Not much anymore. I was never 100% reliant in microstock, but it used to make out a significant part of my income.
But then when the gettyfication began and the other joined the race to the bottom, I settled for other horses to ride on. I have not submitted anything significant for three years now, and removed nothing. Now my stock income is merely a kind of "pocket money" now. And only a fraction of what it used to be.

It was a month that started with a weekend then public holiday.

This thing happens quite often, no payment stuff gets done until people go to work.  So yesterday was the earliest they'd start doing it.

That happens now and then. The difference is that the pending unpaid amount has been returned to the monthly status.

Give it a day or two. Some payment methods are not that much fast either. Som days ago, I got mail from Getty that they had paid me. The payment was visible on paypal two days later.

Shutterstock added that feature that tells if an image is often used or what. It is a "great help" for content thieves or copycat photographers.

The "similar images" should show the reviewer during inspection that this is a stolen file...if there is a human reviewer...

Well, you could put it this way: The agency earns on the images no matter who actually took them. They are more keen on having happy shareholders, than happy contributors.

My sales on P5 are not so common as they used to be. And the average RPD is lower too. Still I consider P5 a feasible business, but the integration in the Shutterstock family will surely end up in "exciting news" some day. So for the time being I stick to easy-made videos, as the videos that require more efforts are unlikely to pay back before the exciting news come.

for tax info:  licence it is good and service ?

Have you read the agreement you signed with the agency?

It seems that some stockphoto agencies believe that AI will soon be able to do the job. That would make them independent on those complicated contributors, and able to pay more to their shareholders.
The development of AI, the rejection politics and common greed could indicate that agencies will start to take measures in matter of getting rid of the least feasible contributors for a start.

I am afraid that the agencies face a storm of regular shithotos from people who have seen a certain, meanwhile outdated youtube video, promising them loads of money from Shutterstock. We have seen them on FB. Someone made a deadly boring photo of the first best lightpole, it was in focus and thus accepted on SS. He wondered when the sales would start. Now romours have spread that SS is not the bg deal anymore, so Adobe faces the challenge. Others do not bother to make their own photos, but pirate from other contributors, with numerous complaints, and infringment notifications as a result. 

Seen from the agencies' point of view the contributors have become a burden.

During my life I have changed my profession several times. Evverything changes faster and faster. I have realized that microstock is close to the end. I do not make new stock photos/videos anymore, but my portfolios remain and still earn med something, until that day there is an email from the agency that the service is discontinued for whatever reason they give.

At least with command prompts, if you get them correct they work every time.

Shutterstock, not so much.

It could easily be that the editorial caption is machine-checked before the image is passed on to  a reviewer.

The caption seen in this actual case does not meet these standards. And got rejected.

My account on Mostphotos still work even if I had not logged in for 3 years.

Quote from: Big Toe on June 08, 2023, 10:31

It's not that hard to provide it.

It's much faster to just add "Circa 2023" to your photos rather than look for specific date.

But, the purpose of the editorial caption is to prove where and when it was taken. If te picture was taken 10 years ago, and the exact time is not important, the circa statement may work. But for an image taken in 2023 the circa statment is pure laziness. If I was the reviewer, I'd booted the image with the same reason. So why not just stick to the standard format?

When you say that you checked your image and it is technically perfect, what did you actually check?
oooh, focus, as you are used to at Shutterstock? It seems to me that a reasonable unsharpness is acceptable at Adobe, while they rather go nuts over burned highlights, even if only a few pixels.  That is something Shutterstock does not seen to have so much attention on. That is also something that is easy to check in an automated process.
That something got accepted on DT does not warrant any quality. They seem to accept everything as long as it is an image file of some sort. 
I have also noticed that these quality rejections from a batch come quite fast, while those images that survive the bot get reviewed by a human at a later time.