MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Shutterstock.com => Topic started by: littleny on January 11, 2017, 19:33
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i have a portfolio of 3700 images and consistent revenue for the last 3 years. In December my sales dropped to a low that I haven't seen in 4 years..down by 30%. I chalked it up to holiday season but now 11 days into January I see no improvement, in fact, I'm its sunk even further. My daily sales are about 50% down from my average daily sales for the last several years. Has something changed in the algorithm or am i just having bad luck?
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Could be a combination of algorithms, bad luck, people still ramping up from the Christmas holidays, and an increase in competition. Both in new contributors and new files.
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I have a fairly stagnant portfolio on Shutterstock but it produced a fairly consistent income .... until November when it crashed. Sales still way, way down.
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You are certainly not alone! It is so bad I have become numb from the shock.
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I got my BDE yesterday or say it was the best of all time. Maybe they are still experimenting with the algorithm.
I also see that they have changed the preview style in download page.
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So far on pace to be the worst month in several years. ODs, SODs and clip sales have almost completely dried up and subs volume is down about 40% from what it used to be. Other sites are similarly slow. Camva was picking up the slack for a while there (and was beating SS) but has slowed down a lot the past few months. It isn't just you.
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i have a portfolio of 3700 images and consistent revenue for the last 3 years. In December my sales dropped to a low that I haven't seen in 4 years..down by 30%. I chalked it up to holiday season but now 11 days into January I see no improvement, in fact, I'm its sunk even further. My daily sales are about 50% down from my average daily sales for the last several years. Has something changed in the algorithm or am i just having bad luck?
Me too. SS in Low Earners Tier now. On 123RF I have only 1/2 of my all images and sells AMAZING this year!!! Thank you 123RF :)
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The new image page design has killed my sales. At first I was happy to see that there were twice as many "similar images" and "same artist" selections at the bottom of the page, but then I realized that they're now showing images from my port that their algorithm considers "most popular"...with a lag of several weeks. So no matter which of my images you're looking at, you see my Christmas images at the bottom of the page, which were popular a month ago and nobody wants or needs in January.
Also, "similar images," until last year, used to show some similars within my own port, but now purposely excludes them, showing only images from other artists. Last year they introduced their awful similars algorithm that goes by pixels rather than keywords, which suppressed my sales...and this new change has suppressed them even further.
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I had a reasonably good start, made pay out on the 4th day, and now for 7 days in a row, I have not made over 8 dollar per day, never seen a run this bad, january has slow starts, but always pick up after the first weekend of the year. not this time, its really bad, if thousands of files cant generate more than 9 downloads per day. if they tweaked something, they tweaked it badly. if i am in some sort of test group, i hope the results make them realize this tweak needs to be reversed
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They used to be very consistent every month but now I get good months and really bad months. January 2106 was grim and this January is just as bad. Hopefully they will still have good months. Luckily for me, they are no longer my best selling site and I am nowhere near as reliant on my income from them as I was last this time last year.
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since two days everything is back to normal...
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Yes, same here, 30-40% down 2016/2017 on SS in the first 10 days of January.
I'm curious to hear the conference call of Q4 2016 ... in Q3 there was the first down in download from 43,4 mln to 41,2 mln.
The flood of crappy and spamming images cover the good quality ones.
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They used to be very consistent every month but now I get good months and really bad months. January 2106 was grim and this January is just as bad. Hopefully they will still have good months. Luckily for me, they are no longer my best selling site and I am nowhere near as reliant on my income from them as I was last this time last year.
I will die happily before January 2106 :)
Happily if microstock increases and implement fair commission policy.
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I had a decent monthly income from Shutterstock for about 2 years although I didnt add many new images. This stable income tanked on the 22 November and never recovered since then. I guess it might have been algorithm change. I was about 40% down on number of DLs in December, the income was saved by a couple of huge SODs at the end of the year.... January so far is quite poor, still 30-40% drop on DLs and income. I dont think it will get better, probably worse.
It forced me to finally go through with my plan B.. I joined Adobe :D I put around 300 of my better vectors there, earned some 120 euro in the first month. It is not even close to cover my loss from SS though :'( Lets see what 2017 brings us..
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It's odd that everyone is talking about 40%.
So far this year I am also down 40% from last year.
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it's the future of micro stock. nobody apart some very big agency could produce something to live on with it.
photography i a chepa commodity, buyer can find free photo everywhere , and everybody with a camera seems to contributing to a micro stock . if you have talent and portfolio go for macro and high quality. diversify doing many things or become a instagram hero. other way better find another job and stop complaining of poor sales.
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it's the future of micro stock. nobody apart some very big agency could produce something to live on with it.
photography i a chepa commodity, buyer can find free photo everywhere , and everybody with a camera seems to contributing to a micro stock . if you have talent and portfolio go for macro and high quality. diversify doing many things or become a instagram hero. other way better find another job and stop complaining of poor sales.
no, I'm not talking about a downward trend. I'm talking about an unexplainable sudden drop-off at one particular site. sales elsewhere are business as usual. therefore your theory doesn't hold true to my original question.
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End of December and first 10-12 days of January have always been low for obvious reasons (christmas holidays, new years bank holidays, companies not working etc etc). My sales were also quite low during this period but have now come back to normal levels.
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I got my BDE yesterday or say it was the best of all time. Maybe they are still experimenting with the algorithm.
I also see that they have changed the preview style in download page.
One Swallow does not a summer make ;D
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The new image page design has killed my sales. At first I was happy to see that there were twice as many "similar images" and "same artist" selections at the bottom of the page, but then I realized that they're now showing images from my port that their algorithm considers "most popular"...with a lag of several weeks. So no matter which of my images you're looking at, you see my Christmas images at the bottom of the page, which were popular a month ago and nobody wants or needs in January.
Also, "similar images," until last year, used to show some similars within my own port, but now purposely excludes them, showing only images from other artists. Last year they introduced their awful similars algorithm that goes by pixels rather than keywords, which suppressed my sales...and this new change has suppressed them even further.
After I read this I thought I'd have a look at my own port's "Same Artist" and "Similar Images" and although I don't see what you're seeing, it appears to have lots of breakage/bugs/very strange behavior
1. I have several images (of the ones I checked) that have more than one of my own images in the "Similar Images" section. Some have all 8! At first I thought I got one slot (the first) in the "Similar Images" row if the image was popular enough, but I have some cases where there's only one of mine in the "Similar" section but it's not the first slot.
2. I have a few images that have no "Same Artist" section at all. One has only one in that section; another has only three. All 8 slots are used for the "Similar Images" section though. This isn't just a one off - if you search for that image again or in a different browser, you get the same result.
3. Thinking about a buyer, the notion of similar is just broken - I have some Kauai images and in the similars are things with something mountainous and something watery but many are from very cold places and lakes not oceans. I can't imagine a buyer looking at Hawaii/Kauai images wanting Alberta, the Swiss Alps or a Fjord!!
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Yeah, similars has been bad for a while. I think they fell in love with the amazing breakthrough tech of their brilliant "pixels" idea and can't admit it's a dismal failure. Going by keywords was much more likely to show buyers images that were relevant to their search.
Weird...I just checked one of my images and the old image page format seems to be back....with no similars. Buggy-doodle-do.
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The most ridicilous thing is, that under "Same artist" instead of showing similar files/subject it shows the most popular files for that user.
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The most ridicilous thing is, that under "Same artist" instead of showing similar files/subject it shows the most popular files for that user.
Not always. For yucks, I did some screen captures of some of my images with their same/similar choices. Even within the same series of images, you get some truly whacky divergence of what is shown. I've annotated the screen shots (click for full size)
(http://digitalbristles.com/temp/SS-same-artist-similar-image-tn.jpg) (http://digitalbristles.com/temp/SS-same-artist-similar-image.jpg)
Edited to add that as of this afternoon (Jan 12), I now see the new larger-but-more-useless display where the "Same artist" section is the same for every image in my portfolio instead of different for each image - first 8 of the most popular sort.
This is such a stupid, thoughtless, buyer-unfriendly change.
Tossers
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it's over, stock media is dead, everyone pack up your bags and go home.
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truly truly awful
as if Christmas continues
:(
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it's over, stock media is dead, everyone pack up your bags and go home.
Except you and me who can clean up :o
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i have a portfolio of 3700 images and consistent revenue for the last 3 years. In December my sales dropped to a low that I haven't seen in 4 years..down by 30%. I chalked it up to holiday season but now 11 days into January I see no improvement, in fact, I'm its sunk even further. My daily sales are about 50% down from my average daily sales for the last several years. Has something changed in the algorithm or am i just having bad luck?
I think the design world is still recovering from the election, holiday, and weather ... we'll buy your images when we realize that the deadline is tomorrow. Until then, cool your britches.
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Currently at 65% of December's earnings, and we're only 39% into the month. Can't complain.
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and now Error 404 message when trying to access the site
:(
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404 Not Found
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nginx
:(:(:(
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I edited my earlier post to note that I now see the stupid, broken, new-and-improved image page. I've done a screen grab of one of the images I included in this morning's example (http://digitalbristles.com/temp/SS-same-artist-similar-image.jpg)to show just how buyer-unfriendly this change in "Same artist" choices is.
For a sunny, summery picnic basket image you now get winter and remodeling thumbnails instead of things resembling the one you're looking at (click for full size)
(http://digitalbristles.com/temp/SS-same-artist-ruined-tn.jpg) (http://digitalbristles.com/temp/SS-same-artist-ruined.jpg)
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I edited my earlier post to note that I now see the stupid, broken, new-and-improved image page. I've done a screen grab of one of the images I included in this morning's example ([url]http://digitalbristles.com/temp/SS-same-artist-similar-image.jpg[/url])to show just how buyer-unfriendly this change in "Same artist" choices is.
For a sunny, summery picnic basket image you now get winter and remodeling thumbnails instead of things resembling the one you're looking at (click for full size)
([url]http://digitalbristles.com/temp/SS-same-artist-ruined-tn.jpg[/url]) ([url]http://digitalbristles.com/temp/SS-same-artist-ruined.jpg[/url])
It seems "See all" is functioning as "Same artist" and vice versa. Looks like a bug and definitely should be fixed.
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I edited my earlier post to note that I now see the stupid, broken, new-and-improved image page....
It seems "See all" is functioning as "Same artist" and vice versa. Looks like a bug and definitely should be fixed.
I checked a few images and I think it's just blindly using the first keyword alphabetically from the image shown when you click on "Same Artist". As that is most of the time not the keyword you searched in the first place, you get seemingly ridiculous results.
This bad behavior is made worse when you have one of the images where our multi-word keywords were split up by SS's ingestion process - some of my images have "bar" and "air" for the first word (it was towel bar and air duct before they mangled it)
This is just good for a giggle. There's an image that showed up as "similar" to one of mine - a photo illustration of a witch! I selected that image to see its supposed "Similars" and I'm not the only older white woman that Shutterstock considers to be a witch!! Don't suppose the guy or any of the other women think of themselves as witches either...
(http://digitalbristles.com/temp/SS-tags-me-witch.jpg)
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I edited my earlier post to note that I now see the stupid, broken, new-and-improved image page....
It seems "See all" is functioning as "Same artist" and vice versa. Looks like a bug and definitely should be fixed.
I checked a few images and I think it's just blindly using the first keyword alphabetically from the image shown when you click on "Same Artist". As that is most of the time not the keyword you searched in the first place, you get seemingly ridiculous results.
This bad behavior is made worse when you have one of the images where our multi-word keywords were split up by SS's ingestion process - some of my images have "bar" and "air" for the first word (it was towel bar and air duct before they mangled it)
This is just good for a giggle. There's an image that showed up as "similar" to one of mine - a photo illustration of a witch! I selected that image to see its supposed "Similars" and I'm not the only older white woman that Shutterstock considers to be a witch!! Don't suppose the guy or any of the other women think of themselves as witches either...
([url]http://digitalbristles.com/temp/SS-tags-me-witch.jpg[/url])
I meant the lower two buttons set: "Same artist" and "See all".
I clicked the "See all" and I saw just my similar/same series images, nothing else.
Clicking the "Same artist" and my most popular images showed up.
It seems the "Same artist" and the "See all" buttons are switching each other's functions.
Because if i remember it right, "Same artist" used to show similar/same series images
and clicking the "See all" would jump to the artist's portfolio.
Or maybe somehow they now think the "Same artist" should show the artist's most popular
images and "See all" should show similar/same series images of the artist...
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Is SS aware of this bug?
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For what it's worth my earnings are almost the same as last year.
Up to now. Today's a bit grim
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I was just stressing about my declining sales, and explaining to my partner the implications, (as I see them), of this latest development. His advice to me was to be adaptable and to learn to 'play the game'.
I'm just wondering if anyone has figured out the rules? I'm ****ed if I know, and I'm getting really tired of chasing after the moveable goal posts.
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No more fb twitter sharing button, am i blind or what ? :o
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I edited my earlier post to note that I now see the stupid, broken, new-and-improved image page....
It seems "See all" is functioning as "Same artist" and vice versa. Looks like a bug and definitely should be fixed.
I checked a few images and I think it's just blindly using the first keyword alphabetically from the image shown when you click on "Same Artist". As that is most of the time not the keyword you searched in the first place, you get seemingly ridiculous results.
This bad behavior is made worse when you have one of the images where our multi-word keywords were split up by SS's ingestion process - some of my images have "bar" and "air" for the first word (it was towel bar and air duct before they mangled it)
This is just good for a giggle. There's an image that showed up as "similar" to one of mine - a photo illustration of a witch! I selected that image to see its supposed "Similars" and I'm not the only older white woman that Shutterstock considers to be a witch!! Don't suppose the guy or any of the other women think of themselves as witches either...
([url]http://digitalbristles.com/temp/SS-tags-me-witch.jpg[/url])
Doesn't the similar section just look at similarity in terms of compositions and colors? That's why buyers must be getting a white-haired guy portrait instead of an actual witch. Sometimes an algorithm does a half-assed guess. It happens, deal with it.
All in all, I don't think a buggy similars functionality really hurts sales that much. Where one contrubutor loses sales, another contributor gains. If buyer demand stays the same, it's a zero sum game.
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Me too. SS in Low Earners Tier now. On 123RF I have only 1/2 of my all images and sells AMAZING this year!!! Thank you 123RF :)
I am pretty sure 123RF has tweaked their algorithm. I made the same each month, within a few dollars or so, for 4 years. A couple months ago, overnight my income dropped to 1/4 of normal and its staying there. Its lower than it was 7 years or so ago when I had only been at this a year and had 1/6 the images.
SS has dropped for me, but in my case its been a slow, steady decline over about 2 years.
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Doesn't the similar section just look at similarity in terms of compositions and colors? That's why buyers must be getting a white-haired guy portrait instead of an actual witch. Sometimes an algorithm does a half-assed guess. It happens, deal with it.
All in all, I don't think a buggy similars functionality really hurts sales that much. Where one contrubutor loses sales, another contributor gains. If buyer demand stays the same, it's a zero sum game.
I think you're right about the behavior of the "Similar images". It's like Google's "Search by image" and I'm personally OK with its function.
But I think it's not quite a zero sum game here. If the "Same artist" works right (as before), the images in the same series or same idea with different executions from the same artist will be readily seen by the buyer. And SS will get more chance of sale than the current design because those images are more related to the image the buyer initially clicked.
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They seems to work on public contributor pages, sharing buttons are back.
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I've discovered I can laugh and cry at the same time
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Abysmal lack of sales. Nothing at the weekend and dead Monday with one tiny weeny 36 cent sale.
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never seen this before, abysmal, completely down the toilet, i am now down about 66% on my earnings if this continues
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what worries me most, lately i see a hard stop of sales around 6pm, i am based in the greater LA area, i normally would have sales around the clock, although slowing down at certain times. but this stop i never had before.
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I'm about half of where I'd normally be right now.
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Doesn't the similar section just look at similarity in terms of compositions and colors? That's why buyers must be getting a white-haired guy portrait instead of an actual witch. Sometimes an algorithm does a half-assed guess. It happens, deal with it.
All in all, I don't think a buggy similars functionality really hurts sales that much. Where one contrubutor loses sales, another contributor gains. If buyer demand stays the same, it's a zero sum game.
I think you're right about the behavior of the "Similar images". It's like Google's "Search by image" and I'm personally OK with its function.
But I think it's not quite a zero sum game here. If the "Same artist" works right (as before), the images in the same series or same idea with different executions from the same artist will be readily seen by the buyer. And SS will get more chance of sale than the current design because those images are more related to the image the buyer initially clicked.
I think you're right. It matches shapes and colors, ignores keywords. Now what it once was. The similar images is not by artist but by image match, not by keywords. When I click See All it shows 100 similar images by shapes and colors. This is not broken or a bug, it's the way they want it to be.
Same Artist I selected one of my unique photos, clicked See All and got this, Sorry, we couldn't find any matches. Not sure what that means, but click another, it came up with one keyword match Antique. Tried another, came up with a one word search for Addiction. Look when you click see all for artist and the first word, bold is what it searches.
Not sure if that's what they want or if it's broken.
But what we might want or any of the possible variations, isn't what they might want. Can't assume that best match will be by keywords again, instead of the AI shapes and colors. I'd agree I like the old one better.
For Same Artist it's nuts, picking one word, both times the first word? But we can't pick the word order on SS. If they allowed like AS and we could order the first seven words, then we could control that first word and make some intelligent decisions for what we wanted to show as similar.
How radical. Let artists control their own keywords and opinion or idea of similar images?
It's not a bug or broken if that's what SS intends it to be. It could be unfavorable, bad match or something we don't like, because it's illogical, but not a bug or broken. Don't forget how IS has taken over word order, eliminated our choice, added a broken CV that doesn't show words that do match, and now took away our rights to edit. That's worse.
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Really weird glitch today. I have one file that had one sale, then an hour later 11 sales, then an hour later back to one sale again, and now 13 sales. It's not a particularly popular image, and it's off season right now, so 13 sales makes no sense. I guess by tomorrow morning it'll be back to one sale again. Weird-o-Rama.
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Is SS aware of this bug?
Volunteering for a company which has necessary budgets and specialists to keep all this stuff on a decent level? For me it is clear that nothing will be done till their profits are not affected. Before that they will close eyes for all types of internal games. Contributors provided testing, signaling of bugs in programming and in business for free and for years.
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Comparison 2016-2017 after 16 days on SS:
Portfolio +16%
Downloads -18%
Earnings -35%
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I depend very much on my income from stock. SS is still my best selling agency but as it is going now I am dropping 1000+ downloads this month. My normal downloads per month are always between 4500-5000. They used to be very steady with nice growth but since November they made a huge drop for me.
But on the positive side. New files sell like they did in 2012. I have some files on page 1 within 2 weeks and one even in 2 days for single word search! :o Normally good photo's needed at least 3 - 5 weeks to climb to page 1.
So I hope I can recover.
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Hi, I'm think this permanent growing of new contributor has gonna have a limit. It canīt
be eternal. That's can be a new era of stability, maybe with less earnings for all of us.
Sorry for my basic english
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Hi, I'm think this permanent growing of new contributor has gonna have a limit. It canīt
be eternal. That's can be a new era of stability, maybe with less earnings for all of us.
Sorry for my basic english
i completely agree....microstock agency must understand that-
- there is already everything available in micro...contriboutior to produce zillion photos...
- the best content in micro are produced by full time...if full time will stop produce cause they need to find another job micro will be only amateurish. personally i see this reflect on quality of photo. i sometimes search in various website like alamy and shutter stock to have inspiration for keyword or title, or look places i wanna visit in my travel, the difference is ee between the two agency is so big. the micro look so newbie amateur...most of travel are cliche', postcard, while in alamy you can find for any country so many themes. that's what photographer do when travel compared to amateur who go to travel with family and snap some postcard.
in my opinion the only benefit they have is they pay much less 0,25 to new contributors compared to 0,38...but is this worth?
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I depend very much on my income from stock. SS is still my best selling agency but as it is going now I am dropping 1000+ downloads this month. My normal downloads per month are always between 4500-5000. They used to be very steady with nice growth but since November they made a huge drop for me.
But on the positive side. New files sell like they did in 2012. I have some files on page 1 within 2 weeks and one even in 2 days for single word search! :o Normally good photo's needed at least 3 - 5 weeks to climb to page 1.
So I hope I can recover.
i agree about new files. i rebegin uploading after holiday...one batch of 96 83 approved and some already sold today...practically i'm selling only files uploaded in 2016 and mostly from end of november. that's good cause i had a super backlog to upload, and it seems they approved anything i throw. my plan is 100 file every two days. i already see a boost last two days. unluckily other agency especially stock seems to struggle.
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Same for me... Way down as last january... which was slow >:(
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Quite slow here too in general - good thing a 4k sale made up for 236 image sales... :)
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Quite slow here too in general - good thing a 4k sale made up for 236 image sales... :)
i agree is time to hope for those big sales...in december had 4 sales for 84 dollar each...in 21..332 dollar made like 1000 sales for 0,38 cent and it was vey good to see big sales in micro back after while...but since then really so slow everywhere not only ss...last two days seems starting again to sale let's see. clearly is a war between poor micro stock with some big production earning good money the rest pennies
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what worries me most, lately i see a hard stop of sales around 6pm, i am based in the greater LA area, i normally would have sales around the clock, although slowing down at certain times. but this stop i never had before.
I am in there OC area (so close to you) and my "volume" sales after 5-6 pm nearly always go stagnant and have for years. However, I frequently have a bigger sale (SOD or video) at night, so I think the machine for me is on but most sales are US based and when the US goes to bed so do SS sales, for the most part.
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what worries me most, lately i see a hard stop of sales around 6pm, i am based in the greater LA area, i normally would have sales around the clock, although slowing down at certain times. but this stop i never had before.
I am in there OC area (so close to you) and my "volume" sales after 5-6 pm nearly always go stagnant and have for years. However, I frequently have a bigger sale (SOD or video) at night, so I think the machine for me is on but most sales are US based and when the US goes to bed so do SS sales, for the most part.
I check the map and most of my sales are Europe and US. Might be what I have for sale. When I started it was 60/40 US, last payment was 30/70 but most of the 70 was Europe, Australia and South America. Asia and Africa I sell almost nothing.
I'm convinced that all the folks who say competition is the problem, are right. SS will never come back, and neither will anyplace else Microstock for any of us. Competition has taken over so many of the sales that we used to get, that our good quality or subjects isn't a selling point anymore.
I can't expect the same sales with under 10,000 images now, that I did a short few years ago. Stockmarketer and some others have pointed out the math facts. It's not just a wall, it's that we get 1 million new photos against ours, every week.
Not going to get better for most.
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I'm convinced that all the folks who say competition is the problem, are right. SS will never come back, and neither will anyplace else Microstock for any of us. Competition has taken over so many of the sales that we used to get, that our good quality or subjects isn't a selling point anymore.
I can't expect the same sales with under 10,000 images now, that I did a short few years ago. Stockmarketer and some others have pointed out the math facts. It's not just a wall, it's that we get 1 million new photos against ours, every week.
Not going to get better for most.
Yes. It is more or less game over. Sooner or later the agencies will require that contributors pay monthly fees to be able to sell. Too many images floating around. The ship is sinking.
I am looking for a lifeboat, but can't find any...Things that I considered lifeboats are leaking, too. If anybody has a free spot in their lifeboat, please let me know.
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The new image page does seem to have changed things a bit. Sales dropped a bit since November 21st, but I still can't pinpoint where it changed since image placement remained the same.
The 'Similar Images' are much more prominent than before, which actually benefits other contributors almost as much as you. You do all the hard work of placing high on the search and now it benefits other people. Someone can look at the similar set of images and next thing you know, they've clicked away to another image.
This presents a problem and a benefit. If you have a better image, there's a good chance they won't click away, but if another contributor has a better one, then there is a good chance the buyer will click away and you lose the sale. The benefit is that your images could also show up in 'Similar Images' for other contributors search. This really pits contributors against each other and it's the survival of the fittest...or in this case, the best image.
The "Same Artist" section is a mess at the moment. It doesn't show anything that's relevant to the search...just the most popular images from that contributors. There's almost no benefit to the buyer since it doesn't have context. They really need to fix that so the original contributors has a chance to fight back against the 'Similar Images' section.
For the last couple months, sales has fallen roughly 20% on SS. Things are starting to look up though. Today had the highest volume of sales I've seen in a long time, almost as high as pre-November 21st levels.
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Shutterstock is down about 30% for me too, but iStock is up a bit and Adobe/Fotolia is up significantly.
I'm guessing Adobe Stock has taken some of Shutterstock's customers. After all, 99% of designers work with Adobe programs.
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Same here, Shutterstock down, Fotolia up, looks like Shutterstock will be in trouble
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Same here, Shutterstock down, Fotolia up, looks like Shutterstock will be in trouble
In trouble with what?
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Competition with Adobe
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I don't think Shutterstock is in any trouble. They have probably made it easier for new people to sell new images. They carry on making more and more money but every individual contributor that has a lot of older images finds it harder to sustain earnings. It will work for them because they have massive oversupply. They make more money by selling more images from newer contributors that are on the lower commission levels. It's a shame things seem to be going the same way as other sites but it was inevitable really.
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It could be an issue... but it's hard to say if any drop in sales is definitely due to Adobe Stock. But still, SS don't seem to be going anywhere any time soon.
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here you go...
Shutterstock Has Trained A Computer To Find You The Perfect Photos
www.popsci.com/shutterstock-is-visualizing-images-in-whole-new-way (http://www.popsci.com/shutterstock-is-visualizing-images-in-whole-new-way)
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here you go...
Shutterstock Has Trained A Computer To Find You The Perfect Photos
[url=http://www.popsci.com/shutterstock-is-visualizing-images-in-whole-new-way]www.popsci.com/shutterstock-is-visualizing-images-in-whole-new-way[/url] ([url]http://www.popsci.com/shutterstock-is-visualizing-images-in-whole-new-way[/url])
This is functional since March 2016.
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Comparing 2015 to 2016, my income in SS decrease in 12% and sales in 10.7% :'(
The increase of my port there in 2016 was 10.8% (total of ~3500 files in the port)
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Comparing 2015 to 2016, my income in SS decrease in 12% and sales in 10.7% :'(
The increase of my port there in 2016 was 10.8% (total of ~3500 files in the port)
Yes, but what was the increase in Shutterstock's TOTAL portfolio? And the market? Those are the interesting numbers.
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Sales go up and down all the time, depending what the buyers might need. There are 100 million photos only on Shutterstock and lots of it is not exactly great product either. More and more 'fake situation' photos are produced sometimes comically bad concepts. I personally think there are way too many photos out there of bad quality and bad concept. That many fake smiles can sell. The whole industry needs a reset.
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I don't think Shutterstock is in any trouble. They have probably made it easier for new people to sell new images. They carry on making more and more money but every individual contributor that has a lot of older images finds it harder to sustain earnings. It will work for them because they have massive oversupply. They make more money by selling more images from newer contributors that are on the lower commission levels. It's a shame things seem to be going the same way as other sites but it was inevitable really.
i agree with you. older contributors are in trouble; not shittershutterstock. you know they are giving everyone a piece of the pie. in the past, sales keeping going, from day 1 till day 30,31.
but for months already , since the basic payout is 35bucks, you see big sales come in at the beginning of the month, you can be sure there follows a bunch of zero days.
it's almost like the best thing for you is to make a big sale at the end of the month, or else, you can be sure your payout will be about 20 to 50% of your previous years' month total.
as for uploading new work. i have done the opposite. after 6 months of no sales, i delete over 3,000 new works in the past years, instead of letting it sit there to bloat ss total images.
and when i see the new images improve selling, i submit them back again.
if that's how they want it, i will play dirty with them too.
..
until you start behaving like the good old professional ss which was #1 in the close 90s
and the new images are not just garbage loads of similars of amateurish laughing stock photos ... i will be as unprofessional as they are.
and yes, i will bloat adobe with my best images with regularity.
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Comparing 2015 to 2016, my income in SS decrease in 12% and sales in 10.7% :'(
The increase of my port there in 2016 was 10.8% (total of ~3500 files in the port)
Yes, but what was the increase in Shutterstock's TOTAL portfolio? And the market? Those are the interesting numbers.
Hi increasingdifficulty,
Yes, you are totally right. 10% of portfolio increase is too low comparing to SS database increase in 2016. I guess it's the main reason why I experienced this decrease for the first time even if I uploaded more than in previous years.
Cheers
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Sales stopped! Usually 40-50 sales per day, this days only few subs! This month 78% down in comparison with last Jan. Btw Dec 2016 was my BME on SS. My port is 45% bigger than last year. Around 4k images online.
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Sales stopped! Usually 40-50 sales per day, this days only few subs! This month 78% down in comparison with last Jan. Btw Dec 2016 was my BME on SS. My port is 45% bigger than last year. Around 4k images online.
This is my experience, too, in sheer downloads. I have kept up by SOD and video. On Sunday I made $100. I almost always make $4-$6 on a Sunday. These one-offs are saving my rear in order to at least maintain my monthly income. That $100 BTW was three sales (2 video and one SOD).
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Sales stopped! Usually 40-50 sales per day, this days only few subs! This month 78% down in comparison with last Jan. Btw Dec 2016 was my BME on SS. My port is 45% bigger than last year. Around 4k images online.
This is my experience, too, in sheer downloads. I have kept up by SOD and video. On Sunday I made $100. I almost always make $4-$6 on a Sunday. These one-offs are saving my rear in order to at least maintain my monthly income. That $100 BTW was three sales (2 video and one SOD).
me too. the thing is unexpectedly january open up surprisingly with SOD and sales which you didn't expect due the the holidays, but then it peters out to lots of zero days till now.
the thing is, we should not expect SOD to save the month for us...
which has been my case for a long time already... although the $80 and $102 are non-existent anymore for me. evn the $28 is a dodo bird.
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Hi there,
First post on here, I noticed in Nov/16 that my sales were down (only been doing 3 years) so I started looking at why.
When I used to load to SS the words loaded alphabetically as they still do via lightburner, however the new algorithm clearly works on keyword order and title word order.
As been off work with a torn knee I started reordering keywords and titles using the order of the most popular search words. Put in same order in title sentence if appropriate and keyword order a MUST (making pin sharp keywords better for customers searches) instead of them bringing up hundreds of irrelevant pictures.
Its very time consuming so I started with my most popular pictures
Hope this helps with re-couping lost sales?
cheers
LJ
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Hi there,
First post on here, I noticed in Nov/16 that my sales were down (only been doing 3 years) so I started looking at why.
When I used to load to SS the words loaded alphabetically as they still do via lightburner, however the new algorithm clearly works on keyword order and title word order.
As been off work with a torn knee I started reordering keywords and titles using the order of the most popular search words in 'insights' and then 'image gallery stats' this tells you what % of sales are to each words. Put in same order in title sentence if appropriate and keyword order a MUST (making pin sharp keywords better for customers searches) instead of them bringing up hundreds of irrelevant pictures.
Due to new algorithm you will have to do this with old pictures (as keywords will be in alphabetical order) even your popular ones or they simply will NOT sell. This is why some peoples new pictures are coming up on page 1 in 'popular' searches despite not having sold a single time. Maybe they are accounting for people clicking into them but not buying but I doubt it.
Its very time consuming so I started with my most popular pictures
Hope this helps with re-couping lost sales? mine were up in Dec by 43% so def worth looking at if you have time free and a nerd brain like mine!
cheers
LJ
Doesn't SS reorder your keywords and the order we put them means nothing? Maybe others it matters. IS no matter, they put words in their order. Adobe you pick the first 7, don't know what after that. That's the big three that matter. I'm not going to keep changing words and order for every agencies idea of what they should be.
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My best selling image at the moment seems to have keywords all in the wrong order. I'm not changing it.
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Hello all,
I just discovered that many many of my images in my portfolio are not displayed when i click on it on buyer SS site !
I understand why my sales have dropped ! :-\
I've written to SS to check what is happening. If only 1 on 5 images of my files are displayed when buyer click on it (I've got 2000 images), then I'll make 5x less income than usually
This is extremely worrying. Are you experiencing the same
Could you check if that 's happening with your port ?
Thx
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i'm packing my bags and i'm going home.
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i'm packing my bags and i'm going home.
you might be turned back at the US border ;)
seriously, it's because everyone's gone to Trump inaugeration ogre-ration
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Hi there,
First post on here, I noticed in Nov/16 that my sales were down (only been doing 3 years) so I started looking at why.
When I used to load to SS the words loaded alphabetically as they still do via lightburner, however the new algorithm clearly works on keyword order and title word order.
As been off work with a torn knee I started reordering keywords and titles using the order of the most popular search words in 'insights' and then 'image gallery stats' this tells you what % of sales are to each words. Put in same order in title sentence if appropriate and keyword order a MUST (making pin sharp keywords better for customers searches) instead of them bringing up hundreds of irrelevant pictures.
Due to new algorithm you will have to do this with old pictures (as keywords will be in alphabetical order) even your popular ones or they simply will NOT sell. This is why some peoples new pictures are coming up on page 1 in 'popular' searches despite not having sold a single time. Maybe they are accounting for people clicking into them but not buying but I doubt it.
Its very time consuming so I started with my most popular pictures
Hope this helps with re-couping lost sales? mine were up in Dec by 43% so def worth looking at if you have time free and a nerd brain like mine!
cheers
LJ
Doesn't SS reorder your keywords and the order we put them means nothing? Maybe others it matters. IS no matter, they put words in their order. Adobe you pick the first 7, don't know what after that. That's the big three that matter. I'm not going to keep changing words and order for every agencies idea of what they should be.
yes it first puts up in alphabetical order but after has been published you can go back in via catalogue manager and change order of keywords from alphabetical to more relevant. its annoying they won't stay in same order as loaded as does on some other sites
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hmmm, i really didn't think keyword order had any significance in search ranking at shutterstock. i guess comparing keyword order of popular vs best match of a single search word would be a good way to tell.
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no chance in hell that ss uses keyword order, rubbish
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hey I'm no expert just something I noticed Only trying to help
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=)
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I have noticed something too - the policies of majority of agencies regarding contributors are "faire chier" them
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this is what happened.... if you can think of any other reasons I'd love to hear as optimising my sales and SEO on sites is an area of interest
i can't help but wonder if keyword order helps with 'best match' searches.
If my photo of water has the keyword 'water' in the 15th position and you're photo of water has 'water' in the 1st position would that give your photo higher ranking in best match search?
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Things are starting to pick back up for me. Slow start to January after a slow December and November. October was my best month ever. I've been seeing image sales increase while videos are slowing starting to sell more consistently.
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no chance in hell that ss uses keyword order, rubbish
+ + + + +
They reorder they alpha sort they change them.
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I've tried to reorder keywords in SS but doesn't work for me at the moment:
Catalog Manager -> edit keywords' order of a photo -> Submit & Save = nothing changes, same old order (even waiting 48h).
Am I doing something wrong?
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I've tried to reorder keywords in SS but doesn't work for me at the moment:
Catalog Manager -> edit keywords' order of a photo -> Submit & Save = nothing changes, same old order (even waiting 48h).
Am I doing something wrong?
You can not change the keyword order it's pointless trying
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12 download from friday...unbelievable....day before friday 46....i am afraid another change from ss.
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Hello all,
I just discovered that many many of my images in my portfolio are not displayed when i click on it on buyer SS site !
I understand why my sales have dropped ! :-\
I've written to SS to check what is happening. If only 1 on 5 images of my files are displayed when buyer click on it (I've got 2000 images), then I'll make 5x less income than usually
This is extremely worrying. Are you experiencing the same
Could you check if that 's happening with your port ?
Thx
Glad you mentioned this cause its the same here! I buy and contribute. The same eight or ten pictures are selling every day but when logging in as a buyer I can only see a small fraction of my pictures. Have also written to SS about a possible bug? they replied no bug and that everything was fine. its not. Whats going on?
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Hello all,
I just discovered that many many of my images in my portfolio are not displayed when i click on it on buyer SS site !
I understand why my sales have dropped ! :-\
I've written to SS to check what is happening. If only 1 on 5 images of my files are displayed when buyer click on it (I've got 2000 images), then I'll make 5x less income than usually
This is extremely worrying. Are you experiencing the same
Could you check if that 's happening with your port ?
Thx
Glad you mentioned this cause its the same here! I buy and contribute. The same eight or ten pictures are selling every day but when logging in as a buyer I can only see a small fraction of my pictures. Have also written to SS about a possible bug? they replied no bug and that everything was fine. its not. Whats going on?
I believe they now call this Alternative Facts, got to give it to Shutterstock they got into the new regime mode pretty quick.
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Hello all,
I just discovered that many many of my images in my portfolio are not displayed when i click on it on buyer SS site !
I understand why my sales have dropped ! :-\
I've written to SS to check what is happening. If only 1 on 5 images of my files are displayed when buyer click on it (I've got 2000 images), then I'll make 5x less income than usually
This is extremely worrying. Are you experiencing the same
Could you check if that 's happening with your port ?
Thx
Glad you mentioned this cause its the same here! I buy and contribute. The same eight or ten pictures are selling every day but when logging in as a buyer I can only see a small fraction of my pictures. Have also written to SS about a possible bug? they replied no bug and that everything was fine. its not. Whats going on?
I believe they now call this Alternative Facts, got to give it to Shutterstock they got into the new regime mode pretty quick.
I noticed this year before. Even i don't have a buyer account, my client several times pointed to this problem, when he was not able to find photos he needed in my portfolio.
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Hello all,
I just discovered that many many of my images in my portfolio are not displayed when i click on it on buyer SS site !
I understand why my sales have dropped ! :-\
I've written to SS to check what is happening. If only 1 on 5 images of my files are displayed when buyer click on it (I've got 2000 images), then I'll make 5x less income than usually
This is extremely worrying. Are you experiencing the same
Could you check if that 's happening with your port ?
Thx
Glad you mentioned this cause its the same here! I buy and contribute. The same eight or ten pictures are selling every day but when logging in as a buyer I can only see a small fraction of my pictures. Have also written to SS about a possible bug? they replied no bug and that everything was fine. its not. Whats going on?
Ok. How can they answer this to you as the bug is so obvious ?! You should show them this :
(http://i65.tinypic.com/2hd7bc7.jpg)
I will do if they dare to answer me there is no bug...
I also sent them bunch of links leading to this same page
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...I just discovered that many many of my images in my portfolio are not displayed when i click on it on buyer SS site .... Are you experiencing the same
Could you check if that 's happening with your port ?...
I did a little checking today and I don't think I see what you're experiencing. I have a buyer account and am logged in to that. I do a search that I know will produce one of my images. I click on that in the search results, then on my name. Then I search within my portfolio for some search terms and see all that I expect to see.
I am seeing again today a bug I thought was fixed last week (other people's images showing up in my sets and some sets missing images). Even though sets are sometimes short on images, if I do a portfolio search, those images are found.
It's possible that one or two images might be missing, but results look correct to me
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Hello all,
I just discovered that many many of my images in my portfolio are not displayed when i click on it on buyer SS site !
I understand why my sales have dropped ! :-\
I've written to SS to check what is happening. If only 1 on 5 images of my files are displayed when buyer click on it (I've got 2000 images), then I'll make 5x less income than usually
This is extremely worrying. Are you experiencing the same
Could you check if that 's happening with your port ?
Thx
Glad you mentioned this cause its the same here! I buy and contribute. The same eight or ten pictures are selling every day but when logging in as a buyer I can only see a small fraction of my pictures. Have also written to SS about a possible bug? they replied no bug and that everything was fine. its not. Whats going on?
Ok. How can they answer this to you as the bug is so obvious ?! You should show them this :
([url]http://i65.tinypic.com/2hd7bc7.jpg[/url])
I will do if they dare to answer me there is no bug...
I also sent them bunch of links leading to this same page
Good picture. Frankly I don't think they care anymore. Nothing else seems to get fixed.
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...I just discovered that many many of my images in my portfolio are not displayed when i click on it on buyer SS site .... Are you experiencing the same
Could you check if that 's happening with your port ?...
I did a little checking today and I don't think I see what you're experiencing. I have a buyer account and am logged in to that. I do a search that I know will produce one of my images. I click on that in the search results, then on my name. Then I search within my portfolio for some search terms and see all that I expect to see.
I am seeing again today a bug I thought was fixed last week (other people's images showing up in my sets).
It's possible that one or two images might be missing, but results look correct to me
I just checked mine from the buyer's site, and notice similar problems. A set that I know has 70+ images was only showing 37, and one of my sets was showing some random images belonging to someone else.
A refresh appeared to fix the problem, but why would a buyer refresh the screen?
Perhaps this goes part way to explaining a 50% drop in sales in the last 6 months, although I'm sure there are plenty of other factors, both intentional and caused by the bugs in the system.
I used to love Shutterstock, as they were so dependable - both for sales, their ability to keep site issues to a minimum and their willingness to communicate with contributors. These days I'm sadly not so impressed.
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Had my first EL of the new year. Haven't seen one of those in a while. Hopefully all the companies will increase their stock budget for February.
Sales are chugging along, but it could be better. 100% sure that FT will overtake SS for the first time ever this month.
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I had a decent monthly income from Shutterstock for about 2 years although I didnt add many new images. This stable income tanked on the 22 November and never recovered since then. I guess it might have been algorithm change. I was about 40% down on number of DLs in December, the income was saved by a couple of huge SODs at the end of the year.... January so far is quite poor, still 30-40% drop on DLs and income. I dont think it will get better, probably worse.
It forced me to finally go through with my plan B.. I joined Adobe :D I put around 300 of my better vectors there, earned some 120 euro in the first month. It is not even close to cover my loss from SS though :'( Lets see what 2017 brings us..
When you say you joined Adobe as your plan B isn't this just Fotolia?! I thought Adobe bought them last year if I'm wrong I would love to know more.
Sam
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...I just discovered that many many of my images in my portfolio are not displayed when i click on it on buyer SS site .... Are you experiencing the same
Could you check if that 's happening with your port ?...
I did a little checking today and I don't think I see what you're experiencing. I have a buyer account and am logged in to that. I do a search that I know will produce one of my images. I click on that in the search results, then on my name. Then I search within my portfolio for some search terms and see all that I expect to see.
I am seeing again today a bug I thought was fixed last week (other people's images showing up in my sets).
It's possible that one or two images might be missing, but results look correct to me
I just checked mine from the buyer's site, and notice similar problems. A set that I know has 70+ images was only showing 37, and one of my sets was showing some random images belonging to someone else.
A refresh appeared to fix the problem, but why would a buyer refresh the screen?
Perhaps this goes part way to explaining a 50% drop in sales in the last 6 months, although I'm sure there are plenty of other factors, both intentional and caused by the bugs in the system.
I used to love Shutterstock, as they were so dependable - both for sales, their ability to keep site issues to a minimum and their willingness to communicate with contributors. These days I'm sadly not so impressed.
Almost exactly my experience. Similar pictures is someone elses pictures. Buyers will not refresh and why should they? plus about 70% of the portfolio not showing. No this is not a bug this is something completely different!
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Yes it is not a bug. It is a "business rule" applied. This allow to sell what they need at the moment. Veterans images are not in their favorite "goods" list, and the only reason is money.
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...I just discovered that many many of my images in my portfolio are not displayed when i click on it on buyer SS site .... Are you experiencing the same
Could you check if that 's happening with your port ?...
I did a little checking today and I don't think I see what you're experiencing. I have a buyer account and am logged in to that. I do a search that I know will produce one of my images. I click on that in the search results, then on my name. Then I search within my portfolio for some search terms and see all that I expect to see.
I am seeing again today a bug I thought was fixed last week (other people's images showing up in my sets).
It's possible that one or two images might be missing, but results look correct to me
I just checked mine from the buyer's site, and notice similar problems. A set that I know has 70+ images was only showing 37, and one of my sets was showing some random images belonging to someone else.
A refresh appeared to fix the problem, but why would a buyer refresh the screen?
Perhaps this goes part way to explaining a 50% drop in sales in the last 6 months, although I'm sure there are plenty of other factors, both intentional and caused by the bugs in the system.
I used to love Shutterstock, as they were so dependable - both for sales, their ability to keep site issues to a minimum and their willingness to communicate with contributors. These days I'm sadly not so impressed.
Almost exactly my experience. Similar pictures is someone elses pictures. Buyers will not refresh and why should they? plus about 70% of the portfolio not showing. No this is not a bug this is something completely different!
I'm not talking about the similar images but my own sets, which should only contain my images. I have random images from other contributors in my own sets.
That has to be a bug rather than a strategy, doesn't it?
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...I just discovered that many many of my images in my portfolio are not displayed when i click on it on buyer SS site .... Are you experiencing the same
Could you check if that 's happening with your port ?...
I did a little checking today and I don't think I see what you're experiencing. I have a buyer account and am logged in to that. I do a search that I know will produce one of my images. I click on that in the search results, then on my name. Then I search within my portfolio for some search terms and see all that I expect to see.
I am seeing again today a bug I thought was fixed last week (other people's images showing up in my sets and some sets missing images). Even though sets are sometimes short on images, if I do a portfolio search, those images are found.
It's possible that one or two images might be missing, but results look correct to me
Thanks for testing Jo Ann. When you're on the SS buyer site, did you try to click on a bunch of images from your portfolio (right click 'open in new window') to check if the image is displaying ? Because my problem is not 'images not showing up when doing a search', it is that my images are not showing when clicking on the thumb to go to the image detail page and buy it... So lots of buyers cannot technically currently buy my images... I've tried from other computers and have the same result. An average of 1 image page detail on 10 only are showing up at this time. Can you imagine the loss of income on about 2050 images ? It's frightening :'( And still no answers from SS staff...
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Hello all,
I just discovered that many many of my images in my portfolio are not displayed when i click on it on buyer SS site !
I understand why my sales have dropped ! :-\
I've written to SS to check what is happening. If only 1 on 5 images of my files are displayed when buyer click on it (I've got 2000 images), then I'll make 5x less income than usually
This is extremely worrying. Are you experiencing the same
Could you check if that 's happening with your port ?
Thx
Glad you mentioned this cause its the same here! I buy and contribute. The same eight or ten pictures are selling every day but when logging in as a buyer I can only see a small fraction of my pictures. Have also written to SS about a possible bug? they replied no bug and that everything was fine. its not. Whats going on?
Ok. How can they answer this to you as the bug is so obvious ?! You should show them this :
([url]http://i65.tinypic.com/2hd7bc7.jpg[/url])
I will do if they dare to answer me there is no bug...
I also sent them bunch of links leading to this same page
Good picture. Frankly I don't think they care anymore. Nothing else seems to get fixed.
BTW this is the image showing up on Shutterstock buyers site when users click on my images... Technical predictable result = 0 sales
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Thanks for testing Jo Ann. When you're on the SS buyer site, did you try to click on a bunch of images from your portfolio (right click 'open in new window') to check if the image is displaying ? Because my problem is not 'images not showing up when doing a search', it is that my images are not showing when clicking on the thumb to go to the image detail page and buy it... ...
I just tried that and every thumb I clicked on to view came up OK. The sets are a huge mess (missing most of their contents) but for what shows, and for searches of my portfolio, I can see the image page for every thumb. Given the other problems I am seeing, it's not surprising you're seeing this though.
I'm using Chrome on a Mac, FWIW
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...
Thanks for testing Jo Ann. When you're on the SS buyer site, did you try to click on a bunch of images from your portfolio (right click 'open in new window') to check if the image is displaying ? Because my problem is not 'images not showing up when doing a search', it is that my images are not showing when clicking on the thumb to go to the image detail page and buy it... ...
I just tried that and every thumb I clicked on to view came up OK. The sets are a huge mess (missing most of their contents) but for what shows, and for searches of my portfolio, I can see the image page for every thumb. Given the other problems I am seeing, it's not surprising you're seeing this though.
I'm using Chrome on a Mac, FWIW
Thanks but not here all I see are the same 10-12 pictures and it just so happens its also my best sellers/most popular. Nothing else.
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I thought I'd just check firefox to see if things were any different, and had a situation where I clicked on one of my thumbs and a totally different image (not mine!) came up.
I clicked on a thumb of this image
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/oast-house-nestled-trees-hollingbourne-kent-79599667 (https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/oast-house-nestled-trees-hollingbourne-kent-79599667)
and this was what was displayed!
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/bottle-water-vector-illustration-isolated-on-308843966 (https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/bottle-water-vector-illustration-isolated-on-308843966)
On Chrome, I couldn't see the wrong image (tried it twice on firefox).
I'm not sure it's worth delving into details further, but perhaps this explains the terrible sales so far this morning :)
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I thought I'd just check firefox to see if things were any different, and had a situation where I clicked on one of my thumbs and a totally different image (not mine!) came up.
I clicked on a thumb of this image
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/oast-house-nestled-trees-hollingbourne-kent-79599667 (https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/oast-house-nestled-trees-hollingbourne-kent-79599667)
and this was what was displayed!
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/bottle-water-vector-illustration-isolated-on-308843966 (https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/bottle-water-vector-illustration-isolated-on-308843966)
On Chrome, I couldn't see the wrong image (tried it twice on firefox).
I'm not sure it's worth delving into details further, but perhaps this explains the terrible sales so far this morning :)
Thanks again but this is really intoreable and of course it explains terrible sales. Are they aware of this? or is it meant to be this way. Bug or something?
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Thanks for testing Jo Ann. When you're on the SS buyer site, did you try to click on a bunch of images from your portfolio (right click 'open in new window') to check if the image is displaying ? Because my problem is not 'images not showing up when doing a search', it is that my images are not showing when clicking on the thumb to go to the image detail page and buy it... ...
I just tried that and every thumb I clicked on to view came up OK. The sets are a huge mess (missing most of their contents) but for what shows, and for searches of my portfolio, I can see the image page for every thumb. Given the other problems I am seeing, it's not surprising you're seeing this though.
I'm using Chrome on a Mac, FWIW
Thanks again for taking the time for that Jo Ann. I hope they will answer soon to my email and bring back all this mess to normal, because it's already a severe loss of income formy part...
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I thought I'd just check firefox to see if things were any different, and had a situation where I clicked on one of my thumbs and a totally different image (not mine!) came up.
I clicked on a thumb of this image
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/oast-house-nestled-trees-hollingbourne-kent-79599667 (https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/oast-house-nestled-trees-hollingbourne-kent-79599667)
and this was what was displayed!
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/bottle-water-vector-illustration-isolated-on-308843966 (https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/bottle-water-vector-illustration-isolated-on-308843966)
On Chrome, I couldn't see the wrong image (tried it twice on firefox).
I'm not sure it's worth delving into details further, but perhaps this explains the terrible sales so far this morning :)
Thanks again but this is really intoreable and of course it explains terrible sales. Are they aware of this? or is it meant to be this way. Bug or something?
I hope they are aware of this and working on it, but maybe we should all write to shutterstock support too, the number the stronger...
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I had a decent monthly income from Shutterstock for about 2 years although I didnt add many new images. This stable income tanked on the 22 November and never recovered since then. I guess it might have been algorithm change. I was about 40% down on number of DLs in December, the income was saved by a couple of huge SODs at the end of the year.... January so far is quite poor, still 30-40% drop on DLs and income. I dont think it will get better, probably worse.
It forced me to finally go through with my plan B.. I joined Adobe :D I put around 300 of my better vectors there, earned some 120 euro in the first month. It is not even close to cover my loss from SS though :'( Lets see what 2017 brings us..
When you say you joined Adobe as your plan B isn't this just Fotolia?! I thought Adobe bought them last year if I'm wrong I would love to know more.
Sam
You are right. Everything is mirrored to both sites.
You are slightly wrong. Adobe negotiated to buy Fotolia in 2014, finalized the deal in January 2015, contributor site for Adobe went live Sept. 2016.
Since then it has been more than Just Fotolia, things have been nice and looking up.
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I have a bad luck. My worst month ever, sales drop -60%.
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I have a bad luck. My worst month ever, sales drop -60%.
December or January?
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I had a decent monthly income from Shutterstock for about 2 years although I didnt add many new images. This stable income tanked on the 22 November and never recovered since then. I guess it might have been algorithm change. I was about 40% down on number of DLs in December, the income was saved by a couple of huge SODs at the end of the year.... January so far is quite poor, still 30-40% drop on DLs and income. I dont think it will get better, probably worse.
It forced me to finally go through with my plan B.. I joined Adobe :D I put around 300 of my better vectors there, earned some 120 euro in the first month. It is not even close to cover my loss from SS though :'( Lets see what 2017 brings us..
When you say you joined Adobe as your plan B isn't this just Fotolia?! I thought Adobe bought them last year if I'm wrong I would love to know more.
Sam
I read in another thread in this forum that it is no longer possible to create new contributor accounts at Fotolia, that people must get an Adobe ID and create an account at Adobe site.
I have an old Adobe ID which I got when I bought Adobe Illustrator a few years ago so I used it and it worked. As far as I understand, the images I uploaded at Adobe are offered for sale both at Adobe Stock and at Fotolia.
Unfortunately, the sales information at my contributor account there is so brief - there is no indication which images were sold at Adobe and which at Fotolia. There is only a short note at my Adobe account summary saying that my status at Fotolia is bronze. It was white when I started, it turned to bronze immediately after I got 100 sales total (probably both Adobe and Fotolia sales?..).
I was joking when I said it was my plan B. It cannot replace my loss at Shutterstock, Im still 40% down since November last year and it is not coming back. It sucks big time.
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appalling january after best month of 2016. after a trend of positive growth a fall down of 70% of earning compared to december and 40 % less than january 2016.
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Down 14% from january 2016.
6 years, +2k portfolio high quality photography.
December was my worst month of last 3 years ... Too many snapshot approved ....
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Down 14% from january 2016.
6 years, +2k portfolio high quality photography.
December was my worst month of last 3 years ... Too many snapshot approved ....
to many files...yesterday i checked for example " pasta carbonara"....10000 files of pasta carbonara...mostly snapshot ugly file ugly light...if i were a buyer i would have an headache everytime i choose a file...much better stocksy,..less choice mostly great files...i hope i can enter stocksy this year. love what i see there.
and this year micro stock will be invaded more and more by russia and ukraine contributor who will spam the world with thousand of similar files...mostly food and still life from above.
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I thought I'd just check firefox to see if things were any different, and had a situation where I clicked on one of my thumbs and a totally different image (not mine!) came up.
I clicked on a thumb of this image
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/oast-house-nestled-trees-hollingbourne-kent-79599667 (https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/oast-house-nestled-trees-hollingbourne-kent-79599667)
and this was what was displayed!
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/bottle-water-vector-illustration-isolated-on-308843966 (https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/bottle-water-vector-illustration-isolated-on-308843966)
On Chrome, I couldn't see the wrong image (tried it twice on firefox).
I'm not sure it's worth delving into details further, but perhaps this explains the terrible sales so far this morning :)
I did post them about a week back and their reply came through today. "we cant see anything wrong and there is no bug". I give up.
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if the new images added are crap, why would that affect your sales if your images are great? in fact your image should stand out even more now and generate more sales
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if the new images added are crap, why would that affect your sales if your images are great? in fact your image should stand out even more now and generate more sales
Because all the images (good and crap) remain less time on the first page in the "new search" ... and you know how important it is to sell immediately on Shutterstock or Adobe.
My best sellers in the past have sold many times in the first month. If an image does not sell at the beginning rarely become a best seller.
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images take time to settle in and start selling, seeing it happen over and over.
anyway, back on topic, worst day ever yesterday with about 7 downlaods. really not good at all
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I have a bad luck. My worst month ever, sales drop -60%.
December or January?
January, december is average.
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if the new images added are crap, why would that affect your sales if your images are great? in fact your image should stand out even more now and generate more sales
As a buyer (and I am) why would you ask me to dig through 30 feet of chit to find a gold nugget?
The crap buries the good stuff faster than penguin poop in a snow storm.
The appalling keywords being used just add to the pile of dung being layered over the top of the dung heap.
It's boring, terrible quality and totally pointless
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faster than penguin poop in a snow storm
Love it - LOL
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As a buyer, why don't you go somewhere else? Is it the price that keeps you there? I'm trying Macro and wondering how the buyer thinks ...
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if the new images added are crap, why would that affect your sales if your images are great? in fact your image should stand out even more now and generate more sales
As a buyer (and I am) why would you ask me to dig through 30 feet of chit to find a gold nugget?
The crap buries the good stuff faster than penguin poop in a snow storm.
The appalling keywords being used just add to the pile of dung being layered over the top of the dung heap.
It's boring, terrible quality and totally pointless
You buy the dung before you get to the good stuff, you just take what you see first? That's why sales are down for good stuff? Keywords for dung are better and buyers buy that before they get to the good stuff?
How do you eventually find what you want? That's where we want to be.
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As a buyer, why don't you go somewhere else? Is it the price that keeps you there? I'm trying Macro and wondering how the buyer thinks ...
Dear Angela I was responding to Microstockphotos post but to answer your question I use several agencies so I have a choice not to go trawling through the mess that some agencies have created for themselves :D
As to agencies costs to be honest the price is so low now price is no longer even relevant when you can pick decent images for less than the price of a fair trade latte :o
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if the new images added are crap, why would that affect your sales if your images are great? in fact your image should stand out even more now and generate more sales
As a buyer (and I am) why would you ask me to dig through 30 feet of chit to find a gold nugget?
The crap buries the good stuff faster than penguin poop in a snow storm.
The appalling keywords being used just add to the pile of dung being layered over the top of the dung heap.
It's boring, terrible quality and totally pointless
You buy the dung before you get to the good stuff, you just take what you see first? That's why sales are down for good stuff? Keywords for dung are better and buyers buy that before they get to the good stuff?
How do you eventually find what you want? That's where we want to be.
By being as detailed as possible in keyword searches and using categories (where available) and perserverence though some agencies appear better positioned with their best match results which helps.
But SS best match tends to throw up the same old stuff from one or two particular image producers page after page after page.
And no buyer would just take what they see first unless it's a quick article write up and they just want a fire and forget image.
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The ELs and mid-size SODs keep rolling in. It's like SS heard me that it's going to fall behind FT and it's making a last desperate effort to catch up. What was a lousy month is starting to turn into an decent month.
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The ELs and mid-size SODs keep rolling in. It's like SS heard me that it's going to fall behind FT and it's making a last desperate effort to catch up. What was a lousy month is starting to turn into an decent month.
Wish I could say the same :( I've gone from a daily average of 70-80 to 30 on a good day. Today, is just 15 lousy subs.
I will quit if I get a zero day, but maybe that's what they are aiming for? If they p**s off all the .38c contributors they can save money. Great business plan to throw older contributors under the bus.
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The ELs and mid-size SODs keep rolling in. It's like SS heard me that it's going to fall behind FT and it's making a last desperate effort to catch up. What was a lousy month is starting to turn into an decent month.
Wish I could say the same :( I've gone from a daily average of 70-80 to 30 on a good day. Today, is just 15 lousy subs.
I will quit if I get a zero day, but maybe that's what they are aiming for? If they p**s off all the .38c contributors they can save money. Great business plan to throw older contributors under the bus.
Yes and the same here from a daily 150-200 to a lousy 50-60. dont ask me if I intend to upload. This is almost a carbon copy of what Istock did some years back and it didnt end well.
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9 subs >:(
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if the pile of crap that is added has appalling keywords, they are even more likely not to be found or bought, so more chance for my beautiful well keyworded images.
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"Yes and the same here from a daily 150-200 to a lousy 50-60. dont ask me if I intend to upload. This is almost a carbon copy of what Istock did some years back and it didnt end well."
About the same numbers here! >:(
They are playing their greedy game and don't care losing old contributors! But they are losing buyers too! From 2017 our company stopped buying content from SS because of their new policy against contributors and their disasterous search engine!
I hope other SS buyers start buying from other more contributor friendly and fair agencies!
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Fairplay, can I ask which agency your company started to use? Very curious ... Stocksy?
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"Yes and the same here from a daily 150-200 to a lousy 50-60. dont ask me if I intend to upload. This is almost a carbon copy of what Istock did some years back and it didnt end well."
About the same numbers here! >:(
They are playing their greedy game and don't care losing old contributors! But they are losing buyers too! From 2017 our company stopped buying content from SS because of their new policy against contributors and their disasterous search engine!
I hope other SS buyers start buying from other more contributor friendly and fair agencies!
Deleting very old files might help. This I was told by somebody. Last night I deleted 70 really old files and somehow this morning the sales result was better not great but better. This is the second time I have tried this and somehow ( dont ask why) but it seems to have a slight effect.
I am going to try it out once more later but have in mind this is very old files and they dont sell anyway and since I am not uploading anymore it might work?
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Deleting very old files might help. This I was told by somebody. Last night I deleted 70 really old files and somehow this morning the sales result was better not great but better. This is the second time I have tried this and somehow ( dont ask why) but it seems to have a slight effect.
I am going to try it out once more later but have in mind this is very old files and they dont sell anyway and since I am not uploading anymore it might work?
The problem with that is you can never re-submit those deleted files as they will be rejected for already being on Shutterstock.
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Deleting very old files might help. This I was told by somebody. Last night I deleted 70 really old files and somehow this morning the sales result was better not great but better. This is the second time I have tried this and somehow ( dont ask why) but it seems to have a slight effect.
I am going to try it out once more later but have in mind this is very old files and they dont sell anyway and since I am not uploading anymore it might work?
The problem with that is you can never re-submit those deleted files as they will be rejected for already being on Shutterstock.
I know it don't matter it needs a clean out anyway. Got a feeling that in order for the portfolio to surface properly you have to do away with really old files.
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I know it don't matter it needs a clean out anyway. Got a feeling that in order for the portfolio to surface properly you have to do away with really old files.
Now can this feeling of yours be backed up by actual data or search position changes? ;)
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Fairplay, can I ask which agency your company started to use? Very curious ... Stocksy?
Pond5 & StockFresh
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if the new images added are crap, why would that affect your sales if your images are great? in fact your image should stand out even more now and generate more sales
As a buyer (and I am) why would you ask me to dig through 30 feet of chit to find a gold nugget?
The crap buries the good stuff faster than penguin poop in a snow storm.
The appalling keywords being used just add to the pile of dung being layered over the top of the dung heap.
It's boring, terrible quality and totally pointless
You buy the dung before you get to the good stuff, you just take what you see first? That's why sales are down for good stuff? Keywords for dung are better and buyers buy that before they get to the good stuff?
How do you eventually find what you want? That's where we want to be.
By being as detailed as possible in keyword searches and using categories (where available) and perserverence though some agencies appear better positioned with their best match results which helps.
But SS best match tends to throw up the same old stuff from one or two particular image producers page after page after page.
And no buyer would just take what they see first unless it's a quick article write up and they just want a fire and forget image.
So you go someplace else? Which means SS should actually care about the mess they created.
I'm surprised they haven't figured out that they are losing buyers with the terrible search. And I'd agree, place like Alamy has diversity search, not all one person in a row, except when there is only one person that matches.
If we know this, and buyers know, why can't SS figure it out?
Good to hear that buyers don't just buy the first thing they see. Means the spammers don't get any advantage after all.
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if the new images added are crap, why would that affect your sales if your images are great? in fact your image should stand out even more now and generate more sales
As a buyer (and I am) why would you ask me to dig through 30 feet of chit to find a gold nugget?
The crap buries the good stuff faster than penguin poop in a snow storm.
The appalling keywords being used just add to the pile of dung being layered over the top of the dung heap.
It's boring, terrible quality and totally pointless
You buy the dung before you get to the good stuff, you just take what you see first? That's why sales are down for good stuff? Keywords for dung are better and buyers buy that before they get to the good stuff?
How do you eventually find what you want? That's where we want to be.
By being as detailed as possible in keyword searches and using categories (where available) and perserverence though some agencies appear better positioned with their best match results which helps.
But SS best match tends to throw up the same old stuff from one or two particular image producers page after page after page.
And no buyer would just take what they see first unless it's a quick article write up and they just want a fire and forget image.
So you go someplace else? Which means SS should actually care about the mess they created.
I'm surprised they haven't figured out that they are losing buyers with the terrible search. And I'd agree, place like Alamy has diversity search, not all one person in a row, except when there is only one person that matches.
If we know this, and buyers know, why can't SS figure it out?
Good to hear that buyers don't just buy the first thing they see. Means the spammers don't get any advantage after all.
You have to remember that Shutterstock is now two different places. In one, for the increasing number of Enterprise Customers, they offer a personal service by the Enterprise Team who will even do the searches for them. The other is nothing more than vending machine.
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"Yes and the same here from a daily 150-200 to a lousy 50-60. dont ask me if I intend to upload. This is almost a carbon copy of what Istock did some years back and it didnt end well."
About the same numbers here! >:(
They are playing their greedy game and don't care losing old contributors! But they are losing buyers too! From 2017 our company stopped buying content from SS because of their new policy against contributors and their disasterous search engine!
I hope other SS buyers start buying from other more contributor friendly and fair agencies!
Yes whatever I can't see many old contributors uploading under these conditions since any uploads are bound to join the invisibles.
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this is the secret of success: What else can you say about Microstock Toilets?
https://www.shutterstock.com/search/similar/558729838 (https://www.shutterstock.com/search/similar/558729838)
these 100 bulps are from one and the same contributor:
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/PictureStudio?search_source=base_gallery&page=2 (https://www.shutterstock.com/g/PictureStudio?search_source=base_gallery&page=2)
every image has hundreds of variations....
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70 downloads in one week, from bad to worse , i am afraid the end for me is near, the decline is really rapid now.
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this is the secret of success: What else can you say about Microstock Toilets?
https://www.shutterstock.com/search/similar/558729838 (https://www.shutterstock.com/search/similar/558729838)
these 100 bulps are from one and the same contributor:
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/PictureStudio?search_source=base_gallery&page=2 (https://www.shutterstock.com/g/PictureStudio?search_source=base_gallery&page=2)
every image has hundreds of variations....
And the point is? The studio has 150,000 vectors. The light bulbs are with shadow, with background, with some small change. They all have the same name you used for the search, Bulb Icon. Vector Eps and all are the same basic image, so of course it's going to be all there's.
How about https://www.shutterstock.com/search?search_source=base_search_form&language=en&searchterm=bulb+icon+vector&image_type=all (https://www.shutterstock.com/search?search_source=base_search_form&language=en&searchterm=bulb+icon+vector&image_type=all) instead of similar to something that's of course going to be similar, because they all came from the same artist.
Yes I'd agree 100 of the same light bulb with minor variations makes no sense. But a search for what the buyer wants, looking at similar, will always get more from the identical source and artist. And when it does, then people are complaining it should have their similar images, not other peoples.
Which is it then, or just finding things wrong, no matter what SS does?
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70 downloads in one week, from bad to worse , i am afraid the end for me is near, the decline is really rapid now.
I have to agree! never seen it like this. I'm getting an uncanny feeling its a lot more to this story like a Gordon Gekko squeeze the last drop of blood out of the business before the end. :)
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70 downloads in one week, from bad to worse , i am afraid the end for me is near, the decline is really rapid now.
I have to agree! never seen it like this. I'm getting an uncanny feeling its a lot more to this story like a Gordon Gekko squeeze the last drop of blood out of the business before the end. :)
There was a time when 20+ downloads a day would have made me very happy, but it was back in about 2008. Now, having worked so hard to build a solid portfolio, it feels like a slap in the face to see such a huge decline.
I used to get a buzz out of watching my stats, and loved the days where the total crept over the 100 mark, but now the daily average of 70-80, (weekday average of 90), is lucky to hit 30.
I guess we should have seen this coming when the required payout went from $75 to $35, as that's proportionately in line with my monthly income drop.
Shutterstock was the flagship of the microstock industry - such a shame to see it hit an iceberg.
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I took a look into the support center for buyers and I found this :
http://www.shutterstock.com/support/article/We-re-having-issues-with-the-site-and-are-working-on-a-fix?l=en_US&c=CustomerKB%3AWebsite_Issues&fs=Search&pn=1 (http://www.shutterstock.com/support/article/We-re-having-issues-with-the-site-and-are-working-on-a-fix?l=en_US&c=CustomerKB%3AWebsite_Issues&fs=Search&pn=1)
"We're having issues with the site and are working on a fix!
We are currently experiencing issues with our site and are hard at work getting things running again. We expect to have this resolved shortly. Thank you for your patience."
They're telling buyers they are having issues but no date, no indication of when, what...
Not very professional way of communicate with "valued" customers... ???
All I hope is that they will restore back all things again fast, and that sales will become great again.
And that they have a smart market plan to get customers (old and new) back!
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It's hard to say when if you don't know when. Troubleshooting is a tricky business in IT. Good to know they are aware of problems though.
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We need to strike somehow. When the professional contributors stop uploading the good unique images, then the shutterstock become the world largest image crapyard. Will see that Jon Oringer when loose the buyers. No one buys trash
It is nonsense. I make 100pics/month in 2012 and my earnings go up.
I make 150pics/Week in 2016 and my earnings half by 2012.
Am I stupid why still working to shutterstock? Yes I am stupid.
from today i stopped the uploading.
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70 downloads in one week, from bad to worse , i am afraid the end for me is near, the decline is really rapid now.
u keep uploading new stuff or rely on old photos?
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We need to strike somehow. When the professional contributors stop uploading the good unique images, then the shutterstock become the world largest image crapyard. Will see that Jon Oringer when loose the buyers. No one buys trash
It is nonsense. I make 100pics/month in 2012 and my earnings go up.
I make 150pics/Week in 2016 and my earnings half by 2012.
Am I stupid why still working to shutterstock? Yes I am stupid.
from today i stopped the uploading.
well it's not stupid....in 2012 we had like 5 10 million images...in 2016 55 million...all agency have this number...there is stocksy and many other site where customer buy or found images....it's competition....it's clear that what applied to micro in 2012 is not applying now...probably to double earning you don't need double images but probably 4 5 times images. or a niche.
for example i see in the last month only new images are selling...so i'm uploading 100 files every day...january was not good, but december was best month since 2014..january in l one with last year probably 10 20% more depends on last days.
you need upload new content at fast pace to keep with competition.
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70 downloads in one week, from bad to worse , i am afraid the end for me is near, the decline is really rapid now.
I have to agree! never seen it like this. I'm getting an uncanny feeling its a lot more to this story like a Gordon Gekko squeeze the last drop of blood out of the business before the end. :)
There was a time when 20+ downloads a day would have made me very happy, but it was back in about 2008. Now, having worked so hard to build a solid portfolio, it feels like a slap in the face to see such a huge decline.
I used to get a buzz out of watching my stats, and loved the days where the total crept over the 100 mark, but now the daily average of 70-80, (weekday average of 90), is lucky to hit 30.
I guess we should have seen this coming when the required payout went from $75 to $35, as that's proportionately in line with my monthly income drop.
Shutterstock was the flagship of the microstock industry - such a shame to see it hit an iceberg.
I don't doubt your personal numbers at all. But you might want to consider some changes since 2008 http://www.microstockgroup.com/shutterstock-com/countdown-to-100-million-on-ss-is-over/25/ (http://www.microstockgroup.com/shutterstock-com/countdown-to-100-million-on-ss-is-over/25/)
There are 165,000 contributors and 110 million images. In 2008 17,000 contributors and 5 million images. Can you see why we are all losing downloads and making less? Pretty simple math when you look at it.
5 million images then, 110 million now. How thin can you make a slice of the pie when there are 165,000 asking for some?
Competition has gone up 115 million more competing images than in 2008. What should we expect, that our percentage of sales with that volume, we'd stay the same?
Might be down the toilet is right, but the reason why is fairly self evident. Competition is the answer.
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Might be down the toilet is right, but the reason why is fairly self evident. Competition is the answer.
That might be but that doesn't explain the sudden drop I experienced. I've had a steady growth in sales and port since 2009 until November 2016. Now DL's are down from 60-70 to 30-40 a day. Even though I increased my port with about 25% last year.
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70 downloads in one week, from bad to worse , i am afraid the end for me is near, the decline is really rapid now.
I have to agree! never seen it like this. I'm getting an uncanny feeling its a lot more to this story like a Gordon Gekko squeeze the last drop of blood out of the business before the end. :)
There was a time when 20+ downloads a day would have made me very happy, but it was back in about 2008. Now, having worked so hard to build a solid portfolio, it feels like a slap in the face to see such a huge decline.
I used to get a buzz out of watching my stats, and loved the days where the total crept over the 100 mark, but now the daily average of 70-80, (weekday average of 90), is lucky to hit 30.
I guess we should have seen this coming when the required payout went from $75 to $35, as that's proportionately in line with my monthly income drop.
Shutterstock was the flagship of the microstock industry - such a shame to see it hit an iceberg.
I don't doubt your personal numbers at all. But you might want to consider some changes since 2008 [url]http://www.microstockgroup.com/shutterstock-com/countdown-to-100-million-on-ss-is-over/25/[/url] ([url]http://www.microstockgroup.com/shutterstock-com/countdown-to-100-million-on-ss-is-over/25/[/url])
There are 165,000 contributors and 110 million images. In 2008 17,000 contributors and 5 million images. Can you see why we are all losing downloads and making less? Pretty simple math when you look at it.
5 million images then, 110 million now. How thin can you make a slice of the pie when there are 165,000 asking for some?
Competition has gone up 115 million more competing images than in 2008. What should we expect, that our percentage of sales with that volume, we'd stay the same?
Might be down the toilet is right, but the reason why is fairly self evident. Competition is the answer.
I'm not doubting the reasons, although I'm sure it's not all about the image numbers, as I have seen two very distinct and overnight drops, which must relate to search changes I think.
I was managing to upload and just about maintain a level income until late June of 2016, and the library was around 100mil images at that point, so I'm not trying to make a comparison against 2008 numbers, I'm just looking at changes in the last six months.
In early July I saw a 30% overnight drop, and the same happened again in late November.
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For somebody to actually experience this sudden drop they obviously have to be one of the people affected! every "old" member coming on here is agreeing on this. For somebody thats been with SS for like 5 years they wont experience anything of this just keep uploading and uploading happy go lucky and it just seems like any old search change. Win some lose some.
Very different for an old member watching the sky fall just over night not all but many. Not an imagination.
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63% overnight drop last year in october.....
This january again 25% drop since last month....
Use to make decent money on SS; now i have days with only 1 sale.
SUCKS big time.
Been on SS since january 1st 2011; than 4 year of growth, than 2 year stable and than- the end of last year- the big drop.
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For somebody to actually experience this sudden drop they obviously have to be one of the people affected! every "old" member coming on here is agreeing on this. For somebody thats been with SS for like 5 years they wont experience anything of this just keep uploading and uploading happy go lucky and it just seems like any old search change. Win some lose some.
Very different for an old member watching the sky fall just over night not all but many. Not an imagination.
Not sure if it's the search or just reaching overload. Many said they saw this drop in 2012. I can upload 1000 new a year and sales don't go up. That's the same as a drop.
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There aren't many jobs where your salary continues to rise by large amounts every year... It's normal to work just to maintain - or not work and go down to zero.
I know that's not why we're doing this as it's a wonderful thing to be able to have a large passive income, but just to put things into perspective...
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It's normal to work just to maintain
I'd be more than happy with 'work to maintain', I'm just struggling with working and accepting a 50%+ pay cut.
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For somebody to actually experience this sudden drop they obviously have to be one of the people affected! every "old" member coming on here is agreeing on this. For somebody thats been with SS for like 5 years they wont experience anything of this just keep uploading and uploading happy go lucky and it just seems like any old search change. Win some lose some.
Very different for an old member watching the sky fall just over night not all but many. Not an imagination.
Not sure if it's the search or just reaching overload. Many said they saw this drop in 2012. I can upload 1000 new a year and sales don't go up. That's the same as a drop.
1000 are nothing in this context...i don't understand why people don't accept this...
in 2010 there were 5 million file...very few stock house...nowadays there is invasion of stock production company...they come from serbia ukraine russia mostly, cheap cost of production help them, they have 100000 minimum files...adding 100 k every year, especially in people category....how can you be competitive?
1000 files are good if you have a unique style and a niche...but how many can have this? how many niche you can find ion a pool of 55 million file...1 million added every week....shutterstock growth has been very small compared to the growth of files size.
micro stock right now is sustainable in a country where cost of living and production cost are very low....tha's why yuri archers went to south africa years ago for example.
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jonbull, still uploading
yada, yes more competition, but my sales are plunging faster than ever before.
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jonbull, still uploading
yada, yes more competition, but my sales are plunging faster than ever before.
what kind of files? stil life , food people travel?
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people, life style, travel, food, vector /illustrations, videos, etc. I diversed long time ago, but the rot is setting in
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people, life style, travel, food, vector /illustrations, videos, etc. I diversed long time ago, but the rot is setting in
ok.
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is this the talk therapy group for microstockers? or the psychiatric ward for depressions?
Up and downs are as normal as anything. I am from Africa, I can tell you about the downs. But now I am happy as a queen. Me and my entire family live on five dollars a day, and microstocks are the very big chance to have a decent living. Life is just great!!!
Sorry for the Trump people, they got the shortest straw right now. But after rain there is sunshine, believe me.
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You can live in Africa on 5 dollars per day? I am moving...
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Josephine sounds like a big fat troll
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I'm a quality over quantity type of producer so micro is not working out for me anymore. Something did change drastically of which will never come back again.
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I'm a quality over quantity type of producer so micro is not working out for me anymore. Something did change drastically of which will never come back again.
I'd agree. We have become producers of a commidity. At one time we made useful work, creations. Micro has never been art, but it has been an art to create good Microstock. Not any more. It's now all about who's got the biggest heap of trash for the lowest price. It's disguisting and I'm embarassed to tell people I work this field. I don't
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Josephine sounds like a big fat troll
She/He has a history for being elsewhere not in the thread or context. I reads like one of the regular come and go accounts, but maybe a new nut job has joined?
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is this the talk therapy group for microstockers? or the psychiatric ward for depressions?
Up and downs are as normal as anything. I am from Africa, I can tell you about the downs. But now I am happy as a queen. Me and my entire family live on five dollars a day, and microstocks are the very big chance to have a decent living. Life is just great!!!
Sorry for the Trump people, they got the shortest straw right now. But after rain there is sunshine, believe me.
$5/ day - unlike
I have been to Africa, and you could probably have the same standard of living for about 1/2 of US costs, unless of course you live in a shithole like Somalia
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I'm an digital Illustrator (raster, no vectors) and I put a very special care on each work, so my production is slow. But in the new system the effort on search of quality is proving to be unprofitable. If the microstock agencies no longer want to offer quality, What type of client they pretend to attract. Only facebookers and bloggers?
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Jav i m in the same boat as you. Until recently i didn't worry about the increase in content because i knew that if i put the time and work in my files somehow they were finding their way to the top and most importantly stood there by merit and not because of some algorithm . I agree that you must expand your port and work harder for your money but not whit random generated sht ,but with those who produce good content to. And if i lose money because someone had bather illustration than me well that was fair .
This is absolutely not.
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I'm an digital Illustrator (raster, no vectors) and I put a very special care on each work, so my production is slow. But in the new system the effort on search of quality is proving to be unprofitable. If the microstock agencies no longer want to offer quality, What type of client they pretend to attract. Only facebookers and bloggers?
Same here ... I'm photographer and i upload 300/400 high quality images every year ... Great income for 6 years and from July 2016 down down down ...
From 2004 to 2015 Shutterstock has 100.000 active contributors (avg 10.000 every years) ... in 2016 64000 new contributors, but perhaps 55.000 have only crappy illustration or snapshot photos ... see the "new search" ... what buyers download this low quality works ? I upload to 10 agencies and the worst performance in 2016 compared to 2015 is from SS.
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Shutterstock seems to want quantity over quality these days.
So many contributors are saying that it isn't worth their time to be working to create quality images, just to get them buried in the search. It feels as if the days of 'quality rising to the top' are long gone, (along with many talented contributors). I guess things will only change if buyers start complaining about things.
I've seen sudden changes recently that have put my portfolio out of favor, so maybe the next change will be to my advantage? Maybe there is a rotation system? Who know's what's happening these days? Every day is an adventure in the Microstock industry!
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@noodle: Please, donīt call Somalia a "shithole country". In Somalia are living human beings like in your country.
The minimum wage in my country is aroung 100 US Dollar per month. Check some African income figures from the World Bank. Donīt compare sub saharan countries with South Africa.
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I'm an digital Illustrator (raster, no vectors) and I put a very special care on each work, so my production is slow. But in the new system the effort on search of quality is proving to be unprofitable. If the microstock agencies no longer want to offer quality, What type of client they pretend to attract. Only facebookers and bloggers?
I'm not much of an illustrator but with what I do and photography, I'd say you're right. The point of return for models or planned more expensive shoots has passed, for most of us. Expense is outdistancing income or returns. Somebody from long ago, calls it Micropayment Photography. That's the micro and the idea was make up the low pay with volume.
Volume is down, payment is mostly lower by lower commissions, SS has held that up at least. But others dropped commissions and earnings money, dropped commissions, while sales dropped. SS sales have dropped and I don't think it's just old people or the search or any specific group. It's all of us because of competition, not quality. And all of us because of numbers instead of quality.
We can't make up the low pay with sales volume anymore. We can't beat the competition with quality anymore. Agencies don't pay us what they used to either. I don't think the search caused all this, I think the whole state and condition of Microstock is the cause.
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I'm an digital Illustrator (raster, no vectors) and I put a very special care on each work, so my production is slow. But in the new system the effort on search of quality is proving to be unprofitable. If the microstock agencies no longer want to offer quality, What type of client they pretend to attract. Only facebookers and bloggers?
I'm not much of an illustrator but with what I do and photography, I'd say you're right. The point of return for models or planned more expensive shoots has passed, for most of us. Expense is outdistancing income or returns. Somebody from long ago, calls it Micropayment Photography. That's the micro and the idea was make up the low pay with volume.
Volume is down, payment is mostly lower by lower commissions, SS has held that up at least. But others dropped commissions and earnings money, dropped commissions, while sales dropped. SS sales have dropped and I don't think it's just old people or the search or any specific group. It's all of us because of competition, not quality. And all of us because of numbers instead of quality.
We can't make up the low pay with sales volume anymore. We can't beat the competition with quality anymore. Agencies don't pay us what they used to either. I don't think the search caused all this, I think the whole state and condition of Microstock is the cause.
most of shooters new who shoot people come from russia and ukraine...very big production house work there ....and a lot thousand of single photographer...you know why? i go in these country every year...there is an abundance of model...beautiful people who want just stop or cost very low money...in ukraine for a day of shooting you pay like 50 dollar one model....in russia similar...and they are natural looking model clearly not model from agency top, but micro don't need this model anyway.....location are practically zero cost...or very low...so if you want do micro u need to move in a country like this...that's why most of new files come from there....
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micro is quantity...always been...those who consider micro quality has never browsed an high end rm agency like aurora or gallery stock....stocksy with 5 dollar rf has a very good quality, much better and more artistic than micro.
so yes to survive u need to upload lot of different content, niche don't work or only extremely niche photos.....this is micro now...stop complaining and work...if not close your account so there is more money for us....
i have micro rm( alamy) rm high end files...i always believed differentiation worked well...probably i would have earned a lot more with some files, had i uploaded them to micro instead of an RM HIGH END AGENCy, but right now i have built a good portfolio who earn me much more than micro.
if you shoot micro for a living you need to produce a lot, have low cost and live in a poor country.
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I'm an digital Illustrator (raster, no vectors) and I put a very special care on each work, so my production is slow. But in the new system the effort on search of quality is proving to be unprofitable. If the microstock agencies no longer want to offer quality, What type of client they pretend to attract. Only facebookers and bloggers?
Same here ... I'm photographer and i upload 300/400 high quality images every year ... Great income for 6 years and from July 2016 down down down ...
From 2004 to 2015 Shutterstock has 100.000 active contributors (avg 10.000 every years) ... in 2016 64000 new contributors, but perhaps 55.000 have only crappy illustration or snapshot photos ... see the "new search" ... what buyers download this low quality works ? I upload to 10 agencies an
d the worst performance in 2016 compared to 2015 is from SS.
more and more will join....in "secret country" where i live the salary medium is u know how much?
i tell you 200 dollar with current exchange...there are people working at mcdonald for example who earn120 dollar right now....so for an "*" guy,...uploading tons of photos for free and earn 300 400 dollar is still a lot of money compared to people working at mcdonald or bar or supermarket or shop.....
that's why you see so many photographer joining micro or this country...it's cheap,...cost are very low...people love being photographed for free for example, so plenty of model available for free...there are big studio who cost nothing...i pay 8 dollar hours..
so a shoot with model start from 20 to 100 dollar ....same shooting in western world cost 1000 minimum. u see the difference?
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I'm an digital Illustrator (raster, no vectors) and I put a very special care on each work, so my production is slow. But in the new system the effort on search of quality is proving to be unprofitable. If the microstock agencies no longer want to offer quality, What type of client they pretend to attract. Only facebookers and bloggers?
Same here ... I'm photographer and i upload 300/400 high quality images every year ... Great income for 6 years and from July 2016 down down down ...
From 2004 to 2015 Shutterstock has 100.000 active contributors (avg 10.000 every years) ... in 2016 64000 new contributors, but perhaps 55.000 have only crappy illustration or snapshot photos ... see the "new search" ... what buyers download this low quality works ? I upload to 10 agencies an
d the worst performance in 2016 compared to 2015 is from SS.
more and more will join....in "secret country" where i live the salary medium is u know how much?
i tell you 200 dollar with current exchange...there are people working at mcdonald for example who earn120 dollar right now....so for an "*" guy,...uploading tons of photos for free and earn 300 400 dollar is still a lot of money compared to people working at mcdonald or bar or supermarket or shop.....
that's why you see so many photographer joining micro or this country...it's cheap,...cost are very low...people love being photographed for free for example, so plenty of model available for free...there are big studio who cost nothing...i pay 8 dollar hours..
so a shoot with model start from 20 to 100 dollar ....same shooting in western world cost 1000 minimum. u see the difference?
Yes I do, perfectly, make good sense.
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micro is quantity...always been...those who consider micro quality has never browsed an high end rm agency like aurora or gallery stock....stocksy with 5 dollar rf has a very good quality, much better and more artistic than micro.
so yes to survive u need to upload lot of different content, niche don't work or only extremely niche photos.....this is micro now...stop complaining and work...if not close your account so there is more money for us....
i have micro rm( alamy) rm high end files...i always believed differentiation worked well...probably i would have earned a lot more with some files, had i uploaded them to micro instead of an RM HIGH END AGENCy, but right now i have built a good portfolio who earn me much more than micro.
if you shoot micro for a living you need to produce a lot, have low cost and live in a poor country.
Yes micro maybe is quantity but if you produce 1000 pictures a week and one of your pictures is truly amazing all i ask from SS is the ability to find it easy and BUY IT. Or do i ask to much?
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@noodle: Please, donīt call Somalia a "shithole country". In Somalia are living human beings like in your country.
The minimum wage in my country is aroung 100 US Dollar per month. Check some African income figures from the World Bank. Donīt compare sub saharan countries with South Africa.
No Josephine all humans live in shitholes because that's what humans do they find somewhere to live and turn it in to a shithole.
One group of humans is no more virtuous than the other you all wreck the planet... >:(
Cats however do not.... and neither do the other residents of the planet; humans are just bad neighbors ;D
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Seems to me that the real damage to sales is being done by the change in 'search'. When a potential buyer clicks on one of your images, they used to be offered similar images (based on keywords) from YOUR portfolio (same artist). Now the offering of alternatives is often not from your portfolio and is a pixel-based/color-pattern similarity search. If I were a buyer who had searched using keywords, I'd be seriously annoyed at SS offering these pixel-based alternatives because often they're totally irrelevant.
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Seems to me that the real damage to sales is being done by the change in 'search'. When a potential buyer clicks on one of your images, they used to be offered similar images (based on keywords) from YOUR portfolio (same artist). Now the offering of alternatives is often not from your portfolio and is a pixel-based/color-pattern similarity search. If I were a buyer who had searched using keywords, I'd be seriously annoyed at SS offering these pixel-based alternatives because often they're totally irrelevant.
Thats right! and to add insult to injury the alternatives are often irrelevant.
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Since mentioned, I must have missed them, but I'm from Serbia and decently active in photographic communities and I've yet to come across such a productions companies, look for photographers or even anyone mentioning them. There are individuals here and there and that's all.
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Since mentioned, I must have missed them, but I'm from Serbia and decently active in photographic communities and I've yet to come across such a productions companies, look for photographers or even anyone mentioning them. There are individuals here and there and that's all.
in serbia there are some in stocksy....very big and good quality work...in micro i don't know...russia is full of user, maybe one band or more, who produce 100000 images year, mostly same stuff...for example food photography top view samples are all over and come mostly from ukraine russia, all same stuff....
ukraine is full of big company who produce from good quality to low quality...most of time they use and even buy photo from other people working for them.
cost of production are so low they can upload thousand of files...there is a website database of shutter stock...of 100 millions
probably one third nowadays is coming from these countries plus thailand.
i don't have nothing against this, i work also in ukraine, but i just explain why we are experiencing such a growth in number of files.
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Since mentioned, I must have missed them, but I'm from Serbia and decently active in photographic communities and I've yet to come across such a productions companies, look for photographers or even anyone mentioning them. There are individuals here and there and that's all.
https://www.stocksy.com/lumina (https://www.stocksy.com/lumina)
this is from serbia very good quality...i'd like to know their cost of production..i suspect very low...
in micro there are more russian and ukraine production
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Well, they definitely "adjusted" things again. My new images have stopped selling completely and sales are going down instead of up, as they should this time of year.
It's sad.
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anyway strange sunday with 30 dollar with a 28 extend sale...good see extended again in january. good feeling fro a great february. i'm planning adding 2000 images per month. se if and how improve.
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anyway strange sunday with 30 dollar with a 28 extend sale...good see extended again in january. good feeling fro a great february. i'm planning adding 2000 images per month. se if and how improve.
I feel its a complete waste adding new images at the moment since they will probably just disappear to the land of nobody. Once they've sorted out this buyer problem mentioned above it might be worth the effort.
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It is getting worse and worse. This new week has began terribly like never before. I used to get 400 sales a day only a few months ago. Now it is good when it is 200 dl/day in spite of uploading lots of new high end content.
I am about to put all my efforts for Adobe which will be getting my content first - a month earlier than Shutterstock.
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anyway strange sunday with 30 dollar with a 28 extend sale...good see extended again in january. good feeling fro a great february. i'm planning adding 2000 images per month. se if and how improve.
I feel its a complete waste adding new images at the moment since they will probably just disappear to the land of nobody. Once they've sorted out this buyer problem mentioned above it might be worth the effort.
i don't know it depends...i upload generic content , travel editorial etc...in last months only new content sells. after i uploaded i see some new files from last batch sells. actually i'm uploading 100 files from a big backlog i had and i'm seeing the new files most of them sells in the first week, while old not sell good, only those who are in first page in popular.
in my opinion if you stop uploading you won't sell nothing.
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I'm not uploading regulary and this January is my BME with number of sales. Had better earning months though...
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anyway strange sunday with 30 dollar with a 28 extend sale...good see extended again in january. good feeling fro a great february. i'm planning adding 2000 images per month. se if and how improve.
I feel its a complete waste adding new images at the moment since they will probably just disappear to the land of nobody. Once they've sorted out this buyer problem mentioned above it might be worth the effort.
i don't know it depends...i upload generic content , travel editorial etc...in last months only new content sells. after i uploaded i see some new files from last batch sells. actually i'm uploading 100 files from a big backlog i had and i'm seeing the new files most of them sells in the first week, while old not sell good, only those who are in first page in popular.
in my opinion if you stop uploading you won't sell nothing.
last week I uploaded 24 files all just vanished just gone. Friday last week I uploaded 8 files and they show. its a hit and miss affair. Prior to that no uploading for three months and I sold more then ever. There is no way of telling anymore.
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My stock photo income is going down every month and it looks like January will be even worse than December. So, I'm probably out, at least for now. We always knew microstock's days were numbered.
On the bright side, I'm 20 pages into writing my doomsday novel and I should be done with it much faster now that I don't feel the need to shoot and upload new photos. ;D
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Every day I get up and hope that today will be the day when I start to see some improvement, but it just keeps going from bad to worse.
No sales = no motivation = no point.
Shutterstock, are you taking notice of the fact that we no longer consider you to be No1? Can you do something to save us, or are your sales just as bad?
There has been talk for months on your forum about tech issues, new site features in the pipeline, etc. etc. but every change you make hits us in the back pocket. Are you just fighting fires, in an attempt to jolly along old technology and to stave off a haemorrhage of buyers, or are all these changes actually what you intended?
It would be so good if someone from Shutterstock would actually say something to us, because we are all getting hoarse from shouting at a wall.
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anyway strange sunday with 30 dollar with a 28 extend sale...good see extended again in january. good feeling fro a great february. i'm planning adding 2000 images per month. se if and how improve.
I feel its a complete waste adding new images at the moment since they will probably just disappear to the land of nobody. Once they've sorted out this buyer problem mentioned above it might be worth the effort.
i don't know it depends...i upload generic content , travel editorial etc...in last months only new content sells. after i uploaded i see some new files from last batch sells. actually i'm uploading 100 files from a big backlog i had and i'm seeing the new files most of them sells in the first week, while old not sell good, only those who are in first page in popular.
in my opinion if you stop uploading you won't sell nothing.
last week I uploaded 24 files all just vanished just gone. Friday last week I uploaded 8 files and they show. its a hit and miss affair. Prior to that no uploading for three months and I sold more then ever. There is no way of telling anymore.
in my opinion 24 8 ...this number cannot compete....i'm not judging the quality...but we are talking about 100000 every day.....persoanlly i only upload batch of minimum 100 file....they stay longer in first pages of new....to upload 8 files and hope to sell them they must be very niche photos so if you search for them they are in first page for days......if you shoot a business man talking to iPhone how long can you hope it will stay in first pages of new content?
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Every day I get up and hope that today will be the day when I start to see some improvement, but it just keeps going from bad to worse.
No sales = no motivation = no point.
Shutterstock, are you taking notice of the fact that we no longer consider you to be No1? Can you do something to save us, or are your sales just as bad?
There has been talk for months on your forum about tech issues, new site features in the pipeline, etc. etc. but every change you make hits us in the back pocket. Are you just fighting fires, in an attempt jolly along old technology and to stave off a haemorrhage of buyers, or are all these changes actually what you intended?
It would be so good if someone from Shutterstock would actually say something to us, because we are all getting hoarse from shouting at a wall.
shutterstock is earning the same or more money....for a user that lose money and download other gain them.... many talk about fotolia...but i have random 2 download day....dreamstime and stock are by far even this month much better than fotolia and ss is still by far the best gainers. so shutter stock cannot do nothing for u or me....we only have to upload content.
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Every day I get up and hope that today will be the day when I start to see some improvement, but it just keeps going from bad to worse.
No sales = no motivation = no point.
Shutterstock, are you taking notice of the fact that we no longer consider you to be No1? Can you do something to save us, or are your sales just as bad?
There has been talk for months on your forum about tech issues, new site features in the pipeline, etc. etc. but every change you make hits us in the back pocket. Are you just fighting fires, in an attempt jolly along old technology and to stave off a haemorrhage of buyers, or are all these changes actually what you intended?
It would be so good if someone from Shutterstock would actually say something to us, because we are all getting hoarse from shouting at a wall.
shutterstock is earning the same or more money....for a user that lose money and download other gain them.... many talk about fotolia...but i have random 2 download day....dreamstime and stock are by far even this month much better than fotolia and ss is still by far the best gainers. so shutter stock cannot do nothing for u or me....we only have to upload content.
I'll reserve judgement on that until I see the financial for 2016, due to be released at the end of next month. I suspect that sales for footage have increased, and topped up the profits very nicely, but I would be very curious to see whether the profit for image sales is anywhere near in line with the actual image ingestion.
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Have written to @shutterstockcontrib on twitter to ask:
"Hi @ShutterstockReq Seems there are serious trbls on website... Lots of my files not displaying for several days.. Any solution soon ? Thx"
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anyway strange sunday with 30 dollar with a 28 extend sale...good see extended again in january. good feeling fro a great february. i'm planning adding 2000 images per month. se if and how improve.
I feel its a complete waste adding new images at the moment since they will probably just disappear to the land of nobody. Once they've sorted out this buyer problem mentioned above it might be worth the effort.
i don't know it depends...i upload generic content , travel editorial etc...in last months only new content sells. after i uploaded i see some new files from last batch sells. actually i'm uploading 100 files from a big backlog i had and i'm seeing the new files most of them sells in the first week, while old not sell good, only those who are in first page in popular.
in my opinion if you stop uploading you won't sell nothing.
last week I uploaded 24 files all just vanished just gone. Friday last week I uploaded 8 files and they show. its a hit and miss affair. Prior to that no uploading for three months and I sold more then ever. There is no way of telling anymore.
in my opinion 24 8 ...this number cannot compete....i'm not judging the quality...but we are talking about 100000 every day.....persoanlly i only upload batch of minimum 100 file....they stay longer in first pages of new....to upload 8 files and hope to sell them they must be very niche photos so if you search for them they are in first page for days......if you shoot a business man talking to iPhone how long can you hope it will stay in first pages of new content?
You are missing the point and btw 2 out of these 8 have already sold and they are niched. Sales wasn't the issue here. The first 24 files just vanished thats my point. I wrote to support and still no anwer, wrote again but no answer
Dangerous uploading 100 files! with the kind of review system at SS it seems very much like Alamy the chances are if they find just one file that dont meet the technical requirements they ban the whole lot.
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anyway strange sunday with 30 dollar with a 28 extend sale...good see extended again in january. good feeling fro a great february. i'm planning adding 2000 images per month. se if and how improve.
I feel its a complete waste adding new images at the moment since they will probably just disappear to the land of nobody. Once they've sorted out this buyer problem mentioned above it might be worth the effort.
i don't know it depends...i upload generic content , travel editorial etc...in last months only new content sells. after i uploaded i see some new files from last batch sells. actually i'm uploading 100 files from a big backlog i had and i'm seeing the new files most of them sells in the first week, while old not sell good, only those who are in first page in popular.
in my opinion if you stop uploading you won't sell nothing.
last week I uploaded 24 files all just vanished just gone. Friday last week I uploaded 8 files and they show. its a hit and miss affair. Prior to that no uploading for three months and I sold more then ever. There is no way of telling anymore.
in my opinion 24 8 ...this number cannot compete....i'm not judging the quality...but we are talking about 100000 every day.....persoanlly i only upload batch of minimum 100 file....they stay longer in first pages of new....to upload 8 files and hope to sell them they must be very niche photos so if you search for them they are in first page for days......if you shoot a business man talking to iPhone how long can you hope it will stay in first pages of new content?
You are missing the point and btw 2 out of these 8 have already sold and they are niched. Sales wasn't the issue here. The first 24 files just vanished thats my point. I wrote to support and still no anwer, wrote again but no answer
Dangerous uploading 100 files! with the kind of review system at SS it seems very much like Alamy the chances are if they find just one file that dont meet the technical requirements they ban the whole lot.
well my story already told ...i never upload in the good years don't know why...laziness?...good sales with a bunch of files...last years i decide to upload all the backlog...very big made of travel still life editorial etc...
in the last month i uploaded a lot fo files and have a 75% acceptance rate. i never experienced a 100% refusal probably cause i never upload 100 similar files. of 100 probably just 4 5 are similar to others.
today anyway is very slow. because i not uploaded nothing from friday.
but i have uploaded and send to review 120 files today and 300 waiting to be sent tomorrow and next tomorrow. i want see how much will impact sales the day after the approval.
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Since mentioned, I must have missed them, but I'm from Serbia and decently active in photographic communities and I've yet to come across such a productions companies, look for photographers or even anyone mentioning them. There are individuals here and there and that's all.
https://www.stocksy.com/lumina (https://www.stocksy.com/lumina)
this is from serbia very good quality...i'd like to know their cost of production..i suspect very low...
in micro there are more russian and ukraine production
I don't know where my reply went, obviously not here.. Anyway, that's a legit high-end company, with that kind of quality and experience they are probably doing a lot of other stuff. But nothing in their photos seems cheap I tell you, yes rent is cheaper, models are cheaper (I don't think these guys work only with friends and people who like being photographed for free) and similar, but taxes are not cheap, creating west world lifestyle atmospheres and tech in a post socialist, post war, post bombed country is not cheap or easy, even in the capital city. Also while people work here for 200-250 euros average (at best) those photographers aren't making those photos for anything less than 1000 euros a month, minimum. I was more having on my mind kind of pseudo companies creating average photos or even spam, this is something else, this isn't cheap at all.
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Since mentioned, I must have missed them, but I'm from Serbia and decently active in photographic communities and I've yet to come across such a productions companies, look for photographers or even anyone mentioning them. There are individuals here and there and that's all.
https://www.stocksy.com/lumina (https://www.stocksy.com/lumina)
this is from serbia very good quality...i'd like to know their cost of production..i suspect very low...
in micro there are more russian and ukraine production
I don't know where my reply went, obviously not here.. Anyway, that's a legit high-end company, with that kind of quality and experience they are probably doing a lot of other stuff. But nothing in their photos seems cheap I tell you, yes rent is cheaper, models are cheaper (I don't think these guys work only with friends and people who like being photographed for free) and similar, but taxes are not cheap, creating west world lifestyle atmospheres and tech in a post socialist, post war, post bombed country is not cheap or easy, even in the capital city. Also while people work here for 200-250 euros average (at best) those photographers aren't making those photos for anything less than 1000 euros a month, minimum. I was more having on my mind kind of pseudo companies creating average photos or even spam, this is something else, this isn't cheap at all.
i said it-s a good quality as stocksy agency...in micro you find similar agency with similar style also,....there a re a lot if you search for country like russia or ukraine.
well most of their stuff come from ikea...model renting cheap is 80% of cost.
i don-t think they will spend more than in ukraine or russia and i know how much cost a shooting like that there....believe me, no more than 300 dollar for complex situation...while in usa or italy for similar shooting you need at least 1000.
and the earning are the same....or you think the photographer in western world are lazier_ if they paid 300 dollar for shooting they would shoot every day three times...
in kiev with a good looking girl with already stock photography experience, photogenic, i pay no more than 50 dollar day for very experienced....location most of time, like bar restaurant shop are free, owner want simply photos, even apartment or luxury flat are free most of times for photos, they want you make some nice shot of apartment for them....try to do this in western world.
they not produce millions of file because thy want work more, they simply have ridiculous cost of production.
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Since mentioned, I must have missed them, but I'm from Serbia and decently active in photographic communities and I've yet to come across such a productions companies, look for photographers or even anyone mentioning them. There are individuals here and there and that's all.
https://www.stocksy.com/lumina (https://www.stocksy.com/lumina)
this is from serbia very good quality...i'd like to know their cost of production..i suspect very low...
in micro there are more russian and ukraine production
I don't know where my reply went, obviously not here.. Anyway, that's a legit high-end company, with that kind of quality and experience they are probably doing a lot of other stuff. But nothing in their photos seems cheap I tell you, yes rent is cheaper, models are cheaper (I don't think these guys work only with friends and people who like being photographed for free) and similar, but taxes are not cheap, creating west world lifestyle atmospheres and tech in a post socialist, post war, post bombed country is not cheap or easy, even in the capital city. Also while people work here for 200-250 euros average (at best) those photographers aren't making those photos for anything less than 1000 euros a month, minimum. I was more having on my mind kind of pseudo companies creating average photos or even spam, this is something else, this isn't cheap at all.
taxes depends on earning but believe me they are much much smaller than western country...in ukraine probably u not rich 18% maximum, in russia near, i don't know serbia but i suspect no more than 30% for very high earning.
sure they earn very good money for their country....i was just saying that 1000 euro in these countries are good salary...sure u not make a luxury living but believe me u live while in europe try to live and work with a salary of 1000 euro.
that's why i'm relocating in ukraine soon:))
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Seems to me that the real damage to sales is being done by the change in 'search'. When a potential buyer clicks on one of your images, they used to be offered similar images (based on keywords) from YOUR portfolio (same artist). Now the offering of alternatives is often not from your portfolio and is a pixel-based/color-pattern similarity search. If I were a buyer who had searched using keywords, I'd be seriously annoyed at SS offering these pixel-based alternatives because often they're totally irrelevant.
Another thing I've just noticed about the search is that in the past is that the keyword order changed as the image sold more frequently. Keywords appeared to be ordered on the basis of popularity as the image sold.....not any more. Keywords are now purely in alphabetical order as they appear under the image selected. Hardly surprising that sales of established portfolios have changed drastically (mostly for the worse according to contributors here).
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Seems to me that the real damage to sales is being done by the change in 'search'. When a potential buyer clicks on one of your images, they used to be offered similar images (based on keywords) from YOUR portfolio (same artist). Now the offering of alternatives is often not from your portfolio and is a pixel-based/color-pattern similarity search. If I were a buyer who had searched using keywords, I'd be seriously annoyed at SS offering these pixel-based alternatives because often they're totally irrelevant.
Another thing I've just noticed about the search is that in the past is that the keyword order changed as the image sold more frequently. Keywords appeared to be ordered on the basis of popularity as the image sold.....not any more. Keywords are now purely in alphabetical order as they appear under the image selected. Hardly surprising that sales of established portfolios have changed drastically (mostly for the worse according to contributors here).
You are correct. I've watched the keywords change on sold files and stay the same on unsold, from same upload. I watched the words go to alpha sort. I could guess that the search didn't change but the keywords did. And expect they will change again.
Currently upload order of keywords makes no difference on SS. Changing the order, doesn't matter. When they fix whatever broke, the sort will be back to agency priority and order.
Anybody who doubts this, go look at your keywords from the buyers site. Alpha sorted. Look at edit keywords on your file on SS, different order. Now look at the original file on your computer, not the same as the SS file that you can edit.
SS still arranges keywords on our pages, into a different order than upload, and buyers, different from submit our site.
Anyone else get this more then every before looking at SS site? "Secure Connection Failed"
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A late surge of ELs and SODs turned January into a decent month. I didn't expect that much from January anyway. That late surge gives me hope that February will be a good month despite being a short one.
Companies should have their budgets figured out by now and they should have more of a stock budget in the upcoming month. Just like everyone else, my sales has fallen a bit as well, by about 20%. With the new format, I think good content and good keywording is more important than ever. SS has really made the entire site a bit more competitive among contributors and if you half-ass anything, it's going to be rough.
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This January was ok, but these last 2 days are dead like a bad weekend, and this is unusual - last day of each month has always been a good day for me, even if it was a so-so month.
Or could it be due to Chinese New Year?
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This January was ok, but these last 2 days are dead like a bad weekend, and this is unusual - last day of each month has always been a good day for me, even if it was a so-so month.
Or could it be due to Chinese New Year?
LOL, I hope that was a joke? It was Saturday January 28th, the dreaded year of the Rooster Saturday. Which is possibly the worst day of the week to start with.
I had to look because dollars down, sales up. I had a good SO last year which is the difference. 2015 same numbers of sales as 2017, same dollars as 2016. In 2014 same number of sales, much less money.
In round numbers, it's pretty much unchanged in three years for me.
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down the toilet
Is this where finally end our newest and best submissions,
resulting of a decade of experiencing the microstock industry?
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Seems to me that the real damage to sales is being done by the change in 'search'. When a potential buyer clicks on one of your images, they used to be offered similar images (based on keywords) from YOUR portfolio (same artist). Now the offering of alternatives is often not from your portfolio and is a pixel-based/color-pattern similarity search. If I were a buyer who had searched using keywords, I'd be seriously annoyed at SS offering these pixel-based alternatives because often they're totally irrelevant.
Another thing I've just noticed about the search is that in the past is that the keyword order changed as the image sold more frequently. Keywords appeared to be ordered on the basis of popularity as the image sold.....not any more. Keywords are now purely in alphabetical order as they appear under the image selected. Hardly surprising that sales of established portfolios have changed drastically (mostly for the worse according to contributors here).
You are correct. I've watched the keywords change on sold files and stay the same on unsold, from same upload. I watched the words go to alpha sort. I could guess that the search didn't change but the keywords did. And expect they will change again.
Currently upload order of keywords makes no difference on SS. Changing the order, doesn't matter. When they fix whatever broke, the sort will be back to agency priority and order.
Anybody who doubts this, go look at your keywords from the buyers site. Alpha sorted. Look at edit keywords on your file on SS, different order. Now look at the original file on your computer, not the same as the SS file that you can edit.
SS still arranges keywords on our pages, into a different order than upload, and buyers, different from submit our site.
Anyone else get this more then every before looking at SS site? "Secure Connection Failed"
You're right. Buyer's site in private browsing gives completely different (alpha sorted) order. In contributor mode it's alphabetical.
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Seems to me that the real damage to sales is being done by the change in 'search'. When a potential buyer clicks on one of your images, they used to be offered similar images (based on keywords) from YOUR portfolio (same artist). Now the offering of alternatives is often not from your portfolio and is a pixel-based/color-pattern similarity search. If I were a buyer who had searched using keywords, I'd be seriously annoyed at SS offering these pixel-based alternatives because often they're totally irrelevant.
Another thing I've just noticed about the search is that in the past is that the keyword order changed as the image sold more frequently. Keywords appeared to be ordered on the basis of popularity as the image sold.....not any more. Keywords are now purely in alphabetical order as they appear under the image selected. Hardly surprising that sales of established portfolios have changed drastically (mostly for the worse according to contributors here).
You are correct. I've watched the keywords change on sold files and stay the same on unsold, from same upload. I watched the words go to alpha sort. I could guess that the search didn't change but the keywords did. And expect they will change again.
Currently upload order of keywords makes no difference on SS. Changing the order, doesn't matter. When they fix whatever broke, the sort will be back to agency priority and order.
Anybody who doubts this, go look at your keywords from the buyers site. Alpha sorted. Look at edit keywords on your file on SS, different order. Now look at the original file on your computer, not the same as the SS file that you can edit.
SS still arranges keywords on our pages, into a different order than upload, and buyers, different from submit our site.
Anyone else get this more then every before looking at SS site? "Secure Connection Failed"
You're right. Buyer's site in private browsing gives completely different (alpha sorted) order. In contributor mode it's alphabetical.
It's different everywhere we can see, very strange. I'd hope that what I sent them would at least be the same, but it's re-ordered. And then as some have pointed out, what buyers see, may not be what gets searched. We can't assume that anything behind the curtain is what's really used.
That Alpha display might just be display. I don't think our upload order matters. And this is just theory unless I do some testing and find proof, the order that changes with downloads is showing us what's really used. But that makes the most sense.
SS reorders words based on their searches, and the ones most searched and most used for downloads, get moved to the front. It's all about customers, buyers and their searches.
Remember the problem with spammed titles. Same works for spammed keywords.
Words used for a sale, go to the front. By default words not used will go backwards and files not downloaded will be unaffected. If it's really smart, and using the same as Alamy has for years, views without a buy, will move that word down the list.
Think about that.
Positive rank for words on sold files, negative rank for words viewed and not sold. Spam will get a file penalized for vague or misused keywords.
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except the spammed titles were all over the first pages of the searches
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Do you think its better if you have less keywords then? For example 10, less to worry about, most relevant keywords only. The order wont matter a lot.
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Just to add in, as a newbie with some 150 photos, January was my BME but I can clearly see the pattern why, I started uploading regularly 3-5 images a day and as soon as they go on sale they sell (depending on the type and demand for it) and then the next day it's back to where it was.
It has a logic, buyers come and sort by NEW, but beyond I can't comprehend how could a buyer stumble upon my photos in a sea of others, there is just that much keywords, I could go with more unique images but that hasn't proved fruitful before, some things are just in high demand and some things aren't I guess.
Still it could be that my sample is so small to pull any meaningful conclusion.
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Do you think its better if you have less keywords then? For example 10, less to worry about, most relevant keywords only. The order wont matter a lot.
All the relevant keywords that are needed to have a buyer find the image. That's how many. If you add words that are just there to make more words, it doesn't help and could very well make your image lower rank.
Description is searched and a good description will help get sales as well. One word or two won't do it. SS has sent us advise emails with samples and examples. Better description will make your images be found more.
Keyword order doesn't matter. https://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/topic/90124-keyword-order/
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https://www.shutterstock.com/contributorsupport/articles/kbat02/000011450 (https://www.shutterstock.com/contributorsupport/articles/kbat02/000011450)
Guide to Descriptions and Keywords from SS help file.
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Do you think its better if you have less keywords then? For example 10, less to worry about, most relevant keywords only. The order wont matter a lot.
Checked my Image stats - I have many images where more than 10 keywords were used by buyers in searches, with maximum of 18 keywords for one of my bestsellers. Some of them I thought would have never been used. You never know!
So limiting your keywords to 10 or so could result in "less $$ to worry about" ;D
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Do you think its better if you have less keywords then? For example 10, less to worry about, most relevant keywords only. The order wont matter a lot.
Checked my Image stats - I have many images where more than 10 keywords were used by buyers in searches, with maximum of 18 keywords for one of my bestsellers. Some of them I thought would have never been used. You never know!
So limiting your keywords to 10 or so could result in "less $$ to worry about" ;D
All the relevant and directly related keywords.
That could be 10 for a simple image and 50 for something complex. You are right, we never know. But adding irrelevant words won't make more sales, it could make less sales.
It's not how many it's what they are. Sounds like how many sales for how many images question. :)
It's not how many, it's what they are.
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Do you think its better if you have less keywords then? For example 10, less to worry about, most relevant keywords only. The order wont matter a lot.
Checked my Image stats - I have many images where more than 10 keywords were used by buyers in searches, with maximum of 18 keywords for one of my bestsellers. Some of them I thought would have never been used. You never know!
So limiting your keywords to 10 or so could result in "less $$ to worry about" ;D
My record is 24 keywords.
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Do you think its better if you have less keywords then? For example 10, less to worry about, most relevant keywords only. The order wont matter a lot.
Checked my Image stats - I have many images where more than 10 keywords were used by buyers in searches, with maximum of 18 keywords for one of my bestsellers. Some of them I thought would have never been used. You never know!
So limiting your keywords to 10 or so could result in "less $$ to worry about" ;D
My record is 24 keywords.
Is that related words used to find the image? Does that mean 24 different words over time, not a 24 word search right? So 100 sales, 24 different words were used to find your image? Pretty darn nice!
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It's 24 words over time, not in a single search.
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It's 24 words over time, not in a single search.
Nice, I've got to go look at mine. I don't pay much attention to the words used to find things. Sometimes it's so unrelated it scares me. :) Many are the first words that I put in, because they are the bottom line, what's in the image. Makes me feel better that I picked the right words, because those will be first everywhere else.
I'll try to view it as education and information for similar images to improve their visibility.
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I have 23 for my bestseller, but normal is 4-6.
Naturally, an image with many sales is going to have better search placement for any keyword.
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Yes, it was over time, but I'm sure some of the keywords were used in a single search.
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Yes, it was over time, but I'm sure some of the keywords were used in a single search.
47 and most of the ones down near the bottom are .1% 25 are .5% or less. One word, and I didn't check them all, isn't in my key words, but part of it is. I'm losing faith in the importance of all except maybe the top six and one of those is another partial word?
Image if word used was Dog 5.4% and the actual keyword was Dogma.
People, retro, black, white, new, man. Have to have them in there, but showing in words used?
Fun looking though. Thanks.
https://submit.shutterstock.com/earnings/top-performers?sort_direction=desc&sort_order=downloads
Shows total earnings by the way.
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Somehow as the OP says I genuinely believe its going down the toilet. There are just too many well established members and not just here its everywhere that have to do with stock photography seeing the same issues from tinkered and unfair searches to disappearing portfolios to bugs galore. Pugh! whats up Doc?
I am seriously starting to look for a plan-B but where the heck do I stick 4K files. hehe!
Any ideas anybody? RF or RM or both?
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Sales have picked up lately. This is the best week I've had since November.
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Sales have picked up lately. This is the best week I've had since November.
I hate to point out the obvious, but we all have good and bad periods, beyond the usual. I'm having a good week also. Somewhere else, someone is saying this is the worst week ever. :) Might be what material we have, the season or just something that buyers happened to need.
I've been having first time sold for a couple weeks. What? Stuff that hasn't sold in years, just suddenly gets a download, while a million new and probably better files, come in every week. What's that about? I like it, but sure is a mystery.
I'm at top level. No reason for SS to be pushing my junk to the front for less money. I never bought that claim anyway. I don't have an answer, makes no sense. Never sold, undiscovered, old images from years ago, and now I get sales?
Next someone will make up some deep reason why I'm getting sales and they aren't like tweaking the search. So why would they treak or twist the search for my old files? Bonus time for people who's last name starts with the same letter as mine.
Or maybe there are just good and bad periods at random, beyond the natural flow. There's not a conspiracy or twist or something behind the scenes that's agencies are doing to manipulate sales. Maybe people are searching so hard for reasons that they make up answers for things that have no easy answer!
Yes, Microstock itself is going down the toilet. For us as contributors. There doesn't have to be some dark plot or secrets behind the why. There's far to much accusing and false claims going around to explain what was predicted years ago.
Microstock will be crushed under it's own weight. That weight is the number of files and cheap images on cheap sites. Quality will always sell, but cheapness is millions of new files a week, smothering the marketplace. We lose, they win.
Stop finding excuses and blame and see the truth.
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I hate to point out the obvious, but we all have good and bad periods, beyond the usual. I'm having a good week also. Somewhere else, someone is saying this is the worst week ever. :) Might be what material we have, the season or just something that buyers happened to need.
I've been having first time sold for a couple weeks. What? Stuff that hasn't sold in years, just suddenly gets a download, while a million new and probably better files, come in every week. What's that about? I like it, but sure is a mystery.
I'm at top level. No reason for SS to be pushing my junk to the front for less money. I never bought that claim anyway. I don't have an answer, makes no sense. Never sold, undiscovered, old images from years ago, and now I get sales?
Next someone will make up some deep reason why I'm getting sales and they aren't like tweaking the search. So why would they treak or twist the search for my old files? Bonus time for people who's last name starts with the same letter as mine.
Or maybe there are just good and bad periods at random, beyond the natural flow. There's not a conspiracy or twist or something behind the scenes that's agencies are doing to manipulate sales. Maybe people are searching so hard for reasons that they make up answers for things that have no easy answer!
Yes, Microstock itself is going down the toilet. For us as contributors. There doesn't have to be some dark plot or secrets behind the why. There's far to much accusing and false claims going around to explain what was predicted years ago.
Microstock will be crushed under it's own weight. That weight is the number of files and cheap images on cheap sites. Quality will always sell, but cheapness is millions of new files a week, smothering the marketplace. We lose, they win.
Stop finding excuses and blame and see the truth.
If someone has a low number of sales per day, they're more probably likely see fluctuations. My sales are very consistent and I don't see a lot of fluctuations between days. This week, sales are noticeably up and I'm talking about 10-20% higher than every week since mid-November.
I'm also at the highest level, and I haven't seen any difference in terms of sales. I have a theory on why there are more first time sales than ever. If I recall correctly, in the old Image page, they only showed 1 row of 'Similars'. Now there are 2 rows. The chances of your old images appearing in the 'Similars' section are much higher than before, giving your image a chance to be downloaded.
Conversely, this also means your image is also less likely to be downloaded if the customer originally clicked on your image from a search. Contributors gain some exposure for some images, but are exposed to more competition by the 'Similars' section. I don't know the algorithm behind the Similars section, but I'm guessing they show a mixture of new, and old images. The non-contextual "Same Artist" used to show similar images from the same contributor and people would download multiple images from the same set. Now that it's non-contextual, contributors are getting less downloads.
Despite the heavy competition, I still believe there is good money to be made.
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I hate to point out the obvious, but we all have good and bad periods, beyond the usual. I'm having a good week also. Somewhere else, someone is saying this is the worst week ever. :) Might be what material we have, the season or just something that buyers happened to need.
I've been having first time sold for a couple weeks. What? Stuff that hasn't sold in years, just suddenly gets a download, while a million new and probably better files, come in every week. What's that about? I like it, but sure is a mystery.
I'm at top level. No reason for SS to be pushing my junk to the front for less money. I never bought that claim anyway. I don't have an answer, makes no sense. Never sold, undiscovered, old images from years ago, and now I get sales?
Next someone will make up some deep reason why I'm getting sales and they aren't like tweaking the search. So why would they treak or twist the search for my old files? Bonus time for people who's last name starts with the same letter as mine.
Or maybe there are just good and bad periods at random, beyond the natural flow. There's not a conspiracy or twist or something behind the scenes that's agencies are doing to manipulate sales. Maybe people are searching so hard for reasons that they make up answers for things that have no easy answer!
Yes, Microstock itself is going down the toilet. For us as contributors. There doesn't have to be some dark plot or secrets behind the why. There's far to much accusing and false claims going around to explain what was predicted years ago.
Microstock will be crushed under it's own weight. That weight is the number of files and cheap images on cheap sites. Quality will always sell, but cheapness is millions of new files a week, smothering the marketplace. We lose, they win.
Stop finding excuses and blame and see the truth.
If someone has a low number of sales per day, they're more probably likely see fluctuations. My sales are very consistent and I don't see a lot of fluctuations between days. This week, sales are noticeably up and I'm talking about 10-20% higher than every week since mid-November.
I'm also at the highest level, and I haven't seen any difference in terms of sales. I have a theory on why there are more first time sales than ever. If I recall correctly, in the old Image page, they only showed 1 row of 'Similars'. Now there are 2 rows. The chances of your old images appearing in the 'Similars' section are much higher than before, giving your image a chance to be downloaded.
Conversely, this also means your image is also less likely to be downloaded if the customer originally clicked on your image from a search. Contributors gain some exposure for some images, but are exposed to more competition by the 'Similars' section. I don't know the algorithm behind the Similars section, but I'm guessing they show a mixture of new, and old images. The non-contextual "Same Artist" used to show similar images from the same contributor and people would download multiple images from the same set. Now that it's non-contextual, contributors are getting less downloads.
Despite the heavy competition, I still believe there is good money to be made.
That too, bigger numbers are more steady and interesting ideas. One that just sold I never thought would ever sell. There are many similars, better and hardly any difference in the composition.
Many of mine have no same set, or very few. I don't do sets. From the same artist some would assume similar from the same. It doesn't say that. Just more from the same artist. Similar is the same idea. It doesn't say from same person it just says similar images. It's not all about us, it's all about buyers seeing more choices.
If from the same artist was a photo of a flower, do we want a buyer to see just flowers or our whole portfolio and all the work we've done to diversify. Do people want a buyer to see, four pages of flowers and trees, and go away saying, how boring and limited we are? Or see that we have a variety of creative example that can bring them back for more subjects. More choices, more visibility which is for us.
I still think the similar image search by composition and color is trash. Hardly useful except very limited cases.
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If from the same artist was a photo of a flower, do we want a buyer to see just flowers or our whole portfolio and all the work we've done to diversify. Do people want a buyer to see, four pages of flowers and trees, and go away saying, how boring and limited we are? Or see that we have a variety of creative example that can bring them back for more subjects. More choices, more visibility which is for us.
Swings and roundabouts.
I have no idea how many buyers actually go first to particular portfolios to look for stuff.
However, if they do, being known as a specialist of, e.g. flowers and trees would be very interesting to some buyers.
If you were very diverse, what's to make them come to you rather than just search the site? Unless you have a very particular style with diverse subjects, which again would be attractive to some buyers, but 'boring and limited' to others.
I think the point is that if a buyer wants a photo of an orange, and clicks on one, and decides not to go with it, they'd rather, at that point, see more photos of an orange than photos of a snowdrop, a skier or businessmen shaking hands.
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Thought Jan was bad, Feb 75% down! Can it get any worse (looking like it will). Depressing what's happened to SS.
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Thought Jan was bad, Feb 75% down! Can it get any worse (looking like it will). Depressing what's happened to SS.
75% on when? Last month last year? Average....just curious
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It is 50% down from last Feb for me. It makes me feel sick ...
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Around 50% down. Worse then when I joined 9 years back. Some friends I got over there with large portfolios also 40-50% down. Getting very worrying. This can't be a placement problem this is something else?
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Anyone else having thumbs show on a map and weren't reported in earnings?
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They rejiggered the search again...my best sellers have been pushed back from the top of page one to the middle of page two, and page one is stuff from newbies. Our fearless CEO is under pressure to get the stock price up to $80/share, and I suspect they're trying to show an increase in profits by paying out lower royalties.
I have to go back to 2014 to see a February this low.
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They rejiggered the search again...my best sellers have been pushed back from the top of page one to the middle of page two, and page one is stuff from newbies. Our fearless CEO is under pressure to get the stock price up to $80/share, and I suspect they're trying to show an increase in profits by paying out lower royalties.
I have to go back to 2014 to see a February this low.
I wondered what went crazy today. I noticed the problem with the map and assumed that the stats would actually catch up but I guess my measly 15 downloads for the day is actually correct?
I know it's big business, and the little people don't matter, but don't they realise how much they are playing with peoples lives? I have to look back to 2011 to see a February this low, and I'm so depressed I can't put into words how bad I feel over all this.
Please Shutterstock, have a heart - you are killing us here.
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They rejiggered the search again...my best sellers have been pushed back from the top of page one to the middle of page two, and page one is stuff from newbies. Our fearless CEO is under pressure to get the stock price up to $80/share, and I suspect they're trying to show an increase in profits by paying out lower royalties.
I have to go back to 2014 to see a February this low.
I wondered what went crazy today. I noticed the problem with the map and assumed that the stats would actually catch up but I guess my measly 15 downloads for the day is actually correct?
I know it's big business, and the little people don't matter, but don't they realise how much they are playing with peoples lives? I have to look back to 2011 to see a February this low, and I'm so depressed I can't put into words how bad I feel over all this.
Please Shutterstock, have a heart - you are killing us here.
micro stock is finished.
you can keep up uploading a lot just to have some dollars...but people who only do this for living better find a plan soon...next year will see 200 300 million images per year...thousand of contributor more.
photography have many opportunity apart micro the problem if you have the plan to catch them...
this month i went from very low position in fotolia to the first 500....considering my week earning i was surprised to be into the first 500 earners. i understood that even working hard and uploading as hell you cant leave with micro .
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They rejiggered the search again...my best sellers have been pushed back from the top of page one to the middle of page two, and page one is stuff from newbies. Our fearless CEO is under pressure to get the stock price up to $80/share, and I suspect they're trying to show an increase in profits by paying out lower royalties.
I have to go back to 2014 to see a February this low.
my february is better than last year but i have my portfolio bigger 60 % with more micro stock oriented content...i'm near january earning with 5 days left...but i expected much much more...at least doubling january.
today appalling 9 download. this month mostly subs, zero enhanced.
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They rejiggered the search again...my best sellers have been pushed back from the top of page one to the middle of page two, and page one is stuff from newbies. Our fearless CEO is under pressure to get the stock price up to $80/share, and I suspect they're trying to show an increase in profits by paying out lower royalties.
I have to go back to 2014 to see a February this low.
my february is better than last year but i have my portfolio bigger 60 % with more micro stock oriented content...i'm near january earning with 5 days left...but i expected much much more...at least doubling january.
today appalling 9 download. this month mostly subs, zero enhanced.
Not finished at all then.....your forecast for next year is out by a factor of about three things may be bad but not that bad...if you really believe that why haven't you stopped uploading.......
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They rejiggered the search again...my best sellers have been pushed back from the top of page one to the middle of page two, and page one is stuff from newbies. Our fearless CEO is under pressure to get the stock price up to $80/share, and I suspect they're trying to show an increase in profits by paying out lower royalties.
I have to go back to 2014 to see a February this low.
my february is better than last year but i have my portfolio bigger 60 % with more micro stock oriented content...i'm near january earning with 5 days left...but i expected much much more...at least doubling january.
today appalling 9 download. this month mostly subs, zero enhanced.
Not finished at all then.....your forecast for next year is out by a factor of about three things may be bad but not that bad...if you really believe that why haven't you stopped uploading.......
" stop uploading" youre right that would work but you have the Russians and all neighbouring countries where $.10 a day goes a long way and they are uploading in millions and millions. Soon they will be the only contributors left and thats probably enough for a few years.
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Yes its their business decision and yours is whether its worth while FOR YOU. If it isn't they why do it.....or perhaps its not so bad after all.
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They rejiggered the search again...my best sellers have been pushed back from the top of page one to the middle of page two, and page one is stuff from newbies. Our fearless CEO is under pressure to get the stock price up to $80/share, and I suspect they're trying to show an increase in profits by paying out lower royalties.
I have to go back to 2014 to see a February this low.
my february is better than last year but i have my portfolio bigger 60 % with more micro stock oriented content...i'm near january earning with 5 days left...but i expected much much more...at least doubling january.
today appalling 9 download. this month mostly subs, zero enhanced.
Not finished at all then.....your forecast for next year is out by a factor of about three things may be bad but not that bad...if you really believe that why haven't you stopped uploading.......
is not my primary income
I'm getting good money but uploading a lot and plan to upload all garbage i have in hard disk and work next three months with model to build up a solid portfolio
as primary income is struggle to see 5 6 k euro months earned right now...maybw when my portfolio will be bigger yes.
it helps keep working in those moment i not have assignment or working on project.
but it's definitely a falling industry for people who upload. and expect much much more contributors uploading for third world country soon.
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They rejiggered the search again...my best sellers have been pushed back from the top of page one to the middle of page two, and page one is stuff from newbies. Our fearless CEO is under pressure to get the stock price up to $80/share, and I suspect they're trying to show an increase in profits by paying out lower royalties.
I have to go back to 2014 to see a February this low.
my february is better than last year but i have my portfolio bigger 60 % with more micro stock oriented content...i'm near january earning with 5 days left...but i expected much much more...at least doubling january.
today appalling 9 download. this month mostly subs, zero enhanced.
Not finished at all then.....your forecast for next year is out by a factor of about three things may be bad but not that bad...if you really believe that why haven't you stopped uploading.......
" stop uploading" youre right that would work but you have the Russians and all neighbouring countries where $.10 a day goes a long way and they are uploading in millions and millions. Soon they will be the only contributors left and thats probably enough for a few years.
axaxxaxa don't talk me about this...i already wrote in spades about the advent of masses of contributor from eastern countries.
yesterday i was checking the world FOOd: 10 millions images...if you search for top view food most of the photos come from russia and ukraine...copy of copy...they copy each other...
the problem is you can't keep up with those guys if you not move there.
i spend most of year in one country of these for example.. right now salary for a shop assistant is near 150 dollar....only those working in IT or multinational company earn decent money...the rest from 100 to 500 , i mean the younger with no family business....you understand that even 3 400 dollar earned uploading zillions of same images of bread salad tomato or the nice girlfriend smiling in park can make a difference for them but for you and me 300 dollar means starving.
and wait when the african and south american waves will hit micro stock.
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75% down on last year//last Feb etc. I'm not a big seller but the drop was quick and hasn't recovered.
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Yes, people from lower income countries are doing well, but most buyers are from Western Europe, Australia, and North America.
I recently had a conversation with a person in charge of content for a major agency and they said that for many concepts, they lack regionally accurate images. The kind of stuff that cant be faked in other countries. So the agencies are starting to feel the results of having such over abundance of images from places that don't have the buyers. Maybe one day they'll figure out if they want images accurate for Western buyers, they need to pay royalties appropriate for Western contributors.
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Maybe one day they'll figure out if they want images accurate for Western buyers, they need to pay royalties appropriate for Western contributors.
Well, if they do decide to pay better royalties, it would attract even more people to become/remain active contributors. Our images would sink even faster and deeper than now. In the end, I doubt we would earn more. Maybe for a short time. We're damned if they do and damned if they don't increase the royalties. But they won't anyway.
The entrance barrier in this field is simply too low, and that is the problem.
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The entrance barrier in this field is simply too low, and that is the problem.
True, but the way out is easy to find too: most new contributors give up once they realise it's a lot of work for very little return, at least in the beginning.
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the problem is you can't keep up with those guys if you not move there.
lol, so true! i know a bloke who lives like that, and he says, life is cheaper with the money
from UK where he lives, and over in the "3rd world", he gets to live like he has money to burn
and.. quote: he gets the gals chasing after him, thinking he's a loaded dude from UK!".
go where the girls are lovely, .. and even get them to pose for you
... was it not yuri at the beginning he was from eastern europe too , no??..
he had the best looking eastern euro girils working for him???
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Yeah. I'm sure all the women on this site will be sure to move where the girls are lovely. ::)
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Yes, people from lower income countries are doing well, but most buyers are from western Euriope, Australia, and North America.
I recently had a conversation with a person in charge of content for a major agency and they said that for many concepts, they lack regionally accurate images. The kind of stuff that cant be faked in other countries. So the agencies are starting to feel the results of having such over abundance of images from places that don't have the buyers. Maybe one day they'll figure out if they want images accurate for Western buyers, they need to pay royalties appropriate for Western contributors.
i completely agree. that's great point. you see this especially with faces....while girl from soviet country are often amazing their feature are typical of their country far from western world, the men are even more different for western men
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The entrance barrier in this field is simply too low, and that is the problem.
True, but the way out is easy to find too: most new contributors give up once they realise it's a lot of work for very little return, at least in the beginning.
this is not true.. look how many easter country contributor have more than 10 k images in less than a year or two....they have not great choices and in many country eve 500 600 dollar are more than normal job...so they can easily live with 700 800 dollar....not a luxury life but they can earn more than normal job...so for them is better wait and submit a lot because anyway working normally they will earn less than micro stock....and in addiction they earn in dollar that's a great plus, cause most of currency are weak against dollar right now.
i think we will seen the next year much much more contributors coming from serbia russia ukraine.
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the problem is you can't keep up with those guys if you not move there.
lol, so true! i know a bloke who lives like that, and he says, life is cheaper with the money
from UK where he lives, and over in the "3rd world", he gets to live like he has money to burn
and.. quote: he gets the gals chasing after him, thinking he's a loaded dude from UK!".
go where the girls are lovely, .. and even get them to pose for you
... was it not yuri at the beginning he was from eastern europe too , no??..
he had the best looking eastern euro girils working for him???
no yuri was from denmark...i remember...but well its like this..i hope i will not spreading this and see thousand of micro stocker this summer in moscow..axaxaa....
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Yet its quite amazing since I read somewhere that around 90% have less then 1000 files in the portfolio. So whos got them all?
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Yet its quite amazing since I read somewhere that around 90% have less then 1000 files in the portfolio. So whos got them all?
Africa Studio over 1million images
http://www.microstock.top/indeximg.phtml?sort=portfolio (http://www.microstock.top/indeximg.phtml?sort=portfolio)
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Yet its quite amazing since I read somewhere that around 90% have less then 1000 files in the portfolio. So whos got them all?
Africa Studio over 1million images
[url]http://www.microstock.top/indeximg.phtml?sort=portfolio[/url] ([url]http://www.microstock.top/indeximg.phtml?sort=portfolio[/url])
ukraine russia and thailand account for more than 50 pages...near 40 % and probably much more than 50 millions file...with ukraine with a lot of people producing cheap content in thousand.
as i already told this is the biggest problem.
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Sad day today...
It has been about to happen for months now but today, Saturday 25, I had the first 0 (zero) downloads day in over 10 years. The last zero day was on October 2006, 2 months after joining Shutterstock.
Don't need to reply... let me just be here in the corner, mourning the fact...
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the problem is you can't keep up with those guys if you not move there.
lol, so true! i know a bloke who lives like that, and he says, life is cheaper with the money
from UK where he lives, and over in the "3rd world", he gets to live like he has money to burn
and.. quote: he gets the gals chasing after him, thinking he's a loaded dude from UK!".
go where the girls are lovely, .. and even get them to pose for you
... was it not yuri at the beginning he was from eastern europe too , no??..
he had the best looking eastern euro girils working for him???
You need to reduce the amount of alcohol in your drinks mate...
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Yes, people from lower income countries are doing well, but most buyers are from western Euriope, Australia, and North America.
Where is 'Euriope'?
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Yes, people from lower income countries are doing well, but most buyers are from western Euriope, Australia, and North America.
Where is 'Euriope'?
In my tiny keyboard letters and big clumsy hands. ;) I corrected it, but it's not my first typo and not gonna be my last.
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Hello,
longtime lurker here but I finally decided to post so I can share an idea. I actually emailed Shutterstock these ideas but I don't know if it will do any good. Here they are:
1. Prioritize placement for "serious" microstock photographers against "hobbyists" so that we can sustain income to run our businesses.
2. Prioritize files from local photographers to match with search queries from local regions. This way, images results may look more authentic, and keywords match the context of language in the region. (This may also keep the waves of images from Europe from dominating the American market)
what do you guys think?
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Yet its quite amazing since I read somewhere that around 90% have less then 1000 files in the portfolio. So whos got them all?
Africa Studio over 1million images
[url]http://www.microstock.top/indeximg.phtml?sort=portfolio[/url] ([url]http://www.microstock.top/indeximg.phtml?sort=portfolio[/url])
ukraine russia and thailand account for more than 50 pages...near 40 % and probably much more than 50 millions file...with ukraine with a lot of people producing cheap content in thousand.
as i already told this is the biggest problem.
True! and this has been going on for some time now. Its incredible really but in these countries it dont take many dollars a day to live the good life so SS will nurse them well and in return they will upload millions of files.
Very hard if not impossible for us to compete since our living and expenses are far higher.
-
Hello,
longtime lurker here but I finally decided to post so I can share an idea. I actually emailed Shutterstock these ideas but I don't know if it will do any good. Here they are:
1. Prioritize placement for "serious" microstock photographers against "hobbyists" so that we can sustain income to run our businesses.
2. Prioritize files from local photographers to match with search queries from local regions. This way, images results may look more authentic, and keywords match the context of language in the region. (This may also keep the waves of images from Europe from dominating the American market)
what do you guys think?
I suspect 2 is already a thing.
The a solution is actually simpler I think. Stop accepting all the junk and delete content that hasn't sold for 4+ years. But instead they are overselling collection size to shareholders and trying to artificially inflate it by letting in on millions of repeated vector icons and almost duplicate photos.
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Hello,
longtime lurker here but I finally decided to post so I can share an idea. I actually emailed Shutterstock these ideas but I don't know if it will do any good. Here they are:
1. Prioritize placement for "serious" microstock photographers against "hobbyists" so that we can sustain income to run our businesses.
2. Prioritize files from local photographers to match with search queries from local regions. This way, images results may look more authentic, and keywords match the context of language in the region. (This may also keep the waves of images from Europe from dominating the American market)
what do you guys think?
Why the heck should they do 1? Touch arrogant don't you think?
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Actually the problem is not small time photographers producing a few pics from their holidays, who no doubt your images are far superior to but the "serious" producers producing thousands of images with almost indiscernible differences from whats already there.
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A reason for doing no.1 would be to make it sustainable for producers so ss can also stay in business. The problem is that the amateur uploading snaps today is the skilled pro of tomorrow. If they don't get a chance to develop collections will stagnate.
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Actually the problem is not small time photographers producing a few pics from their holidays, who no doubt your images are far superior to but the "serious" producers producing thousands of images with almost indiscernible differences from whats already there.
This is very true! but there are still tons of just " rubbish" and sister-images coming in and just there for the sake of quantity.
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A reason for doing no.1 would be to make it sustainable for producers so ss can also stay in business. The problem is that the amateur uploading snaps today is the skilled pro of tomorrow. If they don't get a chance to develop collections will stagnate.
I haven't noticed SS having a shortage of images or contributors ...surely the objective for SS should be to maximise income by delivering a search that meets buyers needs not trying to rig it to suit some producers...isn't that exactly what many complain about now? But its OK if it favours them?
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A reason for doing no.1 would be to make it sustainable for producers so ss can also stay in business. The problem is that the amateur uploading snaps today is the skilled pro of tomorrow. If they don't get a chance to develop collections will stagnate.
I haven't noticed SS having a shortage of images or contributors ...surely the objective for SS should be to maximise income by delivering a search that meets buyers needs not trying to rig it to suit some producers...isn't that exactly what many complain about now? But its OK if it favours them?
I agree it would be counter productive. They just need to tighten reviews across the board. If someone is c**p they need to just be kicked from the site not be pushed back in searches. I was just saying what one of the reasons behind it could be.
They will have the volume either way, but if it isn't profitable to spend dollars on high value shoots or time producing decent illustrations their volume will be made up of snap shot garbage photos and millions of repeat icons.
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A reason for doing no.1 would be to make it sustainable for producers so ss can also stay in business. The problem is that the amateur uploading snaps today is the skilled pro of tomorrow. If they don't get a chance to develop collections will stagnate.
I haven't noticed SS having a shortage of images or contributors ...surely the objective for SS should be to maximise income by delivering a search that meets buyers needs not trying to rig it to suit some producers...isn't that exactly what many complain about now? But its OK if it favours them?
I agree it would be counter productive. They just need to tighten reviews across the board. If someone is c**p they need to just be kicked from the site not be pushed back in searches. I was just saying what one of the reasons behind it could be.
They will have the volume either way, but if it isn't profitable to spend dollars on high value shoots or time producing decent illustrations their volume will be made up of snap shot garbage photos and millions of repeat icons.
Agreed along with better search engines that ensure the "best" and a variety images are near the front not dominated by a group of very similar images. I think illustrators may have it even worse than photographers where sometimes there are literary thousands of very similar images.....I finf it hard to imagine people make money like that but I guess they must.
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Hello,
longtime lurker here but I finally decided to post so I can share an idea. I actually emailed Shutterstock these ideas but I don't know if it will do any good. Here they are:
1. Prioritize placement for "serious" microstock photographers against "hobbyists" so that we can sustain income to run our businesses.
2. Prioritize files from local photographers to match with search queries from local regions. This way, images results may look more authentic, and keywords match the context of language in the region. (This may also keep the waves of images from Europe from dominating the American market)
what do you guys think?
Why the heck should they do 1? Touch arrogant don't you think?
They already do No. 1 for a Select number of top earners.
-
Hello,
longtime lurker here but I finally decided to post so I can share an idea. I actually emailed Shutterstock these ideas but I don't know if it will do any good. Here they are:
1. Prioritize placement for "serious" microstock photographers against "hobbyists" so that we can sustain income to run our businesses.
2. Prioritize files from local photographers to match with search queries from local regions. This way, images results may look more authentic, and keywords match the context of language in the region. (This may also keep the waves of images from Europe from dominating the American market)
what do you guys think?
Why the heck should they do 1? Touch arrogant don't you think?
They already do No. 1 for a Select number of top earners.
The only site I know that does that is DP, do have any evidence for SS doing it?
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If an image is of a high enough quality, and perfectly suits a buyers needs, then why would they care who has made it and how much time they invest in creating stock?
I can maybe understand high sellers coming above others in the results, but if it's just based on hobbyist or professional... then you might have worse images coming out on top of better ones.
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Hello,
longtime lurker here but I finally decided to post so I can share an idea. I actually emailed Shutterstock these ideas but I don't know if it will do any good. Here they are:
1. Prioritize placement for "serious" microstock photographers against "hobbyists" so that we can sustain income to run our businesses.
2. Prioritize files from local photographers to match with search queries from local regions. This way, images results may look more authentic, and keywords match the context of language in the region. (This may also keep the waves of images from Europe from dominating the American market)
what do you guys think?
Why the heck should they do 1? Touch arrogant don't you think?
They already do No. 1 for a Select number of top earners.
The only site I know that does that is DP, do have any evidence for SS doing it?
You mean by evidence the fuoking great big elephant sitting on your lap? The answer was in the answer, even capitalised it for you, Select as in Premier Select, the place where the ever increasing number of Enterprise Customers go, the place where search is not a problem because they have their own web site without all the chaff. You will not hear any complaints from Premier Select contributors, come to think of it you won't hear anything from them. If you think you are not getting your share of the pie it's because there are two pies and you can't touch the growing enterprise pie, except for the few crumbs in the form of SODs, but let's not talk about the elephant.
-
Hello,
longtime lurker here but I finally decided to post so I can share an idea. I actually emailed Shutterstock these ideas but I don't know if it will do any good. Here they are:
1. Prioritize placement for "serious" microstock photographers against "hobbyists" so that we can sustain income to run our businesses.
2. Prioritize files from local photographers to match with search queries from local regions. This way, images results may look more authentic, and keywords match the context of language in the region. (This may also keep the waves of images from Europe from dominating the American market)
what do you guys think?
Why the heck should they do 1? Touch arrogant don't you think?
They already do No. 1 for a Select number of top earners.
The only site I know that does that is DP, do have any evidence for SS doing it?
You mean by evidence the fuoking great big elephant sitting on your lap? The answer was in the answer, even capitalised it for you, Select as in Premier Select, the place where the ever increasing number of Enterprise Customers go, the place where search is not a problem because they have their own web site without all the chaff. You will not hear any complaints from Premier Select contributors, come to think of it you won't hear anything from them. If you think you are not getting your share of the pie it's because there are two pies and you can't touch the growing enterprise pie, except for the few crumbs in the form of SODs, but let's not talk about the elephant.
Sorry, didn't catch that.Is the collection just a streamlined version of the main catalogue or unique content?
-
Hello,
longtime lurker here but I finally decided to post so I can share an idea. I actually emailed Shutterstock these ideas but I don't know if it will do any good. Here they are:
1. Prioritize placement for "serious" microstock photographers against "hobbyists" so that we can sustain income to run our businesses.
2. Prioritize files from local photographers to match with search queries from local regions. This way, images results may look more authentic, and keywords match the context of language in the region. (This may also keep the waves of images from Europe from dominating the American market)
what do you guys think?
Why the heck should they do 1? Touch arrogant don't you think?
They already do No. 1 for a Select number of top earners.
The only site I know that does that is DP, do have any evidence for SS doing it?
You mean by evidence the fuoking great big elephant sitting on your lap? The answer was in the answer, even capitalised it for you, Select as in Premier Select, the place where the ever increasing number of Enterprise Customers go, the place where search is not a problem because they have their own web site without all the chaff. You will not hear any complaints from Premier Select contributors, come to think of it you won't hear anything from them. If you think you are not getting your share of the pie it's because there are two pies and you can't touch the growing enterprise pie, except for the few crumbs in the form of SODs, but let's not talk about the elephant.
Sorry, didn't catch that.Is the collection just a streamlined version of the main catalogue or unique content?
Who knows, you need to be an Enterprise Customer to access the Premier Select website, Shutterstock have been busy converting their buyers to the Enterprise platform since 2010, remember the introdution of SODs? Hence, the quarterly reports show a greater increase in enterprise turnover than the overall business. I think it was in the last report that they expressed a need to diversify the collection so, anyone who has seen a sudden drop in downloads recently may find that someone who shares their niche is now a Premier Select contributor, previously the Enterprise Team would have had to dip down into the main collection for those images.
Shutterstock information is sparse in regards to the Premier Select collection, this is the last I heard aside from the quarterlies "As we test and learn, we will be back in touch with you about how your work can be included in this new collection." March 16, 2015
https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/what-premier-select-means-for-shutterstock-contributors (https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/what-premier-select-means-for-shutterstock-contributors)
Should you want to be one of the next inductees into the Premier Select collection you might want ignore the elephant in the room, like every one else.
-
Hello,
longtime lurker here but I finally decided to post so I can share an idea. I actually emailed Shutterstock these ideas but I don't know if it will do any good. Here they are:
1. Prioritize placement for "serious" microstock photographers against "hobbyists" so that we can sustain income to run our businesses.
2. Prioritize files from local photographers to match with search queries from local regions. This way, images results may look more authentic, and keywords match the context of language in the region. (This may also keep the waves of images from Europe from dominating the American market)
what do you guys think?
For 2, nowadays, web sites are not done locally.
-
Hello,
longtime lurker here but I finally decided to post so I can share an idea. I actually emailed Shutterstock these ideas but I don't know if it will do any good. Here they are:
1. Prioritize placement for "serious" microstock photographers against "hobbyists" so that we can sustain income to run our businesses.
2. Prioritize files from local photographers to match with search queries from local regions. This way, images results may look more authentic, and keywords match the context of language in the region. (This may also keep the waves of images from Europe from dominating the American market)
what do you guys think?
I think that a good, sellable image can come from anyone and to prioritize placement based on how many hours you shoot or whether YOU or the agency thinks someone is serious is a huge disservice to the market. Its as bad as judging whether an image is a good stock image based on the price of the camera it was taken with.
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Hello,
longtime lurker here but I finally decided to post so I can share an idea. I actually emailed Shutterstock these ideas but I don't know if it will do any good. Here they are:
1. Prioritize placement for "serious" microstock photographers against "hobbyists" so that we can sustain income to run our businesses.
2. Prioritize files from local photographers to match with search queries from local regions. This way, images results may look more authentic, and keywords match the context of language in the region. (This may also keep the waves of images from Europe from dominating the American market)
what do you guys think?
Why the heck should they do 1? Touch arrogant don't you think?
They already do No. 1 for a Select number of top earners.
The only site I know that does that is DP, do have any evidence for SS doing it?
You mean by evidence the fuoking great big elephant sitting on your lap? The answer was in the answer, even capitalised it for you, Select as in Premier Select, the place where the ever increasing number of Enterprise Customers go, the place where search is not a problem because they have their own web site without all the chaff. You will not hear any complaints from Premier Select contributors, come to think of it you won't hear anything from them. If you think you are not getting your share of the pie it's because there are two pies and you can't touch the growing enterprise pie, except for the few crumbs in the form of SODs, but let's not talk about the elephant.
Sorry, didn't catch that.Is the collection just a streamlined version of the main catalogue or unique content?
Who knows, you need to be an Enterprise Customer to access the Premier Select website, Shutterstock have been busy converting their buyers to the Enterprise platform since 2010, remember the introdution of SODs? Hence, the quarterly reports show a greater increase in enterprise turnover than the overall business. I think it was in the last report that they expressed a need to diversify the collection so, anyone who has seen a sudden drop in downloads recently may find that someone who shares their niche is now a Premier Select contributor, previously the Enterprise Team would have had to dip down into the main collection for those images.
Shutterstock information is sparse in regards to the Premier Select collection, this is the last I heard aside from the quarterlies "As we test and learn, we will be back in touch with you about how your work can be included in this new collection." March 16, 2015
https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/what-premier-select-means-for-shutterstock-contributors (https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/what-premier-select-means-for-shutterstock-contributors)
Should you want to be one of the next inductees into the Premier Select collection you might want ignore the elephant in the room, like every one else.
Thanks for pointing this out slipped under my radar...bit sneaky but I think this kind of stuff has always been around adobe have some sort of "elite" files too at a premium price. Yeah if I were good enough I would want to participate...
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Yet its quite amazing since I read somewhere that around 90% have less then 1000 files in the portfolio. So whos got them all?
Africa Studio over 1million images
[url]http://www.microstock.top/indeximg.phtml?sort=portfolio[/url] ([url]http://www.microstock.top/indeximg.phtml?sort=portfolio[/url])
ukraine russia and thailand account for more than 50 pages...near 40 % and probably much more than 50 millions file...with ukraine with a lot of people producing cheap content in thousand.
as i already told this is the biggest problem.
True! and this has been going on for some time now. Its incredible really but in these countries it dont take many dollars a day to live the good life so SS will nurse them well and in return they will upload millions of files.
Very hard if not impossible for us to compete since our living and expenses are far higher.
More to the point there is a suspiciously high number of image producers from Thailand Russia and the Ukraine.
I would really be asking myself why? if I were SS or any other agency.
I've reported at least one very high quantity contributor from Thailand months ago to SS because they quite clearly have two accounts producing identical backgrounds.
SS never did anything about it.
-
Yet its quite amazing since I read somewhere that around 90% have less then 1000 files in the portfolio. So whos got them all?
Africa Studio over 1million images
[url]http://www.microstock.top/indeximg.phtml?sort=portfolio[/url] ([url]http://www.microstock.top/indeximg.phtml?sort=portfolio[/url])
ukraine russia and thailand account for more than 50 pages...near 40 % and probably much more than 50 millions file...with ukraine with a lot of people producing cheap content in thousand.
as i already told this is the biggest problem.
True! and this has been going on for some time now. Its incredible really but in these countries it dont take many dollars a day to live the good life so SS will nurse them well and in return they will upload millions of files.
Very hard if not impossible for us to compete since our living and expenses are far higher.
More to the point there is a suspiciously high number of image producers from Thailand Russia and the Ukraine.
I would really be asking myself why? if I were SS or any other agency.
I've reported at least one very high quantity contributor from Thailand months ago to SS becaase they quite clearly have two accounts producing identical backgrounds.
SS never did anything about it.
in the case of africa is also thinkable that the owner is just a business man who employs 10 20 photographer paid monthly, to produce content.
clearly there are many people working in micro cause in these countries, russia less but still in many part of russia the level of salary is far behind western standard, the salary for work are so low that even earning few dollars in micro will be a better choice.
that's why there are so many full time micro stocker, while in western world most are hobbit or amateur with small portfolio.
anyway considering they upload mostly same stuff, there will be a point that even them will not earn so much for living.
-
Yet its quite amazing since I read somewhere that around 90% have less then 1000 files in the portfolio. So whos got them all?
Africa Studio over 1million images
[url]http://www.microstock.top/indeximg.phtml?sort=portfolio[/url] ([url]http://www.microstock.top/indeximg.phtml?sort=portfolio[/url])
ukraine russia and thailand account for more than 50 pages...near 40 % and probably much more than 50 millions file...with ukraine with a lot of people producing cheap content in thousand.
as i already told this is the biggest problem.
True! and this has been going on for some time now. Its incredible really but in these countries it dont take many dollars a day to live the good life so SS will nurse them well and in return they will upload millions of files.
Very hard if not impossible for us to compete since our living and expenses are far higher.
More to the point there is a suspiciously high number of image producers from Thailand Russia and the Ukraine.
I would really be asking myself why? if I were SS or any other agency.
I've reported at least one very high quantity contributor from Thailand months ago to SS becaase they quite clearly have two accounts producing identical backgrounds.
SS never did anything about it.
ss don't give nothing...theuy earn money they only care of this...personally i'd like see an agency ike crestock to be better positioned. less content, but better and good price.
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Crestock??? sell almost nothing and are rude and arrogant either they couldn't sell an ice cream in a desert or have no clue on what makes a marketable image or both
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More to the point there is a suspiciously high number of image producers from Thailand Russia and the Ukraine.
I would really be asking myself why?
Not sure if it's suspicious. If you work in a bricks and mortar job, you're usually limited by local rates when it comes to work. It's more of a level playing field when it comes to the internet, and especially stock.
So if you live in the US and can make $50,000 being a full time, salaried photographer, or $100,000 being a freelance photographer, or $12,500/$25,000/$50,000/$100,000/$200,000 selling stock full time.... people might not be clambering to go down the stock route. Slight chance of making more, but big chance of making less.
But if you live in Thailand, and you can make $5,000 being a full time, salaried photographer, or $10,000 being a freelance photographer, or $12,500/$25,000/$50,000/$100,000/$200,000 selling stock full time... then it makes it a lot more appealing. Slight chance of making less, but big chance of making more.
And if you can then hire somebody at that $5,000 to make an additional $12,500/$25,000/$50,000/$100,000/$200,000 a year, then it kind of makes sense to do so.
Just threw some randomish numbers out as an example... but hopefully it gets the point across.
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More to the point there is a suspiciously high number of image producers from Thailand Russia and the Ukraine.
I would really be asking myself why?
Not sure if it's suspicious. If you work in a bricks and mortar job, you're usually limited by local rates when it comes to work. It's more of a level playing field when it comes to the internet, and especially stock.
So if you live in the US and can make $50,000 being a full time, salaried photographer, or $100,000 being a freelance photographer, or $12,500/$25,000/$50,000/$100,000/$200,000 selling stock full time.... people might not be clambering to go down the stock route. Slight chance of making more, but big chance of making less.
But if you live in Thailand, and you can make $5,000 being a full time, salaried photographer, or $10,000 being a freelance photographer, or $12,500/$25,000/$50,000/$100,000/$200,000 selling stock full time... then it makes it a lot more appealing. Slight chance of making less, but big chance of making more.
And if you can then hire somebody at that $5,000 to make an additional $12,500/$25,000/$50,000/$100,000/$200,000 a year, then it kind of makes sense to do so.
Just threw some randomish numbers out as an example... but hopefully it gets the point across.
In wealthier countries I would imagine that things like Wedding photography and (increasingly maybe) tutoring are much more lucrative than stock so the "best" may gravitate towards that. Also to be an employed photographer someone has to employ you...there has to be a job there. I believe there are quite a few Westerners who have moved to cheaper countries too....as a business decision makes total sense.
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More to the point there is a suspiciously high number of image producers from Thailand Russia and the Ukraine.
I would really be asking myself why?
Not sure if it's suspicious. If you work in a bricks and mortar job, you're usually limited by local rates when it comes to work. It's more of a level playing field when it comes to the internet, and especially stock.
So if you live in the US and can make $50,000 being a full time, salaried photographer, or $100,000 being a freelance photographer, or $12,500/$25,000/$50,000/$100,000/$200,000 selling stock full time.... people might not be clambering to go down the stock route. Slight chance of making more, but big chance of making less.
But if you live in Thailand, and you can make $5,000 being a full time, salaried photographer, or $10,000 being a freelance photographer, or $12,500/$25,000/$50,000/$100,000/$200,000 selling stock full time... then it makes it a lot more appealing. Slight chance of making less, but big chance of making more.
And if you can then hire somebody at that $5,000 to make an additional $12,500/$25,000/$50,000/$100,000/$200,000 a year, then it kind of makes sense to do so.
Just threw some randomish numbers out as an example... but hopefully it gets the point across.
If that were the case why not other countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, India, China, Peru, Chile and so on.
To have so many stuffed in to a single small country is beyond odd.
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If that were the case why not other countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, India, China, Peru, Chile and so on.
To have so many stuffed in to a single small country is beyond odd.
"Single small country"... Thailand has 67+ million people (2013). That's more than the UK, France, Italy, Spain etc.
Thailand isn't dirt poor and there are enough people who own DSLRs compared to the average wage. Culture also comes to play. It may have just the right balance between being developed and cheap living.
Another important thing to consider is that Thailand (Chiang Mai more specifically) is the digital nomad center of the world, meaning people come from all over the world to live there and work online. I wouldn't be surprised if a big percentage of them do stock photography to some extent.
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If that were the case why not other countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, India, China, Peru, Chile and so on.
To have so many stuffed in to a single small country is beyond odd.
"Single small country"... Maybe read up on your geography? Thailand has 67+ million people (2013). That's more than the UK, France, Italy, Spain etc.
Thailand isn't dirt poor and there are enough people who own DSLRs compared to the average wage. Culture also comes to play. It may have just the right balance between being developed and cheap living.
Another important thing to consider is that Thailand (Chiang Mai more specifically) is the digital nomad center of the world, meaning people come from all over the world to live there and work online. I wouldn't be surprised if a big percentage of them do stock photography to some extent.
True! but the overwhelming majority are in countries like Russia, ukraine Rumania and Poland.
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True! but the overwhelming majority are in countries like Russia, ukraine Rumania and Poland.
Also very strange that the tiny little country of Russia with billions of well-paying jobs has a lot of people searching for ways to make a living online...
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True! but the overwhelming majority are in countries like Russia, ukraine Rumania and Poland.
Also very strange that the tiny little country of Russia with billions of well-paying jobs has a lot of people searching for ways to make a living online...
Russia is in complete economic crisis...the ruble is worth 1/3 compared to some years ago...and billions of work are available in moscow well paid...try go some siberia medium city for example. You will see that billions of well paid jobs non exist and people earn few dollars. Most of producers coming from there.
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My post was 100% SARCASM my friend.
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If that were the case why not other countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, India, China, Peru, Chile and so on.
To have so many stuffed in to a single small country is beyond odd.
"Single small country"... Thailand has 67+ million people (2013). That's more than the UK, France, Italy, Spain etc.
Thailand isn't dirt poor and there are enough people who own DSLRs compared to the average wage. Culture also comes to play. It may have just the right balance between being developed and cheap living.
Another important thing to consider is that Thailand (Chiang Mai more specifically) is the digital nomad center of the world, meaning people come from all over the world to live there and work online. I wouldn't be surprised if a big percentage of them do stock photography to some extent.
U are simply confirmi g what we are sayianag....microstock is possible only living in cheap country. In chiang mai you caneasily live with 30 dollar day if u not look for a fancy life. Same in kiev. In part of russia also possible bu more difficult. Russia is more a love affair with photography wide spread and availability of beautiful girl easy to shoot for nothing. Poland is another country where cost of life is muchcheaper like in romania.
Yesterday i was in france ...i have house just relax walk around and went to normal restaurant. Alone. 4 days. I spend 450 euro doing nothing fancy.
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My post was 100% SARCASM my friend.
I know!,, and i explain u wrong.
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Huge drop from mid Feb. I had lots of on demand sales which literally vanished overnight. And the new site design is HORRIBLE.
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Yes there is^ we might be lucky I know people there with thousands of files and some of them are down 50-60% now thats a lot and especially if you depend on stock photography.
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First 2 months of the year SS revenue 32% down compared to 2016, sales seemed to die as 2017 started.
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Is it just me, or are earnings for SODs getting lower and lower? Mine are approaching subs royalties. Gone are the days of $100 and up SODs...50 cents is more like it now.
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Is it just me, or are earnings for SODs getting lower and lower? Mine are approaching subs royalties. Gone are the days of $100 and up SODs...50 cents is more like it now.
It's not just you. The last three weeks for me have been horrible with SS. Very few SOD's but the ones I am getting are 2-3 bucks. Very low sub sales, too. With almost 5,000 assets I am making $13-$16 a day, which is a 75% drop for me.
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Is it just me, or are earnings for SODs getting lower and lower? Mine are approaching subs royalties. Gone are the days of $100 and up SODs...50 cents is more like it now.
Not just you. Today's SODs were two at 67 cents each. The day before, one at 75 cents. Couple of days before that, $1.47. The $1.47 is one of the price test 10 packs. No idea what the others are
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i experience SOD sales from 38 cent to 120 dollar, still every month. last month 3 x 60 dollar, and several in the 20-30 range, january 120 dollr + 2 x 90 and several in the 20-30 range
but now i see clip sales of 4 dollar
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Yes, I have very few videos online, but had one recent sale for just over $4. Hardly seems worth the time invested, since I did animations.
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i experience SOD sales from 38 cent to 120 dollar, still every month. last month 3 x 60 dollar, and several in the 20-30 range, january 120 dollr + 2 x 90 and several in the 20-30 range
but now i see clip sales of 4 dollar
I experienced almost twice as much when the going was good and even single sales at a couple hundred dollars but as from the beginning of Jan this is down by at least 40% almost over night. Thats what I cant explain . On the day at almost the identical time things just changed.
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Over a cliff big time. Absolutely trashed my sales. I fear this is the law of diminishing returns.
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Over a cliff big time. Absolutely trashed my sales. I fear this is the law of diminishing returns.
In 2010 you wrote this. Seems like nothing much has changed? Did you ever get much accepted at SS?
Terrible month. Photo sales have dropped every month this year so far. Dec up to now is even worse. Absolutely awful.
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7 years of awful trash must be hard. Maybe time to do something else?
Every week, every month and every year some people will write on forums that they have their worst month ever and that the world is ending. Doesn't matter if it's about music, pictures, footage or something else...
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Over a cliff big time. Absolutely trashed my sales. I fear this is the law of diminishing returns.
In 2010 you wrote this. Seems like nothing much has changed? Did you ever get much accepted at SS?
Terrible month. Photo sales have dropped every month this year so far. Dec up to now is even worse. Absolutely awful.
So are you in denial that SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? Have you read the forums ? Since they changed the site.
And for your interest I get almost every image accepted.
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Over a cliff big time. Absolutely trashed my sales. I fear this is the law of diminishing returns.
In 2010 you wrote this. Seems like nothing much has changed? Did you ever get much accepted at SS?
Terrible month. Photo sales have dropped every month this year so far. Dec up to now is even worse. Absolutely awful.
So are you in denial that SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? Have you read the forums ? Since they changed the site.
And for your interest I get almost every image accepted.
That was my mistake reading you said you couldn't get accepted. Now I see that everything is getting accept good.
I am on my 4th attempt in getting into SS and have been advised to downsize the images I submit. Should I do this ?
Some of my images that have been refused are on the basis of lighting or WB. Am I allowed to re-submit without being suspended ? I am reluctant because there is no option of writing a note to the reviewer.
Yep but at this rate I won't have nearly as many files up on SS as I do on IS because of the high number of rejections. The reviewer yesterday passed a lot. TOday's reviewer was the opposite. Will it be worth being on SS with much less files ? I don't know but it won't hurt to try.
and you asked about getting into ft and dt. Just wondered how that all went when you dropped exclusive?
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Over a cliff big time. Absolutely trashed my sales. I fear this is the law of diminishing returns.
In 2010 you wrote this. Seems like nothing much has changed? Did you ever get much accepted at SS?
Terrible month. Photo sales have dropped every month this year so far. Dec up to now is even worse. Absolutely awful.
So are you in denial that SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? Have you read the forums ? Since they changed the site.
And for your interest I get almost every image accepted.
It's only denial if it's true, and a few threads in a forum with a very small percentage of total contributors saying that their sales have nosedived... isn't exactly conclusive evidence.
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Over a cliff big time. Absolutely trashed my sales. I fear this is the law of diminishing returns.
In 2010 you wrote this. Seems like nothing much has changed? Did you ever get much accepted at SS?
Terrible month. Photo sales have dropped every month this year so far. Dec up to now is even worse. Absolutely awful.
So are you in denial that SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? Have you read the forums ? Since they changed the site.
And for your interest I get almost every image accepted.
It's only denial if it's true, and a few threads in a forum with a very small percentage of total contributors saying that their sales have nosedived... isn't exactly conclusive evidence.
There is a big difference between "sales on SS have nosedived" and "sales for me and my friends have nosedived". The most reliable source we have are SS's own figures which tell us sales have increased.
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There is little doubt that anybody but a full-timer somebody that depends on stock-photography will ever see nor feel any difference in the ups and downs. When you start paying the bills from stock alone thats when you start questioning things.
As a full time photographer you are forced to keep a much closer track on whats going on visiting other forums reading articles and so on. You sort of learn to spot conspiracy theories from the real thing.
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There is little doubt that anybody but a full-timer somebody that depends on stock-photography will ever see nor feel any difference in the ups and downs. When you start paying the bills from stock alone thats when you start questioning things.
As a full time photographer you are forced to keep a much closer track on whats going on visiting other forums reading articles and so on. You sort of learn to spot conspiracy theories from the real thing.
So you believe SS are lying to the authorities? They would be in prison for fraud. I don't dispute your sales may be falling the fact is SS aren't.
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There is little doubt that anybody but a full-timer somebody that depends on stock-photography will ever see nor feel any difference in the ups and downs. When you start paying the bills from stock alone thats when you start questioning things.
As a full time photographer you are forced to keep a much closer track on whats going on visiting other forums reading articles and so on. You sort of learn to spot conspiracy theories from the real thing.
So you believe SS are lying to the authorities? They would be in prison for fraud. I don't dispute your sales may be falling the fact is SS aren't.
Well I was actually only referring to daily takings earnings and sort order changes. Havent got a clue of what you are talking about?? I must have missed something? :)
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"So are you in denial that SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " if you had said "So are you in denial that MY SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " fair enough but there is no evidence that SS sales have fallen. Thats the point
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"So are you in denial that SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " if you had said "So are you in denial that MY SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " fair enough but there is no evidence that SS sales have fallen. Thats the point
They have nosedived!! and badly so! I dont know about your sales? considering you are quite busy in this thread I presume you are a full-time stock-photographer and yes then you would feel a reduction in sales even more may it be SS or any of the other agencies.
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FWIW, I am a full timer and my monthly sales from them so far this year are about the same each month and also about the same as most of the last year.
They did nosedive, in my case, from 2015-2016 and never recover, but the new normal has been very consistent for me.
There are a lot of people reporting sudden drops though, so something must be going on, even if it isn't happening to my portfolio.
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"So are you in denial that SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " if you had said "So are you in denial that MY SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " fair enough but there is no evidence that SS sales have fallen. Thats the point
They have nosedived!! and badly so! I dont know about your sales? considering you are quite busy in this thread I presume you are a full-time stock-photographer and yes then you would feel a reduction in sales even more may it be SS or any of the other agencies.
So where is the concrete evidence that Total SS sales have nosedived? https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/shares-shutterstock-dive-earnings-sales-154600446.html
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FWIW, I am a full timer and my monthly sales from them so far this year are about the same each month and also about the same as most of the last year.
They did nosedive, in my case, from 2015-2016 and never recover, but the new normal has been very consistent for me.
There are a lot of people reporting sudden drops though, so something must be going on, even if it isn't happening to my portfolio.
Correct there have been large swings for individuals it seems that does not mean however that overall sales are down. Yes things are bad but its an exaggeration to say SS itself is losing sales its just not growing fast enough for investors or to compensate for the speed of portfolio growth. I am not a "professional" microstocker but I have an interest in business strategy and quite a bit of knowledge of statistics FWIW.
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"So are you in denial that SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " if you had said "So are you in denial that MY SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " fair enough but there is no evidence that SS sales have fallen. Thats the point
He refer to contriboutor.
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"So are you in denial that SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " if you had said "So are you in denial that MY SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " fair enough but there is no evidence that SS sales have fallen. Thats the point
They have nosedived!! and badly so! I dont know about your sales? considering you are quite busy in this thread I presume you are a full-time stock-photographer and yes then you would feel a reduction in sales even more may it be SS or any of the other agencies.
So where is the concrete evidence that Total SS sales have nosedived? https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/shares-shutterstock-dive-earnings-sales-154600446.html
You seem to have misinterpreted the information on that page, as it clearly says year on year sales are up. Share price may be down, which it explains is due to them not hitting their target when it comes to sales increases, but sales haven't nose dived. They haven't even dropped or stayed the same... they've increased.
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"So are you in denial that SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " if you had said "So are you in denial that MY SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " fair enough but there is no evidence that SS sales have fallen. Thats the point
He refer to contriboutor.
Simple calculation... total revenue divided by number of files last year, compared to the same info this year. There probably is a drop, but it doesn't mean SS are in trouble or anything.
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"So are you in denial that SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " if you had said "So are you in denial that MY SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " fair enough but there is no evidence that SS sales have fallen. Thats the point
They have nosedived!! and badly so! I dont know about your sales? considering you are quite busy in this thread I presume you are a full-time stock-photographer and yes then you would feel a reduction in sales even more may it be SS or any of the other agencies.
So where is the concrete evidence that Total SS sales have nosedived? https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/shares-shutterstock-dive-earnings-sales-154600446.html
You seem to have misinterpreted the information on that page, as it clearly says year on year sales are up. Share price may be down, which it explains is due to them not hitting their target when it comes to sales increases, but sales haven't nose dived. They haven't even dropped or stayed the same... they've increased.
No my argument is that there is NO concrete evidence of a fall in sales...in fact the opposite which that link illustrates!
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Ah right, yes.... that's what I was saying too! I got confused. I've been drinking.
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Ah right, yes.... that's what I was saying too! I got confused. I've been drinking.
Much better use of time...think we are now going round in circles. (I will do anything to avoid a keywording session)
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"So are you in denial that SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " if you had said "So are you in denial that MY SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " fair enough but there is no evidence that SS sales have fallen. Thats the point
They have nosedived!! and badly so! I dont know about your sales? considering you are quite busy in this thread I presume you are a full-time stock-photographer and yes then you would feel a reduction in sales even more may it be SS or any of the other agencies.
So where is the concrete evidence that Total SS sales have nosedived? https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/shares-shutterstock-dive-earnings-sales-154600446.html
You seem to have misinterpreted the information on that page, as it clearly says year on year sales are up. Share price may be down, which it explains is due to them not hitting their target when it comes to sales increases, but sales haven't nose dived. They haven't even dropped or stayed the same... they've increased.
Sales revenue don't mean jack, it's their operating profit that matters.
Their operating profit is falling very dramatically and has been since 2015
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"So are you in denial that SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " if you had said "So are you in denial that MY SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " fair enough but there is no evidence that SS sales have fallen. Thats the point
They have nosedived!! and badly so! I dont know about your sales? considering you are quite busy in this thread I presume you are a full-time stock-photographer and yes then you would feel a reduction in sales even more may it be SS or any of the other agencies.
So where is the concrete evidence that Total SS sales have nosedived? https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/shares-shutterstock-dive-earnings-sales-154600446.html
You seem to have misinterpreted the information on that page, as it clearly says year on year sales are up. Share price may be down, which it explains is due to them not hitting their target when it comes to sales increases, but sales haven't nose dived. They haven't even dropped or stayed the same... they've increased.
Sales revenue don't mean jack, it's their operating profit that matters.
Their operating profit is falling very dramatically and has been since 2015
Whose talking about revenue? Sales volume is up thats what the discussion is about. I actually don't care about SS operating profit...im not a shareholder.
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* straight!
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"So are you in denial that SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " if you had said "So are you in denial that MY SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " fair enough but there is no evidence that SS sales have fallen. Thats the point
They have nosedived!! and badly so! I dont know about your sales? considering you are quite busy in this thread I presume you are a full-time stock-photographer and yes then you would feel a reduction in sales even more may it be SS or any of the other agencies.
So where is the concrete evidence that Total SS sales have nosedived? https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/shares-shutterstock-dive-earnings-sales-154600446.html
I am not interested at all in the total sales volume. I sold my shares beginning of last year. I am interested in my sales and I dont need any concrete evidence. All I have to do is look at my daily sales stats.
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Sales are up overall. Collection size is up by a much bigger percentage = less sales per image = if you haven't increased your portfolio size by a big percentage also chances are your sales will be down.
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What if we all show our graphs on how badly sales (on photos) nosedived? It is not a conspiracy.
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What if we all show our graphs on how badly sales (on photos) nosedived? It is not a conspiracy.
So how do you explain shutterstocks sales going up by 14% in a year?
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Probably a few on here doing well can't appreciate the slump unless it happens to them. Stop attacking us for complaining of poor sales. We have every right to complain. I have added a considerable amount to my port but like a switch my sales turned off. That isn't normal, that is engineered.
As for sales, it's still diabolical.
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Probably a few on here doing well can't appreciate the slump unless it happens to them. Stop attacking us for complaining of poor sales. We have every right to complain. I have added a considerable amount to my port but like a switch my sales turned off. That isn't normal, that is engineered.
As for sales, it's still diabolical.
I'm sorry if anyone feels its an attack on them. I'm just pointing out that total sales of shutterstock have not fallen. I will shut up now.
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Who cares about overall sales! I couldnt give a monkeys worth if overall sales are up by 1000% turning Oringer into the leagues of Buffet and Gates. Good riddance!.....I only care about my stats my overall take and thats down by 40%. By the sound of it I'm not alone in nosediving.
Now everyone knows and its no big secret that Russia, Ukariane Poland etc these sort of poorer countries are being nursed. Fine by me they produce millions of files every week and of course that makes any agency very happy indeed so maybe their next elaborate head-office will be somewhere in the Red Square Moscow. Well who knows? anything is possible.
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Feels like have two courses of action now: 1) accept that the diminishing sales are not only here to stay but will accelerate, or 2) quit microstock.
Seems like on average we're all 40% down on a year ago (except for newbies who of course have a much larger port than they had a year ago.) You can bet that the slide will ramp further downward at a quicker pace, based on the number of new contributors growing exponentially, faster every year. Next year we'll all be complaining about sales being down 60% or 80% vs 2017.
And it's not just SS but microstock in general. DT, 123, DP, CanStockPhoto... all down around 40%. Adobe for me is about flat, probably only because their efforts to integrate into the CC are still young. I believe the general trend will catch up to them (or rather, their contributors) soon.
I hate to be so negative, but the numbers don't lie. And I don't see the enormous flood of new contributors from around the world stopping anytime soon. It will only get wider and deeper.
The only possible ray of light I see is that SS and others might eventually wake up to realize that the massive oversupply may not be good for their customers. Quality may become an issue and copycatting may be rampant, and searches may be completely ineffective (some would say they are already.) The only hope veteran microstockers have is if the agencies decide to curb the oversupply problem, though first they have to see and admit it as a problem, and I don't know if and when they will ever do so.
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u are simply not understanding each other..shutterstock increase volume of sales and contributor..so it's normal a lot of old contributor experienced a fall in earning or better less growth. bigger cake divide by much bigger contributor.
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Why if Shutterstock sales are up can contributors sales be down?
1. As Justanotherphotographer said dilution.
2. All contributors are not equal, Premier Select contributors for example.
3. Acquired content, for example Rex Features.
4. Agreements with large suppliers of content, for example Associated Press.
5. Search changes.
Any one of these can effect changes to single portfolios in dramatic ways if their content is not diverse or is similar in content to any of the above. If you have not been affected by any of the above yet it's just as likely you could be with continued dilution or the next induction to Premier Select or some new acquired content or more large suppliers of content signing up or even the inevitable search change.
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Number 2 for me.
I have quit micro this year and entering the new world of Macro (RM). I have no idea how it will go. I'm scared but why would I keep wasting my time with decreasing returns? I'm working on my Arcangel portfolio but trying to choose one other macro agency for my lifestyle photos.
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Number 2 for me.
I have quit micro this year and entering the new world of Macro (RM). I have no idea how it will go. I'm scared but why would I keep wasting my time with decreasing returns? I'm working on my Arcangel portfolio but trying to choose one other macro agency for my lifestyle photos.
Just to put your nerves at ease. I dont know what agencies you have joined but at the moment I experience a big upswing in macro. I can of course only speak for myself and some friends and we have been feeding the macro model now for around 12 years.
It might be that the more serious buyers are fed up looking for something among 120 million pictures I dont know. Macros are more forgiving in terms of sort order changes they do it in a smoother way not hurting too many portfolios not like the micros totally slaughtering thousands of ports.
Wishing you luck anyway.
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"So are you in denial that SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " if you had said "So are you in denial that MY SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? " fair enough but there is no evidence that SS sales have fallen. Thats the point
They have nosedived!! and badly so! I dont know about your sales? considering you are quite busy in this thread I presume you are a full-time stock-photographer and yes then you would feel a reduction in sales even more may it be SS or any of the other agencies.
So where is the concrete evidence that Total SS sales have nosedived? https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/shares-shutterstock-dive-earnings-sales-154600446.html
You seem to have misinterpreted the information on that page, as it clearly says year on year sales are up. Share price may be down, which it explains is due to them not hitting their target when it comes to sales increases, but sales haven't nose dived. They haven't even dropped or stayed the same... they've increased.
Sales revenue don't mean jack, it's their operating profit that matters.
Their operating profit is falling very dramatically and has been since 2015
Whose talking about revenue? Sales volume is up thats what the discussion is about. I actually don't care about SS operating profit...im not a shareholder.
Oh you'll care alright when SS find the only way to keep operating profit up is to cut costs and the bulk of those costs are related to royalty distribution.
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If there is an overall increase in sales at SS, it means there is a chance for revenue increase. Not a great one, but a small one and that's all you need sometimes. Common sense says that as the pie gets bigger, everyone gets a smaller piece as contributor numbers increase. That's not necessarily true. The pie gets bigger, but certain contributors take a bigger piece of the pie sometimes. Common sense can fool you.
As a regular buyer, I see what's going on better than most people. I was downloading about 10 images the other day and I noticed that most of the images I was going to download belong to one of the more prolific contributors...African Studio. I work in the healthcare space and these guys have 17,000 healthcare photos in their portfolio.
You know what else I noticed? They have good keywording. They have over 40 keywords each to maximize discoverability. I think many of you guys are looking at things that doesn't exist. While some of you see threats from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and parts of Asia, I see the biggest threats from the big studios like African Studio, and RawPixel.com who are eating a bigger piece of the pie and leaving scraps for everyone else.
I expect the toughest competition from big studios with high quality work and high quality keywording, not from inexperience upstarts. Most small contributors are too inexperienced and doesn't produce good keywording, and their work will rarely be seen. Big studios dominate a good part of the search results. i suspect that the top 10% of the contributors make 90% of the profits, leaving the last 10% to the other 90% of contributors.
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If there is an overall increase in sales at SS, it means there is a chance for revenue increase. Not a great one, but a small one and that's all you need sometimes. Common sense says that as the pie gets bigger, everyone gets a smaller piece as contributor numbers increase. That's not necessarily true. The pie gets bigger, but certain contributors take a bigger piece of the pie sometimes. Common sense can fool you.
As a regular buyer, I see what's going on better than most people. I was downloading about 10 images the other day and I noticed that most of the images I was going to download belong to one of the more prolific contributors...African Studio. I work in the healthcare space and these guys have 17,000 healthcare photos in their portfolio.
You know what else I noticed? They have good keywording. They have over 40 keywords each to maximize discoverability. I think many of you guys are looking at things that doesn't exist. While some of you see threats from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and parts of Asia, I see the biggest threats from the big studios like African Studio, and RawPixel.com who are eating a bigger piece of the pie and leaving scraps for everyone else.
I expect the toughest competition from big studios with high quality work and high quality keywording, not from inexperience upstarts. Most small contributors are too inexperienced and doesn't produce good keywording, and their work will rarely be seen. Big studios dominate a good part of the search results. i suspect that the top 10% of the contributors make 90% of the profits, leaving the last 10% to the other 90% of contributors.
There are two pies and the top earners get 100% of the growing one, and then have their cut of the other one.
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Whatever the reason it's all gone crappy. Sales in every income stream for me (music/sfx/image) have diminished drasticly in the last 12-18 months. Producing more and more work doesn't even keep you running on the spot anymore. I feel like I am under the table of a feast scrabbling around for dropped crumbs only the crumbs are less and less.
In 6 years my house will be paid for so that's my goal. After that the pressure will be off somewhat.
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Yes, people from lower income countries are doing well, but most buyers are from western Euriope, Australia, and North America.
Where is 'Euriope'?
In my tiny keyboard letters and big clumsy hands. ;) I corrected it, but it's not my first typo and not gonna be my last.
Are you sure it's not because of your tiny keyboard AND tiny hands? :P No... wait... that's why our president spells "tapp my phone" ;D
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Yes, people from lower income countries are doing well, but most buyers are from western Euriope, Australia, and North America.
Where is 'Euriope'?
In my tiny keyboard letters and big clumsy hands. ;) I corrected it, but it's not my first typo and not gonna be my last.
Are you sure it's not because of your tiny keyboard AND tiny hands? :P No... wait... that's why our president spells "tapp my phone" ;D
LOL! Nope, not to brag, but my hands are at least normal human sized. Of course I don't go around grabbing the same things he does with them. Or if I do its because I've been invited. ;)
Maybe Trump's phone is the only thing he's tapping these days.... 8)
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Number 2 for me.
No need to be rude.
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Whatever the reason it's all gone crappy. Sales in every income stream for me (music/sfx/image) have diminished drasticly in the last 12-18 months. Producing more and more work doesn't even keep you running on the spot anymore. I feel like I am under the table of a feast scrabbling around for dropped crumbs only the crumbs are less and less.
In 6 years my house will be paid for so that's my goal. After that the pressure will be off somewhat.
Good luck on paying it off. I think the Microstock market has matured a lot from its younger days. I've seen over a dozen large studios with over 100K images in many microstock sites. Some has over 1 million images and they're incredibly successful. That's over 1% of an entire agency's portfolio. If we assume that they earn 1% of the revenue (I'm guessing a lot more), that's over $1 million a year. Spread that across multiple microstock websites, and they can earn over $3 million a year.
They can use that money to get the best gear, models, studio setups, props, dedicated uploaders, keywording experts, designers and more. That's what everyone has to compete with. I think it's a lot of nonsense when people say that there is no quality in Microstock. There's so much good work in there by these large studios. Maybe 75% is garbage, but you're still competing against 25 Million+ high quality images from studios and elite photographers/designers.
That's why I encourage people to learn to compete against the best on the other thread. It's pointless to worry about new contributors who got accepted because they got 1 image approved. That's like worrying about a little leech on your leg when you're surrounded by a bunch of lions.
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Macro stock/Micro stock. What's the difference. ?
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Macro stock/Micro stock. What's the difference. ?
From what I understand, macro is exactly the same as micro, it's just more expensive.
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If there is an overall increase in sales at SS, it means there is a chance for revenue increase. Not a great one, but a small one and that's all you need sometimes. Common sense says that as the pie gets bigger, everyone gets a smaller piece as contributor numbers increase. That's not necessarily true. The pie gets bigger, but certain contributors take a bigger piece of the pie sometimes. Common sense can fool you.
As a regular buyer, I see what's going on better than most people. I was downloading about 10 images the other day and I noticed that most of the images I was going to download belong to one of the more prolific contributors...African Studio. I work in the healthcare space and these guys have 17,000 healthcare photos in their portfolio.
You know what else I noticed? They have good keywording. They have over 40 keywords each to maximize discoverability. I think many of you guys are looking at things that doesn't exist. While some of you see threats from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and parts of Asia, I see the biggest threats from the big studios like African Studio, and RawPixel.com who are eating a bigger piece of the pie and leaving scraps for everyone else.
I expect the toughest competition from big studios with high quality work and high quality keywording, not from inexperience upstarts. Most small contributors are too inexperienced and doesn't produce good keywording, and their work will rarely be seen. Big studios dominate a good part of the search results. i suspect that the top 10% of the contributors make 90% of the profits, leaving the last 10% to the other 90% of contributors.
BTW they are from Ukraine (Africa Studio) and probably get about 1% of all royalties paid to contributors.
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Macro stock/Micro stock. What's the difference. ?
From what I understand, macro is exactly the same as micro, it's just more expensive.
I think there may be more rules about exclusivity and rights management ...I would imagine a customer might be a bit annoyed after paying $$$$ for an image to see it all over the place. Also its can be hard to be accepted you often need a big and impressive portfolio. Customers pay a premium for perceived better quality and more directed searching.
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haha! the shutterstock forum! havent been there for years but popped in a few hours back OMG!!! its like reading the bible of death. There is a thread there highlighting daily earnings and reading that one gets the impression the site is going bust! I mean really haha! its so bad it comical. ;D
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Bye bye on demand sales. Bye bye.
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haha! the shutterstock forum! havent been there for years but popped in a few hours back OMG!!! its like reading the bible of death. There is a thread there highlighting daily earnings and reading that one gets the impression the site is going bust! I mean really haha! its so bad it comical. ;D
I don't find it funny.
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I don't find recent sales funny either, this week I have to go back to the very beginning of my start in SS when I had 10 images to see sales this bad :(
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haha! the shutterstock forum! havent been there for years but popped in a few hours back OMG!!! its like reading the bible of death. There is a thread there highlighting daily earnings and reading that one gets the impression the site is going bust! I mean really haha! its so bad it comical. ;D
I don't find it funny.
No of copurse not. Its pathetic but it was more like tounge in cheek if you know what I mean.
However and this is strange its never occurred to me. Notice how many people complain about their portfolio "vanishing" for hours on end? well thats exactly what I am experiencing.
I am seeing a complete dead-time European time between 13.00 to 21.00 hours and this is right on the dot! for over two weeks exactly the same pattern.
I really haven't got a clue so what going on? :)
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The same pattern I am seeing at Envito.
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The same pattern I am seeing at Envito.
Oh well maybe they have all become clever.
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haha! the shutterstock forum! havent been there for years but popped in a few hours back OMG!!! its like reading the bible of death. There is a thread there highlighting daily earnings and reading that one gets the impression the site is going bust! I mean really haha! its so bad it comical. ;D
I don't find it funny.
No of copurse not. Its pathetic but it was more like tounge in cheek if you know what I mean.
However and this is strange its never occurred to me. Notice how many people complain about their portfolio "vanishing" for hours on end? well thats exactly what I am experiencing.
I am seeing a complete dead-time European time between 13.00 to 21.00 hours and this is right on the dot! for over two weeks exactly the same pattern.
I really haven't got a clue so what going on? :)
Nothing will happen if it was not written in the code
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increasing the quality and number of upload is working for me...i had mostly editorial, in the last year i have seen that uploading is the key. i have still super big backlog to upload so no need to create but just upload.
i'm increasing download constantly since october..20% month....what i'm not seeing is the increase in sod and extended and this is the key for a good income. making 20k at month with 0,38 is becoming difficult:)
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Macro stock/Micro stock. What's the difference. ?
From what I understand, macro is exactly the same as micro, it's just more expensive.
Some specialist macros will have a much deeper and wider selection for their specialism, guaranteed accurate captions, descriptions and keywords. For their target buyers, that's crucial.
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Over a cliff big time. Absolutely trashed my sales. I fear this is the law of diminishing returns.
In 2010 you wrote this. Seems like nothing much has changed? Did you ever get much accepted at SS?
Terrible month. Photo sales have dropped every month this year so far. Dec up to now is even worse. Absolutely awful.
So are you in denial that SS sales have nosedived in the last month ? Have you read the forums ? Since they changed the site.
And for your interest I get almost every image accepted.
How does the change in the contributor site make sales nosedive? I don't understand that.
No my photo sales on SS have not dropped. Better than ever. I don't make sfx or music for SS I can't comment on that part of your collection. I didn't know that SS took music or sfx from us.
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I don't make audio for ss, they refused me despite me selling pro and royalty free in broadcast etc. They know as much about audio as Envito knows about photography.
Well 2017 is utterly crap and getting crapper. What's the point. :-\
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More than 4k images and footages on SS. Two sub sales today! Usually I sell in average 40 images per day. 2017 SS = R.I.P
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More than 4k images and footages on SS. Two sub sales today! Usually I sell in average 40 images per day. 2017 SS = R.I.P
Less than 1k images and footages on SS. Just had my best 2 consecutive days ever, both nicely inside 3 digits range. SS is far from being dead to me.
Sent from my SM-G920T using Tapatalk
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Today and yesterday are like weekend days. I wonder if there is a new search that boosts newer material at the expense of older stuff (not that my new stuff is selling that well either).
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More than 4k images and footages on SS. Two sub sales today! Usually I sell in average 40 images per day. 2017 SS = R.I.P
Less than 1k images and footages on SS. Just had my best 2 consecutive days ever, both nicely inside 3 digits range. SS is far from being dead to me.
Sent from my SM-G920T using Tapatalk
Congrats dude! Nice, than SS is not R.I.P, cool :) Third month this year with LOW sales for me. 2016 year ends great for me! Hope that this period of LOW MONTHS ends sun for me too. I hate this turnovers or fluctuations.
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I had the best start to a month since I joined SS. I don't know if it'll hold up for the rest of the month, but if it does, it's going to be a new BME.
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How long have you been doing this?
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How long have you been doing this?
A little over 2 years.
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It's simply catastrophic how the downloads are drowning there, im back 10 years ago the first year of my contribution ! Not even one footage sold this month .OMG !
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It's simply catastrophic how the downloads are drowning there, im back 10 years ago the first year of my contribution ! Not even one footage sold this month .OMG !
Just sold a footage today. On a Sunday!
The 6th this month. Less than 50 clips for sale.
Sent from my SM-G920T using Tapatalk
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I can't speak for others but I'm doing OK with my 2700 portfolio, but I do realise this is a losing game. I've long started looking for other options within Midstock/boutique.
I do travel photography and I can't recoup my costs for my travel with subs.
I want to try out video, I've heard good things about pond5.
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I can't speak for others but I'm doing OK with my 2700 portfolio, but I do realise this is a losing game. I've long started looking for other options within Midstock/boutique.
I do travel photography and I can't recoup my costs for my travel with subs.
I want to try out video, I've heard good things about pond5.
well what means? i have 4700 and from what i see without any bad comment better looking images....and i cannot say it's good but maybe you earn 400 dollar and you are happy....it seems so strange with such portfolio you can be happy of sales...
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today good start with 4 sod at waking uno than stopped completely after 14...im luckily buidlgina new business who let me cover all expenses in photos....micros is good for paying coffe in the morning and buy some lens.
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you earn 400 dollar and you are happy....it seems so strange with such portfolio you can be happy of sales...
Yes, it depends on your expectations. Many come into this game expecting to make $10 RPI/year and this is just not possible anymore in Micros for 99% of cases.
I'll take $400 a month from 2700 portfolio but it still isn't enough to cover all my expenses, but it helps offset some costs.
Meanwhile, I'll look to milk what I can from my premium images (so far not happening but I'm optimistic).
Bulgaria must be a nice place, I would love to visit some of the resorts on the Black Sea and try out the beluga caviar!
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you earn 400 dollar and you are happy....it seems so strange with such portfolio you can be happy of sales...
Yes, it depends on your expectations. Many come into this game expecting to make $10 RPI/year and this is just not possible anymore in Micros for 99% of cases.
I'll take $400 a month from 2700 portfolio but it still isn't enough to cover all my expenses, but it helps offset some costs.
Meanwhile, I'll look to milk what I can from my premium images (so far not happening but I'm optimistic).
Bulgaria must be a nice place, I would love to visit some of the resorts on the Black Sea and try out the beluga caviar!
in my opinion you must visit country with small number of images and things covered...bulgaria is already heavily covered
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in my opinion you must visit country with small number of images and things covered...bulgaria is already heavily covered
North Korea!
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At the moment I think everything is just strange. Seems they somehow decide what you earn. I have now had three days in a row where its almost an identical sum just differ in cents. Really old files selling I am talking 10 year old files.
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in my opinion you must visit country with small number of images and things covered...bulgaria is already heavily covered
North Korea!
sure you could sell more. but there are many countries. also most of country have basic landmark cover.
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you earn 400 dollar and you are happy....it seems so strange with such portfolio you can be happy of sales...
Yes, it depends on your expectations. Many come into this game expecting to make $10 RPI/year and this is just not possible anymore in Micros for 99% of cases.
I'll take $400 a month from 2700 portfolio but it still isn't enough to cover all my expenses, but it helps offset some costs.
Meanwhile, I'll look to milk what I can from my premium images (so far not happening but I'm optimistic).
Bulgaria must be a nice place, I would love to visit some of the resorts on the Black Sea and try out the beluga caviar!
in my opinion you must visit country with small number of images and things covered...bulgaria is already heavily covered
The smart thing would be to find a country with a small number of images and things covered which buyers actually want; b doesn't always follow a.