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panicattack · Joined: 15 May 2011 Posts: 133

Last download from US area was 2011-12-07

weird.

symbiot · Joined: 06 Feb 2009 Posts: 93

Dear Forumguru,

As written above, I continue to experience literally “zero” downloads from US area.

It is pretty weird cause I have constant downloads from European zone and rest of the world (except Canada and US) during Europe working hours and then, when it’s finished and normally US area start to be very active, it’s been really quite till the next day…

I still can see sales on the Mexican border but nothing in the US, like my images can’t get there…

For me it's totally unusual and very frustrating due to strong decrease of my sales here.

Dear Forumguru, could you please give your opinion about this situation and solution to get my US sales back as it was before?

Thanks in advance

subarashii21 · Joined: 12 May 2011 Posts: 433 Location: Czech Republic

Susan · Joined: 06 May 2005 Posts: 6263

Susan · Joined: 06 May 2005 Posts: 6263

In case any of you missed this in this thread.

http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=116068

panicattack · Joined: 15 May 2011 Posts: 133

this was answer from support team after I asked them about no US sales:

"We are not experiencing any issues with our servers or for customers from the
US. It could be the time of year or simply one of those things that can
happen."

sorry but I believe nobody from buyers can see any difference because some new images DO shows in searches. I'm not among those lucky contributors.

I'm not on Shutterstock for a long time, but I have almost 10x more images now compared when I started and this will be my worst week ever.

There is something wrong because last image sold in USA was 2011-12-07 and before that more then 50% of my sales were from US.

Susan · Joined: 06 May 2005 Posts: 6263

There has been no response to this thread. Therefor we can assume they are not taking our low US sales seriously. I know a few people I have talked to who are experiencing the same issue and are afraid to speak up.

This problem is harder to demonstrate as concrete however it can be done.

I am going to start documenting the sales pattern with screen shots and numbers tallies during US business hours and then conversely Euro Ect time.

I have been a member since 2005 and my US sales number have definitely changed. My new Christmas images seem to be selling better in Europe, africa, asia, etc than they do in the US and that is not the norm for my port over the last 6 years. Even my older images which have been selling in the states for years are not receiving US daytime sales.

US sales during US business hours have been dismal for my port for months with the exception of a few flurries here and there. The pattern is not normal for my port and with all the other problems going on I think they could very well be overlooking a problem that is causing the low US sales.

Someone mentioned that Canadian sales are low... to my knowledge I never receive sales from Canada.

roystudio · Joined: 03 Oct 2011 Posts: 32

subarashii21 · Joined: 12 May 2011 Posts: 433 Location: Czech Republic

panicattack · Joined: 15 May 2011 Posts: 133

Still no changes here. One sale was close to Canadian border so I don't know.

However, images approved last days are searchable by all keywords... I will wait after 3 days passes because that's usually time where keywords disappears in my case.

Susan · Joined: 06 May 2005 Posts: 6263

subarashii21 · Joined: 12 May 2011 Posts: 433 Location: Czech Republic

Yes, 3 days after approval is the "magic moment" when keywords get bugged, I just found out that images approved last Friday stopped being searchable by their keywords.

However, it is strange - they are still searchable by description field words, as it was in the past, but only some combinations of words work. So now its not even possible to rely on description field fully. Hard knock life of a Shutterstock contributor..

triceratops · Joined: 15 Nov 2006 Posts: 7856 Location: The other Nevada

I wouldn't worry too much about this. Sales of US versus non-US vary widely from month to month and year to year. I went back and looked at my stats for as far back as they are available. Over the last six months, beginning in November and working backwards, the percentage of dollars (should closely approximate sales) works out like this:

US: 52.6%, non-US: 47.4%
US: 38.3%, non-US: 61.7%
US: 41.6%, non-US: 58.4%
US: 62.6%, non-US: 37.4%
US: 33.9%, non-US: 66.1%
US: 47.7%, non-US: 52.3%

Overall, using all available statistics, the number of months which had a predominance of US sales (dollars) came to 41% while months where non-US sales (dollars) predominated was 59%.

Conclusion? It's going to vary every month and you can't judge what's going on by only a small sample (short time period). I've gone from a high of 2/3 of my sales to US sites to a low of 1/3 of sales going to the US. The only thing to be gleaned from this is that sales continue. It's when all sales begin to drop that we need to worry.

roystudio · Joined: 03 Oct 2011 Posts: 32

We worry because there is NO (0%) exactly US area downloads. There is only occasionally download on the border (in my case - US/Mexico border) and dont know is it US download or not.