MicrostockGroup

Agency Based Discussion => Shutterstock.com => Topic started by: hatman12 on September 14, 2015, 16:55

Title: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: hatman12 on September 14, 2015, 16:55
I've noticed that over the past month or two my new uploads to Shutterstock aren't selling particularly well.  The sales action seems to be in older files at the moment.  Has there been a search shift towards older files?  Is this something that happens from time to time?
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: wordplanet on September 14, 2015, 18:19
Since the spring, new images started selling better for me than they had in a while. My actual income and the percentage of income from new images has risen appreciably for me, even though I haven't uploaded a lot of new work.

I had a big drop off in new image sales back in 2014 - not sure if it's cyclical with SS or just has to do with what type of image you upload and the luck of a percentage of those new images catching on and getting regular sales.

For me, current best-sellers among my new work include some concept stuff which I expected to do nicely as well as a beautiful empty beach image which I didn't even expect them to accept. I think that the luck of new work catching on as well as finding the right trends has a lot to do with it.
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: Dumc on September 15, 2015, 00:26
Agree. It just has to be right image at the right place at the right time. For example, I have one photo which is selling well, and if you searched for main keyword of that photo it resulted more than 150.000 hits. But I immediately had a few sales after uploading it and it quickly climbed in popular and relevant searches and was on the top of the first page of "popular" and "relevant" among more than 150.000 results.
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: weymouth on September 15, 2015, 02:26
All very well but on the whole they are selling and promoting old material. Playing it safe of course. They have to answer to a bunch of share-holders and heaven forbid if there is a penny short.

As far as we are concerned one might ask what's the point in uploading fresh material when it's not given a fair chance to be seen.
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: Lana on September 15, 2015, 08:18
I also noticed that recently most of the sales have been coming from the older files and new ones needed to hang in there for a while to start selling, beginning this August. Even back in July i had instant sales with the freshly approved content.
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: PROStalkFatagopher on September 15, 2015, 10:02
Shutterstock is all messed up. What a bunch of amateurs running that place.
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: Rinderart on September 15, 2015, 20:09
Shutterstock is all messed up. What a bunch of amateurs running that place.

Kids...More like it. there a lot cheaper.
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: 60D on September 15, 2015, 20:48
Stupidity - Trying to change something when it's already good enough.
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: weymouth on September 16, 2015, 01:06
Shutterstock is all messed up. What a bunch of amateurs running that place.

Kids...More like it. there a lot cheaper.

LOL!  city slickers with lovely Armani suits and Gucci shoes, Prada handbags. ;D
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: mojaric on September 16, 2015, 07:26
uploaded 2 days ago 5 images of a CNC milling machine...4 sales after one day online....i think really depends on the image subject
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: einstein on October 12, 2015, 16:38
I uploaded a new big bunch of images last month and they were selling very well until the 1st October. This month I suddenly have days with no sales and almost all sales are very old images.

I think they are rotating the content and they arrived at the point where the rotation is back to my old content which was of course lower quality because I was a beginner back then.

I would guess that they rotate the content yearly under assumption that Christmas images are submitted before Christmas etc. This also pumps over market knowledge from previous years into the next year.  Seasonal images get preboosted that way. Another effect is that good but previously overlooked images get another chance to travel to the top if they manage to get discovered this time.

This strategy is understandable, but has those bad side effects which are pain in my ass. They should adjust some gears in their current algorithm.

Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: Lana on October 12, 2015, 17:06
I uploaded a new big bunch of images last month and they were selling very well until the 1st October. This month I suddenly have days with no sales and almost all sales are very old images.

I think they are rotating the content and they arrived at the point where the rotation is back to my old content which was of course lower quality because I was a beginner back then.


I felt the effect too, looking at my stats sales suddenly slowed down on October 3rd - 1 sale for the whole weekend - and then I also had one Wednesday without a single sale which is really weird coz Tue to Thur were always the best days, this last weekend was slow too
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: duben on October 13, 2015, 03:41
It will depends on content you are submiting. Curerntly my new upload approved set has 4 sales in 24 hours from approvement ... and its animals one of the worst theme for selling in microstock.
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: beketoff on October 13, 2015, 09:12
Also noticed a considerable drop in sales as of October, with few days already with 0 sales, and few more days with only 1-3 sales only. Even holiday-quiet August was way better. Seeing others here reporting similar trends, my understanding is that it's not about my images but rather a general shift in their system/policy, be it images reshuffling, upgrading or anything else.
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: Dumc on October 13, 2015, 10:05
I'm not seeing any drop. I have almost the same number of sales as in september (which was BME) and earned slightly more money.

You probably have to blame it on your photos rather then SS.
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: searagen on October 13, 2015, 12:15
This question comes up periodically. The reality is that while some new images pop to the top of the list, it takes a while for images to be downloaded no matter what distributor.  I've mined some data from my portfolio and one way to see this is to see how long it takes for an image to sell. Looking at Shutterstock, the following table shows that of images I uploaded in 2005, 100% have sold. However, of those that were uploaded in 2015, only 44% have sold (so far):

The third column shows the total for 8 different agencies:  BS, CS, CR, DP, DT, FO, IS, and SS. The overall results are clear:  SS is ahead of the average, and often substantially so, for each and every year.

YEAR         SS Only     ALL
2005    100%   82%
2006    96%     70%
2007    92%     60%
2008    98%     58%
2009    93%     52%
2010    89%     45%
2011    84%     42%
2012    75%     39%
2013    68%     36%
2014    47%         20%
2015    46%     15%

I am not defending Shutterstock and have no idea if/when they tweak their search engine. Just pointing out that new images always struggle but that, over time, they do tend to get downloaded at least once. It would be interesting to repeat this to weight this by the number of downloads by year -- but that's not as easy to sort out across the agencies.

As always, your results may vary. This is only my portfolio.
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: YadaYadaYada on October 13, 2015, 12:38
Look at your catalog manager. I'll let you decide for yourself. Here's mine.

Newest 10%

1,354.09

Oldest 10%

159.01

Sure looks like my new images sell better?

Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: searagen on October 14, 2015, 14:27
Figured out a way to do similar for my portfolio. Looking at number of downloads, the results show the same concept that newer images do better than the older images; however, the magnitude of results is clearly different from YadaYadaYada's. I've always thought that my portfolio is perhaps less commercial but has more of a long tail for specific images. Anyway, looking at just the last 12 months:

Oldest 10% of images:  72 downloads.
Newest 10% of images:  133 downloads.

It's worth noting that the newest 10% only counts images accepted over the last 12 months (from Oct 15, 2014), so they have been online for only an average of roughly 5-6 months while the oldest 10% was online for the full 12 months. If you doubled the results of the newest 10% for a full 12 month view, you would have 266 downloads which means that they are generating almost 4X the number of downloads of the oldest images.

Good luck.
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: Shelma1 on October 14, 2015, 14:46
Looking at my stats, the drop in sales of new images is pretty dramatic. I wrote here just a few months ago that 50% of my sales were coming from new images, but that's dropped to less than ten percent over the last few months.
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: Lana on October 20, 2015, 04:07
I feel like my portfolio has suddenly gone invisible, only 2-3 of my bestsellers are still selling, the rest of the photos - no more, not even those that generated good steady sales over the last months..

Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: epixx on October 20, 2015, 04:48
Something is happening. Last month, I earned more from Alamy than from Shutterstock, with half the portfolio on Alamy. This month, they seem more or less equal. My last 4 or 5 uploads to SS have all been rejected 100%. I get rejects for noise with photos taken at ISO 64 with a D810   :o
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: Smilla on October 20, 2015, 10:40
I've noticed a huge drop in sales at SS too, 6000+ port.
Down about 60-70%.
I earnt just under a hundred bucks in my first month there 2 years ago and I'm scraping along today at $208 so far. It'll be hitting iStock territory soon.
Canva is $438 so far this month....

Change in the search algorithm???
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: 60D on October 20, 2015, 10:46
Canva is $438 so far this month

How many files in Canva?
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: Dumc on October 20, 2015, 11:38
Having hard time believing you, you've only earned 200$ with 6000+ photos.
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: Smilla on October 20, 2015, 11:57
2000 files at Canva. 50-100 sales a day.

And yes, $208 for the month so far with 6000+ images. Thats why I'm answering this thread as it seems odd to see such a drop.

Last October I earnt $800+ for the month at SS, I'd been with them about 9 months after leaving Fotolia exclusivity.

What are your stats like Dumc?
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: Dumc on October 20, 2015, 12:02
70$ SS, ~740 files
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: Smilla on October 20, 2015, 12:07
70$ SS, ~740 files

Exactly.

I only had a couple of thousand images up last October and they earnt $800+ that month.
Now with 3 times as much i earn a quarter. Something is wrong somewhere.

Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: stockmn on October 20, 2015, 12:24
2000 files at Canva. 50-100 sales a day.


Wow, you're doing a whole lot better than me at Canva. With 781 files I've had 83 sales this month so far. Although 2-300 of those files are one's that I put up when they first opened that are still listed as "pending cut-out".
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: etudiante_rapide on October 20, 2015, 12:35
hatman, ditto .
as someone else said months ago, if you remove the SOD large single sale of $28 to $102
you will see there is in fact a very large drop in sales compared to past years.

with your thread, i went to take a review of my sales and yes, for sure,
remove the SOD large amounts and i see a shocking drop from the years
where i had no large SOD sales and even smaller portfolio

new images, almost not even make 20% of the sales. you wonder why you feed the beast.
Title: Re: Shutterstock - new uploads not selling
Post by: Smilla on October 20, 2015, 12:37
stockmm - 83 sales on 581 images at two thirds of the month is pretty good if you think about it.

I was doing kind of ok on there till i bit the bullet and just isolated all the images myself....it took a while and i got a very bad back from it for months but its paying off now. I'm psyching up the courage to isolate another 2000.....