Quote from: Mantis on December 08, 2015, 09:00

Quote from: Rinderart on December 05, 2015, 17:00

"It sends out a clear message that they are not interested in pro photographers at all. iStock seem to be coming to the same conclusion that pro's will migrate to Macro and the rest can be sold off cheap."

+1

The other thing SS has going for them (like other sites) is that they have A LOT of excellent contributors who simply don't pay attention to what's really happening or are in areas where a little money means a whole lot. That segment of suppliers probably isn't going away.  If everyone who knows what's happening were to pull their ports, it would not make much difference to the collection because there is plenty of good stuff to replace deletions. It unfortunate but it's a fact.

not sure which if i edited correctly , if not, sorry.
but this is the thing that seems to be prevelant here on msg. inconsistency .
what i mean is , only not long ago when rejections were high, many old guys were up with their pitchforks saying "the bar lifted too high already, for the kind of money you pay us".

so now, they lower the bar to very low, and still the voice is shouting saying "the bar is too low".

like cathy, i think , says, micro was never meant for "pros" using expensive cameras to shoot.
if not the cameras, but more the cost of production.  i also remember how someone also said we should be smarter at what we upload as it would be insane to upload works that cost an arm and a leg to produce.
but really, we all know it was never meant for any of us to be paid a lot of money from micro,
so we are flipping back and forth on our own expectation from ss.

i think until someone else comes along to give us as often dls and payout as ss,
i would hold my breath on going to macro or anyone who has not proven they can even be as
productive as dreamstime;  and we know how reliable that is.

looking on the right side, we still see all those long existing agencies still barely hitting past 30 .
so i won't be expecting anyone coming out or coming up to compete against ss.

for now, i will keep my own bar high, and use this lowering of the bar as a chance to actually
stand out above the rest. it's like the real world, you know.. when you see lots of ppl not caring about getting a good job. we still don't say, "oh... that's bad for me... if so many of them doing care
about aiming higher" . same applies to ss, you know. what worry what the others do...
it's really only us, what we do, if we earn more or less in 2016 with ss... with millions of 1/10 entries
and thousands of marijuanas ...
don't really matter anyway.
..should it???

Great comment.

I'm still new to Microstock having only been playing for 6 months or a bit less. I'm not all that good, but even so I'm making consistent sales here and with other sites so I'm happy.

If this does indeed lower the quality of SS content, it can only be good for those of us that are making sales and produce reasonable stuff.. we'll stand out more...

That said, it did stroke my ego getting accepted into SS - now it's no achievement at all.

This business is always good for the agencies and will gradually be bad for contributors. But there will come a day that it will blow up for everyone, agencies included. They know it and they will squeeze it all to the last drop.

- A couple years ago, allegedly, SS changed the search engine and search results so that images from newer contributors would show first than those from the older contributors already in the last .38 payment tier. As a result, me and many of us started to see that our new images uploaded were not being found and sold. Like this, SS would pay more commissions to the first tier than they would to the las tier. Less money paid, equally satisfied costumers.

- Many new contributors, happy with their sales, are motivated and keep uploading. Many last tier contributors, with good or great work, feel it's not worth to keep uploading because their new images don't sell. Many new contributors will reach the last tier one day too and will feel the same. SS doesn't give a s*it. There are always new contributors signing in every day.

-With this new 1/10 examination (LOL), hundreds or even thousands of no less than cellphone snapshooters will be able to build a portfolio of ...say... 10 images in one month. They will have one or two sales during the same time. Eventually they will give up because 0.50$ a month is not woth it to bother. These sales times hundreds or thousands of contributors that will not ever reach a payout, is always 100% profit for SS.

-One day, the quality of work will be so low that there will be no buyers interested and the business will collapse.

How am I doing as a profet?

This business is always good for the agencies and will gradually be bad for contributors. But there will come a day that it will blow up for everyone, agencies included. They know it and they will squeeze it all to the last drop.

- A couple years ago, allegedly, SS changed the search engine and search results so that images from newer contributors would show first than those from the older contributors already in the last .38 payment tier. As a result, me and many of us started to see that our new images uploaded were not being found and sold. Like this, SS would pay more commissions to the first tier than they would to the las tier. Less money paid, equally satisfied costumers.

- Many new contributors, happy with their sales, are motivated and keep uploading. Many last tier contributors, with good or great work, feel it's not worth to keep uploading because their new images don't sell. Many new contributors will reach the last tier one day too and will feel the same. SS doesn't give a s*it. There are always new contributors signing in every day.

-With this new 1/10 examination (LOL), hundreds or even thousands of no less than cellphone snapshooters will be able to build a portfolio of ...say... 10 images in one month. They will have one or two sales during the same time. Eventually they will give up because 0.50$ a month is not woth it to bother. These sales times hundreds or thousands of contributors that will not ever reach a payout, is always 100% profit for SS.

-One day, the quality of work will be so low that there will be no buyers interested and the business will collapse.

How am I doing as a profet?

The free market "invisible hand" will always find ways connect offer and demand.

For example, if searching becomes an issue, professional searchers will appear as middle man between agencies and customers.
Or, if SS collapses, as long as there is demand for good photos, somebody else will emerge to occupy the vacuum.

The only question you should ask yourself is if you are willing or able to compete in a free market, crowdsourced business.

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Great comment.

I'm still new to Microstock having only been playing for 6 months or a bit less. I'm not all that good, but even so I'm making consistent sales here and with other sites so I'm happy.

If this does indeed lower the quality of SS content, it can only be good for those of us that are making sales and produce reasonable stuff.. we'll stand out more...

That said, it did stroke my ego getting accepted into SS - now it's no achievement at all.

welcome to the great anal mythology of making millions with micro 
which is partly true though ... ss make millions we make peanuts 


seriously, i tell you i got in many years a go on 2nd try. but for many months although i got good ratio of approval my dls were not 7/10 at all. so really, it s not the 7/10 approval that is an achievement
but the 10/10 daily downloads that matters.
and as i said, even though these days i do get daily dls, i still manage to make millions of peanuts
cumulative..
so really, to walk around bragging we all got 7/10 or more to be with ss is really no big stuff

This business is always good for the agencies and will gradually be bad for contributors. But there will come a day that it will blow up for everyone, agencies included. They know it and they will squeeze it all to the last drop.

- A couple years ago, allegedly, SS changed the search engine and search results so that images from newer contributors would show first than those from the older contributors already in the last .38 payment tier. As a result, me and many of us started to see that our new images uploaded were not being found and sold. Like this, SS would pay more commissions to the first tier than they would to the las tier. Less money paid, equally satisfied costumers.

- Many new contributors, happy with their sales, are motivated and keep uploading. Many last tier contributors, with good or great work, feel it's not worth to keep uploading because their new images don't sell. Many new contributors will reach the last tier one day too and will feel the same. SS doesn't give a s*it. There are always new contributors signing in every day.

-With this new 1/10 examination (LOL), hundreds or even thousands of no less than cellphone snapshooters will be able to build a portfolio of ...say... 10 images in one month. They will have one or two sales during the same time. Eventually they will give up because 0.50$ a month is not woth it to bother. These sales times hundreds or thousands of contributors that will not ever reach a payout, is always 100% profit for SS.

-One day, the quality of work will be so low that there will be no buyers interested and the business will collapse.

How am I doing as a profet?

If review standards haven't changed, who gets to submit their rejected photos doesn't matter. The only changes I can tell is everybody can try to get their photos accepted/rejected, instead of wasting time passing a flawed and irrelevant 7 of 10 exam to get rejected. End of the broken exam to get in.

money sitting in an account is money ss cannot touch, i doubt it will be on their balance sheet as a credit, im 99% sure it is on the debit side. especially since they are a publicly traded company

Hmm, one opinion that SS review standards haven't changed and one opinion that the review standards are now tougher, when what I'm reading consistently for months now is that inspections are inconsistent and unpredictable.

Whatever, what benefit is it to either SS or contributors to have wannabes who can only get one out of ten images up to an arbitrary standard submitting their backlibrary? Either they'll be lowering their standards to match those of iStock, which would be a very poor move, or the substandard images will clog up the inspection process -expensive if humans are involved - and holding up acceptances for everyone. Lose all round.

I do see the value in them having lots of accepted files from new contributors who earn less. I wonder if the post above that SS want to sell training to the substandard newbies is really the reason behind this. Would it be worthwhile? I haven't a clue.

SS standards are tougher since quite a while now. Note the endless stream of complaints in this forum.
You can also call them inconsistent, if you want, because there are rejection errors, no doubt about it. I had my fair share of those.

The fact of the matter is that SS rejection rate is significantly higher than what it used to be, let's say, 1 year ago.

So no, the standards have not changed when the entry exam has been abolished, because tougher standards were already in place.

I believe it was a deliberate decision made by SS, aiming to improve the collection quality. It might work or not, but that policy change really happened some time ago (when they removed the "note to the reviewer", maybe?)
The side effect of that decision was a much tougher entry exam (call it unpredictable or inconsistent, if you like) than the one YOU had, when you got accepted. And that killed the flow of new contributors in the system.

It is obvious that a certain % of contributors, proud of their "SS contributor badge", might not pass a 7/10 exam, now (see those complaints about whole batches being rejected), especially since I believe that the entry exam implied at least two green lights from different reviewers.

If the rejection standards are kept high or further toughened, in SS eyes, there is no risk of extra quality dilution, even with the entry exam abolished.

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Quote from: Zero Talent on December 13, 2015, 11:37

It is obvious that a certain % of contributors, proud of their "SS contributor badge", might not pass a 7/10 exam, now (see those complaints about whole batches being rejected), especially since I believe that the entry exam implied at least two green lights from different reviewers.

I also see, from here and elsewhere, people having whole batches rejected, the accepted again when resubmitted without changes.
That would drive me to drink.

Sure, but someone who got the very first batch of 10 rejected, had to wait for 3 weeks, before trying again. Why would that be fair? Why do you want this injustice for a "wannabe" who had submitted perfectly acceptable photos?


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Watch for their next quarterly report to boast about how many new 'contributors' they've signed up.  That's all this is about.

Quote from: Zero Talent on December 13, 2015, 12:42

Quote from: ShadySue on December 13, 2015, 12:39

Quote from: Zero Talent on December 13, 2015, 11:37

It is obvious that a certain % of contributors, proud of their "SS contributor badge", might not pass a 7/10 exam, now (see those complaints about whole batches being rejected), especially since I believe that the entry exam implied at least two green lights from different reviewers.

I also see, from here and elsewhere, people having whole batches rejected, the accepted again when resubmitted without changes.
That would drive me to drink.

Sure, but someone who got the very first batch of 10 rejected, had to wait for 3 weeks, before trying again. Why would that be fair? Why do you want this injustice for a "wannabe" who had submitted perfectly acceptable photos?

They should have the entrance exam at the same standard or slightly higher, than the normal acceptance standard. If they know what that is.

There is no need for an entry exam, as long as every subsequent upload is an exam.

Somehow, you believe that a flawed review system becomes fair only when applied to "wannabes".
No it doesn't. It is the same.
Same reviewers review "wannabe" uploads, as well as "SS badge of honor" uploads.

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there should be new agency, image exclusive, slightly higher prices, for higher production and commercially higher quality images. Similar to stocksy,  but without that instagram retro look as requirement.

For high quality fashion, beauty, business, industry, medical, with many models in shoot or similar and also high quality landscape travel images (no snapshots taken from moving car). Also technically high standards in terms of focus, noise.

Most important of all, without those kind of crap images you have showed as example here. Same image with 100 different textual variation or things like that. It doesn't need to have 50 millions images, but to have high quality standard in terms mentioned above.

I can't see how anyone could spin a dropping of standards for new photographers, and the acceptance of tons of repetitious junk, as positives for a photo agency.  If you're thinking your photos will then look better by comparison, well, a needle looks nice and shiny compared to a haystack too.     

This is the attitude I see from classic taxi drivers, asking governments to ban Uber, because their drivers are not certified, when every Uber customer systematically certifies every driver. And they do it much better than any government inspector.

We don't have uber here, but I see a lot of problems reported due to their GPS, and I can understand that because our GPS systems often let us down. A driver who has done the knowledge might have a breakdown or get stuck in traffic, but they won't have problems with GPS. And certified drivers (here) are police checked and incidents with them (here) are very rare. I've read of attacks by uber drivers, e.g. http://www.whosdrivingyou.org/rideshare-incidents
Also of interest: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/uber-drivers-reveal-what-its-really-like-to-work-for-the-low-cost-taxi-company-a6769071.html