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Go figure

Same website, same search criteria, totally different results.

Tomorrow I'm doing the exact same exercise at the same time with a pal in Christchurch (NZ), my friend in VA and again my pal in London.

I'll post the results although I suspect the same thing

We're getting close to the point where a representative from SS shows up and posts an oddly vague, not-quite-denial that this is happening - then doesn't answer the followup questions.   :-)

lets all play this game then, search for "business man" and post your results

Same old same old. Someone takes the time to watch his port closely for 3 full months and then reports detailed information regarding his sales pattern and then receives the usual parroted spew "Stop judging your sales on daily bases, it will drive you mad. Look at it from month to month. "

The OP asks for experiences and I am sharing mine. I do look at my port over longer periods and I do not experience what the OP is experiencing. But I dont say the OP is wrong, do I? I am sure he is right, but I dont share the same experience. With you no one is ever allowed to share their experience unless its doom and gloom about SS. You sound an awful lot like someone on the SS forum with a port of 500 images.

PS to add: I once opened a thread on SS where I said I thought my earnings were capped and it was ridiculed by the establishment. Similar experience as to the OP but that is no longer happening. However my monthly sales do hoover around the same dollar amount. And then it surges again to the next BME. I cant put my finger on it as its unpredictable.

lets all play this game then, search for "business man" and post your results

Same images same order for me too for "Business man" and also for "Business men"

   For me, only the first three images are the same. Next are totally different order, and some other images.

where are you located?

still the same results here (UK)

Same. Based in UK BTW.

I can't do the NZ test until next week, my buddy in Christchurch is away this weekend so I'll tee it up for Monday, three way between Fredericksburg/London/Christchurch.

   Luis, Romania. Now, one hour later, it has changed. More like your searches but not the same. I don't find how to post it here, but this time I have saved it.
   Btw, my sales are down big time this month. Very hard recovery after the holidays. Actually, no recovery.
   Interesting on this topic, I had the exact number of dlds two months in a row, two times, both december-january. I am talking of some hundreds number. EXACT NUMBER!!!

interesting stuff! keep telling your searches here

It seems to me that what Ethan has discovered is statistical averages, not a cap on earnings.  If you have a large number of sales - which I guess he does - from a large number of files being bought at random by a large number of different people then you will tend to find that the daily averages are very close.  The larger the average number of sales, the smaller the percentage difference from day to day is going to be.

In Ethan's case he reports that he sees a variation of around 10% in daily sales (there is a 10% difference between 4.5% and 5% of his portfolio) If his sales are around 100 a day or more I think that would be perfectly normal.  I strongly suspect that he is disregarding the odd day when he sells 4.0% or 5.5% because he regards it as a rogue result when something went wrong with the "cap". Or maybe he sells 1,000 a day, when the average would be much tighter - say 4.7-4.9%, and the outliers are at the 4.5 and 5 level.

This averaging effect has always been one of the great things about microstock. If you get thousands of sales a month you will have a pretty good idea of what your earnings are going to be next month - which will be pretty close to the figure for this month and last month.

Take a look at Alamy. You know your sales aren't being capped there because one month you might get 10 sales and make $800 and the next month you might make one sale and get $40.  Now extrapolate that "non-capped" result to SS: one month you get 10,000 sales and make $8,000, the next month you make 1,000 sale and get $400.  Would that mean that SS was not fiddling the results? No, it would mean the exact opposite. Because as sales volume increases the variation decreases so if you average 5,500 sales a month it is very improbable that 10,000 will be in one month and 1,000 in the other; it is, however, very, very likely that 5,500 plus or minus 5% will be in each month.

I'm not good enough at maths to do any proper mathematical analysis of this (and it's probably necessary to know how many sales a day there are rather than just that there is a 10% difference between high and low totals) but we're probably all familiar with the Bell Curve and the fact that the more data points you have the tighter the shape of the curve will become.

In short, if the day-to-day variation in sales is very small, then the chances are that it means you are selling lots of licenses and doing very well, so things average out over a very short period of time. It doesn't indicated that you're being swindled.

In any case, why would SS want to "cap" successful artists? It's in their interests to let buyers see work that people like, not to hide it away from them, and a portfolio selling 4%+ of its entire content every day is very successful indeed. According to the figures they've just published, on average less than 1% of the content is sold each day.

And, while I think of it, the apparent lack of ODs and ELs is likely to be a reflection of the low volume/large variation effect that you also see with Alamy rather than a real change in their frequency.

BTrousers makes valid points but ignores the reported observation of sales stopping when the cap is reached.

It seems like it would only make sense that SS or any Stock site for that matter would change up the images so as to look fresh to the regular buyers who shop there. Just like Google constantly changes things up. Also it seems like they would have some sort of organic system that doesn't always show the same results otherwise people searching for photos will always pull up Yuri.(For Example)

In the end although it stinks if you rank very high on the search results, overall I think it helps even the playing field so that more of everyones images are seen and sell especially as more and more images are uploaded.

Just like on Google, how many pages back is someone going to go when looking to buy an image? On Google when I look for things I typically go back two pages and almost never three. I think Stock Searches probably have some sort of max as well unless you need something really specific.

It seems like it would only make sense that SS or any Stock site for that matter would change up the images so as to look fresh to the regular buyers who shop there. Just like Google constantly changes things up. Also it seems like they would have some sort of organic system that doesn't always show the same results otherwise people searching for photos will always pull up Yuri.(For Example)

In the end although it stinks if you rank very high on the search results, overall I think it helps even the playing field so that more of everyones images are seen and sell especially as more and more images are uploaded.

Just like on Google, how many pages back is someone going to go when looking to buy an image? On Google when I look for things I typically go back two pages and almost never three. I think Stock Searches probably have some sort of max as well unless you need something really specific.

Exactly!

BTrousers makes valid points but ignores the reported observation of sales stopping when the cap is reached.

what cap man? are you wearing a hat? come on!

please specific the cap number

same results here