Quote from: derek on April 04, 2017, 13:25

Among my total port I have around 70 pictures which I am completelty alone in having......They were still there of course but when buyers searched somebody elses images came up given the same category etc.

Surely you give your own answer? At one time you got all the sales because you were alone in your niche, now you have a competitor in your niche.  Maybe it's a subject where your rival's images make an acceptable substitute to illustrate a concept, even if the subject matter is not exactly the same as yours.
I believe I was the second person to have pictures of the iconic Santorini blue-domed Greek churches on Microstock, in the summer of 2004, and they sold very well for a few years but now they've been swamped by newer material. It happens. (And I bet the first person to upload the subject was less than pleased when mine turned up a few weeks later!).

Just came back from a shoot and read your post here. No!  I am not replaced as such in my category the pics are not even showing the same subject. Its like a differece of lets say for example my shots are of Mykonos but now instead shots of a NY-skyline from people with very small ports of no more then 300 files. Thats the difference.

For all I know you might be right I am no expert at this but as far as I am concerned I firmly believe that its a matter of giving everybody a fair break. This is completely nuts in my books because whats the point then of uploading when genuine and hard work dont count for nothing. DT makes no secret of this but SS does well nowadays you dont hear anything from them at all. Deadly silence.

Ok, now I'm lost.   Are you making $.08 a month from 3000 images on FT?  Or $.08 per image a month on 3000 images?  Or what?

its 0.08 cents per year actually. Sorry my mistake.

Quote from: derek on April 05, 2017, 03:36

Quote from: SpaceStockFootage on April 04, 2017, 15:02

Quote from: derek on April 04, 2017, 14:12

Fotolia with Adobe stock is great! I have some 3000 images with them and I get approx $.800 a month give or take.

Either that's a typo, or you have a low threshold for what constitutes 'great'! 

Yep! thats only Ft. SS and I am really cut down there is still around $.2.5-3000 per month but thats with som 4K files. I have some good sellers you see. Was actually much more but the latest search got me quite badly.

Boy, I wonder how things were selling in the heyday, if this is how it is today for long time independents.

yeah its a pretty bad climate nowadays! but you were there in the heyday were you not. In the film days I mean? anyway over a period of 22 years I have managed to build a port of over 20.000 images and many digitized drum-scaned and they are just earning a fraction of what they used to. Heyday is over its rather a Mayday!

Quote from: derek on April 04, 2017, 14:12

Fotolia with Adobe stock is great! I have some 3000 images with them and I get approx $.800 a month give or take.

Either that's a typo, or you have a low threshold for what constitutes 'great'! 

Jeez!  I didnt say the dosh was great I said the agency was great.btw, you have all videos right? no wonder. Yeah you do have some good space stuff there! so in your opinion which is the best agency for videos?

March was fine.

But what happened this week on SS? Sales are literally cut to half of normal. It's really frightening. I'm contributing for 10 years and never seen such thing..

Exactly the same here!  and overnight!

Quote from: derek on April 04, 2017, 04:53

^ I read somewhere the important thing was the first 4-5 pages? given the default search and amount of pictures on the page!

That's one of the advantages of having stuff from small niches - if there are only a handful of shots of a subject then you have a good chance of selling on the few occasions someone searches for it. I don't reckon I'd have much chance of ever selling a "beautiful business woman with her team" if I shot it, whereas my Circassian chicken on a plate sold a couple of times in the past week - even though everybody knows what the first of those is and not a lot of people are familiar with Circassian chicken (though in a curious nod to the influence of beautiful women, the name of the dish is said to be derived from the skin colour of the Circassian beauties in the Turkish Sultan's harem) .

Well maybe but I think you might be looking just a bit too deep into this and trying to find some logic in it? I know exactly what you mean but somehow I think the equation is quite simple.
I give an example. My portfolio is niched yes. Among my total port I have around 70 pictures which I am completelty alone in having. There is no one else in this world at least not in stock photography that could even come close in similarity let alone the real thing. Lets say I was there at the right place the right time. These 70 pictures represented around 80% of my SS income and sold in hundreds every single day for the past five years and I mean hundreds every day. All of a sudden like an ON/OFF switch they stopped selling! well maybe 20 times a day. This was not a drawn out thing it just whollop! happened over night AND with exactly the same search placement!. I actually asked a Tech friend of mine who has his own firm and very knowledgable in this sort of stuff. He told me my images had been replaced. They were still there of course but when buyers searched somebody elses images came up given the same category etc. That was all he could see and say.

I really dont know if he was right or wrong. However lets assume the concept of fairness much talked about here. Might be as simple as a search is trying to give a fair amount to everybody and thereby ruining the incentive of producing quality?

What do you say about this maybe ( crazy and stupid) idea?

Quote from: derek on April 03, 2017, 07:37

Looking at many replies in this thread one is beginning to see a pattern. Don't know if you've thought of that. Seems like the longer you have been with SS the less you are going to get. I think it was this guy Rindler or something who some time back pointed out that old contributors was in the fireing line. maybe he did have a point. Dont know?

There are several factors at work but the main one has got to be dilution. When I started I had something like 500 files with SS in a total collection of something like 30,000, now I have something like 6,000 in collection of scores of millions.  They haven't managed to increase the revenues at the same rate that they are increasing the size of the collection.
Given that I've gone down from having one sixtieth of the collection to having something like one ten-thousandth of it, it's really quite remarkable that I still make as much as I do.
PS: While my March sales are a bit down on a year ago, Feb and March of this year have each improved on the month before, so in the short-term my sales are improving, I don't know why.

Yes but I am completely convinced its improving or declining with the algorithm and whatever its beyond our control anyway. I know some who are uploading something like 200 files per week and one minute theyre well up and with the next change badly down. with an agency housing 110 million files its all down to luck!  not my cup of tea I would prefer quality and skill before luck and sort changes.

Yes the McImbecile the Lobo lower IQ cretin is still there and probably he is the one that masterminded Donalds goodbye.

^yes lets hope it keeps up!  the way micro is going we're going to need it!

These sort of threads are completely meaningless since a BME to somebody with 500 files might be the WME for somebody with 5000 files and often is. My March was steady with DT finally coming alive showing some really good sales. SS and Ft just steady.
SS have become an enigma. I cant work it out but I keep comparing to the Istock shambles of showing fatigue and sort of happy go lucky with what they've got. Any ambitions seems to be gone.

I shouldnt really say this but if a place like SS closed down they would probably do the entire stock-market the world of good turning it into a healthier environment and a sort of new start. haha!

On the more conventional side the RM/Rf agencies showing very good results with a couple of sales close to $.900 each.

Stockmaan!!!  exactly the same pattern here but with 4800 files and 700 clips and NOT a cent since last night 23.00!  Also have a min of 40-50 sales per day and plenty of SOD's.
Not funny! something is wrong. Tons of screaming in their own forum.

They seem to strangel 0.38 contributors more and more . Spoken to a dozen of them earlier on and all in the same boat. Just strange!

Good luck to him!!  that guy is a surviver. Not bad!