MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Shutterstock.com => Topic started by: takestock on April 28, 2008, 02:51
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Have noticed quite a few forum posts at SS have been reporting slower sales in recent times.
Are we to expect this as SS grows bigger with more competition among contributors or is it a reflection of the current global economy?
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When they put their prices up, sales fall a bit. I remember April last year was a bad month for me. Hopefully things will improve when they give us our raise.
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A drop of alreay 18 % for this month is not a slight drop...:-)
I hope the raise compensated for the drop in donwloads.
Patrick H.
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I have noticed a drop of about 30% since christmas which is quite scarry!
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It took almost a year, but I finally had a BME last month and will likely beat it this month. Just normal ebbs and flows.
Yes...you can expect sales to slow as the database continues to grow and photos get older. A good rule of thumb to maintain decent sales is to find a niche and specialize in specific subjects.
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30-45% drop in sales for me. uploading as before. :'(
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I haven't noticed any drop at SS, but then I have been uploading like crazy the past couple of months so that may be the reason.
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... Just normal ebbs and flows ...
Yes, that's just what I always remind myself when I'm thinking that sales are dropping; "normal ebbs and flows". Being a bit sad, I always keep an Excel spreadsheet up-to-date with monthly sales at each site. The totals are all over the place but the linear regression line is (fortunately), steadfastly on an upward trend. Once I see this trend reversed, then I'll start to worry!
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I haven't noticed any drop at SS, but then I have been uploading like crazy the past couple of months so that may be the reason.
One might think that with a pile of new uploads, the fact that you don't see strong growth is actually a decline of sorts. There were some threads on the SS forums saying that they found it hard to grow their SS income even as they kept uploading.
Relatively speaking, IS and FT are having a good month (for me) and SS is having an OK one (although one or two more extended license sales might even things up!)
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I haven't noticed any drop at SS, but then I have been uploading like crazy the past couple of months so that may be the reason.
One might think that with a pile of new uploads, the fact that you don't see strong growth is actually a decline of sorts. There were some threads on the SS forums saying that they found it hard to grow their SS income even as they kept uploading.
Well I am on track for BME by a couple hundred dollars there so I would consider that growth.
And it is common knowledge you have to keep uploading to shutterstock or sales fall off.
Another reason SS incomes may not be growing much for those who aren't uploading a lot is because they haven't yet put the new royalties in place.
My sales at IS, for example, declined over most of the past year, but because of higher prices income stayed level. (although this month I am finally seeing some growth there, and attribute it mostly to meeting my UL limits every week for the past couple months)
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I haven't noticed any particular slow down.may be not a BME but doing well so far.
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I'm 13.5% over 2007 ytd, but my portfolio there has grown much more than that.
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I've noticed quite a lot of complaints from new-ish contributors - pretty natural that sales drop off after the initial upload bonus wears off.
Personally I'll probably end the month + or - 30 DLs on last month, but then I uploaded about 30 more files last month, and it was my BME...
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Well I am on track for BME by a couple hundred dollars there so I would consider that growth...
...My sales at IS, for example, declined over most of the past year, but because of higher prices income stayed level. (although this month I am finally seeing some growth there, and attribute it mostly to meeting my UL limits every week for the past couple months)
Thank you for saying this Lisa. I cannot say enough about Shutterstock. Sales are fantastic, EL's are fantastic. There is no comparison in my portfolio between SS and IS. The gap widens every month.
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no drop for me... march just missed being BME and I'm pleased so far with April. 8)=tom
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Almost triple my BME this month :o so no... no slowdown for me. I dunno why tho.
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Mine are down 50% this month. But I have submitted only 10 files and had 7 rejected.
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A very slow month at SS for me. IS is ahead by more than 30% for the month, with a much smaller portfolio.
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Sales have slowed down there so much, I barely check my account anymore. I just don't have time to constantly feed the beast. OTOH, I'm having my third in a row BME at IS after being there for over three years.
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It slow for me also for April mostly. I uploaded about 12 to 18 I don't remember exactly, but they wasn't seem to be popular. It was some every day signs on white and even 3 picture on white of a Ford T that I was expecting to do better than 2 or 3 downloads.
Most of the time my signs on white were selling much more than that but maybe it wasn't the right subject choice... I changed my username, maybe it messed up the things? Do the buyers have a bookmark where they put some photographers in?
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Yes! Vonkara - buyers can bookmark you at SS.
BTW, how to you manage to change your username?
They have a form to dot his but it never seems to work!
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very slow tooo
i raise my portfolio +15% for April
and i have - 20% downloads.
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Yes! Vonkara - buyers can bookmark you at SS.
BTW, how to you manage to change your username?
They have a form to dot his but it never seems to work!
It taken 1 or 2 days before the change was viewable in the search. And the old one was giving 0 after these 2 days. I just changed it in the profile page if I remember
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Just for fun let see what Alexa have to say about SS
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/Shutterstock.com
I suggest you to put the graph one one year (6 month by default)
It seem that on one year SS have taken a small drop
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So experiences are obviously varying from contributor to contributor, but after nearly a year of leading the earnings table for me, this month SS is in 3rd place (behind IS and FT).
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did reviews slow down during the last 2 weeks as well?
also I do not get the "review results eMails" anymore. Do You?
Regards
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Alexa only measures visits by people who have installed the Alexa toolbar and is not a good indication of traffic. For example any locked down corporate desktop won't allow you to install non approved software.
Essentially Alexa shows a percentage of traffic but drawing conclusions from it simply valueless
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I don't see a decline at all in 08. I've had my best month with individual sales in April (my 12th complete month with SS). In January I had 100 less sales than April - but it was my BME due to more EL's.
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Alexa only measures visits by people who have installed the Alexa toolbar and is not a good indication of traffic. For example any locked down corporate desktop won't allow you to install non approved software.
Essentially Alexa shows a percentage of traffic but drawing conclusions from it simply valueless
Yes I know, but it's like when there's elections. They call a thousand or so people and then they give the pourcentage. Even whitout having the whole infos the specialist say that it's give a good representation. And the results are good most of the time. But I have to agree that this way to get infos is not logic, but it seem to work most of time
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SS is for me not comparable with other sites, because I have there 20 times more downloads than on all other sites together. I don't know if it's usual...
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Weird. After being so happy to have my BME on SS in April, now all of a sudden for May the sales seem to have been cut in half.
Probably way too soon to draw any conclusions, but I am tempted to wonder if a lot of expired subscribers are holding off to try out istocks new subscription svc. this month.
Or maybe I am just having an off couple of days.
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Lisa I think that it is being caused by the holiday weekend in most of Europe since last Thursday.
Weird. After being so happy to have my BME on SS in April, now all of a sudden for May the sales seem to have been cut in half.
Probably way too soon to draw any conclusions, but I am tempted to wonder if a lot of expired subscribers are holding off to try out istocks new subscription svc. this month.
Or maybe I am just having an off couple of days.
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I agree with the Bank Holiday in Europe statement.
I have been with SS for quite a few years now and was surprised in April to see how many of my older pictures were selling... :) :)
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Lisa I think that it is being caused by the holiday weekend in most of Europe since last Thursday.
Oh, this is a big relief! Thank you for letting me know :)
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And May is sure starting off slowly because of it ... let's hope for a bumper crop of DLs next week!
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I believe Monday is a bank holiday in the UK, so that may put a damper on the start of the week.
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I believe Monday is a bank holiday in the UK, so that may put a damper on the start of the week.
Correct. It may have also contributed to a slower day today, many will take the Friday off to have a four day weekend.
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last month was my best month in sales ever on SS in the last few years