note that it would be impossible for anyone starting out to get to 40% with the current system.

yeo. It happens. I think SS has a surge of images coming in and the reviewers have been told to get tough and new reviewers starting. Same for me - blanket composition rejections .

Hmm just thinking. IS is already second tier for most indies. Take out exclusives and PP and it is a very poor picture for the agency and perhaps worse for contributors sliding to 15% commission rate. I will not take pics down yet but it is not worth the trouble of uploading new images for very little commission if they even could be found. New images from from indies equals best match search death.

As said earlier you can be living in a false environment as an exclusive. Leave and you get a dose of reality. Many shots won't get past current reviews on SS (even though these can be very variable). Time to rebuild and suck up the initial pain or stay at IS as a protected species facing possible extinction. The best time to give up being exclusive was probable 12-18 months ago. We can not go back in time. The best time to do a road trip in Europe was 40 years ago sad but true.

Is your monitor calibrated??

Agree with whats been said, Also - face in shadow and yellow cast on first . Insufficient dof on shots. Make sure your monitor is calibrated for wb.

i shoot raw and use smart sharpen or selective channel filtering using a mask. Most parts of an image should not be sharpened, especially any sky.

Suits are not all dumb. They can look at IS and figure out it is best not to get greedy. Nice to receive the email.

Bigger question is: what can they do about it?

These things are hard to reverse.

Profit -They cut royalties but can not go much further. At zero percent royalty they would make less in six months than they 12 months ago. You can not keep cutting and contributors bleed but at a point they give up or die off. Accountants seek to increase profit by increasing profits increasing prices and decreasing costs. Generally a good way to kill the market and reduce supply. How could they fix it once done??

Exclusives got a respite from reality when the best match was changed but in a declining market share all that they were doing was giving them more of the shrinking sales. It was a one off. They are now feeling the heat. Being at the top of the search when less people are buying is not a help anymore. Now independents and exclusives are peed off.

Exclusives may have left it too late to jump ship. SS and others are getting pickier in their image reviews.Putting a big port onto to SS would not be straightforward. Many may go from lenient exclusive reviews at IS to tough reviews at SS.

PP sales make up more than IS sales for most of us so what is the point of IS??? As a way to get to dodgy poorly paying sites?? Many joined IS as a way to avoid that.

Software??? Will it ever recover?  Fraud?? Seems more of a problem there than anywhere else. Nothing is fixed. Upload limits? Less variety at higher prices with less happy contributors and buyers. I have retired from business writing and teaching but this has such value as case studies.

They have less sales due to price increases and customer relations/site issues. Initially less sales were compensated by higher price per sale. Sales go down further due to PP cannibalism and price hikes. They must have worried about backlash from loyal exclusives and pushed them up in best match (independents are already as pissed off as they can get so why worry about them?). Sales fall more and then they are left with even fewer options. You can not push the exclusives files further to the front (they are already there). Customers are not getting any more cheerful. Hard one to recover from. You could not push royalties lower? For me PP outperforms IS.

they should care about the customers and have a link to Shutterstock there ;-). Maybe SS will gie 10% off to new customers defecting?

Averages??? Head in an oven and arse in a freezer = comfortably warm!

reset doesn't work for me. Default keeps going back to exclusive.  I Just deleted files they put in as exclusive and in the free section. It costs them money to do this. Inspection just to delete.