A little bit more nuanced here: I had a rather decent month in sales volume at Shutterstock, considered January is never a good month.
But earnings are really low, RPD of 0,27. I can't recall seeing such a density of sales in the 10 - 20 cent range.
Level reset and climbing up is one thing, but there's something else too. Almost every S&O sale is the bare minimum of 10 cents.

To compensate, I had a very decent month at Adobe Stock. Ratio Shutterstock vs. Adobe is 1:2 with only half the portfolio size at Adobe.
There were times it was the other way around, and no matter what, Shutterstock came out first, leading with quite a big margin.

EU-based here.

Almost missed it, but I saw a small fee from the contributor fund yesterday. Not even half of what we got in 2023.

the link is not working

I think Rob meant this link, but accidentally made an error with the link formatting: https://www.facebook.com/fotoproduzent/posts/pfbid02zqdMHyC661xGNrZeQqxZteatYjfMbFcoRgxLFexagFMJW9rvjdCdVFBAVQdnvAel

I don't upload directly to them but got some sales through Zoonar. Royalties after distribution fee are still rather okay'ish, ranging from 32 eurocents to a few euro's.
Also P5 is distributing images there indeed, but can't really remember getting any sale through P5. (they might not report it as a distribution sale)

Not really worth it if you ask me, but good enough add-on through distribution for those who don't mind taking that route.

Seems to be working fine for me. Latest uploads a few days ago and the're in my profile. Regular images, not AI.
But sales are broken, that's for sure :-)

This would not make much sense, as descriptions and keywords are also checked against misuse or use of not allowed keywords.

Standard photography will survive because it's all about authenticity and moments, fragments in time. 

AI can't generate your personal and tailor made memories or moments. Whether it's a snapshot of your kid playing with a toy, a camping trip with friends or your wedding... AI won't do that. You will still need a camera to capture that exact moment. 

Same with images of events, travel locations, celebrities, sports games... AI won't be able to generate moments on unique locations and circumstances.
Photographers will still be needed to capture those moments. My personal opinion: I see videography as a bigger threat to standard photography than AI in this area.

Stock photography however is a totally different game. Authenticity will still play a role in a few niches, but in many cases, AI will be able to take over. It's already ongoing, and growing exponentially. When I talk to designers and people involved in DTP: they already fully embraced AI, and when they shop for useful images, they don't care whether it's AI generated or a real photograph. They buy the image that fits their needs, and they tell me that it's often AI. In some of the stock photography niches, standard photography stands no chance against AI.

Where AI will stand on the longer term: I don't know. I really wonder how much we, as a society, are willing to accept artificially generated content. I still believe that people value authenticity and human made products, in general, more than artificially made stuff. And there will always be a strong counter movement. As mentioned before: Some very well established movie directors still prefer filming analog above digital, and the same in the music industry. Ask Steve Albini (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Albini) for instance.

Still waiting for mine too...

I was able to log in this morning BEFORE the email was sent. Probably just too many users using the site at the same time causing the problems now...

I hope I can request my remaining balance before the money runs out again ;-)

Maybe they are restoring the database or something...

Might be that, the site is very slow too.

Found this mail this morning in my mailbox:

We want to start by saying that we are back, and we deeply appreciate your patience, support, and understanding during the past challenging months. We understand that there have been frustrations, and we want you to know that we are fully committed to making things right.

Our return marks a new beginning, and today, we are thrilled to announce that we've found a solution that will allow us to keep our community moving forward. As part of our ongoing efforts to improve our services, we are delighted to introduce you to our new owner, Freepik, one of the largest platforms of graphic resources.

Our top priority is to ensure you receive your owed payments. To facilitate this, we have established a dedicated community management and support team that is here to assist you every step of the way. Within our new partnership with Freepik, we will also be distributing imagery via their platform from now on, giving you the opportunity to earn more revenue from your creative work.

What's next for you?
As already mentioned, EyeEm is back on track to full capacity, so now you can take the following steps:
�   We�ve already started paying out all open requests and will continue doing so regularly again. If you have pending payouts, please request them through your earnings page.
�   If you're ready to start uploading fresh content, you can do so on eyeem.com/upload.
You probably have many questions or concerns, and we�re ready to solve them all. Make sure to check our updated FAQ page for more info and details, we�ll make sure to update it regularly based on your inputs.

Once again, thank you for your patience and for sticking with us through thick and thin. As always you and all our photographers are at the center of everything we do.

The EyeEm team

Good thing is: we will receive our pending payments. At least I hope.
Bad news: we're officially Freekpik contributors now.

It depends.

When I'm pretty sure the review was wrong, I resubmit. Back in the days when reviews at Shutterstock were rather random, I resubmitted an image three times before it got accepted. That particular image took off and became my best-selling image so far. Of course, I knew there was nothing wrong with it, and the reviewing system was randomly rejecting images for no particular reason.

Sometimes I can see the reason why something got rejected, and then I correct wherever possible (e.g. a dust particle) before resubmitting, or don't bother to resubmit at all if I think the effort of correcting something and resubmitting is not worth it.

That said, I don't resubmit at Adobe as I always found their rejections to be fair. Until today, something seems to be off, yet I don't take the effort to resubmit. Not sure how they handle it, they might as well shut down my account when I'm too persistent :-)
Shutterstock on the other hand seems to take everything everywhere all at once nowadays. Same story for iStock.