Best Month Ever = newbie response
Worst Month Ever = veteran response

I've finally come to accept that it's virtually impossible for an ms vet to get past the dreaded wall, and here's why...

If a newbie has a port of 50 images one month, and 100 the next, his/her port size went up 100%.
In that same month, the total images on any given site went up from, say, 25 to 26 million images, an increase of 4%.  As long as the rookie's percentage rate of port increase beats the total image percentage of increase, he/she can see fantastic growth.

But if a veteran has a port of 5000 images one month and 5,100 the next, his/her port size went up  just 2%.  Compared to the 4% monthly growth in total images available on the agencies, the ms vet is going backward, and will see less money each month.

Of course, there are other factors such as monthly variations (March is always a better month than April, December is always much worse than January).  So run the same calculation on an annual basis.  Depressing, depressing results.

It's a numbers game, and once your port is a certain size, and as the agencies keep growing at an incredible rate, you WILL start going backward.  I denied this reality for a long time, insisting that I could overcome the wall by finding niches and meeting an aggressive daily quota, and I may have held back the wall for a year or two by doing this, but it ended up crushing me. 

I've got nearly double the port size I had two years ago, and I'm averaging a few dollars less every day.  And I expect two years from now to be making even less.  For the first time in nearly 8 years of doing this, I feel very negative about microstock.

Totally agree. I think everyone would be happy if SS increase their payments by ~5% for every $10,000 lifetime earnings after first $10,000. Otherwise, for veterans who has already reached $10,000 lifetime earnings, it's not fair. I think this is not a big deal for a big company like SS. Even small companies increase their employees salaries once a year (OK, we are not really employees of SS, but they cannot do it without us). We are not asking for this hard enough. Many people has changed from their full-time jobs to work as a full-time micro stock contributor after seeing the growth of income in first couple of years. However, they simply have to end up by disappointing themselves after couple of more years, after their income just freezes or even goes backward. We need to make a big shout and ask for a change.

Just very odd. Some raking it in, apparently. Others invisible....

Best Month Ever = newbie response
Worst Month Ever = veteran response

I've finally come to accept that it's virtually impossible for an ms vet to get past the dreaded wall, and here's why...

If a newbie has a port of 50 images one month, and 100 the next, his/her port size went up 100%.
In that same month, the total images on any given site went up from, say, 25 to 26 million images, an increase of 4%.  As long as the rookie's percentage rate of port increase beats the total image percentage of increase, he/she can see fantastic growth.

But if a veteran has a port of 5000 images one month and 5,100 the next, his/her port size went up  just 2%.  Compared to the 4% monthly growth in total images available on the agencies, the ms vet is going backward, and will see less money each month.

Of course, there are other factors such as monthly variations (March is always a better month than April, December is always much worse than January).  So run the same calculation on an annual basis.  Depressing, depressing results.

It's a numbers game, and once your port is a certain size, and as the agencies keep growing at an incredible rate, you WILL start going backward.  I denied this reality for a long time, insisting that I could overcome the wall by finding niches and meeting an aggressive daily quota, and I may have held back the wall for a year or two by doing this, but it ended up crushing me. 

I've got nearly double the port size I had two years ago, and I'm averaging a few dollars less every day.  And I expect two years from now to be making even less.  For the first time in nearly 8 years of doing this, I feel very negative about microstock.

Actually, the growth numbers are not all that bad on shutterstock. Looks like this week the amount of new images is at 280k, and shutterstock has nearly 39 million images right now. That is less then 1% increase a week. Also keep in mind, probably 80% of the those 280k new images are probably poorly done photos of screwdrivers or apples on white, ducks, park benches, and stale food. The amount of "real" images you are competing with if you are half competent is very very small. So even growing your port at a very modest 2% a month should see growth.

Quote from: stockmarketer on June 27, 2014, 09:21

Best Month Ever = newbie response
Worst Month Ever = veteran response

I've finally come to accept that it's virtually impossible for an ms vet to get past the dreaded wall, and here's why...

If a newbie has a port of 50 images one month, and 100 the next, his/her port size went up 100%.
In that same month, the total images on any given site went up from, say, 25 to 26 million images, an increase of 4%.  As long as the rookie's percentage rate of port increase beats the total image percentage of increase, he/she can see fantastic growth.

But if a veteran has a port of 5000 images one month and 5,100 the next, his/her port size went up  just 2%.  Compared to the 4% monthly growth in total images available on the agencies, the ms vet is going backward, and will see less money each month.

Of course, there are other factors such as monthly variations (March is always a better month than April, December is always much worse than January).  So run the same calculation on an annual basis.  Depressing, depressing results.

It's a numbers game, and once your port is a certain size, and as the agencies keep growing at an incredible rate, you WILL start going backward.  I denied this reality for a long time, insisting that I could overcome the wall by finding niches and meeting an aggressive daily quota, and I may have held back the wall for a year or two by doing this, but it ended up crushing me. 

I've got nearly double the port size I had two years ago, and I'm averaging a few dollars less every day.  And I expect two years from now to be making even less.  For the first time in nearly 8 years of doing this, I feel very negative about microstock.

Actually, the growth numbers are not all that bad on shutterstock. Looks like this week the amount of new images is at 280k, and shutterstock has nearly 39 million images right now. That is less then 1% increase a week. Also keep in mind, probably 80% of the those 280k new images are probably poorly done photos of screwdrivers or apples on white, ducks, park benches, and stale food. The amount of "real" images you are competing with if you are half competent is very very small. So even growing your port at a very modest 2% a month should see growth.

We're in the middle of one of the slowest periods of the year for uploads. 

A better comparison is an annual one. 

Not sure of the best place to find data for a year over year comparison, but a quick Google search turned up this comparison, from Jan of 2013:

"Shutterstock continued to add to its digital library and now hosts a collection of 21.7 million images, compared with 16.2 million a year ago. " (SOURCE: http://www.sramanamitra.com/2013/01/09/shutterstocks-ipo-performance)

The growth rate described there is 34% in one year.  Let's assume that rate is the same today (I bet it's higher).  That means if you have a port of 5000 images, you would need to have 6700 a year from now just to maintain your share of visibility in the overall SS collection.  That's 1700 a year, or about 5 new uploads a day (assuming they ALL get accepted).

The following year you'd have to add 2238 to remain at that 34% growth rate, or about 6 new uploads accepted everyday.  Working even harder, not to grow but to just hold on to what you're making. 

I wish I did the math on this when I jumped into ms.  Probably would have talked myself out of it.

Excellent point, Michaeldb. Not only it will be impossible for SS mantain it's portfolio growth, the number of sales is also increasing. It's not so bad as it sounds. Even though some files simply have no chance as they get buried within minutes on common subjects.

Quote from: bpepz on July 01, 2014, 13:05

Actually, the growth numbers are not all that bad on shutterstock. Looks like this week the amount of new images is at 280k, and shutterstock has nearly 39 million images right now. That is less then 1% increase a month. Also keep in mind, probably 80% of the those 280k new images are probably poorly done photos of screwdrivers or apples on white, ducks, park benches, and stale food. The amount of "real" images you are competing with if you are half competent is very very small. So even growing your port at a very modest 2% a month should see growth.

There is a long talk about how tough the rejections have gotten on Shutter.  I don't think most of those new images are so LCV as you say.  The smaller growth is either people holding off uploading during the slow season, or the tougher reviews or both.

Have you looked at new uploads? Most of them suck, just like it has always been. The rejections at shutterstock lately almost seem random. I can confirm that I have had experiences similar to everyone else lately in that regard. Had an entire batch of 78 images declined for "out of focus", I resubmitted them and told them to take a second look, all 78 were accepted. This is probably the 3rd or 4th time something like this had happened.  The rejections seem to have nothing to do with quality.

The dreaded wall, a good way to put it and your analysis is quite fair.

But I loved the BME and WME part because it's so funny to watch the climb, the engine starts sputtering, then it stalls, and finally the microstock airplane hits the wall.  Flat Sales.

Yes, there are good months and bad and the slow time right now (for most), will bring out an accented disappointment from many.

People before you have come up with plans and yours was a good solid one, working at a steady pace, and growing with the market and concepts. Sorry to hear that it also finally succumbed to the dreaded wall of competition and massive volumes in collections.

I suppose you remember when people said, "this can't go on forever, the slice of the pie keeps getting smaller for each of us." And it does...

This isn't just sales on Shutter as the Subject, but sales everywhere. Most are worse. I'm still sailing fairly level and constant, rising and falling on the waves... but at some point, I know it will go flat calm.

Best Month Ever = newbie response
Worst Month Ever = veteran response

I've finally come to accept that it's virtually impossible for an ms vet to get past the dreaded wall, and here's why...

(much edited out, sorry)

Independence Day in the U.S...nobody's working.

Independence Day in the U.S...nobody's working.

I hate to break it to you but Umerika is not the entire world 

Quote from: Shelma1 on July 04, 2014, 14:25

Independence Day in the U.S...nobody's working.

I hate to break it to you but Umerika is not the entire world 

It's half the world in terms of microstock sales. More than half for me, in fact.

Quote from: Shelma1 on July 04, 2014, 14:25

Independence Day in the U.S...nobody's working.

Wait a minute I am working today! - albeit Stock photos - and I live in Seattle Washington.
I am trying my best to get my "Independence" from my daytime boss...

Me too...working on illustrations. Ad agencies are closed.

USA holiday + friday + 2 world cup games = low sales

Quote from: Shelma1 on July 04, 2014, 15:40

Quote from: Teddy the Cat on July 04, 2014, 14:39

Quote from: Shelma1 on July 04, 2014, 14:25

Independence Day in the U.S...nobody's working.

I hate to break it to you but Umerika is not the entire world 

It's half the world in terms of microstock sales. More than half for me, in fact.

Yep. Same here. The U.S. is the largest stock photo market. More sales than in all of Europe and Asia combined.

Approx 75% of my sales are not from the US. It's a huge market but the are 196 countries on this planet and many of them buy photos/footage from SS