Quote from: stockyme on September 26, 2016, 12:01

Hi All,
I've about 600 images on alamy and I've received 2986 views - 6 zoom but never got any sale, Is it still keywords fault or just the Alamy slow sales?

Thanks!

6 zooms out of 3000 views equals a click thru ratio of only 0.2%, while the Alamy contributor average is usually around 0.6%. This means your pictures are thee times less likely to be clicked on than average.

This is a strong indicator that there's something wrong. Maybe you added too many irrelevant keywords, so your images show up in searches they shouldn't. Remember to keyword only what the image is of, not everything that's in the image. Or maybe your images just can't compete with other similar images on Alamy. Professional postprocessing is a must.

In the end, without a link to your Alamy portfolio, or without knowing your Alamy contributor name, it is impossible to tell what's wrong.

While I agree that it is probably not wise to have the same pictures on Alamy and on microstock agencies, I don't think this is the main problem in your case. After all, potential customers don't even click on your images to zoom them (I assume a customer zooms an image before trying to get it cheaper somewhere else).

Quote from: Nica on October 16, 2016, 13:19

well bot has its day off 

6hrs...

Hi all,

Some people claim that SS gives something like a grace period of couple of months (6?) to new contributors by making their pictures sell no matter what, with good numbers. So as to create an illusion of extremely easy and profitable business with them. I kind of didn't believe this and still have some reservations as to this theory, however, my own statistics of 1.5 years' experience with SS basically supports this claim:


(greyed area - uploads, red line - downloads, blue boxes - revenue)

As you can see, my upload rate was always quite stable, without much interruptions. Basically, in these 1.5 years my port increased almost 600%, and while the very first 6 months my revenue increase rate followed uploads, as of 7th month everything just fell to the levels of the first 4th-5th months where it stays until nowadays, no matter how many material I upload.

Of course, there's always the fact of insane increase of their library (almost 1 million per week!) which dillutes everything, but back in mid-2015 their library was also increasing significantly each month (300K-500K per week?).

From the very beginning SS was my Top-1 earner, hence all the motivation. But it's clearly loosing steam very quickly, and the problem is that none of other agencies can make up this loss (even Fotolia's recent increases are still a matter of statistics, not a real substitute to SS).

Oh, and my only 4 or 5 ELs so far sold with SS were made in those first 6 months...Not a single EL since then (i'm still opted in).

Some food for thought.

Quote from: Nica on September 26, 2016, 02:16

Does anyone know how to delete the entire port without deactivation every single image?

... I think they asked DT to do that.

There is a new posting from Achille on their forum. They reverted to the old version but they are cooking something in secret:
"We will revert this info for the initial batch as well, while we will work to bring the best decision for everyone."
They are not trustworthy any more

The trials of a submitted image to Shutterstock in September 2016:

Attempt 1: Rejected for not having a property release. No property release needed for this shot. Re-submit.

Attempt 2: Rejected for focus and poor lighting, as well as potentially infringing on "intellectual property" this time. Nonsense. Re-submit.

Attempt 3: Rejected for not having a property release, again. Now it's a just a dumb game. Do I write a note to reviewer in the description and edit it out later? Who knows what they want anymore. I re-phrase the description in an attempt to alleviate this incorrect property release concern for their robot reviewer. Re-submit.

Attempt 4: Rejected for focus, composition and overuse of effects. Gettin' pretty silly now. Re-submit.

Attempt 5: Rejected for poor lighting. That old chestnut again? Re-submit.

Attempt 6: Approved.

All the same image, never re-edited. This whole process occurring in about 20 minutes. I was really just curious what would happen.

And yes, I really should be doing something better with my Saturday night.

I misunderstood your original question, Nica, and am guessing so did everyone else.  As far as I know, most if not all agencies' licenses permit the use of a licensed photo on a product for sale.  It may require an extended (higher cost) license depending on the use, and how much of the value of the product derives from the image.  For example, someone made calendars a while back using licensed images.  Shutterstock went after them, since the photos were much of the value.  They got the customer to pay for extended licenses, which made a nice payout.  But I suspect a yoga mat wouldn't need more than a standard license.

Report them to the agency where they are selling your image.

The new keyword and deactivation policy is to prevent contributors from yanking their best files after August 20th.  If I couldn't delete my best ones, then my next move would be to change 20 relevant keywords to 5 unrelated terms and effectively make it un-searchable.

Apparently, their new terms say you're not allowed to share anything from the forums in public.