So your math assumption is based on selling 10% now and for the last few years, and suddenly you are going to upload 900% more images and have a 50% download rate? 

My specific way of download rate, just in case I'm not clear isn't anything more than, has an image been downloaded one time. So for example, I have 5,000 images, 1,200 have at least one download. The real numbers are, 5,318 and just under 1,400 different images have one DL. 26%

What's your download percentage right now?

What? No?  I think we are all getting a bit confused here.

My assuption - which by the way is not an assumption, but close to my real situation - is selling around 10% for the first 2-3 years after joining microstock, then gradually uploading more images over time - not "suddenly" 900% more images. I never said anything about that and and do not really understand how it could have been interpreted that way. Who uploades 9000 images of decent quality at once? It takes time to build a portfolio.
As I uploaded more and better images over time, my % sales rate has gone up as more of my newer images were sold than of my older images.
Yes, I understand that we are tralking about images that having been downloaded one time.
My download percentage right now is 43%.

There has been a pretty long history of discussion of "the wall" or whatever you want to call the point where downloads no longer go up or even start to fall despite continuous uploading. Unless you can continue to create more images than before or better sellers or the agencies sell more images it will catch up to everyone eventually. The question is how long before it catches up to you and if your income at that point is satisfactory compared to the amount of work you are putting in. 

I didn't say it wasn't a thing. I am sure it will catch up to me eventually, especially with AI generated images as competition.
We all have been competing with millions of new images added each month, so of course each month it is becoming harder to get your image found, noticed and sold. With AI generated images that can be created within seconds the amount of competing images will only drastically increase. There is no way a human can keep up with this.
But I was referring to  t�tar�t�'s post who named 40 +/ - months as threshold for a stagnation or decrease in sales to set in. I am at 53 months now and so far there is no decrease or even stagnation. Again, not saying it will not happen to me eventually, I am sure it will, just saying that at so far it's not and there is no such tendency to be seen yet.

Quote from: Firn on January 20, 2023, 02:35

Quote from: t�tar�t� on January 19, 2023, 17:13

What i wanted to say is that that there is an exponential declining trend.
If you start microstock photography you will see an increase in DL. On average for about the first 40 +/- months.
The next 40 +/- months you probably will see your DL stagnate. Even if you still uploading the same amount of images every month. After another 40 +/- months you will see a decrease of DL with a much larger portfolio.
So there is an exponential function against you.
Your uploads are linear, your DL per image / month are declining exponential.
After your first 40 months at microstock your DL per image / Month  are X, after 80 months your DL per image/month are X/2, after 120 months your DL per image/month are X/4 - on average.
You can't win against an exponential declining trend.

I don't see such a trend. It's now my 5/6th year with Shutterstock and I still see a increase in DLs. It's a small increase, but so far there is no stagnation and no decline yet.

Of course an increase in downloads doesn't necessarily come along with an increase in earnings.

Would you say you've been evenly adding to your portfolio during the 5 years?

Yes. Maybe not during the first year, as back then I was trying to focus on illustrations, which did not work out so well for me, but ever since I upload pretty regularly. There are months where I upload more than during other months, especially during pre-season times, but that's the same each year.

I'm curious how big the difference between shutterstock and AS will be in the January poll. Huge for me.

Same for me, but Adobe is doing extraordinary well for me this month. If it continues at the same pace for the rest of the month this will be my best month ever, which is suprising considering how poor Januarys perform in general.

Finn,

I only use lexica to find themes and some useful guides to my prompts that i like. I think Stable Diffusion can be more powerful with trained models or with image references.

I agree, eventually AI will get there... but it has been quite a speed race. I am using my memory here so it may not be precise but in 2022 we had:

-Disco diffusion v3, v4; Stable Diffusion 1.1,1.2,1.3,1.4,1.5,2 and 2.1;
-Midjourney v2,v3,v4a,v4b

I just tried with a simple text prompt of "french bulldog sit in XVII century Throne" and use some technical arguments without image reference (see images). Probably i could tune a little better but the result is ok for at least showing concept to a client before photo shooting. AI is still struggling to learn the teeth, feet and hands since there's still lack of knowledge of anatomy and right positions of any animal.

To be honest i don't know how much time AI will need but it's getting better everyday since it learns concepts, styles and references 24/7.

Yes, these look great, but they look like paintings to me, not like real photos, which was what I was talking about (sorry if I didn't get that across correctly. It was what I meant by "photorealistic", but maybe I used the wrong word). In regards of paintings AI is - sadly - already kicking ass. I feel so sorry for painting artists, even though I know as a photographer I will be in the same boat soon. I have seen some mind blowing AI generated French Bulldog paintings on Adobe. But when it comes to photos it's still struggling, at least for now.

What in the world are the people who designed this smoking? Now you actually have to scroll down (like, a lot) to see any relevant information. I had to take 3 (!) pages of screenshot to show you the full dashboard. And the latest downloads are now completely missing - again. There is just the map with dots on it, but no list that shows you your latest downloads anymore.

 And not only does it not show me my latest downloads, it does not even show me the current month's earnings anymore. Yes, with Shutterstock now you can't even tell how much you have earned in the current month when looking at your dashboard. Isn't that crazy? I have a"livetime earnings" window that shows me my lifetime earnings and there is the old "monthly earnings" tab where I can select "year to date" or past months' earnings. There doesn't seem to be any way to see this month's earnings directly on your dashboard anymore. The only way to get that information now is to click on the "Earning summary" tab. If the dasboard wasn't the only place where I can submit new images, I would not even have any reason to go there anymore.

This is even worse than their last attempt at redesigning the dashboard. 








I took the survey and the question what I would like to see on my dashboard had all sorts of random things no one really cares about, but not the obvious options: "Latest downloads" or "monthly earnings". 

No matter how I try to wrap my head around this, I absolutely cannot understand what they were thinking with this new redesign. When I go to the dashboard I want to see what I sell and how much I earn. Additional information regarding MY SALES is welcome, but random blog entries should absolutely not be the top priority taking up a full page so that I have to scroll to even see any information that is relevant to me.

Christmas photos have now been "released" from being glued to the back of our ports, so the deadline apparently is December 1st.

Still not ranking anywhere as high as they should according to my sales.

Firn, are these your puppies??

Found in an Australian supermarket (pics are from their website) selling Christmas Cards.

Yes, they are! Thank you for sharing your finding with me!  (But what an unsightly crop of the photo. Would have looked much better if they had not cropped it that much)

Wilm, I actually have an idea what the problem is. Does your new image by any chance happen to have a keyword related to Christmas? I looked at your port and noticed it is having the same weird behavior regarding Christmas images than mine: They are all glued to the back of your port.

To me this suddenly happened maybe 2 years ago. Suddenly all my Christmas images went to the back of my port. I never bothered reporting the problem to Shutterstock, because I didn't expect any of their "expert contributors" to understand my problem anyways. They would probably have replied something like that how images a sorted in my port are a secret or something like this. But the other reason why I didn't bother reporting it is that it didn't seem to have an effect of the overal sorting in the whole Shutterstock database or my sales. My all time best seller on Shutterstock is a Christmas images, but it kept selling.
And then, sometime in December all my Christmas images suddenly were sorted back to were they belong - and then after Christmas they all went back to the last pages of my port. So maybe it's not even a glitch, but an intended feature where Shutterstrock sorts Christmas images different out of season. But I never noticed anything similar with for example easter or Halloween images.

Either way, seeing as in your port all your Christmas images seem to be sorted on the last page, I suspect it's the same with your port as with mine. I don't know whether it's specificially the keyword "Christmas". Might just as well be something like "december" or "winter" or any other of the keywords one would commonly use for Christmas images.

You can contact Shutterstock, but getting some decent reply from them will be difficult. I'd rather reply to this company and inquire there.

Quote from: Firn on September 18, 2022, 09:13

Quote from: alan b traehern on September 18, 2022, 09:10

Eventually there will be an agency with no artists where the buyer types in what they want and gets a selection of AI images to choose from.

But that's already here and pretty much what people are talking about here.

What agency has make a request and get an AI image assortment? I haven't seen that yet, but I think that will be part of the future. No artists at all at that one.

Where is it already here?

I am not sure what you mean by "make a request", but AI generation sites like DALL E are pretty much what was described: You go to a site, you "types in what they want and gets a selection of AI images to choose from".

Or can you just submit the one with the logo as editorial and the same photo, with the logo removed, as commercial? Or will the agencies see this as similar?

At least Shutterstock will consider this to be too similar. Do not know about the other agencies. I once shot the same scene with people and then waited till they were out of the picture and shot it again without people. Submitted the one with people as editorial and wanted to submit the one without people as commercial - Was rejected for being too similar.
Probably isn't helpful if you already shot the photos, but in the future try to take photos of the building from different ankles and then use one without the logo for commercial and a different one with the logo as commercial if you really want to have both.

Personally I think such photos have a higher editorial usage. There are really more than enough generic photos of high rise buildings out there customers can pick from. However, if they are looking for a specific building including the company's logo, they have a much smaller selection. So if I had to chose, I'd pick the editorial version.

Quote from: Firn on September 16, 2022, 00:26

I got mine as well and the fee also disappeared.

However, there is one thing different with paypal: I get my Canva payment in $, but the main currency of my paypal account is �. Usually I have my total PayPal balance shown in � and underneath I have a breakdown of how much of it is � and how much is $. But now I only get shown one total � amount, no $ in my account anymore. Not a big deal, just wondering. Anyone who's main currency is not $ seeing the same?

No change here. I also have dollars & euros at PayPal and the Canva money went to the dollar amount, just as always (with the difference that I also had the payment "pending" for 24 hours)

Huh, that's strange. I have no $ in my PP account anymore. Even when I try to withdraw money to my bank account it only shows me � to withdraw. But the canva payment with $ is listed as completed.