Shutterstock Photographer Forum :: View topic

jeffbanke · Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 10:20 am

I have been very remiss in that I have not been feeding the beast very much in the last 5 months, and it has finally caught up with me! My sales at SS are down 30% from the last 4 months, guess it is time to get back in the saddle and shoot some more, LOL!
Strangely, it does not seem to have affected my sales elsewhere?

aynia · Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 11:06 am

My sales are the same whether I upload or not....

Perhaps if I had a larger port I would notice a difference!!!!!!!!

rinder99 · Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 11:16 am

Im glad you started this discussion , I almost did a few times. I am completely the opposite. been sending in quite a few the last 5 months and it hasn't made a bit of difference and, as a matter of fact at least 90/95% of my sales which are very strong come from Images that are so old that at times I hardly didn't even recognize them And a lot haven't sold in years And I know from conversations with others it's true for them also. But not everyone. Newbies really don't count in these equations because everything they do is new. I also know quite a few here don't upload anymore and are concentrating there efforts at some new sites coming along because of this.Whatever search change they did is fabulous for sales But...new images are just Plain gone so I wonder sometimes why even feed the beast. he's fat and Lazy now with more to eat than he can handle. The bugs are out of control
and no end in sight for issues that have been around for years But...Sales are very strong regardless of review issues. Maybe my new stuff just doesn't cut it anymore here? It sells fine elsewhere just not here.

ruxpriencdiam · Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 11:27 am

First you try to feed the Beast and wait up to 10 or more days for a review and then are told to delete them all and re-upload now putting your feeding the Beast into a 20 day wait so he's hungry now right? Not quite because then you get the piss poor lighting rejection that is randomly being handed out and have to try and re-feed again.

Some new are selling for me and still the same old so i say it's about a 50/50 split. But it really makes no difference at all with all the Bugs crawling around anymore and the new explanation for the SOD's they handed out and someone on MSG bringing up some good points about the lack of info regarding the terms of the usage of the images! Here is the quote from her.

lowellaguno · Joined: 11 Oct 2006 Posts: 1083 Location: SoCal

My experience goes along the lines Laurin described for himself.

I can count on two hands the total of new images added to my port in the last year. Despite this, sales have remained fairly steady. Like Laurin, the images that are doing well for me tend to be the older ones.

jeffbanke · Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 3:10 pm

Well like the rest of you my new image sales represend only 6% of my sales in the last 6 months, which means since my total sales are down, actually it is just the EL's that are down, it means my old images have lost some of their appeal :-)

copidosoma · Joined: 17 Nov 2009 Posts: 3784 Location: Canada

I haven't really been uploading much for the past few months (really, the past year has been pretty pathetic photographically). But the last three months (and this one) have been consecutive BME.

Then I uploaded a few old pics last week. Approved yesterday, sold today. So I really have no idea if uploading helps sales or not.

robhainer · Joined: 03 May 2010 Posts: 2746 Location: Dallas, GA, USA

My new stuff is selling and accounting for about 25-30 percent of my daily sales. Records every month. But, I have a small port in comparison to most, so even adding 50 images is a lot of growth proportionally.

If I had 5,000 images and only added 50, then it might not make as much of a dent, which I think follows what you're saying, Laurin.

I guess the question is what is considered a new image. I consider anything uploaded in the past month to be new. An image that doesn't get any sales in 30 days is probably headed for oblivion.

This is for this year:
-- January, 527 images online, 493 sales
-- February, 549 images online, 615 sales
-- March, 586 images online, 644 sales
-- April, 727 images online, 709 sales
-- May (to date), 824 images online, 715 sales

So, to sum it up, I've increased by port from 527 images to 824, and total downloads from 493 to 715. If not for the holiday, I'm pretty sure I would have hit 800 downloads this month. Still might if Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday return to normal.

aquafish · Joined: 10 Oct 2007 Posts: 81

I had a quiet 6 months of not adding many images and of course sales have suffered a little maybe 15% down.

Started adding images again this month and basically every image I have added has generated 1 sale. Of course as the weeks roll by sales of these new images will increase a bit.

I would say that it is just about worth putting the effort in at the moment. As I look at it if the average drops below this then I will be looking into other options.

blinztree · Posted: Mon May 28, 2012 6:28 am

Had crazy work loads for April and May and did not submit anything new for these two months. Volume took a small dip but ELs and ODs mercifully made this my best month even for a small port.

Never pimp anything for a month too so guess the so-call-practice of pimping gives better exposure is so busted.

Big Thanks and Appreciation to the Buyers. Again, BIG Thank You!

jeffbanke · Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 11:42 am

Well, the end of the month is almost here, and no ED's!
Big hole in my revenue stream !

25 a day, ODD's are close to par for the course, and SOD's slightly up

peteklinger · Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 12:23 pm

strotter13 · Joined: 29 Nov 2010 Posts: 1683 Location: Nevada

I kind of just glanced through the postings, but here is my obsevations of my stock sales. Stock sales are a triangle. The three sides are the following:
1. Timing (now-a-days this is pretty much out of our control, because of review times, etc.)
2. Key Wording and Describing
3. Image Quality

This is just my experience. I could have an excellent image that is keyworded perfect, but it just hits the market at the wrong time. It doesn't get any sales in the first couple of weeks and sinks. It may see a few sales here and there but nothing major. Then I could have an average image of a pot of boiling water (I have seen tons of better images then mine), its keyworded decently (I mean really how many keywords are going to sale an image of a pot of boiling water), but it hits the market at just the right time and takes off. It is now my most popular image, and his been for several months, and usually sells daily. Another example is an open can of chew, isolated on white, the same thing happened with that image. I mean its just a plain image isolated on white, but the timing made it. Another example would be my photo of my youngest daughter in glasses. It has held as my second most popular photo for months now as well. I think it is an exceptional image, the keywording is good as well. The timing on this image was poor. I submitted it and no sales for a few weeks. Then it started selling like crazy. Now it gets downloaded daily. I am still yet to have an exceptional image and good timing combination. My point is that sales are really out of our control. I look through people’s ports and see some of their best images (in my opinion) ranked low in popularity (which means they don’t sale as much).
Now how does this all tie into feeding the beast??? Well part of feeding the beast is about luck as well. I could feed the beast tons and tons of awesome images that are keyworded well, but if I don’t get lucky and have the timing aspect then it doesn’t do much. For example about a year ago I did a stock shoot with a gal. I took a bunch of pretty good images, that would all be keyworded about the same, so I said, “screw it, I will just submit them all”. About 90 percent of them were accepted (I think it was close to a hundred or so photos). To this day I have maybe seen ten or so image sales from that upload. Recently I had a similar situation happen where I did a bunch of prom photos for a guy and a girl. I had a bunch of images that would be keyworded similarly, so I did the same thing, I uploaded them all and about 90 percent of them were accepted (about 80 images). Well the images (IMHO) were about the same quality as the images from several months earlier and they were keyworded with the same regard. The difference was the timing, the timing was good and BOOM I have been seeing sales left and right. So feeding the beast is about luck too.
Back to the original subject, I really don’t see much difference in sales whether I feed the beast or not.
Over the last six months, 24 percent of my earnings came from new content. I don’t think this number means anything. I think it is affected by numerous aspects such as port size, how long you have been a contributor, timing, so on and so forth.
That’s just my personal opinion from my personal experience. It may differ for others, I am just a little guy, I don’t make thousands of dollars a month doing this.

rinder99 · Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 9:39 am

I would say 2/3% of what I uploaded in the past 8 months sell. The rest are stuff that never sold in 7 years. So old in fact I forgot they were mine. Long Lost, dead Images that other sites would have deleted for not selling. Strange that Images that are so buried come back to life. Very Bizarre to say the least if we assume that old Images get buried....Evidently they don't so why keep uploading? Is it worth it here. My other 8 sites are the complete opposite.Also I enjoyed a 100% acceptance ratio for years and years, Thats out the window now. I get Lighting and composition rejects all the time and kinda tells me maybe time to stop trying to advise folks on the critique forum If I can't get accepted myself.You would think there paying us 50 Dollars a DL not pennies.What the hell did we help create???

semmickphoto · Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 10:29 am

@ Strotter,

How do you know it was timing was the factor? I mean, timing for what?

If you submit easter eggs photos after easter is bad timing. But what is bad timing for a photo of a gal? Or good timing? I dont understand.

Thanks
Ron