my LR is a mess. Finding stuff in there is getting to be impossible.

Then spend the time to straighten it out.  it is well worth the effort.

I did that twice, many years ago.  After a year or so, I realized my photo organization was not working well.  I designed a new approach, and spent a day reorganizing.  That lasted maybe 3 years, until I realized I had outgrown that organization too.

I then did the last (well... most recent...) reorg around 6 years ago.  That one has stood the test of time, and only needed minor tweaking to keep it working well for me.  I live and die by Lightroom -- if it stops working, I am not sure I will be able to get up in the morning any more!

FWIW, I have roughly 300,000 images, mostly spanning the last 13 years, since I got into digital photog (with a Canon 5D).  Another 40,000 or so that are scanned images from the 1968 to 2005 period (college through first 5D).  If I want an image from that set, I can often find it in 5 seconds or less. Never more than a couple minutes for the oldest, most obscure images.

2) The DJI OSMO Pocket has a mechanical gimbal, which works great when I'm snowboarding, but when I'm just walking around in an urban area or even on a mountain trail, I see consistent slight bumps up and down as a I walk.

All the non-professional gimbals (ie, anything under about $20,000 or so) have that issue.  Do a YouTube search on using the Crane2 (the one I have) or any of the other brands (whose names slip me right now).  There are several that show you how you have to walk to avoid that problem.

Essentially, you bend your knees and do a "ninja walk" to get the smoothest video without the vertical bumping.

the same clip was accepted by all the other stock sites that I submitted it to.

Not the slightest bit relevant. Each agency has their own standards and what they are looking for. In fact, they would LOVE to have different media than their competitors. If they are identical media, then all they can compete on is price -- which is to your detriment...

Weird. I'll submit the video again and hope for the best.

Just move on to other media. Stop worrying about one agency not accepting one piece of media.  It happens every day to those of us that submit regularly.  It is simply not worth your time to flog a dead horse, and does not really help you in the long run.

FWIW, I have lots of media that was accepted by x by not by y.  When I see it sold on x, I used to smirk and say "I told you so."  However, when I tracked those media that got accepted after first being rejected, I have had ZERO sales on them. ZERO. NOT ONE.  Yes, they sold at the agencies that accepted them up front, but not at those that rejected it the first time.

What does that tell me? They have different clients looking for different media.  They aren't as stupid as people here seem to assume.  They are looking for media that fits THEIR clients, not a lowest-common denominator of clients.

Not sure, but if it's this outfit, it's closed as of March this year <snip>

I don't think it is the same. I am asking about ColourBox, while your link is ColorStock.  CBox has nothing to do with images of 'people of color' as far as i can tell from looking at portfolios there.

That was the forum topic on  'footage'. One of their footage contributors (Crossroads) had virtually the whole of page 1 of footage with any/all most popular keywords. SS admitted that they had been fiddling with the algo ahead of the launch of Shutterstock Select footage and that it was a glitch caused by them.

Thx. I went back and tried to find that discussion again, but came up empty.

My bet is from my experience on how these sites work, they aren't achieving anything at all, it's a complete waste of time.

Why do you think that?  If I am a buyer (which I have been on occasion), I go to a site and enter my keywords. 80+% of the time, I will choose an item from the first page that shows.  Sometimes onto page 2, and if i am really specific about my needs and am not seeing it, i might go further.

However, whoever is on page 1 of my search returns has by far the highest chance I will buy it.  If one guy controls that entire page, he has an 80% chance of making the sale (at least if I am the one buying)...

Just because you hit 300 doesn't mean you have earned the coupon...

I have never seen this in ANY of the announcements for this award, but it turns out you also must have at least 50% acceptance rate to qualify.  If you have 300 accepted, but have submitted 700 (and been rejected on 400), you will not get the award.

I only learned this when several months had gone by without my getting the award. I emailed them, and they responded that my acceptance was too low (and said that it had just gone above 50% that week, so I would now get it, which I did a couple weeks later).

In my case, I submitted a bunch of editorial images early in the year, to see if they would accept them.  Of course they rejected most (as I expected), but took maybe 20% of those.  Only later, when this award was announced, I found I had almost cost myself getting one...

There is also one question. What to do with images and videos from the same location? Is it possible to send a video from one location to BlackBox and to send photographs from the same location to others agencies manually (because BlackBox does not support images)? In such a case, there can be video on the BlackBox's account (for example on Shutterstock) and exactly the same composition on the photograph (different media) from contributor's account. That would be weird. Is it againt some rules? How to solve that?

Not a problem. Completely within the rules of both BlackBox and all agencies.  Videos and photos are separate media types, though it is not likely you would actually submit a screen-grab from a video into still stock. The resolution just would not be acceptable unless you were shooting at least 8K...

No help now, but for the future why not just keep a folder with all fully keyworded files (jpg version) on your drive? No need for another export, all ready to upload. Cost of disk space is not an issue any more...

YUCK!  What a TERRIBLE way to organize files!

Keyword the original edited RAW files.  Use something like Beard's addon to allow you to flag those sent to agencies without going into the keyword field.  Then export fresh JPG when you want to send to a new agency. 

This way, any new edits you do to the file are included, as are any improvements to name, description or keywords.

Those JPG are THROW-AWAY once they have been uploaded. No further use for them. Re-export if needed again.

The problem is not that I have lost the metadata. I use the Adobe Bridge to burn the metadata to the files and it is always there. The problem is that I have to go back and export all the images again from RAW to Jpeg. We are talking about thousands of files. This will take to much time.

Again, use Lightroom.  I typically export 100 at a time, simply because many agency submission systems choke on more than 100.

Create one export preset -- max jpg quality, etc.  Call it "stock" (or whatever you want).  Now select 100 images in Lightroom. Right-click, choose export->stock.  It will take about a minute to export 100 images with all the info, in whatever folder you have told it to use (my 'stock' preset goes to a folder I call 'stock upload' -- creative, ain't it?)

Now you go down your list of agencies and upload that 100 images.  I typically have a FTP program open and send to all those agencies, and a browser window with half a dozen tabs for all those agencies.  Set them up, and go have dinner.

Return when the uploads are complete, and then go to each agency for the final cleanup of your batch submission. 

Now onto the next batch (I tend to just do 100 per night, wait a few nights, then do another 100).

Unless you want to pay someone like StockSubmitter (and then spend hours trying to fix the mess it makes...), that ain't no easier way than this.

It's totally irrelevant, though.
If an agency decides not to accept photos of grass, that's their decision.

And THAT completely sums it up. Why is this thread even still hogging my RSS feeds?

Yeah, that's for October, after the sales have been notified. That's not real time reporting, which is what the OP asked.

You're right.  It is "real time" for all other agencies, but they pop up end of the month for iStock.