i hope every agency kill the popular tab, even losing the sales of y popular images, and use other categories.

I quite like popular provided other rankings are done correctly.
Buyers are happier with a good image rather than a less good newer image.

OF course, SS main problem now is they dont actually QC or review images at all and just accepted everything.  The quality has dropped massively.  So "popular" is pretty much guaranteed to give the buyer a better quality of image to choose from than "New" as a default.

Im firmly convinced this IS hitting income.

Im getting the same number roughly of video sales as usual but the last few months instead of the usual commission from them im getting $1.50
Conclusion is that people who would previously have paid a normal price are now getting the $5 extra special offer package instead.

So from my point of view this this isn't "extra revenue" as SS claim, its my existing revenue being cut as they're selling my work at a cheaper price than was previously available.

Then again, since they changed search in May meaning if a buyer clicks on "HD" it excludes EVERY 4k video from the search results (even though they can be downloaded in HD).

It's possible to earn $100 selling images on shutterstock per month. I earn approximately $30.

Easily.  Its all about quantity.  If you have 1000-1250 or so images id guess you'll turn over $100 a month or so. 

The "old" rule of thumb used to be an image will earn about $1 per year.  So for $100 a month you'd need about 1200.  The $ per image is dropping on SS a lot due to saturation so its likely more than that.

Stop blaming the agency or quality

Well the lack of quality control is largely responsible for the massive above linear increase with library size and that is the agencies decision.

They've also publicly stated they vary the algorithm and test it with randomly selected groups (its on their forum) so thats not some conspiracy theory.

New stuff is really being de ranked in the searching again it seems.
Usually uploading a modest number of new you'd expect a decent number to pick up sales.
Lately that just isn't the case.  New stuff sits there whereas old stuff (sometimes really old and having never sold in years of being there) with the same keywording sell.
Im in the process of clearing a backlog of 9 months of images and uploading, added about 1000 in the last month.  Sadly, with the algorithm at the moment its making no difference - all my sales are still the older images.
Looks like i picked exactly the wrong time to update my portfolio.

Well there are browser plugins and internet sites that allow people to download anything they want off SS for free.  They've been around over a year now and still no action so i guess SS dont actually care.  So removing watermarks is of no consequence to them.

These requests have been on the adobe tracker for several years now but no action or response to say its being considered.
Its even more ridiculous that theres a LR plugin for adobe stock which cant actually go through the whole submission thing because you still need to manually order keywords on the website.

Uploading to adobe is a PITA for this reason - i export images with keywords in alphabetical which is fine for SS, 123rf and others so submission after upload is quick.  But for each image on adobe i have to manually repaste keywords in priority order from a spreadsheet before submission.

Yeah the new system is doing well....for them id guess not me!

iStock reviewers accept any technically correct image BUT they seem to want every single-cell amoeba to sign a model release not matter how small or unrecognisable in the image.  Ditto for tiny houses way in the distance.

They also want model releases specifically dates to match the EXIF photo taken time (a nightmare if you use the same person and release over a period of time).

It's not the first time their infrastructure has been shown to be incredible fragile and fall over at the slightest point.

5 DAYS now and a fairly vital part of their business isn't working and they dont seem overly concerned.  Today FTP is still badly broken and even the web based upload and approval system is failing.

Would appear they arent bothered about getting new media at all.

Quote from: gnirtS on February 08, 2015, 01:03

Is there any way at all to get iStock to accept a model release with a range of dates or open ended dates?

No.

The only exception is the same concept / location shot over a very short period of time (a week or less). Otherwise, it's one MR per. 

If that's the case then its not worth me bothering to submit any images of actual people to them.  I tend to use the same people maybe once or twice a week and have done for several years so the practicalities of asking them all to sign countless individual releases for one specific site don't make it worth it for the financial return.

Just checked for example and one person appears on 29 different days going back 3.5 years.  I'll just submit to all the others and skip iS for any people shots.

Shelma, that's exactly why I'm so confused! It is the same, just the same with me. Rejection-email-mistake-resubmit-approve-sales (up to hits)... Some kind of stupid game here, really 

It was OK for me for the last 5 months or so last year but now gone back to that.

I've had batches approved all 100% last year across multiple periods.  But this year even some images from those same batches are getting rejected randomly and approved randomly.

The last few i've had 100% rejection for a single reason despite being of 5 different topics spread over 3 months apart with 3 different cameras.  Every single one of those images got approved and sold resubmitting 24hrs after that rejection (and are amazingly selling).  After that i submitted ONE image in a batch (because internet here died for 3 days) and it got rejected for "too many similar images in the submission batch".

Last week 12/12 rejected for poor lighting, noise, focus,overuse.  Same 12 all accepted again 48hrs later.

I don't think anyone minds standards and high standards but its the utter lack of consistency causing the problems.  If they had a standard and ruthlessly applied that consistently across the board i really can't see many people complaining.  But generally they don't.

It's annoying for me here as each image takes me roughly 30 minutes to upload and costs me roughly $0.10 due to the capped and draconian internet bandwidth allowances per month.  That means an entire rejected batch for 1 reason where they clearly didn't look at any of the images past maybe the first one forcing me to reupload taking substantially more time and more money gets irritating fast.