MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Shutterstock.com => Topic started by: Elenathewise on September 18, 2015, 21:06
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Not sure if fellow conspiracy theorists here discussed this topic already... but it looks to me there is a cup on daily earnings on SS - well at least something funny is going on. This morning I had a couple of large SODs and a couple of extended license sales, nice surprise, no complaints there. But after that my downloads just stopped - never seen anything like that before, and by the end of the day, even though I had a nice total, if you subtract the SODs and extended sales I ended up with the total well below my daily usual, even for a Friday.
It seems to me once you images sold up to certain daily amount they push your portfolio down the search results??
Would hate to think that I am working for a salary and can't grow because someone there decided how much they should pay me.
Anyone else with large ports and tin foil hats seen anything like that?
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I don't believe it for a second. I've seen way too much variation in my sales to think there's anything but market forces affecting my sales. Interestingly enough, I had a much larger number of subscription sales today, easily 5x my daily average.
Stuff happens, that's all. Conspiracies are rarely borne out.
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Yes, I've noticed the same thing. One or two ELs or decent SODs then suddenly everything else dries up for a day or two. Then, things get back to normal. The drop after the additional income from ELs etc is noticeable.
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... and last 3 days I think they play with a search... my earnings are drastically down...
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Sometimes it does seem that way, but I haven't ever seen a change in search placement after a few big sales. I am guessing it is just the ebb and flow combined with the usual search monkeying.
It certainly doesn't seem as regular as DT where I get a run of subs, a few credit sales, and then nothing then repeat. If my credit tap comes on during a weekend it makes for a few poor weeks.
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So when where how is this being set by whom and why?
Is it set only for the biggest contributors? Because when you have an average contributor, how could he ever get a $75 sale if his daily limit is $10 or $20?
It would also imply that customers with the biggest license fees will see a filtered search result with some of the best selling contributors being filtered out. Why would you "punish" your best paying clients? It would especially be true for customers on the US west coast as they come in latest in the day, isn't it?
No, sorry, it doesn't really add up to me. I think once you have a certain amount of images, your random sales are averaging out somewhere. On some days you sell a lot of licenses to Asia, on others to Europe, and on others you only make big sales in the US. But on most days you'll sell around the clock as the planet turns.
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... and last 3 days I think they play with a search... my earnings are drastically down...
I thought that no one mention and I am alone, exactly same here!
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Surprised? this has been going on for some time now. Old news. If I am capped according to my average monthly earnings I am quite happy actually then I'm earning quite a bit.
The worries start when it goes beneath that.
To ear-mark peoples earnings and especially large contributors is far from new. It started way back in the film-days, leading agencies used to make sure people were earning accordingly sometimes a bit less or a bit more. :)
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I had a good day today, but there was nothing in the middle. Good sales before I got up. Decent sales after dinner sometime. I thought it was more of a posting delay.
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Yes, I've noticed the same thing. One or two ELs or decent SODs then suddenly everything else dries up for a day or two. Then, things get back to normal. The drop after the additional income from ELs etc is noticeable.
Same here, had a really good month, lots of sales daily, and then EL sale (first sale that day - in the morning) and then no more sales that day. It's too weird.
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Yes, I've noticed the same thing. One or two ELs or decent SODs then suddenly everything else dries up for a day or two. Then, things get back to normal. The drop after the additional income from ELs etc is noticeable.
Same here, had a really good month, lots of sales daily, and then EL sale (first sale that day - in the morning) and then no more sales that day. It's too weird.
Not weird. Just a reality
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Not sure if fellow conspiracy theorists here discussed this topic already... but it looks to me there is a cup on daily earnings on SS - well at least something funny is going on. This morning I had a couple of large SODs and a couple of extended license sales, nice surprise, no complaints there. But after that my downloads just stopped - never seen anything like that before, and by the end of the day, even though I had a nice total, if you subtract the SODs and extended sales I ended up with the total well below my daily usual, even for a Friday.
It seems to me once you images sold up to certain daily amount they push your portfolio down the search results??
Would hate to think that I am working for a salary and can't grow because someone there decided how much they should pay me.
Anyone else with large ports and tin foil hats seen anything like that?
No a conspiracy Elena but a known fact.
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I don't see evidence of a daily cap.
What I do see evidence of is SS playing with search algos. There have been multiple wild swings in what gets served first in search results, and those have drastically affected my sales. But no daily cap. My numbers, which I watch like a hawk, don't support the theory.
But here's the reality that is keeping my earnings down, and WAY down: the dramatic, depressing rise in competition. That's what has capped my earnings, and makes it a losing battle to achieve any growth. My earnings at SS and everywhere else are down about 30% vs a year ago. I know that's a different type of 'cap,' and not at all what the OP is referring to here, but it's what keeps ME up at night: a very real wall that is affecting us more than any tin-hat conspiracy.
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It is a fact. Happens all the time, every time. For example, I had a $140 day this week then the next three (up until today) I have had zero OD's, zero SOD's and only a hand full of subs leaving me about $15 each day after. It happens far too often to say it is something other than an algorithm adjustment based on sales.
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It is a fact. Happens all the time, every time. For example, I had a $140 day this week then the next three (up until today) I have had zero OD's, zero SOD's and only a hand full of subs leaving me about $15 each day after. It happens far too often to say it is something other than an algorithm adjustment based on sales.
Yes and a big fact! it's been going on for months now. Looking at my monthly sales for the last six months and they differ no more then $.50. give or take
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Not sure if fellow conspiracy theorists here discussed this topic already... but it looks to me there is a cup on daily earnings on SS - well at least something funny is going on. This morning I had a couple of large SODs and a couple of extended license sales, nice surprise, no complaints there. But after that my downloads just stopped - never seen anything like that before, and by the end of the day, even though I had a nice total, if you subtract the SODs and extended sales I ended up with the total well below my daily usual, even for a Friday.
It seems to me once you images sold up to certain daily amount they push your portfolio down the search results??
Would hate to think that I am working for a salary and can't grow because someone there decided how much they should pay me.
Anyone else with large ports and tin foil hats seen anything like that?
I think it's on accident. By my experience this was never happen to me, i have almost every day SODs and this days in most of the cases are good days overall with more subs.
Shutterstock are very intelligent and they know very well that people like you Elena(maybe me too :) ) which sale a lot are the backbone of their collection. Good images sells more, why they will limit sales and why they will limit the buyer's choice?
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It would be very easy to see if this were true, just do a search (or have someone else on a different computer) and see if your images show up or if they are moved down to the bottom of the results. Unless you're saying they are not paying you for downloads which I very much doubt.
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I am surprised this comes to light now. As I said earlier its nothing new at all. Been going on for a long time. Now all of a sudden people start noticing it?
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I am surprised this comes to light now. As I said earlier its nothing new at all. Been going on for a long time. Now all of a sudden people start noticing it?
Well, if you think it only happens to you, you might think it's coincidence. But when you see, other people have same experiences too, it might be some truth in this.
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I've been politely laughed at for suggesting similar theories.
Just because Area 51 hasn't been turned into a National Park, with rangers wearing HazMat suits and carrying MegaTazers, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
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I am surprised this comes to light now. As I said earlier its nothing new at all. Been going on for a long time. Now all of a sudden people start noticing it?
Well, if you think it only happens to you, you might think it's coincidence. But when you see, other people have same experiences too, it might be some truth in this.
Thats what I am saying. It's facts! and there are loads of people experiencing the same thing, earnings are somehow capped or shall we say somehow controlled.
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The cycle on DT is no mystery. Several of the DT admins have admitted, on their forum, to cycling contributors in the search results. Serban himself has stated it outright in order, as he put it, to give everyone a fair chance. This is why you get good sales for a week or so followed by nothing for a week or so and then repeat.
Shutterstock however, has stated that their mandate is to deliver the best image to the buyer based on search terms. This is why they won't do exclusive because giving an exclusive preferred search placement would go against that mandate. It seems to me that pushing a contributor down in search results due to an earning quota would also go against that mandate.
I won't rule out anything when it comes to what microstock agencies are capable of but it does seem hard to believe they would muck up their search results just because someone is making more than normal.
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Quote: " Serban himself has stated it outright in order, as he put it, to give everyone a fair chance". are you sure he said that? that is a dreadful statement from a business man. This is a cut throat business and may the best man win and I don't think you find many happily giving it away just to be fair.
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I find that hard to believe. What's in it for SS to single out contributors based on their earnings? How does it profit SS by focusing on individual contributor earnings instead of optimizing their search algorithm? How high would the supposed earnings cap be? Would customers see different search results if contributors are left out? Does it apply to all search orders? Too many questions are left open. It doesn't make sense to me.
I think it's confirmation bias. I'm surprised the OP's conspiracy theory is getting +'ed so often.
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Quote: " Serban himself has stated it outright in order, as he put it, to give everyone a fair chance". are you sure he said that? that is a dreadful statement from a business man. This is a cut throat business and may the best man win and I don't think you find many happily giving it away just to be fair.
No, it was another DT admin (Dudau) who often puts his foot in his mouth. This is what he said -
"The "similars" policy has been relaxed a bit, since we updated the uploads limit, and I can say that's an acceptable selection. However, the placement changes continuously, in order to give everybody a fair chance, so what you see today on the first page it may not be there next week or the next month, depending on too many factors to be described here. As I said, it's a game of numbers and quality, and the ideal situation is to have both. If not, one should focus on at least one of these, in order to succeed."
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Possible answers to some questions (theoretically - I have no solid proof of anything, so this is a speculation):
- An agency can easily limit a contributor's exposure in search results. It's fairly easy to do, just some not too complicated code.
- Why would they do that? They are interested in getting fresh content daily. For someone starting now, it would be nearly impossible to sell anything, unless their new content is pushed up in searches. If someone's content is being pushed up, someone else's has to be pushed down. How much down? - now here is a big question. Some time ago I had an interview with SS's contributor's department, and first thing I was asked if I was happy with my earnings. I wish I said no (which was the truth - I feel I should be earning more with my portfolio), but I misunderstood the purpose and the context of the question and said yes. My earnings have been on that level ever since. It could be that they would pay you whatever they think you'd be happy with to keep uploading.
- Why wouldn't they display they "best" results to customers? Well, is there even such a thing with over 60 million images? It's A LOT of images, and even if most of them are mediocre, there is still A LOT of good ones to choose from even if they do cap people's earnings. Customers won't lose anything, and the agency would still get their sales.
Again, in the absence of any proof or statements from agencies this is all speculation. However, something's definitely going on, I wish agencies kept us informed about thing like that, at least we'd know what to expect. Most likely they won't of course, but I am fairly convinced that we're not dealing with the "let the best man win" environment like it was in the early days of microstock.
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Possible answers to some questions (theoretically - I have no solid proof of anything, so this is a speculation):
- An agency can easily limit a contributor's exposure in search results. It's fairly easy to do, just some not too complicated code.
- Why would they do that? They are interested in getting fresh content daily. For someone starting now, it would be nearly impossible to sell anything, unless their new content is pushed up in searches. If someone's content is being pushed up, someone else's has to be pushed down. How much down? - now here is a big question. Some time ago I had an interview with SS's contributor's department, and first thing I was asked if I was happy with my earnings. I wish I said no (which was the truth - I feel I should be earning more with my portfolio), but I misunderstood the purpose and the context of the question and said yes. My earnings have been on that level ever since. It could be that they would pay you whatever they think you'd be happy with to keep uploading.
- Why wouldn't they display they "best" results to customers? Well, is there even such a thing with over 60 million images? It's A LOT of images, and even if most of them are mediocre, there is still A LOT of good ones to choose from even if they do cap people's earnings. Customers won't lose anything, and the agency would still get their sales.
Again, in the absence of any proof or statements from agencies this is all speculation. However, something's definitely going on, I wish agencies kept us informed about thing like that, at least we'd know what to expect. Most likely they won't of course, but I am fairly convinced that we're not dealing with the "let the best man win" environment like it was in the early days of microstock.
But whether SS pays one contributor $0.38 or another contributor $0.38 doesn't matter to them. Of course newer contributors are less expensive, but not by much. Why go through all the hassle of capping their most productive and most successful contributors just to save a few cents per download? They might even lose out, because the best contributors often produce the most valuable work (because of more experience, a better track record, etc.)
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Possible answers to some questions (theoretically - I have no solid proof of anything, so this is a speculation):
- An agency can easily limit a contributor's exposure in search results. It's fairly easy to do, just some not too complicated code.
- Why would they do that? They are interested in getting fresh content daily. For someone starting now, it would be nearly impossible to sell anything, unless their new content is pushed up in searches. If someone's content is being pushed up, someone else's has to be pushed down. How much down? - now here is a big question. Some time ago I had an interview with SS's contributor's department, and first thing I was asked if I was happy with my earnings. I wish I said no (which was the truth - I feel I should be earning more with my portfolio), but I misunderstood the purpose and the context of the question and said yes. My earnings have been on that level ever since. It could be that they would pay you whatever they think you'd be happy with to keep uploading.
- Why wouldn't they display they "best" results to customers? Well, is there even such a thing with over 60 million images? It's A LOT of images, and even if most of them are mediocre, there is still A LOT of good ones to choose from even if they do cap people's earnings. Customers won't lose anything, and the agency would still get their sales.
Again, in the absence of any proof or statements from agencies this is all speculation. However, something's definitely going on, I wish agencies kept us informed about thing like that, at least we'd know what to expect. Most likely they won't of course, but I am fairly convinced that we're not dealing with the "let the best man win" environment like it was in the early days of microstock.
Capping earnings has been going on for ages and not just in micro-stock but even in the larger traditional photo-agencies. This was a way to keep solid and productive photographers on the books, photographers that could produce special commercial material.
This I can agree with, if I was running an agency of course I would want to ensure keeping the best photographers happy or else they go.
The capping in micro-stock is not the same its difficult with hundreds of millions of pictures. In micro-stock they seem to set some sort of a roof on your earnings. People talk about the "wall" well IMO this could be the so called wall.
Lets say my average monthly earning is in the region of $.2000. Now if this is reduced to lets say $.1000/month I will become less productive, less interested in supplying. Human nature! therefore they will somehow ensure that my earnings will remain in the region of $.2000.
This is easily done with the Internet, all search changes, algorithms and so on. No big deal at all. The GI search is a classic, aggregators like Blend and the house images are almost always in the front line of any searches. Popular! is another search method of ensuring that good selling and commercial material is given first option.
Nowadays agencies can do almost anything they want and the overwhelming majority of just " ordinary" members won't even notice, won't even think about it. :)
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Possible answers to some questions (theoretically - I have no solid proof of anything, so this is a speculation):
- An agency can easily limit a contributor's exposure in search results. It's fairly easy to do, just some not too complicated code.
- Why would they do that? They are interested in getting fresh content daily. For someone starting now, it would be nearly impossible to sell anything, unless their new content is pushed up in searches. If someone's content is being pushed up, someone else's has to be pushed down. How much down? - now here is a big question. Some time ago I had an interview with SS's contributor's department, and first thing I was asked if I was happy with my earnings. I wish I said no (which was the truth - I feel I should be earning more with my portfolio), but I misunderstood the purpose and the context of the question and said yes. My earnings have been on that level ever since. It could be that they would pay you whatever they think you'd be happy with to keep uploading.
- Why wouldn't they display they "best" results to customers? Well, is there even such a thing with over 60 million images? It's A LOT of images, and even if most of them are mediocre, there is still A LOT of good ones to choose from even if they do cap people's earnings. Customers won't lose anything, and the agency would still get their sales.
Again, in the absence of any proof or statements from agencies this is all speculation. However, something's definitely going on, I wish agencies kept us informed about thing like that, at least we'd know what to expect. Most likely they won't of course, but I am fairly convinced that we're not dealing with the "let the best man win" environment like it was in the early days of microstock.
Capping earnings has been going on for ages and not just in micro-stock but even in the larger traditional photo-agencies. This was a way to keep solid and productive photographers on the books, photographers that could produce special commercial material.
This I can agree with, if I was running an agency of course I would want to ensure keeping the best photographers happy or else they go.
The capping in micro-stock is not the same its difficult with hundreds of millions of pictures. In micro-stock they seem to set some sort of a roof on your earnings. People talk about the "wall" well IMO this could be the so called wall.
Lets say my average monthly earning is in the region of $.2000. Now if this is reduced to lets say $.1000/month I will become less productive, less interested in supplying. Human nature! therefore they will somehow ensure that my earnings will remain in the region of $.2000.
This is easily done with the Internet, all search changes, algorithms and so on. No big deal at all. The GI search is a classic, aggregators like Blend and the house images are almost always in the front line of any searches. Popular! is another search method of ensuring that good selling and commercial material is given first option.
Nowadays agencies can do almost anything they want and the overwhelming majority of just " ordinary" members won't even notice, won't even think about it. :)
Exactly plus, many can probably live a good life with 500 or 1k a month so don't complain or care about what is happening (or as you mentioned are not even aware)
Even if that means they make the same with their current port or after adding another 1k files, as long as they get that 1k a month they will continue uploading, and high quality stuff too I might add.
Now who do you think agencies will favour? Take a good look who is in front of search...
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Quote: " Serban himself has stated it outright in order, as he put it, to give everyone a fair chance". are you sure he said that? that is a dreadful statement from a business man. This is a cut throat business and may the best man win and I don't think you find many happily giving it away just to be fair.
No, it was another DT admin (Dudau) who often puts his foot in his mouth. This is what he said -
"The "similars" policy has been relaxed a bit, since we updated the uploads limit, and I can say that's an acceptable selection. However, the placement changes continuously, in order to give everybody a fair chance, so what you see today on the first page it may not be there next week or the next month, depending on too many factors to be described here. As I said, it's a game of numbers and quality, and the ideal situation is to have both. If not, one should focus on at least one of these, in order to succeed."
Dudau was one of the admins that has made this statement but Serban also said it. It's very difficult to mistake the username "Achilles" with someone else. Perhaps his post has been deleted, I'm certainly not going to go looking for it, but he's also stated that social activity, posting blogs and commenting on blog posts also factors into the search results.
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Possible answers to some questions (theoretically - I have no solid proof of anything, so this is a speculation):
- An agency can easily limit a contributor's exposure in search results. It's fairly easy to do, just some not too complicated code.
- Why would they do that? They are interested in getting fresh content daily. For someone starting now, it would be nearly impossible to sell anything, unless their new content is pushed up in searches. If someone's content is being pushed up, someone else's has to be pushed down. How much down? - now here is a big question. Some time ago I had an interview with SS's contributor's department, and first thing I was asked if I was happy with my earnings. I wish I said no (which was the truth - I feel I should be earning more with my portfolio), but I misunderstood the purpose and the context of the question and said yes. My earnings have been on that level ever since. It could be that they would pay you whatever they think you'd be happy with to keep uploading.
- Why wouldn't they display they "best" results to customers? Well, is there even such a thing with over 60 million images? It's A LOT of images, and even if most of them are mediocre, there is still A LOT of good ones to choose from even if they do cap people's earnings. Customers won't lose anything, and the agency would still get their sales.
Again, in the absence of any proof or statements from agencies this is all speculation. However, something's definitely going on, I wish agencies kept us informed about thing like that, at least we'd know what to expect. Most likely they won't of course, but I am fairly convinced that we're not dealing with the "let the best man win" environment like it was in the early days of microstock.
That's a valid point. Most buyers will buy the first image that suits their needs, or a small selection of images that work well and not go through page after page, On any given *common* search like business man in meeting or girl with cell phone there will be thousands of quality images to choose from each one "the best image" for the search and if one contributor's images are suppressed, buyers wouldn't even notice.
You're also right in that they would never admit to manipulating results.
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Quote: " Serban himself has stated it outright in order, as he put it, to give everyone a fair chance". are you sure he said that? that is a dreadful statement from a business man. This is a cut throat business and may the best man win and I don't think you find many happily giving it away just to be fair.
No, it was another DT admin (Dudau) who often puts his foot in his mouth. This is what he said -
"The "similars" policy has been relaxed a bit, since we updated the uploads limit, and I can say that's an acceptable selection. However, the placement changes continuously, in order to give everybody a fair chance, so what you see today on the first page it may not be there next week or the next month, depending on too many factors to be described here. As I said, it's a game of numbers and quality, and the ideal situation is to have both. If not, one should focus on at least one of these, in order to succeed."
Dudau was one of the admins that has made this statement but Serban also said it. It's very difficult to mistake the username "Achilles" with someone else. Perhaps his post has been deleted, I'm certainly not going to go looking for it, but he's also stated that social activity, posting blogs and commenting on blog posts also factors into the search results.
I seem to recall that post was made April 1st.
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So that's it then? Has Microstock Group forums been taken over by conspiracy nuts with tin foil hats?
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i can't say for others, but i defintely
believe suspect capping in ss.
you know it is when you get a large $80 single or say handful of 28 bucks singles at the beginning of the month. then almost like a curse, zero days suddenly appear.
otoh, when you get a 100 bucks single sale on the last days of the month , this is when i cheer
and go out and get me a 6 pack because i know i will get my regular sales next month without many zero day...
that is until i hit another jackpot
and then the rest of the month would be that pot we usually visit first thing in the morning ;D
finally, if they are encouraging us to give them new stuff, i don't see any evidence either
as most of my new stuff have been getting almost no dls at all for months.
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Quote: " Serban himself has stated it outright in order, as he put it, to give everyone a fair chance". are you sure he said that? that is a dreadful statement from a business man. This is a cut throat business and may the best man win and I don't think you find many happily giving it away just to be fair.
No, it was another DT admin (Dudau) who often puts his foot in his mouth. This is what he said -
"The "similars" policy has been relaxed a bit, since we updated the uploads limit, and I can say that's an acceptable selection. However, the placement changes continuously, in order to give everybody a fair chance, so what you see today on the first page it may not be there next week or the next month, depending on too many factors to be described here. As I said, it's a game of numbers and quality, and the ideal situation is to have both. If not, one should focus on at least one of these, in order to succeed."
Dudau was one of the admins that has made this statement but Serban also said it. It's very difficult to mistake the username "Achilles" with someone else. Perhaps his post has been deleted, I'm certainly not going to go looking for it, but he's also stated that social activity, posting blogs and commenting on blog posts also factors into the search results.
I seem to recall that post was made April 1st.
Nope. Close. April 2nd. The fool rule doesn't apply.
I did try to find it. Couldn't resist http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_16895 (http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_16895)
Also here: http://www.dreamstime.com/forumm_16869_pg2 (http://www.dreamstime.com/forumm_16869_pg2)
I'm certain he's said it on another occasion as well but I have other things to do.
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I find that hard to believe. What's in it for SS to single out contributors based on their earnings?
It's not singling them out, it's levelling them out. Huge difference. You expect a greater degree of overall "enthusiasm" from your contributors if they all get something. "You can please some of the people some..."
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I find that hard to believe. What's in it for SS to single out contributors based on their earnings?
It's not singling them out, it's levelling them out. Huge difference. You expect a greater degree of overall "enthusiasm" from your contributors if they all get something. "You can please some of the people some..."
Spot on! and its been going on for years. Levelling it out according to your average monthly intake. No big deal really.
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Quote: " Serban himself has stated it outright in order, as he put it, to give everyone a fair chance". are you sure he said that? that is a dreadful statement from a business man. This is a cut throat business and may the best man win and I don't think you find many happily giving it away just to be fair.
No, it was another DT admin (Dudau) who often puts his foot in his mouth. This is what he said -
"The "similars" policy has been relaxed a bit, since we updated the uploads limit, and I can say that's an acceptable selection. However, the placement changes continuously, in order to give everybody a fair chance, so what you see today on the first page it may not be there next week or the next month, depending on too many factors to be described here. As I said, it's a game of numbers and quality, and the ideal situation is to have both. If not, one should focus on at least one of these, in order to succeed."
Dudau was one of the admins that has made this statement but Serban also said it. It's very difficult to mistake the username "Achilles" with someone else. Perhaps his post has been deleted, I'm certainly not going to go looking for it, but he's also stated that social activity, posting blogs and commenting on blog posts also factors into the search results.
I seem to recall that post was made April 1st.
Nope. Close. April 2nd. The fool rule doesn't apply.
I did try to find it. Couldn't resist [url]http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_16895[/url] ([url]http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_16895[/url])
Also here: [url]http://www.dreamstime.com/forumm_16869_pg2[/url] ([url]http://www.dreamstime.com/forumm_16869_pg2[/url])
I'm certain he's said it on another occasion as well but I have other things to do.
Yep, both said in 2009. If you believe that any of the agencies are still doing things the way they were in 2009, well... I'm not defending any site or any site owner, just saying that we all know that they all manipulate the search algorithms constantly and if you think it is to make it "fair" for contributors that is naive. I believe that they make changes to shake things up in order to bring in more business for the agency, perhaps put new images in front of the loyal buyers. Which contributors benefit from any one search change is up to interpretation. If it changes and you get more sales it is looked upon as a good change, if sales drop it's easy to blame the search. We often read here that "my sales from suchandsuch site are down" with another chiming in to say "my sales on that same site are up." There are no easy answers.
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I find that hard to believe. What's in it for SS to single out contributors based on their earnings?
It's not singling them out, it's levelling them out. Huge difference. You expect a greater degree of overall "enthusiasm" from your contributors if they all get something. "You can please some of the people some..."
Enthusiasm cannot be measured, and they get plenty of images anyway, so there's no benefit for SS. In fact, you'd expect more enthusiasm if contributor actually see some growth in their earnings, instead of hitting the 'wall'.
In my opinion, the 'wall' is simply an effect of diminishing returns because of oversupply, causing your sales to be eroded because your images get less exposure. Not because SS is screwing their contributors. They have better things to do than micro-managing earnings caps of individual contributors.
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Whatever the reason, you can be sure that it puts money in their pocket somehow, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. It sure isn't of any benefit to the contributor. As usual.
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Whatever the reason, you can be sure that it puts money in their pocket somehow, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. It sure isn't of any benefit to the contributor. As usual.
I am sorry but you don't know how wrong you are on that point :)
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Quote: " Serban himself has stated it outright in order, as he put it, to give everyone a fair chance". are you sure he said that? that is a dreadful statement from a business man. This is a cut throat business and may the best man win and I don't think you find many happily giving it away just to be fair.
No, it was another DT admin (Dudau) who often puts his foot in his mouth. This is what he said -
"The "similars" policy has been relaxed a bit, since we updated the uploads limit, and I can say that's an acceptable selection. However, the placement changes continuously, in order to give everybody a fair chance, so what you see today on the first page it may not be there next week or the next month, depending on too many factors to be described here. As I said, it's a game of numbers and quality, and the ideal situation is to have both. If not, one should focus on at least one of these, in order to succeed."
Dudau was one of the admins that has made this statement but Serban also said it. It's very difficult to mistake the username "Achilles" with someone else. Perhaps his post has been deleted, I'm certainly not going to go looking for it, but he's also stated that social activity, posting blogs and commenting on blog posts also factors into the search results.
I seem to recall that post was made April 1st.
Nope. Close. April 2nd. The fool rule doesn't apply.
I did try to find it. Couldn't resist [url]http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_16895[/url] ([url]http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_16895[/url])
Also here: [url]http://www.dreamstime.com/forumm_16869_pg2[/url] ([url]http://www.dreamstime.com/forumm_16869_pg2[/url])
I'm certain he's said it on another occasion as well but I have other things to do.
Yep, both said in 2009. If you believe that any of the agencies are still doing things the way they were in 2009, well... I'm not defending any site or any site owner, just saying that we all know that they all manipulate the search algorithms constantly and if you think it is to make it "fair" for contributors that is naive. I believe that they make changes to shake things up in order to bring in more business for the agency, perhaps put new images in front of the loyal buyers. Which contributors benefit from any one search change is up to interpretation. If it changes and you get more sales it is looked upon as a good change, if sales drop it's easy to blame the search. We often read here that "my sales from suchandsuch site are down" with another chiming in to say "my sales on that same site are up." There are no easy answers.
The date doesn't matter nor does the idea of "fairness". I regret that word being included as it seems to be acting as the bright shiny jangling car keys that distract from the point. The point is that even the owner of the site has admitted on several occasions to manipulating search results regardless of the reason. That may seem like an obvious thing to most, (or perhaps not) but whether it's done to "shake things up" or enforce an earnings cap it's all manipulation.
I may be naive (anything's possible) but when one agency openly admits to * with search results for reasons other than to optimize for the best results, then they probably all do possibly for reasons like what Elena is suggesting (remember the OP?).
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Manipulate is an interesting term - no search algorithm is neutral. I think also "best" is a misleading term. I suspect buyers want images that are fit for purpose easy to find and inexpensive they don't need or want the best ever picture of a particular subject. In fact sometimes I think a stunning pic may distract from their purpose.
So if someone else picture sells rather than yours because the search algorithm changes then you have to live with it don't you?
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Possible answers to some questions (theoretically - I have no solid proof of anything, so this is a speculation):
- An agency can easily limit a contributor's exposure in search results. It's fairly easy to do, just some not too complicated code.
- Why would they do that? They are interested in getting fresh content daily. For someone starting now, it would be nearly impossible to sell anything, unless their new content is pushed up in searches. If someone's content is being pushed up, someone else's has to be pushed down. How much down? - now here is a big question. Some time ago I had an interview with SS's contributor's department, and first thing I was asked if I was happy with my earnings. I wish I said no (which was the truth - I feel I should be earning more with my portfolio), but I misunderstood the purpose and the context of the question and said yes. My earnings have been on that level ever since. It could be that they would pay you whatever they think you'd be happy with to keep uploading.
- Why wouldn't they display they "best" results to customers? Well, is there even such a thing with over 60 million images? It's A LOT of images, and even if most of them are mediocre, there is still A LOT of good ones to choose from even if they do cap people's earnings. Customers won't lose anything, and the agency would still get their sales.
Again, in the absence of any proof or statements from agencies this is all speculation. However, something's definitely going on, I wish agencies kept us informed about thing like that, at least we'd know what to expect. Most likely they won't of course, but I am fairly convinced that we're not dealing with the "let the best man win" environment like it was in the early days of microstock.
But whether SS pays one contributor $0.38 or another contributor $0.38 doesn't matter to them. Of course newer contributors are less expensive, but not by much. Why go through all the hassle of capping their most productive and most successful contributors just to save a few cents per download? They might even lose out, because the best contributors often produce the most valuable work (because of more experience, a better track record, etc.)
I think it matters because if, say, 20% of the contributors make up 80% of the sales, the rest would likely give up because they can't make any money. In my humble opinion they do this not to "cap" an individual per se (although that is the consequence) but to keep people uploading by spreading the wealth. Having 70% of motivated contributors is better than 20% when you want to differentiate yourself through content volume and variety.
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It is certainly true that the searches are not neutral and they are not static. If nothing else the sites want to change their searches to keep them from being gamed. They also don't want the results to always appear the same. Most sites with exclusive content say that exclusive stuff gets a boost. Many sites have some sort of ranking based on the photographer. One of the great things about the old SS search was that it didn't do that.
Any time the sites change the searches there will be winners and losers. If they really mess up the search and the shopping experience the buyers will go elsewhere (eg IS).
It is also in the interest of the sites to attract and retain new photographers. I used to wonder if small sites would produce a few bogus early sales to spur uploading since they didn't have to pay out 'til the photographer had made many more sales. The sites also don't want to discourage older photographers since they supply a good percentage of the HCV images. I think it is pretty obvious that although the pie is growing it is also getting sliced up into more and more pieces so that the average return per image is falling. One way to try to "spread the wealth" and keep more submitters happy would be to follow a big sale with a relatively poor placement for a bit. This would be hard to prove, although seeing your images move down in the search following a big sale would be pretty good evidence. Personally I have enough crappy days followed by more crappy days that a few crappy days after a big day aren't going to prove anything.
Whatever is going on, search placement is the key to getting sales for the more common keywords and the sites keep their search sauce pretty secret.
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Personally I have enough crappy days followed by more crappy days that a few crappy days after a big day aren't going to prove anything.
LOL. ::) 'Tis true!
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One way to try to "spread the wealth" and keep more submitters happy would be to follow a big sale with a relatively poor placement for a bit. This would be hard to prove, although seeing your images move down in the search following a big sale would be pretty good evidence.
So far nobody in this discussion (and previous ones) has come up with such an observation.
This is why I personally don't believe that this active "capping" really happens.
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I think it matters because if, say, 20% of the contributors make up 80% of the sales, the rest would likely give up because they can't make any money. In my humble opinion they do this not to "cap" an individual per se (although that is the consequence) but to keep people uploading by spreading the wealth. Having 70% of motivated contributors is better than 20% when you want to differentiate yourself through content volume and variety.
Also useful when you don't want contributors to have any power. If the best 10% (i.e. those producing the most saleable images) were always at the top of results they would soon be the only ones making any sales and the agencies would have to start treating them like human beings for fear of losing them.
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One way to try to "spread the wealth" and keep more submitters happy would be to follow a big sale with a relatively poor placement for a bit. This would be hard to prove, although seeing your images move down in the search following a big sale would be pretty good evidence.
So far nobody in this discussion (and previous ones) has come up with such an observation.
This is why I personally don't believe that this active "capping" really happens.
Its never been a matter of spreading the wealth or keep submitters happy. Its always been a matter of keeping large producers of pictures, High commercial value suppliers happy. They make up the agency strength, the backbone of any stock-agency.
If X comes along and drop a portfolio of travel or landscape images X will be one in a million. Simultaneously another photographer comes along and drops a portfolio of images from the future and options exchange, stock-exchange, dealers, etc all with MR's.
Which one of these suppliers do you think will raise the agency eyebrows?
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Whatever the reason, you can be sure that it puts money in their pocket somehow, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. It sure isn't of any benefit to the contributor. As usual.
I am sorry but you don't know how wrong you are on that point :)
Please, do tell me how i am wrong. 😀
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Whatever the reason, you can be sure that it puts money in their pocket somehow, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. It sure isn't of any benefit to the contributor. As usual.
I am sorry but you don't know how wrong you are on that point :)
Please, do tell me how i am wrong. 😀
Its of benefit to some contributors, not all but a fair amount. :)
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Wohooo, 2 EL's in a row. Now let's see if this theory about cap is true :)
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I have also a "strange theory". I believe that people's earnings are depending on the area where they are. I read a lot of information about earnings on this forum (and not only here) and I believe if I l lived in Germany, U.K., U.S.A, and so on, my income would have been higher. Also, if I lived in Moldova, Georgia, Syria, etc. my earnings would have been lower.
What do you think ?
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I've noticed the same thing ???
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I have also a "strange theory". I believe that people's earnings are depending on the area where they are. I read a lot of information about earnings on this forum (and not only here) and I believe if I l lived in Germany, U.K., U.S.A, and so on, my income would have been higher. Also, if I lived in Moldova, Georgia, Syria, etc. my earnings would have been lower.
What do you think ?
I wouldn't be surprised at all if the local search tends to show local artist's work. Of course this makes no sense for most images, but if some bean counter saw some small benefit to it it would be implemented. If you live somewhere far away from most photo buyers that would hurt your sales. I am tempted to change my address to NYC.
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I have also a "strange theory". I believe that people's earnings are depending on the area where they are. I read a lot of information about earnings on this forum (and not only here) and I believe if I l lived in Germany, U.K., U.S.A, and so on, my income would have been higher. Also, if I lived in Moldova, Georgia, Syria, etc. my earnings would have been lower.
What do you think ?
I wouldn't be surprised at all if the local search tends to show local artist's work. Of course this makes no sense for most images, but if some bean counter saw some small benefit to it it would be implemented. If you live somewhere far away from most photo buyers that would hurt your sales. I am tempted to change my address to NYC.
Haha! for all you know you might just be right on that one. There is such a thing as a geographical search, so why not an area search. The things they can get up to when it comes to tweaking searches are just incredible. ::)
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I too have noticed a sort of capping phenomenon following high income days. But a far more likely method of doing it IMO, would be by simply pocketing the sales once the cap has been reached, for a period of time.
In other words creaming off our sales beyond a certain level. No need to muck around with search results, and risk negatively impacting on sales. Just cream off our sales. I also suspect that lower income contributors may well not be impacted by this.
One way of testing this would be for some buyers and sellers on SS to get together discreetly and buy each others images over a few days, and check that all the sales are registered correctly. Obviously they would have to buy heavily initially to test the cap theory. If they turn up results that confirm that we are being robbed, then things could get very interesting indeed!!!
Microstock with its inherent smoke and mirrors and byzantine secrecy lends itself perfectly to dodgy dealing.
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^^^ I like this theory. I propose that everyone start heavily buying my images. I'll let you know if my sales go up. Promise. 8)
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Wohooo, 2 EL's in a row. Now let's see if this theory about cap is true :)
I still have good sales after those 2 EL's.
I guess they've read this topic.
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^^^ I like this theory. I propose that everyone start heavily buying my images. I'll let you know if my sales go up. Promise. 8)
;) 'buy each other's images'...... zero sum game (less the cream/%age)
Creaming might just kick in for the $.38 folk?
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^^^ I like this theory. I propose that everyone start heavily buying my images. I'll let you know if my sales go up. Promise. 8)
;) 'buy each other's images'...... zero sum game (less the cream/%age)
Creaming might just kick in for the $.38 folk?
No, not zero sum, because you need to spend a dollar for someone else to make 28 cents. So as long as you're spending money, might as well spend it on me.
"Skimming" might be a better term for your theory. "Creaming" means something else entirely in the U.S.
As a 38-center, I've seen no evidence that my sales stop after an EL or ODD.
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^^^ I like this theory. I propose that everyone start heavily buying my images. I'll let you know if my sales go up. Promise. 8)
;) 'buy each other's images'...... zero sum game (less the cream/%age)
Creaming might just kick in for the $.38 folk?
No, not zero sum, because you need to spend a dollar for someone else to make 28 cents. So as long as you're spending money, might as well spend it on me.
"Skimming" might be a better term for your theory. "Creaming" means something else entirely in the U.S.
As a 38-center, I've seen no evidence that my sales stop after an EL or ODD.
that's what '%age' was about. Sorry thought, it was obvious, I'll let you get back to nit-picking.
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"Skimming" might be a better term for your theory. "Creaming" means something else entirely in the U.S.
Yeah, never heard it called creaming in this context before. :o
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"Skimming" might be a better term for your theory. "Creaming" means something else entirely in the U.S.
Yeah, never heard it called creaming in this context before. :o
Common UK usage, but usually 'creaming off'
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/cream-sth-sb-off (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/cream-sth-sb-off)
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"Skimming" might be a better term for your theory. "Creaming" means something else entirely in the U.S.
Yeah, never heard it called creaming in this context before. :o
Common UK usage, but usually 'creaming off'
[url]http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/cream-sth-sb-off[/url] ([url]http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/cream-sth-sb-off[/url])
Lol. Separated by a common language.
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I thought you were talking about "creampie".
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Error.
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in case any other US people are struggling to understand the usage of the word 'cream' as a transitive verb. The Collins American English dictionary is quite clear on the subject:
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/american/cream (http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/american/cream)
Search 'cream' : definition no 12 ..... 'To remove/use etc. the best part of'
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It seems easy to check if cap exist. In my Earnings Summary I see that almost always when I have EL the Total is 10% less than usual (for example if normally I had 100 sales in a day with EL it will be only 90).
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in case any other US people are struggling to understand the usage of the word 'cream' as a transitive verb. The Collins American English dictionary is quite clear on the subject:
[url]http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/american/cream[/url] ([url]http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/american/cream[/url])
Search 'cream' : definition no 12 ..... 'To remove/use etc. the best part of'
No one is struggling. We say cream of the crop all the time. We just dont use the word creaming instead of skimming. But i will stop diverting the thread now.
I stopped uploading images awhile back and am only selling at SS and FT now, so my sales are dwindling anyway. But pretty much all the scenarios presented are not out of the realm of possibility for me to believe. All the big companies now have a magical "algorithm" that can manipulate earnings any way they like. We arent people anymore, just a metric for them squeeze every last penny from.
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I have also a "strange theory". I believe that people's earnings are depending on the area where they are. I read a lot of information about earnings on this forum (and not only here) and I believe if I l lived in Germany, U.K., U.S.A, and so on, my income would have been higher. Also, if I lived in Moldova, Georgia, Syria, etc. my earnings would have been lower.
What do you think ?
I strongly agree with this theory, maybe SS pays what is reasonable acording with the place where you live, i live in a south american country and i only can earn a similar amount of money to the minimum wage in my country (which it is a very sad amount by the way). Now I'm working so hard to generate new content and upload images every day, but this does not change earning rate.
The general explanation of this is that the quality of my content is not so good or maybe i didnt use the correct keywords and for this reason my earning is lower... but im not sure about it and i start to believe that SS limits earning acording to your country (among other things).
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I have also a "strange theory". I believe that people's earnings are depending on the area where they are. I read a lot of information about earnings on this forum (and not only here) and I believe if I l lived in Germany, U.K., U.S.A, and so on, my income would have been higher. Also, if I lived in Moldova, Georgia, Syria, etc. my earnings would have been lower.
What do you think ?
I strongly agree with this theory, maybe SS pays what is reasonable acording with the place where you live, i live in a south american country and i only can earn a similar amount of money to the minimum wage in my country (which it is a very sad amount by the way). Now I'm working so hard to generate new content and upload images every day, but this does not change earning rate.
The general explanation of this is that the quality of my content is not so good or maybe i didnt use the correct keywords and for this reason my earning is lower... but im not sure about it and i start to believe that SS limits earning acording to your country (among other things).
What can we do ? Or, how we can be pretty sure?
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I have also a "strange theory". I believe that people's earnings are depending on the area where they are. I read a lot of information about earnings on this forum (and not only here) and I believe if I l lived in Germany, U.K., U.S.A, and so on, my income would have been higher. Also, if I lived in Moldova, Georgia, Syria, etc. my earnings would have been lower.
What do you think ?
I strongly agree with this theory, maybe SS pays what is reasonable acording with the place where you live, i live in a south american country and i only can earn a similar amount of money to the minimum wage in my country (which it is a very sad amount by the way). Now I'm working so hard to generate new content and upload images every day, but this does not change earning rate.
The general explanation of this is that the quality of my content is not so good or maybe i didnt use the correct keywords and for this reason my earning is lower... but im not sure about it and i start to believe that SS limits earning acording to your country (among other things).
What can we do ? Or, how we can be pretty sure?
Good question Sebalos, i really dont know...
I still have the hope of earn similar amounts that some users report (2k per month or more) which is almost impossible to earn working in my country...
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I still have the hope of earn similar amounts that some users report (2k per month or more) which is almost impossible to earn working in my country...
I have same feeling. I'm pretty sure that if I ask someone what is my monthly revenue, he will say much more that actually is. Of course, if he is from a country with high living standard.
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in case any other US people are struggling to understand the usage of the word 'cream' as a transitive verb. The Collins American English dictionary is quite clear on the subject:
[url]http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/american/cream[/url] ([url]http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/american/cream[/url])
Search 'cream' : definition no 12 ..... 'To remove/use etc. the best part of'
As John Travolta so eloquently puts it in "Greased Lightning:"
Go Greased Lightning, you're burning up the quarter mile
(Greased Lightning, go Greased Lightning)
Go Greased Lightning, you're coasting through the heat lap trials
(Greased Lightning, go Greased Lightning)
You are supreme, the chicks'll cream for Greased Lightning
(Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go)
It has a sexual connotation in the U.S.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK63eUyk-iM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK63eUyk-iM)
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As John Travolta so eloquently puts it in "Greased Lightning:"
Yep, Shelma, I remember that line very well. LOL!!
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I honestly do believe there is a delay or server lag sometimes, because you can sit there and refresh your earnings for an hour at a time (sometimes) and not see a change. Even on high-earnings days. Although those seem to be fewer and further between, lately. It might be a technical thing.
I don't think Shutterstock is "skimming" or limiting us in our income potential. All contributors are the backbone that helped them gain and continue to hold their top spot in the microstock market. They haven't been shady in the past, and let's hope it stays that way.
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I honestly do believe there is a delay or server lag sometimes, because you can sit there and refresh your earnings for an hour at a time (sometimes) and not see a change. Even on high-earnings days. Although those seem to be fewer and further between, lately. It might be a technical thing.
I don't think Shutterstock is "skimming" or limiting us in our income potential. All contributors are the backbone that helped them gain and continue to hold their top spot in the microstock market. They haven't been shady in the past, and let's hope it stays that way.
I also agree with this dealy but anyway when i say that i think that there is a earning limit is watching my earning history, not my current day earning, i think that the limit is not day by day but month by month.
As you say... "All contributors are the backbone that helped them gain and continue to hold their top..." maybe for this reason they try to give a reasonable earning acording to your country, im pretty sure that if you pay the money that i earn to a Canadian he just is gonna stop uploading images because he can go outside and earn about 3000-5000 US$ per month, so you really need to pay better to people in other countries (for example)... i dont know it is just a theory
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Backbone? us the contributors? Oh dear, well maybe some eight or nine years back we could afford the luxury of that thought. Things have changed my friend.
Today we are numbers, just numbers among millions of other numbers and if a member quits today he or she is replaced within five seconds. :)
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Backbone? us the contributors? Oh dear, well maybe some eight or nine years back we could afford the luxury of that thought. Things have changed my friend.
Today we are numbers, just numbers among millions of other numbers and if a member quits today he or she is replaced within five seconds. :)
u r the wisest of all the ppl here!!!
most of us live in a dream world thinking we r still the backbone, when in fact we are just the necessary part of that body part which is useful to everyone of us because every morning we have to use it to get rid of things our body don't need .
you know which body part i mean.
it's like the reality with telemarketing employees, or politics. i was just walking home last night and i notice a grafitti on a political ad, it read..."same old sh*t, just a different a$$hole!".
well, that's what microstock is like the telemarketer agents who walk in to work all fullofsh*t screaming to the boss, "we want you to listen to us, or else..."
and without a moment's thought, the boss gave them the "or else" ...
and fills the empty call centre in a day with another bunch of eager beavers looking for employment.
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I don't think Shutterstock is "skimming" or limiting us in our income potential. All contributors are the backbone that helped them gain and continue to hold their top spot in the microstock market. They haven't been shady in the past, and let's hope it stays that way.
How do you know that? Have you seen any independent 3rd party audits published recently that have followed the 'paper trails' through SS databases to ensure that they aren't creaming off the profits illegally? Without anything like that it's just wishful thinking to believe that they are crediting each sale that they make appropriately and have been doing so from the beginning. Of course, it's much more comfortable and less stressful to believe in a world where corporate greed and exploitation doesn't exist. The unfortunate truth is that it does, it's endemic and crowd sourcing lends itself admirably to exploitation in various forms.
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your images are perfect, you cannot earn 2k with food, understand that.
i think you all are overreacting, if i have big sod ,next day is 90% average or little less. That is fact. Other fact is you have to work every day and that brings results. thats all.
I still have the hope of earn similar amounts that some users report (2k per month or more) which is almost impossible to earn working in my country...
I have same feeling. I'm pretty sure that if I ask someone what is my monthly revenue, he will say much more that actually is. Of course, if he is from a country with high living standard.
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I honestly do believe there is a delay or server lag sometimes, because you can sit there and refresh your earnings for an hour at a time (sometimes) and not see a change. Even on high-earnings days. Although those seem to be fewer and further between, lately. It might be a technical thing.
It's directly on their earnings page:
NOTES:
To maintain database performance, stats are updated every hour.
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your images are perfect, you cannot earn 2k with food, understand that.
I really dont understand what you mean with that... my images are'nt about food...
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I honestly do believe there is a delay or server lag sometimes, because you can sit there and refresh your earnings for an hour at a time (sometimes) and not see a change. Even on high-earnings days. Although those seem to be fewer and further between, lately. It might be a technical thing.
I don't think Shutterstock is "skimming" or limiting us in our income potential. All contributors are the backbone that helped them gain and continue to hold their top spot in the microstock market. They haven't been shady in the past, and let's hope it stays that way.
I don't think anyone's "skimming" either, or not reporting sales or anything "shady" like that- but I do have a strong suspicion that there is a certain "weight" number assigned to your portfolio. I upload regularly still and my earnings stay surprisingly the same, every month very close to one number. Let's say I uploaded 500 new images this year - that's someone else's portfolio right? Shouldn't I see at least *some* increase? Newbies with 500 new images do report nice earnings, right? So - where is mine?
And yes it would make sense to pay less to people in developing countries - they'd stay motivated for less money (not saying this is happening, but could be)...
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I do believe I saw a similar thread a while ago...something about capping downloads. This conspiracy is just as loony.
If earnings are down, it's because of competition. Sometimes, you have competitors and other times, you are the competitor. There are no cap on downloads or earnings. People need to face reality and start upping their game.
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I do believe I saw a similar thread a while ago...something about capping downloads. This conspiracy is just as loony.
If earnings are down, it's because of competition. Sometimes, you have competitors and other times, you are the competitor. There are no cap on downloads or earnings. People need to face reality and start upping their game.
Seems it doesn't matter how often you point out the fundamental flaws in conspiracy theories people hang on to them like a lifejacket in the ocean
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your images are perfect, you cannot earn 2k with food, understand that.
Why not ? I believe that are many people who earn much more than that only with food pictures.
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Although some of these " conspiacies " are just reallity and common sense from any agency.
Its quite obvious that no photo-agency, large, small, traditional or micro, can survive on apples, oranges, babies, landscapes and so on.
Contributors, photographers that can deliver speciallity, high value commercial images and plenty of it ARE looked after and quite rightly so. Even Getty makes no secret of this, a well known fact for years, long before micro-stock surfaced.
If I owned an agency I would make damned sure that the members whos pictures generated interest and sales were highly looked after and if this falls under the heading conspiracy, well so be it. I call it common sense for agency survival.
There are also non public forums for full-time creatives, photographers involved in stock where these conspiracy theories have been debated for years and accepted as part of the business.
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I do believe I saw a similar thread a while ago...something about capping downloads. This conspiracy is just as loony.
If earnings are down, it's because of competition. Sometimes, you have competitors and other times, you are the competitor. There are no cap on downloads or earnings. People need to face reality and start upping their game.
What is loony about widespread corporate greed and fraud? Let's see some facts to back up your blind faith in the unimpeachable honesty of the microstock industry. Slinging insults around doesn't make your arguments convincing, quite the contrary. As far I can see there have been no independent audits to demonstrate that fraud isn't conducted on a systematic scale within the industry. It's long overdue that people realise that the microstock industry is a multi-million dollar industry who's single most important lodestone is the bottom line on the balance sheet. Profit. It's an industry run by accountants and big investors. They don't know who we are. They don't care how many hours it takes to create a single image, the care, the effort, the imagination. Anyone who believes that microstock is some altruistic business is simply living in a utopian dream world.
They draw a veil of secrecy over their internal workings. And until some whistle blower from the inside exposes the whole thing, or lawyers get to examine the books, we'll never really know what goes on. But one thing is sure. If the big microstock companies were really concerned about showing how honest they were they'd invite independent auditors in and the results proving how honest and altruistic they were would be circulated with great fanfare to each one of us. The pall of secrecy that they take great pains to maintain undermines any confidence we should have in their probity.
A message to those SS/Getty etc stooges on this forum. Let's see some hard facts.
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I'm quite prepared to believe in fraud - in fact its' inevitable to some degree the problem I have with the capping theory is I don't see how it benefits the agency and given the state of their IT systems I'm not sure they would be capable of implementing it.
I'm not sure about US company law but certainly companies quoted on stock exchanges such as SStock are audited.
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I'm quite prepared to believe in fraud - in fact its' inevitable to some degree the problem I have with the capping theory is I don't see how it benefits the agency and given the state of their IT systems I'm not sure they would be capable of implementing it.
I'm not sure about US company law but certainly companies quoted on stock exchanges such as SStock are audited.
Agreed. But there's a big difference between auditing the accounts, which involves accountants ensuring that the P&L, salaries, and running costs, liquid and fixed capital declarations etc are accurate, so that a correct tax declaration, dividends and end of year accounts is made, and on the other hand ensuring that each supplier is paid according to his or her agreements with the corporation. I know, as I've managed some big internal audits into US companies in the past. These are two very different activities, with very different aims. The independent audit that I'm refering involves rigorously following the sales/individual to their payments for a sample of contributors. Just to illustrate my point for those who haven't had any experience with auditing. An accountant auditing the accounts wouldn't care what category of contributor was in, say in the FT complex model. He would only care about the overall payments made to each supplier. The accountant if he spared a thought in that direction, would assume that each supplier would raise a fuss if he wasn't paid properly.
The advantage with the microstock model in terms of hiding the fraud, is that the supplier has no way of knowing exactly what he should be paid, as he doesn't get to see the direct sales of his products.
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It is funny how people love conspiracies these days.
And sad at the same time.
If you believe what you write, why do you not prove it?
It is so easy. Use a IP anonymizer and look where some of your images are in the results. After big sales, look if the positions are changed.
So many report so many conspiracies, but no one ever proved anything.
All nonsense.
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Companies will do whatever it takes to improve their financial position. If they find that something improves finances, and it's not unethical or illegal, why not? And obviously some companies don't even care if it's unethical or illegal.
It's all probability.
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It is funny how people love conspiracies these days.
And sad at the same time.
If you believe what you write, why do you not prove it?
It is so easy. Use a IP anonymizer and look where some of your images are in the results. After big sales, look if the positions are changed.
So many report so many conspiracies, but no one ever proved anything.
All nonsense.
Actually had you been a bit longer in this game and with a lets say a five times bigger portfolio. Believe me you would notice the differences.
There is no need to prove anything, it speaks for itself, unless of course you assume this business is the one and only business that is honest to the point of stupidity.
Lets face it, if a business, any business whatever model can improve their revenue they would be complete fools not to.
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It is funny how people love conspiracies these days.
And sad at the same time.
If you believe what you write, why do you not prove it?
It is so easy. Use a IP anonymizer and look where some of your images are in the results. After big sales, look if the positions are changed.
So many report so many conspiracies, but no one ever proved anything.
All nonsense.
Actually had you been a bit longer in this game and with a lets say a five times bigger portfolio. Believe me you would notice the differences.
There is no need to prove anything, it speaks for itself, unless of course you assume this business is the one and only business that is honest to the point of stupidity.
Lets face it, if a business, any business whatever model can improve their revenue they would be complete fools not to.
The repeatability for those with larger ports (I have almost 4,000 assets on SS) who have a monster day/week and then repeatedly see the next week or two fall the face of the planet happens all the time. Not one time. If I have no stellar days/weeks, my income is fairly level loaded day over day. The behavior is then reproduced the next time I have a big day/week. I have enough evidence in my own experience over years to know this IS GOING TO HAPPEN. Last week I had two good days ($150 or so per day). The entire last week has been at $13, $16, $10 per day, WAY BELOW MY DAILY AVERAGE.
Very frustrating but very factual.
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It is funny how people love conspiracies these days.
And sad at the same time.
If you believe what you write, why do you not prove it?
It is so easy. Use a IP anonymizer and look where some of your images are in the results. After big sales, look if the positions are changed.
So many report so many conspiracies, but no one ever proved anything.
All nonsense.
Actually had you been a bit longer in this game and with a lets say a five times bigger portfolio. Believe me you would notice the differences.
There is no need to prove anything, it speaks for itself, unless of course you assume this business is the one and only business that is honest to the point of stupidity.
Lets face it, if a business, any business whatever model can improve their revenue they would be complete fools not to.
The repeatability for those with larger ports (I have almost 4,000 assets on SS) who have a monster day/week and then repeatedly see the next week or two fall the face of the planet happens all the time. Not one time. If I have no stellar days/weeks, my income is fairly level loaded day over day. The behavior is then reproduced the next time I have a big day/week. I have enough evidence in my own experience over years to know this IS GOING TO HAPPEN. Last week I had two good days ($150 or so per day). The entire last week has been at $13, $16, $10 per day, WAY BELOW MY DAILY AVERAGE.
Very frustrating but very factual.
I know! and agree with you. Same thing is happening here and to everyone I know. I have a massive port, still happening though.
Just that some people have a hard time digesting this and prefer a make believe world nice and cosy.
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It is funny how people love conspiracies these days.
And sad at the same time.
If you believe what you write, why do you not prove it?
It is so easy. Use a IP anonymizer and look where some of your images are in the results. After big sales, look if the positions are changed.
So many report so many conspiracies, but no one ever proved anything.
All nonsense.
Actually had you been a bit longer in this game and with a lets say a five times bigger portfolio. Believe me you would notice the differences.
There is no need to prove anything, it speaks for itself, unless of course you assume this business is the one and only business that is honest to the point of stupidity.
Lets face it, if a business, any business whatever model can improve their revenue they would be complete fools not to.
The repeatability for those with larger ports (I have almost 4,000 assets on SS) who have a monster day/week and then repeatedly see the next week or two fall the face of the planet happens all the time. Not one time. If I have no stellar days/weeks, my income is fairly level loaded day over day. The behavior is then reproduced the next time I have a big day/week. I have enough evidence in my own experience over years to know this IS GOING TO HAPPEN. Last week I had two good days ($150 or so per day). The entire last week has been at $13, $16, $10 per day, WAY BELOW MY DAILY AVERAGE.
Very frustrating but very factual.
I know! and agree with you. Same thing is happening here and to everyone I know. I have a massive port, still happening though.
Just that some people have a hard time digesting this and prefer a make believe world nice and cosy.
Right. I wasn't disagreeing with you at all. I meant to say a monster week the week before last, then last week was among the worst I have had when my port was only 500 images.
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Right. I wasn't disagreeing with you at all. I meant to say a monster week the week before last, then last week was among the worst I have had when my port was only 500 images.
There are too many people reporting the same phenomena, so some kind of earning cap is a reality
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Maybe your big days and ELs are coming because they promoted your ports? It's funny when you're having a good day or week it's all because your images are great but when you have a bad day it's a conspiracy to keep you down. Seems just as likely that your bad days should be the norm and SS is boosting you up to unnatural levels on your good days.
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It is funny how people love conspiracies these days.
And sad at the same time.
If you believe what you write, why do you not prove it?
It is so easy. Use a IP anonymizer and look where some of your images are in the results. After big sales, look if the positions are changed.
So many report so many conspiracies, but no one ever proved anything.
All nonsense.
Actually had you been a bit longer in this game and with a lets say a five times bigger portfolio. Believe me you would notice the differences.
There is no need to prove anything, it speaks for itself, unless of course you assume this business is the one and only business that is honest to the point of stupidity.
Lets face it, if a business, any business whatever model can improve their revenue they would be complete fools not to.
The repeatability for those with larger ports (I have almost 4,000 assets on SS) who have a monster day/week and then repeatedly see the next week or two fall the face of the planet happens all the time. Not one time. If I have no stellar days/weeks, my income is fairly level loaded day over day. The behavior is then reproduced the next time I have a big day/week. I have enough evidence in my own experience over years to know this IS GOING TO HAPPEN. Last week I had two good days ($150 or so per day). The entire last week has been at $13, $16, $10 per day, WAY BELOW MY DAILY AVERAGE.
Very frustrating but very factual.
I know! and agree with you. Same thing is happening here and to everyone I know. I have a massive port, still happening though.
Just that some people have a hard time digesting this and prefer a make believe world nice and cosy.
Right. I wasn't disagreeing with you at all. I meant to say a monster week the week before last, then last week was among the worst I have had when my port was only 500 images.
Well maybe I worded it wrong but I am 100% agreeing with you on this cap business. Its a reallity for sure. :)
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My understanding is that if you upload for example 100 times more images in one agency this doesn't mean 100 times bigger income just because the clients there are the same and they will buy the same volume of images as before :)
It's very important also what kind of content we upload not only the quantity, because we can upload good salable images, but if there are similar is possible to not give us additional income. And if we add the wear and decline in the older files the result can be "the wall". Day after day all this becomes more complicated...
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Here's a graph of my September so far. I had a really excellent day yesterday, a $70 royalty. So don't let throw you off.
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Same here actually. Two EL's among others. Not bad for a Friday.
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Maybe your big days and ELs are coming because they promoted your ports? It's funny when you're having a good day or week it's all because your images are great but when you have a bad day it's a conspiracy to keep you down. Seems just as likely that your bad days should be the norm and SS is boosting you up to unnatural levels on your good days.
I don't know if you are specifically referring to me but if you are I never come in here touting "how good my port is". I am merely reporting what happens to me, regardless of my port quality. We are talking about known, repeatable patterns triggered by a specific event.
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Maybe your big days and ELs are coming because they promoted your ports? It's funny when you're having a good day or week it's all because your images are great but when you have a bad day it's a conspiracy to keep you down. Seems just as likely that your bad days should be the norm and SS is boosting you up to unnatural levels on your good days.
I don't know if you are specifically referring to me but if you are I never come in here touting "how good my port is". I am merely reporting what happens to me, regardless of my port quality. We are talking about known, repeatable patterns triggered by a specific event.
Nope not aimed at anyone in particular. Maybe your bad days are the fair normal ones and the good days are really SS propping up your ports at someone else's expense, seems just as likely as the alternative especially when you can easily test to see if your images are moved up or down the search. I think since it's easy to find proof that they cap earnings but no one has it's most likely they aren't doing anything. How hard is it to check the search results?
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Shutterstock is forever changing the search, all the time. Both Anthony and Scott admitted that openly. Called it a forever ongoing " experiment " to find the perfect search " which obviously takes them years/forever to find?
The truth of the matter is, one day you can find your image on lets say page four, the next day on page seven or one regardless of a sale or not.
There is no logic in the sort whatsoever.
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The truth of the matter is, one day you can find your image on lets say page four, the next day on page seven or one regardless of a sale or not.
There is no logic in the sort whatsoever.
Hmmm wasn't the argument that there was some logic, namely that when you get a big sale or lots of sales you get pushed down in the search? If there is no logic to it then there is no conspiracy to cap your earnings.
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One of the benefits of being a contributor and stock buyer is that I can do a lot of tests. I rarely do it, because I don't believe in abusing my corporate subscription account for my own benefit. With that being said, I have bought my own stock in the past to see if the caps conspiracy was real. And the result was what I thought, it was bullcrap. There is no cap on earnings or downloads. I used up a full day of subs to test and it all went through.
When someone buys a stock image, the transaction is instant. I buy an image and it shows up on my download list a second or 2 later. There is barely any delay. I'm not going to do another test, because there is no need.
What people need to understand is that this is not some Office Space nonsense where a bunch of rogue programmers install a virus to skim off the top. This is automated software that handle millions of transactions a day and they happen instantaneously. If anyone dares to try it, it would be some disgruntle programmer, not the company itself.
The only thing that constantly changes is the search rankings. Images rise and images fall. Images with high consistent downloads rise to the top while images with no downloads fall to the bottom. It's the nature of search of search engines and the nature of competition. If you still think there is a conspiracy, that's your own problem, not anyone else's. You have neither or facts or numbers to back it up, just an excuse as to why your portfolio is not performing as well as you want.
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The truth of the matter is, one day you can find your image on lets say page four, the next day on page seven or one regardless of a sale or not.
There is no logic in the sort whatsoever.
Hmmm wasn't the argument that there was some logic, namely that when you get a big sale or lots of sales you get pushed down in the search? If there is no logic to it then there is no conspiracy to cap your earnings.
Well you know. Logic, like too many Pints, loses its beneficial effect when taken in too large quantities. ;)
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You need 10k food images then, with 200 images new every month.
your images are perfect, you cannot earn 2k with food, understand that.
Why not ? I believe that are many people who earn much more than that only with food pictures.
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Just to expand on transactions, when a buyer makes a purchase, a few things happen.
1. The image becomes part of the buyer's download history. They can access it at anytime unless the image gets deleted, which is like never. The buyer can download it an infinite number of times after they make the initial purchase.
2. The image becomes part of the seller's download history and the transaction is added to their daily earnings.
3. The download is recorded in other sections as well, like insights, which keep track of download stats and keywords.
There are so many audits logs for each download. It's almost impossible for Shutterstock to skim anything, let alone hide transactions. The most important part here is when the image becomes part of the buyer's download history. It's recorded and transactions happen as it should. If someone wants to compare the buyer and seller logs, they can easily do it.
I dare anyone to prove me wrong. Spend $299 on a monthly subscription and use up every sub. You'll be losing about $15 dollars (assuming you're a .38'er) if you use every download. I will guarantee you that every download and every transaction will go through as it should.
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It is funny how people love conspiracies these days.
And sad at the same time.
If you believe what you write, why do you not prove it?
It is so easy. Use a IP anonymizer and look where some of your images are in the results. After big sales, look if the positions are changed.
So many report so many conspiracies, but no one ever proved anything.
All nonsense.
Actually had you been a bit longer in this game and with a lets say a five times bigger portfolio. Believe me you would notice the differences.
There is no need to prove anything, it speaks for itself, unless of course you assume this business is the one and only business that is honest to the point of stupidity.
Lets face it, if a business, any business whatever model can improve their revenue they would be complete fools not to.
The repeatability for those with larger ports (I have almost 4,000 assets on SS) who have a monster day/week and then repeatedly see the next week or two fall the face of the planet happens all the time. Not one time. If I have no stellar days/weeks, my income is fairly level loaded day over day. The behavior is then reproduced the next time I have a big day/week. I have enough evidence in my own experience over years to know this IS GOING TO HAPPEN. Last week I had two good days ($150 or so per day). The entire last week has been at $13, $16, $10 per day, WAY BELOW MY DAILY AVERAGE.
Very frustrating but very factual.
Yes, I've noticed exactly the same thing.
However I don't think this is something devious and nasty going on - I suspect that SS is simply trying to be fair to as many suppliers as possible, and give as many people as possible a good slice of the pie.
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It is funny how people love conspiracies these days.
And sad at the same time.
If you believe what you write, why do you not prove it?
It is so easy. Use a IP anonymizer and look where some of your images are in the results. After big sales, look if the positions are changed.
So many report so many conspiracies, but no one ever proved anything.
All nonsense.
Actually had you been a bit longer in this game and with a lets say a five times bigger portfolio. Believe me you would notice the differences.
There is no need to prove anything, it speaks for itself, unless of course you assume this business is the one and only business that is honest to the point of stupidity.
Lets face it, if a business, any business whatever model can improve their revenue they would be complete fools not to.
The repeatability for those with larger ports (I have almost 4,000 assets on SS) who have a monster day/week and then repeatedly see the next week or two fall the face of the planet happens all the time. Not one time. If I have no stellar days/weeks, my income is fairly level loaded day over day. The behavior is then reproduced the next time I have a big day/week. I have enough evidence in my own experience over years to know this IS GOING TO HAPPEN. Last week I had two good days ($150 or so per day). The entire last week has been at $13, $16, $10 per day, WAY BELOW MY DAILY AVERAGE.
Very frustrating but very factual.
Yes, I've noticed exactly the same thing.
However I don't think this is something devious and nasty going on - I suspect that SS is simply trying to be fair to as many suppliers as possible, and give as many people as possible a good slice of the pie.
Nor do I. I believe it is as you state, hatman.
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One of the benefits of being a contributor and stock buyer is that I can do a lot of tests. I rarely do it, because I don't believe in abusing my corporate subscription account for my own benefit. With that being said, I have bought my own stock in the past to see if the caps conspiracy was real. And the result was what I thought, it was bullcrap. There is no cap on earnings or downloads. I used up a full day of subs to test and it all went through.
When someone buys a stock image, the transaction is instant. I buy an image and it shows up on my download list a second or 2 later. There is barely any delay. I'm not going to do another test, because there is no need.
What people need to understand is that this is not some Office Space nonsense where a bunch of rogue programmers install a virus to skim off the top. This is automated software that handle millions of transactions a day and they happen instantaneously. If anyone dares to try it, it would be some disgruntle programmer, not the company itself.
The only thing that constantly changes is the search rankings. Images rise and images fall. Images with high consistent downloads rise to the top while images with no downloads fall to the bottom. It's the nature of search of search engines and the nature of competition. If you still think there is a conspiracy, that's your own problem, not anyone else's. You have neither or facts or numbers to back it up, just an excuse as to why your portfolio is not performing as well as you want. So what would that be 0.002% of transactions on one day?
So you proved to yourself (if we can take this story at face value) that some of the sales are credited some of the time. We all knew that already, big deal. You say that SS handles millions of transactions a day, and you checked on what 25, 50? So what would that be 0.002% of transactions on one day? Statistically insignificant. It doesn't come near to addressing the capping concern, which would presumably occur at a specific time in the month/week around the time that the presumed threshold is reached.
In addition creaming off sales on 25/day downloads doesn't make anything like as much sense from the corporate point of view as SODs, EDs etc. for obvious reasons.
Only last week, look at how VW have managed to hide defeat device software in their diesel cars, and actually deliver that software around the planet hundreds of thousands of times for years without being caught.
For anyone who believes that corporate fraud is just conspiracy theories, there's a top 10 worst cases here. The fun facts in each case are particularly illuminating.
http://www.accounting-degree.org/scandals/ (http://www.accounting-degree.org/scandals/)
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It is funny how people love conspiracies these days.
And sad at the same time.
If you believe what you write, why do you not prove it?
It is so easy. Use a IP anonymizer and look where some of your images are in the results. After big sales, look if the positions are changed.
So many report so many conspiracies, but no one ever proved anything.
All nonsense.
Actually had you been a bit longer in this game and with a lets say a five times bigger portfolio. Believe me you would notice the differences.
There is no need to prove anything, it speaks for itself, unless of course you assume this business is the one and only business that is honest to the point of stupidity.
Lets face it, if a business, any business whatever model can improve their revenue they would be complete fools not to.
There is no need to prove anything?
It is funny how people believing in various conspiracies always say that.
So how do you explain the plain fact that many people with large portfolio do not agree with your "proven" theory?
And how do you explain the reports of others, that after good days their images are on the same place in search?
So how is the "cap" achieved if your images are still on the same spots for buyers to purchase? I am a guy of facts. Give me facts and I will believe you.
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Last week I had two good days ($150 or so per day). The entire last week has been at $13, $16, $10 per day, WAY BELOW MY DAILY AVERAGE.
Very frustrating but very factual.
So you had TWO good days in a row? Is this not kind of the evidence that this theory does not work ? (just joking)
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It is funny how people love conspiracies these days.
And sad at the same time.
If you believe what you write, why do you not prove it?
It is so easy. Use a IP anonymizer and look where some of your images are in the results. After big sales, look if the positions are changed.
So many report so many conspiracies, but no one ever proved anything.
All nonsense.
Actually had you been a bit longer in this game and with a lets say a five times bigger portfolio. Believe me you would notice the differences.
There is no need to prove anything, it speaks for itself, unless of course you assume this business is the one and only business that is honest to the point of stupidity.
Lets face it, if a business, any business whatever model can improve their revenue they would be complete fools not to.
There is no need to prove anything?
It is funny how people believing in various conspiracies always say that.
So how do you explain the plain fact that many people with large portfolio do not agree with your "proven" theory?
And how do you explain the reports of others, that after good days their images are on the same place in search?
So how is the "cap" achieved if your images are still on the same spots for buyers to purchase? I am a guy of facts. Give me facts and I will believe you.
So you say youre a man of facts. Good! for you to understand facts you have to have a portfolio of thousands of files or else you will not see/experience what many of us here are experiencing. I mean with a smaller port you probably have a BME every single month, the amount from previous month isn't hard to beat.
Further more why use the word conspiracy? its no conspiracy. As I said lots earlier, this has been going on for years and years. Even many of the traditional agencies back in the film-days were doing this. Its nothing wrong, nothing illegal or shadey. Its a perfectly legit business action.
When people say "skimming off the top" now that is a conspiracy theory which I completely disagree with since there is no need for SS to do so.
In any case don't worry about it since it wont happen to you and when in fact most people don't notice or even think about it.
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Last week I had two good days ($150 or so per day). The entire last week has been at $13, $16, $10 per day, WAY BELOW MY DAILY AVERAGE.
Very frustrating but very factual.
So you had TWO good days in a row? Is this not kind of the evidence that this theory does not work ? (just joking)
Here's the very common pattern (for me). Could be nothing, could be very coincidental, or it could be level loading income. I honestly do not know for a fact (obviously since I don't work for SS).
Mon: $70
Tue: $45
Wed: $50
Thur: $65
Fri: $42
Sat: a few pennies
Sun a few pennies
Mon: $150
Tue: $135
Wed: $13
Thur: $16
Fri: $10
Sat: a few pennies
Sun: a few pennies
Mon $12
Tue: $19
Wed: $14
Thur: $11
This is my current pattern (dollars not exact). What typically happens next is I will ramp back up to my daily average when I don't have any stellar days, usually within a couple of weeks. Based on the years of these patterns, I anticipate that next week I will see a slow ramping of daily earnings back to "normal".
This is all I am saying. So when we post these behaviors it's not conspiracy theory per se, but rather a discussion as to why it's happening.
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So you proved to yourself (if we can take this story at face value) that some of the sales are credited some of the time. We all knew that already, big deal. You say that SS handles millions of transactions a day, and you checked on what 25, 50? So what would that be 0.002% of transactions on one day? Statistically insignificant. It doesn't come near to addressing the capping concern, which would presumably occur at a specific time in the month/week around the time that the presumed threshold is reached.
In addition creaming off sales on 25/day downloads doesn't make anything like as much sense from the corporate point of view as SODs, EDs etc. for obvious reasons.
Only last week, look at how VW have managed to hide defeat device software in their diesel cars, and actually deliver that software around the planet hundreds of thousands of times for years without being caught.
For anyone who believes that corporate fraud is just conspiracy theories, there's a top 10 worst cases here. The fun facts in each case are particularly illuminating.
[url]http://www.accounting-degree.org/scandals/[/url] ([url]http://www.accounting-degree.org/scandals/[/url])
It's well-known fact that I download stock images for personal projects and company projects. I'm one of the few who can compare seller and buyer logs and I have. I already told you what happens when someone buys an image. Each download creates a log on the buyer and the seller's history.
And based on the small sample that I tested, everything went through. If you think there is a conspiracy, then the burden of proof is on you, not me. If you stand to make an accusation, it's on you to prove it. And your low download numbers are not facts. Your scandals list companies that falsely report earnings, has little to nothing to do with what were talking about. For the record, I don't trust any company that operates in finance or anything that require government regulations.
I have over 1000 images in my portfolio and I consistently make over a certain amount on weekdays. I haven't seen any capping. I've seen plenty of fluctuations because of SODs and Enhanced Downloads, but I rarely go below a certain threshold. It's the nature of the retail business to have fluctuations, seasonal highs and lows. Every industry face this issue, but the vocal few always seem to think their experience is everyone's experience. It's not.
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this is realy weird sales, my sales are every day almost the same +- 15%, even saturdays and sundays are every week the same.
Last week I had two good days ($150 or so per day). The entire last week has been at $13, $16, $10 per day, WAY BELOW MY DAILY AVERAGE.
Very frustrating but very factual.
So you had TWO good days in a row? Is this not kind of the evidence that this theory does not work ? (just joking)
Here's the very common pattern (for me). Could be nothing, could be very coincidental, or it could be level loading income. I honestly do not know for a fact (obviously since I don't work for SS).
Mon: $70
Tue: $45
Wed: $50
Thur: $65
Fri: $42
Sat: a few pennies
Sun a few pennies
Mon: $150
Tue: $135
Wed: $13
Thur: $16
Fri: $10
Sat: a few pennies
Sun: a few pennies
Mon $12
Tue: $19
Wed: $14
Thur: $11
This is my current pattern (dollars not exact). What typically happens next is I will ramp back up to my daily average when I don't have any stellar days, usually within a couple of weeks. Based on the years of these patterns, I anticipate that next week I will see a slow ramping of daily earnings back to "normal".
This is all I am saying. So when we post these behaviors it's not conspiracy theory per se, but rather a discussion as to why it's happening.
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As an ex-analyst (13 years as a Credit Scoring Analyst), I would say there is an element of control over the amount a contributor can earn in any one 7 day period. I believe this is part of their ranking system. Sad as it may be I still enjoy building SAS programmes that import and integrate data to find patterns and there is plenty of evidence to be found. It does't mean they are being underhand, i't just THEIR way of ranking contributors. Whether it's the right way is open to individual opinion.
Why do it? Keeping as many contributors happy as possible (earning money) means more varied work to present to clients. If the same people stayed at the top all the time while the rest sank below they would stop submitting and variety in images would decline. They have already stated they want to keep changing images for clients. Shifting images up and down the search means clients see a greater variety of images. However, it can also P1ss some off.... it's a balancing act. Time will tell if SS have got the balance right
One of the more interesting stats to watch is the 7 day rolling average. For me, I often see medium - large variation in daily sales. This is not unusual on it's own but when I see the 7 day average stay within a couple of $'s from the previous day after such a large variation in actual daily income, then it's either a massive coincidence or, there is a a cut off that slows sales down once a threshold is met. It would be very easy to manage / operate (anyone who's been involved in building scorecards would know). I'd imaging each contributor will have a score (rank) for each client type (subs, ODDs,SODs etc etc) and depending on who searches and for what, will alter what lands at the top of their search. From time to time they will alter the way the algorithm makes use of the contributor scores etc to see if the mix of images results in greater or reduced sales compared to what it was (champion / challenger analysis).
Here's an example of what I mean in terms of daily inc and the average over the previous 7 days.
Daily Inc 7day avg
$75.89 $ 177.34
$14.4 $ 179.34
$38.26 $ 177.05
$13.1 $ 176.29
$11.72 $ 176.61
$2.88 $ 175.08
$20.94 $ 177.19
This is just a 7 day average but there are ways to monitor similar patterns over 30days, 3 & 6 months etc. Very revealing.
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As an ex-analyst (13 years as a Credit Scoring Analyst), I would say there is an element of control over the amount a contributor can earn in any one 7 day period. I believe this is part of their ranking system. Sad as it may be I still enjoy building SAS programmes that import and integrate data to find patterns and there is plenty of evidence to be found. It does't mean they are being underhand, i't just THEIR way of ranking contributors. Whether it's the right way is open to individual opinion.
Why do it? Keeping as many contributors happy as possible (earning money) means more varied work to present to clients. If the same people stayed at the top all the time while the rest sank below they would stop submitting and variety in images would decline. They have already stated they want to keep changing images for clients. Shifting images up and down the search means clients see a greater variety of images. However, it can also P1ss some off.... it's a balancing act. Time will tell if SS have got the balance right
One of the more interesting stats to watch is the 7 day rolling average. For me, I often see medium - large variation in daily sales. This is not unusual on it's own but when I see the 7 day average stay within a couple of $'s from the previous day after such a large variation in actual daily income, then it's either a massive coincidence or, there is a a cut off that slows sales down once a threshold is met. It would be very easy to manage / operate (anyone who's been involved in building scorecards would know). I'd imaging each contributor will have a score (rank) for each client type (subs, ODDs,SODs etc etc) and depending on who searches and for what, will alter what lands at the top of their search. From time to time they will alter the way the algorithm makes use of the contributor scores etc to see if the mix of images results in greater or reduced sales compared to what it was (champion / challenger analysis).
Here's an example of what I mean in terms of daily inc and the average over the previous 7 days.
Daily Inc 7day avg
$75.89 $ 177.34
$14.4 $ 179.34
$38.26 $ 177.05
$13.1 $ 176.29
$11.72 $ 176.61
$2.88 $ 175.08
$20.94 $ 177.19
This is just a 7 day average but there are ways to monitor similar patterns over 30days, 3 & 6 months etc. Very revealing.
Very interesting indeed. Another very feasible hypothesis.
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As an ex-analyst (13 years as a Credit Scoring Analyst), I would say there is an element of control over the amount a contributor can earn in any one 7 day period. I believe this is part of their ranking system. Sad as it may be I still enjoy building SAS programmes that import and integrate data to find patterns and there is plenty of evidence to be found. It does't mean they are being underhand, i't just THEIR way of ranking contributors. Whether it's the right way is open to individual opinion.
Why do it? Keeping as many contributors happy as possible (earning money) means more varied work to present to clients. If the same people stayed at the top all the time while the rest sank below they would stop submitting and variety in images would decline. They have already stated they want to keep changing images for clients. Shifting images up and down the search means clients see a greater variety of images. However, it can also P1ss some off.... it's a balancing act. Time will tell if SS have got the balance right
One of the more interesting stats to watch is the 7 day rolling average. For me, I often see medium - large variation in daily sales. This is not unusual on it's own but when I see the 7 day average stay within a couple of $'s from the previous day after such a large variation in actual daily income, then it's either a massive coincidence or, there is a a cut off that slows sales down once a threshold is met. It would be very easy to manage / operate (anyone who's been involved in building scorecards would know). I'd imaging each contributor will have a score (rank) for each client type (subs, ODDs,SODs etc etc) and depending on who searches and for what, will alter what lands at the top of their search. From time to time they will alter the way the algorithm makes use of the contributor scores etc to see if the mix of images results in greater or reduced sales compared to what it was (champion / challenger analysis).
Here's an example of what I mean in terms of daily inc and the average over the previous 7 days.
Daily Inc 7day avg
$75.89 $ 177.34
$14.4 $ 179.34
$38.26 $ 177.05
$13.1 $ 176.29
$11.72 $ 176.61
$2.88 $ 175.08
$20.94 $ 177.19
This is just a 7 day average but there are ways to monitor similar patterns over 30days, 3 & 6 months etc. Very revealing.
Excellent post HalfFull - I think this is exactly what's happening. "...there is a a cut off that slows sales down once a threshold is met" - that's what I see. Which brings me back to my original question - does SS decide how much to pay each of us and we're just getting a salary? It sure feels like that to me. What's the point of improving then and growing your portfolio? Motivation - down the toilet...
Time to move out of this business.
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As an ex-analyst (13 years as a Credit Scoring Analyst), I would say there is an element of control over the amount a contributor can earn in any one 7 day period. I believe this is part of their ranking system. Sad as it may be I still enjoy building SAS programmes that import and integrate data to find patterns and there is plenty of evidence to be found. It does't mean they are being underhand, i't just THEIR way of ranking contributors. Whether it's the right way is open to individual opinion.
Why do it? Keeping as many contributors happy as possible (earning money) means more varied work to present to clients. If the same people stayed at the top all the time while the rest sank below they would stop submitting and variety in images would decline. They have already stated they want to keep changing images for clients. Shifting images up and down the search means clients see a greater variety of images. However, it can also P1ss some off.... it's a balancing act. Time will tell if SS have got the balance right
One of the more interesting stats to watch is the 7 day rolling average. For me, I often see medium - large variation in daily sales. This is not unusual on it's own but when I see the 7 day average stay within a couple of $'s from the previous day after such a large variation in actual daily income, then it's either a massive coincidence or, there is a a cut off that slows sales down once a threshold is met. It would be very easy to manage / operate (anyone who's been involved in building scorecards would know). I'd imaging each contributor will have a score (rank) for each client type (subs, ODDs,SODs etc etc) and depending on who searches and for what, will alter what lands at the top of their search. From time to time they will alter the way the algorithm makes use of the contributor scores etc to see if the mix of images results in greater or reduced sales compared to what it was (champion / challenger analysis).
Here's an example of what I mean in terms of daily inc and the average over the previous 7 days.
Daily Inc 7day avg
$75.89 $ 177.34
$14.4 $ 179.34
$38.26 $ 177.05
$13.1 $ 176.29
$11.72 $ 176.61
$2.88 $ 175.08
$20.94 $ 177.19
This is just a 7 day average but there are ways to monitor similar patterns over 30days, 3 & 6 months etc. Very revealing.
Excellent post HalfFull - I think this is exactly what's happening. "...there is a a cut off that slows sales down once a threshold is met" - that's what I see. Which brings me back to my original question - does SS decide how much to pay each of us and we're just getting a salary? It sure feels like that to me. What's the point of improving then and growing your portfolio? Motivation - down the toilet...
Time to move out of this business.
For the last seven months I have been within. 5% give or take of my monthly threshold. Amazing! having siad this I really don't mind being on a monthly salary as long as its a good salary. LOL. so I can't complain.
As far as improving, growing your port, uploading? well thats gone down the drain long time ago. What we are seeing now is exactly a carbo-copy of what happened with the traditional photo-agencies back in the mid 90s followed by a few years and then it all collapses. :)
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Excellent post HalfFull - I think this is exactly what's happening. "...there is a a cut off that slows sales down once a threshold is met" - that's what I see. Which brings me back to my original question - does SS decide how much to pay each of us and we're just getting a salary? It sure feels like that to me. What's the point of improving then and growing your portfolio? Motivation - down the toilet...
Time to move out of this business.
For the last seven months I have been within. 5% give or take of my monthly threshold. Amazing! having siad this I really don't mind being on a monthly salary as long as its a good salary. LOL. so I can't complain.
As far as improving, growing your port, uploading? well thats gone down the drain long time ago. What we are seeing now is exactly a carbo-copy of what happened with the traditional photo-agencies back in the mid 90s followed by a few years and then it all collapses. :)
I don't think we are seeing the collapse of the business just a business finding the limitations of it's current ranking system. This system works great when the business is growing fast and the increase split over all it's contributors is increasing each month. Now, with the volume of contributors and the slowing growth (in terms of revenue coming in) and the still massive increase in terms of contributors / images they are having to cut the amount of earnings to some.
They are still working on the principle of trying to please everyone but not really pleasing anyone. The bigger earners will feel they are being held back, lower earners will be happy to begin with until throttling comes in. Lower earners who supply a lot will wonder why their earnings don't increase in line with the growth of their port etc etc.
The system they employ means people earn well from the beginning (sales come in quickly) rather than seeing very little for months until image and contributor ranking builds up based on sales (without promotion). This more traditional approach of rewarding increased rank based on image popularity only means there will be fewer individual contributors at the top, not as varied selection of images (but still plenty, 1000's contributors still) but the ones that don't cut it will fall quickly and ultimately stop supplying, while the successful ones will continue to supply, possibly in greater numbers. This of course speeds up the demise of the less successful contributors as images are pushed further down.
The type of growth curve from this type of ranking is a very shallow to begin with but will steepen quickly once images move up the ranking system faster. Like a rolling snowball it can gather pace quickly. There are a few agencies out there that work with this more traditional approach.
SS will have to decide if it wants to continue to please everyone (and fail) or reward those whose images climb up the ranking system without assistance (and reduce the variety of contributors). Continuing the way they are going now will ultimately result in them losing more contributors from the middle to top as they will be full time and looking for increased earnings from their increased portfolios.
I believe SS are at a crossroads and they'll have to revisit how they rank contributors as FT starts eating into their client base more and more, which will in turn will mean contributors at SS will notice this capping more and more.
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Excellent post HalfFull - I think this is exactly what's happening. "...there is a a cut off that slows sales down once a threshold is met" - that's what I see. Which brings me back to my original question - does SS decide how much to pay each of us and we're just getting a salary? It sure feels like that to me. What's the point of improving then and growing your portfolio? Motivation - down the toilet...
Time to move out of this business.
For the last seven months I have been within. 5% give or take of my monthly threshold. Amazing! having siad this I really don't mind being on a monthly salary as long as its a good salary. LOL. so I can't complain.
As far as improving, growing your port, uploading? well thats gone down the drain long time ago. What we are seeing now is exactly a carbo-copy of what happened with the traditional photo-agencies back in the mid 90s followed by a few years and then it all collapses. :)
I don't think we are seeing the collapse of the business just a business finding the limitations of it's current ranking system. This system works great when the business is growing fast and the increase split over all it's contributors is increasing each month. Now, with the volume of contributors and the slowing growth (in terms of revenue coming in) and the still massive increase in terms of contributors / images they are having to cut the amount of earnings to some.
They are still working on the principle of trying to please everyone but not really pleasing anyone. The bigger earners will feel they are being held back, lower earners will be happy to begin with until throttling comes in. Lower earners who supply a lot will wonder why their earnings don't increase in line with the growth of their port etc etc.
The system they employ means people earn well from the beginning (sales come in quickly) rather than seeing very little for months until image and contributor ranking builds up based on sales (without promotion). This more traditional approach of rewarding increased rank based on image popularity only means there will be fewer individual contributors at the top, not as varied selection of images (but still plenty, 1000's contributors still) but the ones that don't cut it will fall quickly and ultimately stop supplying, while the successful ones will continue to supply, possibly in greater numbers. This of course speeds up the demise of the less successful contributors as images are pushed further down.
The type of growth curve from this type of ranking is a very shallow to begin with but will steepen quickly once images move up the ranking system faster. Like a rolling snowball it can gather pace quickly. There are a few agencies out there that work with this more traditional approach.
SS will have to decide if it wants to continue to please everyone (and fail) or reward those whose images climb up the ranking system without assistance (and reduce the variety of contributors). Continuing the way they are going now will ultimately result in them losing more contributors from the middle to top as they will be full time and looking for increased earnings from their increased portfolios.
I believe SS are at a crossroads and they'll have to revisit how they rank contributors as FT starts eating into their client base more and more, which will in turn will mean contributors at SS will notice this capping more and more.
Very good post! well written!
yes held-back is the right expression. I have experienced and on a number of occasions the potential earnings capacity from SS and its quite daunting. There have been many $.500/ days there. The potential is enormous.
Pleasing everybody is an impossibillity. I believe there are some 50K contributors to SS. Joke! and as you say Adobe/FT is without doubt closing in fast.
Interesting to see how they will respond or maybe just playing it safe.
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I did not believe this theory, as my weekly income had huge ups and downs but on average it was increasing.
But as soon as I reached 0.36 level, my weekly chart simply flattened, within a few cents difference. 3 weeks in a row - the creepy part is, weekly earnings are exactly the average of the last 8 weeks before reaching 0.36 ($1 difference).
It could be a huge coincidence as my bestsellers have very stable search positions, but it's strange. I will observe in the coming weeks and post the results later. And will also upload more than usual to see if affect earnings.
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I have the same patterns. The last week of a month is "correcting the balance" in + or in -, depending from average. So no progress is possible with ss for a contributor.
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[...]It could be a huge coincidence as my bestsellers have very stable search positions[...]
Becareful when you check the search position of your images using you account (or maybe your IP/Personal Ubication) because i notice a big difference between the search position when i check it using my account and when i use anybody else computer...
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I just checked two of my images out of curiosity. First I checked for them with my IP, and then with "anonymizer".
First image:
more then 150.000 results
my IP: 8th place in "popular"
anonymizer: 13th place
second image:
100.000+ results
my IP: somewhere in the middle of the second page
anonymizer: same
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Excellent post HalfFull - I think this is exactly what's happening. "...there is a a cut off that slows sales down once a threshold is met" - that's what I see. Which brings me back to my original question - does SS decide how much to pay each of us and we're just getting a salary? It sure feels like that to me. What's the point of improving then and growing your portfolio? Motivation - down the toilet...
Time to move out of this business.
Amen, sister friend. I've uploaded 511 images so far this year. The quality of my images has improved better than anything I've uploaded through my career. I have been focusing more on photos however, rather than illustrations, vectors, or raster graphics. 511 uploads is not my best performance, but I've been kind of discouraged with these earnings (so what's the point of killing myself to try and make a few more bucks per month?) Some artists who are hustlers, as I used to be, can easily submit 100 new images every week. I'm done killing myself for diminishing returns.
Now is the time when microstock really is only pennies, per hour... at least from new work! My motivation is gone as well. Why? I have no shame to share my actual earnings from newly approved uploads from this year, as they are almost laughable. Here's what I've figured out:
From those 511 new files approved, I have earned a whopping $1-something-per-hour (from time spent actually working) on Shutterstock alone, which is an agency that makes up 35-40% of my total income. What is my motivation for staying in this business? Back in 2008 if you uploaded 500 new images, you'd be earning $500 more collectively, per month. Much different than today. Yes, I can go out and grab a corporate dayjob to double my income right now. I'd rather be poor and have no stress. And yes, the newly approved images will earn more in the years to come... but not that much more, the way the files keep dumping in. Market saturation is a bigger beast than any of us individually can control anymore.
The "backbone of the company" statement I made was incredibly misunderstood. Contributors as a whole are the backbone/product supplier, is all I meant. That doesn't mean we still can't be under appreciated or jerked around by complicated back-end ranking or capping systems. Maybe you guys are on to something. I just know I'm done working for slave wages.
What's my solution? I'm moving over to one-time-commission-work and freelancing, with stock as a solid transitional back-burner income. I can't apply for unemployment, being self-employed, so whatever trickles in from stock residual earnings is as best as I'll get. Time to start making the transition because for me, the 10 year full-time income run is now beginning to show the ugly signs that it's soon over. This year I should make about 50% of the income I made at my highest yielding year.
Business sense tells me - I'm beating a dead horse. It just isn't going to magically wake up. It's time for me to move on, and I think it's been a long time coming. No more paralysis of analysis for me. Time for me to wake up and smell the coffee... because someone has to pay my bills. I'll always love stock and continue contributing whenever I have spare time, if I feel like making slave wages in my spare time. But other than that, it's not the most lucrative choice for me anymore. For other artists, they may be seeing different results. I wish them the best in the road ahead :D It's not going to get any easier. Prepare yourself for it. Change sucks - but it is inevitable in this life.
Do I blame these changes on the agencies? No, I don't see how we can do that. I don't see how I could begin to blame any agency. They're in the same boat. Do you blame the grocery store when there is a chicken bird flu, and eggs are now $4 per dozen? The suppliers get the blame, not the middlemen. In our case, we can't control the fact that our market is being saturated at a rate that no one can slow down.
Elena - on the other side of the coin, is this. How many people do you know that can get regular raises every year at their dayjobs? Not many... usually they are few and far between. If you can still do what you do and enjoy the freedom and extra time that self-employment awards you, and still at least MAINTAIN your current income, then it's not as bad as it seems. I still don't think it makes sense for me, to work any harder just to keep having my income decline. My income will be down another 5 figures this year, over last... for the second year in a row. I personally don't think I can keep up with how quickly the rock is sinking. If things level out by year-end, then perhaps I'll change my mind... but I seriously doubt it will. Even if I edit and submit another 1000 images from my hard drive before year's end.
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I just checked two of my images out of curiosity. First I checked for them with my IP, and then with "anonymizer".
First image:
more then 150.000 results
my IP: 8th place in "popular"
anonymizer: 13th place
second image:
100.000+ results
my IP: somewhere in the middle of the second page
anonymizer: same
Yes, this is another sad truth, they try to "motivate" us with this manipulation...
Search position rotation is a reality! Images position changes according with IPs, i think that the difference is bigger if you check from another country.
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I Create a single method to evaluate search position rotation, see the next post:
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=25898.0 (http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=25898.0)
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I just checked two of my images out of curiosity. First I checked for them with my IP, and then with "anonymizer".
First image:
more then 150.000 results
my IP: 8th place in "popular"
anonymizer: 13th place
second image:
100.000+ results
my IP: somewhere in the middle of the second page
anonymizer: same
Yes, this is another sad truth, they try to "motivate" us with this manipulation...
Search position rotation is a reality! Images position changes according with IPs, i think that the difference is bigger if you check from another country.
Mine don't change. Maybe a new group will enter and be positioned ahead and in a couple weeks they fall off and I'm back where I was. I see the good days as unusual and the low days as normal. Why should I find something wrong with getting a better then usual day? It's not a cap, it's a bonus. Then back to normal.
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Why working out methods and why bother at all? if there is such a thing as a cap or whatever it is. It's perfectly legit and above board anyway.
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I think, it's more a cap on daily exposure than on daily earnings. Sales are coming in batches in a short interval of time and then they stop. If some buyers are searching for the kind of images I have when the "window" is open than I'm lucky, if not,......
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I think, it's more a cap on daily exposure than on daily earnings. Sales are coming in batches in a short interval of time and then they stop. If some buyers are searching for the kind of images I have when the "window" is open than I'm lucky, if not,......
Maybe... but finally daily exposure on search engine is direct proportional to daily earning...
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I suspect one of the biggest influencers these past two years has been the exchange rate between US and Europe.
In 2014 the Euro was worth 1.3 to 1.4 USD but is now down to around 1.1 USD
In 2014 the Pound was worth 1.6 to 1.7 USD but is now down to around 1.55 USD
Anyway, the cheese moved back in 2013
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After reading more and more of this conspiracy theories I have to state my opinion:
I have worked in Law Enforcement for several years. One thing you learn with experience is when something "smells suspicious" and when it doesn't'. A good rule of thumb is to think like the person who you suspect. Think what would his motivation be of doing this "crime" and is there any motivation at all. In this case the suspect is Shutterstock. Does Shutterstock have anything to win on putting a daily cap on peoples earnings? If they had would the win be worth the time of making an advanced algorithm to put a daily cap on peoples earnings? In my opinion. No. No. And no!
The aim of Shutterstock to make as much profit of their portfolio of images as possible. I believe the approach of Shutterstock is to let the search algorithm do the work based on customer behavior whereas Stocksy for example has a more curated approach. I'm pretty sure the Shutterstock search algorithm is prioritizing images based on popularity of images and that the search is differentiated based on location.
And let's say that evil Shutterstock did but a cap on your earnings - there would be nothing you could do about it.
My point is: Stop worrying about conspiracies. Shoot more pictures. ;)
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Shutterstocks bottom line is more profit. It makes more sense from the company perspective to have fresh new diverse content. You get more diverse content by spreading the wealth to more contributors to keep them motivated to keep uploading. As many others stated before me, some sort of capping makes a lot of sense to me and doesn't seem like a conspiracy theory at all. I am just curious on how much of that is going around which we will never find out.
As far as the search positions go, I would like to know how many of you guys are actual buyers of images. I buy from time to time and I usually stop searching around page 10 or so. So if anything, the real search placement you would need to check is from pages 5-10 and not pages 1-3.
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I am just curious on how much of that is going around which we will never find out.
It's extremely easy to find out the answer and the fact that no one has shown it to be the case casts a lot of doubt on the theory.
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After reading more and more of this conspiracy theories I have to state my opinion:
I have worked in Law Enforcement for several years. One thing you learn with experience is when something "smells suspicious" and when it doesn't'. A good rule of thumb is to think like the person who you suspect. Think what would his motivation be of doing this "crime" and is there any motivation at all. In this case the suspect is Shutterstock. Does Shutterstock have anything to win on putting a daily cap on peoples earnings? If they had would the win be worth the time of making an advanced algorithm to put a daily cap on peoples earnings? In my opinion. No. No. And no!
The aim of Shutterstock to make as much profit of their portfolio of images as possible. I believe the approach of Shutterstock is to let the search algorithm do the work based on customer behavior whereas Stocksy for example has a more curated approach. I'm pretty sure the Shutterstock search algorithm is prioritizing images based on popularity of images and that the search is differentiated based on location.
And let's say that evil Shutterstock did but a cap on your earnings - there would be nothing you could do about it.
My point is: Stop worrying about conspiracies. Shoot more pictures. ;)
it doesn't really work like that in the photo-agency business. SS, whats their company assets?.... picture of course. They are in the business of selling pictures, the more the better. By keeping the majority of contributors "happy" they will forever upload more and more and soon some 60 million assets will turn into 70 million assets. The share-holders are extremely impressed with this.
Of course what they don't think about is that all these assets belong to the photographers but we have allowed SS to market and sell them on our behalf since they can do that a heck of a lot better then we can.
Its business all the way. :)
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After reading more and more of this conspiracy theories I have to state my opinion:
I have worked in Law Enforcement for several years. One thing you learn with experience is when something "smells suspicious" and when it doesn't'. A good rule of thumb is to think like the person who you suspect. Think what would his motivation be of doing this "crime" ...blah blah blah
My point is: Stop worrying about conspiracies. Shoot more pictures. ;)
LMAOFTTF yes, we all know how efficient and effective the LE rule of thumb works.
that's why we have all those criminals and pushers all locked up in gaol
and only honest politicians and cops are running the land and protecting us good ppl
...
excuse me while i laugh and forget about conspiracies ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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My point is: Stop worrying about conspiracies. Shoot more pictures. ;)
If I could have your portfolio I wouldn't worry either. Nice work!
With or without Law Enforcement experience, I also agree with this:
I'm pretty sure the Shutterstock search algorithm is prioritizing images based on popularity of images and that the search is differentiated based on location.
And let's say that evil Shutterstock did but a cap on your earnings - there would be nothing you could do about it.
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I am just curious on how much of that is going around which we will never find out.
It's extremely easy to find out the answer and the fact that no one has shown it to be the case casts a lot of doubt on the theory.
Extremely easy huh? like 1+1 easy? No wonder you get very little support in here with these type of remarks.
If its so easy, how come none of us have any clue on the type of variables that go into the search algorithm. You can program so many variables into this search algorithm, its almost impossible to figure it out without direct access. It can be 99% generic and that 1% or 1 line of code is all thats needed to have major bottom line profit margins for the company. Bunch of naive people up in here.
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I am just curious on how much of that is going around which we will never find out.
It's extremely easy to find out the answer and the fact that no one has shown it to be the case casts a lot of doubt on the theory.
Extremely easy huh? like 1+1 easy? No wonder you get very little support in here with these type of remarks.
If its so easy, how come none of us have any clue on the type of variables that go into the search algorithm. You can program so many variables into this search algorithm, its almost impossible to figure it out without direct access. It can be 99% generic and that 1% or 1 line of code is all thats needed to have major bottom line profit margins for the company. Bunch of naive people up in here.
You don't need to know anything about the coding. The conspiracy theory is that once you reach a certain amount of sales in a month or get a good day of sales your images are moved lower in the search so you stop getting sales. If that's the case then your images will drastically and quickly move down the search and back up again at the beginning of next month right? How hard is that to track? So in answer to your question it's about as easy as 1+1.
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Except that images move up and down based on download volume, not manipulation. When are people going to accept that?
I've seen some of my images make its way to the top and it stays at the top. It go down or up a few places on occasion, but that only means other images have more downloads then mine or vise versa. It has nothing to do with SS "spreading the wealth".
I've been keeping track of some of my images for months, almost every day. Change isn't drastic, it's incremental.
Do a search for "Pets". Our fellow resident's pic is still at #3, like it was a few months ago.
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it doesn't really work like that in the photo-agency business. SS, whats their company assets?.... picture of course. They are in the business of selling pictures, the more the better. By keeping the majority of contributors "happy" they will forever upload more and more and soon some 60 million assets will turn into 70 million assets. The share-holders are extremely impressed with this.
Of course what they don't think about is that all these assets belong to the photographers but we have allowed SS to market and sell them on our behalf since they can do that a heck of a lot better then we can.
Its business all the way. :)
Shutterstock is in the business of selling Subscriptions and other plans - not selling pictures. There is no real incentive to have more images downloaded unless they can get more buyers to purchase more Subscription Plans.
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Except that images move up and down based on download volume, not manipulation. When are people going to accept that?
I've seen some of my images make its way to the top and it stays at the top. It go down or up a few places on occasion, but that only means other images have more downloads then mine or vise versa. It has nothing to do with SS "spreading the wealth".
I've been keeping track of some of my images for months, almost every day. Change isn't drastic, it's incremental.
Do a search for "Pets". Our fellow resident's pic is still at #3, like it was a few months ago.
until it isn't - like when my best seller went from the #3 spot where it had been + - maybe 10 spots for a few years to I couldn't find it (at least page 25) overnight and not surprisingly the sales dried up too.
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shutterstock has lowered my cap by exactly 150 euro per month. it's freaky how they control earnings per contributor
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it doesn't really work like that in the photo-agency business. SS, whats their company assets?.... picture of course. They are in the business of selling pictures, the more the better. By keeping the majority of contributors "happy" they will forever upload more and more and soon some 60 million assets will turn into 70 million assets. The share-holders are extremely impressed with this.
Of course what they don't think about is that all these assets belong to the photographers but we have allowed SS to market and sell them on our behalf since they can do that a heck of a lot better then we can.
Its business all the way. :)
Shutterstock is in the business of selling Subscriptions and other plans - not selling pictures. There is no real incentive to have more images downloaded unless they can get more buyers to purchase more Subscription Plans.
Of course its subscriptions packages, the ultimate killer of this industry, we all know that. I was calling it pictures since their product is pictures and not cars. Thats all.
However if you have lets say plenty of EL's, Single-sales and On-demand sales. That is sales of single images. Not subscriptions.
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it doesn't really work like that in the photo-agency business. SS, whats their company assets?.... picture of course. They are in the business of selling pictures, the more the better. By keeping the majority of contributors "happy" they will forever upload more and more and soon some 60 million assets will turn into 70 million assets. The share-holders are extremely impressed with this.
Of course what they don't think about is that all these assets belong to the photographers but we have allowed SS to market and sell them on our behalf since they can do that a heck of a lot better then we can.
Its business all the way. :)
Shutterstock is in the business of selling Subscriptions and other plans - not selling pictures. There is no real incentive to have more images downloaded unless they can get more buyers to purchase more Subscription Plans.
Of course its subscriptions packages, the ultimate killer of this industry, we all know that. I was calling it pictures since their product is pictures and not cars. Thats all.
However if you have lets say plenty of EL's, Single-sales and On-demand sales. That is sales of single images. Not subscriptions.
True - but I'd venture to say that for most people Sub's make up the bulk of their sales at SS.
Last year there were many more SOD’s.
I think it was naive of all of us to expect SS would be able to continue to provide the same level of higher dollar sales.
It was inevitable that competition would erode those sales, make deals with those same buyers and we would be the ones to really suffer.
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I never got fooled by that, no way. I knew from earlier experience that once share-holders, this and that came into the picture. That was it. End of a nice story.
Further more you have Adobe/FT just around the corner and I know for a fact that serious buyers will for sure follow the name Adobe, it rings loud and clear.
Possibly thats one of the reasons why ELs, single-sales are getting scarce and subs packages are selling like mad.
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I never got fooled by that, no way. I knew from earlier experience that once share-holders, this and that came into the picture. That was it. End of a nice story.
Further more you have Adobe/FT just around the corner and I know for a fact that serious buyers will for sure follow the name Adobe, it rings loud and clear.
Possibly thats one of the reasons why ELs, single-sales are getting scarce and subs packages are selling like mad.
Agree. Big time.
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Recently i strongly suscribe to the cap theory, not daily but in certain time lapse.
Now I have my doubts, and I think what we (some of us) interpret as a cap it is really some kind of algorithm that is trying to give an "equal" income to active uploader users...
When i say "equal" i dont mean the same earning for everyone of us, but a least divide total sales so everyone can get something according (maybe) to your country.
They can control sales restructuring the search algorithm, because top pages means sales...
I develop this new theory because:
1- It is not possilbe to sell any new pic without something like this. Without this just old top pics will be on top searches,new pics have no chance to compete against pics that was downloaded thousands of times (if downloads is the main search criteria).
2- It is not good for the business that the same pic (or just best 100 pics) is sold then advertising campaigns have no variety (asuming that the use microstock pics).
3- Somehow contributors are so important for the business, some people in the forum think that those who are not able to upload top pics about a concept are a waste of time for the business but buyers are not looking only for top pics about a concept, variety is important, hi quality pics, medium quality pics and low quality pics are very important for the business (not talking about resolution when i talk about quality). It is also important to increase the whole number of images in the database because if somebody will buy a suscription to a microstock page, it will be better to buy in this one with greatest number of images.
So if a new contributor just upload a few images and he have no sell in the first week... he will get out of this business, the system must show him some kind of constant income. So, for that they must see the way to restructure the search engine to warranty him good exposure of his images...
4- My last point is something that for any reason no body talk about in this "CAP Conspirancy" thread and is the fact that when you stop uploading, for some reason your sales drop dramatically. If i dont i can see a good selling rate of my last week uploaded images (for example) but if i stop my last week images just stop sales... is this a way to keep us uploading without think??
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Recently i strongly suscribe to the cap theory, not daily but in certain time lapse.
Now I have my doubts, and I think what we (some of us) interpret as a cap it is really some kind of algorithm that is trying to give an "equal" income to active uploader users...
When i say "equal" i dont mean the same earning for everyone of us, but a least divide total sales so everyone can get something according (maybe) to your country.
They can control sales restructuring the search algorithm, because top pages means sales...
I develop this new theory because:
1- It is not possilbe to sell any new pic without something like this. Without this just old top pics will be on top searches,new pics have no chance to compete against pics that was downloaded thousands of times (if downloads is the main search criteria).
2- It is not good for the business that the same pic (or just best 100 pics) is sold then advertising campaigns have no variety (asuming that the use microstock pics).
3- Somehow contributors are so important for the business, some people in the forum think that those who are not able to upload top pics about a concept are a waste of time for the business but buyers are not looking only for top pics about a concept, variety is important, hi quality pics, medium quality pics and low quality pics are very important for the business (not talking about resolution when i talk about quality). It is also important to increase the whole number of images in the database because if somebody will buy a suscription to a microstock page, it will be better to buy in this one with greatest number of images.
So if a new contributor just upload a few images and he have no sell in the first week... he will get out of this business, the system must show him some kind of constant income. So, for that they must see the way to restructure the search engine to warranty him good exposure of his images...
4- My last point is something that for any reason no body talk about in this "CAP Conspirancy" thread and is the fact that when you stop uploading, for some reason your sales drop dramatically. If i dont i can see a good selling rate of my last week uploaded images (for example) but if i stop my last week images just stop sales... is this a way to keep us uploading without think??
New, old? it still don't add up. So how come then that Adobe/FT can do this? instantly mix old with new. There must be thousands of times, 24 hours after acceptance I have seen some of my new files mixed with old on the front or second page and whats more: they hav sold instantly.
I mean dont get me wrong, it doesn't bother me, cap or not as long as good money is coming in, which it is. Would just be fun to find out.
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New, old? it still don't add up. So how come then that Adobe/FT can do this? instantly mix old with new. There must be thousands of times, 24 hours after acceptance I have seen some of my new files mixed with old on the front or second page and whats more: they hav sold instantly.
I mean dont get me wrong, it doesn't bother me, cap or not as long as good money is coming in, which it is. Would just be fun to find out.
I agree with you: "it doesn't bother me, cap or not as long as good money is coming in" (im not totally happy with my current incoming anyway)...
I do not want to defend the "cap theory" in an irrationally way; I just have some doubts about the inner workings of SS and try to share with you to see if we can support or refute this theories.
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Recently i strongly suscribe to the cap theory, not daily but in certain time lapse.
Now I have my doubts, and I think what we (some of us) interpret as a cap it is really some kind of algorithm that is trying to give an "equal" income to active uploader users...
When i say "equal" i dont mean the same earning for everyone of us, but a least divide total sales so everyone can get something according (maybe) to your country.
They can control sales restructuring the search algorithm, because top pages means sales...
I develop this new theory because:
1- It is not possilbe to sell any new pic without something like this. Without this just old top pics will be on top searches,new pics have no chance to compete against pics that was downloaded thousands of times (if downloads is the main search criteria).
2- It is not good for the business that the same pic (or just best 100 pics) is sold then advertising campaigns have no variety (asuming that the use microstock pics).
3- Somehow contributors are so important for the business, some people in the forum think that those who are not able to upload top pics about a concept are a waste of time for the business but buyers are not looking only for top pics about a concept, variety is important, hi quality pics, medium quality pics and low quality pics are very important for the business (not talking about resolution when i talk about quality). It is also important to increase the whole number of images in the database because if somebody will buy a suscription to a microstock page, it will be better to buy in this one with greatest number of images.
So if a new contributor just upload a few images and he have no sell in the first week... he will get out of this business, the system must show him some kind of constant income. So, for that they must see the way to restructure the search engine to warranty him good exposure of his images...
4- My last point is something that for any reason no body talk about in this "CAP Conspirancy" thread and is the fact that when you stop uploading, for some reason your sales drop dramatically. If i dont i can see a good selling rate of my last week uploaded images (for example) but if i stop my last week images just stop sales... is this a way to keep us uploading without think??
I haven't uploaded anything for a month and I just had the BME on Shutterstock.
There are multiple ways for new pics to get noticed. It appears new and undiscovered tabs. You can linked your images together with similar keywords and your popular images will drive downloads for new images. And if you keyword your images the right way, it can show up high on the search results. If you fight for single keywords like "cherry", you're might as well give up now. From what I'm seeing, many people have an abundance of skill, but lacking a understanding of key-wording.
Everyone has theories, but people keep forgetting common sense.