Backbone? us the contributors?  Oh dear, well maybe some eight or nine years back we could afford the luxury of that thought. Things have changed my friend.
Today we are numbers, just numbers among millions of other numbers and if a member quits today he or she is replaced within five seconds.

Just shows you how clever composites can earn lots of money. Funny thing is that categories like travel, nature, landscapes even wildlife have little by little declined as stock over the years. There are of course millions and millions of these type of images in all the stock-agencies.
A friend of mine who worked with GI told me the images that nowadays bring in the most money per/image are lifestyles, industrial/corporate, business and models.

You have to admire these people though, wildlife, nature photographers. They are exclusivly in the hands of weather and wind, sometimes dangerous places. They really takes risks getting their pictures.

How about war photographers then? I used to know one, Don MacCullin, he shot incredible war photography, member of Magnum. I think he got hit by stray bullets every now and then. Great photographer.

Back in 98 the average price for a stock photo was hundreds of dollars. Big difference from today. Back in 1999, GI sold me a picture of the interiors of a bank for. $. 7000. LOL that would never, ever happen today.

Looks as if there are some minor changes to the sort-order. No bad effect yet, had a good day yesterday but I hope we are not in for a dry spell.

We should consider the possibility that this stuff isn't even being submitted, inspected and approved - but that SS has people generating it internally, just to pump up their numbers.  There is absolutely nothing to stop them from doing this.

For all we know you might be right? nothing surprises me anymore in this business. There is little doubt that SS sales are declining and quite rapidly so. The only reason they keep telling the world about their 60 million images is to impress share-holders not buyers. Contributors are not worth anything they are expendables and can be replaced tomorrow.

The new management don't care about spam, don't care about relations, bugs glitxhes or anything. They will milk the place dry, drain every ounce out of it while they can. Afterwards you couldn't even sell it for a song.

Since the bean counters are desperate for money they have been pushing subs, packages for a long time now. That way, crap is enough to sell. They don't go after the big buyers like ad agencies, designers. They want the small time buyer here and there and then second rate material is good enough.

Quote from: Sebalos on September 21, 2015, 06:55

I have also a "strange theory". I believe that people's earnings are depending on the area where they are. I read a lot of information about earnings on this forum (and not only here) and I believe if I l lived in Germany, U.K., U.S.A, and so on, my income would have been higher. Also, if I lived in Moldova, Georgia, Syria, etc. my earnings would have been lower.
What do you think ?

I wouldn't be surprised at all if the local search tends to show local artist's work. Of course this makes no sense for most images, but if some bean counter saw some small benefit to it it would be implemented. If you live somewhere far away from most photo buyers that would hurt your sales. I am tempted to change my address to NYC.

Haha!  for all you know you might just be right on that one. There is such a thing as a geographical search, so why not an area search. The things they can get up to when it comes to tweaking searches are just incredible.

Quote from: pancaketom on September 20, 2015, 20:39

One way to try to "spread the wealth" and keep more submitters happy would be to follow a big sale with a relatively poor placement for a bit.  This would be hard to prove, although seeing your images move down in the search following a big sale would be pretty good evidence.

So far nobody in this discussion (and previous ones) has come up with such an observation.
This is why I personally don't believe that this active "capping" really happens.

Its never been a matter of spreading the wealth or keep submitters happy. Its always been a matter of keeping large producers of pictures, High commercial value suppliers happy. They make up the agency strength, the backbone of any stock-agency.

If X comes along and drop a portfolio of travel or landscape images X will be one in a million. Simultaneously another photographer comes along and drops a portfolio of images from the future and options exchange, stock-exchange, dealers, etc all with MR's.

Which one of these suppliers do you think will raise the agency eyebrows?

First thing she needs to do, dump all collections. Just House, RM, RF and "micro"

Possible answers to some questions (theoretically - I have no solid proof of anything, so this is a speculation):
 - An agency can easily limit a contributor's exposure in search results. It's fairly easy to do, just some not too complicated code.
 - Why would they do that? They are interested in getting fresh content daily. For someone starting now, it would be nearly impossible to sell anything, unless their new content is pushed up in searches. If someone's content is being pushed up, someone else's has to be pushed down. How much down? - now here is a big question. Some time ago I had an interview with SS's contributor's department, and first thing I was asked if I was happy with my earnings. I wish I said no (which was the truth - I feel I should be earning more with my portfolio), but I misunderstood the purpose and the context of the question and said yes. My earnings have been on that level ever since. It could be that they would pay you whatever they think you'd be happy with to keep uploading.
- Why wouldn't they display they "best" results to customers? Well, is there even such a thing with over 60 million images? It's A LOT of images, and even if most of them are mediocre, there is still A LOT of good ones to choose from even if they do cap people's earnings. Customers won't lose anything, and the agency would still get their sales.
Again, in the absence of any proof or statements from agencies this is all speculation. However, something's definitely going on, I wish agencies kept us informed about thing like that, at least we'd know what to expect. Most likely they won't of course, but I am fairly convinced that we're not dealing with the "let the best man win" environment like it was in the early days of microstock.

Capping earnings has been going on for ages and not just in micro-stock but even in the larger traditional photo-agencies. This was a way to keep solid and productive photographers on the books, photographers that could produce special commercial material.

This I can agree with, if I was running an agency of course I would want to ensure keeping the best photographers happy or else they go.

The capping in micro-stock is not the same its difficult with hundreds of millions of pictures. In micro-stock they seem to set some sort of a roof on your earnings. People talk about the "wall" well IMO this could be the so called wall.
Lets say my average monthly earning is in the region of $.2000. Now if this is reduced to lets say $.1000/month I will become less productive, less interested in supplying. Human nature! therefore they will somehow ensure that my earnings will remain in the region of $.2000.
This is easily done with the Internet, all search changes, algorithms and so on. No big deal at all. The GI search is a classic, aggregators like Blend and the house images are almost always in the front line of any searches. Popular! is another search method of ensuring that good selling and commercial material is given first option.

Nowadays agencies can do almost anything they want and the overwhelming majority of just " ordinary" members won't even notice, won't even think about it.

Quote from: weymouth on September 19, 2015, 10:03

I am surprised this comes to light now. As I said earlier its nothing new at all. Been going on for a long time. Now all of a sudden people start noticing it?

Well, if you think it only happens to you, you might think it's coincidence. But when you see, other people have same experiences too, it might be some truth in this.

Thats what I am saying. It's facts!  and there are loads of people experiencing the same thing, earnings are somehow capped or shall we say somehow controlled.

It is a fact.  Happens all the time, every time.  For example, I had a $140 day this week then the next three (up until today) I have had zero OD's, zero SOD's and only a hand full of subs leaving me about $15 each day after.  It happens far too often to say it is something other than an algorithm adjustment based on sales.

Yes and a big fact! it's been going on for months now. Looking at my monthly sales for the last six months and they differ no more then $.50. give or take

Michael Jay is absolutely correct. I have heard many buying from Adobe/FT saying the Procedure is very easy and very well explained.

On the note of out of focus shots, well take Shutterstock as an example, none of their reviewers have learnt the art of depth-of-field selective focus or anything. So whats  the best of two evils?