Quote from: stoker2014 on January 10, 2025, 13:36

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N O !

Quote from: stoker2014 on January 10, 2025, 13:47

Quote from: Uncle Pete on January 10, 2025, 13:47

Quote from: stoker2014 on January 10, 2025, 13:36

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N O !

Honest, why don't you just ask him? 👌

He doesn't show me his work. 

Quote from: stoker2014 on January 10, 2025, 13:36

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N O !

Exactly!

Congratulations Zerotalent on what looks like a good year with (as Wilm mentioned) the modest size of your portfolio. Downward trend doesn't look too bad considering too the few uploads.

Stocker2014, Zerotalent probably doesn't want to show his portfolio or nor does he have to. His work is high quality and hence the income to upload ratios. However, why don't you show us any of your data? Never see any posts from you except you crying about not having enough assets selected for Adobe's free selection offer and telling us how much you love Vladdy-meer Pootin and wishing you could be sitting on his lap and listening to his bedtime stories of the good old days of the Soviet Union.

 

January 2025 compared to January 2024 was very bad.

since January 2024 a year has passed in which my portfolio has grown by around 40%,more than 2000 contents added,and in January 2025 I made one less sale and earned $1.41 more!

so January 2025 was perfectly the same as January 2024,a terrible result!

it is also fair to say that in November I earned 153% more and in December 52% more,compared to 2023.

For the moment I haven't returned to work yet,however I already have 112 contents approved this year,contents that I sent before January 20th,and I will probably try to have at least 500 contents approved this year,even for the contributor bonus,you never know what the minimum requirements will be next year.

since November things haven't recovered for me,and so I expect to go higher again in February,the point will be to see how high.

and "Bullet in the head" of RATM comes to my mind:"they say jump,you say how high?" 

so nothing,I'll go back to working very slowly and calmly,I'll upload these last 500 contents,but then if things don't improve that's enough,I certainly can't continue with these results!

Congratulations on completely crashing and burning SS!  I made $60 which is about 1/5 of what I made my first month in March of 2013.

I haven't bothered to add up my totals yet (another result of the lack of excitement from all the exciting news we have had over the years - but I can tell it won't be very good already) From what is posted it is pretty amazing how much lower income we now make from honestly mostly much better content. I remember starting out on SS and in the first month that I had over 100 images up I made 100$ - and I had to upsize because my 4mp point and shoot really only took 3.9 mp pictures.

Contrast that with increasing your port 40% and making essentially no more or even less $ now or having 3000+ images and making 15$.

Of course there was a lot less competition - I think there were under 1 million images at SS then and we made .25 per download.

jan 25 was 50% more than jan24.

roughly 4000 more files added to adobe yoy

i started tracking my ratios of ai to camera content and am quite surprised that on many days i am still selling more camera than ai.

both have increased in sales yoy though.

when istock and envato come in, i will probably reach around 720-750 dollars total.

had a sale on eyeem market for 16 dollars, which they already paid out.

I am actually uploading less files than last year and am trying even harder to find small niches.

Overall I have changed my strategy from trying to find great selling content, that might sell every week or maybe in season every day, to content that I expect to sell maybe 1-5 a year.

So slower selling, tiny niche, but less competition overall.

I had a month with zero sales on blackbox, which is unusual.

Didn�t upload as many videos as I wanted, because I am still processing a huge pile of ai for adobe.

Must change that and do more camera content.

overall i am optimistic, i was very worried how this january will do because usually jan is very bad.

on adobe i have around 5000 ai and 2600 camera content, but in volume sales are often 50:50 split between camera and ai.

partly that is because the ai content is still newer and needs to get picked up. partly that is because with ai i experiment a lot, testing styles, genres and sometimes i get carried away with stuff that is fun for me but not commerical enough.

so i am trying to do things that are more boring and less flashy but hopefully more useful.

i am still a long way from a full time income, but stock is not dead.

goal for february - more video, more camera and more editorial.


eta

both nov and dec were disappointing with zero growth yoy and dec actually negative by -11%. the months before I always had growth.

so I am really relieved that jan is an improvement.

@Cobalt congratulations on your results,50% more is very good for you. 

my 50% more is certainly not your 50% this is why even my 150% in November is a barely acceptable result,but still acceptable.

as far as I'm concerned,to hope to start having an acceptable income in 4 years from now I would have to make at least 100-150% every month this year,then next year at least 50-100% every month,then in 3 years from now even 20-50% more every month can start to be good and in 4 years from now even 10-20% more would be good.


as regards SS in January I earned only 12% of what I earned in January 2024,but I haven't uploaded anything since September 2023,but still 12% is still too low even without new uploads.


I agree with you,the microstock is not dead,but it has become much more difficult to have an acceptable income,and above all it is very difficult to have a good constant income,it may be fine for a few months,but then at least half year is barely acceptable or not even acceptable.


of course,it's easier for those who have started at least 10 years ago,then of course it also depends on what you do,the quantity and the quality,but speaking in general today microstock has certainly become much more difficult than 10 years ago or more.

many complain about Adobe,but the truth is that without Adobe then microstock would really have already ended.

Congratulations on completely crashing and burning SS!  I made $60 which is about 1/5 of what I made my first month in March of 2013.

Just because you did 2013, I went to Jan. 2013 for myself. And believe me, I have nothing like you or many other people here have. But 5549 images now, and probably under 2,000 back then. In a nice simple way, an average DAY on SS in January 2013 was double what I made for the entire MONTH on SS for 2025.

It's that bad.

Or as people used to say back in 2013, about how bad things were?



Who knew that the actual change would be so terrific.

it is an interesting thread. Now we need to hear from the people with stellar sales on ss or where ss is outselling adobe. 
...

here are my agency sales in $ for last 3 years - black is SS, blue is AS - AS has gained on SS mostly as a result of bulk payouts (non-DL - contributor & dataset training)  but usually lags behind. 
 



here's the 3 year totals - yellow is monthly, orange is 3 mo running avg - 2024 was about 20% drop from 2023, again mostly due to non-DL payouts in 2023



these results demonstrate  why even monthly $ aren't predictive - and tracking daily or even weekly sales is meaningless

I got into shutterstock it seems after a lot of the great sales most people had (I think end of 2018/beginning of 2019 I think it was). For several thousand files (videos + photos).

Not that I ever made "that" many sales there, but after about 2020, just diminishing returns for time/effort put into uploading, with the constant "good news" e-mails from them. Stopped uploading I think around 2022, because it just didn't seem worth it any more.

Right now maybe make (on average) between $50-$100 usd/month from them. (And I think how they've structured the royalites that means they are making gross about $700-$800).

I do wonder, the top experienced producers reporting low sales, wether it is on ss or elsewhere, have you been uploading regularly?

Because we all know our job is not really �passive� income.

If we don�t feed the beast, our income drops like a stone.

I was down to less than 10 dollars a month on Adobe, now I am back to several hundred and sometimes in the 1200-1600 range.

I still need to activate the other agencies. But considering that Adobe is now taking 7 million files a week�my sales are not affected, it just keeps rising as long as I send in useful stuff.

On other agencies you don�t even compete with ai.

So�while ss clearly has a downtrend�how much of that is due to lack of uploads?

eta

these are how my stats developped only for adobe in the last 3 years

feed the beast again, money comes your way

I hope I can do this on other agencies as well

I've been on Shutterstock for quite a long time, and aside from the obvious mistreatment of contributors/customers, my personal observation is that no matter how much money they make off the hard work of contributors, if they don�t create an environment where even the smallest contributor feels their effort is rewarded, they�re bound to collapse sooner or later. In Shutterstock�s case, it took a few years for the cracks to become visible, largely because they were inflating their stock value despite an increasingly dire situation - acquiring anything they could to keep up appearances.

I don�t have access to their financials, nor am I invested in them to worry about it, but something definitely seems off. There�s no single explanation for why, for example, with around 400 videos/animations on Envato, I made 10 times more in January than I did on Shutterstock - despite having those same assets (plus many more, including photos and illustrations) on Shutterstock. And unlike Shutterstock, my earnings on Envato have been constant and steadily growing. I never would have expected that to be the case.

Now, the real question is: how long until they ruin Envato the way they did with Pond5?