Okay, everyone knows shutterstock gave the middle finger to the majority of its contributors, knowing full well most individual contributors would be scared to leave, thinking 'something' is better than 'nothing'. Problem with that thinking is you continue to get screwed, until you actually get nothing, and it's too late to do anything.

Money, or what affects their income source/money is pretty much the only thing that a company like shutterstock will listen to.

So. Here's some specific things that can be done.

1. How to effectively reach & band contributors together.
2. Effective negative publicity
3. Promote other 'good' sites (i.e., dreamstime right now), moving customers to better paying sites

1. How to effectively reach & band contributors together.

a) https://microstockrank.com/shutterstock/videos-rank is a fantastic resource to get the list of contributors that you can contact one by one.
If you could get the top 100 contributors (which is about 10% of the total assets on shutterstock) to agree to do something (i.e., turn portfolio off), that would send a very strong message. Chances are though - they benefit from the new scheme, so may or may not be willing to participate. You'd need to use a different approach (i.e., they'd like the idea of bargaining power to INCREASE revenue further).
b) You simply look @ the contributor name, go to google, type "contributor name + shutterstock" look @ their about tab, and some have contact information. Not everyone does. But this is one way of getting individual contact information. (They may also have contact info on another site, as most ppl have more than one agency they submit to).
c) (While I don't care for google's lack of privacy protection in general) - at the moment - google docs can be useful for people sharing/updating who has been contacted/agrees/etc. Alternatively, if someone wanted to use their website, or be a bookkeeper, could do that too.

Not sure how many ppl it would take turning off their portfolio, whether its 10, 100, or 1000, but at some point, shuttertstock would pay attention.

2. Negative publicity

a) Review sites. Posting negative reviews does to some degree have an effect (tends to be the #, the site posted on, and so forth). Be truthful (don't just bash/namecall, but specific about what wrong they are doing).
b) Contacting actual print publications. I.e., https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/153708/the-100-most-important-online-publishers.html
Journalists love a good story. Basically you find a journalist who would be sympathetic to what you have to say. So you might google something like "publication name + rotten companies" or "publication name + companies abusing power", etc, etc.

One possible approach would be something like "In the midst of a crisis for the general population, when most businesses are bending over backwards to provide better service and help people, not only does shutterstock - a 654 MILLION revenue a year company not do that -  but they decide to shave more money off the top from 95% of struggling contributors that their business is based on". (The 95% is a guess, but probably accurate - as I am guessing it would only be the top 5%, or less, that have the bulk of assets & subsequent sales that would see either the same or an increased commission).

If enough people contact enough journalists, there are likely to be stories to be printed.

Print publications are also good. Just google something like 'top print publications'.

3. Promote other 'good' sites, moving customers to better paying sites

Dreamstime (long time ago) was upset because they losrt google rank (and actually I think I remeber reading google struck a deal with shutterstock, to promote their assets over sites like dreamstime).

Companies need good publicity/advertising, and people love "causes". (I.e., look at "hashtag" anything, and you'll find "hashtag-movement" "hashtag-stop-the-opression", etc, etc).

So companies that are doing right by people (i.e., at the moment dreamstime seems to be one of them) - promote them. Help drive sales to sites that are doing RIGHT by contributors (i.e., right now dreamstime).

Consumers do tend to "stick" with something when they are used to it, but - they still do read twitter, facebook posts, etc - and if "everyone" is saying "go check out this site" - they'll most likely follow their peers, and check out that site.

Don't underestimate just how powerful, effective, & quick this can be. (I read somewhere someone said 161 people responded to the poll - if 161 people ALL posted on facebook/twitter/etc to say go to dreamstime), you'd be surprised how fast that can catch on with a good hashtag name, cause & powerful reason.

These are some very specific, effective strategies you can employ today.

Once shutterstock starts seeing a difference (whether its customers migrating to other platforms, or contributors stop uploading/cancelling their accounts), they will be more inclined to listen.

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but a lot of people are already doing what you are saying here: we disabled our port before the changes, we are posting bad reviews, and comments on social media letting customers know about the situation, there are several articles about this in the media etc. It just sounds like you are saying everything as you are not involved (you should do this, you should do that, instead of WE should do it) and that's not very convincing.

Did you disabled your portfolio BTW?

As for top contributors: they have a special deal, so not much chances in convincing them.

Quote from: Chichikov on June 02, 2020, 13:52

Quote from: r2d2 on June 02, 2020, 12:48

we should organise us in teams with special tasks.

For Example:

Twitter Team
Facebook Team
Google Ads Team
Trustpilot Team
Customer Phone Team

We should give SS the best service that we can provide!

You can add Linkedin


The best way is not for contributors to leave, Shutterstock doesn't care about losing even 10,000 contributors.
The best way is to "force" customers to go elsewhere.

and the best way to get customers to go elsewhere is to leave.

This is going to go on well into 2021, move on.