Funnily enough just had sale of something thats only been up a few days but I have been selling quite a bit of my really old stuff of late. Suspect the search algorithm is all over the place.

No

Another NO

The same. And it starts worrying me 

Quote from: Chichikov on September 02, 2016, 10:40

No

Good job!

At least someone is happy with the new algorithm. I wonder how many are alike, so we can guess if it is any chance for reversing the search algorithm or not.

Naturally they don't use/keep algorithms that lowers overall sales. Some people will gain sales, others will lose. Just a fact of life.

Its surprising though it seems to swing so rapidly you would think over time it would get closer to the ideal and vary less unless there's been a radical change in buyer needs. But if overall sales remain the same/similar  then there's probably as many happy as not......

SS just present the default search as "Popular" the undiscovered stuff now has no hope of being found as they got rid of that search option

I think you're right but� what could have been the motivation to get rid of that "undiscovered" option?

Quote from: Teddy the Cat on September 02, 2016, 15:41

SS just present the default search as "Popular" the undiscovered stuff now has no hope of being found as they got rid of that search option

I think you're right but� what could have been the motivation to get rid of that "undiscovered" option?

What's their motivation? Who knows judging by all the problems recently I doubt they really know themselves

to me, the solution is simple...

if everyone in ss who has been seeing months of zero downloads from their new uploads
just delete most of them , and then wait , say , around december, or whatever you best selling months are, to reupload them,
ss will notice this strange phenomenon ...ie sudden drop in numbers of images ..due to so many contributors deleting their new non-sellers altogether in the same period, eg. end of this month...
they will do something about it.

it only needs all of us to do this at a given agreed period...
like i said... end of this month..
or whenever everyone agrees.

"all of us" = "all SS contributors currently active on msg" = a tiny percentage of SS's contributors. Only a proportion of them would be agreeable.

As SS seems to be exactly emulating iS at the moment, and there have been at least two mass deactivations I remember, it won't make one iota of difference.

Delete for yourselves, for self-respect, for catharsis - but don't expect it to make any difference to SS policy (if they have one).

Well the last time I checked among popular keywords around 50% of the stuff on SS never showed a sale.

So they probably wanted to hide that figure

Well the last time I checked among popular keywords around 50% of the stuff on SS never showed a sale.

So they probably wanted to hide that figure

Again, just like iStock. It was too easy to see that even the historic best sellers weren't selling their newer work (as credit sales), so they removed the ability to see dl figures, so newbies can be uninformed and hopeful.

It is just s bug. I've sold "new" files and the graph shows 0. The problem is in the graph, not the sales.

The OP was asking about the lack of new images selling not the graph

Quote from: ShadySue on September 03, 2016, 06:20

"all of us" = "all SS contributors currently active on msg" = a tiny percentage of SS's contributors. Only a proportion of them would be agreeable.

As SS seems to be exactly emulating iS at the moment, and there have been at least two mass deactivations I remember, it won't make one iota of difference.

Delete for yourselves, for self-respect, for catharsis - but don't expect it to make any difference to SS policy (if they have one).

good point !!! at this stage of seemingly dejavu iS, it really won't make a difference
when the capt plans to leave his sinking ship; if not, already gone...
and left it with his cabin-boys to run the ship.
it's wiser to look elsewhere and be prepared for the sinking of the Titanic

Lord Hanson in London during the 80s was a famous corporate raider. His plan was to milk the cow to its last drop of blood and then simply just leave it to die hoping that something or someone would come along and buy the remains in bits and pieces.

As you say the captain has left. Well he left ages ago and replaced his mates with civil-servants who haven't got the slightest idea of how to navigate a ship so most likely in the nearby future it will turn into the flying Dutchman.

I'm not even started my sales itself.All my graph shows Zero "0".Why??[https://www.shutterstock.com/g/r_D_r]
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/r_D_r

If I read your post correctly you have had no sales.

No sales= no data to plot that's why your graph is showing zeros

Quote from: Teddy the Cat on September 05, 2016, 06:08

Quote from: r_D_r on September 05, 2016, 03:01

I'm not even started my sales itself.All my graph shows Zero "0".Why??[https://www.shutterstock.com/g/r_D_r]
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/r_D_r

If I read your post correctly you have had no sales.

No sales= no data to plot that's why your graph is showing zeros

Your rite, but how i will showcase my data to customers can you please & to survive in photography

Please read this thread about work uploaded to Shutterstock, I think by you, that includes the work of another artist (Santa Claus illustration).

http://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/find-a-port-on-ss-with-stolen-images/msg463324/#msg463324

If this is you, you need to immediately remove all work you've uploaded (on other sites if you've done that) that includes the work of other people. That is copyright infringement and you will have your account closed at the agency if you're found to be uploading work that is not your own - every element must have been created by you.

As you (I think) said you haven't had sales and appear to be new to this, you might get the benefit of the doubt if you act immediately to fix this serious error.

You need to delete all your illustrations. They all use clip art from other sources. If you don't SS and the other sites will soon be shutting you down and banning you.

wait, let me get this correctly. were these clip art included stuffs uploaded actually approved by ss reviewers and the other sites???
if so, considering the anal reviewing we have been reading about in the past months,
this is indeed a big surprise that they were not caught. when you think that  , as someone pointed out, even re-submitted stuffs are being caught .

what 's going on???

Quote from: Teddy the Cat on September 05, 2016, 06:08

Quote from: r_D_r on September 05, 2016, 03:01

I'm not even started my sales itself.All my graph shows Zero "0".Why??[https://www.shutterstock.com/g/r_D_r]
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/r_D_r

If I read your post correctly you have had no sales.

No sales= no data to plot that's why your graph is showing zeros

Your rite, but how i will showcase my data to customers can you please & to survive in photography

You know what you should do?

Remove all the irrelvant keywords from your images

For example

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-476855920/stock-photo-best-landscape-in-oman.html?src=CHihwepp3hs5lfU3yKcuBw-1-65

I see no maps oceans lakes reflection sea water or tourists and try naming these nonedescript places where they are they in Oman 

And stop accidently copying things by mistake as you will be found out and reported

Does anyone still sell anything on this site? I have never had such a bad period on Shutterstock since I am member there. Today I had ZERO downloads, yesterday 2 subs. And I've tried to continue my uploading every day. I guess now I've reached my breaking point. It is extremely demotivating working without any hope of earning improvements. Before they have started with changing the algorithm, I was doing pretty well, and I have had 4 times less than what I have now (around 2200 vectors). I've worked a lot in the past 3 months and all I can see, is a decrease of my earnings.

Any other opinion? Is everybody content or you just have given up complaining anymore?

Greetings, Luka

Quote from: increasingdifficulty on September 02, 2016, 14:14

Naturally they don't use/keep algorithms that lowers overall sales. Some people will gain sales, others will lose. Just a fact of life.

Its surprising though it seems to swing so rapidly you would think over time it would get closer to the ideal and vary less unless there's been a radical change in buyer needs. But if overall sales remain the same/similar  then there's probably as many happy as not......

this stuff has been chewed over for the last 10 years. The simple fact is that they need to keep varying the search to prevent stuff getting stuck in the top of a search and staying there just because it is there. A perfect example of that was a couple of shots of fish and chips (fries) that I happened to upload to istock about  five years back at precisely the moment they screwed up on a "fish and chips" search. The result was that my file was about the best in a search that only delivered something like 40 results. I made about $500 on it as a result (and it seemed to do unusually well on some other sites, too - maybe cross-searching by buyers). And, of course, once a "low commercial value" file picks up a hundred or more sales in a couple of months it gets pretty much locked in near the top of a "best match". God knows what it would have sold if I'd been exclusive. Sadly, they seem to have given it the boot now, its last sale was almost a year ago (and if it wasn't really good enough to justify its sales, it still isn't bad enough not to sell for a year).

Nice to see an honest post where someone isn't claiming there's is the best shot of Fish and Chips EVER and deserves to be perpetually at the top! When I look at my sales with a few exceptions no way would I say my best or most commercial work (in my opinion) has sold the best.

LOL. I've been at this lark for 12 years ... which is plenty of time to get over being infatuated with my own genius. I leave it to the newbies to be infatuated with my genius now.
The real eye-opener came when I purchased the BBC video entitled: "The Genius of Photography" and discovered to my utter horror that it wasn't all about me.

Yesterday was really a slow day for me too, had very less downloads. Its a Eid festival maybe the it is due to it. don't know

yes, that explains why i had a whole month of zero days. it was ramadan
and the islamic countries abstained from buying vectors and photos from an infidel like shutterstock
(joking, just in case i twisted the knickers of christians who consider this comment sacrilegious from an  athiest).
seriously, as far as i know, most of those pizza-eating freeloading bozos at HO are probably
athiest themselves since they don't believe in an honest hard-days work to make things right...
ignoring answering emails, not fixing the disappearing portfolios, etc.

just have given up complaining

that is the wisest reponse i have read so far.
move on, stop looking at your earnings, and start uploading to adobe,
and even consider a new game at stocksy and canvas.

how can you compete with the smart-phone zero cost brigade who go whoop-yea i got
a 25 cts sale everyday since august, ooh shitterstock is sooooo cooool???

off topic...

can anybody explain the adobe deal? i don't understand the difference between fotolia and adobe now...

adobe has also a premium service...

how one can apply to adobe only content?

thanks

that explain the falling down of september....8 content sold from sunday to today....never had anything like this..and i'm uploading much more....

luckily rm in big sites and stock and dreamstime are improving this month and last month.
i will focus much more on rm in next moth. micro stock for what i do, mostly travel and reportage, is totally useless at this time. One million images add any week..thousand of photographer accepted...for what?
agency must sit down and start realizing that this will only decrease the quality of their portfolio and create more problem than benefit to customer who don't want 1000000 photos of tomato in white,m or 40000 of colosseum.

so true. i read the thread at ss forums, it's not just you & me and a handful of old contributors who gave up since the IT guy left to spend time with family.
when you read that others with 100% approval consistently are complaining
and you read teddy the cat link to  where Oringer says there is no crisis,
you know it's time to pack up and go somewhere else.

RM sounds like the best thing to do now that ss is becoming more like istock in
"we don't care NFA" attitude, and zero downloads at ss are now making even dreamstime look good

Its a Eid festival maybe the it is due to it. don't know

Sorry, I had to google what Eid festival is, at least I get more and more cultivated reading the forum.
My buyers are mostly European and I bet there could be many more uncultivated among them, just like me.

Back to the subject, I had 1-2, rarely 4-5 subs a day with one 1.75 SOD and half of the month is gone. It is worse than my very first sales, some years ago. What is going on?
Btw. Can anyone please tell me where does the 1.75 SOD come from?

Quote from: jonbull on September 13, 2016, 11:04

off topic...

can anybody explain the adobe deal? i don't understand the difference between fotolia and adobe now...

adobe has also a premium service...

how one can apply to adobe only content?

thanks

In practical terms for contributors there is no difference....expect the Fotolia brand to dissapear at some point

thanks a lot.
i wanted apply for premium category but i'm more interested in applying for offset

IMHO the reason why new files are selling bad is new layout of search result page.
There is no easy (one-click) access to new files, no undiscovered.
Users have to click twice to see new content.

ah, at last, a voice from the client side!!!
the new amazing high tech IT innovation to service our clients , as they so proud announced
last month with the departure of the IT chief to "spend time with family"
must have told them ... K.I.S.S.

but here we have the new IT geniuses totally farking it up like big-time!!!

Đizs krajst, chill down already, breath, are you replacingRrinderart or what?? *, you're annoying with constant bullshiting...

arsch geige nie mand spricht zu dir

I think the reason is that old established sellers brings in the bread and butter and thats what the bean counters want. Its a matter of playing it safe. New sellers haven't proved themselves and the monthly take might go down for a while which in their eyes is absolute catastrophy.

The very thought of showing and promoting new files for tomorrow never seem to cross thir minds.

in reality September is going worse than August, even after a portfolio increase

glad to hear yet another person who is not a company lackey or fanboy
pretending that all is well.  there is definitely something very wrong at ss
much in the same manner as istock after the bigG took it.

I think the reason is that old established sellers brings in the bread and butter and thats what the bean counters want. Its a matter of playing it safe. New sellers haven't proved themselves and the monthly take might go down for a while which in their eyes is absolute catastrophy.

The very thought of showing and promoting new files for tomorrow never seem to cross thir minds.

right too. but even the old established sellers are not selling.
as alexzappa said , or others at ss forum, lots of zero... not even the regulars
are recording a sale. that is not right !!!

Sales at Shutterstock in September are very low... not even close to last year when we had much less footage online. Something is wrong at their side, that's sure.

Problem is that any uploading of new files is a waste. Once files have been in micro they are "locked" no rights or Royalty-free macro agency wants them and you can't supply micro images to a staunch macro agency since it could lead to all sorts of troubles.

Right now there is hardly any exposure or promotion of new files and I really don't understand the SS game on this one.

New files take a bit longer than a few years ago but I still have files climbing to page one within 3 to 4 weeks. Both vector and images. SS is far from going down for me. Yes I see some swings (seasonal and abnormal) but overall you have to realize it's like a street store. New products come on the shells and old ones start selling less. And like in a real store sales are not the same every month.

I know I am not the only one. I am on SS since 2011. I also do wedding photography and when you make bad wedding photo's the customer tells 20 people. When your work is good they only tell 5. I think it's the same on the forum here. When you have bad sales everybody tells. When you have good sales you just relax and keep going. I might step on some toes now by being to positive? But this is my experience.

Nobody said it's bad for everyone but when so many people complain about a sudden drop in September, there must be something true in it.

Your example of the street shop is exactly the opposite of the title of this thread. Many people observed that old files sell more and new ones less or not at all lately, not vice-versa.

This discussion is as old as Shutterstock. It's just boring. Two weeks later, everything has changed again.

Problem is that any uploading of new files is a waste. Once files have been in micro they are "locked" no rights or Royalty-free macro agency wants them and you can't supply micro images to a staunch macro agency since it could lead to all sorts of troubles.

Right now there is hardly any exposure or promotion of new files and I really don't understand the SS game on this one.

you can sell rf in both micro and macro, if macro don't do exclusivity in photos, alamy for example.
personally i find every image has its position in the market. no way i will provide rf with images i consider to have something unique...my best portfolio go to off set alamy and 2 3 other agency, included my best editorial photos that goes to reduxpictures.
In micro i put good image but i not consider them unique or having somethings interesting a customer could buy as rm.
thanks to this strategy i keep good earning in rm that compensate the fall in rf. i'm sure if i had put all images in rf i would have seen my earnings completely falling down.
it's economic laws at the end.

Quote from: gyllens on September 16, 2016, 02:17

Problem is that any uploading of new files is a waste. Once files have been in micro they are "locked" no rights or Royalty-free macro agency wants them and you can't supply micro images to a staunch macro agency since it could lead to all sorts of troubles.

Right now there is hardly any exposure or promotion of new files and I really don't understand the SS game on this one.

you can sell rf in both micro and macro, if macro don't do exclusivity in photos, alamy for example.
personally i find every image has its position in the market. no way i will provide rf with images i consider to have something unique...my best portfolio go to off set alamy and 2 3 other agency, included my best editorial photos that goes to reduxpictures.
In micro i put good image but i not consider them unique or having somethings interesting a customer could buy as rm.
thanks to this strategy i keep good earning in rm that compensate the fall in rf. i'm sure if i had put all images in rf i would have seen my earnings completely falling down.
it's economic laws at the end.

Works with Alamy yes but not the kind of agencies I'm with. Its a no go.

Not for me....you have to consider the possibility that people don't want to buy your pictures.

I am surprised that none of MSG forum users go on the Shutterstock Facebook page to write about these problems
https://www.facebook.com/Shutterstock/

Generally on this page the staff gives answers

I think that if we go in mass on this page to expose this "new content issue" we will have more possibility to be heard.

https://www.shutterstock.com/g/r_D_r?search_source=base_gallery&language=en&page=1&sort=newest&safe=true I think New images are not visible to customers.Compare to last month,Zero download in September for me.

It's because your keywords are just spam why can't you be honest and put the correct keywords in?

Sadly your images are just low commercial value

Example
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-474654643/stock-photo-graphite-is-covered-by-wood.html?src=CHihwepp3hs5lfU3yKcuBw-2-7

Graphite is covered by wood?? You mean it is  a pencil

Keywords: I highlighted the junk keywords for you
 art, background, black, creativity, design, draw, drawing, education, element, equipment, eraser, filing, flat, graphic, graphite, icon, illustration, isolated, large, lead, learn, object, office, pastel, pen, pencil, pure, school, set, sharp, sign, simple, single, study, subject, supplies, symbol, tip, tool, vertical, web, website, white, wood, work, write, writer, yellow

The next quarterly report will be interesting not sure when its due? I like evidence rather than anecdote and with the best will in the world what is on this site is a tiny sample. However, things do seem to be going off the rails and Adobe are probably the first serious competition they've had for years.

adobe, and as pauliewalnuts say, go indie.
i started my own project ie to contact the bloggers who bought my works at ss
... food bloggers, travel bloggers, sports bloggers, .. even the ones
like biggest xxx, hottest xxx,.. etc.. which are claiming the largest traffic.

i got my first commission with one of them, which comes up to more than what i got from ss
this month.

as pauliewalnuts stated, eliminate the middle-man, who is taking the biggest chunk
of your earnings giving you peanuts.
without the middle man, the earnings could look less, but really much more than even one sod
or all the sods you missed these past years
with the disappearance of the 28 to 102 bucks single earnings.

i read from one of my emails from the bloggers about geo-strategic marketing...
which goes past my head...
but it says from my old school mind understanding,
you learn this and you can make back more than all you gave to ss in your 15 years.

better energy spent than come in here to let my a$$ sniffer sniff my @rse, LOL

Seems to be the exact opposite to new sales. I keep seeing files being sold that I uploaded ten years back and they are not even good. Ridiculous really whats the point in uploading fresh content when they are not given the chance to sell. I don't know? seems to be something all wrong with this entiere outfit nowadays.

I don't want to repeat myself (I've mentioned this before) but I am seeing new content - last few months - selling along with older stuff (and I have been with Shutterstock a long time). I'm not seeing any high value SODs, which is why things are not great at SS for me, but the sales volume is good and includes lots of this year's uploads as well as oldies.

Quote from: gyllens on September 28, 2016, 12:41

Seems to be the exact opposite to new sales. I keep seeing files being sold that I uploaded ten years back and they are not even good. Ridiculous really whats the point in uploading fresh content when they are not given the chance to sell. I don't know? seems to be something all wrong with this entiere outfit nowadays.

I don't want to repeat myself (I've mentioned this before) but I am seeing new content - last few months - selling along with older stuff (and I have been with Shutterstock a long time). I'm not seeing any high value SODs, which is why things are not great at SS for me, but the sales volume is good and includes lots of this year's uploads as well as oldies.

True. Some will find new content selling others won't. Search is somewhat skewed that way.

Quote from: gyllens on September 28, 2016, 12:41

Seems to be the exact opposite to new sales. I keep seeing files being sold that I uploaded ten years back and they are not even good. Ridiculous really whats the point in uploading fresh content when they are not given the chance to sell. I don't know? seems to be something all wrong with this entiere outfit nowadays.

I don't want to repeat myself (I've mentioned this before) but I am seeing new content - last few months - selling along with older stuff (and I have been with Shutterstock a long time). I'm not seeing any high value SODs, which is why things are not great at SS for me, but the sales volume is good and includes lots of this year's uploads as well as oldies.

Me too, I find mostly that my good files sell much better then my poor files. Odd how that works? If I upload marginal quality and subject, new or old, or something that there's 100,000 already on SS, they don't sell good? Nothing strange going on that I see. Do people expect things to sell just because they are new? That ended in 2012.

At what hour?

Ok, thanks...