I think I can say this month is the worst in quite some time. Seems like Canva is continuing to go down.

And not just that they screwed contributors with the Getty deal, they, as someone previously said, are pushing themselves into irrelevance. They could have been great stand alone site, but they instead of that chosen to be a Getty's extension. Instead of having all the great sellers, which they could appropriately categorize to make it easier for the customers, they instead decided to delete and reject almost everything, and now to rely on Getty's library. Who in the world makes those "decisions" for them? Being a good marketer doesn't mean being a good planner and strategist, especially not in the long term.

I had 1 payout last year, but for a while now there are no sales.

Uploading is easy but it seems pointless, so I'm thinking about stopping to upload despite of easiness.

Standalone vector file upload

    AI and EPS formats only
    Artboard size: minimum 15 MP, maximum 68 MP

If vector of any size can be exported to image of any size, why would they even demand the minimum artboard size? To save their servers from more processing or because of the lack of programming knowledge?

If Adobe and SS normalize their requirements for standalone vectors (which would mean no min artboard size), that would be the real step forward. (accepting AI files by all agencies would be another one)

But for now, unfortunately, I assume that SS will stand by their decision for whatever internal reason, despite the fact that many people criticize them and despite the petition. Also, Adobe won't change their standalone vector requirement anytime soon.

Quote from: stockman11 on April 06, 2019, 14:05

Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't the minimum artboard size at Fotolia / Adobe 15 megapixels? How do you submit there if your artboard size is less than 1 megapixel?

Where did you find this? Most of my artwork is saved at 450px x 300px and I never had a problem submitting these files to Fotolia / Adobe.

At Adobe click on the upload button and check the requirements for vectors on the right.

Also, larger jpg should be more appealing to buyers who want to buy the raster version. So I thought that almost everybody work with 15MP artboards.

.

^ good point

Hey, I updated the script.  The issue was that they put the image details page inside an iframe, so I just had to account for that.

You can try it here: http://seanlockephotography.com/scripts/CV_showThumbnail.user.js

Thanks Sean, it works.

It's unacceptable that we need to go trough files 1 by 1 and submit them this way. I don't care about the "advanced" feature like "populate fields", it's unacceptable and laughable. It absolutely sucks.

I'm thinking about to stop uploading to Dreamstime, since the earnings are not so rewarding anyway. And even if they are, making the submission process faster and easier is just a normal thing to do and it's absolutely a must.

So Adobe do listens contributors at leas a little. Maybe not regarding euros and Payoneer or switching from euros to dollars (my post regarding that on this forum god ignored), but it's still something.

I'll try not to repeat what others have said. So I'll just say this for now:

- rows showing activity (downloaded images) are unnecessarily high, so there is too much scrolling
- why would 12-week trend be the only default option on the dashboard home page - some maybe do like to see weeks, but some others and me don't care about weeks and want to see months. So maybe give the option for everybody to choose between 3 months, 12 weeks, and maybe even 90 days (day by day).

Now, since all the useful links got removed from Fotolia, I was forced to actually use the Adobe for the 1st time. And it's absolutely awful and stupid (no offense Adobe, but it really is), even more than I originally thought. I won't even bother listing why, it's obviously pointless and I have better things to do. How could anybody chose this over Fotolia is incredible...

And how can we even track sales (simple chronological list), maybe I missed it?

Oh yeah, that's right.  We must be in the middle of the makeover.  Don't like not seeing the thumbs.

Maybe you should make a new script. Because who knows how long is this makeover going to take, and we do need to see the thumbnails.

Quote from: stockman11 on January 20, 2019, 12:36

Quote from: Eco on January 20, 2019, 10:29

Been doing stock since 2006. I am sure there are many old timers that still remember the time when high value sales were both regular and in high volumes. I remember the days of 20-30 or more EL sales at SS in a month, every month. Not anymore. I guess we are now in the period where we will have to accept whatever is coming our way or quit. I can�t complain though - still doing quite well to make it worthwhile for me to continue.
 
I like Canva and I always hoped that they will be able to fill that loss of the declining sales at the other agencies. For me this never really happened, possibly because I joined them relatively late.  Based on what I see happening there now I cannot see that it will change anytime soon.  They will remain one of my low earners and it frustrates me to see only those $0.35 sales. You may have better luck and a wish to all the success.

Some people probably remember the good old macrostock days (not me, I'm much newer than you)... The thing is simple - more and more people want to spend as little money as possible on the images, which is why the bigger sales on SS and other sites are in less numbers than before. So trying to raise the prices would be a suicide. That's the state of the market nowadays, we can't go around it. All what agencies and us can do is keep the current state and not allow any further devaluation.

So as I said, all what Canva did bad for us is the Getty deal. Their prices are not the problem, they fit perfectly into the current market, which is a must nowadays if you want to have any success.

Is it people looking to spend less and less? Or is it the agencies representing us that are competing with each other so much that they have decided to lower prices - the customer is still happy to pay whatever the price is for the image they want, it is the agencies that dictate the price, not the customers.

If there are less large sales on all the main agencies, lower prices or not, but people still spend the same, where do people spend that money now? Where did the big sales go? Or people really do spend less money now than before?

Behavior of the buyers plays a huge role in our earnings. If there were a higher prices since the beginning of microstock, that would be probably ok in the beginning, but would it be now? Why are some people so sure that the sales nowadays wouldn't drop even more with those higher prices?

Of course, I'm not saying let's drop the prices even more to make the buyers happy, I'm saying we should meet with the buyers in the optimal spot - the spot which will gives us the highest earnings. People who think raising prices 10x would do good for us are too emotional and delusional. Too bad that reality isn't better, but it is what it is, which is why microstock > macrostock.

Quote from: stockman11 on January 19, 2019, 08:50

Quote from: Eco on January 19, 2019, 07:12

Canva the new One Dollar Club. Only $1.00 sales that pay us $0.35. Sounds familiar?

No it isn't. $1 sales are for one usage only. $10 sales are their equivalent of regular sales. It would be nice to get those $10 sales more often, but to me it's not rare to see the same file purchased for $1 multiple times in a row. So it's still good.

I totally understand it is for a single use only. However, if the multi-use license sales decline or totally disappear (as many of us are experiencing) this is only a small consolation. If you are interested in decent earnings, $0.35 a pop will not do it, especially with declining volume of sales due to the dilution from the Getty image dump. 

I have been doing this longer than most and seen it all. For example, a good month at SS is not determined by the number of subscription sales, but the number of higher value sales. When these higher value sales decline, total earnings decline dramatically. Canva will not be the first promising site that lost its luster due to decisions that did not favor contributors.

Canva is one of those companies that really brought something new to the market. I really hope that this trend of declining higher value sales at Canva is only temporary, but I am not holding my breath.

With changing the concept and with the higher prices, there would hardly be any sales at all. These small sales come in large volumes so the earnings from them are still significant, plus they are secure and consistent, which is VERY important. Bigger sales are nice, but they are sporadic, not consistent. This applies to both SS and Canva. Some may not like that but that's the state of the market and you can't go against that if you want to live from stock.

So Canva is doing a very good job, their only bad for us move is the deal with Getty, but they did that because they prioritize their earnings over ours, and there is no doubt that their earnings since that deal are going higher.