Author Topic: How did SS perform for you in Jan 09? (Read 13036 times)

peep · « **Reply #25 on:** January 29, 2009, 16:32 »

I regret to say SS has been really horrible this month. DT is almost better for me and it has never been better before.

jsolie · « **Reply #26 on:** January 29, 2009, 16:57 »

SS has done better this month than in the last two. It's still doing under my monthly average for them by a little over 35%

cathyslife · « **Reply #27 on:** January 29, 2009, 22:04 »

I will be lucky if I get a payout this month. My sales on SS have been down for the past 3 months.

lephotography · « **Reply #28 on:** January 30, 2009, 01:02 »

The last month I have had many days each week where I sold nothing at all.. that has never happened to me before. I am not worried or gripping... I imagine it will pick up.

Imagecom · « **Reply #29 on:** January 30, 2009, 03:02 »

Hi,
I have probably the highest rejection in January but oddly i did much better than expected !?!?
Guess just got lucky

CofkoCof · « **Reply #30 on:** January 30, 2009, 03:19 »

Need to start uploading some new stuff or my sales will stop completely

Just don't have time lately.

MikLav · « **Reply #31 on:** January 30, 2009, 03:44 »

It's much better than December; and a it's better comparing with several previous months. So far it's my 2nd BME and it's very close to become the BME

bbettina · « **Reply #32 on:** January 30, 2009, 19:37 »

One word: pathetic!
IS and Dreamstime are picking up the slack but SS has been very disappointing. Sigh

Phil · « **Reply #33 on:** January 31, 2009, 01:58 »

slightly better than june 2007 when I had been with them 4 months and had about a sixth of the portfolio. under 1/2 of any month last year

perkmeup · « **Reply #34 on:** January 31, 2009, 04:35 »

Well, I made more than I made last month....but Dec is always the worst month of the year. My sales have continued to fall slightly every month since last year. I am down about 30% from my BME in March of 2008. (With over 3000 images online) Right now I am struggling to maintain my current level and that is with adding around 200 new uploads every month. It is just getting harder and harder to have your pictures get any exposure with 70,000 new photos coming in every week.....and unfortunately I don't see anything changing in the future. A year or so ago when they were adding 20,000 new photos a week.....or 80,000 new images a month....my 200 new uploads accounted for .25% (1/4%) of the total new photos....Not much but at least I had some visibility. Now my 200 images account for only .005% ......I just can't keep up with the numbers and my images are getting lost in the Abyss.

a.k.a.-tom · « **Reply #35 on:** January 31, 2009, 16:35 »

Just about average in spite of the fact that I haven't uploaded in a couple months. I did have an increase in 'on demand' and 'extended' sales. That was nice to see.

=tom

cdwheatley · « **Reply #36 on:** January 31, 2009, 17:35 »

Quote from: perkmeup on January 31, 2009, 04:35

Well, I made more than I made last month....but Dec is always the worst month of the year. My sales have continued to fall slightly every month since last year. I am down about 30% from my BME in March of 2008. (With over 3000 images online) Right now I am struggling to maintain my current level and that is with adding around 200 new uploads every month. It is just getting harder and harder to have your pictures get any exposure with 70,000 new photos coming in every week.....and unfortunately I don't see anything changing in the future. A year or so ago when they were adding 20,000 new photos a week.....or 80,000 new images a month....my 200 new uploads accounted for .25% (1/4%) of the total new photos....Not much but at least I had some visibility. Now my 200 images account for only .005% ......I just can't keep up with the numbers and my images are getting lost in the Abyss.

Totally agree with everything you said. Its not that new people are going to come in and take sales or produce better material as some have mentioned. Its the problem of being visible in the sea of new material regardless of how good it is. I can see the effects of this clearly on shutterstock. Someone mentioned in another thread how few downloads it takes to make the top 50 now on shutterstock. In the past you would need 10-20 downloads/day average to make it, now it is far less. The sky is not falling, but things are surely changing.
Getting exposure is and will get tougher and tougher. Whats the solution?? double, triple, production at same or better quality?? How about sending Christmas gifts to site admins

sharpshot · « **Reply #37 on:** January 31, 2009, 17:53 »

I think the problem with shutterstock is the heavy bias for new images can leave ones that should sell way down the default search. They need to find a way to bring more quality older images to the front pages, so they have more chance of being seen. I liked the Lucky Oliver sideshow where we were able to select some of our portfolio and they showed up randomly on the first pages. It would be great if they could bring in something like that.

RT · « **Reply #38 on:** January 31, 2009, 19:30 »

Quote from: sharpshot on January 31, 2009, 17:53

I think the problem with shutterstock is the heavy bias for new images can leave ones that should sell way down the default search.

I honestly believe that Shutterstock couldn't give two hoots what sells, they're a numbers game and as long as people buy their subscriptions I don't think Shutterstock care what the buyers do after that, apart from hoping they don't use their full quota obviously.

As for the OP's question, in my experience sales on SS are stagnated, it matters not whether I upload 5 or 500 a month the sales remain at or around the same level, but as strange as this may seem to some, I don't class Shutterstock as a 'stock' agency in the true sense of the word.

alfonsodetomas · « **Reply #39 on:** February 01, 2009, 05:16 »

Quote

It started as a real bad month for me for the first two weeks, until I received an EL. That put me just ahead of what I would normally expected.

Me too

cathyslife · « **Reply #40 on:** February 01, 2009, 12:53 »

I did not even make payout this month at SS

Xalanx · « **Reply #41 on:** February 01, 2009, 18:47 »

Quote from: cdwheatley on January 31, 2009, 17:35

Quote from: perkmeup on January 31, 2009, 04:35
Well, I made more than I made last month....but Dec is always the worst month of the year. My sales have continued to fall slightly every month since last year. I am down about 30% from my BME in March of 2008. (With over 3000 images online) Right now I am struggling to maintain my current level and that is with adding around 200 new uploads every month. It is just getting harder and harder to have your pictures get any exposure with 70,000 new photos coming in every week.....and unfortunately I don't see anything changing in the future. A year or so ago when they were adding 20,000 new photos a week.....or 80,000 new images a month....my 200 new uploads accounted for .25% (1/4%) of the total new photos....Not much but at least I had some visibility. Now my 200 images account for only .005% ......I just can't keep up with the numbers and my images are getting lost in the Abyss.

Totally agree with everything you said. Its not that new people are going to come in and take sales or produce better material as some have mentioned. Its the problem of being visible in the sea of new material regardless of how good it is. I can see the effects of this clearly on shutterstock. Someone mentioned in another thread how few downloads it takes to make the top 50 now on shutterstock. In the past you would need 10-20 downloads/day average to make it, now it is far less. The sky is not falling, but things are surely changing.
Getting exposure is and will get tougher and tougher. Whats the solution?? double, triple, production at same or better quality?? How about sending Christmas gifts to site admins

Absolutely agree. Visibility is so much more an issue today than it was an year ago. The solution is quite clear and doesn't really look pretty. At mass uploading respond with ... mass uploading. However, it really looks bad when you see in "people" category let's say about 2-3 pages of virtually the same photo of some contributor that has 5000 images in his portfolio and if you remove the duplicates it'll remain no more than 500.

vonkara · « **Reply #42 on:** February 01, 2009, 21:09 »

Agree with all you three up there...

As I saw in some threads, they started to reject more images than in the past. It could be one solution. Another is the way SS give a push to new images, giving them a chance to be seen. It worked quite OK I think when there was less than 50K images added a week, but now its getting ridiculous. I don't have the recent numbers though. Then only good sellers was going on top after this. But now the newer images added get like 50 sec in the first 10 pages LOL

They could delete images that haven't sold ?? But, they didn't loose money, only us !! Nobody will won by increasing the main problem, mass production ! But again, nobody will take care of this problem, as the only photographers weapon seem to be mass complaining LOL

peep · « **Reply #43 on:** February 03, 2009, 14:53 »

Oh god, this month seems to be even worse than the previous one! SS has been really terrible at sales recently despite my uploading several times a week. The new images do not even seem to take off. SS is my 3rd earner this month and it has never been that bad.

Allsa · « **Reply #44 on:** February 03, 2009, 15:02 »

I wish SS and other sites would follow iStock's lead and institute upload limits. I know everyone complains about them, but upload limits would force people to become much more selective about what they upload, and the overall quality of the collections would improve. The end result would be smaller libraries with higher quality images, and we would all benefit. With these huge libraries, due to the dilution effect, it will eventually reach the point where the only people working in microstock and making any real money will be the agencies.

MikLav · « **Reply #45 on:** March 25, 2009, 10:03 »

Jan was good, Feb was my BME and now March beats it!

It is my BME on SS.

null · « **Reply #46 on:** March 25, 2009, 11:51 »

Quote from: MikLav on March 25, 2009, 10:03

Jan was good, Feb was my BME and now March beats it! It is my BME on SS.

Same here. I got my EL today already before 2pm CET so it's a European customer. Mostly sales start to roll in when the Californians had their lunch, and wednesday seems to be the top day at SS. Add the frequent ODs to this and I start to wonder who the real subscription site is now...

null · « **Reply #47 on:** March 25, 2009, 11:59 »

Quote from: Allsa on February 03, 2009, 15:02

I wish SS and other sites would follow iStock's lead and institute upload limits. I know everyone complains about them, but upload limits would force people to become much more selective about what they upload, and the overall quality of the collections would improve.

What kind of upload limits you had in mind? I think 10 per day won't help, people would just spread it out more. The QC of SS is getting pretty high now and you are forced to upload your bests, as we all do spontaneously, no?. This ain't 2006 any more. I don't know about others but I can't postproduce 10 images per day on a sustained base. I'm happy to have 40 salable images per month. So actually, unless you have to upload an existing port to a new site, the upload limit of IS of 60/month is more than enough for most. Uploading similars is a bad strategy since you come into competition with yourself.

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Author Topic: How did SS perform for you in Jan 09? (Read 13036 times)

peep

jsolie

cathyslife

lephotography

Imagecom

CofkoCof

MikLav

bbettina

Phil

perkmeup

a.k.a.-tom

cdwheatley

sharpshot

RT

alfonsodetomas

cathyslife

Xalanx

vonkara

peep

Allsa

MikLav

null

null

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