no fault of yours but passing the initial test on SS (only requiring one photo out of ten to pass) is actually hurting folks.  The majority of your images are too dark and dull in color and the isolated ones are poorly isolated on white.  In the past you would've failed the test (I failed three times) and better yourself before being accepted.

 --- I will give one tip (learn to light better).  Go on the web and study your lighting. 

Here is sample of a good images that are similar to your image topics-

https://www.shutterstock.com/pic-372151882/stock-photo-homemade-cheesy-pull-apart-bread-with-garlic-and-parsley.html?src=xGVAzs1uv6POLzCloQ05pg-1-6

giveme5 is correct in the opening remark. 1/10 gets you to be a contributor of ss.
consider this, in the days when ss was something to be proud of, you need 7/10 approved
before being a contributor. you fail, and you wait a month before re-applying.

based on this slack in admission criterion, it means that you have to try 7 times harder than us
to produce good images for ss.
although these days, even 100% excellent images are not being downloaded much
because they are not being seen...

unless you are an expert at title - spamming.

agree with those colleagues who suggest stocksy, offset,etc..

nice pictures are not micro stock pictures. the problem with travel shots is that there are millions now.
at the beginning of ss career, my travel shots sold a bit, even found them on wiki travel logs, country website, travel agency,etc..
but as soon as someone in that area sees them as top sellers, they go and take their own portfolio of those tourist areas and naturally,
if you are living in say, baffin island, or galapogas, or even jasper,etc..
you can go back there at the right time , all four seasons, and make the best tourist shots for micro.

tourists do not have this luxury, ...
so of course, our images soon become less often sellers.
unless you have unique hard to get images, like that gent from istock many years ago who specializes in antartica arctic shots.

so I didn't make tens of thousands today? booo

lol, i think this is the first thread on ss here 
where contributors are actually rejoicing ...

if we keep this up ... ss might make it a habit to f*ckup, and put the total earnings
more often...

just to see us all smiling !!!

huh what??? you mean i didn't strike it rich this morning???
i ran out and got myself a new set of wheels...
paid the full amount of my ss earning as downpayment...
all 11 grand of it.

what am i going to do???

The agencies have become so greedy and gutter bent on subs that I, like many, have given up the chase.

Someone posted one key truth about the content of micros and that is the quality of the content will be, more or less, sustained by people in third world countries where $800 a month is a nice living.  Much of their work is very well done, both images and illustrations.

well said... both insightful truths!!!
i also remember at the beginning of my microstock here on leaf's msg, reading someone who said he left his country to settle in a 3rd world where the microstock earnings goes a longer way.
esp for us old crows (not the other one with the same monicker here), we can go that route too,
and make our earnings go a longer way with 35 bucks a month. but i will be crazy and old
if i say i will support greedy ss to let them rule my life with 35bucks as a wooo yayyy i got payout every month from ss, sooooo cool. !!!
no, won't be an ss coolie !!!

i got my equipment all paid up by micro, so like you mantis, next year will be a new project.
stay local doing my own thing, while getting in touch with all those who are using my micro work
..by finding their blog directly and make a deal with them.
they will pay less for my work without the middle man, and they won't have to rummage through
hundred pages of spammy sh*t .
this way, we both get the best of our relationship.

i doubt if ss will really improve contributors, or clients relations. that's way too old school for them.
the only thing to happen is Oringer cut out and go private again, but that too won't happen.
the taste of green is too much like opium to the masses... you don't go back ...

Quote from: Josephine on November 27, 2016, 08:16

How many years does it take for a microstocker to run into a burn-out syndrom?
 
And how to overcome it? To take a break? For how long?

How to overcome a creativity block?

Any experience?

If I was still making money and seeing growth from my efforts I may not have burnt out. I quit about three years ago after five years of submitting. When I first started, I got really motivated when I saw revenue increasing consistently when I added new images. It was awesome for a few years until the plateau hit and then the drop. The hamster wheel. I still experiment with stuff like mobile to see if there's anything new that makes it worth my time but haven't found it yet. I spend my time producing stuff outside of micro where I still find profits and growth. I also license my own stuff through my site.

Like Mantis said, things are shifting. Up until a few years ago equipment and quality requirements were so high it prevented a lot of people from entering micro. Now the requirements are so low that anyone with a cellphone can join micro which opened up the competition floodgates to just about anyone anywhere in the world. And micros will continue squeezing people until they find that fine line where taking away too much negatively affects their financials. Hasn't happened yet and there's no bottom in sight.

Wish it wasn't this way because in the beginning I was so excited. I actually thought I could live off of this with just a few thousand images. Now I'd need tens of thousands and it's not viable.

as a photographer from view camera media to 120 to 35mm to digital to mirrorless (no, will never go to mob)...we all go through that more than one phase of becoming old school .
i don't think of ever being burnt out. i just move on and off photography... going into other things to keep me advancing and never getting sick and tired of photography.

i remember Sting from his post Police days saying the same thing..
you play or do for yourself first, and you will never give it up. photography is that to me, like music is to Sting.

microstock is not a livelihood to me; it never was. i merely started microstock about 12 years ago only because it seemed like a good idea at that time when istock was kicking @$$ ... keeping ss on their toes.

like paulie and many of my peers who have more or less given up or died..

i just do microstock whenever i run out of football, beer , etc..
and come in here to leaf's MSG to whine and grunt

... because it's there !!! (to coin some mountain climber when asked why do you climb mountains???)

Its an interesting parallel in the UK some farmers have done very well by adopting a more vertical model with "farmers markets" or making their own end products. I'm sure for the more talented photographers this is more lucrative but don't think I'm dedicated/good enough. Also if you can create a restricted supply you can retain prices e.g Champagne, Melton Mowbary Pork pies etc.

i don't think anyone is saying they are more talented, but asking for things to get back to norm
like what ss became #1 to most of us who chose to submit to the 7/10 entry criterion...
and to see there is no switch flipping once you hit that monthly average...
or see amazing garbage like title spamming getting approved while your proper standard stuff
is rejected for some strange reason like atilla used to do,etc..

we are not looking for some great miracle...
although the return of the $80, $28, $102 single earning ... would be wonderful...!!!

we're just looking to see things getting back to when Oringer was the sole proprietor with no
main shareholders' @ss to lick...

but perharps the last financial report meeting had some heads rolling when questions were being
asked...

or adobe did the trick to get ss to sit up...

whatever the reason,  ( i am sure the vultures have already all short sold and taken profit
to go elsewhere to suck blook)...
so let's hope we see a good 2017 start to get back to ss ...

Quote from: etudiante_rapide on November 24, 2016, 13:37

rts
and they get paid less and get excited with lower sales more often.

ss is in no exertion to cater to top earners anymore; that's a mission for adobe (my guess this).

SS - and the others - have never been there to cater for top earners, they're there to cater to buyers. Putting rubbish up front isn't going to do anybody any good. We got to be top earners by producing stuff people like and want and that stuff is going to keep on performing on its own strengths. But if newbies produce better stuff then we're going to take a hit. IF the flood of new images simply drowns out the best then SS will have a problem keeping its buyers happy. That's just business.

good point, but 80.4% to the right of the page... says spammers are drowning the best .
ss never left the 90% during the heydays when istock was a challenger.

A couple of people here can not see any difference and thats explainable because its always been the same. Ports containing lots of travel, landscapes and sort of general content will not ever notice too much difference.

A change of algorithm will most certainly hit specialized portfolio ten times more. Thats where you find most of the high commercial content and probably most of the best sellers.

I do agree with that large Tech-firm Mullenengines or whatever they were called who sorted the Adobe before they became tangled up with FT. They stipulated that its always a very bad sign indeed when tweaking any search to the point where top sellers fall outside first 4-5 pages and since there is no undo or reverse button chances are they could be gone forever in a downslope.

re:redded...
it all depend on the objective of the agency.
if you are told by the shareholders to make quantity over quality, pay less,...
you would be arm-twisted to please 1 million newbies and/or oldies cheerleaders of 35 bucks a month earners
at the displeasure of 35 top earners selling a million .
like telemarketing, there is a lots more excited newbies waiting in line to replace the old experts
and they get paid less and get excited with lower sales more often.

ss is in no exertion to cater to top earners anymore; that's a mission for adobe (my guess this).

Quote from: Xtraone on November 23, 2016, 13:44

Today Shutterstock has deleted many of the images with spam titles and banned the contributors. Obviously the whole topic is now in their focus of action.  I bet that the remaining contributors who do image title spam are now in a hurry to change their titles before they get banned.

What's the source of information? Maybe search change has something to do against spammers, if they changed it indeed.

wa didn't think i'd agree with dumc
but you are correct. i too thought it was a change in search , in my comment to that topic thread here, but now i still see my daily earners getting dls,
so it's may not be a change in search but more the elimination of spammers
giving more exposure to proper keyworded image.
still it's only guessing.

but oringer saying anything is a good sign, as for months, years, he took a deaf ear blind eye to all the istock-y problems ss suddenly developed.

i am sure yuri and sjolocke,etc had many sales from the same buyer, many times.
it does not mean someone is out to steal your work. maybe so, but i would not worry too much
as this is microstock. lots of ppl see microstock as a cheap way to get images,
and for now, conisder yourself lucky you found someone who likes your style.

if you assume it is a thief, and if it is an admirer, you kill yourself but stopping to upload more work.

i see it this way,... if you can do sellable stuff, it can't be difficult for you to make more.
the thief can only steal what you create, and nothing more.

what if otoh, it is in fact as pixelbytes say, someone who likes your style.
they see you as a one trick pony, and stop checking in to see if you have more to buy.
it's your call,  .. i would just like it so long as i see my earnings keep going up.

Quote from: cathyslife on November 06, 2016, 05:50

Seems like the agencies are moving towards turning microstock all back into high dollar images, with high returns for them (macrostock). Good for them and the elite contributors that are in the club, but the fact remains the market for microstock is still there. Someone will still need to supply that market. And 2 cents per download for the contributor isnt going to cut it.

One big problem for us rank and file microstock contributors is that when the money was good, a lot of us invested in expensive equipment and models to make high value images. These are images that can easily compete with high end collections, and should be included in them.  But for some reason, if your pictures,  even HCV ones,  have been in micro, they are treated as tainted and inferior by SS when they choose Premier Select, or allow contributors to Offset.

Adobe, so far, treats images as equal and doesn't turn up their nose just because they are microstock.  In very early days micro may have been inferior quality, but for long time much micro can rival Macro and other top tier collections. 

If you don't want cheap micro images competing with your premier expensive images, don't hide them in the back of searches.  Put the top quality micro images in the higher end collections.

excellent point!!!  the insinuation that micro contributors are inferior was obvious when ss indicated "ss contributors need not apply for offset".
the irony was it was they (microstock agencies) who set the standard,
and in the days when 7/10 entry criterion, the bar was lifted way above all across the stock photo tiers..
your point to repeat...  in red