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Messages - kuriouskat
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501
« on: December 15, 2016, 13:30 »
I am on Target to be about 60% down on last December.
Whatever I do, nothing seams to bring up my sales. I have noticed 2 distinct drops this year, starting end June/early July with another around the 22 November. I can only surmise that I am a victim of search changes that haven't gone my way but, if it continues, I will have to make some significant changes in 2017, as I can't continue with the level of work involved for the minimal returns.
502
« on: December 14, 2016, 09:02 »
this him, not who you linked to I think
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Piotr+Marcinski
ETA, I see the mistake, OP was just linking to other people who have also had stolen work given away on the third party site. His portfolio is the one here. I think it could have been reinstated as I was having trouble accessing earlier and now it is back. If so congrats to the OP
Images are visible but say they 'no longer exist' when you click on them. I hope this gets satisfactorily resolved promptly, as it's rotten to be in this position if you are actually innocent of the accusation, and the loss of income is potentially significant. It's understandable that Shutterstock have to act decisively if there is a possibility that content is stolen, but I wish they would make it a little easier to be able to quickly and efficiently communicate and resolve such matters.
503
« on: December 13, 2016, 11:23 »
Herrible month. It's 40% lower than two months ago!!!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
You need to compared apples to apples thus compare last year December to this year December.
Apples to apples: First 12 days of Dec 2016 is down 47% on the same period 2015 and 58% down on 2014. Fortunately a couple of other sites are picking up the slack to a degree, but it's going to be a lean Christmas at this rate. Since the summer, and after what appears to be three arbitrary search changes that haven't been in my favor, the Shutterstock bubble appears to have finally burst.
504
« on: December 08, 2016, 06:40 »
Rubbish never picked up after July 
+1
505
« on: December 07, 2016, 06:16 »
sharpshot! I am not so sure anymore most of the complainers seem to be very established contributors that like myself have been with them almost from the very start. Contributors with large portfolios of 10000 files and more.
An increase of members and files followed by a soft drop of earnings would make sense but most of these people are complaining about sudden 50% drops and complete stand-stills for hours and long cut off periods.
Many of these people are long time members they know the ropes from experience and can hardly be imagining this.
Myself well I am absolutely sure that somewhere along the line bot SS and Adobe are trying to sort of keep all happy and spreading it out a bit a sort of " fair" for all if you know what I mean and in doing that many members will be " robbed" of potential earnings.
Mght be wrong of course its all a guessing game but its all turning into a very unstable and unsecure agency. 
I did not believe this before. Just sudden drop in downloads over night. BUT... it happend to me now to. Only difference is that I understand that SS should mix things up now and then to give buyers a good experience en not show the same images over and over again. I'm also a buyer. No need for me to go complaining here and blame the industrie. Business is business. And yes. I depend on this income very much so it's not that I don't care. I need this income to pay my bills.
Before 21st of November I had 200-250 downloads on weekdays. But then suddenly I don't get over 155 on weekdays. I have 1600 files. So I have a drop of +100 downloads a day. Weird thing is that I still manage to get $100+ days on SS but I think that is just luck until now. New files start selling like they used to so I need about 200 new files to catch up again. So yes... it's true. A drop over night. Another contributor here I talk to in private has the same experience. He has less files than me and even more downloads and also dropped 100+ since 21st. But like me it motivated him to make more images and just deal with it. And hopefully sales will clime back up again even without new files.
Indeed! I used to have around 500-700 dls per day ELs single-sales almost every day! could easily survive on my SS income and I live in an expensive country. Its still a good earner but my God! its dropped badly.
Are you talking about the same period? Last November 21st? I wonder if it is just me and another person I know. We both have it since the 21st.
Yes almost exactly the same period and thats also the period when something did change or occur according to many a voice.
Same pattern here. I saw an overnight drop at the end of June and another overnight drop from 21st November. At first I attributed it to the Thanksgiving holiday but it hasn't picked back up yet, so I'm guessing it's a something else.
506
« on: December 07, 2016, 05:32 »
I took an overnight drop of 30% around the end of June. Now it's recently happened again, and my weekly earnings are down almost 60% from earlier in the year.
I am still uploading in the hope that the next search change will bring me back up again, but I honestly think I'm clutching at straws.
Like many, Shutterstock was my highest earner and my priority site for uploads. So sad to see what it has become in such a short space of time.
507
« on: November 14, 2016, 06:57 »
Hi there,
The option for editorial submissions should always be there under the image under your images when you are in "iStock Submission" mode. If you ever experience that it disappears, please take a screenshot and email it to me.
Thanks,
Kasper.
Thanks Kaspar. I'll check when I have some more editorials to upload, and get back to you if it's still not visible.
508
« on: November 13, 2016, 07:58 »
Unless I miss this functionality in qHero, it would be also nice to have a possibility to prepare editorial images for submission in batch mode. For instance, it could be very well a case where I have several photos with the same subject, location, date etc. So it would be nice to be able to CTRL-select several images and enter the editorial metadata just once instead of repetitive times.
Hi, this is not a bad idea and I can reveal to you that once the unification project of iStock and Getty is done, we will have a different setup for editorials much similar to our current for images. I hope you will stay tuned until the changes goes in effect.
Best, Kasper.
Sometimes I see and option to select Editorial, and sometimes it's nowhere to be seen. Why does it keep coming and going, as it works fine when it's available?
509
« on: October 17, 2016, 03:50 »
.
510
« on: October 16, 2016, 12:23 »
Shutterstock should send another email warning that those who don't amend their descriptions/keywords by a given date, will have their accounts suspended, and then actually follow it through.
Then it should lock the description field so that it can't be altered after upload.
This can't be a difficult fix, and yet the problem has persisted for months.
512
« on: October 16, 2016, 09:02 »
3- As said by another person here, shutterstock not taking any action is because its working good for them
4- They do not care
But they are sending mixed messages big time. On the one hand they pretend to care, and send a blanket email to warn contributors not to spam, and to keep their titles/keywords within their published parameters. On the other hand, they allow some to spam with repeated keywords, (not even sure how you can do that, as whenever I have a duplicated keyword the system automatically removes it), and reward them for doing so by promoting them in the top spots of a Best Match search. All I would ask is for a set of rules that is consistent. Either keep the 'no spamming' rule and enforce it, or scrap the rule so that we can all play the spamming game without fear of consequence. The current state of affairs rewards the rule-breakers and penalises those who conform, and creates a double standard that's causing a lot of bad feeling.
513
« on: October 16, 2016, 03:37 »
I haven't uploaded to Istock in quite a while, as I can never justify the time spent on preparation of the submissions.
Thanks for this tool - it works well for me, and it certainly saves time.
514
« on: October 15, 2016, 13:00 »
Even if we open hundreds of threads like this/day, SS won't give a da*n, so a is out of question.
That's the sad fact, isn't it? It's true that many will take advantage of an unclosed loophole, even if it's against the rules. What I'm finding hard in all this is that Shutterstock's lack of action smacks of condoning this behaviour. It even has me wondering whether the 'spam email' was sent to almost everyone on purpose - either as a vain attempt to get us to self-police or even as a message to educate? A long as they are making money, why not? Ethical companies have higher running costs, right? Perhaps the 'ethical business practices' folder got shuffled to the bottom in the last search change.
515
« on: October 15, 2016, 09:32 »
All the spammers are in the top 'best match' positions, and it's clearly working for them - just open a 'best match' search next to a 'popular' search and many of the same images appear.
If I write autumn, autumn, autumn, autumn, autumn, ad nauseam, as my title, that will always be a better match for an 'autumn' search than if the word is just used once.
It's killing sales and damaging the site's credibility. I thought after the spam email debacle, that something might actually be done but, if anything, it's just served to educate the cheats and made matters far worse.
I guess we have to:
a. Trust Shutterstock to do something about it
b. Play the same game
c. Keep moaning about it, because misery loves company
d. Concentrate efforts on the sites that can actually give Shutterstock a run for their money
I'm currently a little in the c camp but mainly in d
516
« on: October 12, 2016, 02:38 »
What . is this discussion all about? If somebody does not like peanuts any longer, he or she should just stop eating them. Thats all. Why do spend all this time to explain the hundred reasons for???
What is Shutterstock all about? God Father for microstockers?
It's more along the lines of "I like peanuts, but someone suddenly changed the taste and now they taste awful".
517
« on: October 12, 2016, 02:13 »
Images I uploaded to SSTK in the last 6 months represent 6% of my portfolio but only 3% of the sales for the period. In previous years, that balance was reversed.
We can all speculate on market conditions and Shutterstock's reasoning for doing what they do but, bottom line, it's no longer viable for me to sit under the table and wait for them to drop crumbs my way.
518
« on: October 10, 2016, 14:43 »
Q1 + Q2 2015
Earnings: 198.000.000 $
Download: 69.300.000 $
Items (June 2015): 57.200.000 $
Q1 + Q2 2016
Earnings: 240.000.000 $ (+21%)
Download: 84.200.000 $ (+21%)
Items (June 2015): 92.000.000 $ (+61%)
Actually, if it was my company, I wouldn't be that happy with only a 21% sales increase from a 61% asset increase over the period. Translate those figures to contributors, and it won't be long before many of them chose to bail out.
100% of those 61% increased assets were free for SS ... I doubt they're too concerned with contributors bailing out ... contributors are a "dime a dozen"
Nothing is free - cheap maybe - but not free. They have to pay to moderate and host those images, and I'm guessing for every one they approve, they have to pay for another that doesn't make the grade. The infrastructure that's sagging under the weight of 100 million images doesn't come free either. Average contributors are a dime a dozen, and they are the ones that will stay. Good ones - not so much.
519
« on: October 10, 2016, 06:49 »
Its buyers that drive this not contributors leaving...If I were shutterstock I would be concerned if they were no longer easily finding the content to meet their needs. Any buyers out there with thoughts on this?
I think that's the whole point though. Contributors will only provide the content if makes economical sense. When it makes more sense to concentrate elsewhere then Shutterstock won't easily find the content to meet their needs and buyers will look elsewhere.
Judging by the figures posted earlier, this is already happening - 61% increase to service a 21% earnings increase. That's a huge oversupply to meet buyer demand.
Yes it seems adobe are doing better but essentially they are following the same model I haven't checked but I suspect their image growth numbers are similar. I think the microstock model may be returning to what it was meant to be....somewhere to sell "average" quality images for low prices. When it was turned into a business by volume producers the writing was on the wall.
Fotolia are advertising 35 million+ images. I was doing very well on Shutterstock when they only had 35 million images. In the long term, Fotolia/Adobe may well go the same way as Shutterstock but, in the meantime, I'll take the level of competition and sales that come with a smaller library while it lasts. Perhaps by the time Fotolia reaches 100 million images, Shutterstock will have smartened up their act in an effort to attract us back?
520
« on: October 10, 2016, 06:10 »
Its buyers that drive this not contributors leaving...If I were shutterstock I would be concerned if they were no longer easily finding the content to meet their needs. Any buyers out there with thoughts on this?
I think that's the whole point though. Contributors will only provide the content if makes economical sense. When it makes more sense to concentrate elsewhere then Shutterstock won't easily find the content to meet their needs and buyers will look elsewhere. Judging by the figures posted earlier, this is already happening - 61% increase to service a 21% earnings increase. That's a huge oversupply to meet buyer demand.
521
« on: October 10, 2016, 06:03 »
Actually, if it was my company, I wouldn't be that happy with only a 21% sales increase from a 61% asset increase over the period. Translate those figures to contributors, and it won't be long before many of them chose to bail out.
Yes ... and often new items are low low quality images and vectors ...
That does raise the question of where these contributors who 'bail out' would go. Are there other microstock agencies which will be more rewarding for those who might abandon SS?
There are certainly other sites that are showing significant growth, and are closing in on Shutterstock. It is only a matter of time before the balance of power changes at the top, unless the current pattern is broken. Shutterstock used to represent 70%+ of my monthly sales - it is now down to less than 50%. My second site used to represent 10% of my monthly sales - it is now up to 30%. That change has been gradual over that last 12-18 months, but if it continues at the same rate, then concentrating efforts on site number 2 makes better business sense than continuing to throw good work at Shutterstock for little or no return. If I concentrate on uploading to site number 2, and other disillusioned contributors do the same, then the decline at Shutterstock will be faster and the increase at their competitors will be quicker. Shutterstock will continue to ingest almost everything submitted, which will further reduce in quality and variety, and the competitors will grow a library or well curated, quality images. It will very effectively accelerate the shift. Like I said, 'slippery slope'.
522
« on: October 10, 2016, 05:34 »
Actually, if it was my company, I wouldn't be that happy with only a 21% sales increase from a 61% asset increase over the period. Translate those figures to contributors, and it won't be long before many of them chose to bail out.
Yes ... and often new items are low low quality images and vectors ...
It's not a sustainable business model as it currently stands. The 'biggest' library is no longer the best, and buyers, (and contributors), are shifting focus to other smaller, but well curated libraries. Shutterstock need to put the breaks on how much they approve and refocus on quality. If they continue as they are, by next year they will need to double the library to see 20% profit, then triple it. Contributors won't continue to upload anything of quality if they are not seeing a return, so they will end up only getting submissions of sub par images. It's not yet 'free fall' but it's a slippery slope.
523
« on: October 10, 2016, 05:14 »
Q1 + Q2 2015
Earnings: 198.000.000 $
Download: 69.300.000 $
Items (June 2015): 57.200.000 $
Q1 + Q2 2016
Earnings: 240.000.000 $ (+21%)
Download: 84.200.000 $ (+21%)
Items (June 2015): 92.000.000 $ (+61%)
Actually, if it was my company, I wouldn't be that happy with only a 21% sales increase from a 61% asset increase over the period. Translate those figures to contributors, and it won't be long before many of them chose to bail out.
524
« on: October 05, 2016, 18:03 »
Until a year or two back, Shutterstock ingested only the best and grew to be a well oiled machine that was admired and respected by both buyers and contributors alike.
The last year or so has seen it overfeed on high calorie and low quality fast food, and it has become a bloated monster that needs to detox and go on a strict diet.
The 'Supersize Me' mentality has damaged both its' health and credibility.
525
« on: October 04, 2016, 11:18 »
It would help if you gave an example - maybe you missed something?
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