Quote from: zebra007 on June 24, 2020, 13:57
....

Not out of character... At all!

Exceedingly unwise to do business with this let them eat character. Jon's business plan is/was a major contributor to where we find ourselves today.

Let Jon eat cake and move on!

Quote from: gbalex on January 11, 2015, 19:31

Quote from: stockastic on January 10, 2015, 19:31

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on January 10, 2015, 15:33He's a billionaire because he masterfully played the game of business and managed to make a fortune off of ordinary people. Bravo! Well played.

I can't quite manage a "bravo" for this guy, who's made a ton of money as a middleman by gaining control of a market and exploiting photographers around the world, grinding their margins to dust and causing many skilled and creative people to abandon the business.  Yes there is some skill in evidence here, but also a very large component of being in the right place at the right time.

We don't have a 'buyer's market', or a 'seller's market'.  What we have today is a 'middleman's market'.    Somehow, I don't feel this represents the original dream of the internet and crowdsourcing increasing opportunities for everyone. 


I look forward to a day when the photographic community finds ways to route around Shutterstock entirely.  That will get a 'bravo' from me.

The ultimate measure of a man is what he does with power and wealth as his true worth is built upon the legacy of his deeds.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one would never wish to live.

Greed flourishes by a thousand tiny surrenders to self seeking, selfishness, self interest.

And here we are... Jon's actions bearing fruit!

Quote from: cobalt on June 02, 2020, 20:03
Oh look, on day 8 of their shitstorm they are trying to play ,,divide and rule".

Nope, will not work, will totally,totally backfire.

They really have absolutely no clue how internet communities work, do they? And they have had a huge producer community for 15 years.

This strategy might work in authoritarian places, but not with free artists.

https://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/topic/100133-new-earnings-structure-for-contributors/page/140/

Everything they do about this shitstorm is COMPLETLY wrong.

But it does tell you what management really thinks about the lowly masses...

,, Everyone stop and read this. Its very important. Continue to quote it so that it doesn't get buried in the forum and others will see it. Many members of the Stock Submitters Coalition (the new coalition created to fight changes like these and you can join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/261369748434285/ ) have reported to us that they received a communication from Shutterstock wanting them to sign a separate deal that will allow them to stay at what they said was the current percentage (Im assuming that means the previous structure) until the end of January and then they would be taken down to level 1 like everyone else. They are hoping to quell the rebellion by throwing a carrot in front of a select group of contributors and making them feel special. Just when you thought they couldn't get worse they go and do something like this. They are now offering different deals to select people in hopes of this all going away. Not to mention the deal they are offering still sucks. If you get one of these letters/emails I implore you to not sign it. In fact, I beg you to post it here and show the rest of the contributors what Shutterstock is trying to do behind everyones backs.

Again, keep quoting and reposting this for others to see. Join the Stock Submitters Coalition and help fight this. We are over 600 members strong now and represent a portfolio of over 7.65 million. Our members have pushed articles out to many websites: https://fstoppers.com/originals/what-wrong-shutterstock-489338 , https://www.dpreview.com/news/7607355790/shutterstock-announces-new-earnings-structure-contributors-are-anything-but-happy , https://petapixel.com/2020/05/27/shutterstock-unveiled-a-new-royalty-structure-and-photographers-are-furious/ . Join in and help make a difference. https://www.facebook.com/groups/261369748434285/"

Again this is not a new tactic, they did the same thing when they made changes at BS.

They are who they have always been!

Quote from: thx9000 on June 01, 2020, 19:46

Quote from: FastRacer on June 01, 2020, 18:38

Quote from: thx9000 on June 01, 2020, 18:29

Quote from: gnirtS on June 01, 2020, 18:14
Looks that way - they cant even get the robbing contributors bit correct.  Everything is appearing as an SOD.

Greed and incompetence. That's a potent mix. If you aim to drive a business into the ground that is.

Thing is, THEY are laughing all the way to the bank. It's only being driven into the ground for contributors. The noobs who are ok with $.10 an image are all lined up, ready to go. Tens of thousands of them.

Short term maybe. Long term they'll eventually share the fate of iStock. I don't know what kind of spin they put to this in their corporate meetings to convince themselves it is sustainable but there is no way they'll be able to keep old and attract new contributors producing relevant and quality content. After that it'll be a vicious circle ...down the drain. It's not the first nor the last time a leading company shoots itself in the foot

I don't think they ever thought it would be sustainable. They made a mint going public and the goal has always been, to fill their pockets, at our expense.

The business plan has been built around devaluing our assets to gain market share and that has not changed. The focus is on attracting more contributors, using key contributors to attract more contributors and offering the lowest pricing model to attract buyers.

They fully understand this is not sustainable, at which point they do just what they have done. When profits & market share drop, prop stock prices up by robbing the contributor piggy bank.

I don't care enough any more, to check what key players have been doing with their stock and stock options. I am out and have been out for a while. Will never be back. I don't do business with morally bankrupt crooks.

Quote from: Firn on June 01, 2020, 07:48

Quote from: gbalex on June 01, 2020, 07:26

As you can see on the forums there is always a fresh new crowd of contributors waiting to take advantage of algorithms; which benefit new contributors. And always new contributors, who are willing to buy into the lies and belive, that it will never happen to them. Because of course, they are strategic workers who produce superior content.

Fom what older contributors have told multiple times, the algorithm seems to benefits old contributors. A lot of oldtimers have confirmed that newly uploaded work does not sell at all for them, while their old images, that have been selling for 10 years+ continues to sell. 
Yes, they changed the algorithm in a way that new content was mixed into the "top image" resuts, but that was only for a very small period of time. Your new image would be there for a day, or sometimes even hours, depending on how much other new content with the same keywords came in, while old top images stayed on the first page permanently. I think with that mix Shutterstock tried to achieve a mix of exposure both to their newsellers as well as their bestsellers, but the 1million+ of newly images that are added each week are just too much to give every individual new image that is uploaded enough "stage time" for potential to become a permanent bestseller.

But since earnings for individuals have gone down over time (as can be seen in SS's sales report - They still have roughly the same profit, they still pay roughly the same to contributors, but the number of images has gone up drastically. So of course, in the end everyone gets a smaller piece of the pie) I can understand how older contributors would assume that new contributors would be to blame for having less of that pie.

New contributors are NOT to blame, their only crime is believing the con/lies; that hook them into being exploited like the rest of us. In the end we are all in the same boat.

I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of Jon and his IPO cohorts who are willing to watch us all buy more expensive kits, expensive software, etc, etc; fully knowing that what they have planned for the industry.

I also feel sorry for SS's staff, many of whom also belive the lies. Those with integrity like Scott, who moved on to Adobe.

Ask yourself why did SS suddenly hide the Weekly - Top 50 Best Selling Images?
https://www.microstockgroup.com/shutterstock-com/how-are-sales-going-shutterstock/msg392983/#msg392983

SS has NOT changed RECENTLY. Once Jon decided to go public, he committed to throwing contributors under the bus to gain market share. Key employees put in place during the IPO publicly stated, that the objective was to lower prices with the intent to gain market share.

It is sad to read this thread and see, that some people are only now, waking up. Jon committed to exploiting contributors and running down prices in 2011. They intend to do so, until there is nothing left to wring out of contributor hides.

They fully understand that there is a limited window in which to exploit contributors under the downward trajectory that is their business plan.

Does anyone here belive they will not continue to lower prices until they have destroyed; even new contributor ability to make a slim dime. SS's business model has been an unsustainable pyramid scheme, for most contributors, since 2011.

And yes they banned people from the forms before & deleted ports when contributors complained about poor treatment. They were largely unresponsive on the forms in regard to serious contributors problems, from the very beginning.

As you can see on the forums there is always a fresh new crowd of contributors waiting to take advantage of algorithms; which benefit new contributors. And always new contributors, who are willing to buy into the lies and belive, that it will never happen to them. Because of course, they are strategic workers who produce superior content.

As always, some will disappear from stock and move on, just as many old timers did from MSG when they woke up to find sales had dropped by half because of algorithm changes tuned to give IS contributors jumping ship, a competitive advantage because they were at lower pay levels.

Oh the irony!

I can remember receiving similar responses when new contributors jumped ship in mass from IS. Long term contributors were complaining about algorithm changes that gave preference to new contributors. SS understands this dynamic and takes full advantage of new contributor ego's!

Quote from: cobalt on May 31, 2020, 21:19
Look fake people with no portfolio are popping up on the SS forum telling us all we are worthless scum.

Now that will surely influence the producer community and make them go on their knees and back to uploading the ungrateful brats!

How dare we doubt SS! Everything they do, they do for us!

https://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/topic/100133-new-earnings-structure-for-contributors/page/100/


,, Im good with SS new earnings change, I trust Shutterstock that they had no other choice but to do it, I have zero respect for contributors trashing Shutterstock online, on social media and in this forum and I think everyone that does it should be banned for life from SS.

Show some respect for the guys that put in tons of work for you to have a platform to sell your work in times when it's heading straight to Unlimited free downloads, SS is doing it's best to provide good sales EVERY SINGLE DAY !

Chill ! The entire world is on its knees with all this Corona Virus and you go around shaming SS Calling to ban them ?

10 cents minimus per sub? Work hard, be original, explore and I guarantee you'll make 1 million sales a year. WORK HARD !  Work Harder !

90% of the negative comments here are from small lazy portfolios, SS Said in the email they want to reward hard working contributors and this is a great idea.

If you're here to make money, there is plenty! Plenty to make, Just put in the effort.

What other choice did SS have ? take a deep breath and think about it, look around, read the map and thank god every morning for SS.

People started posting financial reports (I read all of them when they come out) stating they have this much and that much, I wish SS will go back to the glory days of higher stock price, they deserve it, its an amazing platform with amazing people putting an amazing amount of hard work for you to be able to do what you love and get paid on time and run it like clock work. SHOW SOME RESPECT !

And for the love of god, the Levels are perfectly balanced, wanna go level 6? Do you want SS to create a level 7 just for you? WORK FOR IT !

I think SS should remove any account that also sell at these "unlimited" sites, that is giving SS a bad name.

Long live SHUTTERSTOCK, a fair, welcoming and professional company.

Shutterstock is doing the right thing for them and for US.



I don't work for SS (I wish I did, honestly).

I don't know anyone that works for SS.

I am a contributor just like you, Not a top contributor but not a small one.

"

😄

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on May 27, 2020, 20:07
Now might be a lovely time to re-read their blog post about their sumptuous new headquarters in the Empire State building



I encourage anyone's social media shaming of these greedy jerks to go heavy on the contrast between their luxury real estate in one of the world's most expensive markets and how they're trying to squeeze the small businesses who supply them. During a pandemic no less - to add a rich layer of icing on the cake!

Do a search for #ShutterstockESB on twitter to see the "Silicon Alley" elite at play in their new space... Especially sickening in light of the new royalty scheme

It is not like we did not have advanced warning... it has been clear for a very long time that SS does not value its contributors. All we needed to do is pay attention to their actions over the long term. And yet we continued to give them the benefit of the doubt time after time; while they continued to let us know who they are via their choices.

We need to ask ourselves... do we value ourselves & our work. I have not contributed to SS for some time and they will never get another creative from me.

https://www.microstockgroup.com/shutterstock-com/shutterstock-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2013-financial-results/msg366316/#msg366316

Quote from: obj owl on May 31, 2020, 16:14

Quote from: gbalex on May 31, 2020, 16:04
The time to stand up to SS was long ago... Why anyone is surprised at these actions, is beyond me. I tried to set off alarm bells long ago and was met with a great deal of push back & disdain.

SS/JO = Pure greed and nothing more... Actions have shown for many years; that they do NOT value contributors! Contribute to SS @ your own peril.

Everybody has a different tipping point, it was Shutterstocks job to manage that so it didn't all go tits up at the same point, this time they failed.

Yes the tipping point for me occurred in 2015. The choices Jon made to drive down the value of our content, to gain market share; a strategy key SS admin admitted to publicly in financial reports; convinced me that they were no longer supportable. The extreme damage SS purposely caused to the entire industry, should not be given a pass.

Quote from: gbalex on June 30, 2015, 16:56

Quote from: XXX
You mean like XXX when he was the self appointed rep. for XXX. SS was smart enough to steer clear of that. They must read forums and see how some people are high risk. Yourself included for your never ending attack on anything SS.

I don't feel the need to trash talk XXX, I tell him what I believe when we disagree. We have butted heads here on the MSG forums many times, but over the last year I think he has done a good job of showing respect to me and other people here on the boards. We frequently agree and disagree and I think that is healthy.

As for your comment about me, I will take your comment as a compliment. If I were going to promote any company as a "Community Leader". I would need to be able to look each person I attracted to join thru the position in the eye and feel that the investment in time, talent, and funds they would personally choose to make, as a result of my involvement; would be beneficial to them in the long term.

Rather than take things at face value when shutterstock went public, I spent time to find out where we stand as contributors. I have taken the time to find out who joined shutterstock as key business decision makers; as a result of the IPO. And I take time to read the financial reports and PR shutterstock is producing to attract investors. I think this is important for my own port, because shutterstock's key business insiders determine the future value of the assets we produce. And because they hold a large share of the market their business decisions, also affect the value of our assets on other micro & macro sites.

As a result of my research, I would not choose to be a Community Leader at a company that chooses to devalue our assets to gain market share. I would choose the welfare of my friends & colleges over any monetary or others benefits I might gain any day.

The time to stand up to SS was long ago... Why anyone is surprised at these actions, is beyond me. I tried to set off alarm bells long ago and was met with a great deal of push back & disdain.

SS/JO = Pure greed and nothing more... Actions have shown for many years; that they do NOT value contributors! Contribute to SS @ your own peril.

Quote from: pancaketom on January 29, 2019, 23:18
As a geologist and someone who has spent a fair amount of time in places that have glaciers or used to have glaciers it is pretty obvious that they are melting away much faster than they have in the recent past. Just looking at the before and after photos of some places is astounding. Many of the glaciers in the lower 48 US states will probably be gone in my lifetime.

My take on global warming is that it is real and at least some of it is caused by human actions, it will have drastic effects on humans no matter what we do (too late to completely stop the effects now), we could make it so things won't be all that bad, but we won't until it gets a lot worse. In general wet places will get wetter , dry places will get dryer (warm air can carry more moisture than cool air), and things will be less steady - so for instance in the dry parts of the SW USA it will be dryer most of the time with a few bigger storm events which will lead to flooding and other problems. Mostly climate change will be a problem for people, who like things to stay more or less the way they are used to. Some places will be better off, some not much change, and some will be completely screwed - like Miami or Bangladesh. As people try to leave places that are less habitable all sorts of unpleasantness will erupt.

Will things always exactly follow the broad predictions? of course not. Weather does what it does on a shorter time scale than climate. Over a longer time scale we will see the changes in climate. I hope that my take is too pessimistic, but I worry it might be too optimistic.

Lately climate deniers frequently mention cold snaps as justification to deny the "fact" that we are losing polar ice and glaciers. If the world is actually getting colder overall as they claim. How do they explain the loss of ice and what do they belive happens when large amounts of cold water enter the ocean currents which act like a conveyor belt - transporting warm water and precipitation from the equator toward the poles and cold water from the poles back to the tropics. It is well known that the ocean currents regulate global weather.

Watch the 6 graph cubes - central to ice melting in the arctic between 1979 - 2018
https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/155/video-annual-arctic-sea-ice-minimum-1979-2018-with-area-graph/

Quote from: cobalt on September 11, 2018, 13:41
Devastating news. I met him once in Cologne, when he was still with Shutterstock. Great guy full of life with a big smile. Very inspirational and very dedicated to working with photographers and artists.

Terrible loss for his family and young children, but also a terrible loss for us. He was one of the really decent people with a keen, sharp mind the industry has.

My deepest condolences.

Could not agree more, a huge loss for his young family, our photo community and the world in general. Scott was an outstanding individual and he will be missed.

Very Sad News, Scott was a talented, compassionate man with integrity and he will be missed.

Scott Braut OCTOBER 11, 1971 – SEPTEMBER 7, 2018

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/suffern-ny/scott-braut-7984156

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on August 02, 2018, 19:32
More ramblings of a Trump hater 

If the Pope stood up today and said Donald Trump was the second incarnation of "jesus" democrats and liberals would still hate him for no other reason than they have to hate him.

It might come as a surprise to find that there are a good number of Republican NON Trump supporters who hold him accountable for his numerous contemptible and documented actions; because many of those actions are in polar opposition to the actions Jesus thought were of paramount importance.

Quote from: relativity on June 05, 2017, 10:32

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on June 02, 2017, 15:15

Look at part of a glassdoor review (from April 2017) of a departed software engineer

this is exactly how i see SS IT team from outside. last week, they were unaware that the images weren't indexed for 32 hours. they reacted only when a contributor told them.

This has been going on since 2007.  Since that time they have been absolutely aware, that they have indexing issues and they consistently choose not to address them. They hope contributors will not notice and when they do, they offer very little in the way of meaningless noise to quiet the crowd. 

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on June 02, 2017, 15:15

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on June 02, 2017, 03:52
Has SS changed much over the past 15 years? I wonder how much of the current system is band-aid'd 15 year old technology.

Look at part of a glassdoor review (from April 2017) of a departed software engineer

"Preventing the company from having high uptimes is a massive pile of tech debt, the fixing of which is often prioritized out of existence. Several attempts have been made in splitting up the monolithic Perl app that runs the store into several smaller microservices; however, since no resource planning, performance measurements, or any other sort of proactive actions were taken by the developers, the microservices have only increased the number of single-points-of-failure. Compounding issues is a relatively-new directive that all new services *must* be written in NodeJS, and while this is a positive trend from the previous directive of "you can write your code in any language you want";, the extremely-questionable choice of NodeJS was made by a small committee of developers, with no input from other teams in the company.

As such, development at Shutterstock is a nightmare of Lovecraftian proportions, which both developers and infrastructure being ill-equipped for the scale and challenges that need solving. Projects at Shutterstock used to be in pretty much every language under the sun (Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, NodeJS, and Go used to all be supported runtimes), so it's commonplace to be handed code in a language you're unfamiliar with. As a result, services are rewritten every time the assigned developers change (which is frequent, due to high turnover), and as a result, there are many instances where two or three microservices running to serve the same function.

The developers themselves are a mixed bag. As stated in Pros, there are some very smart people here, but they're sadly dwindling in number as the days go by. Instead of hiring experienced developers to replace them, managers instead hire very-inexperienced developers, often right out of college, or very inept developers, who actively make poor coding choices and lower the overall stability of the site further. Since these developers often function by pushing untested code into production with minimal test coverage, problems go undiscovered until they cause production problems, and only after several hours of looking at red herrings first.

The toxic nature of the culture at Shutterstock means that teams are rarely willing to work together, instead hoarding infrastructure resources and institutional knowledge in blind grabs for power and prestige. Shadow infrastructures are commonplace, only being discovered when they cause production outages or break in some other way that affects the developers who created them. At this point, the Infrastructure team is expected to support and fix these solutions, without being given either the manpower to do so, or the authority to remove these teams' abilities to create their shadow servers again. As a result, the infrastructure is in a constant state of flux, and a recent decision to move the entirety of the infrastructure to the cloud was both poorly-justified and badly-planned, and will lead to more outages in the future.

A lot of these faults and problems lie squarely at the feet of management, who have to be among the most inept group of executives I've ever worked for. Middle management is easily the worst, with good management is often coached out of the company, replaced by others who are too busy playing politics to manage effectively. There are way too many middle managers, and others are promoted to management positions without experience or a clear directive. As a result, managers often battle with one another over responsibilities and power, and burying each other in meetings is far more common than it should be. This directly affects morale and productivity, and engineers are often paralyzed into inaction for fear of making the wrong move and losing their jobs.

At the C-level, the poor performances continue. The CEO is a megalomaniac who micro-manages the site and the work teams are doing, often wasting tons of resources and time by refusing to allow more-qualified employees to handle the day-to-day operations. The tasks he sets are almost always impossible to complete on time, and he has no qualms about dismissing managers that he feels have failed him, even if the failures were due to his poor planning or lack of understanding of his own company's technical stack. This further increases stress and fear among the engineers as well.

Overall, working at Shutterstock is a frustrating, unfulfilling experience, and there is almost certainly a better company in NYC that would make better use of your skills, and respect you more as a person. Avoid!"

This should come as no surprise to any of us. The site has not been functioning for at least 10 years. jon has consistently stiffed contributors and choose the bailing twine approach each and every time numerous bugs became impossible to ignore. Based on his business plan to run prices into the ground; I have always suspected he and the people he brought on board for the IPO, believed the money would be made before the site imploded. As such they never invested the capital and resources needed to develop the site for the long game.

They made changes to the search engine to facilitate the IPO and flow of sales between pay tiers to boost stock prices. For years, jon has been consistently making choices for short term profit with no regard for the welfare of his contributors or employees.

They have been having server and server sync issues since 2007. Countless contributors have railed on the numerous issues that continue to crop up without resolution. They simply try to convince us that there are no problems.

Have come to the conclusion they do not care to resolve them. Will NOT base my success on a company who does not care about the success or welfare of its contributors. Greed is the order of the day at SS.

These "bugs" have been going on for years and shutterstock has done little to resolve the numerous issues.  As long is money is flowing in on SS's end they do not care how the bugs impact the welfare of their contributors.

Quote from: Rinderart on May 01, 2016, 01:59
Mar 12th 2012 is when the end started, My most popular. some with 5/6,000 DL's and deserved to be Most Popular Disappeared that accounted for the bulk of income. They went to page 50 or something and never returned. This and taking away My "VERY HEFTY" referral Money after swearing it was Permanent was Basically what Killed my Motivation.

Have you noticed that some of the harshest critics of the "conspiracy theory" have fallen silent or added their voices to those who have been hit by these demotions?

Quote from: FlowerPower on April 20, 2016, 16:41

Quote from: gbalex on April 20, 2016, 16:10
Constant bugs on SS

This is the message I receive when trying to log on to SS.

"Your connection is not secure

The owner of contributor-accounts.shutterstock.com has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website."

That's a Firefox problem not SS problem. I get the same alert on Adobe's website.

If it was a firefox issue, I still would not be able to get in. I waited three hours and signed on again and had no problem the second time.

Constant bugs on SS

This is the message I receive when trying to log on to SS.

"Your connection is not secure

The owner of contributor-accounts.shutterstock.com has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website."

Quote from: NewStocker on March 29, 2016, 22:47

Quote from: MichaelJayFoto on March 29, 2016, 20:01

Quote from: Photostocker on March 29, 2016, 19:49
We contributors should set up our own stocksite where the royalty rates are something like 90%. 10% is only for the runing company and the website. And we need webtool for the copy and paste all the photos and keywords from the iStock if contributor wants to leave from the iStock.

Sure. Because customers are just waiting for that. And the site obviously is going to run flawless once set up because it is run by photographers who know what they're doing. 

Eh-Hem, I am a photographer, I have set up my own stock site selling purely my own content, it looks far more professional than iStock's site ever did/does. It has very simple pricing, it is easy to navigate, was built on a free and open source CSS platform, nothing is broken, the site can accept both credit card and PayPal payments, and it runs smoother and faster than the iStock site ever does/did.

Granted I don't have a sizable collection when compared to an agency that crowd sources from millions of potential contributors, or the traffic to be successful with it (yet), but it isn't hard to run circles around iStock's web programmers in order to build a stock site that works and people find easy to use, yet I still consider myself very much a coding hack at best. I set it up over only a few month period, on a part time basis, whilst tweaking and working the bugs out. Imagine what one could do if all they did all day was develop a stock site as a full time endeavor?

When I think of the iStock site programming team though I imagine a bunch of children with mental disabilities who can't control their bowels sitting in a bathtub together, whilst floating amongst their own turds, squeezing them like Play-doh, and giggling away as if they haven't a worry in the world.

Good point, I think because most people are inexperienced in building sites they over estimate the technical abilities and expense needed to build a successful sales platform. And the micros have taken full advantage of this. Heck their sites are full of bugs which they make no attempt to resolve.

What you could not put off upgrading your geriatric infrastructure another 8 years?

The bailing twine and duct tape must me giving way!

Quote from: Daryl Ray on February 19, 2016, 17:41

Quote from: r2d2 on February 19, 2016, 16:06

Quote from: enstoker on February 19, 2016, 14:55
Every day more and more sales on Fotolia.
&
Excellent support from Mat and agency support team, as well.
TNX Mat.

Realy refreshing !
Nice weekend to all 

ecited, thank you, impressive...

Yes they make PR (you call it support) in this forum. WOW!
They give us 33% commission and make millions.
Suggestion: Stop the "support" and pay a fair trade commission of 50%.

For what should i say thank you?


No wonder that the agencies can make  what they want with us...

Baby-steps in the right direction are still steps. Fotolia scores some brownie points with their communication. Expecting leading agencies to suddenly start paying a fair 50% is unrealistic, considering those of us that could have helped prevent that trend years ago, failed miserably at doing so.

Only way to send a message is to sacrifice the worst of the leading agencies. Easy choice. iStock. If enough contributors severed ties with those scumbags demanding they lower the 85% commissions they rape from your content or pull their ports. Shutterstock, etc. would eventually notice and things might start to change. Or else "they could be next". But no, here come the sad excuses. Change takes sacrifice boys and girls, personal and financial. But the result in the end would be well worth it. Can't take the hit all at once? Drop exclusivity, stop uploading, speak out more, take a few down at a time. Do something or admit defeat.

Every single one of you that still contribute to and defend iStock are responsible for extending the state we are in now. Every time the idea of a "union" or some kind of collaborative effort gets shot down by frightened, uneducated, voices that dismiss the idea before it begins, we ensure our future stays as is.

Even a small yet vocal, organized, focused group represented by a handful of trusted big time contributors would change the game for us. The naysayers overlook the power of a vocal minority and the fact that the "big corporate, faceless" overlords are scared to death of negative public sentiments and will placate to preserve reputation. Consider politicians, television networks, etc. We don't need more than a measurable enough percentage of content represented, with a loud, consolidated voice to start developing momentum to push back with.

Many are underestimating the power we'd yield with a simple coalition, and over-estimating the disadvantage of the lack of total participation and the quality of the new content that deliver those ridiculous high stats that scare you so much. Simple communication and clear, honest goals would keep the recruitment healthy.

Or just keep complaining to thin air while bending over repeating, "yes sir, may I have another"...

I should rename this thread "Please Sir May We Have Some More"

http://www.microstockgroup.com/shutterstock-com/last-ss-raise-may-13-2008/

Quote from: r2d2 on February 15, 2016, 12:29

Quote from: Chichikov on February 14, 2016, 09:24

Quote from: r2d2 on February 14, 2016, 08:11

Maybe thats one reason. Another could be that the veterans still earn enough money.
But whats your solution?
Only cry a loud about the good old times? 

"Only cry a loud about the good old times?"
I am not crying about the old good times... Not at all, never.
But I am not whimpering about the new [bad] times, like many here.

I am aware that the system is not the best today (if any "best" system could exist), but we live longer, we live better (and we lament more and more).

The problem is not a problem of changing prices on Shutterstock's ELs... This is a false problem, or only a very very little part of it.
The problem is too complex to be limited only to Shutterstock's ELs.
This is part of the result of how we have built our whole society. We are part of it, we are responsible of it. Constantly whining is just weakness and hypocrisy.
The problem is a general problem of society. A society based on exploitation of the most for the profit of the less.
The problem is a priority of values in life. (What is really important in life, what we really want in life?)

Money (and their possessors) rules the world, banks rule the world. All is done in the name of God Money...
If you really want to change things, change the system, the whole system...
There is could be a way: make the system to fail, theoretically it is very simple: make the banks fail and the whole system will collapse. Are you ready for this? How many people are ready for it?
If you are, do it. If you are not you can continue to whimper, you will change nothing at all (and fill more depressed).
But, in my opinion, this is another battle against windmills because you cannot fight and win against human nature (that is to be courageous in speech and coward in act).

there is some truth to it.
Anyway, I'm not depressed and it is not all hopeless...

Hey i feel good i like what i do! 

Just look at the share price Oringer is quite under pressure. The agency business collapses
by itself.

And if I can speed it up by talking about "unity"i do it. Thats it.
No reason to throw the towel.

Oringer took in millions every year before he took the company public, however than was not enough for him. He paid himself around 30 million at the time of the IPO and then sold a huge chunk 09/25/2013    2,530,000      Disposition at $57.3 per share.    144,969,000

Jon will be fine no matter what happens to SSTK and has earned himself an appropriate reputation among those who supported his road to success.