They always said that!
First they predicted coal reserves will end soon. Then an oil based economy emerged and doomsday got delayed.
Then they predicted oil reserves will be exhausted soon. But deep drilling technologies appeared, and doomsday got delayed.
Then they said again that oil resources will be exhausted soon. But fracking appeared together renewable energies and doomsday got delayed again.
Then you predict a new doomsday. But new technologies will always emerge to delay doomsday.

You are assuming that the future will resemble the past. That's a big assumption.

The industry is at it's golden day already. More photographers and customers than ever before. You are talking about an individual photographer's income that is lower than it used to be. Well demand used to be huge and supply was limited, now demand is huge and supply is huge as well. Stock photography has been around since the 30's and closing on becoming a century old business. So it's not going anywhere.

As for competition between us contributors, for sure there is. Our income is costantly on the decline because of each other. And there is a lot of new talent getting added everyday, so no one can escape the natural way of things.

Staying productive and keeping a certain ammount of edge in your individual style will bring sales to your own library. The most probable outcome though is that you can't make it solely on stock photography but you should use it as supplumentary income and a stepping stone to learn more commercial photography and be able to handle bigger client accounts in the future.

Quote from: lotzik on September 06, 2017, 04:13

The industry is at it's golden day already. More photographers and customers than ever before. You are talking about an individual photographer's income that is lower than it used to be. Well demand used to be huge and supply was limited, now demand is huge and supply is huge as well. Stock photography has been around since the 30's and closing on becoming a century old business. So it's not going anywhere.

As for competition between us contributors, for sure there is. Our income is costantly on the decline because of each other. And there is a lot of new talent getting added everyday, so no one can escape the natural way of things.

Staying productive and keeping a certain ammount of edge in your individual style will bring sales to your own library. The most probable outcome though is that you can't make it solely on stock photography but you should use it as supplumentary income and a stepping stone to learn more commercial photography and be able to handle bigger client accounts in the future.

If contributors aren't contributing or going off to pursue more profitable endeavours, then isn't it shrinking and not growing?

I think  there are so many more contributors so even if individually they are contributing fewer images overall contributions are still increasing. As I think has been said before bigger cake but cut into smaller slices.

In the golden days, people can sell Fart Apps for $.99 and make thousands doing it. In the golden days, there is little to no competition. The market was immature. It grew up. To some contributors, the present is golden and there is still good money to be made.

I've always found poop themed sells better than fart themed.

There's been healthy competition the whole time. Bars got raised. Amazing artists entered the market, and I never felt threatened. It just pushed me more, and I encouraged it. The market moved forward and grew with changes and innovations.

The moment I started to get worried was when a lot of that innovation and positive changes stopped. Companies reduced royalties, prices stagnated and even affiliate programs were scrapped. It seemed to get hostile overnight when companies realized that money was going to make them a lot more happy than us. There also seemed to be a trend of dumping as much low quality images on the market as possible. Honestly, places that have kept stricter review standards have changed very little or a lot less.

One of the other changes that personally hit me hard was with Google and search engines, it seemed to kick some of the smaller and boutique shops in the shins. Which is a shame because they were the part of the market that was trying to keep the rest of it honest.

So, yeah, there's still plenty of money out there, but it is not the same friendly landscape regardless of competition.

Shutterstock's commission schedule hasn't changed much in a decade. The only thing that changed a lot was the amount of images in their portfolio...from a 1.8 million to over 160 million. There is an oversupply and demand for large SODs went down...or may it stayed the same or went up, but distributed to more contributors.

Istock turn to crap, but that's just Getty and their terrible business decisions. FT has been consistently good and if you can't make it on FT, you won't make it anywhere. There's the competition of 2007 and there is the competition of 2017...it's a lot different. Large studios with large high quality portfolios are eating up the search results these days because they realize how much they can dominate the inexperienced contributors.

Google's algorithm ranks search results by a number of factors. One of them is relevance. If people clicks on a Shutterstock link instead of a small agency, then Shutterstock is more relevant and it moves up the search results. It's the nature of Search Engines.

The biggest change over the years is competition. It has always been competition. I just talked a friend who said a lot of sellers on Amazon are forced to lower prices because the competition is so fierce from other products and Asian sellers. It easy to blame the 'landscape' instead of the competition, because we don't want to believe the competition is good enough to eat into our sales.

Might as well blame the inventor of the digital camera and the internet.  Once it became easier and cheaper  to produce and distribute high quality images it was always going to happen. Just like any comparable industry.

Luddite (lʌdaɪt  )

If you refer to someone as a Luddite, you are criticizing them for opposing changes in industrial methods, especially the introduction of new machines and modern methods.
[disapproval]

The majority have a built-in Luddite mentality; they are resistant to change.

Luddite in British (ˈlʌdaɪt  )
noun English history
1. any of the textile workers opposed to mechanization who rioted and organized machine-breaking between 1811 and 1816
2. any opponent of industrial change or innovation
adjective
3. of or relating to the Luddites

Derived forms
Luddism (ˈLuddism) noun
Word origin of 'Luddite'
C19: alleged to be named after Ned Ludd, an 18th-century Leicestershire workman, who destroyed industrial machinery

The majority have a built-in Luddite mentality; they are resistant to change.

I think it's a bit of a simplification. Luddites weren't opposed to technology per se. They were opposed to the fact that with the emergency of new inventions what required skills at some point now only needed an "unskilled" laborer (machine operator).

Quote from: Brasilnut on September 07, 2017, 04:13

The majority have a built-in Luddite mentality; they are resistant to change.

I think it's a bit of a simplification. Luddites weren't opposed to technology per se. They were opposed to the fact that with the emergency of new inventions what required skills at some point now only needed an "unskilled" laborer (machine operator).

Yeah, where are those cobblers? That was a skill replaced by NO machine, because nobody is repairing their shoes anymore, today. The abundance of shoes and their quality made this job virtually obsolete!
Long time ago, I used to be very good at repairing TVs! Luckily, I didn't pursue a TV repair carrier, because nobody is repairing their TV anymore, today! TVs are so good, you just replace them with newer model, before they break.

So ask yourself: what would it take to bring back the shoe repair industry to the golden days? What would it take to bring back the TV repair industry to the golden days?

PS. I know one or two presidents who should know better than claiming, all day long, they will bring back golden days back to obsolete industries.

Unfortunately, I think that photography in the future can only be cheaper

Lets stop innovation all together and go back to the days of taking a dump over a hole in the ground and bloodletting 

Lets stop innovation all together and go back to the days of taking a dump over a hole in the ground and bloodletting 

You have a hole? Civilized rich snob!

I've got it! Set quotas. New upload minimums and percentage sales minimums. People who don't upload or people with terrible materials that don't sell get dropped. The result will be getting rid of the weak competition that takes a few sales here and there, and then that means more for us. The agencies need to start closing accounts, like Canva did.

Of course when it's one of the people here who gets cut, then we'll hear the screaming and crying. But that's my answer. Remove the weak, survival of the best and strongest. Produce or perish. I'm all for the higher standards plan. Don't people here complain about standards and other peoples junk that passes. Here's the answer.

That's how we can all earn more and make it more like the good old days.