I do only video, and to be honest SS is the only agency where I get rejections.
The way it works is that generally they reject one third of each batch.
Reviewers are paid peanuts and certainly they don't have the time to actually look at each individual file (with video), but they are scared to death that if they accept a whole bunch they will be considered lazy, so they simply reject a few random one just to pretend that they have had a look at them.
Of course you resubmit them and the get all accepted, because they know that if they refuse them a second time, the artist might argue with whatever quality control service and reviewers will get in trouble.
Bottom line, every time you upload videos to SS, you know that one third will be rejected and you have to upload it again. A bit of an idiotic way to work, but after all you end up with everything accepted.
The only question is: Why SS keep paying useless reviewers? they could save the money and give it to contributors, or give discount to customers

Quote from: Brightontl on October 28, 2018, 16:23

I do only video, and to be honest SS is the only agency where I get rejections.
The way it works is that generally they reject one third of each batch.
Reviewers are paid peanuts and certainly they don't have the time to actually look at each individual file (with video), but they are scared to death that if they accept a whole bunch they will be considered lazy, so they simply reject a few random one just to pretend that they have had a look at them.
Of course you resubmit them and the get all accepted, because they know that if they refuse them a second time, the artist might argue with whatever quality control service and reviewers will get in trouble.
Bottom line, every time you upload videos to SS, you know that one third will be rejected and you have to upload it again. A bit of an idiotic way to work, but after all you end up with everything accepted.
The only question is: Why SS keep paying useless reviewers? they could save the money and give it to contributors, or give discount to customers

This isn't my experience. I generally submit small batches of videos and have a rejection rate of less than 10%. Almost always I agree with the rejections when I look closely. Only once in seven years of submitting to SS have I felt that a reviewer has lazily or mistakenly pushed the reject button on a batch of videos and rejected the whole lot. SS support eventually agreed with me that the rejection was an error but I didn't bother resubmitting as P5 provided a perfectly acceptable home for the same batch anyway. i think to say that their reviewers reject a third of every batch is too sweeping a statement.

Yes, that's true, each batch would be reviewed on it's own merits, but it's also true that Shutterstock's rejection rate as a whole is 33% or thereabouts.

I am sure in a not so far future, MS companies will exclude portfolios of people who were flooding databases with low quality images (hem, maybe the words crap images are often more adequate)... Customers are surely getting more and more exasperated with the dilution of the good images.
Anyway, these practices are and will be a bad calculation for the efficiency of one's portfolio. Everything can move in microstock, in bad or good way.

My belief is they think intelligent search engines will in effect hide these images away....I just don't believe we've reached that point..as usual the hype about IT is a few years in advance of the reality.

Quote from: NoTrust on October 28, 2018, 15:12

I am sure in a not so far future, MS companies will exclude portfolios of people who were flooding databases with low quality images (hem, maybe the words crap images are often more adequate)... Customers are surely getting more and more exasperated with the dilution of the good images.
Anyway, these practices are and will be a bad calculation for the efficiency of one's portfolio. Everything can move in microstock, in bad or good way.

My belief is they think intelligent search engines will in effect hide these images away....I just don't believe we've reached that point..as usual the hype about IT is a few years in advance of the reality.

Like this? 

Showcase is an evolution of Shutterstock Labs, which was launched in 2012 as a platform for exploratory tools and products. The company has been developing innovative solutions to improve image search with tools such as Composition Search with computer vision technology, Spectrum and Reverse Image Search. The goal for Shutterstock is to make the millions of images it has in its library available with a higher degree of accuracy and speed. 

Stop, I have to read that again... "higher degree of accuracy and speed" not high, but higher, which means any improvement is higher, the search could still be terrible and it would be better and higher?

Or the May 8th, 2018 announcement?  https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/shutterstock-showcase-next-gen-image-search

We�re excited to introduce Shutterstock Showcase, a suite of visual search tools powered by AI and deep learning that will change the way you search for images. Oh yes, so excited! 

But they did add a plugin to search from Adobe CC. Watching these two moving ahead, and in all likelihood, they will leave the rest behind even more over time. Five years ago, would anyone predict, with any facts, that FT would pass IS? Look at the Big Four, and ask, what happened to all the rest below that?

I still think AI or some search tweak isn't going to make up for the total disaster and mess that low standards and accepting almost anything, has created.

SS stock price has dropped more than 10%, despite all the fluffing of the collection. So ruining things for buyers and contributors hasn't made investors happy either. Sad all around.

"Shutterstock (NYSE:SSTK) drops 10.3% on Q3 results that beat EPS estimates but missed on revenue. Downside Y18 guidance has revenue from $625M to $630M (consensus: $633.81), down from the prior guide of $625M to $635M. Adjusted EBITDA guide was also tightened from $105M to $110M to $105M.

Key metrics: Paid downloads, 43.9M (+5% Y/Y); revenue per download, $3.40 (+5%); image collection, 221M images (+42%); video collection, 12M clips (+44%)."

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3402687-shutterstock-minus-10_3-percent-mixed-q3-narrowed-fy-guide?dr=1#email_link

Quote from: Shelma1 on October 30, 2018, 09:47

SS stock price has dropped more than 10%, despite all the fluffing of the collection. So ruining things for buyers and contributors hasn't made investors happy either. Sad all around.

"Shutterstock (NYSE:SSTK) drops 10.3% on Q3 results that beat EPS estimates but missed on revenue. Downside Y18 guidance has revenue from $625M to $630M (consensus: $633.81), down from the prior guide of $625M to $635M. Adjusted EBITDA guide was also tightened from $105M to $110M to $105M.

Key metrics: Paid downloads, 43.9M (+5% Y/Y); revenue per download, $3.40 (+5%); image collection, 221M images (+42%); video collection, 12M clips (+44%)."

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3402687-shutterstock-minus-10_3-percent-mixed-q3-narrowed-fy-guide?dr=1#email_link

This is the pattern the stock price gradually recovers on optimism until the next set of results which slightly fail to deliver. Away from the stock market though SSs results still show growth so its not nearly as bad for shutterstock  as some would like to think. The number of downloads and revenue is still going up.

Interesting:
High
55.06
on Sep 12, 2018
Low
36.64
on Nov 3, 2017
Avg
47.37
for past 1 year

I'd say Shelma1 and others have this right. I will say it's not stockholders who they are trying to impress, it's investors. Stock holders want the value to go up, true, but investors are the ones who make that happen, by buying the stock at inflated prices. People keep writing about how the glut is somehow making stockholders happy. I see it as, only when they sell to investors who are buying the "we have more images" hype.

Maybe investors are finally seeing the same as we do, that more is not the same as better quality or attractive for licenses? 

I suppose SS could start another curated collection and actually have reviews and scrutiny of what's allowed in?

Utter utter shite. November statarted as abysmal as ever. The whole site has become a compromised bin. Depressing.

at least you are consistant, Feb. 2012

I have given up on SS and going to concentrate on my main earner which is IS (and that's still low). SS might be great for most people here but for me it has proved no returns on the time invested. I can't see it being any different from what it is now in the future. For me SS is the "Emperor's New Clothes" of microstock. With 1 or 2 sales a day of around 25 cents I can't understand how this can be sustainable.

Quote from: Herg on November 01, 2018, 15:43

Utter utter shite. November statarted as abysmal as ever. The whole site has become a compromised bin. Depressing.

Beat this igf you can and then tell me its not rigged!

Mon.....28.50
Tues.....27.96
Wed.    28.44
Thurs...26.88

so on and so forth!....its hard to realize that this was the site we praised to absolute heaven between 2005- 2015!  from then on its been a downhill slide all the way and today? well its hardy worth it anymore!   rant over!

PS/  wait for the ghostbusters! in particular two! ( you know the ones)  hahaha!

Are you complaining that things change or things don't change?

Not only is this strategy not good for contributors, it also makes it increasingly difficult for consumers to sort through the glut of poor quality images to find the good stuff. This emphasis on pleasing shareholders in the short term rather than thinking about what is best for the company in the long term is a problem across the business world. It all comes down to short-sighted greed.

Spot on!  greed!..........selling my shares some time ago was the best I've done!

anyway only the FIRST PAGE results of "popular" will sell
so the quality is always the best option to follow.

 

about the main subject "Why Shutterstock is accepting everything" :

in my experience,  Shutterstock was accepting everything for videos 1 year ago, now they are more selective and don't reject randomly but each video that has some issue, you can resend, and generally, they are refused again if they have some problem.

the person that will review them is not always the same.
other agencies like Pond5, have made the opposite and now accept everything, they just refuse the big violation of the copyright of what they cannot sell at all.

about the salary of the reviewers, I think that they cannot pay more, because they have a lot of files to review quickly  and the money they earn is not unlimited and they prefer to distribute to contributors

if you look at the SS stock option trend and company public charts you can find in google, you can see that they have grown a lot in terms of gross-profit:
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SSTK/shutterstock/gross-profit

but the Net Income was flat and depending on their revenue share.
This year, after many years of flat income,  they have probably changed something to keep more money for them, saving in RS or salaries:
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SSTK/shutterstock/net-income

So they cannot pay too much the reviewers if they want to survive

By the way. As it's Winter where I live, cold and all that. I've been going through some old saved photos and Microstock rejects. Some personally put aside before uploading and some that SS declined years ago. I found three that I thought had some potential, just because of the subject or composition. No I'm not retiring to live off Microstock, but I basically self reviewed, I don't remember if I perked them up a bit in editing, then uploaded a few weeks ago. Two have sold. Oh yes, passed review of course.

Like most of mine, they are one of a kind shots, and I'm not suggesting that anyone just spam their own portfolio and upload a bunch of marginal Crapstock. I'm saying that past rejections, before a few years ago, with some interesting subjects or that had a rejection for a minor reason, might be good enough to reconsider.

Annual reminder that we need to remember to look back at


"old photos, on hard drives on our computers"

Yeah seriously and a little humor as well.