It's a way of competition in order to give everyone a reason to impoove and submit better images. It's also there to help achieve some quality standards.

It's 100% natural for all images in the top 50 to get copied by other artists. If you read the automated email you receive from SS after each batch you submit , you will see that they encourage you to visit the top50 and design similar images

Konstantinos

...I doubt you came up with all the ideas for your vector and I don't mean you copied. You see what sells and try to modify that to look even better (if you didn't do that most of your work would be totaly different from anything on the sites)...

True, but I also wonder if this is also more harmful than helpful. For example, in early December I pretty much gave up on making Christmas-themed images, because everything I can up with was already done in some way. There was too much competition in that category of images. Same with Valentine's Day. I made a few heart illustrations, but again, because there are a thousand other heart images out there, they didn't sell very well. I wonder if the Top 50 is just creating a repeating cycle of image styles and looks. A few images sell well, so people make more of those kinds of images, then other people make images similar to those, and so on.

I'm almost thinking more along the lines of looking at the Top 50 and not doing those kinds of images. In vectors, floral designs are super common. I'm less inclined to create more florals because I know I'll be competing with thousands of other floral images. I can make unusual icons or other shapes (as I've been doing lately) that no one else is doing, and have much better chances at success.

i use the top 50 as motivation and as an analysis tool to show what "look" people are buying... it constantly still shows that buyers want clean, crisp images - even images that are made up from several images.

I don't use it to copy, but to inspire - but then again, everyone's different

well i can perhaps agree with the copycat problems with listing a top 50 images, but the top 50 images on shutterstock aren't neccesarily the best images for buyers, or images with the most potential. 

What they ARE, are images that are in lightboxes.  If you look through the lightboxes, then look through the top images there are many similars.  Getting an image in the shutterstock lightbox is a ride to the top 50.... so my point is.... errr....

duplicating top 50 images won't necessarily guarantee sales, because those duplicated images won't be found in a light box and that subject / style of picture perhaps wasn't enough to float on it's own.... to a certain extent anyhow.

Helix I understand what you mean and I agree with you. Like I said there is not much benefit from it. But the overabundance of some categories is getting bigger in bigger.