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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
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1051
« on: June 15, 2020, 18:28 »
microstock graphic
Are you aware of the Shutterstock terms & conditions that all accounts agree to that say, in part "You agree that you will not use Shutterstock's Trademarks in any manner that might tarnish, disparage, or reflect adversely on such Trademarks or Shutterstock." https://www.shutterstock.com/termsIt's possible they won't bother to pursue a legal case, but if you weren't aware that you were probably violating the terms - and wanted to keep your account open for the future - it'd be good to think about the legal aspect of this
1052
« on: June 15, 2020, 13:41 »
You don't have to read the number at the bottom of the page, which was suspect in the past, sometimes updated, sometimes not.
https://www.shutterstock.com/search and enter nothing. Search: 321,985,595 stock photos, vectors, and illustrations are available royalty-free.
While bottom of the page says: Over 324,009,728 royalty-free images with 993,927 new stock images added weekly.
Sorry to add something that doesn't agree with the dropping numbers, assumed that all are caused by people leaving. Phil and I both noticed drops of millions of images, earlier this year. Before the commission change.
Just because no one else was watching or tracking back then, doesn't mean nothing happened. There were big drops.
I know about the search stuff. I've been tracking those numbers too. There was a 12,701,237 loss of images on Feb 27 2020 and then the numbers climbed again. I've asked around about the reason for such a huge one-day drop, but other than purges of stolen content, no one knew I have many numbers (as they reported them, so who knows how accurate) from the Internet Archive's Wayback machine to give context to what's happening now They haven't updated the numbers at the bottom since the afternoon of June 12th
1054
« on: June 14, 2020, 21:18 »
Shutterstock reports images "added daily" and "added weekly" and those numbers have been dropping. They didn't start dropping when the pandemic started. They started dropping after their May 26 announcement of royalty cuts....
as always, correlation is not causation - the pandemic has been a rolling disaster (eg unemployment stats also exploded in May)
There's an odd correlation that over 3.3 million fewer images are in Shutterstock's collection now (versus June 1). No clue how that could have happened.
1056
« on: June 14, 2020, 20:55 »
1057
« on: June 14, 2020, 14:30 »
Tolerating plagiarism is just despicable. I think it's particularly bad in the illustration area - many of my photos can't easily be replicated even if someone wanted to, but people can, and do, copy illustrations.
When I was wandering through the misery of new uploads at Shutterstock yesterday I found a portfolio full of badly auto-traced and outlined photos. One has to hope that it was the contributors' own photos that he/she vandalized like that.
Don't know if you ever submitted illustrations to iStock, but I had to show any photo reference I'd used - it had to be my photo - as part of uploading. For a while, it looked as if Shutterstock was going to take standards - including keywording standards - seriously, but they clearly just don't care about that beyond policing trademarks in keywords
1058
« on: June 14, 2020, 13:08 »
Its possible for one volunteer to build a website while another writes a press release. People are working hard for no money...I wish we could all just lend them our support and thank them.
And btw, Id like to say Jo Ann Snover is a force of nature, a one-woman tweet machine. Huge props to her and everyone else in the background helping out.
Thanks  But when you have something to celebrate, you tweet! I'm @joannsnover if you want to help by retweeting to your followers https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/1272228426326224897We are seeing some more big drops today, I think because all the June 15 1-week boycott folks are deactivating. While the week has the collection numbers way down, we want to make the most of the impact of those declines (and no need to worry about them going back up the week after; we'll find something else to squawk about then).
1059
« on: June 13, 2020, 18:19 »
If you do not boycott Shutterstock on Monday, your portfolio will be worthless in 6 to 12 months. If we as a community don't stand together strongly with this action,...
perhaps true, however, deleting/disabling your portfolio means it's worthless TODAY!
and, of course, this 'community' is a tiny fraction of all contributors
Many people who are joining #BoycottShutterstock June 15 are doing it for one week. It's a move more people can afford to make because it won't destroy their portfolio's search position and will only take 1/4 (ish) of that month's earnings This community isn't the sum total of those boycotting And the active part of Shutterstock's huge contributor totals is a tiny fraction. Lots of people upload 50-100 images and never do anything else with it.
1060
« on: June 13, 2020, 18:14 »
...what does a drop in images uploaded have to do with images DELETED? - w worldwide lockdowns (esp asia & russia), it's not unexpected to see fewer images being produced
...how do you know 2 million QUALITY images have been deleted? (or importantly, quality images that are actually SELLING?)
...and you know this HOW? how many images leaving are those that weren't selling (or even [shocking!], 'similars garbage')
You know as well as I do that Shutterstock has been piling on the images with little regard to quality for a few years now. However that's not really the point with respect to #BoycottShutterstock. Shutterstock reports images "added daily" and "added weekly" and those numbers have been dropping. They didn't start dropping when the pandemic started. They started dropping after their May 26 announcement of royalty cuts. And I've tracked a bunch of data from the Wayback Machine that's part of the Internet Archive, if your next question is how do I know that As far as the deleted images, we know quantities but I'll grant you that even the large portfolios (hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands) with great saleable images have a clunker or two in them. All of us have that. I know about the portfolios because the people boycotting have been telling me and I've been tweeting about them. I've looked at the work that's going and there's lots of really great work. I have also been tracking the new uploads, both quantities and quality and he's telling you it's dreck because I've been finding the dreck and tweeting about it. As always, there are great images in there too. As far as the dreck and tens of thousands of similars (see this if you don't believe me; there are more like this https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/1271609402131271680), whether or not it's being encouraged by Shutterstock I don't know, but when you look at a page of fresh content for a search versus the "top" images, you get an idea of how useless most of the new uploads are to buyers. For example: https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/1271679920997982208) If you want to throw rocks, get better data first. I'd actually prefer it if you didn't throw rocks. You could join #BoycottShutterstock or not, but if not, why not leave us to it?
1062
« on: June 13, 2020, 15:34 »
...unfortunately the calculations in this video are not what Shutterstock is giving us. According to this me, at level 5, should not have $0.10 downloads, but I do get them every day in a higher number than I expected. First week wasn't as bad for me as I thought it would because with big single sales my RPD was quite ok, but second week came with mostly subs and some ODs and it showed what the future might look like. With my regular download numbers my revenue dropped to around 40% of what it was before the new earnings structure. It was really disappointing to see this after 15 years of actively contributing to SS.
There are two of the packages of 750 images a month that will give a 10 royalty to a level 5 contributor. The annual commitment paid monthly & annual paid up front. Even the month to month will only get you 12 Level 6 is hardly better. They still get 10 for the annual paid up front/750 a month. And the other two options for 750 are only 11 and 13. There is no good news out of the 350 or 750 subscriptions with the new royalty schedule. I predicted (blog post) that if buyers were happy with the lower volume/higher price per image options, Shutterstock wouldn't have introduced (recently) the annual paid up front choice. The new royalty rates were necessary to make the annual-paid-up-front option profitable. Seeing all the low subscription royalties is confirming my suspicions
1063
« on: June 13, 2020, 14:38 »
...So far this month I've received an average of $0.44 per sale.
That's a pretty bad average unless you are a new contributor. My portfolio is disabled as of June 1, but for good years my average was 90+ cents per download and bad ones about 75 cents. So 44 cents would be a huge cut.
1065
« on: June 13, 2020, 11:10 »
I will not boycot SS.
We are hitting a global economic crisis, worse than the Great Depression.
If so, then Shutterstock should move out of the expensive Empire State Building offices - many may be working from home anyway If so, then Shutterstock should not be paying a 17 per share dividend to shareholders this month. They boast they have cash to pay this. If so, then former financial analyst and current CEO Stan Pavlovsky could cut his $4+ million salary. Jon Oringer could do the same If so, then Shutterstock might not hire some of the highly paid employees they're advertising for. If so, then the volume of sales might decline, but not the royalty share that goes to contributors. Your argument just doesn't hold water if you look at the reality of what's going on. I'm glad your income is unchanged. Let's talk again January 1, 2021
1067
« on: June 12, 2020, 11:05 »
... But my problem is, if I would boycott SS, I would have to do the same with...
I don't think that's the right way to look at this. It isn't just about some cents/download absolute number and above you stay, below you go. If you left 123rf because their sales were rubbish, that'd be a fine reason. Or if you left some other agency because they wouldn't let you opt out of partnerships and some of those were a bad deal, that'd also be a fine reason. The reason to consider boycotting Shutterstock is that they suddenly and drastically changed the portion of the buyers' money they keep and reduced the share you get. (For video producers, I think the big hit will come in January when everyone goes back to the basic level and their percentages drop). Not only is that cutting into your income now, it's increasing the chances other agencies will follow suit, reducing your income everywhere. Shutterstock's annual pay-up-front subscription, a new and even more heavily discounted subscription, reduced the theoretical minimum cost for the buyer to 22 cents an image. To enable this price cut they needed to do something about royalties or risk loosing up to $118 per month on each 750/month subscription. Looking at all the 10 downloads in people's royalty charts, I'd say those are popular options. If those become the price point to compete with, other agencies will eventually be tempted to compete on price - if we don't hurt Shutterstock with no new uploads and portfolios leaving. At the very least, stop uploading and send your new work elsewhere while you convince yourself that it is not in your longterm interest to just take whatever shrinking piece of the pie Shutterstock decides to let you have.
1068
« on: June 12, 2020, 00:17 »
1069
« on: June 11, 2020, 15:53 »
...what's the plan of action once the website is up and running? What are we organising? What action is the 'unified front' going to undertake?
The unified front is figuring that out. In the meantime, halting uploads and disabling portfolios continues with #BoycottShutterstock to keep some pressure on the Shutterstock execs. You may not think the boycott will work. The execs can't be sure that it won't. That'll do for a Thursday
1071
« on: June 11, 2020, 13:21 »
It looks like the earnings of the big players will not drop that much. They have strong portfolios (should we use stock market term all weather portfolio) and it is also possible that SS is fine tuning search engine to drive more traffic to them, so they would not leave. All of them are now "shocked" and "insulted" and "humiliated" with 10 cent sales, but in reality all they (and all of us, lets face it) only care about overall income, not RPD. Why I think that? Pure logic - 38cents was already so low it could also be called insulting and humiliating. All microstock concept is based on that. So, they won't care is it 10 or 5 or 1 cent as long as the overall income is satisfying. SS will take care that income doesn't drop that drastically, and everything will be the way it used to be. and the small contributors? Who cares about them.
I think the problem contributors face if they take that attitude - that essentially, we've already agreed we're cheap, it's only a matter of just how cheap - is that buyers aren't going to purchase 3-4 times the number of images just because Shutterstock cut our royalties. Their needs are pretty much unchanged.
If the volume won't go up (or up enough) income will fall even for the factory producers (who also are the ones with expenses to cover, unlike some of the smaller contributors).
But, we are not cheap, that's the point. Although most of sales were 38 cents thousands of people got rich in microstock. So we are not cheap. I just find it hypocritical, or what the English word is, to base the boycott campaign on slogan 10c is humiliating. When the real reason is - I don't won't to work for 50% less money.
I've been trying all sorts of ways of talking about this to draw attention to it. An essay won't grab anyone's attention; too much detail and people stop reading. I liked somone's comment on an early tweet that included an image "That image is worth so much more than 10" I think using 10, even when some royalties are 12 or 14 has more impact. I haven't used humiliating (others have, but they've also used a bunch of language I won't as I think it's counter productive) I also think it's helpful to talk about our royalty cuts funding a 17/share dividend this month. It's more complicated than that, but it helps get the point across about who's helped and who's hurt by these changes. I also like the idea of using their Empire State Building offices (even though I'm sure most are working from home at the moment) because it's evocative too - big execs living high on the hog (Stan Pavlovsky's $4+million salary) sticking it to the small business contributors. Anyone who has suggestions for other ways to get our point across, feel free to find me on twitter (@joannsnover), pm me here or in the Stock Submitter's Coalition on Facebook. Note that I will not use anything with slave, slavery, any third reich images or language, or any swearing (however much Shutterstock deserves it). This needs to be business-friendly.
1072
« on: June 11, 2020, 10:15 »
It looks like the earnings of the big players will not drop that much. They have strong portfolios (should we use stock market term all weather portfolio) and it is also possible that SS is fine tuning search engine to drive more traffic to them, so they would not leave. All of them are now "shocked" and "insulted" and "humiliated" with 10 cent sales, but in reality all they (and all of us, lets face it) only care about overall income, not RPD. Why I think that? Pure logic - 38cents was already so low it could also be called insulting and humiliating. All microstock concept is based on that. So, they won't care is it 10 or 5 or 1 cent as long as the overall income is satisfying. SS will take care that income doesn't drop that drastically, and everything will be the way it used to be. and the small contributors? Who cares about them.
I think the problem contributors face if they take that attitude - that essentially, we've already agreed we're cheap, it's only a matter of just how cheap - is that buyers aren't going to purchase 3-4 times the number of images just because Shutterstock cut our royalties. Their needs are pretty much unchanged. If the volume won't go up (or up enough) income will fall even for the factory producers (who also are the ones with expenses to cover, unlike some of the smaller contributors).
1073
« on: June 11, 2020, 10:10 »
Done.
If you're getting too much of one sort of image, perhaps ask for "no more xxx" or "more yyy please" as most of us have a lot to choose from and it'd be good for the end result to look appealing overall
1074
« on: June 11, 2020, 01:47 »
Simple economics, if a site cannot reimburse production costs, the content will bot be uploaded or disappear like on SS.
As far as Shutterstock goes, video is the one category that isn't going down http://shuttercounter.ddns.net/I don't follow the economics on that side, but possibly it's that the big hit for video is January 1 with a reset to the minimum royalty rate. Knowing that it is coming, I'm puzzled that the uploads are growing, but perhaps people want to take out all the royalties they can in 2020 & then complain?
1075
« on: June 11, 2020, 00:34 »
The first time I hear about them is during the ss discussion. Hm.
ETA: at least for photos the quality is mostly lousy.
And in total they only have 8 million files.
I really cannot imagine quality producers giving them content.
If you search for them here, you'll see all the dust-ups in the past. I think the issue is that if they do well, it drives down even further buyer expectations for what they have to pay. From the contributor side, more contributors will mean diluted earnings - they don't pay much per download but the volume for each contributor is high, so (if you can keep the pool of contributors small) earnings are reasonable. But this sort of business model is the definition of unsustainable, IMO. Especially as the new owners want to grow the business. Who wants to see Shutterstock's 10 cent royalties anywhere else???
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