It took a while, but I finally made it to the $.38 tier. I remember making about $3 with 10 images in my first month and I was thinking to myself...maybe I can make money doing this.

All I wanted to do was make a bit of side money to buy some tech toys and fund my hobbies. I didn't think I'd be in the position I'm in today. I think I hit every goal I wanted to hit in SS, though I still have a few more goals for FT.

It's been a nice ride and I'm thankful for all the motivation I got on this forum.

Quote from: hartlet12 on May 06, 2016, 01:15

Quote

Top 100 on shutter stock. Vast majority of vector and Illustrator Folks.

http://www.microstock.top/index.phtml?p=1

I think this Top 100 is composed of group of vector addicted artists working 24 hours a day and 7 days a week that's why they are so productive

It still doesn't make sense. I mean some of these people have a STR of like 0.5%. That means they have sold 500 of their 100000 icons. That would be $190 at the top .38c rate, which actually they will never reach (you can bet they aren't getting ELs on that stuff).

It can't make sense financially anywhere in the world. You couldn't even keep your computer equipment up to date. It can only be a deliberate strategy to inflate the database size either for marketing reasons or to keep the shareholders happy.

That percentage is deceiving. The ones they sold, they sold at least once. If they sell those 500 icons 10 times, then the number doesn't look so small anymore. They obviously have some kind of motivation to keep going.

I would not say it to colleagues at my work to avoid unnecessary stress but since it is a forum it is different.

I am always wondering how somebody can have a complain about search engine and thinks that it is broken just because his or her images are not anymore on page 1, instead taken by other contributors. Then they check and check every day until the images are on page 1 again and then they decide the engine is fixed.

Do you really believe that you have a special ticket and only your images should be on first page? Everybody that sells images on SS has right to be on page 1 and everybody can fall into page 2 and deeper.

Mirco

It was a glitch. It was experienced by a lot of contributors, not just a couple. Every contributor that upload has the right to be on the first page, but the right is earned when images gets download more than others make their way up there.

Looks like everything is finally back to normal again. Still having a decent day despite the glitch and the holiday.

Tomorrow is going to be great!

What socialist countries?

Google has done more to destroy the free market with their lobbying than any other company in history. They make massive contributions to both sides of the Isle to ensure their monopoly, and they make the senators that are in their pocket canvas eu policy makers when they are threatened in Europe.

The tech market is now full of firms who's target is to be bought up by Google, a competitor, rather than continue to build and compete with them. How is that not a horrific distortion of the market?  That innovators are hoovered up by one giant company rather than striving against each other to produce the best solutions is grotesque.

The tech market is full of firms that want to be bought up by any large company, not just Google. That's the nature of any company that takes funding from investors who wants a 10x return. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Uber, Microsoft, you name it are all companies who have acquired a large amount of companies. Hell, even our good friends at Getty has tried to swallow up the image market with aggressive acquisitions.

While Google hasn't all been innocent, you forget who has been buying up influence behind in the scenes in the EU, the one company that's been pulling the strings and pushing the anti-Google campaign in the shadows...Microsoft.

I'm not exactly calling Google some angelic company, but Getty still doesn't have a legitimate case. Everyone plays by the same rule book, and Getty think they can get their past glory back by suing Google. Little do they know, the market is slowly leaving them behind.

Quote from: Minsc on May 01, 2016, 12:27

Quote from: Dumc on April 30, 2016, 21:31

My 2 images that were on top of the first page among popular and relevant searches are still there.

I did a search on my phone and iPad earlier and everything seems to be normal. On the desktop, the results are different.

On the upside, this will give my images that were on page 2 a chance to get some sales. We'll see how the change affect sales in the upcoming week. Maybe I'll see a drop, maybe I won't. If the ranking engine hasn't change, whatever is popular on page 2 will eventually make its way back to page 1 in time.

I searched through my PC not iPad or phone...

It seems like things are going back to normal again. I did a private search and it returned the correct results. My non-private search still show the other set of results. Both Shelma1 and I saw the different search results, so it probably affect a small number of searches.

As you can see in the screenshots, the odd results showed one extra page (12140), so it must have been a glitch.

Quote from: Minsc on April 30, 2016, 15:07

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on April 30, 2016, 13:51

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/28/getty_on_google/

Have you actually read what you linked too?  The examples of people getting the wrong end of the stick are pretty much verbatim what you have posted.

Yes, I have. And I can't side with Getty on this situation. Every search engine has adopted the same preview feature (Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckgo), but Getty is only going after the biggest player and they're suing to make a product harder to use. This is a slippery slope. After Getty is done with Google, they'll want to do the same to other search engines assuming they win.

I refuse to side with a company that wants to reduce the usability of a product. Not to mention their dishonest public release about why they're suing. They want to make search harder to use, which goes against the philosophy of product design and usability. Google did makes some changes by adding "Visit website" buttons to each image, which drives high quality traffic as opposed to low quality traffic that many websites were getting.

With bigger previews, users are able to clearly see the watermarks of each agency. If people want to buy an expensive image from Getty, they will buy an expensive image from Getty. If they don't, they won't.

You are missing something crucial. Getty is suing Google in the EU where the european commission is accusing Google of abuse of dominant position regarding its internet search and android business. If Google is find guilty, as Microsoft has been in the past, then a bunch of companies will have a good case to suing them back.

I know what it means. Europe can't handle that fact that an American company is handling all their information and the politicians can't handle the fact that they can't hide their misdeeds while Google is around. People don't need to use Google...it's a choice. It's not like Windows where nearly every computer needs it to operate.

Maybe some of those socialist countries should stop sitting around and build their own search engine instead. Russia built Yandax and China built Baidu. What's stopping them?

I just did a search on several terms for which I have very high placement and they haven't changed. Was this on your personal port or in a general search?

General search. Tried it with different browsers and in private browsing mode.

It doesn't seem like it has affected everything yet, but take a look at this search for pets:

http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?autocomplete_id=&language=en&lang=en&search_source=&safesearch=1&version=llv1&searchterm=pets&media_type=images

If the first 3 results are 3 sets of icons, then it has changed. I searched this category often and I clearly remember page 2 results on the first page.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/28/getty_on_google/

Have you actually read what you linked too?  The examples of people getting the wrong end of the stick are pretty much verbatim what you have posted.

Yes, I have. And I can't side with Getty on this situation. Every search engine has adopted the same preview feature (Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckgo), but Getty is only going after the biggest player and they're suing to make a product harder to use. This is a slippery slope. After Getty is done with Google, they'll want to do the same to other search engines assuming they win.

I refuse to side with a company that wants to reduce the usability of a product. Not to mention their dishonest public release about why they're suing. They want to make search harder to use, which goes against the philosophy of product design and usability. Google did makes some changes by adding "Visit website" buttons to each image, which drives high quality traffic as opposed to low quality traffic that many websites were getting.

With bigger previews, users are able to clearly see the watermarks of each agency. If people want to buy an expensive image from Getty, they will buy an expensive image from Getty. If they don't, they won't.

I am sorry to say but you still don't get it. You keep bouncing against a wall......take a few steps back and look and the whole picture on it.

Actually, I know exactly why they're suing. I rather use deduction than listen to corporate babble. So I'll explain it to you one last time.

Google created Google Image Search in 2001. As many companies continue to do after its first iteration, they keep improving it, be it visual design or overall usability. In 2013, they added a new feature...image previews. This image preview allow a user like you and I to view a larger image preview instead of looking at a thumbnail.

When they implemented this feature, web traffic dropped, not just for Getty, but for a lot of website. The reason was because the image preview gave the user what they need to see instead of clicking a blurry thumbnail which takes them to another website. This was done to improve the usability of Google Image Search and it has.

When this happened, Getty was furious. They saw their traffic dropped and some revenue drop. The whined and complained to Google to no avail. Google basically said you can opt out of Image Search, but Getty reluctantly agreed to continued to be crawled.

As Getty's marketshare and revenue continue to erode, they got more bitter and angry. The WANT Google to remove the preview feature so Google users continue to see a tiny thumbnail. Google Refused, so Getty lawyers comes up with different creative ways to shame Google...people stealing images, Google is promoting piracy, blah, blah, blah. So now they attached themselves to a lawsuit, in hopes of getting Google to change their search engine and remove image previews.

So there you have it, the entire reason why Getty is suing. Getty won't opt out of Google Image Search because they will become invisible to the internet, but they want Google to make the usability of the Image Search worse so they may see more traffic to their site. As contributors, we see Stock search engines to change all the time, from gigantic previews, to socialistic image rotation to revenue cuts that erode our revenue, but we're all not suing like Getty...or maybe we should sued them for their Redeemed Credits system.

Quote from: Minsc on April 29, 2016, 00:44

Quote from: everest on April 28, 2016, 23:56

Read the articles again and don't take out speculations of your hat.

 Offering images to download at any available size without the authorization of the source is illegal. The WWW is not a place were anything that goes online is available to grab or facilitate to third parties without the approval of owners of copyright. For that you have Creative Commons but the reason of copyright to exist is because authors or their representatives have the right (as the word clearly hints.....Copy...Right) to decide who can or cannot download a file. Google is clearly violating this right that benefits them, pirates, customers that don't know about copyright BUT it clearly benefits NOT the creators.

And those images are all watermarked. Getty provide watermarked images in small and large sizes, Google merely indexes them. If someone downloads an image with a watermark on it and use it on their website, it's not the fault of Google.

It IS the fault of google because they are indexing everything and making it available to everyone to download. They are a HUGE company. Certainly they should be able to put some kind of watermark over all images before they show in their index.

Here is a nice summary of the original compliant by Getty:

http://www.thesempost.com/getty-images-blames-google-not-competitors/

Getty is blaming Google for the loss of sales, instead of its own incompetence. In the google images search, you can clearly see that the high res images are watermarked. They're complaining that Google shouldn't show the high res watermarked images because people already saw a preview and that discourages traffic to Getty, therefore reduce potential sales to that user.

If the images are watermarked, then the image is protected. If the image is NOT watermarked, Getty's incompetent web team is allowing Google to crawl protected content, so the blame rest with them. Either way, you can't blame Google, because they are a search engine.

From what I gathered, Getty wants certain things from Google and they're not getting it. They want the image search to show only tiny thumbnails (preferably around 200x200), so that it's tiny and push the user to visit Getty instead of seeing the high res watermarked image on Google. Second, they WANT google to index their images because it helps generate traffic to their website. If they opt out of Google Image Search, they can lose as much as 50% in traffic to their website. And they're complaining that their search rankings are not high enough because other websites outrank them sometimes.

What Getty wants is completely unreasonable. They're a bunch of whiners and they rather blame a search engine instead their incompetence for losing so much market share in such a short time.

Quote from: Minsc on April 27, 2016, 18:14

Hit BME today with a few days to spare.

How many Images do you have? and How long you been submitting?

Just a little over 1500. 14 months.