BTW, that 'top-selling photo's of the week' page hasn't been updated for a while....note the preponderance of Valentines day images. 

I'm not popular enough to have mine stolen but everything there is stolen even old Yuri on SS!

I noticed a shot of Walmart on P1 from SS. That's an editorial.

I'm having a deep dive also @ FT. Constantly uploading, but still going down. I assume that's happening because of their "6-month kill" that is killing my bestsellers. Now we are talking about files that have been downloaded 1000-2000 times a piece! First sales are consistent 10 dl's per day and then overnight it's hardly one per day.

Have anyone else seen that after six months of uploading a file it just disappears from the "Relevance"? I've seen that for few of my files. It is not as important to be a leader in "Downloads" that it's to be in "Relevance".

I think that cut down is way too harsh. I understand that fotolia wants to push new content in front of the buyers and yes, it's also good for new contributors, but if we look at it from the quality perspective then I think their "Relevance" isn't pushing the best ones. The ones that really has the best quality and sales potential.

I'm sure that fotolia (and us) is losing huge amounts of revenue with their out-of-date search. I can say this because when overnight-kill beats up my bestsellers then those views are heading to files that aren't even close to the quality I have. I'm not being selfish here. Even my ass can see that.

That's exactly what happens at FT and has been going on for a few years now (the overnight kill-switch. Hero to zero within a day). Best sellers of mine do remain best sellers for longer than 6 months (about 12 months) but I've never had a best seller greater than 500. I wondered how long it would take for sales to drop after opting out of DPC and for me it looks like it's around 6 months. Could be due to summer slowdown but if sales don't improve by end September, I'll wait for payout and delete everything that sells/sold. They can have the rest forever!

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

Winston Churchill

Even if they got say 75cents per DPC sale, every ODD on SS not sold as a result of the DPC sale would still cost them 2 bucks. I can't imagine that they're getting 3X as many sales at DPC to compensate for the loss of ODD's income at SS. Haven't calculated my ODD's percentage exactly at SS but I think it comes to around 50% of monthly payments and I would hate to lose it. Maybe the image factories don't have that ratio of subs:ODD's or maybe they just don't care but I can't see them making it up on volume of subs.
Anyway,as long as the major factories are all opted into DPC, I don't see the number of images on DPC vs FT decreasing much more than it now is. Most of the small and medium sized producers that keep a finger on the pulse (us here), are already opted out.

Normally I wouldn't notice but some time ago, I had the idea that I/and or Mantis had a couple of brownie points accrued to our posts and now they've gone. Is FT sending in the troops to ensure that no anti-FT post gets hearted, I wonder. Heehee, come out come out wherever you are...you anti-hearters. 

Quote from: marthamarks on June 13, 2014, 20:13

Here's an image on Stocksy that really blows my mind.

http://www.stocksy.com/224056

Can anybody explain the appeal of an image like that?

I'm not going to comment on this image, but to answer your question, no, I cannot.

At least the background is sort of sharp.

As opposed to some of this portfolio on SS:

http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-198979p1.html

I have to say that I like that port a lot but I've never managed to get any 'defocussed' stuff past the SS reviewers.....and I have tried. 

Quote from: michaeldb on June 26, 2014, 18:44

The stock market has been hitting record highs for a long time. There is no real economic basis for this kind of optimism - it's just that the Fed has kept interest rates so ridiculously low that you can't make any interest so people have to buy stocks to have a hope of beating inflation. Anyone buying stocks at these highs will probably have to wait years to make a profit.

In the current situation, I can see why someone would sell. It may have more to do with the overall market than the company.

Agree. We're living in a giant game of Monopoly where the bankers are helping themselves to the till, the politicians are the gate keepers and the real economy is taxed to within an inch of its life to keep the game going just a little longer.

I like this 'quote' from a George Carlin performance:

You know how I define the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there... just to scare the sh** out of the middle class. Keep 'em showing up at those jobs.

 

Possibly...RSI @70+ is quite high but the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

And yes, Insight sold their 1.6 million shares @ nearly $80/share...no doubt someone in wall Street had to buy them in....and WS rarely loses so the stock may still be being distributed to 'suckers' at the present level of $84 before the plug is pulled. Might even go back toward $100 before then. WS loves to make profits and they have to come from someone.

Did I mention that I know nuffin! 

Don't trust Fotolia, that's for sure. I am also anonym in this forum, because I am afraid.

Some years ago, I had some questions about something (tax related), so I politely asked in the support section. They answered with a standard answer, with not really reading my question and definitely not answering it. So I asked again, politely. I received the same standard answer, not about my problem. I finally got a little angry and asked again...not very polite, I have to admit. But I wanted to get noticed without getting again the same wrong answer. I also told the story in the official forum, that the people working in the support-section are not really helping, maybe they are idiots or so.

I remember in 2010? when the question of US tax reporting was introduced. Support was worse than useless and gave completely wrong advice about which form was required for European residents. That little farce involved some submitters in costs to obtain notarized copies of forms they never needed in the first place. At that point, I decided never again to have anything to do with their 'support' which I reckon, in reality, was probably 'Son of HAL9000' installed somewhere in Mumbai. 

Ok, here is a perfect example. Go to the Shutterstock main home page, scroll down a bit and click on the Photos tab. On the left hand side there is a very nice photo of asparagus.

Now, I dare anyone to try to duplicate that photo and get it passed the SS reviewers now.   I can almost guarantee that it will be refused for a) poor lighting (shadows) and/or b) cropping.

Something happened to the review system a few months ago. What used to go though approved before, will more than likely be rejected now. Everything is taken too literally. That sweet little asparagus photo would not exist there today, if left up to the current review system.

Not sure I could agree on the asparagus example, though. Whilst I've never seen that photo before (honest!) I recently submitted a set of photo's containing asparagus (some very close up and selective focus) and they were all accepted. All were lit using small tungsten spots; none of which has an identical colour temperature. No rejection even on wb.

OTOH, some outside stuff taken in natural sunlight does get rejected on wb! So I duuno. 

There are probably less then 5000 serious contributors in microstock.
Using the Fotolia week rank, I got it to 4000 once with less than 200 pictures there.

A few industries are probably responsible for more than 80% of the uploads. There will always be people from undeveloped countries where 0.25/d is not that low, but they are not the big threat here.

I've got less than 500 images there and my seven day rank is regularly under 3,000 depending on how many sales I make. My regular rank is 5,000 and it is rare that my 7-day ranking goes above the 5,000 but sometimes it does for a day or two.

I would agree with gostwyck that opting out of DPC has made little difference to sales volume on FT main site and it is 'encouraging' to note that DPC-optersout do not appear to be being punished as optersout of subs were punished at FT in the old days. (If you opted out of subs as an exclusive, within days, your images were never seen and sales dropped off a cliff. FT actually explained how the algo worked and why you would get few sales when opted out of subs).

As to serious contributor numbers, I don't know how many there would be. I'm a serious contributor with relatively few images. I make most of my money with the occasional commission from long-standing clients. Nevertheless, I wouldn't like to go without my stock income even if it is less than �300/month. It is not to be sneezed at. And I do keep adding to my portfolio at a steady but minimal rate.

What does surprise me about DPC is that at least one image factory with 500,000 images is still opted in despite having the same port at Shutterstock. If I were to lose my ODD's income at SS because I opted in to DPC, then my income from SS would easily be halved. If an image factory with income from SS and DPC saw that SS income halve as a result of buyers downloading from DPC instead of buying ODD packs at SS, I would think they would notice that drop in income and withdraw from DPC to protect their SS ODD sales. But maybe things work differently when you have 500K pics at every agency on the planet! Maybe they just don't care or have some sort of links with DPC/FT that they're not going to reveal.

Istock is saying we need more puppets in our videos

More puppets in the videos and more muppets to make 'em.