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Author Topic: please tell me this makes sense!  (Read 24136 times)

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« Reply #75 on: June 02, 2017, 08:55 »
0

Hmm, around 2011 I deleted and tried to re-upload 1 photo, because it hadn't taken off and I thought it was a good one and deserved more downloads. What happened then: the photo was rejected because the system recognized that it was re-uploaded and I got a warning.
I don't know how they treat this these days...

Back then, I think a second or third warning meant you were a goner.


All you have to do back then and now is to change file name and file checksum. There are very simple utility programs for batch processing names and check sums of your files. If you change the name and content for 1 single byte file is not the same. I also batch changed some exif data but that is not necessary.


As you write, you don't intend to re-upload them, but I don't think having more images in the portfolio can hurt your video sales... It would make no sense. Why should the algorithm reward contributors who delete their stuff? How does it benefit SS? Correlation does not mean causation.

If that was helpful, people would just delete their stuff to game the system and grow their earnings. It would make more sense to penalize people who regularly delete their stuff.

I didn't said that, I replied to Video-StockORG comment with this:
 "Depending on their behaviour and behaviour of their buyers some users will notice cap for the number of monthly downloads but I didn't find that downloads of photos and videos are related, so it probably won't help but if you delete your images and keep the same cap of monthly downloads than great for you."

As you see I also wasn't sure that would help because I wasn't tested mixed photo/video content at the same time. But if Video-StockORG really suffers from downloads/period cap it could help to delete photos because videos have greater value per file.


« Reply #76 on: June 02, 2017, 09:03 »
0

About search algorythm, which kind of test do you did in past years?
For example, I have a couple of images always on the first search page for a very generic search ("movie") and they stay there from more than two years, moving up and down depending on download numbers, but always in the first page.
And this position is not changed after a lower earning month.


I don't know if you know it, but you should perform such tests from different locations. You can use a decent VPN, e.g. TunnelBear or the one in Opera. And clear the cookies between searches. Of course, you shouldn't be logged in while testing.
FWIW, I don't perform such tests anymore, I am only interested in the amount that is transferred to me every month.

For those testing Ghost VPN works excellent, you can jump quicky from one country to another. Also new anonymous browser session will get rid of a cookies from previous session.

« Reply #77 on: June 02, 2017, 09:32 »
0
Super interesting read, mb! Thanks a lot!

Keep an eye on that I am expecting that to be changed in next few months and I'm expecting that contributors which are not posting at all to go down even faster when that happened. My advice is: don't be lazy, keep uploading and keywording but don't publish them until new stuff will start to sell again.
Does that mean that the search algorithm actually "reacts" to *uploads* rather than images someone gets *approved*?
Say, if I'd upload and keyword them, but don't send them to the review team, they'd still positively influence the placement of my port/active images?

I think that search algorythm reacts also to uploads only but it is so not important factor.
That is a part of measurement on contributor activity which also has influence of your ratings.
If you are not active rating of your files will become lower, but it is not simple and linear for all files.
It depends on a various things from files "history".

Not sure about this, but my expirience also is that there are some "thresolds" for inactivity. If you are inactive for a certain period of time you won't experience constant drop of sales, but at some point there will be a huge drop and after that if you continue not to publish your files you will have another period of  constant sales on that lower level until next threshold.

More important why I said that is that because current solution of a spam problem is not viable in a long term. There are millions on new files every month which are not selling at all. IT costs raises and there is no income from new content to cover those costs. Algorythm must be changed in next few months, new files from old contributors will probably get higher priority and when that happened it will be good to have a lot of new files prepared for immediate publishing.

And wouldn't those images be already buried (due to their older image number and date they were uploaded) when I finally publish them later on?

No they won't, approval date counts for "new image" status, not upload date or image id.

« Reply #78 on: June 02, 2017, 10:15 »
+3
It is not mathematically possible to earn more monthly than the market value produced by a contributor per month. That's your cap, right there, everyone's got one, and everyone's is different. Unless you consider the market value of your every image/pic/clip infinite. Then we are talking about a different kind of cap altogether...

Regarding cap, this is not my direct answer on your comment but I would like to share something special that happened to me these days.

Ok, story goes like this, seems like two of my buyers forgot to spend some money on images before the end of the month. They are from two different continents, they are buying different content and there is no chance that they know each other. On Tuesday 30th of May one of them from Europe targeted directly one of my sets bought huge number of images, actually more than my weekly sales from all customers. I had sales of big licences in the past but never so much downloads in one day. On Wednesday 31th of May happened something very similar, another customer from a different part of the world targeted directly my images bought even bigger amount of images from a few different sets but there is obvious consistency between those images and I was very happy because that looked like a legitimate sale and I was also happy because those two almost doubled my monthly sales on Shutterstock.

But most interesting things happened yesterday and today. Before that I would like to explain someting about my sales. I'm selling a lot of images, for years I didn't have a day without sale, mostly because of good diversity of regional and niches coverage. For that reason big holidays, weekends, seasonal fluctuations are not hurting ma sales too much. Even on a worst day of a year I'm selling at least dozen of images on Shutterstock. Ok let's get to the point now. Yesterday on Thursday 1st of June after 2 consecutive days of huge sales I had 0 sales. That happened on Thursday which is statistically my best selling day in a week for a years on Shutterstock. I'm writing this on Friday, it is 5pm in Europe and I also have 0 sales today. I tried to calculate probability for this to be happened accidentaly but I stoped when it passed 1:1.000.000.

After this if you are still not convinced that search engine cap exists then you'll never be. Search engine recognized huge deviation in my sales caused by those two customers and now it is trying to "fix" that during next period.

p.s. There is a possibility of some technical error on Shutterstock servers for last two days but nobody reports it so I assume that I have a problem with search engine because of previous "unexpected" sales
« Last Edit: June 02, 2017, 12:01 by mb »

« Reply #79 on: June 02, 2017, 13:54 »
+1
i agree with everything mb wrote. my experience can back every claim he makes.

would it be possible for you to comment on my histogram i posted on the third page of this thread? is it of any relevance and can anything be deduced from it?
« Last Edit: June 02, 2017, 14:16 by relativity »

« Reply #80 on: June 02, 2017, 15:17 »
+2
" 100000" % agree with MB.
Nothing new at all.
Today I have the same situation: zero DL after yesterdays great sales.
Shame on SS !!

dpimborough

« Reply #81 on: June 02, 2017, 16:13 »
0
And the same here a really good day on June 1st in fact really surprising considering how bad things are.

Then Friday nothing a few subs more like a Sunday.

I track sales and the statistical likelihood of having the same numbers day in day out if it were random buyer behaviour would be very low.  But each month the same old pattern day in day out.

The monthly figures are within >5% of eachother.

The same goes for yearly sales and more whacky is 2015 compared to 2016 overall annual sales revenue varied by $57 over a total of thousands of dollars.

Even though I added images and improved keywords on old images.

The game is rigged
« Last Edit: June 03, 2017, 03:45 by Sammy the Cat »

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« Reply #82 on: June 02, 2017, 20:37 »
+2
But what would be the statistical likelihood of having variance of more than 5% every month? Surely a plus or minus of less than 5%, is more likely than a plus an minus of more than 5%? And it sounds like it's even less than 5% over the year... that's just how it works... if you flip a coin and get heads five or ten times in a row, that's pretty rare, but nothing to write home about. If you get heads 500 times in a row, then something strange is going on.

The 'cap' is how much you sell. If you upload more stuff, and better stuff, and improve your keywords, the 'cap' will probably increase... what a strange coincidence! I mean, how would they decide what your cap is, and how would that vary from one person to another?

I'm pretty sure it's not rigged. Consistent sales over a month or a year is hardly evidence of a rigged system. And some outliers when it comes to zero sales days isn't either. People are talking about the statistical improbability of having a zero sales day, but they mention nothing of the statistical improbability of having a weeks worth of sales in one day. If sales were massively inconsistent from one month to another instead, I'm sure somebody would come up with some theory to explain why that's rigged as well

Surely an anonymous ex-employee would have 'blown the lid' on this capping system by now?

« Reply #83 on: June 03, 2017, 03:06 »
+1
honest question: does this discussion make sense? Which result do you expect at the end of the day? any profits?

« Reply #84 on: June 03, 2017, 03:28 »
0
honest question: does this discussion make sense? Which result do you expect at the end of the day? any profits?
You are right really this has been rumbling for years in the end they have a cap or they don't not much we can do about it by discussing it. Like most discussions about conspiracy theories doubt anyone will change their mind.

dpimborough

« Reply #85 on: June 03, 2017, 03:47 »
0
honest question: does this discussion make sense? Which result do you expect at the end of the day? any profits?

Honest answer? I would expect to be able to put images and video up for sale without and agency manipulating earnings.

And these discusions do make sense otherwise we end up blindly rolling along thinking all will be well when it is clearly not.

We are not sheep

SpaceStockFootage

  • Space, Sci-Fi and Astronomy Related Stock Footage

« Reply #86 on: June 03, 2017, 04:10 »
+1
Honest answer? I would expect to be able to put images and video up for sale without and agency manipulating earnings.

So would I, but I've not been presented with any compelling evidence that such things are happening.

...all will be well when it is clearly not.

Might be clear to you, but not to me!

« Reply #87 on: June 03, 2017, 05:11 »
+1
honest question: does this discussion make sense? Which result do you expect at the end of the day? any profits?

Honest answer? I would expect to be able to put images and video up for sale without and agency manipulating earnings.

And these discusions do make sense otherwise we end up blindly rolling along thinking all will be well when it is clearly not.

We are not sheep
You are not forced to sell there if you think they are really that shady. I just don't see how the discussion improves things...

« Last Edit: June 03, 2017, 05:15 by Pauws99 »

jonbull

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« Reply #88 on: June 03, 2017, 07:48 »
0
Agree with..after good period of sale a friday with 4 sale, never happened, todya 2.


Maybe they had problm generally cause friday i had a modl felease not accepted i dont know why, there is a similar post also, and still they zeroed the june month, i still have may earning

Justanotherphotographer

« Reply #89 on: June 03, 2017, 08:23 »
0
Agree with..after good period of sale a friday with 4 sale, never happened, todya 2.


Maybe they had problm generally cause friday i had a modl felease not accepted i dont know why, there is a similar post also, and still they zeroed the june month, i still have may earning
Do you mean 4 sales total on one day?

niktol

« Reply #90 on: June 03, 2017, 10:53 »
0

After this if you are still not convinced that search engine cap exists then you'll never be. Search engine recognized huge deviation in my sales caused by those two customers and now it is trying to "fix" that during next period.



You are missing my point. First off, I am not denying the existence of search engine algorithms helping companies to move their assets. Early "search engine algorithms" existed even when Mesopotamian merchants were bringing textiles by donkey caravans. Well selling "popular" merchandise was placed right in front of prospective buyers so they'd be able to find it easily.  Second, I don't know what a "search engine cap" is. It's probably something that is akin to hiding well selling stuff from buyers' eyes. Sounds like a winner to me. But you can never overestimate the operational silliness of a corporate environment.

Nevertheless, my point wasn't to criticize or comment on a particular stock day-to-day business operation. My point was that as much as I adore people's fascination with search engines, no reasonable contributor relies on a single agency and builds their strategy based on daily fluctuations of sales produced by technical or not so technical events/approaches. Long term sustainability is much more important.

If your job is/was to provide a specific agency with a little bit of edge in daily sales, that's fine with me. It has no relevance to my success and strategies though.
« Last Edit: June 03, 2017, 11:24 by niktol »

dpimborough

« Reply #91 on: June 03, 2017, 15:46 »
+1
honest question: does this discussion make sense? Which result do you expect at the end of the day? any profits?

Honest answer? I would expect to be able to put images and video up for sale without and agency manipulating earnings.

And these discusions do make sense otherwise we end up blindly rolling along thinking all will be well when it is clearly not.

We are not sheep
You are not forced to sell there if you think they are really that shady. I just don't see how the discussion improves things...

Because a year ago I was blissfully unaware.  Full of the woo yay! I got a sale things were growing.

But things faltered and even though I kept uploading things continued to falter.

I wanted to know why and threads like these point you in the direction to find underlying causes and also threads like these:

https://www.microstockgroup.com/shutterstock-com/shutterstock-ceo-says-new-business-plan-hinged-upon-total-overhaul-of-it/

Checking out glass door where some ex-SS employees admit the contributors are being manipulated and shafted just confirms a lot.

As to you comment "you are not forced to sell there" well you are right and I was happy to ditch Fotolia with their crappy dollar photo club and then iStock with their continued shafting of contributors.




« Reply #92 on: June 03, 2017, 16:15 »
+1
Because a year ago I was blissfully unaware.  Full of the woo yay! I got a sale things were growing.

But things faltered and even though I kept uploading things continued to falter.

I wanted to know why and threads like these point you in the direction to find underlying causes and also threads like these:

https://www.microstockgroup.com/shutterstock-com/shutterstock-ceo-says-new-business-plan-hinged-upon-total-overhaul-of-it/

Checking out glass door where some ex-SS employees admit the contributors are being manipulated and shafted just confirms a lot.

As to you comment "you are not forced to sell there" well you are right and I was happy to ditch Fotolia with their crappy dollar photo club and then iStock with their continued shafting of contributors.

I don't see anything about manipulation.

Shutterstock is located in NYC, where very few workers are actually happy. I worked in New York for years and people only care about money. Competition for jobs is tough, so it's easy to replace employees. Good work-life balance is hard in a city that moves so quickly, especially with so much competition.

SS as a company is doing well, so they're doing something right regardless of what disgruntle employees are saying.  A lot of software engineers love trying new tech stacks. Sometimes it's not the right decision, but don't tell that to know-it-all software engineers. Everything has to be managed well, or the product will be like Frankenstein. I'm not saying the managers know what they're doing, because many don't, but you can't formulate a concrete picture just by looking at negative reviews.

« Reply #93 on: June 03, 2017, 17:14 »
+1
"Checking out glass door where some ex-SS employees admit the contributors are being manipulated and shafted just confirms a lot." Not seen where they have said this? The most likely explanation of faltering sales remains that of increase in supply vastly exceeds growth in demand.

SpaceStockFootage

  • Space, Sci-Fi and Astronomy Related Stock Footage

« Reply #94 on: June 03, 2017, 18:31 »
+1
The majority of employees from the beginning of time have at some point thought that their manager is useless and doesn't know what they are doing. That doesn't automatically mean it's true though.

Take the Donald. Obama was rubbish, all these problems are easy, I'll sort them all out etc... then when you become the actual 'manager' you realise it's not all that easy!

But still, was there any mention of the 'cap' in the reviews? I didn't see any. Some of them don't hold back, so it would seem the ideal place to blow the lid on it.

« Reply #95 on: June 04, 2017, 02:49 »
0
The majority of employees from the beginning of time have at some point thought that their manager is useless and doesn't know what they are doing. That doesn't automatically mean it's true though.

Take the Donald. Obama was rubbish, all these problems are easy, I'll sort them all out etc... then when you become the actual 'manager' you realise it's not all that easy!

But still, was there any mention of the 'cap' in the reviews? I didn't see any. Some of them don't hold back, so it would seem the ideal place to blow the lid on it.
Personally I think its plain to see that SS is not as well run as it once was...but thats a completely different question to the "cap" ...what I never get is why buyers aren't up in arms about disappearing content their favourite authors being hidden etc etc.....

« Reply #96 on: June 05, 2017, 09:11 »
+4
Guys I don't talk here much, but I've earned a full time income on microstock in the US since 2008.  It's very sad for me, but to be totally honest; I'm now viewing microstock royalties and their dwindling returns as a sort of "unemployment" compensation.  It's going to continue, but will also continue shrinking.  There are so many other ways I can use my time during the week to generate income, that I really can't see pissing in the wind or chasing this runaway train any longer.  I believe that the wave has finally crashed for individual contributors who are looking for a full time income from this, regardless of your content or your skill level.  If you want to make enough to pay your cell phone and grocery bill, and don't mind countless hours of work for less than minimum wage; then go for it. 

I had a 1 hour on discussion on the phone a few weeks ago with the contributor relations head of a major agency in the big 4, and explained my feelings.  YES, there are still niches in the image banks that need to be filled with a lot of earning potentional, but to me, earnings also are not guaranteed to be enough to justify their costs (in both production, orchestration, and planning time). 

Like many others here in this thread, I too have never seen a tank in sales on Shutterstock any larger than 2016-2017.  I barely produced anything from 2012-2015 and still was able to generally maintain my royalty levels.  If Shutterstock is trying to punish those who don't frequently upload. 

I have thousands of images left on my backlog that I might eventually submit, but only when I am extremely bored or feel like experimenting.  I heard that review times are crazy fast and extremely easy to pass, lately.  They must have beefed up their reviewer team.

« Reply #97 on: June 05, 2017, 18:05 »
+2
Very good post, ArenaCreative.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2017, 18:10 by LDV81 »

« Reply #98 on: June 05, 2017, 18:29 »
+2
Okkydokky, this is my experience. If you don't believe it it is your problem, I do not care that much.
I practically do only video, so my experience might be very different from people here doing other kind of funny stuff.
More or less every month on SS I have a sort of cap, based on dollars, not on downloads.
This cap stays the same more or less for 3-4 months, then it goes up a bit (I upload a couple of hundreds  of clips every months).
Sometimes the month starts great, and by the 15th of the month I have reached my allocated total, so I think "great, this month is going to be fantastic!".
After that for about ten days not a single sale, so that I end my month to my allocated total, where I am supposed to be.
Other times the month starts without any single sale for about ten days and you start to think "OK, this is the end". But then all of a sudden sales start pouring from everywhere, until I reach my allocated total, sometimes in the very last few days I get some incredibly expensive sales just to make sure that I reach my cap.
This thing keeps going every single month: 10 days without any sale every month and then deluge of sales. I am sorry, but this is not statistically real.

I must add that I am not complaining at all: SS is my best selling agency by a country mile and doing stock video is one of the coolest way you can imagine to earn your living.
Sales are manipulated big way, no doubt about that. But perhaps this is not wrong at all.
SS is the number one agency, maybe they have figured out that keeping everyone happy is the best way to go. They often say that they don't want customers to see the most popular to be the same all the time, so maybe they modify the algorithm for this reason.Maybe they are right and they are doing a good job.
I am happy with that.
Keep on smiling :-)

« Reply #99 on: June 06, 2017, 03:40 »
0
For example, I have a couple of images always on the first search page for a very generic search ("movie") and they stay there from more than two years, moving up and down depending on download numbers, but always in the first page.
And this position is not changed after a lower earning month. So?
Does those images have similar relative position if you search for them with more specific keywords?

Thread is very interesting, and I'll try to answer from my point of view. I'm not a db algorythm expert as you :-) I will just try to give myself an answer.

First of all, I see a little bit confusion and misunderstanding about the point. People here often talk about three different events:
1- constant drop of earnings
2- alteration of search results depending on buyer (area, past search, preferences...)
3- alteration of search results to push a cap on contributors earnings

Points 1 and 2 are absolutely real, with no doubt, for many reason. But have nothing to do with point 3.

We're discussing point 3. Ok.
Wich are the reasons for an agency to play in this way?
I see a couple of reasons: one is to pay less royalties giving advantage to new "0,25c$ level" contributors, other is to give buyers always new files to choose.
Can you imagine other reasons to cap earnings? I can't see any.

How to do this? The only way (only legal way!) to do this is to costantly change search results, mixing rating for every single image with contributor rating... it's really complicated, I know, but it can be done.

Giving the high numbers of new files every day the result should be to have a completely different search result page quite every minute (or second...).

But the point is to bear in mind the buyers advantage: agency probably want to give them a good mix of new and old good images. How can i cap earnings of old images? Simply impossible, as they should just disappear from search results. And if ALL good earnings should disappear from search results the buyer would be not very happy to find different images every day.

About contributors: ok, I could give a contributor rating, instead of image rating. I could, let's say, give a maximum rating for total images of a single contributor and push up and down his images (so his earnings) until a maximum amount. In this way, contributors with many images would be strongly punished!
No sense at all.

What I really think is that the growing mountain of images tend to make this calculation quite impossible, and any statistics is unreliable, as should depends from number of total files and number of files uploaded by single contributor.
What I really think is that there is a big contradiction between people who cry about drop in earnings and people who cry for stable earnings (too much stable?). The two points of view are at the opposite, but often we read both in the same thread, as in this.
Finally I cannot be sure about the real answer, of course :)
And, as I told before, I think Mb post is really interesting and I can imagine that something is true. What I believe is that final purpose of manipulation is NOT to give cap on earnings, as I can't see a clear reason to do this without big risk to penalize buyers.


 

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