Why is Thijs 's profile greyed out?

They have dropped for me like 60% compared to how it was a few months ago. I mean it wasnt like I swimming in success or anything but definitly feel that images that sold all the time suddenly stopped selling. While others have gained traction.

Anyways they reject half of everything so I guess theres hardly any new content for clients. I uploaded about 1000 images and around 300 videos and guess how many got accepted? around 300 photos and les than 10 videos.

Compare to Adobe stock they accepted around more than 500 photos and about 100 videos.

SSTK are in a real rejecting mood now. it was about one half rejected before then this week I had 14 out of 15 photos rejected & ere all accepted on DT, alamy & adobe.

Microstock will just get worse over the short term, commission rates will continue to be cut, maybe even stopped or put �on hold� as many of the sites will call it.

Shutterstock have shown the way on this with their January restart every year, I believe the overall outlook is very grim.

On the upside, in the long run, I believe that many countries, probably starting in Europe will look to bring in legislation to fairly compensate contributors, perhaps with a law that makes these companies responsible to all stake holders on a equal basis, when a company is sold, takes on debt, commission rates or terms and condition changes, basically all contributors having a equal vote at the shareholders annual meeting.

Perhaps they will bring in laws that state contributors/creatives are the ones who decide how much their work is charged out at, along with the commission rates.

As for the sites manipulating the search engines to favour the highest return for their �shareholders� this will also be outlawed.

As in the music industry, new technology has been used to scam artists in our sector of the creative arts, initially drawing in the talent and then after suckering them in, ripping them off.

The law and basic human rites are always slow to catch up with the 19th century mill owners, but it will come.

Or perhaps the advent of new technology will supersede microstock as we know it, like a search engine that seeks out individual websites of artist, photographers as a listing site, creating a market of independent online shops, which to a certain degree has been happening, maybe this will supersede microstock sites as we know them.

The other point I would make is, companies like Adobe have a vested interest in higher commission rates for us, as we buy their software, lets hope they hold their nerve, as many contributors (myself included) will only be uploading fresh content to them alone, ignoring SS/Getty and the other low hanging fruit, maybe 2022 could be a breakthrough year for Adobe.

I would suggest that if Adobe offered an exclusive contract, this could be a knock out blow for the likes of Getty and Shutterstock.

Personally, and I'm sure most people would like to see this, is Getty going bust and then wound down, with all the constituent parts sold off individually.

I also believe that there should be legislation on separating historic or commisioned photographs, art/illustation libraries from individual contributors portfolios on Microstock sites, companies should only be allowed to sell one or the other, or they should have the two types of content on totally separate sites.

Overall the outlook in the long term is better than in the short term.

Agree completely. Some of us actualy trained in this industry (or a related one) I trained in Graphic design back in the 1980s before everything went digital but when the internet got popular in the 2000s it became too difficult to earn a living at with websites like Fiver etc. I had to do another job but the horrible & rich new owners of the firm I worked for replaced my job & others with a machine. I then started photographing & selling things on Ebay, Amazon etc. but even that's declined in the last few years. It's much worse for me than most others because I have nystagmus in my eyes (limited eyesight) which naturaly limits the kind of work that I can do. (can't be a truck driver or plummer for instanse)
I could never have known back in the 80s that the internet was gonna be invented let alone how these websites would exploit others work. else I'd never have done art & photography..

Good news for me at Alamy:
. I haven't sold anything under $5 gross yet.
. Received my first $50 from Alamy in October. (started in June 2020)
Bad news: Nothing sold after that

Your specialised macro shots probably are popular on alamy. One of the 3 sales I had so far on alamy was a extreme close up of a flower. I only have 900 photos on there though. I think you need way over 1k photos on there to get any real sales.

Quote from: Level6 on December 27, 2021, 13:26

If only Adobe took editorial video and photos directly from contributors I'd basically go all in and upload everything I have. We need a 3rd viable site, Pond5 and SSTK take editorial but that's it,...

123RF & DT also take editorial & make submission simple - you can choose to have images automatically considered for editorial if they fail commercial standards.  great as you don't have to play guessing games about what they'll consider editorial

Yes they are great because you dont waste your time and just submit it to editorial unlike SSTK who don't care about wasting your time.

Ten sales today in China for 15c, all vectors, when I signed up to sell vectors on this site they assured me that they would sell for $30.00 each.

They have over the last five or so years renaged on this contract, dropping the price over and over again, tell they have reached rock bottom of 15c.

Alamy used to give it's profits to Charity, but since it has sold it's soul to PA Media Group (which really is the Daily Mail newspaper, owned by Viscount Rothermere a notorious tax avoiding family, he and his father have never paid any tax in the UK, his father was a well known supporter of Adolf Hitler). I write this, so you know the type of people and the context of the situation.

What is basically going on is exploitation, personally I'm never uploading to them again.

The Microstock market is a money grab by the wealthy, one has to ask one self, don't these people have enough already?

I'm moving in to different creative markets and leaving Microstock behind, after 12 years of designing, illustrating and photographing along with thousands of hours keywording and uploading, I will just leave my portfolios to run their course and then when they stop making money, I will delete them, with the exception of Adobe.

Anyone who is sane will do the same.

Well said. I'll think twice about staying with alamy with t''' s like that now owning it & they've halved the commission as well but for me it's 20% of nothing as i've only had 3 DLs there in 2 years.

shutterstock no longer has the capacity to maintain the forum. It's all the more amazing how often they ask me to participate in the contributor survey. I get it at least once a week.

After months I uploaded an image again. It was rejected because of noise. With all other agencies the problem did not exist. But I don't care. If they don't want it, they don't want it. I do not make a second attempt.

I saw an ss blog and an example for noise they gave in a photo was the factory ceiling at 100% but I can't see it. https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/how-to-avoid-a-visual-noise-rejection
There may be color noise but I'm not sure. The other examples are easy to see though. I had to start shooting in RAW to get rid of this color noise but SS still rejected some of my pics for another type of noise or grain especially ones with trees or foliage. The same pics were accepted on adobe and they are pretty strict in what they accept.

Quote from: Zero Talent on January 07, 2022, 14:57

Quote from: Level6 on January 07, 2022, 14:37

Quote from: Zero Talent on January 07, 2022, 11:06

Quote from: Level6 on January 07, 2022, 10:59

Quote from: Findura on January 07, 2022, 10:06

My downloads at SS have declined alarmingly.
None of my best sellers have been sold yet.
My portfolie has been in weekend mode for 7 days.
Also at AS things are unexpectedly very bad.
Nothing is going on at P5 so far, but that's nothing new. I've always had very few DL there.

I guess there is the recession, economy, omicron, also in play and things are getting worse all the way down the line.

What recession? Canada is not in a recession at the moment. Neither is the US...

Depends on what industry you're in I guess, I am in Ontario and in Ontario and Quebec it's near impossible to find any job

Sorry for your troubles, but Canada is not in a recession and neither is your province.
Besides:
Employment in Ontario rose for the sixth consecutive month, bringing the province's unemployment rates back below pre-pandemic levels.
https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/toronto/2021/12/3/1_5692371.html

Yep!, if you read the job reports in the media all through the pandemic you'd think it was the best of times here and the non-stop stories about the labour shortage and "employers can't find workers", I can start tomorrow, not looking for anything special and min wage is fine.  I've been looking for a year and looking and applying HARD since May because the writing was really on the wall for stock video and nothing yet.

If I have the time this weekend I need to deep dive into those stats and see who is actually hiring because just yesterday a company here laid off 5000 min wage workers.

It seems the same in my town which has been declining for years. ie shops boarded up outdoor market with less stalls but my country overall is not in recession. I watch someone's videos on YouTube where he looks inside large abandoned houses in Canada that had been empty for years. He never seems to run out of houses to explore. Maybe they were abandoned during a recession

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on December 24, 2021, 04:35

Shareholders need convincing the collection is growing faster than competing agencies. I wonder if they just accept this stuff then bury it from searches. Also wonder if/when shares eventually tank will SS face action  over this stuff (misleading shareholders)?

If you search, you will see more similars with him. https://www.shutterstock.com/nl/g/pisanstock?searchterm=flag+of+japanese.+The+rising+sun.&sort=popular   Not bad in quality, but I think if I uploaded them, a fair amount of these images would also be rejected as similar.
So much is uploaded and so much is rejected at Shutterstock, that there must be another reason. The shareholders mainly look at the profit and number of sales.

Omg those stripy patterns hurt my eyes and I'm an ex designer so why would anyone buy those?

I think the main stock sites need to explain to stingy buyers the advantages of paying for content instead of going to the freebies.

Almost every landscape photo that has trees with leaves is being rejected for focus (The main subject is out of focus or is not in focus due to camera shake). The other agencies have no issues with my photos. How is your experience?

Yep had exactly the same problem with tree photos yet DT Alamy & even adobe accepted them so I think ss don't want that subject and are too lazy to tell us the real reason

I know Alamy accepts vintage content because it's a UK site but not sure about others as copy wright law may be different in other countries like the US