when i worked in retail many years ago they did all their holiday prep in july

despite above average number of downloads and decent number of video downloads it's the worst month for me out of the last 6 or so.  very few decent sales and nothing big.  istock is very much like shutterstock.  largely tiny meaningless sales that add up to nothing and the once in a rare while big sale that totally skews the numbers.

let us know, seems like others tried too and it worked for them as well.  its frustrating because i can tell some of the words being flagged and just fairly generic place names and not company ip.  a few seem to be places named for a person.  guess it'll have to be "a bridge" from now on, wish me luck.

getting closer...

cobalt- why don't you contribute there anymore? 

not a great month, but not terrible.  a little below the recent average but 15500% increase from feb, 2024 (that is the actual percent increase, not an estimate).

Quote from: davedigitalfx on February 27, 2025, 18:47
same sh*t here ... zero downloads in 10 days ... before Shitterstock i was at 350-400usd a month ..
let's thank Shitterstock for the great destructive work done on pond5 ...

what i wonder is where those sales have gone.  my hunch is demand for stock video isn't down, it's just the sales volume on pond5 appears almost gone.  the only place i sell video reasonably well is adobe even if the revenue is low.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 24, 2025, 16:31

Quote from: AM24 on February 21, 2025, 19:46

I love blue cheese and it photographs really beautifully. The only thing wrong with your photo, Pete, is the background. The two-tone is too distracting. But a full black background would have been too flat. It's good to have some texture in your backgrounds too sometimes.

Getting the right background is 50% of what makes a good photo. As you know I used to go to salvage places and get a lot of things there. Like those old wooden large trays that I painted and distressed. Or get some sample vinyl floor tiles. I still use the dark slate ones.

Here is a page I left out of the book because it was getting too large. The background of my black forest trifle in the champagne glass are those dark slate vinyl tiles. Used just 4 - 2 behind and 2 on the base.


Oh, and there are my polka dot cups and saucers !! 

Not my photo, just used for an example. However... Good advice on backgrounds and worth remembering. I also have flooring and counter samples for backgrounds. The further advice on side lighting for food is also always something to remember.

Yum, Yum, one of my delicious and attractive food photos.

what's funny about this is i have posted and sold kind of similar images.  the concept being junk food looking greasy and unappetizing. could be used for an article about clogged arteries or obesity.

speaking of ai, i haven't had a "contributor fund" payment in ages.  have others been getting anything?  ss has been terrible for me for 3 months now.

pleased to say its my best month ever by a small margin.  one really big sale otherwise it would have been pretty underwhelming.  to my surprise it was a video.

i heard you guys like metrics, well i've got a new one:

days of less than $1 in sales. 

adobe so far in feb had 2 while shutterstock has 8.  definitely winning. 

(yes i know one day of $10000 sales is better than 9999 days of $1 sales but it's not a trend i'm enjoying, i haven't had a bigger sale on ss in months anyway)

you're right, rpd by itself doesn't matter but rpd times volume is your bottom line.  for me and i think many others volume is a little higher on shutterstock but the rpd is so low that the bottom line is much less $ than adobe.  i think we can all agree that $ in the bank is what matters at the end of the day.

shutterstock sales have been pathetic lately, are others seeing the same thing?  adobe is currently 3x for me in feb, same thing in jan.

@cobalt i too would like to hear from the ss>as folks.  for me adobe sales in jan were about 2.5x shutterstock.  ss was my #1 agency for about 2 months last year though with a few big image sales i the fall.  let's hope they stay competitive but dec and jan were pretty underwhelming for me at ss despite many new images added.

decided to revive this oldie not because i want to complain again but because i made a small discovery based on a suspicion.  after this original thread and with mat's help the ducks i was waiting 5 months to be reviewed were reviewed and approved (probably, i didn't even care anymore but they are no longer in "in review").  at almost exactly the same time i also uploaded some images of a bridge.  these images are currently waiting to be reviewed for 10 months.  they were uploaded, tagged and submitted 10 months ago.  i have about 100 files that are stuck on 3+ months along with them.  they are not amazing images but a smaller, less famous bridge that isn't well covered in the agencies.  images like this don't sell a lot but do get a few sales here and there.  in fact these images have sold on other agencies already in the last 10 months since no agency lets images sit that long without review and the other agencies accepted them no problem.  about 3 or 4 months ago i uploaded the same images again with the same metadata.  they are also stuck.  a few weeks ago i uploaded them again, a 3rd time but wrote the minimum number of words in the metadata fields.  they have been reviewed and approved.  my suspicion was metadata caused some of these files to get flagged and put in the "we'll get to it in 10 years" pile.  in this particular case i used specific name places (like the name of the county, etc) that this bridge is located in.  if you have images stuck forever try re uploading with minimal metadata and fill it all in once they get reviewed.  as for the original images... it seems i will soon find out what comes after "1 year ago."

Quote from: ShadySue on January 22, 2025, 15:27

Quote from: cobalt on January 22, 2025, 00:50
The S+ files cost 3 credits, the normal files 1 credit. So S+ is three times more expensive. And in addition it gets mirrored on Getty.

Not quite, Signature, and Signature Plus cost 3 credits sometimes*.
Sig+ get mirrored to Getty, and the plussing seems to depend solely on which inspector randomly inspected your batch, I can't see any other reason why some of mine get plussed and why some others, which IMO are better, not in the same batch, don't (we can't nominate files to be plussed nowadays, though for a while we could).
Sig+ files, and Signature editorial files get mirrored to Getty, where we all get bumped down to a 20% commission. Some of these sales are high value, more are very small,: whichever, we get 20%.

*However, they only cost three credits if they buyer is on a Basic plan.
If they're on a Premium plan, all stills are one credit, but the credits cost more.
If they're on a Premium Plus plan, all files, stills and video are one credit, but the credits cost more still.
https://www.istockphoto.com/plans-and-pricing

do only exclusive contributors get into signature?  are all exclusive images automatically signature?  i've seen some sales through getty (i believe) though i'm not exclusive.

i'm with cobalt on this one.  i don't see why i would want to be exclusive with the 3rd best agency.  maybe the higher rate will make them the 2nd best agency and it'll be slightly less effort to upload to 3 agencies but there's no reason to believe they will do well enough to cover the earnings from AS/SS.

not a bad month per se but first month in my istock career that i earned less than the year before. 

first time inside the top 10k.  little over 4k files.

None because I think (and this is just a theory) you need sales to get refunds.  I've given up on Alamy, little to no volume most months.

avg month, bit less than oct.  quite a bit less than AS/SS.  no big sales, not great volume.  miniscule ai payment. 

best ever photo sale just happened today ($6.60), best ever video was about 6 months ago ($31.50)

a likely story...

Pretty good month for me.  RPD is .77, certainly seen worse.  One really good sale, one decent sale, a good number of sales for over $1 and a huge pile of $.14 sales as well.  First time ever that non-US narrowly beat US sales which is something to be encouraged by I suppose.

at the end of the day everyone has to decide for themselves if they want to continue contributing to microstock agencies at the current rates of pay.  i know it was better before but there doesn't seem to be a convenient way to go back to that time.  most of us on the forum in 2024 are here because we are still contributing despite the lower pay.  a few folks here and other places have recently recognized that SS has been earning more, much more than when this thread started.  in my option it is becoming relevant again, by today's standards, even if it will never earn what it did in 2016 ever again.