Ernie Cooper

Phytolacca Americana is incorrect. The second term in a scientific name (the species) is never capitilized. The original name is correct: Phytolacca americana. I include the scientific name for almost all my uploads. But I use commas instead of brackets in the title. I have never had an image rejected for the title. My version of the title for the image in question would be like: "Close up of American pokeweed berries, Phytolacca americana".

I just had my biggest SS sale this month: $0.19! Now I can retire! LOL!

June was about average. July was very good. So far August has sucked...

July was an excellent month for me, one of my best. I had 66 sales on SS at an average $0.43/image, despite the change in fee structure. Given that I have only uploaded 600 images, that is not bad. My sales on AS and DT were better than average and I even had a rare sale on AL, which is always nice given how much they pay. August has started out terribly. Eight days in and I only have 4 sales on SS for a total of a whole $0.40! AS and DT sales are sporatic as always. I have had another sale on AL though, which was another nice bonus. But SS has gone dead...

So far July has been a good month for me. Very surprising considering the change in payment. The $0.10 sales are always disappointing, but I’m also getting more sales of $0.50 - $3.00. The result is that my average sale for July is currently $0.45, which is higher than the average of $0.36 for May and June. I admit to being a bit perplexed as to why my sales have improved when clearly things have gotten worse for many other contributors. My subject matter might be in more demand in spring/summer. I also don’t shoot travel photography, which I would assume would be heavily impacted by the pandemic. Nonetheless, I’m pleasantly surprised. I wasn’t planning to keep contributing to Shutterstock after the rate change. Now, I don’t know…

Good point. Thanks.

I have the same experience. I was having consistent sales on Adobe up to June 15. Not a single sale since then. Shutterstock sales were good for June, the most sales I have had in one month. Despite the changein shutterstock fees, my average payment per image remained the same as for May ($0.36/image). I really don't understand what is going on, but wonder if the two are linked. Have the reduced prices for Shuttertock cut into Adobe's sales?

So far, June is shaping up to be an average month for me, despite the new fee structure. My average for the previous 7 months was $0.34/image sold, with a median of $0.34/image. Currently, my average for June is $0.33/image. I'm frankly surprised by the numbers, given that the majority of my sales have been for $0.10 sales. But I have also had a few more on-demand and single sales that brought the average up. Probably just luck. My average for April was $0.33/image, for May it was $0.36/image. I also received notice yesterday that I was being bumped up to Contributor Level 3. After getting that notice I subsequently had some $0.11 sales (wow, BIG difference! [sarcasm]). But today, the average sale dropped back to $0.10. Not sure what is going on there...

Up until today my rejection rate was 1 or 2 out of 100. I work hard to upload only high quality images. This morning I discovered that more than half of the images I submitted last night were rejected because the content was "to similar to another image". Horse pucky. They are clearly different images if you actually look at them. Is this an AI issue? Unbelievably frustrating...