i do enjoy the ignore button but what this forum also needs is a downvote button like reddit.  "0" doesn't sufficiently describe  some of the genius comments on here.

I only nominate assets that haven't sold once in 5 years...the duds in my portfolio. With AI coming, I consider my future in microstock non-existent anyway. 10 years from now, maybe even sooner, business models will have drastically changed, excluding most artists. Maybe AI content farms will take over the market.

strongly agree.  i have 800 "nominated" and exactly 2 of those have ever sold on adobe.  i doubt they will accept much if any of the remaining 798 but if they do it's highly probably that the $8 is $8 more than i would get if they didn't offer the free collection option.  renting unsold videos for $8/year is really not a bad deal considering one or two sales during that time @ $2.80 wouldn't match $8 anyway.  i've heard many times here and elsewhere that the best days of microstock are way in the past.  most folks seem to suggest it was around 2016 to 2019 or so.  not having a time machine i'm inclined to collect whatever change is left before we stop earning altogether.

BME so far

congrats!  what agency?  is that a photo or video?

that's a lot of dedication!  why not just leave it and let it collect next to nothing over the years?

Quote from: Big Toe on August 22, 2024, 13:20

Quote from: cobalt on August 20, 2024, 10:13

How difficult can it be to write an algorithm with a few adjustable parameters so the queue is always at maximum two weeks or whatever their desired target range is depending on the content?

I think the problem is that they are just overwhelmed with AI content and no shuffling around of resources between different queues is going to solve this problem. They very likely would have to expand the available resources.

They may be reluctant to do this, because they do not know how long the current influx will remain at this level. Or perhaps they are working on tools that allow the help of AI with reviewing AI content (and possibly other content).

My guess is that that AI influx will increase as tools are more widely available and generate "accurate" content more quickly.

My guess is that the AI influx will decrease as the number of images increases and each "contributor" receives less and less for their contributions.  A few will keep going but if they get paid a few $ for many hours of generating, uploading and tagging most will quit.  The novelty of AI is going to wear off and there will be a small steady need for these images, not a huge glut of downloads.  Also it's pretty easy to pay for a midjourney sub and ask your creative team to generate 10 images of a duck with sunglasses on, I'm not certain people will keep paying for stock images they can easily generate themselves.  It's much harder and more expensive to create photos so those I think will keep selling to a certain extent.

after 2 excellent months i knew a "correction" was coming and this month was less than half of the last two.  a few decent image sales but no huge ones.  still a better month than where the year started.  all this despite more images and video sold.

Does anyone know how stock agency search engines rank content?

Last year I took a brief vacation from the world of stock and tried uploading to YouTube which was interesting but didn't work out.

However, it did get me wondering about how stock agency search engines rank new uploads and if they work in a similar way to how the YouTube algorithm monitors 'signals'.

I know the YouTube algorithm is a complex beast that uses many factors to determine if your content is good, and then apply that data to decide whether or not rank or promote your content higher within the search results. But do stock agencies use a similar approach to ranking content every time a customer uses a specific search term?

are you willing to share your youtube experience?  i've been dabbling for a little while and after a few years got my channel monitized a few days ago (not photo related channel). 

Quote from: DanielVisuals on August 06, 2024, 14:52

Quote from: zeljkok on August 06, 2024, 14:48

No, but this is discussion forum and it is good to see perceptions people have and exchange information.   Adobe Review Time for RF images is very peculiar with total lack of information why this is happening.

Well put!

May I ask what does RF images stand for?

Royalty Free.    Non-editorial and non-AI generated

I have strong feeling Adobe doesn't want regular photos anymore, unless they are editorial.  So they like out of pool of 10 reviewers, allocated 5 to AI, 4 to editorial and 1 to RF.  All for purpose of Firefly promotion, as company belief is that "art photographers" are thing of the past, soon to be extinct.  If true, it is quite sad.    Canon, Nikon etc reaction would be quite interesting.

you may be right but that would be a ridiculous position from my perspective.  i know ai images are having a moment and probably will always have a use for certain type of images but i don't expect photography to go anywhere.  a few years ago silly obviously staged smiling face images were the norm but once that market got saturated every agency started begging for "authentic" images of "real" people.  there wasn't enough diversity now every agency brief asks for diversity.  i truly believe ai will never fulfill every need or even most needs of most buyers. time will tell i guess.

this month was very exciting.  for most of the last year AS was about 5-7x the sales of SS.  SS has slowly improved the last few months for me to the point where it has been competitive with AS.  istock has been right up there as well but because the numbers come out 3 weeks later i can't speak to how they did in july.  SS got off to a great start and was ahead for a long time with larger sales volume and a few higher sales in the first week.  one strong week from AS though put them right behind SS going towards the last week.  it was a difference of a few dollars up until the final days of the month but a couple small video sales pushed AS over the finish line to take first place.  i much prefer it this way over AS being the only show in town and the other agencies earning pennies.  had a best month on alamy and DT  but those numbers are so small i don't see myself ever getting a payout.  absolutely nothing from p5 despite uploading a lot of stuff in the last 2 months, seems like a waste of time so i'm pausing uploads there.

Quote from: yuriy on July 29, 2024, 16:41

hey Mat, thanks for responding.  i keyworded and submitted these files 4.5 months ago.  i will get you some file new numbers when the pagination glitch is fixed since I'm unable to navigate to the end of my lengthy review queue.  i did send an email back in march regarding a few of these though and this is one that is still waiting:  File ID: 743968048

Thanks for the file number. You are right, that is an image that appears to be stuck in the queue. You hold the record for the longest wait that I've seen. I'm sorry about that. I've forwarded it to our moderation team and asked them to take a look.

-Mat Hayward

appreciate it.  i figured it was some sort of anomaly.  i have exactly 12 images stuck like this (and they are actually 6 versions each from 2 different shoots).  i hope there's some work behind the scenes to speed up the rest of the images that are 2 months in queue as things stand.

i guess development of the soon-to-be-released "reviews will take up to 6 months" banner broke the scroll functionality.

quite a lot.  it was going well until 2 months ago when they stopped reviewing commercial images.  i also have 12 images like the screenshot that are 4 and 5 months in the black hole.