I cannot find the number of downloads anywhere.

Last time I saw I was Gold and not far from the next level but since then, with the changes to Adobe site, either some information has disappeared from the sites or I forgot where to look and can't find it.

Does anyone knows where to look for the total downloads? Thanks!

Quote from: Mir on August 09, 2019, 14:51

Quote from: MicroVet on August 09, 2019, 14:39
Where can I check my current level? I think I was about to turn Emerald but never checked it again since migrating to Adobe site. Now I don't know where to see it. Just logged to the Fotolia site but couldn't find any information.

Contributor Account, Your rank is at the bottom.

Thanks. Is there a way to know how many downloads we still have to have to reach next level or the rank system died and we got frozen where we were? I have an idea this was discussed in the past but cannot remember.

Where can I check my current level? I think I was about to turn Emerald but never checked it again since migrating to Adobe site. Now I don't know where to see it. Just logged to the Fotolia site but couldn't find any information.

This is the off-topic section and anything should be discussed here because life isn't just photography.

I simply cannot understand why people ask for the closure of this discussion when they can simply ignore it! Those willing to participate should be able to do it.

As far as I'm concerned I'm not saying this because I support Trump or Clinton. As a non-american Trump and H. Clinton are just another two megalomaniac, genocidal American politicians just like any of the previous presidents and candidates.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on July 23, 2019, 05:15

Quote from: ShadySue on July 22, 2019, 01:07
By coming out with this on Insta, I think Nadav Kander has backed himself into a difficult corner.

It looks like the bulk of the blame is on the Big Issue, by cropping in and mitigating the window shadow. (I don't have enough English Law expertise to know whether the author has any legal responsibility - he certainly wan't trying to pass off the work as his own.)

However, as the Big Issue is a charity enterprise, and one close to David Lynch's heart, he can hardly go suing them (Obviously, he could legally, but it wouldn't do his personal reputation any good). But he wouldn't want to be seen to back down, and now he has discovered Rolling Stone did nearly the same but without removing the shadow, and that's a commercial publication.

Good summary, let me add, the person who licenses the image is responsible for the use. Someone can license an Editorial Only image and use it commercially, the liability is on them, not the artist, not the agency. The limitations have been stated, the "buyer" has decided the use.

I'm almost certain that it won't happen, but I wonder if the photographer that had the image on alamy doesn't have a case against Nadav Kander for defamation, moral abuse, threats and extortion since Nadav demanded that he made a donation to an organization.

Plus, I wonder if the alamy contributor didn't suffer abuse from Kander groupies, which in this day and age of Social Media (the sewer of the world) is very likely.

If this happened in the US, which is an extremely litigant country, Nadav Kander could eventually be facing an indemnification to the alamy photographer.

Well, I had an image rejected on iStock for being sexist even after asking for a higher tier evaluation.

The image only showed a man shouting at a crying woman to portray domestic violence. Like that never happens... What I'm sure is that the review team is imposing an ideological agenda to the content.

As for the dragonflies I also believe it was the keywords, and the "A" not so "I" checking the image cannot differentiate dragonflies from people.

It seems people here are talking about this issue without seeing the images in questions. So bellow you have the original picture on alamy, the Big Issue cover and the post by Nadav Kander.

There are some "if's" in this story but all things considered and not knowing those details the only part in error may be the magazine. Even if the photographer has some responsibility, the magazine will never be completely innocent unless the alamy photographer claimed to be Nadav Kander, which apparently he has not done.

The "if's" are:

- was it allowed to photograph inside the exhibition? If not, the photographer is in fault.

- was it allowed to photograph but it was mentioned anywhere (ticket, entrance...) that the photos taken could not be use in any profitable way? If yes, the photographer is in fault.

- was the image marked as Editorial or was being licensed as Commercial? If it was Editorial I don't see a problem for the photographer unless any of the previous conditions existed. If it was licensing as Commercial then the photographer may have a problem, even if he forgot to mark he Editorial box.

- what was the caption on alamy? Did it provide context to the photo also and attributed credit to Nadav Kander?

Nevertheless it's clear that the image was on display on a wall, not even showing the original photo completely. And that the magazine made an effort to crop out not only the frame, the empty wall and the caption stuck on it, but also to minimize the shadows of a window seen over the picture.

As a personal note I would never have taken a photo like the one seen on alamy. But if I was photographing something like this I would have photographed the whole picture and frame, the wall and caption, plus the floor and if possible someone looking at it, creating a bigger context for the photo in the wall. 

Quote from: charged on July 20, 2019, 02:12
The worst month in at least 10 years.

Me too. The worst month since 2007. I've earned about 10% of I earned in my best June.

I'm getting closer to open a website and put all my 20.000 photos for free download and receive donations from whoever wants to give them.

Quote from: douglas on June 15, 2019, 09:27
It's hard to believe SS can implement this incredibly intelligent cap system when most of the IT 'enhancements' they have released over the last five years have been woefully poor. Equally, confronting conspiracy theorists with logic is the same as trying this approach with religious fundamentalists. However ...

If you believe your sales are capped based on looking at your sales figures you are looking in the wrong place. It might give you an idea about a cap but the proof, if any, is on the supply side. 'My portfolio is turned off' is a testable assertion. Remove the possibility the evil demons at SS are tricking you by showing you one thing and buyers another by using a VPN (Nord or HMA) and browsing anonymously/use the browser incognito window. Choose four or five places in the world for the VPN and search from these every couple of days and check the position of your top sellers in the search results. If they are not found at any given point then perhaps the claim 'my portfolio is turned off' is not complete nonsense. If they drop down a couple of pages halfway through a month then come back to a higher place the following month, and repeat this pattern over a period of time, you could make a case for capping (the cyclical part removes the explanation that they have just been displaced by newer/cheaper/better contributions).

Unless you can explain how a portfolio with many thousands of images which has from isolated on white objects/seasonal images/travel and commercial and editorial content, plus video and illustrations has a sale pattern like the one I've posted I cannot accept that you call me a conspiracy theorist.

How is this mathematically possible if not by a controlled sales system? Isn't this beyond a coincidence?

Quote from: MicroVet on June 15, 2019, 08:41

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri
Week 1:		75			70
Week 2:	70	75	80	61	50
Week 3:	70	75	80	60	50
Week 4:	70				70
Week 5:					70

You claim that the IT enhancements at SS have been poor. That means nothing. I can argue that they may have diverted efforts to this project. Or outsourced the search results and earnings programing. Who knows.

As I said previously, at this time I have absolutely no doubt that the earnings are controlled. I'll exemplify what I said earlier which happened to me recently. Numbers are completely fictitious and used to exemplify what happened.

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri
Week 1:		75			70
Week 2:	70	75	80	61	50
Week 3:	70	75	80	60	50
Week 4:	70				70
Week 5:					70

Are those sales pattern are a product of coincidence? Yeah... right... Not even with anyone selling 5 to 10 images per day that would be normal, much less when we're talking of a larger sales volume.

I've also noticed what others said, and happened to me for many months now. Like having very low sales half the month and all of the sudden buyers discover my portfolio. And this is not just on SS but on DT and 123RF is pretty evident too. Or sales drying up after a large SO or even EL sale.

I believe SS uses different methods to control the exposure/income of the contributors, not just one. And rotates the methods. Honestly, I would do the same in their position and in terms of programing it's not even that hard.

I think some people wouldn't believe in this even if Jon Oringer said it on video. They would probably argue that it was a doppelganger...

Quote from: georgep7 on June 11, 2019, 12:01

Quotewith a lot of OD and SO.

Sorry for the offtopic, but what is OD and SO mean?

"On Demand" and "Single & Other"

Quote from: increasingdifficulty on June 11, 2019, 11:08

Quote from: MicroVet on June 11, 2019, 10:59
And it does not matter if they are single, double, triple or whatever.

Oh, it doesn't? Well, that tells me everything I need to know... (hint, it matters one heck of a lot).

Quote from: MicroVet on June 11, 2019, 10:59
Comparing the needs of tenths of thousands buyers across the world with the need of a single person regarding supermarket needs is non-sense.

Not at all. And if you read the post the habits of one person (but maybe instead of milk, the next likes tomatoes) stretches out to the entire population, which is why a store doesn't sell 1,000 cartons one week, and 23 the next.

And they always, every week, sell more candy on Saturdays than on Mondays. Coincidence?

Listen, I'm on the Microstock, Mid and Macrostock business for almost 15 years and have a portfolio just under 20.000 images across several agencies. I've told you that my sales are NOT single digits and I live solely from Stock income.

I have a lot of images on the first page of competitive themes, and I've been featured on SS lightboxes a lot of times.

I'm not someone with 100 mediocre images that produce 100 more, doubling the portfolio which impacts clearly the earnings and with luck strikes one good image creating continuous BME's (I've been there). Contributors earning 0,25c and being promoted by SS to avoid paying 0,38c to older members earning them more money.

Your supermarket comparison is non-sense from the point of view of a contributor.

I just told you that my sales from the several Mondays were very different in terms of themes each week. From your logic they should be somewhat the same in terms of themes. After all people always buy the same amount of milk and eggs each week, right? They are not buying the sames images to me except the ones that are best sellers. Not only in terms of themes but varied greatly in terms of subscriptions vs OS and SO.

You cannot say that having the same number of sales on a weekday for several weeks is normal. Even more when that happens to whole weeks for several weeks! You just can't!

The numbers I'm referring are NOT single digits.

And it does not matter if they are single, double, triple or whatever. I believe it's impossible to have consecutive Mondays, followed by consecutive Tuesdays and so on with the exact same number of sales each day for weeks.

Plus, I just took a look at the three Mondays sales and they are completely diverse.

One has more seasonal images and almost all subscriptions. Other has a lot of travel and all subscriptions and the third basically religions themed with a lot of OD and SO.

Sorry, but I do not believe this is due to season, portfolio, demand, etc. The exact same downloads each day for weeks with very diverse themes sold? LOL

Comparing the needs of tenths of thousands buyers across the world with the need of a single person regarding supermarket needs is non-sense.

I've been with SS for over a decade and this is really strange to me.

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on June 10, 2019, 21:16
And they claim sales aren't fixed ~ yeah right 

This happened to me recently in a period of 3 or 4 weeks. Can someone explain?

- Three consecutive Mondays with the exact same number of sales.

- Followed by three consecutive Tuesdays with the exact same of downloads.

- And two similar and consecutive Wednesdays.

- And two Thursdays with the difference of a single download. But the following two Fridays were equal but higher.

- And two consecutive Fridays with same number of downloads. But the previous Friday was equal to the following two Fridays. Which means that in five weeks I could count two variations of daily downloads. So I can add a new pattern here.

- The weekend was more irregular but always is.

Could this be a coincidence? Really?

So, in this period I can say that the number of downloads I had were the number of downloads I was allowed to have. If I want to be positive I may say that this allowed me to have those sales, otherwise I could have less.

I understand that we may have roughly the same downloads per week based on our portfolio. But that number being achieved by having consecutive weeks almost xeroxed days from the previous week?

One thing no one can convince me at this time. That the downloads we have are not controlled by Shutterstock.

Well I had sometime ago an image rejected as being sexist. It was an image portraying domestic violence.

I complained, it was reviewed by a higher tier inspector and again rejected.

One image of the series had been approved years before and it was a best seller. And believe me, nothing in that image was visually offensive, showing physical violence or anything like that. It wasn't even a sensitive image by any means.

But to the agency it was sexist because it represented a man exercising psychological violence towards a woman. Like that never happens...

The truth is that the agency decided to clearly enforce a political and ideological agenda.

My 20 year old car not giving me mechanic expenses.

Quote from: swisschocolate on March 30, 2019, 15:24
Right, we don't need you, nor an IT, SEO, accountant, customer support, marketing, social media and advertising speacialists.
We can do it all by ourselves! What a wonderful world

Even updating those free plugins by third parties when the next WP update comes out can become a nightmare.

Please, don't make it seem so unrealistically easy, because it's not.

It can be done!
But I want to do photography and videography

Exactly. This has been tried with Symbiostock for years now and failed. It took a lot of work and was complicated for someone like me who has never done anything like it. And I didn't enter the tax mess, do a lot of Social Networking, etc.  It's not easy for someone outside the area.

Besides, I think this discussion should be taken to a new topic. There it could be discussed in more detail to those interested, being a project to unite photographers or to sell website services.

Quote from: ShadySue on March 29, 2019, 11:34

How often have we read here people saying that although prices are higher on Alamy, they make more on Micro, so that's where they're putting their efforts. I have rejoined that camp, with reluctance, but with an eye on the bottom line. And micros are squeezing Alamy, as they have made the expectation of super low prices, so Alamy's rpd is falling, without any rise in sales volume (OK, that  statement is only based on the small number who report on their forums. And for sure, the $$$ earned from Live News is much higher, but that's not 'stock' as most of us know it.

Last year on alamy I had a 60% increase in the number of images licensed compared to 2017. It was my best year in terms of sales since 2012.

Yet, the average sale value (net) dropped 25% compared to 2017. I still ended earning a bit more in 2018 than on 2017 because of the large amount in the number of sales but nothing exciting.

The average sale (net) in 2018 is about 10% of what it used to be in 2008.

Unfortunately this will not change by photographers banding together. I've read tenths if not hundreds of posts like this, especially in the past 10 years and it equaled to zero apart the Symbiostock experiment which did not go as expected.

In the past there was a chance by someone who had the visibility, the knowledge and even the financial capability. Plus this was a much smaller community. It did not happen.

Nowadays the only chance we've got is to have a top agency to take the lead in this process. For example, by paying an excellent commission to the exclusive artists to motivate the change. The only one left able to do this is Adobe. They have the knowledge, the reach in terms of customers, the money and above all a positive image in the eyes of contributors. But if they don't even accept editorial will they buy a war with the other agencies? I think not.

Apart from this I do not see any change. How will a photographer who lives like a king in his country with $500 risk it all to join his competition which find unsustainable to live of $2000 in their countries? The first thing the less accomplished photographer wants is to see is his competition sink so he can get some of those $2000 to earn $750 and start living like an emperor.

Quote from: georgep7 on March 03, 2019, 12:05

QuoteOur editorial content is sourced through outside agencies at this time.

Still a newbie but i beleive that eng editorial sublects (from reuters and similar) as migrant crisis, politics, environmental issues, sports etc are a whole totally diferent world than stock editorials on local markets, walks, landmarks, whatever from around the world is classified as editorial but actually have no "news"worthy value.

Exactly. There are a lot of places, like travel destinations or even shops or product brands, which have a lot of value in stock photography but do not classify as news worthy.

Not news but still editorial, not only because they include elements that are not released and cannot be Commercial, but even because they are essentially sought by the editorial press like magazines or newspapers, and not by advertisers.

As an example, I have a photo of a name of a Bank on a building which has been involved in an ongoing scandal for years now. It's far from my best seller but it regularly sells. Why? Because economy and financial sections of newspapers and magazines need images to illustrate an article about that bank.

When it comes to travel places and tourist destinations, then the sales multiply incomparably. I believe I could almost double my income on Adobe with the acceptance of my editorial portfolio. In fact, I believe it's the reason why I still sell about half of what Shutterstock gives me.

Quote from: MatHayward on March 03, 2019, 04:44

Our editorial content is sourced through outside agencies at this time. We are not accepting editorial submissions from individual contributors.

-Mat Hayward

And that is a shame because I estimate that close to half of my income comes from editorial content. Mainly photos but some video too. And I'm a full time stock photographer so I know there's a large market for it.

And since Adobe does not accept editorial, it's probably the most forgiving when it comes to recognizable people in photos. Images that would not be accepted on other agencies because of recognizable people, pass on Adobe. That could be a problem.

Quote from: Dumc on January 21, 2019, 19:10
Where the h3II do I find latest download, for example.

This is my preferred view when I go to the site. On a daily basis I want to see my latest sales, and on occasion other type of statistics.

Because of the change I have returned to the Fotolia site despite the abusive imposition of a new login on every visit, despite the change is still months away.

As others have mentioned, the Adobe site is terrible. Really confusing to navigate and unappealing. The Fotolia site is superior by far.

Good decision.

Some agencies who earn much, much less than AS/FL should follow this example.

This is just f*cking unbelievable. Started with 65% and now I'll receive 40%.

We've paid for the NY office which is established for years with a commission cut, and after all this time we did not see our commission restored to what was before. And now this.

This year, the sales have been up about 7% compared to 2017, but the average commission I've earned (net) has fallen about 25%, which in the end makes for an insignificant raise in the total amount I've earned for the year. With the cut to 40%, even if I sell even more I'll be earning even less!

There's a huge problem with alamy which is, they are lowering the prices and cutting commissions but they do not have the volume other micro agencies have. And when that happens, the road for failure is paved as we have seen countless times in the past decade with other agencies.

And what will happen to the distribution sales? The distributor gets 40% and alamy and us 30% each? Will there be a cut there also?

I'm extremely disappointed with alamy. I can honestly say that with this move I've placed them on par with the micro agencies in terms of support. No more defense from me for alamy in any discussion. They've become like the rest.

Quote from: rushay on November 06, 2018, 11:29
Its good that they ending free accounts, nothing is free maybe that's why the community went dead cos nobody values anything if its free.

Don't be naive. The information they gathered from the free accounts is worth many millions. Starting from email lists, equipment used, interests of members, popularity of themes, forms of interaction between people and social behavior, etc. Social media is a gold mine.

I don't believe that Flickr died because of it being free. For me it died because of poor functionalities, getting poorer despite being a paid member.

Plus, it had a terrible mood with those stupid groups, contests and badges where friends would vote on friends despite the terrible images. Great images would be ignored if someone would not get into the clique.

Since being part of those groups was the only way for your images to get noticed in the search results I used them for a while with great results despite not participating in the cliques and ass-kissing. But I got fed up quickly. It was just pathetic.