Microstock is loosing costumers because of AI.

My guess is that a lot costumers won't renew their AS subscription for 2025 because of AI pollution.
If you do a search for classic stock photos at latest uploads. AS ist far behind istock or Shutterstock. At AdobeStock someone mostly find AI images at latest upload search. So lot of the latest trendy (non AI) images are not available at AdobeStock.
I guess subscription and EL sales will increase at istock and Shutterstock this year.

   

Lightroom, i do keywording in Lightroom.

microstock will became AI stock. Image mining companies will do the job.

In 2025, I plan to reduce microstock. I am a small home studio shooter, producing to much variations.
I hate do shoot up to 10 variations, its boring. No variation, less work thats my goal.

Shocking numbers.
AI photo uploads 5 times compared to real photos.
AI illustration uploads 33 times compared to real illustrations.

Its the season for Xmas and New Years images.
These images are quite easy to copy with AI. So i think that there is much more competition because of AI nowadays.

 

Years ago i paid �20 per hour. Nowadays only tfp.

Quote from: SuperPhoto on September 21, 2024, 09:56

I'm surprised this seems rather confusing for a lot of people? I believe I even read where it stated what the weekly sales rank is?

It's simply your rank, in terms of downloads - relatively to ALL the other contributors - for that week. Lifetime rank is simply for all contributors over the LIFETIME.

So, if you get more downloads than more people - your rank goes up. If other people get more downloads than you, your rank goes down.
So you 'could' be ranked #1, if for example you had '3' downloads, and 'everyone else' had 1. Or, you could be ranked #10000 if you had say 1000 downloads, but 'everyone else' had 1001+...

Really quite simple. Your weekly ranking is just simply how many downloads you've had relative to everyone else in the system.

of course,but why is there anyone who thinks the opposite? 

I think we all bounce between 2 values ​​in the rankings.

if your ranking value is an average of 30,000 you can probably bounce between 40,000 and 20,000

if your average value is 20,000 you probably bounce between 15,000 and 25,000

if your average value is 1000 you probably bounce between 800 and 1200

the higher you go,the less variation you have in the rankings,simply because there are fewer contributors at the top.

I don't know whether the ranking follows sales or money,I have some doubts about it,it probably follows both the number of sales and money.

I don't think that there is such a small range.
For a rank below 10.000 there is no large portfolio needed. It is no rocket science to reach a rank around 5000. But it will take some time to built a good performing portfolio for a rank below 3000.
There are three things. Portfolio size, quality and upload volume compared to your competition.
There is no such thing like an Adobe sale system.
 

I have become partially reliant on microstock in recent years.

It has helped me to do some things in life I would not be able to do without it and I have a full time job - and I'm not talking about splurging on indulgences here. Rising costs and cost-of-living pressures has eroded my day-job discretionary income quite significantly.

Some people still make a living from microstock and I have to say you have my sincere respect. Clearly you have worked hard and smart to achieve this.

Others, like myself, have microstock as a supplementary albeit necessary side-income. Others have microstock simply as a hobby and making a bit of extra income, at whatever amounts, is like a small reward.       

Also have a full time job. Its enough for a living and will retire in a few years.
Microstock ist not reliant for me in case of income.
But maybe stock photography will became reliant for me to keep a daily routine at retirement.

Quote from: t�tar�t� on August 19, 2024, 08:23

I did not say slots are a bad idea.
But the numbers you suggested are way to much.
There are thousands of new AI content creators every month.
AS probably needs to go down to slots of 50 for everything.

How difficult can it be to write an algorithm with a few adjustable parameters so the queue is always at maximum two weeks or whatever their desired target range is depending on the content?

Isn't that exactly what software is for?

They are not a tiny mom and pop shop. They are ADOBE.

And yes, perhaps the limits in some cases should be 50 files a week for certain media types.

But even if they want to aggressively grow the ai collection, everyone will benefit if it can be done in 2 weeks.

There is also no reason for other media types to suffer.

If normal photos is currently not their thing, limit it down to 50. It forces people to be more selective and only upload their best work. Hell, limit it down to 20 if needed. As long as the stuff goes live in a reasonable time that would be better than waiting months.

And like I said, they can always add factors like portfolio success and let the people who can attract sales have higher limits.

But a system with an over 5 month wait time...I really don't understand.

Timing is so crucial with uploads, such a long wait time will severly depress sales.

The issue is not that contributors upload more.
The problem is that there are more AI contributors that upload.
Its just like a bank run. To many people want money from Adobe.
So if Adobe limit the uploads of photography to 50 a month.
Around 80% would not be affected, because they usually don't upload more. The review time also won't be much faster.
But around 10% of top contributors would be hurt.
Customers who are not using AI photos finding 99% new AI images without no Ai Filter.
With AI filter there are some new images, but maybe only 1% of the exiting new images that they find at istock or Shutterstock.
So are lot of these customers probably will change to Shutterstock or istock.
Because they only find a flood of new boring AI images at AS. With or without slots. Not what most costumers are looking for.
Authentic images are not just shoot like authentic, it are authentic.   

Upload slots will not change much.
I guess 80% of microstock photographer upload less than 50 images a month.
With AI thousands of nerds have found the way to microstock.
Like the time of first affordable DSLR for amateur photographers 20 years ago.