balajisrinivasan

Nice! I had an ODD for 1.33. We gettin' rich.

So what do you do with the images you don't upload?

Yeah... downloads have been realllly slow so far. I thought things would pick up post 10th but they haven't. This combined with level one is a real blow. So far it has been way worse than Jan last year when my port was just 3 months old. Hope things pick up 😕

If you can't draw (and have no inclination to learn), can't get shots in focus or get them right (and have no desire to correct) and aren't "artistically inclined", why are you selling pictures in the first place? Especially using long-winded digital tracing methods that are only going make your images look worse? I mean, there are far better ways to make money or waste your time.

Like I said in my post, for generic oversaturated images of mountains and beaches and architecture and people and everyday things, of course, I agree with you, they're competition and they would likely win. But for a lot of specific categories, like species of insects, fungi, wild animals and locations of, say, a town in Bavaria or a temple in Thailand or a village in India or a particular shop in a city, the free sites are practically useless because they don't have either the range of available images or the rigorous keywording and SEO that comes with the best microstock sites. A lot of

The microstock industry isn't going to collapse. Websites, blogs, news corporations, ad agencies, everyone needs new images every day. So unless that entire sphere is going to collapse, microstock will be up and running because it still offers a good, affordable deal and variety as opposed to traditional stock. Yes, free sites exist but they aren't competitors to microstock. The emphasis on the free sites is more on beauty than usefulness. So yeah, if you have a port full of random beautiful mountain landscapes and beaches and people, you might get affected. But if a customer is looking f

One download for me too... although it was a picture I never thought would sell on account of there being thousands like it on SS (and shot way better than mine). So there's that.

Yay... I feel good about being at the same level as Africa Studio. If only for half a day (probably).

December 2020 was very close to being my BME, beating even my best months in pre-rate cut times. So not an entirely bad way to end a terrible year. It also makes me look forward to 2021. I'm not as pessimistic as some of the others on the forum and I do sincerely hope for good sales this year. Happy new year, everyone, hope you'll have a great 2021 as well

I get about 70 percent of my cellphone photos accepted. And all are taken by a Galaxy S7, a smartphone that's now about over 5 years old. But typically I reduce resolution and submit to cover some of the noise/artifact issues.

Well, big corporate houses and publications with annual subscriptions make for the majority of Shutterstock's customers and Shutterstock's current business model caters almost exclusively to them because that's where they see profits. I've seen a LOT of 10-14 cent sales this month, at a rate faster than any other time this year, which is probably an indicator that no such boycott exists from big customers. If independent creators who would normally buy an ODD or SOD are boycotting and going for other alternatives, I doubt it puts any serious dent in Shutterstock's domination of the market and

Right now, I think there's more money to be made exchanging leftover bottles for a few cents than selling images on MS markets.

As for the topic at hand, I do see some rejections but only a very few of them are unjustified. Mostly, the rejections happen when I'm taking a gamble with a picture that I know is not all there technically. They would have been accepted a few months ago when the reviews were more lenient. So yeah, I think they've become a bit stricter. I have no complaints. There are other sites where they get accepted and sell.

I use Snapseed for quick edits and posting to social media like instagram and facebook. But haven't used it for stock yet because I don't see a noise reduction feature. How do manage noise with snapseed?