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Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock CEO Says New Business Plan Hinged Upon Total Overhaul of IT
« on: June 03, 2017, 07:41 »
Noticed quite a lot of negatives about the CEO on 'glassdoor'.
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Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock CEO Says New Business Plan Hinged Upon Total Overhaul of IT« on: June 03, 2017, 07:41 »
Noticed quite a lot of negatives about the CEO on 'glassdoor'.
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General Stock Discussion / Re: How was your April?« on: May 01, 2017, 15:39 »
Yep. That's the trouble with SS this last year. April marginally better than March but now the months of this year are around 25-50% down on previous years despite a portfolio increase of 50% in the last 2 years. Going to have to find a more remunerative reward for my genius! 203
General - Top Sites / Re: How is this possible ?« on: April 17, 2017, 07:00 »black is the new colorful Remarkable that all the similar images appear almost identical and from the same contributor. They only started serious uploading around the end of 2016 (image numbers from 52........ onward) and they already have 35K images in portfolio. As far as I can see, their technique is now find a 'celebration day' and add that to 100+ standard backgrounds that have different colours. 204
Shutterstock.com / Re: Someone reselling items« on: April 13, 2017, 05:56 »
Judging by the video number, it was 'earning'/stealing for quite a few months before being taken down.
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General Stock Discussion / Re: Pond5 is paying EU contributors from Ireland now, what about VAT?« on: February 25, 2017, 13:09 »
VAT in NL is simple. If you are required to charge VAT to a customer, you do that and complete the required VAT reporting every quarter or month. When you don't receive VAT payments from stock agencies because they're registered in USA or Canada etc, you can't report it because no VAT was involved in your payment. How the stock agencies work the VAT that they have to charge customers licensing images in the EU, I haven't a clue.....that's their problem.
Adobe appears to do all their 'transactions' in NL via Ireland. FT/Adobe payments come through Ireland as does my subscription to Photoshop CC. As I'm VAT registered here in NL, I don't have to pay VAT on my PS CC subscription after I've provided Adobe with my NL VAT registration number. (Falls under intra-community transactions, I believe). 206
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock - New earning table design and new contributor dashboard« on: February 19, 2017, 11:29 »Can't find number of followers ...Believe that hasn't worked for a year or two Dunno whether that worked or didn't work when last seen....now it's completely disappeared with the new layout. Sorry....found it. Go to 'Earnings' in the new dashboard and click on 'delayed earnings'. Hover mouse over earnings and you'll get current month earnings with dl's and followers. First I had zero followers, then it jumped to 6 and sometime last year it went to 7 where it remained since then. 207
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock - New earning table design and new contributor dashboard« on: February 18, 2017, 08:33 »I think the most recent thumb is blue bordered - the one with the location listed. Correct. I think that the idea of the new dashboard is to constantly remind us ungrateful peasants just how much we have earned in our lifetime with Shutterstock (hence the largest size font) and to distract us from the more recent earnings decline that many have complained about. 208
Shutterstock.com / Re: down the toilet« on: February 01, 2017, 18:14 »Seems to me that the real damage to sales is being done by the change in 'search'. When a potential buyer clicks on one of your images, they used to be offered similar images (based on keywords) from YOUR portfolio (same artist). Now the offering of alternatives is often not from your portfolio and is a pixel-based/color-pattern similarity search. If I were a buyer who had searched using keywords, I'd be seriously annoyed at SS offering these pixel-based alternatives because often they're totally irrelevant. You're right. Buyer's site in private browsing gives completely different (alpha sorted) order. In contributor mode it's alphabetical. 209
Shutterstock.com / Re: down the toilet« on: January 31, 2017, 09:02 »Seems to me that the real damage to sales is being done by the change in 'search'. When a potential buyer clicks on one of your images, they used to be offered similar images (based on keywords) from YOUR portfolio (same artist). Now the offering of alternatives is often not from your portfolio and is a pixel-based/color-pattern similarity search. If I were a buyer who had searched using keywords, I'd be seriously annoyed at SS offering these pixel-based alternatives because often they're totally irrelevant. Another thing I've just noticed about the search is that in the past is that the keyword order changed as the image sold more frequently. Keywords appeared to be ordered on the basis of popularity as the image sold.....not any more. Keywords are now purely in alphabetical order as they appear under the image selected. Hardly surprising that sales of established portfolios have changed drastically (mostly for the worse according to contributors here). 210
Shutterstock.com / Re: down the toilet« on: January 30, 2017, 04:05 »
Seems to me that the real damage to sales is being done by the change in 'search'. When a potential buyer clicks on one of your images, they used to be offered similar images (based on keywords) from YOUR portfolio (same artist). Now the offering of alternatives is often not from your portfolio and is a pixel-based/color-pattern similarity search. If I were a buyer who had searched using keywords, I'd be seriously annoyed at SS offering these pixel-based alternatives because often they're totally irrelevant.
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Shutterstock.com / Re: December so far« on: January 01, 2017, 05:52 »Might be interesting to know! This factory with a few photographers with over 100.000 files at Shutterstock. Spoke to one of them this morning. Yesterday they had 2 downloads and today at 12 noon still nothing. I cant even put in writing what they said about SS. Makes me feel somewhat better with less than 700 files but I have never had 2 consecutive days of zero sales until now (30th and 31st Dec). Money OK for the month thanks to more than $100+ in SODs but down from Dec 2015 by 16% and downloads almost halved! Fails to inspire for 2017. 212
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock takes action against spammers!« on: November 26, 2016, 07:55 »
I noticed that Jon Orringer posted a FB message thanking SS contributors for their help in weeding out the title spammers.
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Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock takes action against spammers!« on: November 26, 2016, 07:35 »For what its worth my explanation is contributors were ignored but once buyers started complaining, and possibly defecting to the likes of Adobe something had to be done........I really want a explanation from the company why several month nothing happens and the contributors were ignored.To be honest I rather think its a waste of your energy if they did give an explanation you may well not believe it. I may be too fatalist but I think to survive in this environment its best to focus on what you can control. I remember thinking as much a couple of weeks ago. Only when the buyers start voting with their feet will something be done. Looks like the buyers started shuffling out the door. 214
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock do nothing with spammers.« on: October 16, 2016, 15:22 »Shutterstock should send another email warning that those who don't amend their descriptions/keywords by a given date, will have their accounts suspended, and then actually follow it through. That is probably what SS will do, unfortunately. Thereby punishing the thousands of correct users of this facility (of which I too occasionally make use) because there's a few smarty-pants b*****s who abuse it. In the description field, it's sometimes difficult to avoid using a word more than once but restricting it to a maximum of two or three times should be sufficient. 215
Adobe Stock / Re: Help me understand these best selling images on Fotolia...« on: October 16, 2016, 10:41 »
In the good old days when you could see how many sales an image had on Fotolia, best sellers of the day often only had one or two sales in total (since approval). IMO completely fictitious or randomly generated file number.....sort of like the lottery.
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Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock do nothing with spammers.« on: October 16, 2016, 09:55 »
I thought this problem of spamming the description was confined mostly to vectors. However, I came across this photo of soup today in 'Best Match'. Only just approved judging by its number and already #1 in 'Best Match' already on page 1 (middle) of 'Most Popular'. Category 'soup' photo's has 290,000 shots.
http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/706681/496729930/stock-photo-soup-in-clear-soup-mug-on-wooden-table-soup-soup-soup-soup-soup-soup-soup-soup-soup-soup-496729930.jpg Description =soup in clear soup mug on wooden table [soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup. soup] 217
Shutterstock.com / Re: Goodbye Shutterstock« on: October 14, 2016, 06:08 »Shutterstock has a problem with spammers, that's in the open, but I had no idea how big the problem was.I guess that blows the theory about needing super clever keywording strategies to get to the top. I'm surprised repeat keywords are allowed let alone seeming to add weight to the relevance The keywords are all different (albeit very slightly) because the SS keyword filter automatically removes duplicates. Clearly, this is not the case for the description where 'arrow.' repeated 40 times is 'allowed'. And the description seems to have more weighting in the search algo than we have perhaps been led to believe. 218
Shutterstock.com / Re: Countdown to 100 Million on SS - is over« on: September 12, 2016, 16:09 »https://twitter.com/jonoringer/status/773921086237016065 ...and even better for Big O, those 200,000 newbies may have to wait a year or so before they reach payout. Like having creditors' terms that give you a year to pay instead of 30 days! 219
Shutterstock.com / Re: SS contributor login problem« on: August 22, 2016, 05:35 »
Contributor log-in down most of the morning in the Netherlands. And no search results available on Shutterstock buyer's site.
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Shutterstock.com / Re: Maps Download Info isn't working« on: August 20, 2016, 04:57 »
Yup. Not working since sometime on Thursday. Maybe it's another part of the 'new normal'.
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Shutterstock.com / Re: Unreported sales today? Glitch?« on: July 23, 2016, 14:26 »
Well, looking at the SS earnings rating on the right hand side of the page (105.7), someone(s) here is doin' da bizznizz at SS.
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General Stock Discussion / Re: fotolia are they worth the time?« on: July 23, 2016, 14:10 »
One thing to be aware of with FT compared to SS is that FT allows Print on Demand for a sub price.
Poster producers can print up a poster from your work at FT and you get a pittance. 223
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutter Stock Sales Drop« on: July 02, 2016, 08:38 »
I have to wonder whether re-kewording old images that are so far down the sort order is going to make any difference to their sales. I've done it with a few old and even not-so-old images but it seems to have no effect. Time and number of sales within a short time on the site seem to be the most important factors for a good position in search.
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Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutter Stock Sales Drop« on: July 02, 2016, 06:44 »These guys currently occupy a good portion of the most popular images on SS: Interesting thing about that factory (and I've seen others that do it too) if you click on their 'about' on that contributor page, their website is not so much a web site as their own stock agency using their SS page as a link. I didn't look further but I'll bet that their prices for ODDs' packages are better than those of SS. Maybe these guys and others are taking the business in ODDs, SODs and ELs away from SS which could also be a reason for declining earnings for other contributors. 225
Shutterstock.com / Re: Disappearing sales« on: April 25, 2016, 13:57 »
Totally crazy. Money total increases with an ODD but no ODD showing in sales. Then later the ODD shows up in sales and the money total reduces to what it was before the ODD. Fortunately the amount with ODD was a pallindrome and I screen snapped it with time code so I have proof.
Edit: 10 minutes later and it's back to where it should be! |
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