Yep - there was a database error.  I got it fixed yesterday morning.
I've also managed to stop some of the spam, which should help speed a little bit (hopefully)

You might find it less peculiar, if you knew the rank is calculated based on the performance from the last 7 days, not based on the performance from the current week (which are the download count numbers you see on your dashboard). No conspiracy theory here 

Good to know and that explains why the numbers, don't match, the DL numbers.  When I was tracking this with a group of people, we had the same anomalies. People with the same DLs and different ranks. People with the same rank and different DL numbers.

The seven days makes good sense and resolves that conflict. I guess what you are saying is, when the counter resets on Sunday night, the week, doesn't reset. Although when I have no new DLs on Monday morning, my rank is - - -. As if I have no rank and no downloads.

Thank You

Nothing special, but the numbers are up, if anyone was wondering.

The last post from lifeatshutterstock on Instagram was 170 weeks ago. https://www.instagram.com/lifeatshutterstock/ "Life at Shutterstock
Official behind-the-scenes look at Shutterstock's global employee life and culture. #sstklife #lifeatshutterstock"

I didn't follow the link but I remember the game lounge, the salad bar, and all kinds of perks at the New York offices in the Empire State Building. Some people have actually been invited in to see the place. I don't know what it looks like now.

That makes me wonder what will happen, when Getty tightens the belt on expenses. "Shutterstock is headquartered in New York. In October 2013 Shutterstock opened its new European headquarters in Berlin, Germany and by March 2014, Shutterstock had additional offices in Amsterdam, Chicago, Denver, London, Montr�al, Paris and San Francisco. After maintaining its New York headquarters for years in a Wall Street office, in March 2014 Shutterstock relocated into the Empire State Building. "

https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/look-inside-shutterstocks-new-hq-in-the-empire-state-building?msockid=2e522b4b6b636d5e2aa13b116a1d6c2e

With photos, the new offices on the Shutterstock Blog.

Quote from: Roscoe on February 14, 2025, 17:03

...
Well, if you look at it that way, RPD is as important as volume. Both go together in terms of
earnings. And earnings in relation to effort is what really counts if you see it as a business. In other words, how much do I earn at an ency against which effort. In that regard, submitting to Adobe or Shutterstock is more or less comparable. iStock requires more effort Motion Array even more. ...

again, RPD is worthless as a measure of usefulness or performance- my RPD from alamy is $30 but actual % of my income is < 5%. similarly, pond RPD has varied from $2 to $15 but overall income is again < 10% since actual sales (ie INCOME) is just a blip (tho welcome) on monthly sales

if RPD were important i'd be concentrating on alamy & pond rather than AS & SS which provide 90% of my income.  i heartily endorse those who make their decisions based on RPD since it pays for my additional international travel!

Here's what counts:


This is all that stats are, most of the time:

People are worshiping the stat Oracle, instead of the money and the images. Are we in business for money or for stats?

The only way to divine future sales is by carefully studying WHAT sells, and where, not what numbers things sell for, rank, position or trying to game the algorithm for better sales. scientia et sapientia

Quote from: Roscoe on February 14, 2025, 17:03

...
Well, if you look at it that way, RPD is as important as volume. Both go together in terms of
earnings. And earnings in relation to effort is what really counts if you see it as a business. In other words, how much do I earn at an ency against which effort. In that regard, submitting to Adobe or Shutterstock is more or less comparable. iStock requires more effort Motion Array even more. ...

again, RPD is worthless as a measure of usefulness or performance- my RPD from alamy is $30 but actual % of my income is < 5%. similarly, pond RPD has varied from $2 to $15 but overall income is again < 10% since actual sales (ie INCOME) is just a blip (tho welcome) on monthly sales

if RPD were important i'd be concentrating on alamy & pond rather than AS & SS which provide 90% of my income.  i heartily endorse those who make their decisions based on RFD since it pays for my additional international travel!

But I am concentrating on Alamy?  Yes, of course and this is what it all comes down to in these threads. Alamy has a wonderful RPD IF someone gets a download. SSTK has the worst RPD but for many had higher volume. (that's ended now, from what I see) Adobe has the best mix of downloads and RPD for many people. iStock is a mystery. For what used to be the top agency, they went downhill, until (for me) they are doing slightly better than DT.

Wirestock, for all others, all the agencies where I don't want to have an account, I only have 500 images or so, and I make more there than IS or DT. The RPD is scary bad, but the all others, and the $30 minimum, I get paid, makes up for that. I may have never made payout at 123RF or Envato or DP, but just by having the old collection, on WS, I get "Free Money" from all the deadbeat agencies.

The other problem and I've said this for years, all agencies don't accept the same images, some sell different types better than others. I sell many more Illustrations on Adobe than SSTK. IS seems to sell anything, but the problem is, low RPD and low volume. Alamy is all kinds of things that none of the previous do well on.

Anyone who's comparing RPD, RPI or pick your stat, and they have a different number of images, different images or video, different styles, and then compares agency A to Agency B, isn't using comparable data. And especially when someone says, SSTK is much better than Adobe, and someone else says, Adobe is much better than SSTK, the point is, we don't have the same images, subjects, or numbers. My numbers are nearly worthless to anyone else, and visa versa.

SSTK 5,500 images, RPD for 2024 was $0.65
Adobe 1,041 images, RPD for 2024 was $0.87 And total I made 3 times more money from Adobe

bottom line - SS pays more bills than AS, no matter what the RPD says. everything else is window dressing & bragging rights

And yes, I agree, except Adobe pays more bills than SSTK, and all the letters and numbers are mostly, after the fact, observations, that don't really change sales? It's like looking at the weather. Watching doesn't change it.

Besides the stats and bragging and watching, the most important part of this, for anyone who's actually trying to make some money, isn't RPD, RPI, or position, rank or any of the other junk stats. The heart of the business is, what sells the most, what sells best, and where. Then recognizing the market demands, and creating more of that kind of material.

ps I just passed 7,000 images on Alamy. I expect I'll make more money this year, than when I had 5,000 images last year. Of course my expectations don't mean anything to the buyers. They only care about their needs. 

One Alamy DL is equal to an entire month of iStock. I just need to get up to one DL a month on Alamy, to have things balance. Otherwise 1,087 images on IS is making me more than 7,000+ images on Alamy. $$$ to DLs I'll take Alamy over IS for now.

For landscapes, in fact, I stopped taking generic shots.

Now I only deal with specific locations.

I think that's a very good way to find subjects that are best for both. Specific locations are the main attraction, but that doesn't stop anyone from seeing it as a good generic landscape as well. But either way, specific locations are a good way to attract specific uses. 

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 11, 2025, 14:27

Downloads-
Earnings-
Position-



Dear friends, do you worry about your rank, every day, all day. Do you find yourself concerned that the "algo" has changed and your best sellers aren't best anymore. You go check, to see what page you are on, at a minimum of daily? Do you see new images getting no traction and old images declining in sales numbers. Do you go to the best sellers page, every day, at least once, so you can see what other people are doing? And you check your earnings, morning, noon and night, then last thing, before you go to sleep, just in case something changed in the last few hours.

Is that what's got you down Bunky? Well let me tell you, there's an asteroid coming, that's going to hit the Earth and blow us all into cosmic dust. Making pennies from Nanostock, isn't so important after all? We have global warning, climate change, people in power that half the population, generally doesn't like. Dictators and wars, someone could push the big "end of the world" doom button and nuke the planet.

While you're more concerned about how the algorithm runs and obsessed with your image rank?

One can observe their rank without being obsessed. It's a useful piece of information. For example I also observe my Google rank (not for microstock obviously), which gives me a data point about what works and what to change.

And about the asteroid, you can relax. It's a small asteroid about Tunguska size (google Tunguska if you don't know what I mean). Also I think you're from the US and US is not even in the possible impact path. Also it's not so difficult to deflect with current technology.

The joke is, checking a few times a day, over and over, all day, not observing on an occasional basis.

Yeah to Tunguska interesting case, comet or air burst. It's still a mystery and a good one. OK small asteroid blown up story. What about the volcano in Yellowstone, how about the Earths core moving. What about the poles swapping? Oh of course climate change. Then there are the aliens, airplanes spraying chemicals... Much more important things to worry about besides, how's my rank and is the agency biased for "other people". Position is relative and if you go and look back at this thread, most people just go up and down, like a cork floating on the waves.

It's not as if Position actually goes up or down much or changes, for most of us.

Do my images have a Google Rank. Tell me how I can see that. I'd be interested in seeing what that says. I did Chatgpt and found my name. Not very exciting. 

There was a joke in that first post, my rank shows as "-" because it was so bad this week.

Quote from: synthetick on February 12, 2025, 01:25

Apparantly in India a government-issued ID is required to open a Paypal account.

I've just checked their website, and a Photo ID + proof of address, (in the form of a bank statement or utility bill), are required. I'm in Europe.

That's a good start. So someone explain, how do they have dozens of accounts as the evidence shows? And those accounts are filled with copied, altered and stolen images. As fast as they are closed, another one shows up, and many have the same sets of images.

We're the honest people. I have one account, one ID, one email that I use for photography. How come SSTK doesn't stop these people, when it looks like Adobe, IS, DT and most of the rest, block them?

Usually Shutterstock is very good at tracking copies of photos or videos, if it finds a copy in another account, it bans that account very quickly. So I am surprised that thieves upload the same works to different accounts and Shutterstock does not ban them automatically.

No they don't, that's the problem. When we report image theft, they stonewall and deny and make it difficult. Sometimes they only delete the offending image, and leave all the rest.

As for Payoneer, PayPal or Skrill, I believe it's only possible to have one account on each, and they need to be linked to a bank account for withdrawal. Certainly, where I'm from, you can't open a bank account without verifying your identity.

Not true, I have more than one Paypal account and two of them are linked to the same bank account. Yes, true, you can't open a bank account, without proper ID, but no one checks to see if that data matches your Microstock name and account. The stock agencies just like to know that you have a valid Paypal account, and they trust that.

I use one Paypal just for Microstock, another for eBay, and a third for marketplace sales. Best of all, Paypal keeps sending me notifications that I "have been selected, to apply for  PayPal credit card" 

DraftKings does a better job of making sure people don't have more than one account. They read IP address, and computer ID, if you use a phone, or tablet, they are probably looking at the IMEI. It costs money for SSTK to care and have good security, they don't give a *. All they would need is minimum security for new accounts, and put the earnings on hold for 90 days. During that time, check every upload from new accounts, against the entire database.

Once the cons saw that they couldn't get money from stolen images or multiple accounts or cheating, they would stop playing the system.


SSTK could stop this, and could have 15 years ago. They don't.

Unless they have changed, PayPal doesn't require any ID. But you'll need a bank account to get your money? So email address and bank account, you can have all the PayPal accounts you want.

Last I looked SSTK asks for an email address, that's it. Yeah, tax ID, which anyone can make up. Address, which apparently everyone in (Asian country here) uses their neighbors, relatives or access to unlimited mailing addresses? Does SSTK care where you live, after you sign up?

I think it's funny that some people here are asking about fake credentials, or IDs, and why the agencies don't check better. But when Alamy asked for your Birthday, people went into conspiracy mode, "why do they need that?" "Hell no that's private" Yeah, something as simple as a birthday? But those same people want SSTK to get IDs, numbers, locations, and have better security. 

ps if Alamy doesn't know your birthday, and that's top secret, highly secure information, then they won't know if you made one up. Pick some date you like and make a note, in case you need that date again some day. Wasn't that easy?

Shutterstock knew very well the rate of use of its subscriptions and therefore moved its entire business from on-demand sales to subscriptions. In this way it increased its earnings significantly.

Did you mean from Subscriptions to Single and Other? That's the way mine changed last year. I had one month with Subs totaling under $1 for the entire month. May 2024 was the only month that Subs equaled or beat S&O and that was by one cent.

It looks to me, like they either lost the subscription clients or they moved them over to image plans, for less. I made more in 2009 with probably 200 images, @25� a DL, than I do now with 5,500 images. RPD is down and so are the total sales.

I sure hope this merger goes through and they get more sales. Otherwise it's just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

I have not uploaded to Alamy but things like this make me wary. The amount of the so called "fines" vary for the same "offence" as though it is a random amount from some person  who may or may not be having a good day. Coupled with the number of people who find sales for which they have not been credited .... it does sound like their accounting department needs a good shake up!

Yeah, Alamy is different in many ways, but they are honest. Or at least were, for their history, before they were sold to PA news. I don't see any changes.

This whole fine thing is new and started end of last year. The first I saw was someone on the forum who got fined $50. I didn't think anything of that, because I didn't believe I had any mismarked. Then someone else got one, and said, they had gone through and removed any settings that said "Exclusive". The answer from Alamy was, the violation had occurred months before they altered the Exclusive Settings.

Wow I should have jumped at that as a warning, but I didn't. Then I got mine for an image from 2014 that wasn't Editorial and wasn't Exclusive, and shouldn't have been. I admit it could have been my mistake when I was marking others, but the whole batch, wasn't anything Editorial and wasn't exclusive, and they were marked as such.

I appealed to Alamy, they basically said, "tough beans" the people who find infringements found it on a different agency site. They charged Alamy a fee and Alamy charged me an addition fee. Thank You.

As for the other part, Alamy has never charged at the time of download. They claim it's some standard use system in the business. The buyers are supposed to report uses. True, people do find unpaid and unregistered uses, and have since the start. I wish Alamy would change their system. I'm sure what they earn and collect would improve substantially enough to cover and perceived loss from the honor system clients who go somewhere else.

I don't know if Alamy calls it a fine or an offense, I called it a fine, because they took money from my account.  If I used the wrong terminology, then I stand corrected.

I'll just add some humor to this. As the new email came out and said people would get one warning, and they could correct all their assets. I wrote back using the support email thread that was created when I committed my "Offense"  and quoted the email and asked if I would get my money back for my first fine, and that I had marked all my images, non-exclusive.

As probably everyone here is laughing at me, and somewhere saying, "You must be kidding, I bet they don't answer you!" Or "do you really think they will refund you anything?" Nope, I'm not so sure I'll even get

and I'm more assured in my opinion that I won't see a penny returned. But at least I wrote them with a chance that they could do "the right thing".