Brightontl  And how many monthly downloads do you have with 2000 movies besides this one good movie?

I on videohive as exlusiv I have 1000 movies and downloads for 150 ~ 200 months

I do not know if it is worth to resign from Exlusiv and send to Shutterstock. If I had 50 downloads a month. I think only a few downloads. If they manipulate sales

I do not know English well.

Yes I have 150 ~ 200 per month Videohive.

And how much do you give Shutterstock for a month besides a hit movie?

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on April 22, 2017, 01:19

There's plenty of evidence of sales manipulation on SS.

I've been tracking sales data for 5 years and it is definitely become more apparent since 2014.

They are probably trying to share the "wealth" to encourage contributors to hang around.

I also get such odd sales for old files of really common subjects that have sold when they should have been drowned out long ago yet when I search for the same image it's no where to be seen anywhere in the results.

I know but this is a joke isnt it? I mean this has been going on since new year and really I mean its so obvious isnt it. How they do it I do not know but there you go.

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on April 22, 2017, 12:10

Quote from: derek on April 22, 2017, 01:29

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on April 22, 2017, 01:19

There's plenty of evidence of sales manipulation on SS.

I've been tracking sales data for 5 years and it is definitely become more apparent since 2014.

They are probably trying to share the "wealth" to encourage contributors to hang around.

I also get such odd sales for old files of really common subjects that have sold when they should have been drowned out long ago yet when I search for the same image it's no where to be seen anywhere in the results.

I know but this is a joke isnt it? I mean this has been going on since new year and really I mean its so obvious isnt it. How they do it I do not know but there you go.

It's even more evident if you track the moving average over a period of time.  The daily moving average is just straight forward manipulated with the same figures and little variance.

I reckon thats why SS removed the ability to see weekly sales data so contributors couldn't see what was going on so easily.

 youre right! manipulation of earnings and tampering with figures. Sounds a bit dodgy actually and how about the legalities of this? can they do this?

This topic comes up every 3 months. I still don't think there is any truth in it. My numbers fluctuate daily, not by just a few percent, but by over 20% sometimes. I think it's just a coincidence that some people see consistent numbers.

Historically, April has always been a lousy month (for many industries) because of Spring Break and Tax Season. Kids get off school for a week and some parents take off work with them to go on a trip. For taxes, some people like us are saving up to pay the government instead of getting a refund.

Quote from: Minsc on April 22, 2017, 19:49

This topic comes up every 3 months. I still don't think there is any truth in it. My numbers fluctuate daily, not by just a few percent, but by over 20% sometimes. I think it's just a coincidence that some people see consistent numbers.

Historically, April has always been a lousy month (for many industries) because of Spring Break and Tax Season. Kids get off school for a week and some parents take off work with them to go on a trip. For taxes, some people like us are saving up to pay the government instead of getting a refund.

I too agree, there is no any conspiracy here, my numbers too fluctuate daily, last week, I too had a 2 figure and 3 figure earn. As said, this is a coincidence for some people.
People seeing increase and down sales coz SS is now shuffling the things up. They are also doing heavy marketing with introduction of new plans.

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on April 22, 2017, 01:19

There's plenty of evidence of sales manipulation on SS.

Really? 
So how do they do it? Seriously. What method could they use to manipulate sales?

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on April 23, 2017, 01:31

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on April 22, 2017, 01:19

There's plenty of evidence of sales manipulation on SS.

Really? 
So how do they do it? Seriously. What method could they use to manipulate sales?

I experience constantly manipulation and not only by SS.
I am not saying it is necessarily a bad thing and I am not complaining about because I have decent sales and maybe this manipulation is useful for us.
I do video only (very few still images and I only started it very recently).
As I said previously out of 2,000 clips in my portfolio, this year (last 4 months) over 90% of sales come from a single file. I have been in this game less than two years, so I have only one file very well positioned in SS (over 100 downloads), artists with a longer track record probably have sales coming from several well established files when the algorithm is in this mode.
Also every months I have about 10 days in a row when I do not get one single sale, then in the other 20 I get plenty.
Last year I used to get a few weeks like now, when only one file sells, but then some other weeks I was selling a very broad number of files, including new ones.

Why they would do it?
They have often said that they do not want customers to find constantly the sames files on top of the popular search, and maybe they are right.

How would they do it?
Extremely easy: in the algorithm put something like:
IF artist(x) has > x sales in the last x days THEN shut door

I do not pay much attention to still image sales, but now that I checked it tend to be the same amount every week day, but it is too soon to tell, as my portfolio is very small for photos

How would they do it?
Extremely easy: in the algorithm put something like:
IF artist(x) has > x sales in the last x days THEN shut door

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on April 23, 2017, 06:17

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on April 23, 2017, 03:42

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on April 23, 2017, 01:31

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on April 22, 2017, 01:19

There's plenty of evidence of sales manipulation on SS.

Really? 
So how do they do it? Seriously. What method could they use to manipulate sales?

How on earth would I know how they do it?

Well, there are  two ways, aren't there? Constantly change the search (which is not happening) so that buyers see files from the people whose turn it is to have a sale, or simply not to report sales that have happened once the individual target is reached -- which is fraud.

Since people all seem to have different numbers that crop up repeatedly I suppose that someone there is going through the contributor list one-by-one to give everyone a different ceiling. Ridiculous idea, isn't it?

Or it could be that probability is levelling things off a bit, given the search ranking of various people, and the human tendency to see a pattern where none exists accounts for the rest.

yes but have a long good look at my stats in the OP!  and this reflects the similarity of a period of three months. It differs in cents!  wouldnt you agree that the odds of this being coincidence are astroniomical, just astronomical. I mean you have to dig really, really deep to come up with some logical mathematical explanation.

Quote from: derek on April 23, 2017, 07:40

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on April 23, 2017, 06:17

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on April 23, 2017, 03:42

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on April 23, 2017, 01:31

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on April 22, 2017, 01:19

There's plenty of evidence of sales manipulation on SS.

Really? 
So how do they do it? Seriously. What method could they use to manipulate sales?

How on earth would I know how they do it?

Well, there are  two ways, aren't there? Constantly change the search (which is not happening) so that buyers see files from the people whose turn it is to have a sale, or simply not to report sales that have happened once the individual target is reached -- which is fraud.

Since people all seem to have different numbers that crop up repeatedly I suppose that someone there is going through the contributor list one-by-one to give everyone a different ceiling. Ridiculous idea, isn't it?

Or it could be that probability is levelling things off a bit, given the search ranking of various people, and the human tendency to see a pattern where none exists accounts for the rest.

yes but have a long good look at my stats in the OP!  and this reflects the similarity of a period of three months. It differs in cents!  wouldnt you agree that the odds of this being coincidence are astroniomical, just astronomical. I mean you have to dig really, really deep to come up with some logical mathematical explanation.

I assume your weekday figures fall in a range of say $20 to $60 and that 40-ish is somewhere near the middle and so has a fairly high frequency in your stats. It's not as if there is an infinite range of numbers you could get, so the chances of this coincidence probably aren't astronomical at all, maybe somewhere in the range of rather unlikely - and rather unlikely things do happen.
Added to which the difference in the figures you cite isn't a matter of mere cents, it's a matter of a couple of dollars from top to bottom over five days, which is something like variation within a 5% range.

Quote from: derek on April 23, 2017, 11:46

Well jeez! bit far fetched and I dont buy it but anyway like many other oldies I am also down by about 40% but before the cuts I was having quite different stats weekdays.

Are you really saying that every weekday for 12 weeks has been between $39 and $41, or do you just get that for a few days in a row every now and again and a broader spread at other times? Last time you posted about this you only listed four consecutive days, not five.

Well, I'll agree that's odd. I've had three successive days this month with quite good sales where the earnings were within 1% of each other (achieved in an assortment of ways) - but that's exceptional, I've had days with four times that amount and days with a third of that, it's generally all over the place. Your sales are better than mine, though, and the higher the sales volume the less variation you will see, you'll start hitting a statistical average.

There's plenty of evidence of sales manipulation on SS.

I've been tracking sales data for 5 years and it is definitely become more apparent since 2014.

They are probably trying to share the "wealth" to encourage contributors to hang around.

I also get such odd sales for old files of really common subjects that have sold when they should have been drowned out long ago yet when I search for the same image it's no where to be seen anywhere in the results.

I think that they are manipulating Search Result to give each contributor a standard earning based some contributors porfolio parameters...

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on April 24, 2017, 01:53

Quote from: Mrblues101 on April 23, 2017, 16:49

I think that they are manipulating Search Result to give each contributor a standard earning based some contributors porfolio parameters...

That's the only way to control the portfolios buyers go to - and even that would be a bit hit and miss - the thing is, there are people who watch the search results like hawks and they don't report a constant shuffling to distribute sales in a certain way.

It's also worth asking why SS would bother to take the trouble to try to control submitters' earnings. There doesn't seem to be much in it for them.

I dont know but if they could control the search results which in fact can not be too difficult that would in effect mean they could also control in which direction they like the money to go.
I know quite a few being with Offset and they are certainly not happy with present earnings and Premier I know nothing about but lets say they like to feed what ( somebody else mentioned) poorer countries or factories?