Microstock: Shutterstock Priorities

At Shutterstock, apparently new images have quite a boost in the search priorities which almost always results in immediate sales right after upload.

Of course, I haven't gotten any sales, since all my images have taken days to appear in the search index. Apparently I'm not the only one either according to this forum post.

While I don't mind too much if I don't get a bunch of sales right out of the gate, if the search system causes images to be buried soon after upload, that is a problem for me, especially if each sale only pays me 20 cents. I'm going to upload more this week to see if I can get the boost. If there's no boost or I don't make significant sales this week, I may stop uploading because it is not worth the time involved.

PS, my second batch of images took about 48 hours to be reviewed, which is in line with many other sites.