Quote from: Wilm on December 21, 2021, 10:43

Yes, Exiting Times are also already announced to me figuratively. I am looking forward to it so much...

I like it being able again to rise up in a level.
Because now I was a stuck in a current level.

Today my shutterstock RPD is $0.105. Looking at this, I don't have to worry seriously about downgrading from level 5 to level 1. It doesn't change that much at all....

I have never been exclusive anywhere and personally think it is wrong.

But if you think about it, dreamstime is a bad choice from my point of view. They are on a steep downhill path. And I'm not sure how long they'll survive.

To me dreamstime didn't even make $5000 in 10 years. I still upload there because the images are uploaded in seconds - it runs alongside and costs me no additional investment. But that's all there is to dreamstime.

What about istock as an alternative? When I look at the poll results, that seems to make more sense, doesn't it?

Country Search as of December 2018 - data is no longer available. There's no certainty that this is really the country because it's user supplied. Not all accounts had a country.

Thailand      2567
Russian Federation   2122
Ukraine      1857
United States      818
Italy         367
Belarus         346
United Kingdom   344
Spain         301
Czech Republic      258
Serbia         227
Romania      205
Japan         202
Canada         197
Indonesia      168
Andorra      168
Malaysia      156
China         134
Turkey         132
Netherlands      128
Australia      117
Latvia         115
India         107
Hungary      90
Bulgaria      84
Moldova      76
Azerbaijan      75
Kazakhstan      71
Estonia         67
Slovakia      67
Lithuania      65
Luxembourg      65
Lithuania      65
Sweden      59
Brazil         57
Portugal      57
Israel         55
South Africa      50
Switzerland      50
Austria         49
Taiwan         48
Greece         45
Korea         44
Croatia         42
Belgium      36
Finland         35
Vietnam      34
New Zealand      33
Hong Kong      31
Denmark      29
Bosnia and      28
Norway      24
Pakistan      23
Philippines      22
Singapore      20
Ireland         20
Mexico         19
Colombia      18
Macedonia      17
Armenia      15
Georgia      14
Cyprus         11
Iceland         6
Uruguay      6
Antarctica      5
Cuba         3
Tunisia         3
Cocos Isl.      2
France         2
Tajikistan      2
Niue         1
Solomon Islands   1

I am very sure that this list is not true, Pete.
Where is Germany? Where is France? Andorra - 168 - with its 77,000 inhabitants compared to Indonesia - also 168 - with its 274,000,000 inhabitants? Hmmm...

Merry Christmas to you all! For the year 2022 I wish you health and success! And try to stay optimistic!

Quote from: Findura on December 20, 2021, 11:55

Quote from: Level6 on December 20, 2021, 10:37

Isn't less information sometimes better tho?, if it's all about content content content these days maybe info like fps etc could throw off some customers?.  also, maybe they are copying the free sites, after all the free sites have some way of staying in business with no revenue.......hmmm.

Did you forget the sarcasm smilie?
I think so.

If I were a buyer, I would not buy where there is not enough info.
Dreamstime doesn't have fps info on footage either. I would never buy footage there. When I had a look at the website and some videos, my first impression was : totally unprofessional.

Perhaps the new SS designer is an 'undercover' brought in from a competing business. 
But I hope everything will be fine.

Yes but times have changed and people are dumbing down while getting smarter if that makes any sense and maybe they are catering to that crowd who is now entering or in the workforce, those who will just tap on something that "looks cool" and use it and don't want to see or care about those pesky technical details.

I live in a mixed student building in a college town and it's mostly computer science and engineering students here, they do programming and math to the next level, some really impressive stuff but can't clean a room or operate a complicated piece of equipment like a vacuum cleaner if their lives depended on it.

They think differently, I can't understand one symbol on their math assignments yet in real life they function like 2 year olds.

There was a big party on my floor last Friday and it was great btw but then came time to clean up the next day and none of them could figure out how to get rid of 30 balloons so they asked me if I knew who sells large garbage bags because we have a lot of balloons to get rid of and I said sure but you're gonna pop them first right?.,  they had no clue what I was talking about, their plan was to put all these balloons in to large garbage bags and haul them out to the bin.

I took a fork from the kitchen and five minutes and a lot of noise later I swept the remains up with my bare hand and put them in the little kitchen garbage bin, they looked at me like I was a god and them proceeded to tell me how smart I am and how much money I could make......

That's who's entering the workforce......

This story is really great!!! 

Quote from: Josephine on December 17, 2021, 12:56

Please dont forget, that Adobe is making lots of money by selling you their software....

No they aren't. 

I earned a free photo subscription last two years and will again this year.

Who else gives us anything at all? Our bonus from SS, for a years work, is being reset to level one.

True!

Quote from: Wilm on December 15, 2021, 16:23

No agency or company that conducts business over the web will ever provide insight into the algorithm. But even if the company did, it wouldn't do anyone any good, because then everyone would adjust their wares to that algorithm and the company would have to generate new algorithms to define a new ranking in searches.

I do not agree. If Adobe would just state that the ranking is based upon, number and frequency of uploads of the contributor, sales of the photo, sales vs views, region, age of the photo etc... that they shuffle every so many weeks or months, it would be just honest communication in the cooperation we have with them.

And if that leads to more uploads, better quality photos then that would be beneficial for them and buyers as well.

It's not that I am asking how to beat the casino at the black jack game or the answer to the million dollar question.

Well, there is a well-known factor that influences the ranking of images at AS: the order of keywords.

All other factors are unknown to me.

But again, even if we knew the factors that influence the ranking of images in search, nothing would change.

There are 40,112,000 search results for the search term "landscape". Of these, 10,000 results are displayed - the remaining 40,102,000 images and videos are invisible to the searcher. Every 40,000th image is visible in that case.

If the factors you mentioned were known and the contributors would upload even more images, it would lead to the fact that at some point only every 50,000th image is visible. Even if the uploaded images then had better quality, then perhaps at some point the overall quality of the image database would improve, but that has nothing to do with the ranking of the contributors' images.

It reminds me of the SEO agencies. They all promise to get their clients' websites to page 1 in the search engine because they pretend to know how the algo works. But if you have 500 dentists in one city, not all 500 of them can be on the first page of the search engine � even if all 500 of them hire an (or all the same) SEO agency. In other words, how to get on the front pages of the search engine is a mystery - even if you tell us a few factors.

No agency or company that conducts business over the web will ever provide insight into the algorithm. But even if the company did, it wouldn't do anyone any good, because then everyone would adjust their wares to that algorithm and the company would have to generate new algorithms to define a new ranking in searches.

I'm not sure I'm interpreting Mat's lines correctly. But I take from his words that recent upload activity plays a role in the ranking of the portfolio.

And there may apply to the entire contributor portfolio then:

- who has not uploaded anything, is not in a good position
- who has uploaded a lot and the material is usable, is in a better position
- who has uploaded a lot and the material is bad, is in a worse position than the one who has uploaded nothing.

Shortly before the middle of the month.

December 1 to 13, 2021 compared to December 1 to 13, 2020

At AS
Downloads: - 7%
Revenues: + 21.8%

For SS
Downloads: - 25.1%
Revenues: + 50.5%

AS vs. SS
Downloads AS compared to SS: 76%
Revenues AS compared to SS: 125.2%

once in a while they miss the monthly payment and will add it on the next payment- sucks for sure...

I never had this case! No Problems in more than 130 months. They were always correct.

The money came in 3 days ago.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on December 02, 2021, 11:35

Quote from: Wilm on December 01, 2021, 17:49

Quote from: pic_pom on December 01, 2021, 08:15

but i produce 50 MP pictures and it a shame to downsize them to 20 or less.

In my view, this is the wrong approach! You get between $0.10 and $0.20 for most downloads, and with the revenue you worry about the generous buyer only getting a 20 MP photo? How many downloads do you need to even begin to recoup the cost of an equimpment that allows 50MP?

From a financial point of view, I think you need to rethink!

That's my answer too. Just downsize and move on. Giving away 50MP images for a dime is not going to make more than giving away 10MP images for a dime. And if the 10MP images come from that 50MP camera (what the heck is that?) and you are downsizing, you'll have almost no rejections for focus, pixelation, grain, soft or any of the other absurd rejections from the SS Bots.

I have also bigger sales at SS, actually these bigger sales drive the overal revenue, why should I not have the chance to have them?

now, in the last days I did not have any rejections anymore, weirdly exactly after opening this thread, perhaps a coincidence?

Bigger sales come in - no matter if you upload 50 MP or 10 MP images from my point of view.

What I was getting at is that both buyers and agencies are shrinking our revenues more and more. At the end of the day, all buyers want all images for free. And based on that, from my perspective, they have no right to expect contributors to go to expense to be able to produce huge photos.

I myself have only photos in my portfolio that were taken with a compact camera. So my investment in equipment is dwindling and that leaves me with more money.

My three best-selling photos, with a combined 10,000 downloads at SS, are 8 MP, 7 MP, and 5 MP. It's quite possible that I would have even more sales with them if the images had a resolution of 50 MP. But I would need an estimated 4,000 more downloads to recoup the price difference for the camera. I don't think I would have had that many additional sales because of the higher resolution.