I recall that years and years ago many contributors to iStock were complaining about 'good days followed by bad days'.  I experienced it myself - a couple of really good days would be followed by a sudden bad day.  It all smacked of income limiting and was very obvious at the time.

But they didn't do it by manipulating the search.  Search positions remained stable but sales dropped significantly.  It seems the way they did it was to limit what registered buyers could see - in other words the search results seen by individual buyers were not necessarily the same as the results seen by contributors or visitors.  iStock themselves confirmed that they could 'tailor' the search results for all registered buying accounts.

And this is probably what is happening at Shutterstock.  Yes the search might move around a bit generally, but if they really want to control sales they simply have to remove or reduce certain results seen by particular buying accounts.  They know which accounts are subscriptions, on-demand etc, and they know which contributors have had a run of above average sales or SODs.  It would be a simple process to pull back those contributors from visibility to certain buying accounts.  None of this will ever be seen by contributors or visitors - only by the registered buyers.

Interestingly I've noticed a similar situation on Dreamstime.  With their famous 'three good weeks followed by two bad weeks' again the search doesn't seem to change, yet sales can be dramatically different.  Again I suspect they are able to tailor results to particular buyers accounts.  For instance in January I had a very good month of on-demand sales.  Very good.  For the last couple of weeks though, all I've had is subs.  Somehow the on-demand sales have completely disappeared, more than just coincidence.  They only way they can do this is to 'remove' my portfolio from the registered on-demand customers temporarily.  Of course only the customers will actually see the changed search results.

Very likely all eyes are focussed on the Winter Olympics and Valentines Day.  I've noticed in the past Summer and Winter Olympics that my sales slow down during the games.

When I went non-exclusive nearly three years ago I started to upload to Alamy with some enthusiasm.  However I found sales very slow and the upload process tedious.  After about a year I gave up and considered the effort not worth it.  If it is indeed possible to make reasonable money at Alamy perhaps I should try again, but I must admit I am feeling somewhat reluctant.

Hi
How do you think the keyword Copy space affects the sale of images? A while ago almost every stock image that contain space for text had the keyword copy space. Even though it was just a tiny area with room for text etc.....Even images with absolutely no room for text had it.
I wonder....Is it useful to submit images with copy space keyword or can you just leave it out and add more descriptive keywords?
What do you guys think of this? Does this have any effect on sales?

For many years I always included the keywords copy space, copy, space, copyspace etc where an image had the appropriate space.  Lots of my images have space so I always thought it logical to include those words.  I believed (wrongly) that those words were important to buyers.

Then, in Oct 2012 (I think) iStock changed its search to only include the first six or seven most popular keywords.  I found that many of my files disappeared from searches that included the copyspace words.  Perplexed, I wrote to iStock and asked them about it - they replied and said that there is no evidence that buyers ever use those words for searching.  They were helpful in those days, so I wrote again and said I found that difficult to believe.  They then replied and said they'd carried out a small analysis of my sales and that the copyspace words were used in less than 5% of searches and sales.

When I went non-exclusive in Feb 2015 I naturally had to upload all my work to other agencies.  I refined my keywords but left the copyspace words intact.  Then, after a couple of years and a good volume of sales I had a look at various sites and found (again) that there was no evidence at all of those words being used to make sales.  I looked through my Shutterstock best sellers (where they list the top three keywords) and out of several hundred files the copyspace words didn't show once.

But perhaps the best source is the 'keyword cloud' at 123RF (look at your personal home page near the bottom).  The cloud shows the top fifty words used for downloads in your own portfolio.  Again, in my case, despite having probably thousands of files with the copyspace keywords, those words do not appear in my 123RF cloud.

So all the evidence suggests that istock were correct in their analysis - these words are hardly ever used by buyers.  And in fact because some agencies penalise images based on numbers of keywords, having these unnecessary words might actually result in fewer sales.

Nowadays I never include any of those words.

Very poor start to the year.  Sales running at only 50% of usual expectations.  Something appears to have changed, as others have pointed out.  Disappointed.

I started uploading a few batches of work to istock again a couple months ago.  I haven't really uploaded much since going non-exclusive two years ago.

I recall that the priority keyword system got broken a few years back and making views or sales from new uploads became very much a hit or miss affair (mostly miss).  Thing is - I'm still seeing very few views on newly uploaded files.  And I mean very VERY few views.  Some entire batches have zero views.

I remember they tried to remedy the problem by introducing the ability to put keywords into priority order in DeepMeta, but that didn't seem to work very well - the files still got jumbled keywords when they hit the site.  That function is no longer available.

Is anyone having success with new uploads to istock, or is the thing still broken from years back?

Enjoying using my new Fuji equipment.  However I find the results from the 18-55 lens rather hit and miss, with an unacceptably high number of blurry and out-of-focus results.  I've searched through the internet forums and find that many people have had problems with this lens - something to do with a conflict between the OIS system and the camera body.  I updated the body and lens firmware but the results are still patchy.  Never got this sort of thing with my Canon gear.  Looks like I'll have to get this lens exchanged or checked, or upgrade to the more expensive 16-55 F2.8.

I read a review of this lens which got excellent results.  But the reviewer qualified that statement with the remark 'if you can get a good one'.  Seems there's lots of variation in quality for this lens in particular.  Shame, because it's a nice size and weight lens, whereas the 16-55 is more like a housebrick.

It's a nice portfolio and you've got all the right ideas for someone starting out.  Over time you'll be able to refine your ideas once you begin to sense what sells.

As jsnover said - don't make things too complicated.

Your processing technique needs attention as a lot of images look dull and unattractive.  Work out how to get better colors and contrast.

Things with a white background have to be properly isolated and the background has to be truly white not grey.

Otherwise it's a good attempt at starting stock photography.

What about the SilkyPix Raw File Converter EX supplied by Fuji (there's a new version).  Does anyone use that?

A month ago was my first ss payment, nice!

Januari and Februari were good months, with some od's
Since three weeks i sold nothing, for me this is a unusual long period without sales
Is there someone else experiencing such long period withou sales?
My port contains around 150 images:
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/photosis?language=en

Nice little portfolio which appears to be on the right track for someone just starting out in stock photography.  All the advice given by others is correct - you need a larger portfolio, bright attractive images, some copy space where appropriate.

My own experiments suggest, as you say, that a short concise description gives better search placement for the 'relevancy' search.  Ten words or less ensures good relevancy placement for those words.  The 'popular' search appears to be based on the actual keywords used by buyers, and you can see these keywords in the 'insights - top performers' menu.

There is no evidence to suggest that fewer keywords results in better placement, however I have personally reduced my keywords in recent upload batches and found a better sales ratio for those new uploads.  However this might be coincidence.

I also got dumped.

No email received for my iStock account, and no email received for my separate Getty account either.  Absolute mess as usual.