Hi Everyone,

I can't login to my account for weeks now, due to a 'Security Upgrade'. I've been asked to renew my password following the instructions sent to my email account. But neither do I receive any message or link nor does the support team is responding to my mails asking to solve this problem.

Am I the only one?

Rob

Thanks for your answer Sue,
I don't want this to become an endless story, it's not that important. But just for your info: I uploaded again 4 batches, 4 submissions. 1 image has been rejected, the rest accepted. I am confused ... but okay.

Regards,
Rob

Thanks to both of you for your replies, very much appreciated.

Yes, I read the FAQs and I have read about the handling of reviews here in the forum, so I was aware about the unique review by Alamy.

But my issue is, that I had not just 1 submission but 22 submissions rejected at once. A I have mentioned above, they are totally unrelated, different shooting dates, different locations, different cameras, different models, uploaded over a period of 4 days.

So far no answer from support. I guess I won't waste anymore time on this.

Does anyone had a similar experience:

I started uploading to Alamy about 3 weeks ago. So far, so good, very smooth, all accepted.

Now I received a message, that 1 image failed QC. Fair enough, I thought.

Then I checked my Account just to see that ALL remaining 22 batches with more than 900 images, have been rejected without being assessed just because 1 image failed QC. 22 batches uploaded over a period of 4 days, not related to each other, different topics, different shooting dates, all accepted at other agencies.

I contacted support, we'll see what they say. If they expect me to upload the whole lot again, the relationship will be over before it actually started. 

SS topped it overnight. 5 clips for $2.67 all together ... that's it! Definitely! 

Yep, 5dl overnight for $2.67 all together ... that's it! 

Update: already 15dl and counting - for $6.09! All pretty old stuff I have never sold before ... I agree, something fishy is going there.

Quote from: jjneff on June 22, 2020, 12:16
Yes, I deactivated all my photos on SS and have not uploaded any new content to them. Pond5 and Adobe are are best bet in town. I am very willing to take some pain
for long term gains. The way SS is going video will be at 25cents per download very soon!

I got close today. 34 cents for a clip sale!

After the first week of June I thought I will probably deactivate my images by the end of the month but hold on to my SS Video Portfolio until the end of the year, because June started really well. But since then nothing until this 'glorious' 34 cent sale today. That's the last nail in the coffin for me. I will at least deactivate the whole lot after the next payment.

Surprisingly the number of image sales for June is already much higher then in the last 12 months, though. The RPD however is ridiculous, as expected. Looks like buyers still get what they want for probably outrageous low rates.

SS is still my top selling agency, but financially it wouldn't hurt that much, because I don't rely on stock-income. Just disappointing that it has to end like this. Unfortunately for me Adobe can't step in to take over SS rank. Mysteriously my sales at Adobe dropped this month by around 80%!

Take care fellow folks and colleagues!

Rob

Some more numbers from my side:
Jul '12: 0.41 (first month with SS, about 300 images online)
Apr '13: 0.52
Apr '14: 0.62
Apr '15: 0.60
Apr '16: 0.76 (0.86 incl. Videos)
Apr '17: 0.58 (0.64 incl. Videos)
Apr '18: 1.09 (1.78 incl. Videos)
Apr '19: 0.67 (1.26 incl. Videos)
Apr '20: 0.63 (0.88 incl. Videos)
Jun '20: 0.32 (0.68 incl. Videos)

Overall with SS since 2012: 0.82 - first 3 years images only (images: 0.66, videos: 21.49 (June '20: 15.10))

Until a month ago I thought it is impossible, but now it's reality: MY RPD on DepositPhotos is higher than on SS!

Rob

Quote from: trek on August 27, 2019, 12:24
FYI:  Pond 5 has a "Global Partner Program".  The click box is located in account preferences.  You might be opted in by default.

Thanks, you are right! 

Never really paid attention to it ...

Rob

Thanks for your answer.

As this clips are not part of my adobe portfolio yet, I am gonna upload them and see what happens. Wondering if the clips will come up twice in search results.

Rob

Hi everyone,

Just wondering if I missed something ... I am about to upload some older footage to Adobestock. Out of curiosity I searched their content and found already the clips online! With me as the author and the source Adobestock/Pond5.

I can't remember of any partnership between these two. And I can't remember agreeing to share my files on both sites.

I didn't contact Adobestock yet, thought maybe someone here can give me a clue.

Thanks in advance,

Rob

Hi everyone,

So far I called myself a lucky Shutterstock Contributor as my Clip Sales gained in general reasonable royalties. I had a few of the $1.50 sales, though, but now even that got 'topped'.

$0.60 for an HD clip of 29 seconds!

I sent a complaint to Contributor Support ... to be answered by a "fellow" contributor ...

"Hi, My name is [xxxx] and I'm a fellow Shutterstock contributor for over 9 years and also an expert user. I'm happy to look into this issue for you.

Shutterstock offers promotional deals or bulk packages from time to time. This sale is part of that program. Unfortunately, there is no way to opt out of these sales, but at least this will help to raise that footage in the search engine placement.

If you need more information, please let me know and I will reroute your request to Shutterstock agents for providing possible help."

I don't take the microstock business serious anymore, take the royalties as a welcome pocket money on top of my income, but still, this hurts, feels like a prank.

Btw: this "fellow" contributor posted only once in the Shutterstock Forum, back in 2010, I can't find his portfolio, if there is one, but he managed in the meantime to answer 9,510 of our questions and complaints ...

Rob

Hi everyone,

I have noticed that my Royalty Statements haven't been updated since 01 August 2017. My attempt to contact the customer support failed, as I always get the annoying message:

'Oops! An unexpected error has occurred.
The error may be transient but has been logged. If you continue to encounter problems, you can contact customer support.' Yeah, very funny 

Anyone else with the same problem or any idea, how to contactthe support?

Thx in advance

Rob

The new design doesn't worry me - I'll get used to it. What does worry me is, that I've 'lost' several hundred downloads for at least one of my Top Performers in the new DL Statistic. I hope, it's only that single one, but that one is quite obvious. I received my royalties overt the years, though, just wondering, if the lower incorrect amount will have any negative consequences in search results?!

Now they picked me: 150DL yesterday, just portraits, NO Asian women. Weird and supicious. Contacted support.

Maybe that's the reason why some of my clips pending for 12 weeks now and explains that I had not one sale on more than 5 weeks... I've never received a mail about providing new ID in my private mail account, checked my account, too - nothing. But I guess, it won't do any harm to send them a copy of my current photo ID. Let's see if it is changing the things at Pond5 to a bit better than it is at the moment.

Thanks for posting, Jo Ann

I wish the offer would come from Shutterstock 

I don't expect too much from DT. Still, a nice move, though.

Unfortunately there are not many alternatives around when it comes to decent clip sales, actually only one. And again, for me Shutterstock is far ahead of the rest. Easy upload, reasonable review times and better sales than Pond5. I still hang on to P5, because customers there seem to look for different content.

Amongst other files, I uploaded my clips Santa Claus relaxed at beach on 7 October 2015. I didn't expect them to be still pending on Christmas Day. Well, there is always gonna be another Christmas...  But for the future I try to upload my Xmas-files around Easter, Easter Bunnies on Halloween, Valentine Day on Independence Day...

Have a Merry Christmas everyone!

Rob

Just change the language back to English (or whatever language you prefer - top centre).

You have to be happy where you live. That was always my maxim and that's why I am where I am now. And on top of it, Perth in Western Australia - and the rest of the continent, is not short of cool and classy locations for a photographer  But I bet, if you love your home, if you love your life, then you've found the right place and creativity shouldn't be the problem anymore - and that can be (almost) anywhere in the world!

Quote from: douglas on October 05, 2015, 12:49
I hadn't bothered with Pond5 for a couple of months as nothing had sold but, after a sale last week, I uploaded a batch and could see from the post-review message that they have the reviewing had been done by the Indian company V2 Solutions http://www.v2solutions.com/media/images.html

Based on what had been accepted and sold at other agencies the review was, shall we say, erratic and all the possible rejection reasons were lumped together for all rejected images with a 'one or more of these apply' generic message.

Now I know why.... although it says they are from California, nevertheless...

I started only two months ago uploading footage to Pond5 and SS. Before someone even reviewed my clips at Pond5 I had already the first sale at SS. SS acceptance 90%. Pond5 only 60%, with always the same (silly) reason (shaky footage) from the same curator. As anyone knows who is contributing to Pond5, it takes a lot of work to upload and prepare your clips before sending them to review. But with obviously amateur reviewers it is not worth the effort, in my opinion. So I dumped Pond5 and concentrate on uploading to SS - so far pretty happy with the results.

To get back to the initial topic: the next wave of spam attacks is hitting the forum. I wouldn't go to bed or even enjoy the weekend off if I were SS. WAKE UP! Tomorrow there might even more affected than just the forum...

I noticed this morning (Australian Time) that more than a hundred new entries in some Asian language appeared over night in the Discussion Forum. And it becomes more widespread while writing here.  I have contacted Vince, but he might be still asleep. I noticed already yesterday, that my Footage Gallery was switched to Chinese or Korean or whatever, although I didn't touch that option. And furthermore, 2.5GB uploaded footage clips disappeared (but there might be another reason for it), not showing up in my Submission Folder. Something is going on in the background - and that is not good. Hope, Admin is waking up soon and sort it out quickly!

Same problem for some hours now! And I am sitting on the other side of the world