I would not be surprised. After all we already know for a fact that this happens regularly on Alamy. I have found multiple images of mine online credited to Alamy, but never had any sales for these images reported on Alamy. And in some cases the images had been used on websites for well over a year.
When I contacted Alamy, they "hunted down the sale" and the images were reported as sales after all, but had I not taken any actions, I would never have gotten money for these sales. And I have read of similar stories from other contributors.
 And finding these unregistered sales was only possible because the sites credited Alamy and because I have so few sales on Alamy that it is easier to know that an image has never been reported as sold. But on Shutterstock, with severl hundred sales per month, when I find an image online, even IF it is credited to Shutterstock, then I have no way to know whether the particular sale was reported or not.

I requested payment last week. God the usual mail where I had to confirm the payment request. Didn't get the payment yet, but they say it can take up to 14 days and that's usually how long it has taken in the past.

The clause that Me thinks is about using our images for AI training looks more like protecting themselves.  If someone thinks their Depositphotos images have been used that way, they can't sue Depositphotos.  I don't think they intend to do it themselves, but are concerned by some of the lawsuits they have seen lately.

"Depositphotos distributes the Files to third parties under various types of paid and unpaid agreements. Such agreements may cover various areas of permitted use, including right to use the Files for the development and training of algorithms, networks, technologies and solutions."

does not sound like some concern over lawsuits to me, but pretty much, as it says, that they will give our images to third parties that may use them for AI training. Even without compensating us. 

Quote from: Her Ugliness on February 02, 2024, 12:48

"EIN/TIN/SSN does not match Vendor Number - Please Retry (0)."

Same as last year.
I guess I will never get that 1099 form.

Yes, that's misleading. It's not Adobe's EIN. It is your Member ID number. You can find it at the bottom of your account detail page.

Yes, I entered the Member ID and I entered my TIN the same it is in my tax form submitted to Adobe, still get the error message.

These are my statistics with them. I guess they are next to close after Canstockphoto.

2020 - around 600 videos - 7 sales - total $109.35 ---- highest sale $36       RPD- 15.62
2021- around 1500 videos- 13 sales- total $88.14  ---- highest sale $19.09  RPD-   6.78
2022- around 2500 videos-  9 sales - total $68.26  ---- highest sale $17.79  RPD-   7.58
2023- around 3500 videos- 12 sales- total $38.56  ---- highest sale $6.18    RPD-   3.21

Ouch.
I have an average of about 50 sales per month there. I don't sell videos though, just photos.
Not a big earner, but decent and steady income for me. Usually better than the other small agencies.
Don't see why they should close anythime soon, no noticable decline in sales or revenue for me.

It's no different from other sites.
Embed the keywords as metadata in your images and save yourself the extra work of adding keywords for Dreamstime or any other agency.

Quote from: Her Ugliness on January 28, 2024, 12:08

Quote from: DiscreetDuck on January 28, 2024, 06:55

Quote from: Her Ugliness on January 28, 2024, 03:42

Quote from: DiscreetDuck on January 28, 2024, 03:22

If not happy be mature, stop complainning and quit the place.

As soon as you give me a good alternative how to earn my livelihood I will do that. So far no one was able to and who would quit their job without having an alternative?

We share the same goal, earn a livelihood. And I revised my expectations significantly downwards.
Realize that you kill yourself your own future (and other's) using AI. See you in a near future with more complaints, since I've got ideas about what this leads to, since AI will be soon autonomic. Of course, one could argue that if you don't do it yourself, others will do (Only sheep expect others to act like sheep too) However, I remain convinced that I made the right choice not to provide ANY AI generated fake photo IMAGE (Because yes, they are not photographs, even though the platforms sell them as such).
 
My portfolios are in no way polluted by these images and they will perhaps be spared during the big clean-up (who will come in his time, whether by deleting certain contributor accounts or by the eviction of their images by algorithms, which will lead to the same), since for me, a photograph is a subject (often living), a real place, an existing moment, even the memory of an event, the transmission for the future, the reflection of the organic, a skill resulting from long training, a subtle and sensitive testimony, unsuspected creativity, a personal visual interpretation of reality, but also imperfection, accident, unpredictable, and therefore charm.
 
Is this really the tool you want to use to secure your future?

 I was under the impression this was a thread about Shutterstock and I am pretty sure I specifically talked about my Shutterstock earnings. Shutterstock does not even accept AI images.

So what in the world are you talking about...?

Omg, it's so low level here.
In any case, you did not respond to my message with anything intelligent, that would have surprised me.
Reread the topic, where is written "Adobe Stock" too... yes, the impression -you were under- was fake, as fake as the images you make the machines make by using AI.
 
Forget, have a lovely day, explore your keyboard typing your prompts, I will continue to enjoy exploring and promoting reality by using my eyes. 

You just don't make any sense.

If not happy be mature, stop complainning and quit the place.

As soon as you give me a good alternative how to earn my livelihood I will do that. So far no one was able to and who would quit their job without having an alternative?

While this is very unfortunate that this is happening and while I actually 100% believe this to be true (have seen too many AI images that had the exact same title as other people's photos), I do not believe there is anything you can do about it or Adobe will do anything about it.
The stance of microstock agencies has always been that it was completely okay to steal other people's ideas.

I know this from the past when people came here showing illustrations/vectors that were copied. It even happend to me once myself. People take other people's artwork, basically redraw it with minor changes and submit it. And in some cases there were way too many almost identical illustrations in the ports for it to be a coincidence only.
I know that whenever the contributors complained to the agencies the reply from the agencies where that there was nothing wrong with this. Stock agencies only consider it theft when an exact image is stolen, but don't care when the image idea, title or keywords are stolen.

It has always been very upsetting and of course it's even more upsetting now. At least with illustrations the thieves "only" stole the idea, but still had to do some work. Now AI does all the work and other people just leech off other peoples' real work.

Not having any other video contributors providing insights on the performance of stocksy in selling videos speaks volumes

I must conclude that stocksy is best for photographers.

Not sure that's the right conclusion, I think we just don't have many contributors on this forum that got accepted to Stocksy in the first place, probably just a handful, and they happen to be photo contributors only.  And if you don't have anyone who got accepted into Stockys who is a video contributor, you just don't have anyone to tell their experience.

I think the level system is extremly vague anyways. The FAQ just says "When the amount of downloads per image reaches a specific number the level of the file is increased", but it doesn't tell you what that "specific" number is. Is it 5 downloads? Is it 50?

I found the information that "The prices go up 2-3 credits for each level. Level 5 images are between 11 and 20 credits", but even that is vague? Why "between 11-20 credits?" Is it 11 or is it 20? How comes no one knows?

And the same source says that the final cost of an image is determined by the credit pack the customer buys. This means you might get less for a level 5 image if the person buying the image has a 2000 credit pack than you might get for a level 1 image if the person has a 11 credits pack. So, at least according to this source (stockphotoguides.com), the levels are also for subscription sales, not just for non subscription! But I can't confirm, as no detailed information can be found on Dreamstime's site.

All very intransparent. In the end I never held much hope for the level system anyways. It might probably work if you have very unique images, but as soon as your image is more generic and there are 5873 of the same topic in the database, it might just mean that customers will serach for a cheaper image once yours costs more, so the system might be sabotaging your sales.

Quite honestly? I think you are putting too much thought into this.
Adobe's rejection reason are extremely vague and can mean anything or nothing at all and from my experience of the past months, rejections there have become completely random. Submit a batch, get 100% rejections, re-submit it, get 100% approval. There is no consistency. It didn't use to be like this in the past, but seems to be the new normal at Adobe.
The real rejection reason might just as well be "Reviewer is feeling grumpy today".