I had a 57$ image sale last week, which soothes the otherwise not so very good October at Shutterstock.

Clicking, clicking, clicking
Shooting, shooting, shooting
Uploading, uploading, uploading
Sell, sell, sell
Grow, grow, grow

And then...



Just like that, like there were no more upload....

 

My Adobe stats look more or less the same as yours. I had some really great weeks in September, but since two weeks sales and earnings dropped significantly.
that said, I've seen that before, some very good weeks followed by some very bad ones.
Also sales volumes at Shutterstock dropped significantly for me last two weeks.

Nope, but I don't send them anything now. That could change if there's some reason why I wanted to send Eyeem anything. I'm not against adding more outlets, if they are of any value.

Who is Eyeem? I don't see them in the poll or anyplace else. Do I want to join?

Eyeem is part of Talenthouse, wich ran into financial trouble earlier this year. They didn't pay their contributors for some months.
The issue is fixed now (at least for me) but I'm still very reluctant to resume uploading.

It's mainly a distributor anyhow, with very few own sales.
Most of their sales come from the partner programs, Getty and Adobe, on which I have personal accounts too. (iStock, not Getty)

So there's little value to upload there for me.
I have a small historical portfolio which earns my monthly coffee money, or in a good month a free lunch. 

Just found out that Wirestock also partnered up with Freepik, Canva and 123RF, all under the Extra Channels umbrella.

This means that all of your content which was selected for Extra Channels is now available on Freepik (flat fee/unlimited downloads shared revenue, or whatever you call that program) Selected content will be provided to 123RF (PLUS program I assume) and Canva.

The previously also had the Korean agency Miricanvas under extra channels, also a shared revenue plan.

It shows in our sales dashboard: 3 cents per download at 123RF and 4 cents for what I assume to be Freepik sales.

Can't say I'm happy with this "additional opportunities". I avoided any unlimited/flat fee and shared revenue plan so far, but Wirestock decided to throw my stuff in.
They'd better made those agencies available as an extra selectable option, but I guess they don't want to do that because very few of us would opt-in.

So beware, if you're still using Wirestock and don't want your content on those agencies: don't select extra channels!
It's basically giving Wirestock the permission to do whatever they want with your content.

Quote from: Roscoe on September 14, 2022, 03:51

Quote from: Firn on September 14, 2022, 00:04

Quote from: Dhav on September 13, 2022, 16:59

These are current news editorial images, yet the whole batch have been rejected for not meeting editorial guidelines.

Adobe does not accept current news editorial image, they only accept illustrative editorials or their very own definition of it I don't understand half of the time.

Me neither. I would say that Illustrative Editorial is defined by content where a brand is the main subject of the shot.

This is confirmed by rejections of architecture which I upload as Editorial, or cityscapes which I upload as editorial due to visible brands and logo's.
Yet, I've had images rejected due to illustrative editorial issues where the brand is the main focus of the shot, e.g. a storefront while some others were accepted.

Same with the definition of recognizable people. Street shots with groups of people in it are often rejected, but I had some accepted too, mainly when shot from the back.

I guess the definition is not clear to all reviewers either.

Yeah, same experience. I have, for example, tried to submit photos of the BASF (largest chemical company in the world) factory complex to Adobe, though not at the same time. 3 images were rejected for not meeting their editorial guidelines, 3 images were accepted. They all show different parts of the factory complex, so the photos are not similar, yet they pretty much have the same content: Factory building of a famous trademarked company, no people. I see absolutely no constancy in the editorial acceptance system.
 I'll never figure out what editorials Adobe accepts and what not and I hardly ever try to submit editorials to them anymore, even though the ones that get accepted often sell. I am too worried this hit and miss game will unnecessarily increase my rejecten rate and cause me some disadvantage.

It's hit or miss it seems, and indeed reviews are not consistent for illustrative editorial content.

I don't worry about rejection rates influencing content ranking. I never have seen prove of anything like that at any agency, and if so, I guess I'm still pretty good because the vast majority of my commercial stuff still seems to be accepted. Also, Adobe sales really increased this year for me, despite having illustrative editorial rejections.

There's not enough time in this life to start shooting something you don't like.

Hello everyone, I'm new to the forum. Which stock photo agency should I join for my old editorial photos thar are only 2 MB - 2.5 MB in size? (From years 2002 - 2005, camera was 5 Megapixels.) Shutterstock and Alamy reject nearly all, even after editing. Dreamstime accepts them, but looking for 1 more. I heard istock is too cheap, what do you think? Is there another that will accept them and sell at a decent price? Thanks

There's no such thing as a decent price anymore. Might be 1,2 cents at iStock, 10 cents at Shutterstock, or 33 cents at Adobe. But might as well be 10+ dollar if you get lucky. They sell at the same pricing conditions as new images taken in 2022.

As far as older editorials go: I had no issue getting many of them accepted at iStock (takes nearly everything unless they find it to be unlicensable), Shutterstock (unpredictable rejections, but that's also the case for new images), as Adobe (only takes Illustrative Editorial) and Dreamstime (100% acceptance rate). As long as your image has the minimum amount of megapixels and decent quality (which is obviously more difficult on less advanced camera's), you have a fair chance into getting it accepted, no matter how old it is. Only exception is Alamy, they tend to reject pictures from older camera's or certain smartphones by default no matter the quality.

Do they sell? Depends on the topic, but to my gut feeling indeed less in volume than newer editorials. I once sold quite some, and for a short period of time, images from a building taken in 2008 with a point and shoot. Turns out they renovated it and I guess customers were looking for before/after shots. Earlier today I sold an 2007 image from a traditional folklore festival. And every now and then I see an image in my reports of which I think: "oh yeah, right, I've been there. Djee, already 10 years ago?".

If you have the time to upload them, spread them over all the agencies where you have accounts on. Older editorials are sometimes needed for historical reasons, and some of them can even stand the test of time.

Congrats on the book cover, but I'm confused: they bought your image and mostly changed it?  Other than the concept, I don't see much of your original image in the final.  New hair, new coat, new bokeh, etc.  Seems like it would have been less work for them to just shoot what they wanted rather than heavily Photoshop a stock image.

But I guess paying one Photoshop guy is cheaper than paying a model, photographer, and scouting a location.

Came here to post the same, but thinking it over you're probably right.
Way less effort and money to have the adjustments done in Photoshop than starting from scratch an organizing everything yourself.

Sill weird to see how little is left from the original shot.

AI definitely can replace a fair chunk of today's microstock market.
It would be na�ve to think otherwise. Plenty of examples where AI could work just as fine as a run-of-the-mill stock image.

Article or post about wine? AI generates the perfect glass of wine in a cozy setting. Rustic wooden table, wood stove in the slightly defocused background.
Article or post about depression? AI generates a sad depressed and more important anonymous face.
Article or post about traveling the Grand Canyon? AI does the trick. Perfect sunset over the Grand Canyon with happy birds in the sky and a lovely hipster couple holding hands in the near distance. 

Agencies are sitting on massive data, with massive amounts of topics covered.
And they are selling it to AI developers who build systems that can generate the perfect image based on popular already existing content.

The question is: how much will those tech companies charge to use their AI to generate stock images?
And will it be cheaper than what stock agencies currently (or in the future) charge?
Continuous development and maintaining a proper AI is not cheap.
Having the infrastructure that can process thousands of requests per hour, instantly, isn't that cheap either.
And sure, they will want to make as much as money as they possibly can too.
For a customer, buying a standard good enough stock image or illustration from the agencies, still might be the cheapest option for the months and few years to come.

And sure, AI can't do just about anything.
Video? Sounds like a lot more difficult.
Editorial content? Documentary. Real people. I wonder how images of gritty and edgy demonstrations about topic x in city y will look like. Can get quite messy, right?
New trends. Creativity How fast can AI pick up new trends and build on an ongoing stream of creativity?

But in the long run, for sure, it will have a very severe impact on the market of microstock.
We already beat it in a coma by the enormous amount of content that we fed it. AI will only feed more content to that same market.

One last thing that comes to my mind: How good will it really be in high volumes while keeping a certain aspect of authenticity?
At the end of the day, will the consumers of those media not get frustrated and feel disconnected by the overflow of AI generated content?

So�Talenthouse and eyeem live another day�

Let us see what they do next�will they increase sales? Especially diect market sales?

That train has left the station I'm afraid. It's been months since I had a direct sale on EyeEm, and before that months too.

But sure, they have to do something, otherwise it's a matter of time before they burn through their money again.
They recently partnered up with Alamy if I understood it correctly, but I can hardly imagine this will save them.

In the eyeem facebookgroup there is a contributor who is now taking eyeem to court and also trying to get a criminal case going accusing them of fraud.

If you look around the net apparently there are many other artists from their platforms also complaining about delays of over 9 months before they get paid.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/EyeEmMarket

I suppose it will end with eyeem being sold again�.

I wonder how they were able to buy it in the first place, knowing they probably didn't had the financial balance and outlook to do so.

Nice to see that someone wants to go through the hassle of taking legal actions just to prove a point, not necessarily getting paid.

I see two possible outcomes:

- Talenthouse finds new investors and is able to pay the contributors and everyone else they own money to.
Restoring trust is the only way to survive and ensure future business.

- They go bankrupt, while meanwhile the images at partners stay online and are still generating sales which ends up the trustee who handles the bankruptcy and tries to pay as many creditors as possible? Again, contributors probably last in row? And what happens afterwards? Images remain online and nobody gets paid? Or will someone take the effort to effectively remove the content from all their partner sites?

Quote from: Roscoe on August 19, 2022, 08:40

Quote from: Firn on August 19, 2022, 06:15

Quote from: Roscoe on August 18, 2022, 09:49

 Hard work beats talent (if talent doesn't work hard)

From my personal experience, with microstock, sheer luck beats talent and hard work. Might not have been the case when the selection of images was more limited, but now with millions of images for competition, it's mostly a matter of luck to have the right image at the right time displayed somewhere.

This one sold for around $100:
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/orange-industrial-transportable-dumpster-container-1668704380

I  still have some images where I put lots of work into where I seem to have been able to produce something that is in high demand and the images sold hundreds of times. But even "hundreds of times" can, in worse case scenario, still mean like $50 only. For me it's rarely the images that are in high demand and sell in large quantities that bring in the money. It's the ocassional high amount sales that make the difference between a good month and a bad month on Shutterstock and these, at least for me, are often really random. I really can't attribute having earned $100 from a very random photo of a very random industrial dumpster, that took me literally 3 seconds to take, 0 seconds to post-process and under 10 seconds to keyword to "hard work" or "talent". Anyone who follows the minimum image quality standards of Shutterstock could have made, uploaded and sold an image like this. All it needed was luck.

I agree with you, luck is probably quite a big factor in the game nowadays.
But don't you think that hard work increases your chances in having that luck?

Hard work can be producing a lot of content, which increases your chances on having more occasional big sales of rather random shots like you had, or having an unintentional best-seller of a rather generic subject.
 
Hard work can be producing higher quality images, which also increases your chances of getting images actually sold on a very regular basis.

Or hard work can be analyzing the market trends and gaps in the database and start shooting that.

Or combining all of that together.

Whether the hard work is worth the returns is of course a completely different story

Yes, of course hard work, and also talent, plays a role. I don't doubt that. As said, there are images where I invested a large amount of work and time and some of them sell regularly - And across all agencies, counting together the sum, of course they also bring in a decent amount of money over time. But when I just sell my "regular" sellers within a month, my income is my "regular" income as well. Because of the time and effort I put into my photos that "regular" income might be much better than someone else's income, who just snaps a few photos without any real effort. But it's the big sales that make a difference between my average "regular" monthly earnings and a really great month. These big sales have a much bigger impact on my earnings and these are almost always really random photos that do not sell regularly at all, that's why I attribute them to the luck factor.

I am not sure I am getting across what I am trying to say so well. I am convinced that spending time and effort, not only into taking photos and videos, but also into doing research to determine what could sell well and also talent pays off and plays a role in microstock and helps you have a decent income.
 But this is a thread about high price photo and video sales and, at least for me, very specifically these sales rarely seem to be the ones connected to effort and work, but more to luck.

Yes, clear Firn. My post was indeed a more general remark regarding Microstock, not specifically aimed at fishing for high commissions.
So thanks for bringing it back on topic.
 
If I'm not mistaken, a discussion regarding which kind of images and subjects generally generate higher commissions took place in the past.
Can't find it after a quick and dirty search, maybe someone else remembers better than I do.
Anyhow, I don't think there was a clear conclusion regarding which kind of images have a higher chance to get better commissions.
So you might be right: it's a matter of luck and then only way to have a higher chance to win the lottery is obtaining more tickets. 

I do have the gut feeling that my illustrative editorial images are a bit more subject to generating higher RPD's.
But also way lower in volume, and nothing that comes close to double figure commissions.

I have requested the colsure of my Eyeemaccount already a month ago. Nothing happens, the account is still up. No sales report either. I wrote them again, and got this quite fast answer.

Quote

Hi Kim

we have received your request to fully delete your EyeEm account. Please allow us 7 days to do so. This will pull all your images from EyeEm Market and our Partners. Partner image takedowns can take up to 21 days.

Please make sure that you are requesting your account deletion from the exact same email address that is associated to your EyeEm account. Otherwise we won't be able to process this request.

If you have pending payouts, we will trigger them to be paid out before deleting your account. This will add an additional week, to assure your payout goes through. In case you don't wish to receive that last payment but rather speed up your account deletion process, then please reply with "No payout request needed, please delete my account asap".

Best,
your EyeEm Support Team

PS: If you have changed your mind or if you want to change the type of deletion request, then please reply to this message by copy & pasting one of the other three [ ] options below. Right now the request marked with

• is activated:
• Please delete my full EyeEm account and all images on EyeEm Market and Partners

[ ] Please delete all my images (Market and Partners) but keep my account active (to keep access to payouts history, keep receiving newsletters, etc)
[ ] Please only delete my images that are on Partners (keep my EyeEm account and Market images)
[ ] I have changed my mind, please don't take any action / I did not request an account deletion

The 21 days referred to have already expired onc without result.
But I notice taht they can speed things up if I do not want my pending payments. In other words, they are broke!

Could be, things are not going well with Talenthouse I just found out.

Meanwhile there's a lot of complaining on social media. Not only regarding EyeEm but also regarding other brands under the Talenthouse umbrella.
A lot of the contributors and creatives are still waiting for payments by Talenthouse.

I'd strongly advice against providing them new content, and it might be wise to try to get your images removed from their platform and partner sites. (if you can get it done, they don't seem to be responding to those kinds of requests anymore)