So Shutterstock help desk thought it was legit. Shutterstock send me a mail that i had been kicked off the platform for every reason there ever was, without being precise. Probably a standard mail. I am not aware of having done anything against SS' tos. There were these strange sales that I reported while they happened. I had not contributed new material since the cut. Still my old portfolio made me some nice money. But the loss is very bearable.  I always worked with niches in stock photo, and it seems that some customers followed me to other platforms. I never sold images on P5, but that has changed now. My sales on AS and DT also went remarkably up. So maybe I should have quit SS right away when they made the cut back in 2020.

Exciting, but for whom? The contributors? Or the shareholders?

Trying to log in to SS this morning it tells me that my accout was disabled and i should contact shitterstock support. Which is no possible as I can't log in. I will not bother about that lost account but about the 52$ earned in April.

Quote from: SVH on April 05, 2022, 19:29
I think Uncle Pete is right in the end.

The agencies have enough for each subject. They don't need us anymore. They even don't want our photos anymore. The will reject everything and sit to see the cash coming in and pay you 10 cents or 33 cents or whatever minimum is appropriate. If they get any because a lot is free this days.
From a business perspective completely understable though (for the intermediate term that is).

At least P5 is straight about the reason, and do not use other non relevant rejection reasons in taht situation like I suspect some other agencies to do.

Got an answer from Shutterstock. The sales are legit and may have been caused by a discount offer at the end of May. So I am just happy to have jumped two levels up within one day.

There is no difference, Shutterstock pays when the calculations are ready. I would not recomment to change payment methods at this time of the month, things could mess up. And we know what shutterstock support is like?

This night I had 51 video sales, all of 1 dollar, all purchased in either Norway, Poland, Phillipines or Algier. It still goes on, with 18 sales 1$ each today, but now from Indonesia, Argentina, Andorra and unspecified. There is no common tendency in the subjects of the video sales, just random purchases. I never have that amount of sales in a weekend. It is my thought that something suspicious is going on.  It is not that i mind the money or the level change... Has anyone else experienced this recently? I have this feeling that Shutter will cancel these sales soon due to fradulent activites.

Got a small portfolio there. uploading to twenty20 they do not read metadata, so it is manual typing, only allow 10 keywords per image. Even with that small portrfolio i have made at least one sale per month, and up to 10 sales per month. No matter the amout of sales I always get 1 dollar. One dollar for one image is fine with me, but one dollar for 10 images is just the same as shitterstuck. I do not uploa more to that site, but keep observing.

Quote from: thirdbornentertainment on March 10, 2022, 02:59
Good to hear. I look forward to the increased sales. Matter of fact, my portfolio at istock and shutterstock have done 10x better since they started paying us pennies.

Serious question, what do you think the end result will be with regards to quality of footage?

I suspect many will submit garbage footage with little to no effort to help offset the lower pay.

Strange enough Shitterstock have set technical demands that only can be obtained with very expensive cameras, like they have in Hollywood or NASA. "Hi NASA can I borrow your new super camera for a 0.25$ job in microstock?"

Covid is not over. It has been decided that Covid is over.
The current Omikron is "more harmless" but very infective, still many dies.
Politicians are used to negotiate and make agreements. They will find that they can't negotiate or make agreements with a virus.
Covid will be back with a not so harmless version.

For med DT came back with several sales right at the start of March. Wonder if sales reports were stuck for some time?

Since mid January and until now I had only 1 sale on DT. My normal at DT is 10-20 sales in a month. My sales activity on other agencies are normal for the season.

Have you< noticed unusual low sales on DT recently?
Or is it only the everpresent fluctuations of microstock)

Always consider: Who would want to use this or that photo for what. You have quie some similar images: Usually Adobe is fast on the similar content-trigger, but you should chose the best of these, and leave the others alone.

You have very general keywords. The same keywords apply to a zillion other images on Adobe, and as your preferred topics are well-present on the agencies, and the demand not ovewhelming, you need to be better then the best. Do your research on whatever you photograph and find the names or relavant terms for the image. Your research will each you what is important about this or that topic, then return to the subject and make sure that the important tithings are clerly visible. It is a lot of work, but if you want to get anywhere on an agency like Adobe, that is the price it takes.

Quote from: Unamas on February 07, 2022, 01:32
It's still tempting. They have 100+ sales!

But is it worth the possible trouble?
Carefully read the Agencies Terms of Service like a lawyer, and find who's head will be on the block if things go wrong. If there are no precise terms on that question, assume it will be your head in the pillory.

Well,  I had 5 EL's at $13,47 each while at level 1.  Why couldn't they have purchased them in December!

Quote from: HappyBunny on December 06, 2021, 08:39
Adobe recently rejects images that were accepted by all agencies including SS and Alamy. What frustrates me is that they simply use technical issues as rejection reason. There weren't any technical issues. Can't they just say that they don't want a photo like that because they already have thousands of them. Why can't they just be honest?

The technical error thing is likely to be "We don't want that image". I've had aome of them too.. Then I made some extreme closeup pics of metallic Arsenic, took the lens to the limit and likelye more than that. If they were picky about actual technical errors, they would have found it in that image, nevertheless it got accepted.

Mos other agencies take everything if the exposure is OK, even if the image's potential is close to zero. Adobe pays more than most agencies, so we shopuld really expect the curation to be more severe than the cheeper agencies.

Some agencies have the option to issue commercial licences on editorial images. Let them hanlde it. The customers that try to arganize something with the photographer directly, are ost likely looking for a scapegoat to take the trouble if thy come.

Quote from: Pauws99 on November 12, 2016, 10:38
I don't think its a totally a machine it takes humans to mess it up so badly and inconsistently...though I'm sure they are screening in some way.

A machine could indeed register birds in the sky as dust, it has happened for me.

It looks as if there is electrical light in that cave. If you paid an entranvce to get there, there may be legal problems with selling the photos there. P5 does not care about that, they blame it on you.

There are many backgrounds offered for sale, and the marked interest is modest. It will never be a big deal.

You should also learn to select. Having 3 good photos on a subject is better than hiding 3 good photos in a group of 50 less god images.

Further, P5 is a footage site. They may sell a photo now and then, but footage is their thing.

Quote from: cascoly on October 09, 2021, 22:22

the big difference here is between government & business censorship.  US govt is prohibited from censorship in almost all cases by the 1st amendment.  businesses are not. but the actual question is whether FB should be censoring at all. Extreme,  ongoing false, malicious and speech that incites violence is sound reason for censorship.  merely expressing false, hateful or unpopular views is not (anti-vaxxers, creationists, etc) but 'ordinary' businesses may censor speech they disagree with.   but FB is not an ordinary business - it's dominance makes it a common carrier like telephone services, mail delivery, etc and limits what it can do. and they should not be censoring except in extreme cases presenting a 'clear & present danger'

in addition, hate speech laws make expression a thought crime, which threatens the free exchange of ideas & eventually  democracy itself.   look at Texas' anti abortion law which makes it illegal to talk to someone about abortion, or even drive them to a provider!

Look at what happene to 8chan. It was not ther most beautiful place on the net, but when the El Paso killer made his announcement on 8chan, 8chan was drawn into the legal machinery. Seems like the authorities expect some sort of real time censorship from the sites and networks. That is difficult to maintain, that is why we deal with bots that lock accounts on and off because of some auto-detected words that may relate to something illegal.

Censorship does excist, and it is expected to do so.

Christmas happens to be one of my stock topics. I make what I feel for and upload to all agencies on which I'm involved. There seems to be some segmentation on the market there. The images are uploaded with same keywords on the agencies. Shutterstock makes me almost no christmas sales. Adobe quite some sales, but for me Istock is the top seller (measured in $) when it comes to Christmas.

Back in the late 1990's I had my own little stock agency. A lot of work, and many difficult customers. One customer used my photos via remote file access, so that my site carried the load. I gladly surrender those protection and legal issues to a stock agency, so that I can now use my time to make pictures.