shutterstock subscription plan will not work on Dreamstime etc. The boss may be he one who decides what agency to purchase from, looking at the bill is probably quite common.
The other part of me that is not stock photo is a one person company that sometims buy visual assets that it is not feasible for me to produce myself. These purchases are always on demand, as even the smallest subscription packages expire before I get them used. Thus I am not bound to any agency. So what are the actual costs buying from an agency. A spot-on search function saves me a lot of time browsing trough the collections. Adobe and Dreamstime does well here. Alamy, iStock and 123RF less, but it still works. Shutterstock is the looser here. Often I will have to browsee trough a ton of assets that abviously have no relation to my search whatsoever. Or one contributor has found a trick to basically own the first page of a search with semi-dull images. The right image is most likely there somewhere on page 35. Being able to select I go elsewhere, knowing that Shutterstock has no exclusive contributor agreements. So the things I search for may indeed be somewhere on Shutterstock, but is lkely to be somewhere else too, where it may be easier to find. The "get rich fast" with their keyword spamming and loads of identical assets tend to cling to Shutterstock 

Quote from: Firn on July 13, 2022, 08:39
https://www.microstockgroup.com/123royaltyfree-com/is-this-the-oldest-refund-ever/msg575751/?topicseen#new

According to this 123RF claimed the refunds were a mistake and they removed them again. Not sure how such a weird mistake can happen in the first place and why it keeps happening.

With the software quality of 123's platform, these absurdities do not surprise me much.

I just recently requested my Eyeem account to be closed. (after a long series of 1 cent "sales") It seems they are processing a lot of those requests at the moment. Support has been back to me and offers payout, but so far nothing...

You don't know why? Usually Adobe gives a rejection reason.

Had a lot of Alamy sales recently. After all deductions, what remains for me is 1 cent.

Two months ago I got kicked from Shutterstock, got a standard mail with every reason there ever was, but no details. Guess that is life as microstocker 2022. What is the problem, we are seeing the end of microstock come closer. I just got my Eyeem sales report, a bunch of 1 cent sales. So requested my account there to be shut down. Got an auto-reply that deletion was in progress. It seems that account deletions at Eyeem are now so frequent that they have automated processing of these. There is not future in microstock, so do not cry over rejected files or locked accounts.

Ask yourself what will the last remaining high-praised agencies be like in two years (none mentioned, none forgotten). We know the answer don't we? They will also have made "anouncements of exciting news", by now every stock contributor knows what that means.

Well if most of us had a low sales volume this month, it could explain why the statements are out so many days before "20". Just saying... - there wasnt so much to calculate?

Low sales volume for me too, but the average RPI remarkably higher than SS, even with some 3 and 4 cent sales.

I just want to know if JPEG will remain JPEG or maybe should be pronoinced GEPJ or JPEJ or GPEG. It does not matter much, it won't sell for more than 10 cents anyway.

For me stock photo is dead, I have recently retired from my differen jobs, and planned to go on wih microstock on hobby-level. It seems that it will not even be that. I will contrinue for the time being, making photos for Adobe and Alamy and Dreamstime until the aging Nikons fall apart. When they fall apart, I'll quit. Or if Alamy and Adobe goes getty-mode. For me video is dead already. I sold a little video on Adobe and more on Shitter for 25 cents. P5 was the agency that made video production some sort of feasible, but change will come there, so making new videos will never come to pay.
So I have retired..

I'm still happy with my PS Elemens 2.0 from the millenia time. It is already long time ago that I decided that the future of stock photograpy did not justify any new investments or updates.

I have always experienced 123 as technical wobbly in all manners. And as many say, not worth the trouble. 

Cent-subscriptions are killing the business for those contributors who create quality. What will be left is some third world social media-like crap with no meaning at all. Aood images and videos catch attention, talentless sh!t does not. I think the quality stock libraries will soon die out. We can earn more by collecting paper or bottles and do not need expensive equipment for it like some agencies tend to demand. 

Quote from: Uncle Pete on May 10, 2022, 02:19

When is the Getty SPAC going to start selling the stock? Will this make it happen?

The good question is why a stock photo agency should be on the stock market? The reason for a presence on the stock market is raising money for investments. A stock photo agency does not own a lot of equipment. or property. We are the ones who own the equipment. A stock agency's servers are likely rented as well as the property/office. These are all running costs just like staff salaries. None of these are investments that are likely to pay back some day. Marketing is also ongoing costs, that should pay back if the marketing is succesful. So Shutterstock needed a lot of capital, and joined the stock market, but for what? Was there a big hole in the budget? Did they invest a lot of money in AI review systems, and the costs went out of control?
Being on the stock market is a cost, and some small and mid cap companies withdraw when their investments have paid back, maybe they maintain a smaller stock portflio for the actual owners, that may be a tax benefit.

It seems to me that Adobes standard rejection reason is because Adobe is not the agency that carries newbies trough the process. They want photographers who know what they do. It is the same with Alamy, they do not go easy on rejections. I also had technical good images rejected. On the other hand I had an image accepted that had noise and was not in good focus. Because the image was funny and unusual.

Sometimes the technical rejection comes quite fast. It could be they have some algorithm sorting out obvious faulty images, before ever letting the human reviewer bother with it.

Adobe is one of the better paying agencies. If you want more help there is always Shutterstock...

Quote from: komikmiha on April 21, 2022, 18:26
I'm in the process of deleting 7850 video clips from Adobe. All of them are going to P5 Exclusive. Goodbye AS.

With the latest news, do you still think P5 is the best place on earth? I'll hang on to AS

SSTK began to grow in mid 2020 after the cut. It reached an all time high in late 2021, but then came the decline. So they might be tempted to make a new royalty cut, and obtain companies in good standing in order to correct things. The purchase of P5 will not solve that problem, as P5 is a small company compared to SS. But it will look good in the quarterly report.

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/SHUTTERSTOCK-INC-11660041/consensus/

That solves a big problem for me. I was researching for the purchase of a new video camera. With that announcement in mind, I will not nee a new video camera at all.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on April 21, 2022, 16:37
What? Show me your photos, I want to steal them?  Darn the people who just can't think of ways to actually work and be honest, can sit all day and think of ways to lie, cheat and steal? I think many of them would be good creatives and earn money if they went in the right direction.

It might be that they could get creative enough to get somewhere on their own. But these people seems to be lazy and want to get rich in a jiffy, please without too much work, or preferably none. Stock photo was never that kind of business. Even if a certain viral youtube video made it appear so. Then they get the idea: Buzz around the real good photographers, see what they have in their port, and achive that from one of the illegal "get watermark free images from shutterstock" services, if the are not too lazy they swap the image horizontally or crop it and reupload. Caption and keywords are already at hand on shutterstock.

Things went bad on Shutterstock when some youtube video went viral in parts of Asia, the video pomised big income from photos. Many rushed to the facebook group for Shutterstock contributors. Many of them had zero talent, and obviously hey did not read what they signed up for. Some appeared to come from places that did not even seem to have a monetary system. Most of then basically ha to be carried trough the whole process. When their first approved image of the electric pole outside their residence had been aproved, and made no sales for the first few hours, these luck seekers found new ways. "Show Portfolio !" was a common question to the more experienced. They soon found their images in other portfolios. These luck seekers simply wanted Shutterstock to pay them money so or so, and many more or less creatice fraud attempts were made.

From my time on Istock before the gettyfication, I knew there were issues where photographer had bought their own images towards the end of the year where just a few sales would make a significant difference in their royalty tier for the next year. With most sales being 10 cents for images or 25 cents for videos on SS, and the annual tier reset buying own assets will simply not be feasible. 

I will now enjoy my retirement and the creative freedom the agencies with human review gives me.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on April 15, 2022, 17:52
Sounds like something is all wrong with this? The whole thing is odd.

This is the mail I got.

Quote
​Dear Kim,

Thanks for reaching out to Shutterstock Contributor Care.

I understand your concern regarding your account, please allow me to clarify the reason behind the deactivation of your account.

After a careful review of activity within your account, we have determined that your contributor account is linked to suspicious activity across our platform. Your contributor account will not be re-activated.

Paragraph 4 of the Submitter Terms & Conditions gives Shutterstock the right to terminate any existing account " . . . for fraud, intellectual property infringement, violation of a third party's rights including those of privacy or publicity, artificially inflating downloads, submission of material that is obscene in nature, violent or that might be construed as defamatory, failure to comply with Shutterstock's guidelines as may be amended from time to time, or for any breach of the terms of this or any other agreement that you have with Shutterstock."

As a result of the foregoing, Shutterstock has terminated your account.

If you have earned commissions at the time of this closure, you are not entitled to these earnings per the Shutterstock Terms & Conditions you agreed upon when you became a Shutterstock contributor.

Paragraph 9(d) of the Submitter Terms & Conditions states that "If your account is terminated for a breach of the material terms of the TOS, in addition to its other rights at law or in equity, Shutterstock shall have the right to retain any royalties and/or other compensation otherwise payable to you hereunder as liquidated damages."

Your account cannot be reinstated and you do not have permission to create a new account. If you try to open another account, our system will automatically reject you. Please consider this matter closed, as future inquiries will not be addressed.

We thank you for your understanding.

Regards
Royber,
Shutterstock Contributor Care Team

I know the terms of copyright and all they state, I have been on Istock long before Getty and on Shutter since 2016. The suspicious activities were that a large number of strange sales came in at a time of the week that is otherwise very silent. I reported this to "Shutterstock help desk India" snf essd rfirected to some other third part wendor , both parts consiedered these sales legit. But then someone did not. Why should I buy my own videos? We had something on Amazon Publish, it stopped when someone proved taht it was possible to buy some Kindle e books with a credit card, and have hem refunded to basically any other credit card. Money launder, it stopped when Amazon limited the refund option to the payment source used for the purchase. For what I know Shutterstock does not offer refunds, but maybe the laundrer found out the hard way.

Nevertheless, I do not care.  I am retired now, and now have more creative freedom on sites like AS, AY, DT, P5 etc where a good photo weighs more that autodetection of insane focus and film grain.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on April 12, 2022, 16:10

So much once again for the outsourced help desk. I hope you have some wort of transcript to send to SS if you get a reply from an actual employee.

Did they include a contact or just ban you?

I got a standard mail informing me that the case was hereby closed and not up for further negotiation.
Well, nothing I would fight for. I begin to see increased image sales on AD, DT and even P5 where I had other wise only sold 2 images in 5 years. Itleaves me more freedom for creativity, not having to think about making media files so that some insane focus-focussed review machine would interpret the file.