Mine are stuck at 3rd day. I wonder, subs are mixed with PP report? I don't see any new color and, if I remember well, Lobo says the subs sales will be reported when PP sales will.

Same here - that was fast. Seems like that industry is not driven by robots after all.

The search manipulation is not conspiracy theory, is just a fact. It is happening. Not everybody is affected indeed and that's why it is hard to believe. But those who are suffering from it can tell you. I am one of them, I used to have very good sales until the first of what SS called an "improvement" of the search algorithms, that caused a sudden drop of -35% in my sales, in April 2012. The second "improvement" took another -35% of my sales in April 2013 and that was overnight as well.
Top contributors, Chris among them, are reporting huge drops in March-April as well.

Nothing in my behavior has been changed (upload volume, quality etc) and both huge drop in sales took place overnight, so it is not me, it's them. I know it is hard to believe for those from you who didn't see anything but normal fluctuations in their sales over the years but trust me, if this will happen to you, you will know.

After six or more months of absence I returned to FT and uploaded about 70 vectors starting from Sunday. I had two rejections for "similar", no problem for the rest of them. It is not the fact of being approved surprised me but the speed of it. I honestly doubt a reviewer had the time to inspect every vector, they started to be approved before I finished the upload process, for every of the four batches, Sunday and Monday. Like it was an automatic process or something. I only stopped to see if there will be any effect over my sales - nothing big yet.

Quote from: adigrosu on February 03, 2014, 19:12

Quote from: Toopy on February 03, 2014, 08:39

My thought behind this topic was assumption that if you have here linked portfolio to SS, you can always go check for popular. So it is not that big secret. Even though mine is just simple coffee, it can help someone produce similar image but not the same. And I dont mind to share it.

Actually, checking someone's most popular files at Shutterstock you will get anything but really popular results. My "most popular" files displayed are new files that have 3-4 sales or less (or none). My real popular files that generated thousand dls over the year are not even on the first page, due to their "improved" and "complex" search algorithm.

Some of shutterstocks other comments are also priceless.  Quote: " Anecdotal claims in the forums are very hard to track down - to understand what's going on, you would need to isolate all of the attributes of the image, the keyword that was searched, whether the image was in a test, etc..."

The claims are not anecdotal when we have direct evidence for individual files that long term received 15 to 30 downloads every day; and then in the matter of one day our best files are given the permanent axe. You do not need image attributes to see that they no longer receive downloads or show up in searches. When it happens to most of them in one day, it is clear they purposely killed our best earning files.

Contrary to SS smoke and mirror claims we know full well what they have done.

Snip
scott wrote:   
It would be very difficult to answer something like this, because the algorithms are very complex; we run many different tests; and we see millions of searches. Anecdotal claims in the forums are very hard to track down - to understand what's going on, you would need to isolate all of the attributes of the image, the keyword that was searched, whether the image was in a test, etc...

As mentioned, the goal of all of this is to drive customer success, which ultimately delivers more downloads across the board and more royalties. It's easy (and understandable!) to worry about one image's specific search placement for a popular keyword search, but across all images and all searches, the net result is continuous improvement.

Best,

Scott

This is exactly what I mean. That's interesting that earlier today in a Shutterstock forum somebody quoted the same post of Scott and I quoted him, highlighting with bold pretty much the same that you did.
Claiming "the net result is continuous improvement" is pure sarcasm. I would very much like to see them on this side, being a full time microstocker. I assume they would be glad when  80% of their income would be taken away from them. At least they would know that "the net result is continuous improvement".

Their absence from SS forums says it all.

My thought behind this topic was assumption that if you have here linked portfolio to SS, you can always go check for popular. So it is not that big secret. Even though mine is just simple coffee, it can help someone produce similar image but not the same. And I dont mind to share it.

Actually, checking someone's most popular files at Shutterstock you will get anything but really popular results. My "most popular" files displayed are new files that have 3-4 sales or less (or none). My real popular files that generated thousand dls over the year are not even on the first page, due to their "improved" and "complex" search algorithm.

My application have just been declined by Colourbox. It appears I have to get better if I aim so high. Interesting, since my old copycats from Shutterstock have gathered there.
However, as this is the first rejection I'm facing in several years, I did a quick research about Colourbox.
Can't tell you how grateful I am about being rejected. Being pretty naive, it would take me month to realize that I'm being robbed.