Quote from: jonbull on June 19, 2017, 08:00

real there is still somebody that don't think ss and other agency are controlling the level of sale for any contributor?
do you think that company like monkey business for example, who employ 10 15 people and have cost of 200 thousand pound minimum year, still produce content without any insurance that at least they file will be positioned good? dreamer

No I don't think the agencies conspire to control or manipulate our income or sales.
No I don't believe that they insure sales and money to the big ones.

My sales go up and down. Some with the seasons, some for the time of year that images are needed, sometimes lower just because the whole market goes down. I upload more, I sell more, but it's not a direct ratio or relationship. Now and then I get a better image with more demand which takes off and sells over and over. We are up against a million new images a week, how does anyone expect we can continue to grow or hold our sales against that?

Instead of blaming the agency and making claims of agencies manipulating our sales or income, people should spend more time finding good, interesting, new subjects to upload. Making more of what there's all ready too much of, is just chasing your tail. Copying popular is also just chasing a bus that already left, and you missed it.

Second that!

Instead of blaming the agency and making claims of agencies manipulating our sales or income, people should spend more time finding good, interesting, new subjects to upload. Making more of what there's all ready too much of, is just chasing your tail. Copying popular is also just chasing a bus that already left, and you missed it.

Maybe this is true for still images, but footage market is a totally different market.
Some of my best seller are Eiffel tower or Tower bridge, done zillion of times, but I know that I can make them in timelapse with a different post production, a different angle, the best light, or approach them with a drone from a different side and still sell plenty of them.
In my case I have no doubt that there is a good deal of manipulation at SS, but I have never complained about that: SS is the best selling agency for me by country miles and almost every month for me has been BME.
Since they do extremely well, I am actually convinced that the manipulation is very well done and very useful and I am glad they do it, but I certainly cannot deny that there is manipulation.
I always note a pattern: I have more that 2,000 file and half of the time 100 sales come from 80 different files, so a broad distribution, with some sales repeated form the same files. The other half of the time it goes in a mode where 100% of my sales come from 1 single file; of course in this mode I get less downloads than usual, but I do get sales at incredibly high prices, so that I end up making the same amount of money.
I have been in this game for just two years, so I have very few well established files, certainly someone who has been in for more than 5 years will notice this variation much less than me.
But still I read about plenty of veterans commenting: "No way to sell new files!", or "Only new files sell, so that they pay lower commissions!"
It is a bit the same thing: the model switches between two modes. Why they do that? They often say that want absolutely to avoid to present all the time the same file to customers at the top of the search and it makes a lot of sense to me.
It is also said that they want to make as many contributor happy as possible, and this sounds reasonable too.

BTW when I hear more than one reliable contributors posting here that uploading photos hurts the sales of footage, in other word that number of download is capped, so selling still images make you lose a lot of income from footage, I do take it very seriously.
I would not hesitate one second to pull out my photo portfolio if I have any evidence of this (I must add that I just started adding photos a couple of month ago)

Quote from: jonbull on June 19, 2017, 08:00

real there is still somebody that don't think ss and other agency are controlling the level of sale for any contributor?
do you think that company like monkey business for example, who employ 10 15 people and have cost of 200 thousand pound minimum year, still produce content without any insurance that at least they file will be positioned good? dreamer

No I don't think the agencies conspire to control or manipulate our income or sales.
No I don't believe that they insure sales and money to the big ones.

My sales go up and down. Some with the seasons, some for the time of year that images are needed, sometimes lower just because the whole market goes down. I upload more, I sell more, but it's not a direct ratio or relationship. Now and then I get a better image with more demand which takes off and sells over and over. We are up against a million new images a week, how does anyone expect we can continue to grow or hold our sales against that?

Instead of blaming the agency and making claims of agencies manipulating our sales or income, people should spend more time finding good, interesting, new subjects to upload. Making more of what there's all ready too much of, is just chasing your tail. Copying popular is also just chasing a bus that already left, and you missed it.

u know my content? iso why u talk?
u complaint sometimes , for long time, then if u sale 3 files more makes this arrogant post.
point.
the path is clear and i can see it even month...i can predict for certain how much i will earn next month. hundred percent.

Quote from: Tay on June 19, 2017, 11:25

Quote from: YadaYadaYada on June 19, 2017, 10:18

Quote from: jonbull on June 19, 2017, 08:00

real there is still somebody that don't think ss and other agency are controlling the level of sale for any contributor?
do you think that company like monkey business for example, who employ 10 15 people and have cost of 200 thousand pound minimum year, still produce content without any insurance that at least they file will be positioned good? dreamer

No I don't think the agencies conspire to control or manipulate our income or sales.
No I don't believe that they insure sales and money to the big ones.

My sales go up and down. Some with the seasons, some for the time of year that images are needed, sometimes lower just because the whole market goes down. I upload more, I sell more, but it's not a direct ratio or relationship. Now and then I get a better image with more demand which takes off and sells over and over. We are up against a million new images a week, how does anyone expect we can continue to grow or hold our sales against that?

Instead of blaming the agency and making claims of agencies manipulating our sales or income, people should spend more time finding good, interesting, new subjects to upload. Making more of what there's all ready too much of, is just chasing your tail. Copying popular is also just chasing a bus that already left, and you missed it.

Over the last couple years I sold on Istock content for more than 1 million dollars. For about two months I'm independent and for 99% I'm sure that shutterstock control sales and sets limits for new contributors. But this is just my opinion.  I'll share with you when I'll have more data.

monkey business was before banana stock..sold for million dollar, with the know how to do this. they mostly shoot south aufrica cut cost...and clearly they have some good search position. they are one of the few big pure western company. and as i said i'd like to know one day what deal can have some company like this with micro stock agency. you think somebody risk million dollar every year of production cost salary, without any deal?

Are they exclusive to SS.....nope. You think SS would want to risk losing customers by passing off inferior content?

If I'd run an agency, I'd rather pay more to well established image factories with good quality photos than newcomers whose images might not be so great. Paying more to image factories also makes sure, there is a constant flow of new good images.

If I'd run an agency, I'd rather pay more to well established image factories with good quality photos than newcomers whose images might not be so great. Paying more to image factories also makes sure, there is a constant flow of new good images.

If I'd run an agency, thinking that what you describe would be a good move, I'll pay that factories fixed prices for exclusive images. Surely I'd not leave door open to other contributors nor a chance for the factories to leave me for new professional horizon.

Your idea could be a choice, but in this case agency moves would be really different from what they actually do, in my opinion.

If I'd run an agency, I'd rather pay more to well established image factories with good quality photos than newcomers whose images might not be so great. Paying more to image factories also makes sure, there is a constant flow of new good images.

If I'd run an agency, I would constantly tweak the popular and relevant algorithms, to make sure customers get what they want, with minimal efforts.

Dumc!!  of course! and it stands to reason. In order to make sure of a constant flow of good and commercial images you have to nurse the ones producing them. This is old news and used to be the case in the old agencies long before micro stock came about.
Then you have the factories and distributors who needs looking after. The small single contributor is way down the list.

Make no mistake nowadays people who are unhappy will quit and take their portfolios with them placing them elsewhere and mostly in the macro market agencies where if its a niched portfolio you can negotiate a deal or something. This happens frequently and especially with agencies like SS and IS.

I reckon if they are any good they don't need nursing.

Quote from: Pauws99 on June 22, 2017, 01:46

Quote from: derek on June 22, 2017, 00:18

Dumc!!  of course! and it stands to reason. In order to make sure of a constant flow of good and commercial images you have to nurse the ones producing them. This is old news and used to be the case in the old agencies long before micro stock came about.
Then you have the factories and distributors who needs looking after. The small single contributor is way down the list.

Make no mistake nowadays people who are unhappy will quit and take their portfolios with them placing them elsewhere and mostly in the macro market agencies where if its a niched portfolio you can negotiate a deal or something. This happens frequently and especially with agencies like SS and IS.

I reckon if they are any good they don't need nursing.

Nah youre wrong there believe me they need nursing weather good or bad. Just take GI as an example. Agencies like Blend, SPL and Photo-source always gets right up there in their search. Just common sense really if you want their tens of thousands im images. I would do the same if I governed an agency. Nothing wrong there its been done for years.

I thought it was "newbies" and low earners who were favoured? I would expect them to be high simply because of their sales record/port size I doubt the algorithm would need to single out favoured agencies.

Quote from: Pauws99 on June 22, 2017, 02:11

I thought it was "newbies" and low earners who were favoured? I would expect them to be high simply because of their sales record/port size I doubt the algorithm would need to single out favoured agencies.

No no no, only 10 MSG forum members are pushed back in the search. Everyone else is favored. It's only logical.

I was pushed back on Tuesday but luckily I'm at the front today ;-).

Quote from: derek on June 22, 2017, 01:54

Quote from: Pauws99 on June 22, 2017, 01:46

Quote from: derek on June 22, 2017, 00:18

Dumc!!  of course! and it stands to reason. In order to make sure of a constant flow of good and commercial images you have to nurse the ones producing them. This is old news and used to be the case in the old agencies long before micro stock came about.
Then you have the factories and distributors who needs looking after. The small single contributor is way down the list.

Make no mistake nowadays people who are unhappy will quit and take their portfolios with them placing them elsewhere and mostly in the macro market agencies where if its a niched portfolio you can negotiate a deal or something. This happens frequently and especially with agencies like SS and IS.

I reckon if they are any good they don't need nursing.

Nah youre wrong there believe me they need nursing weather good or bad. Just take GI as an example. Agencies like Blend, SPL and Photo-source always gets right up there in their search. Just common sense really if you want their tens of thousands im images. I would do the same if I governed an agency. Nothing wrong there its been done for years.

This claim is ridicilous, I only have about 1200 images, and I have plenty of files on first page for main keyword, whether best match or popular...

Sure!  so do I. Not exactly what I meant though.

i am back to 8 dollar days

Your lucky try $6.82 days

Whatever they did I wish they would stop

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on June 24, 2017, 04:09

Quote from: Microstockphoto on June 22, 2017, 17:58

i am back to 8 dollar days

Your lucky try $6.82 days

Whatever they did I wish they would stop

I'm in the same boat.  Something changed that had a big impact on my sales.  If this keeps up June will be the worst month I've had at SS for years.  About half of last month, or a �$600 shortfall.

Same here...

I never had so much single & other downloads (20+).. But ALL are below 1 dollar. Today I have two 0.59 and 0.67 last month I have three all more than 50...

Hope you do better..