I know how some of you hate this kind of topics, but this one appears to be out of an ordinary one (at least for me), and I'm on a verge of freaking out: my sales at Fotolia/Adobe Stock have almost stopped in November, with a projected drop in sales vs October by -20% (or considerably more if the trend remains) and could be my worst ever month in 2.5 years (port of close to 2K images). As you can see, in my case fluctuations month to month with FT/AS are common, but November is something special (remember, we're in 17 November, with less than 10 working days left in this month).



Does anybody have a similar situation?

Don't worry or think too much

After a good October, November has been poor to say the least. The stability their search engine once had seems to have gone. SS went through a period when there search was radically changing every couple of weeks. Their's seems to have stabilised to a degree while FT AS has taken the same characteristics as the old (bad) SS search. Makes me wonder if that has something to do with Scott being over there now. Either way, it's no where near as good as it once was.

Agree I thought things were back to "normal" but plummeting down the rankings again...might still be an OK month but I now experience periods of total inactivity on there which I never really came across before.

Just looked at % of US sales to the rest of the world. I'm routinely over 90% US sales, often 95-98% even though I supply work that is not specific to the US (I'm based in the UK). It's like my port is not visible anywhere else other than the US. It certainly explains why my sales plummet when the US has a holiday. The last couple of days have been terrible yet SS is good. They seem to have a good balance of visibility across all countries.

It just seems that they've badly broken the search at the moment. My weekly position dropped massively to 700 this week, lowest it's been for years!

Good news is that good sales came in from Archangel.... 4 sales = 1.5x FT monthly earnings! I'm thinking of just focusing on them and other RM agencies now and send quick and simple stuff to micro.

same here 90% us sales (-30% tax) - before AS it was 10% us sales - and I m on eu fotolia - strange?!!! - and sales a down...

What does "eu fotolia" have to do with anything?

The reason US sales have increased is because of Adobe. A US company with a huge US market.

For the first time I just checked my percentage of sales in the US.
And yes, 100% of sales this month come from the US.
A big zero from Europe, while I am based in the UK and in the past I always found that Fotolia used to be very friendly to European content.
Go fugure

For those experiencing the same pattern, report it to FT via the message system. I�ve already done this with a copy of last months percentages. It could be something they are not aware of so its worth reporting it so they know to investigate it!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Same experience here. I wrote this about a month ago in some other topic.

Well, I think they totally neglected EU buyers. I used to get a lot of credit sales XL, L, M, now, very rarely. EL sales were more frequent year ago also. Also, most of my 0.99 sales are coming from US, and those sales are my mostly main income + subs. So, I think US sales increased, but EU sales dropped significally.

I just went to check my stats and for November so far, my non-US sales are 24%

For Oct 2017 it was 20% non-US. I'm based in the US.

In the thread about this last month I had noted my recent average over the last (almost) year was 29% non-US. As I noted in that thread, that is down a lot from earlier days.

Fotolia and Storyblocks are dead in november!

What has Thanksgiving to do with this? It is a US and Canadian celebration, how can that affect EU buyers and contributors. There is a big world out there.

I have no Thanksgiving images and my sales are just a bit down from last month but we still have a few days.
Also, I have 68.66% US sales (in commission). For a better comparison, we should have access to the number of downloads too for those US sales not just the credits (without counting them one by one).

Like you said, the US market makes up nearly 70% of your sales. On some days, the US market makes up over 90% of my sales. If the biggest market is on holiday, it would only make sense if the sales are down from the previous month.

Quote from: Dodie on November 26, 2017, 10:03

What has Thanksgiving to do with this? It is a US and Canadian celebration, how can that affect EU buyers and contributors. There is a big world out there.

I have no Thanksgiving images and my sales are just a bit down from last month but we still have a few days.
Also, I have 68.66% US sales (in commission). For a better comparison, we should have access to the number of downloads too for those US sales not just the credits (without counting them one by one).

Like you said, the US market makes up nearly 70% of your sales. On some days, the US market makes up over 90% of my sales. If the biggest market is on holiday, it would only make sense if the sales are down from the previous month.

US holiday or not, I was asking where are the sale from the rest of the world? Or why are they missing?
SS is an US company too and I have sales from all over the world but hardly ever from North America.

Quote from: Dodie on November 27, 2017, 11:26

Quote from: Minsc on November 27, 2017, 02:42

Quote from: Dodie on November 26, 2017, 10:03

What has Thanksgiving to do with this? It is a US and Canadian celebration, how can that affect EU buyers and contributors. There is a big world out there.

I have no Thanksgiving images and my sales are just a bit down from last month but we still have a few days.
Also, I have 68.66% US sales (in commission). For a better comparison, we should have access to the number of downloads too for those US sales not just the credits (without counting them one by one).

Like you said, the US market makes up nearly 70% of your sales. On some days, the US market makes up over 90% of my sales. If the biggest market is on holiday, it would only make sense if the sales are down from the previous month.

US holiday or not, I was asking where are the sale from the rest of the world? Or why are they missing?
SS is an US company too and I have sales from all over the world but hardly ever from North America.

Speculation, but it could be an accounting change rather than a change in the demographics of sales.  For example sales through Adobe products maybe reported as US sales and not where the buyer is from, if Adobe products are considered a partner for accounting purposes.

That could be an explanation. It never crossed my mind but possible.

Quote from: Minsc on November 27, 2017, 02:42

Quote from: Dodie on November 26, 2017, 10:03

What has Thanksgiving to do with this? It is a US and Canadian celebration, how can that affect EU buyers and contributors. There is a big world out there.

I have no Thanksgiving images and my sales are just a bit down from last month but we still have a few days.
Also, I have 68.66% US sales (in commission). For a better comparison, we should have access to the number of downloads too for those US sales not just the credits (without counting them one by one).

Like you said, the US market makes up nearly 70% of your sales. On some days, the US market makes up over 90% of my sales. If the biggest market is on holiday, it would only make sense if the sales are down from the previous month.

A lot "US sales" here, too (whatever that means)
Here is the trend of my US earning percentage for the past few years:

You would be pissed if you were paying 30% withholding tax.