I guess I meant it as... At what point do they go full crowdsource if they keep adding more and more? We've all seen what other crowdsourced sites look like for artists, and the thought of that potentially happening to the micros scares me.

I get what you mean. Yeah, that is scary as well. When you've got an army of people with little concern for making a living (or making much money at all) it changes the game. Could kind of make the folks who do have those expectations become more of an annoyance than an asset.

You mean there are standards of how "serious" people must be, in order to market on SS? I thought the test to get in was discouraging enough to weed out many of the casual efforts, and review is not exactly a free pass like just about every pother site.

Talk about crowd sourcing, look at the list on the right. Every one of them, takes almost anything.

If SS is accepting 200K new files, I'm concerned that we will all get lost in the flood and buried in results. That's just the sheer numbers, but I'm pretty sure they are reviewing every image and checking them closer than any of the other sites that show in the poll.

Quote from: cthoman on March 25, 2014, 12:53

I guess I meant it as... At what point do they go full crowdsource if they keep adding more and more? We've all seen what other crowdsourced sites look like for artists, and the thought of that potentially happening to the micros scares me.

I get what you mean. Yeah, that is scary as well. When you've got an army of people with little concern for making a living (or making much money at all) it changes the game. Could kind of make the folks who do have those expectations become more of an annoyance than an asset.

You mean there are standards of how "serious" people must be, in order to market on SS?

Nope, there never have been. That is some of the concern I brought up. Some people have expectations of making a living with the money they make. Others just want to make a little money. Right now, SS and other micros accommodate both types. But if the supply starts to vastly outstrip the demand, will it squeeze out the people that want to make a living? Micro sites don't have to protect their higher earning contributors and the question is will they?

Quote from: Uncle Pete on March 26, 2014, 09:58

You mean there are standards of how "serious" people must be, in order to market on SS?

Nope, there never have been. That is some of the concern I brought up. Some people have expectations of making a living with the money they make. Others just want to make a little money. Right now, SS and other micros accommodate both types. But if the supply starts to vastly outstrip the demand, will it squeeze out the people that want to make a living? Micro sites don't have to protect their higher earning contributors and the question is will they?

Surely it would be the pocket money brigade that go first. If the small amounts get smaller very quickly they will look elsewhere for extra income.

The point in adding numbers to the image base is not so that the customers can have a better choice.

It is to dominate the net, the search engines and the whole flow of information and clicks.
Wise enough seen from the agencys view. Dangerous for us contributors, since our pictures get washed out..

You don't know that Jens. Is the issue new images being added or old ones not being removed? That is a different discussion as "everyone" always says to not delete old files, and then the same "everyone" moans about number of images and that their images get swamped. Simultaneously you read people saying their sales are going up on SS even with a million files added each moth. Is that down to image quality? Commercial value? Luck? Serach algorithms? Who knows.
Trhere is a reason why the search options have a "New" filter. I would love to know how these files are determined to be "new", when they pass from new to old, what percentage of sales are new or old files, etc. There is so much info to possibly analyse but we see none of it.

Is the market getting bigger? More customers? Existing customers spending more? So many variables but the increasing number of images is constant and provides a constant new choice for buyers. If you're supplying high quality commercial images does it matter to contributors if there are 100 or 1,000,000 images added each month? Your images will appeal to customers searching using your keywords and no other customers. The amount of images affects what the buyers can choose, not what you sell.

My mistake in understanding. I thought some of the messages were being critical of individuals for how much they work or don't. Whether they are serious and need the income, or hobby shooters making extra income.

If someone produces a high quality stock photo, it doesn't matter where they are, how much they need money or how often they upload.

Yes the number of images is over the top, but I don't find that SS has personally lowered standards or dropped reviews. Most of the other places have.

I mean, I still get my rejections and even faster now, than before, on SS. 

Just looked at the last batch and wondered what happened to a group of shots. Oh my Why? At 100%, the final upload and edit, I see why. I should have never sent them. And if I see some doubling flaw or soft edges like these had, I wouldn't even edit them. I wasn't paying attention.

I also agree it's not better for buyers to have too many images. It's a distraction and makes it harder to find the good images in the thousands of, average, but acceptable, images. Maybe it's time for SS to add a premium collection? Curated Premium Quality, with accurate keywords, also of high quality, not some artsy trendy collection.

Maybe it's time for SS to stop accepting so many similar images and inch by inch minor variations, But then people will start screaming about those rejections.

My question would be, not what's wrong, but how should they cure the problem?

This is amusing. And now, I'm actually pretty happy with the DLs and returns and acceptance rates for my images.

http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=136729

Rejections way up, sales down. Is the title.

I understand how sales would be down because of the volume of new images. Rejections up? But adding 200K new images a week. Imagine how many they must be receiving to review?