Author Topic: Shutterstock sales decline. (Read 8398 times)

helloitsme · « **on:** September 25, 2018, 04:58 »

It seems like I may have negative growth on Shutterstock for the first time this year despite adding new materials constantly. VideoBlocks is also declining. AdobeStock/Fotolia sales are growing this year. Pond5 sales are growing at slow but steady pace as well. I wonder what happened to Shutterstock? They are losing the edge.

kelomang · « **Reply #1 on:** September 25, 2018, 05:05 »

For me the decline started around April. And it has gotten worse ever since. I still hope they get better again.

derek · « **Reply #2 on:** September 25, 2018, 10:32 »

Really??? you dont say! I thought they were the best in town!

on a serious note: its all crap!

DavidK · « **Reply #3 on:** September 25, 2018, 10:46 »

For me the answer to that is pretty clear. IS and AS are eating Shutterstock's lunch. Shutterstock has made some confounding and bizarre moves in the past months which have alienated a large segment of their buyers, while both IS and AS have been agressively pursuing those buyers. The only commensurate growth I am seeing in relation to portfolio size is with IS and AS, and persistently diminishing returns at SS. SS may still be selling more overall, but the kind of buyers who purchase my work are moving on. For good reason.

jonbull · « **Reply #4 on:** September 25, 2018, 11:51 »

Quote from: DavidK on September 25, 2018, 10:46

For me the answer to that is pretty clear. IS and AS are eating Shutterstock's lunch. Shutterstock has made some confounding and bizarre moves in the past months which have alienated a large segment of their buyers, while both IS and AS have been agressively pursuing those buyers. The only commensurate growth I am seeing in relation to portfolio size is with IS and AS, and persistently diminishing returns at SS. SS may still be selling more overall, but the kind of buyers who purchase my work are moving on. For good reason.

i agree...in addiction is clear they control sales and revenues based on contributors.....is not possible that often portfolio seems really disappear from ss, from one hour to another...then appear again...
today i sold images uploaded in 2007 never sold......probably buried by zillions images....images compared to my last two year wrk i would be ashamed to upload today.

nobody · « **Reply #5 on:** September 25, 2018, 11:59 »

Quote from: jonbull on September 25, 2018, 11:51

Quote from: DavidK on September 25, 2018, 10:46
For me the answer to that is pretty clear. IS and AS are eating Shutterstock's lunch. Shutterstock has made some confounding and bizarre moves in the past months which have alienated a large segment of their buyers, while both IS and AS have been agressively pursuing those buyers. The only commensurate growth I am seeing in relation to portfolio size is with IS and AS, and persistently diminishing returns at SS. SS may still be selling more overall, but the kind of buyers who purchase my work are moving on. For good reason.

i agree...in addiction is clear they control sales and revenues based on contributors.....is not possible that often portfolio seems really disappear from ss, from one hour to another...then appear again...
today i sold images uploaded in 2007 never sold......probably buried by zillions images....images compared to my last two year wrk i would be ashamed to upload today.

Your images that you are ashamed of are like ten times better than the images they are accepting today for the nobs

jonbull · « **Reply #6 on:** September 25, 2018, 12:18 »

Quote from: nobody on September 25, 2018, 11:59

Quote from: jonbull on September 25, 2018, 11:51
Quote from: DavidK on September 25, 2018, 10:46
For me the answer to that is pretty clear. IS and AS are eating Shutterstock's lunch. Shutterstock has made some confounding and bizarre moves in the past months which have alienated a large segment of their buyers, while both IS and AS have been agressively pursuing those buyers. The only commensurate growth I am seeing in relation to portfolio size is with IS and AS, and persistently diminishing returns at SS. SS may still be selling more overall, but the kind of buyers who purchase my work are moving on. For good reason.

i agree...in addiction is clear they control sales and revenues based on contributors.....is not possible that often portfolio seems really disappear from ss, from one hour to another...then appear again...
today i sold images uploaded in 2007 never sold......probably buried by zillions images....images compared to my last two year wrk i would be ashamed to upload today.

Your images that you are ashamed of are like ten times better than the images they are accepting today for the nobs

yes sure...i am ashamed as anybody improving in years is a bit ashamed of the images he did at the beginning..clearly years ahead 90% of stuff uploaded today...anyway i cannot understand who and how they can find images unsold from 2007..

pkphotos · « **Reply #7 on:** September 25, 2018, 13:46 »

There's only one way that sales are going to get better and it has to be a combined effort by all contributors. The answer? Stop uploading, everyone must stop uploading now indefinitely and do other stuff. Then you'll see sales will gradually get better.

pkphotos · « **Reply #8 on:** September 25, 2018, 13:49 »

Quote from: jonbull on September 25, 2018, 12:18

Quote from: nobody on September 25, 2018, 11:59
Quote from: jonbull on September 25, 2018, 11:51
Quote from: DavidK on September 25, 2018, 10:46
For me the answer to that is pretty clear. IS and AS are eating Shutterstock's lunch. Shutterstock has made some confounding and bizarre moves in the past months which have alienated a large segment of their buyers, while both IS and AS have been agressively pursuing those buyers. The only commensurate growth I am seeing in relation to portfolio size is with IS and AS, and persistently diminishing returns at SS. SS may still be selling more overall, but the kind of buyers who purchase my work are moving on. For good reason.

i agree...in addiction is clear they control sales and revenues based on contributors.....is not possible that often portfolio seems really disappear from ss, from one hour to another...then appear again...
today i sold images uploaded in 2007 never sold......probably buried by zillions images....images compared to my last two year wrk i would be ashamed to upload today.

Your images that you are ashamed of are like ten times better than the images they are accepting today for the nobs

yes sure...i am ashamed as anybody improving in years is a bit ashamed of the images he did at the beginning..clearly years ahead 90% of stuff uploaded today...anyway i cannot understand who and how they can find images unsold from 2007..

IS are a complete joke these days and I doubt many people are stupid enough to contribute further material. AS is still a very small player in the video market IMO. Therefore SS and P5 still dominate video but contributors are uploading furiously anything they produce, thereby saturating the market

derek · « **Reply #9 on:** September 25, 2018, 13:54 »

nobody! above, is correct 100%!....so what is it? corporate raiding under way or some people on the inside are skimming off the top! I think its very, very suspicious!

DavidK · « **Reply #10 on:** September 25, 2018, 14:35 »

Quote from: pkphotos on September 25, 2018, 13:49

IS are a complete joke these days and I doubt many people are stupid enough to contribute further material. AS is still a very small player in the video market IMO. Therefore SS and P5 still dominate video but contributors are uploading furiously anything they produce, thereby saturating the market

Stupid perhaps, or maybe their work is good enough to actually sell there

helloitsme · « **Reply #11 on:** September 25, 2018, 20:56 »

What is IS? iStock? If so, I thought everybody left there already.

pkphotos · « **Reply #12 on:** September 25, 2018, 23:21 »

Quote from: DavidK on September 25, 2018, 14:35

Quote from: pkphotos on September 25, 2018, 13:49

IS are a complete joke these days and I doubt many people are stupid enough to contribute further material. AS is still a very small player in the video market IMO. Therefore SS and P5 still dominate video but contributors are uploading furiously anything they produce, thereby saturating the market

Stupid perhaps, or maybe their work is good enough to actually sell there

You missed the point. Everyone with images/videos still makes sales there, I still make sales there, but very few are stupid enough to keep uploading when the commission we make is 10 or 15%. You're majorly undercutting your work at other agencies if you do.

msg2018 · « **Reply #13 on:** September 26, 2018, 02:14 »

Quote from: pkphotos on September 25, 2018, 23:21

Quote from: DavidK on September 25, 2018, 14:35
Quote from: pkphotos on September 25, 2018, 13:49

IS are a complete joke these days and I doubt many people are stupid enough to contribute further material. AS is still a very small player in the video market IMO. Therefore SS and P5 still dominate video but contributors are uploading furiously anything they produce, thereby saturating the market

Stupid perhaps, or maybe their work is good enough to actually sell there

You missed the point. Everyone with images/videos still makes sales there, I still make sales there, but very few are stupid enough to keep uploading when the commission we make is 10 or 15%. You're majorly undercutting your work at other agencies if you do.

This is an old dilemma. It's true that by continuing to supply iStock we are COLLECTIVELY undercutting ourselves. But INDIVIDUALLY no one is stupid, it's a business decision: should I remove my assets and let buyers buy someone else's work (because I don't think buyers will look specifically for MY files on another site), or take a part of those sales?

Ditching low earners that pay low commission is easy, iStock is a different story.
Note that my ethical view of a good commission is at least 50%. By that principle I should ditch Shutterstock too, and all of the good earners. Then I'd be unemployed.

By the way, this topic was about Shutterstock sales decline. And in my view the reason is mainly internal to Shutterstock itself: too much competition since they started to accept everyone and everything.

Pauws99 · « **Reply #14 on:** September 26, 2018, 02:34 »

I also think focussing on the percent payout is somewhat one dimensional 15% of $100 is better than 50% of $10. Of course we'd all like a bigger percentage but IS do occasionally make high value sales which other agencies rarely match and 60% of nothing is nothing...which is typically what sites offering those kind of percentages deliver. My RPI at Istock is pretty much in line with the "average".

Shutterstock do seem to me to be suffering from a combination of poor quality control and stronger competition.

DavidK · « **Reply #15 on:** September 26, 2018, 06:50 »

Quote from: pkphotos on September 25, 2018, 23:21

Quote from: DavidK on September 25, 2018, 14:35
Quote from: pkphotos on September 25, 2018, 13:49

IS are a complete joke these days and I doubt many people are stupid enough to contribute further material. AS is still a very small player in the video market IMO. Therefore SS and P5 still dominate video but contributors are uploading furiously anything they produce, thereby saturating the market

Stupid perhaps, or maybe their work is good enough to actually sell there

You missed the point. Everyone with images/videos still makes sales there, I still make sales there, but very few are stupid enough to keep uploading when the commission we make is 10 or 15%. You're majorly undercutting your work at other agencies if you do.

I couldn't possibly say it any better than the two posts above, but I would add that personally I gave up looking at microstock as a sustainable model a long time ago. To me the long view strategy giving consideration to undercutting work at other agencies is irrelevant at this point. I follow the buyers now, and I also listen to what those buyers are saying about agencies like SS. If my own stats are showing me that one agency is in freefall while another is actually showing real growth then my own definition of stupidity would be to ignore the growth agency based on some arbitrary notion of fairness. Microstock was never fair. I also look at the aggregate financial totals on a quarterly and annual basis (not daily or even monthly) and I certainly don't care about the volume of files sold. RPI used to be important to me but that horse has also left the barn. I am only interested in the bottom line now.

For the record I did not miss your point at all. I actually agree with you on a fundamental level but I have been at this long enough to know that you will never find the kind of consensus among such a large and disparate group of contributors required to affect the kind of change you are hoping for. So, calling someone stupid for doing what they feel is in their own best interest is, well, not so smart.

thirdbornentertainment · « **Reply #16 on:** November 03, 2018, 00:38 »

My sales have been up for the most part with pond5 and SS. Dissolve and Videoblocks have been down

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Author Topic: Shutterstock sales decline. (Read 8398 times)

helloitsme

kelomang

derek

DavidK

jonbull

nobody

jonbull

pkphotos

pkphotos

derek

DavidK

helloitsme

pkphotos

msg2018

Pauws99

DavidK

thirdbornentertainment

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