I have read here (https://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/december-earnings) a thread about earnings and bad influance of free photos stock sites.
As a phrase
"Those people who gave free photos in unsplash are probably the dumbest person ever appeared on the www. I cannot think of somebody more stupid"
I took a look to Unsplash for the first time.
I found a lot of good images, relevent reserch results and curiously often better descriptions than at SS. For sure this kind of sites is serious competition for regular stock. My first thought was to agree with quotation above but after long reflexion, am I really smarter than they? I am selling for $0,38, it is not so far from free...
With half day commissioned shooting I earn equivalent of 6 months of SS earnings. It seems easy for potential clients to contacts artists at unsplash so maybe with carefully selecting images it is not so bad idea to be there. I have seen a lot of profesionals there.
If microstock leaders continue to treat us as sh*t there is a risk that lot of contributors,earning close to nothing, turn to free sites to have pleasure to hurt microstock business , just for revenge.

Quote from: rene on June 02, 2019, 15:55
With half day commissioned shooting I earn equivalent of 6 months of SS earnings.

Have you sold 1 image at Shutterstock the last 6 months or a million?

Quote from: rene on June 02, 2019, 15:55
I am selling for $0,38, it is not so far from free...

38 cents is a world away from free when considering 100s of downloads.

Plus the average isn't 38cents, more like double that on Micros depending on the port.

Unsplash users overestimate the kindness of strangers and underestimate the value of their work.

"I'm not making much at my job, so I think I'll march into my boss's office and tell him I'll work for free. That'll show him!"

Quote from: Shelma1 on June 02, 2019, 19:22
"I'm not making much at my job, so I think I'll march into my boss's office and tell him I'll work for free. That'll show him!"

And maybe your boss will help your career by telling all his business friends that you work for free. You will be so busy with work. 😂

Quote from: rene on June 02, 2019, 15:55
I am selling for $0,38, it is not so far from free...

If you are getting 38 cents basic per sale on ShutterStock, that means your total sales through that agency are over $10,000 total.  A far cry from free...

I only get 36 cents basic from SS, since my total sales are still a bit shy of $5,000.  HOWEVER, if I look at my overall sales to SS, I discover that my AVERAGE per download is actually 67 cents.  And my RPI is $3.89. (both totals since 2010, though the account lay mostly empty until the late 2017, when I got serious again).

The alternative is free?  Might as well stick to pInterest if that is really what you want...

I would say that if you are doing microstock to market yourself for contract work you are doing it wrong.

I have no idea if unsplash is a good way to market yourself. I certainly wouldn't suggest sending full or even high resolution images there.

Now that there is advertising on the Unsplash site do the photographers realise they've been taken for fools? I'd laugh, but it's not funny.

Quote from: gillian vann on June 04, 2019, 06:55
Now that there is advertising on the Unsplash site do the photographers realise they've been taken for fools? I'd laugh, but it's not funny.

With the cost of Unsplash, hard to believe that it will stay free for a very long time ...
But, Where did you see advertising?

source : https://medium.com/unsplash/what-does-unsplash-cost-in-2019-f499620a14d0

The ads shown as if they are part of the photo collection. I saw a few from the company Square. It is the same style of ads you see on Pinterest, where they also put ads among the pins you scroll through.

Quote from: microstockrank.com on June 04, 2019, 13:20

With the cost of Unsplash, hard to believe that it will stay free for a very long time ...
But, Where did you see advertising?

source : https://medium.com/unsplash/what-does-unsplash-cost-in-2019-f499620a14d0

You have a typo in your tagline.

One of the others may not be as big as Unsplash but Pixabay is a tad more blatant in its advertising....their sponsors are our old friends........SS and AS...no doubt using their cut from the proceeds of licensing our images to 'sponsor' the competition.

Quote from: microstockrank.com on June 04, 2019, 13:20

Quote from: gillian vann on June 04, 2019, 06:55
Now that there is advertising on the Unsplash site do the photographers realise they've been taken for fools? I'd laugh, but it's not funny.

With the cost of Unsplash, hard to believe that it will stay free for a very long time ...
But, Where did you see advertising?

source : https://medium.com/unsplash/what-does-unsplash-cost-in-2019-f499620a14d0

Thanks for the interesting link.
I did some analysis of where the money at Unsplash comes from here, in German though (Google Translate might help):
https://www.alltageinesfotoproduzenten.de/2019/01/15/das-geschaeftsmodell-hinter-kostenlosen-bildern-am-beispiel-unsplash/

Quote from: fotorob on June 05, 2019, 17:11

Quote from: microstockrank.com on June 04, 2019, 13:20

Quote from: gillian vann on June 04, 2019, 06:55
Now that there is advertising on the Unsplash site do the photographers realise they've been taken for fools? I'd laugh, but it's not funny.

With the cost of Unsplash, hard to believe that it will stay free for a very long time ...
But, Where did you see advertising?

source : https://medium.com/unsplash/what-does-unsplash-cost-in-2019-f499620a14d0

Thanks for the interesting link.
I did some analysis of where the money at Unsplash comes from here, in German though (Google Translate might help):
https://www.alltageinesfotoproduzenten.de/2019/01/15/das-geschaeftsmodell-hinter-kostenlosen-bildern-am-beispiel-unsplash/

Most enlightening and the Google translation is good. Thanks.
Interesting that the Unsplash model for monetization is different to that of Pixabay and on that subject there's a link given to another article "The business model of Pixabay and possible consequences" which is also worth a read (Google translate from the original German text).

Edit: Sorry Robert. Didn't realise that you're author of both articles...many thanks.

Well, I guess Getty won't be able to lower pricing further...
https://www.finanzen.net/nachricht/aktien/getty-images-to-acquire-unsplash-the-preeminent-image-platform-for-global-creators-9967925

"The Unsplash team share our values and share our vision of enabling global creativity and communication. We are impressed by what the Unsplash team and community has built and we look forward to supporting their continued development"

They can say it louder but not clearer. 

Well thats one way of disrupting the free giveaway model of stupidity.

Buy them,  move the images to thinkstock/getty
close it down

Make money

Quote from: Bad Robot on March 30, 2021, 15:54
Well thats one way of disrupting the free giveaway model of stupidity.

Buy them,  move the images to thinkstock/getty
close it down

Make money

Bear in mind my crystal ball is not all that good, but I'd guess they want Unsplash for all the API business so Getty can copy what Shutterstock has been doing with API customers - the fees for the API hookup aren't shared with the people who create the images and there are some small per-asset royalties that get paid when the end user downloads something.

https://unsplash.com/developers

I'm not sure how many of the people who previously uploaded to Unsplash will continue to supply them once they know they're feeding Getty

I think this is good news.

Getty will create a nice little Unsplash collection, bring in the really good artists and hang the rest of the platform out to dry.

They will use it as a marketing tool, but make sure it stops interfering with the real business.

We can see how far iStock languished when under the control of Getty. Getty didn't understand and continue the Internet community of the site. They didn't well grasp the community influence on the business plan. Getty ran iS just as any of their other collections and in the way they wanted to do the business in an old school way. I'll bet Unsplash will suffer a similar fate - existing, but not at the former level.

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on March 30, 2021, 14:55
Well, I guess Getty won't be able to lower pricing further...
https://www.finanzen.net/nachricht/aktien/getty-images-to-acquire-unsplash-the-preeminent-image-platform-for-global-creators-9967925

Never underestimate greed. I'm sure plans are afoot to make people pay for the privilege of uploading images. The next evolution of stock photography. And guess what, I won't be surprised if people were queuing up to pay to upload. Just like they gave all that great photography away for free to make other people millionaires.

Maybe they intend to populate istock's offerings with newly acquired Unsplash content.  Then increase their profits by skewing the search results towards said content.  Customers need not know the content is also available as creative commons.   Contributors need not be paid because they already gave away all rights.

Quote from: trek on March 31, 2021, 01:54
Maybe they intend to populate istock's offerings with newly acquired Unsplash content.  Then increase their profits by skewing the search results towards said content.  Customers need not know the content is also available as creative commons.   Contributors need not be paid because they already gave away all rights.

I think that's exactly what they'll do.

Quote from: ShadySue on March 31, 2021, 02:10

Quote from: trek on March 31, 2021, 01:54
Maybe they intend to populate istock's offerings with newly acquired Unsplash content.  Then increase their profits by skewing the search results towards said content.  Customers need not know the content is also available as creative commons.   Contributors need not be paid because they already gave away all rights.

I think that's exactly what they'll do.

Does unsplash content typically have model or property releases?

If I understand this correctly, Unsplash is inviting companies to provide images with their products and logos in them so that Unsplash users will effectively advertise the product for them when they download and use those images.

In the articles below, they detail both paid ad content by brands as well as just adding branded images to the collection (in the paid case, the brand pays Unsplash to show the brand content in searches where they think it'll work; content is still free)

https://unsplash.com/brands

https://medium.com/unsplash/introducing-unsplash-for-brands-3b60d1b4ad0c

They claim Unsplash is used more than Shutterstock, Adobe Stock and Getty combined (no idea if that's accurate; just noting that they pitch this about themselves)

https://buffer.com/resources/unsplash-for-brands/


Here's a collection of Surface devices as an example of brand linkage

https://unsplash.com/@surface