thank you for your reply.

I wanted to know roughly if one day is it possibile to kinda make a living out of this or is it always going to be an extra ?

It is "kinda possible". Some people can make a living, if they are very good. Most, however, cannot and it will only get more and more difficult, because the market is saturating rapidly. My advice is: don't quit your day job to shoot stock.

I am always putting nice content

"Nice" is relative. What matters more, is this content useful to the customers, how much competition you have in that subject matter and how good your competitors are.

Quote from: rockerstocker on April 28, 2017, 10:07

Dreamstime politics are quite ridiculous on this. Photo's don't sell very well (on Shutterstock and elsewhere they sell really good), so I also want to close my account, also because there is a 100 dollars to be sold before I get paid. Means I'm competing on my own uploads elsewhere, where I get paid every month. Close the account!

I have applied for withdrawal from 20 months ago. I still can not leave.

"Welcome to the Hotel California,
Such a lovely place, such a lovely face,
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave"

My RPI this month at DT is around $0.10. Nowadays, it is usually around $0.12 - 0.15.
In the good old days it was between $0.25 and $0.35, I think.

Get a life, man. This is 2017, normal people don't upload to istock anymore.

You think the stricter review stopped a significant number of these people? they just kept submitting till they passed.

The most hopeless cases just gave up. Others had to improve, analyze their mistakes and learn and learn.
The filter was working. The ones who got through had at least some idea about stock.
Shutterstock had a very good collection compared to other sites.

Guys with thousands of marijuana shots or gradients didn't have a chance. If I remember correctly, back then 'delinquents' uploading s#&t would be forced to re-take the entrance exam after a warning, but I may be wrong on this.

Conclusion: they don't care at all about "adminitration costs" per contributor.

The vast majority of income comes from the top contributors. These are invariably on the highest rates. For those that are in the top at Shutterstock 5%, the highest rates amount to less than 2 months income from Shutterstock. Generally these contributors have very low review and administration costs associated with their accounts because they have successful portfolios that have already been reviewed. Administration costs measured per download for a $5000 payout are also much lower than someone that just scrapes in for $100.

Again, at the moment of download, administration costs incurred by the contributor in the past don't matter. Irrelevant. What counts is only how much the agency earns with that particular download at that particular moment.

If they were concerned with administration costs, why did they practically abolish entrance exams? Now, they would accept even dogs who know how to press the shutter button and accept a gazillion files per minute. They want a bazillion contributors and a gazillion files per minute, therefore they don't seem to care about administration costs per contributor.

You don't understand causality. The reason why the top contributors bring the most income is simple! As a group, they have the most appealing images and customers want them, for crying out loud. That is the reason, and not the lower administration costs that they incur. And that doesn't exclude the possibility that the agency might try to increase short-term earnings by giving lower-ranked contributors a small push at certain times in certain markets, without making buyers too angry. The agency is concerned only with their bottom line. Obviously, they cannot kill top contributors in the search results, because the buyers would leave, but they do experiment every now and then and test which settings earn them most money.

Generally, store owners tend to promote products with the highest margins.

It'd be nice if they'd give us another rise for hitting, say, $50,000. 

And penalize you in the search results even more, because you're 'so much more expensive' than the newbies?
I suspect that a good position in the search results is more valuable than your base royalty per download.

I can see my earnings from this year compared to the last few and they are much better now. 

Maybe because you're so exceptional

Those who can survive on microstock alone, are an endangered species.

Like animals threatened with extinction, they can survive for some time in areas with the most favourable conditions (i.e. "low costs of living") or if they are very strong.
But I am afraid that at some point in the future, they will all go the way of the dodo, nevertheless. Unfortunately.

I posted on Jon's FB feed, and he said "We are working on it.".  So, I guess it isn't going unnoticed.

Meanwhile at Shutterstock: 1.269.450 new stock images added this week   

When I started, I think it was around 50K/week.

.

Quote from: LDV81 on March 16, 2017, 11:15

Quote from: Pauws99 on March 16, 2017, 11:08

Greek debt is 113% of GDP...so what?

Actually, it is much more than that. But the point is that debt cannot grow forever, and there is a point when a straw breaks the camel's back and the system collapses.
Greece almost or practically collapsed. What is the last straw for each country, you never know, until you get there.

Maybe but I don't understand the relevance to Brexit?

Nevermind.