Dear Adobe,

For years we had been in the situation that content supply is abundant. And yes, this is still true. In some Areas.

With the recent development in Stock Video licensing the race to the bottom leads straight to a dead end. That is: professional Video and Animation content is not profitable to produce anymore . And this opens opportunities:

1. Stock Video is not the same as stock photos. Cutting prices in Photos is much easier since many hobbyists, professionals, semi-professionals use stock as a secondary source of income, oftenly for material they would have produced anyways. A scene of photography production houses has grown over decades and the creation is by far not as complex as professional Video. Uploading a photo today costs seconds and there are a myriad of stock agencies where you can source money from with photos, which reduces the liability of proper pricing of individual outlets. Uploading a 4K Video is a lot more complex and there are only a few sites to sell them - a price cut as we see now on shutterstock cannot be compensated easily by just uploading to some other sites. The cost and revenue relation of Photo to Commission is also much better than from Footage to (Subscription) commission. The demand for photos is also higher and higher volume compensated oftenly for lower prices.

Nobody will produce and process good 4K clips for subscription prices. If people want some exposure or benefit other than licensing income they will rather upload their footage to Youtube then subscription agencies. The marketis different.

2. The Libraries are great now. Nobody cares about exclusive material? Yes, the libraries are great, but given the factor in 1. this will change. Maybe you find easy to produce clips there, but not the great location with 5 Models or the complex 3D Animation with 120 hours render time anymore. This material will simply not be produced anymore due to the lack of profitability. Buyers will look at a increasingly crappy video library. And especially in Video the market can be assumed to be consisting of a higher percentage of professional customers. Times changed, but still not ever stock video buyer is a youtube guy arming another conspiracy video.

In a few years you could achieve dominance in the footage stock area for more demanding clients who need more than a pizza from top video.

3. Nobody risks sales on all the other sites? Maybe with Photos this is true since there are much more sites and outlets to sell pictures and the market is much more dynamic, but remember that there are far less profitable sites for Video. Also, the revenue of a regular footage sale soon will compensate for 10 sales on Shutterstock. Looking at the actual sales figures and estimating that 90% of future shutterstock sales come from Subs, Adobe sales would ALREADY have the same value or exceeding this value without even changing the commission structure. This all comes with the factor that footage is much less of a volume market. Even considering that nowadays you have many small players licensing stock video...who is gonna download 20 Gigs of 4K clips just because he can? A nice photo is easily downloaded on a subscription site. 4K footage not. Volume will not compensate for the massive decrease in sales price and those sites selling subscriptions are abandoned easily.

4. Experience shows already that many did not and do not bother to upload to low priced agencies. While it is true that there are always some guys uploading to the cheapos, many held back from it, especially professional producers. In the photo market most contributors jumped on every site no matter how cheap. This makes it more likely to create a better and more important exclusive library.

5. In Photography you have much more similar material which makes image exclusivity more irrelevant. As said, footage is different. It will only get produced when worthwhile and the competition of producers is much lower and hobbyists wont upload 20 clips with 60GB of footage as easy as 20 photos with 200 MB.

6. The race to the bottom is what it is. You can run into that direction as long a supply is not an issue and the buyer is the king. But as in any market, everything reaches a flipping point. With footage we have reached this point.  The one who is able to reserve exclusive rights to great content without even investing anything else than trust and fair commissions will attract the most professional buyers. Not today. Not in September. But as soon as the existing libraries get flooded with crap and lack of better quality supply.

7. The prices for Stock Video are falling? Yes. True. But this considers a well saturated offer on the content side. This was held up in the past by different sites with different commissions structures as mentioned above. As soon as the cheap sites dominant you just cannot cover the cost of production. The consequence is lack of great new content.

....resolved to offer my footage exclusively on Pond 5, because to date they've sold better there than anywhere else.

But have they sold better there than everywhere else combined?

If one is serious about making $$$ these days exclusivity simply makes no sense. Between the current price point of content, sales volume, and royalties, there is not one single agency out there that can provide the returns for what it costs to produce even the most basic photo/video content, when you factor in the real costs and time involved. These days one can barely have a positive return submitting to multiple agencies, let alone one agency.

Quote from: marthamarks on April 16, 2020, 12:16

....resolved to offer my footage exclusively on Pond 5, because to date they've sold better there than anywhere else.

But have they sold better there than everywhere else combined?

Actually, yes.

Is there an option somewhere in shutterstock for that? I didn't see that...?

Quote from: Jimbo on April 16, 2020, 09:47

Dear Adobe,

For years we had been in the situation that content supply is abundant. And yes, this is still true. In some Areas.

�

Well said, Jimbo. I do hope Adobe listens to you and responds favorably.

Last night, I flipped the switch on my SS account from

YES, please do sell my videos!

to

NO, don't you dare sell my videos at el cheapo prices!

This morning, I woke up resolved to offer my footage exclusively on Pond 5, because to date they've sold better there than anywhere else. (Not stills, of course, but we're talking footage right now.) And while I realize the risk of putting all my video eggs in someone else's corporate basket, there don't appear to be a lot of decent options at this point.

So then, right after signing up as a P5 video exclusive, I started deleting my 700+ clips from Adobe. AS has given me very few video sales since I started doing that in 2017, and the last video sale was in 2018� almost two years ago. Doesn't seem like much of a loss.

It's a shame one has to pick from so few options to maintain any sense of value in the work we produce, but that's where we are. I'm still "all in" to Adobe with my stills, but my videos will be completely gone there by this evening.

Is there an option somewhere in shutterstock for that? I didn't see that...?

Yes, there is. Go your SS account, click on Account Settings, then scroll down to Licensing Options, and you'll find a way to set videos to NO.

Let me know if you don't find that, okay?  Good luck.

My best selling site is Adobe and I like them. They pay me better than SS or P5. So if they offered an exclusive contributor status then I'm all in. Adobe has some problems with upload speed and I don't like the lack of duplicate tags removal, but I still think they are the best on the market right now.

Dear Adobe,

For years we had been in the situation that content supply is abundant. And yes, this is still true. In some Areas.

With the recent development in Stock Video licensing the race to the bottom leads straight to a dead end. That is: professional Video and Animation content is not profitable to produce anymore . And this opens opportunities:

1. Stock Video is not the same as stock photos. Cutting prices in Photos is much easier since many hobbyists, professionals, semi-professionals use stock as a secondary source of income, oftenly for material they would have produced anyways. A scene of photography production houses has grown over decades and the creation is by far not as complex as professional Video. Uploading a photo today costs seconds and there are a myriad of stock agencies where you can source money from with photos, which reduces the liability of proper pricing of individual outlets. Uploading a 4K Video is a lot more complex and there are only a few sites to sell them - a price cut as we see now on shutterstock cannot be compensated easily by just uploading to some other sites. The cost and revenue relation of Photo to Commission is also much better than from Footage to (Subscription) commission. The demand for photos is also higher and higher volume compensated oftenly for lower prices.

Nobody will produce and process good 4K clips for subscription prices. If people want some exposure or benefit other than licensing income they will rather upload their footage to Youtube then subscription agencies. The marketis different.

2. The Libraries are great now. Nobody cares about exclusive material? Yes, the libraries are great, but given the factor in 1. this will change. Maybe you find easy to produce clips there, but not the great location with 5 Models or the complex 3D Animation with 120 hours render time anymore. This material will simply not be produced anymore due to the lack of profitability. Buyers will look at a increasingly crappy video library. And especially in Video the market can be assumed to be consisting of a higher percentage of professional customers. Times changed, but still not ever stock video buyer is a youtube guy arming another conspiracy video.

In a few years you could achieve dominance in the footage stock area for more demanding clients who need more than a pizza from top video.

3. Nobody risks sales on all the other sites? Maybe with Photos this is true since there are much more sites and outlets to sell pictures and the market is much more dynamic, but remember that there are far less profitable sites for Video. Also, the revenue of a regular footage sale soon will compensate for 10 sales on Shutterstock. Looking at the actual sales figures and estimating that 90% of future shutterstock sales come from Subs, Adobe sales would ALREADY have the same value or exceeding this value without even changing the commission structure. This all comes with the factor that footage is much less of a volume market. Even considering that nowadays you have many small players licensing stock video...who is gonna download 20 Gigs of 4K clips just because he can? A nice photo is easily downloaded on a subscription site. 4K footage not. Volume will not compensate for the massive decrease in sales price and those sites selling subscriptions are abandoned easily.

4. Experience shows already that many did not and do not bother to upload to low priced agencies. While it is true that there are always some guys uploading to the cheapos, many held back from it, especially professional producers. In the photo market most contributors jumped on every site no matter how cheap. This makes it more likely to create a better and more important exclusive library.

5. In Photography you have much more similar material which makes image exclusivity more irrelevant. As said, footage is different. It will only get produced when worthwhile and the competition of producers is much lower and hobbyists wont upload 20 clips with 60GB of footage as easy as 20 photos with 200 MB.

6. The race to the bottom is what it is. You can run into that direction as long a supply is not an issue and the buyer is the king. But as in any market, everything reaches a flipping point. With footage we have reached this point.  The one who is able to reserve exclusive rights to great content without even investing anything else than trust and fair commissions will attract the most professional buyers. Not today. Not in September. But as soon as the existing libraries get flooded with crap and lack of better quality supply.

7. The prices for Stock Video are falling? Yes. True. But this considers a well saturated offer on the content side. This was held up in the past by different sites with different commissions structures as mentioned above. As soon as the cheap sites dominant you just cannot cover the cost of production. The consequence is lack of great new content.

The very moment that Adobe offers exclusivity is the exact moment that my other portfolios come down. They're the only one doing innovative things besides ripping the market to pieces.

Exclusivity works for the minority that make truly outstanding material in commercial demand. For the majority producing generic material it won't. You have to be honest and ask yourself which camp you truly belong to.

Except for the option of Individual Videos as exclusive, I don't think Adobe has any interest in Artist Exclusive. There's no real benefit in running that way. Maybe for artists but not for the agency.

Quote

The very moment that Adobe offers exclusivity is the exact moment that my other portfolios come down. They're the only one doing innovative things besides ripping the market to pieces.

Nope. Still a newbie, perhaps negative biased on AS (or all agencies) but next time i will be asked to kill portfolios for an exciting opportunity i will pass. It is enough deleting or moving files due to whatever good news come from time to time.

I'm not new as much as I'm disheartened. I stopped submitting when I started seeing $0.125 revenue from sales. Just blows to spend a day on a piece and get paid like that (tbh. I think it's even worse than having it stolen. The agencies are supposed to be OUR PARTNERS in this * mess ... and they're just sleeping around.)

But, the Adobe software to Adobe stock workflow is FRICKEN awesome and I think there's even more stuff you can publish. For instance it seems like you can publish After Effects, and InDesign templates and all sorts'o stuff. I was a print designer for 10 years and could easily do 10 magazine or newsprint mockups a day for sure.


Edit: Where is Matt? Where and how would I sell InDesign templates through AS? There only seems to be the photos, vectors, and footage.

Quote from: georgep7 on April 21, 2020, 04:59

Quote

The very moment that Adobe offers exclusivity is the exact moment that my other portfolios come down. They're the only one doing innovative things besides ripping the market to pieces.

Nope. Still a newbie, perhaps negative biased on AS (or all agencies) but next time i will be asked to kill portfolios for an exciting opportunity i will pass. It is enough deleting or moving files due to whatever good news come from time to time.

I'm not new as much as I'm disheartened. I stopped submitting when I started seeing $0.125 revenue from sales. Just blows to spend a day on a piece and get paid like that (tbh. I think it's even worse than having it stolen. The agencies are supposed to be OUR PARTNERS in this * mess ... and they're just sleeping around.)

But, the Adobe software to Adobe stock workflow is FRICKEN awesome and I think there's even more stuff you can publish. For instance it seems like you can publish After Effects, and InDesign templates and all sorts'o stuff. I was a print designer for 10 years and could easily do 10 magazine or newsprint mockups a day for sure.


Edit: Where is Matt? Where and how would I sell InDesign templates through AS? There only seems to be the photos, vectors, and footage.

Well, we all have our perspective @DallasP
Regarding AS submissions maybe this helps?

"Note:

Design templates are not currently accepted through the Contributor portal.

If you are interested in submitting design templates, fill out this form to apply to become an Adobe Stock Templates Contributor."

source: https://helpx.adobe.com/gr_en/stock/contributor/help/design-template-requirements.html

I like Adobe a lot, but I would sure like to see them open up to:

 - editorial stills beyond "illustrative" (in other words editorial with people)
 - full editorial video (illustrative as well as editorial with people)

Good point, if they add real News Editorial I'd be very happy.

About the exclusive wishes:

These companies are not in business for our benefit!

Why would someone, an artist, want to be exclusive if there's no gain is being exclusive? What would Adobe gain from paying us more for exclusive and getting the same materials, they already get?

There's no profit or business reason to offer exclusive for Abode Stock, anything.