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Author Topic: Why Shutterstock is accepting everything  (Read 18561 times)

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Shelma1

  • stockcoalition.org
« on: October 13, 2018, 07:15 »
+3
To please investors, as you've probably surmised.

"Margins have contracted in recent years, but the company continues to address with cost reductions.

The company has aggressively built out its stock photo content, dwarfing rival Adobe....

Based on publicly available info from both companies, it appears Shutterstock has actually outpaced Adobe in the buildout of its stock photo offering. Shutterstock had a larger library in 2015, but since that time, its content growth rate has far outpaced that of Adobe:...

In short, I'm getting access to a larger library of content for my dollar with Shutterstock than I am through Adobe. Over the last 12 months, Shutterstock has drawn 1.9 million customers, which is up 7.5% yoy."

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4211402-shutterstock-looking-like-potential-long-term-play-strong-2018#alt1


nobody

« Reply #1 on: October 13, 2018, 07:55 »
+27
Shutter is using the 'Walmart' strategy with tons of low quality items.  The good artist quality images are drown by the crappy images and/or copied by others as well. No benefit to us whatsoever on their corporate moves... :-\


« Reply #2 on: October 13, 2018, 07:58 »
+12
That short term marketing stunt may cost a lot in the long term.

As soon as buyers start perceiving the SS collection as little more than dross, and the time and effort to find anything suitable becomes too much to be practical they'll change to another more curated agency.

Even if SS then starts tightening the approval criteria the damage will be done. Millions of great images will already be buried in all that garbage and the photographers will not re-shoot and submit the same things. I know I will not.

Shelma1

  • stockcoalition.org
« Reply #3 on: October 13, 2018, 08:08 »
+15
I agree. It may please investors in the short term, but I think buyers are finding it frustrating to try to pick good images from the avalanche of cruddy similars. And their continuing site outages are p*ssing people off. Adobe is the new rising star.

« Reply #4 on: October 13, 2018, 08:24 »
+11
"Over the last 12 months, Shutterstock has drawn 1.9 million customers, which is up 7.5% yoy." So I wouldn't write them off too soon......but I do think they are living on borrowed time without better QC and a stable platform.

« Reply #5 on: October 13, 2018, 23:15 »
+1
Beside having lot of crappy (and good) images, I still have few buyers in network who prefer buying from SS as they get lot of options.

H2O

    This user is banned.
« Reply #6 on: October 14, 2018, 06:32 »
+1
Designers I know have long complained about the quality of the images, when searching SS, at the end of the day quality will win out, this is why they opened Offset the Premium site.

wds

« Reply #7 on: October 14, 2018, 08:26 »
+4
I agree. It may please investors in the short term, but I think buyers are finding it frustrating to try to pick good images from the avalanche of cruddy similars. And their continuing site outages are p*ssing people off. Adobe is the new rising star.

My sales don't reflect a "rising star". My Adobe sales have been fairly constant over the last couple of years while SS has been slightly dropping...fwiw

« Reply #8 on: October 14, 2018, 10:58 »
+3
What a pathetic con job. Standing back and letting  their archive get flooded with junk is a "buildout"?


derek

    This user is banned.
« Reply #9 on: October 14, 2018, 11:48 »
+4
Short term profit thinking, branding the average customer as stupid and not knowing anything about quality but still buying any old rubbish!  add to that they pile it up and accepting anything! Thats why they lowered the bar so that every weekend snapper with a phone could gain entry.

Sad thing that some pros and advanced amateurs still feed this beast uploading and thats the only thing that keeps this crap alive!

msg2018

« Reply #10 on: October 14, 2018, 15:08 »
+4
almost...

Quote
Short term profit thinking, branding the average customer as stupid and not  knowing anything giving a **** about quality


« Reply #11 on: October 18, 2018, 16:13 »
+2
This article shows that although Shutterstock has increased its portfolio by over 300% over the last 3 years, it has only increased downloads by around 9%.

http://www.selling-stock.com/ViewArticle.aspx?id=84743e14-8f7e-49e0-8e64-0deff8dcd563

FYI, you do have to pay to view the article.

« Reply #12 on: October 22, 2018, 10:00 »
+2
Short term profit thinking, branding the average customer as stupid and not knowing anything about quality but still buying any old rubbish!  add to that they pile it up and accepting anything! Thats why they lowered the bar so that every weekend snapper with a phone could gain entry.

Sad thing that some pros and advanced amateurs still feed this beast uploading and thats the only thing that keeps this crap alive!

And now they flood facebook groups with questions like "what is RF?" and "where is the upload button in mobile app". People that don't know their way around mobile app and website UIs, let alone photography or design.   

derek

    This user is banned.
« Reply #13 on: October 22, 2018, 12:29 »
+2
Short term profit thinking, branding the average customer as stupid and not knowing anything about quality but still buying any old rubbish!  add to that they pile it up and accepting anything! Thats why they lowered the bar so that every weekend snapper with a phone could gain entry.

Sad thing that some pros and advanced amateurs still feed this beast uploading and thats the only thing that keeps this crap alive!

And now they flood facebook groups with questions like "what is RF?" and "where is the upload button in mobile app". People that don't know their way around mobile app and website UIs, let alone photography or design.

Yes 100% true! everything to make life more difficult for existing contributors and less and less profitable by the minute! its all quantity nowadays, more and more!

« Reply #14 on: October 22, 2018, 13:59 »
+3
It's probably my loss, but I didn't dare jump into the stock for 10 years, until I thought I reached a certain quality and until I gathered decent equipment and it became my second nature. People now flood SS with mediocre mobile snaps and I don't think it's doing anyone any good, not even for them as they won't learn anything and probably won't reach payouts.

Shelma1

  • stockcoalition.org
« Reply #15 on: October 22, 2018, 17:16 »
+7
Shutterstock *has* to be creating these images. They either have people on staff churning this stuff out to plump up the library or they're recruiting people to upload quick and dirty portfolios full of thousands of images that take seconds to generate.

There's just no way these ports are going through the usual review process.

Brasilnut

  • Author Brutally Honest Guide to Microstock & Blog

« Reply #16 on: October 22, 2018, 17:27 »
+4
It seems that SS is doing some heavy marketing in India. Loads of new contributors there shooting useless stuff with their smartphones. Nearly everyday there is someone from India on the SS forum opening threads asking "why they're few dozen snapshots aren't selling after a few weeks". Not really their fault as those pics should have never been accepted in the first place by a redundant SS QC team that were once upon a time the benchmark. Now they just reject for legal reasons, that is if they gets through without the Technical Error rejection.

Although there must be some excellent Indian contributors, I'm not seeing much quality from the new contributors. Such a pity because India is inherently beautiful.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2018, 17:38 by Brasilnut »


derek

    This user is banned.
« Reply #17 on: October 23, 2018, 01:40 »
0
Shutterstock *has* to be creating these images. They either have people on staff churning this stuff out to plump up the library or they're recruiting people to upload quick and dirty portfolios full of thousands of images that take seconds to generate.

There's just no way these ports are going through the usual review process.

Yes!  I am sure youre right there to some extent! Getty did the same towards the end of 90's, hired staff and photographers to churn out useless studio images by the millions!
I cant see any reviewer anywhere accepting thousands of images of weeds for example. Its an impossiblillity!

« Reply #18 on: October 23, 2018, 09:32 »
+1
It seems that SS is doing some heavy marketing in India. Loads of new contributors there shooting useless stuff with their smartphones. Nearly everyday there is someone from India on the SS forum opening threads asking "why they're few dozen snapshots aren't selling after a few weeks". Not really their fault as those pics should have never been accepted in the first place by a redundant SS QC team that were once upon a time the benchmark. Now they just reject for legal reasons, that is if they gets through without the Technical Error rejection.

Although there must be some excellent Indian contributors, I'm not seeing much quality from the new contributors. Such a pity because India is inherently beautiful.
As I've said before Shutterstock are not doing any one a favour by their grow port at all costs approach...they are promoting false expectations and allowing submission of millions of images that will never sell. Horribly cynical really.
 

« Reply #19 on: October 23, 2018, 11:33 »
+4
Shutterstock *has* to be creating these images. They either have people on staff churning this stuff out to plump up the library or they're recruiting people to upload quick and dirty portfolios full of thousands of images that take seconds to generate.

There's just no way these ports are going through the usual review process.

I suspect many "contributor" portfolios are wholly owned by agencies.  I'm sure they give themselves a nice dose of search result optimization as well.  That's what I would do if I owned an agency. 

Getty used to be somewhat open about it.  How many millions of images did they / do they own?


« Reply #20 on: October 25, 2018, 12:35 »
+4
I'm no mathamatician but I reckon that if SS QC spent ten seconds on each of this week's 1,410,450 new images it would take a full 163 days to complete the task!

« Reply #21 on: October 25, 2018, 13:12 »
+1
I'm no mathamatician but I reckon that if SS QC spent ten seconds on each of this week's 1,410,450 new images it would take a full 163 days to complete the task!
So about 500 working days bout 120 staff ;-).

« Reply #22 on: October 25, 2018, 17:21 »
0
I think the more important question right now is "How can I make my work stand out?".

« Reply #23 on: October 28, 2018, 15:12 »
+1
I am sure in a not so far future, MS companies will exclude portfolios of people who were flooding databases with low quality images (hem, maybe the words crap images are often more adequate)... Customers are surely getting more and more exasperated with the dilution of the good images.
Anyway, these practices are and will be a bad calculation for the efficiency of one's portfolio. Everything can move in microstock, in bad or good way.

« Reply #24 on: October 28, 2018, 16:03 »
+6
A few posts were removed from this thread.  This is a good discussion - let's try not to reduce it down to personal attacks on individual photographers.


 

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