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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
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1152
« on: May 30, 2020, 10:43 »
...meanwhile, I read on some Facebook groups that Shutterstock terminated and suspended the accounts of some contributors who criticize them on the Forum and Social media. In one case I read that even the Portfolio continuous to be on sale but without the name of the contributor! How low can you fall?
I've seen the blurred out name and avatar account because the person posted in a thread here yesterday. Does anyone have any specific information about a contributor account (not forum posting privileges) that's been suspended? That was one of Fotolia's favorite tactics and I'd love to make noise about it if Shutterstock's done/is doing it. My quick scan of twitter and facebook this morning didn't reveal anything
1153
« on: May 30, 2020, 10:23 »
SS was such a great place. What happened? It feels like this is a completly different business.
I think they just can't keep the business by using the traditional payout rate.
Not true. If they hadn't introduced the pay up front annual subscription option (some time recently; not sure exactly when) they could have continued as they were. If they hadn't effed up their enterprise business - which has nothing to do with the subscription payouts - they wouldn't need to suddenly grow faster in the subscription business. If they had any sort of creativity, they wouldn't have decided to grow by slashing prices, which hurts all of us - all agencies as well as contributors - in the end If you look at their Q1 numbers, they were profitable but just not growing the way Wall Street would like. This isn't a story of a business on the brink of failure trying to rescue itself. And then we can look at their massively expensive office space in the Empire State building. This was *not* in any way a change necessitated by an unsustainable business model. That's a fiction trotted out pretty much every time an agency wants to stick it to their contributors and enrich themselves
1154
« on: May 29, 2020, 18:26 »
I FTP'd some uploads up this afternoon and was very pleasantly surprised by 1. How much simpler they've made the submission process and 2. How quickly the images were approved (I'm guessing they had hoped this might be the result of their royalty increase) I thought I should tweet about the new uploads to continue to raise awareness of their 10% royalty increase - and am now using #SupportDreamstime as well as #BoycottShutterstock in the tweets (along with the agency names) https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/1266509975955755008I realize that their big problem is sales (lack thereof) but given how rare it is for an agency to reach out a helping hand to contributors these days, I think it's right to give them lots of public "thank you"s
1156
« on: May 29, 2020, 12:11 »
https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/1266416370943574021I haven't uploaded there in ages as sales were so weak, but I'll be uploading this weekend - and I'd encourage anyone on twitter to retweet their announcement. They are at least trying to help, unlike the fat cat tossers at #Shutterstock...
1157
« on: May 28, 2020, 23:45 »
Why even bother trying to salvage anything with this company? It's like trying to get an abusive spouse to promise to stop beating you. What is the point? SS is junk and we really don't need them.
I'm not optimistic that we can get changes - Shutterstock is now a big public company with a huge image library - but the reason to try is that they've earned many thousands for lots of us and for a long time were undisputed monthly earnings leader after Getty and the private equity idiots ruined iStock (the first far and away leader in earnings). At 10 cents a sub download we don't need them, but it isn't June 1st yet and possibly they might be worried enough about noticeable quantities of proven salable content being removed from their library to rethink their cash grab.
1158
« on: May 28, 2020, 23:35 »
Why do you think Adobe Stock has a minimum 38 cent subscription royalty? It's not a coincidence.
They do? I thought it was 33 cents.
My mistake. Adobe has three subscription minimums, depending on lifetime downloads; 33, 36 and 38 cents. Shutterstock has 4 - those three plus the 25 cent lowest tier. The point stands though that when Adobe set up the rates for Adobe Stock (Fotolia's were different), they took care to at least match what Shutterstock paid.
1159
« on: May 28, 2020, 19:39 »
Here's a way to play with what happens with different royalty rates in the new system and compare with your current flat-rate subscription royalty https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1d3zG0P4zkNtHU5W15kszacAmr6rjc3JU3vRrmdZSCKM/edit?usp=sharingI've only allowed edits on the three input fields - royalty rate, new minimum sub amount and current flat-rate sub royalty (nothing is error checked so you'll get daft answers if you enter daft numbers) In the prices section I've shown all three payment options (monthly, annual paid monthly & annual up front). It's the last one that's creating problems for Shutterstock - and that they're trying to dump on us by cutting royalties Ignore the fact that they must have been making out like bandits if they only paid us 38 cents a pop for the 10 and 50 per month subscriptions. I'm guessing not many people buy those or they wouldn't be adding the new cheap options for annual paid up front. Also ignore the dangled bait of potentially higher royalties on those small-volume subs (which aren't really subs at all; I assume they created them to increase their profit compared to the On Demand items) The real story is in the 10 cent sub royalties for huge portions (not all, I understand) of our sub downloads. The changes in the global market they obliquely refer to are I assume them losing subscribers and their idea to woo them back is cut prices. The cut-price sub royalties allow them to offer the annual up front payment discounts without worrying over losses if customers download too much. If anyone remembers SS's early days, they'd change prices and then wait about a month to set the new royalty rates - with 25 a day (not 750 a month as it now is) they had 10 weekend days that probably wouldn't get used as much and needed to see what actual download numbers looked like to be sure they set a rate they could afford to pay. Removing daily limits made managing that buffer of unused images harder, and there's no room to discount. Bottom line for me is that our images are already licensed at rock bottom prices and if they keep undercutting other agencies with race-to-the-bottom price cuts, they will hurt all of us once the other agencies copy them. Why do you think Adobe Stock has the same top-tier minimum 38 cent subscription royalty? It's not a coincidence. Couple of tweets on this point - retweet if you can https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/1266221554209193986https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/1266222133018935296
1160
« on: May 28, 2020, 13:42 »
I filled out the form, but there are a couple of things I couldn't say. 1. Any levels-based scheme should be based on $$ not downloads. They don't report revenue and profit to shareholders in units and we don't get paid in units. Even with that change, I have severe reservations about having annual sales targets because t means that if the agency becomes very poor at selling our content, they get rewarded with a bigger share of each sale. We then have to fund their decline or quit. I mention this because I gave 123rf's rolling 12-month scheme a try - remember how they promised it would increase sales for us? What happened (and I was actively uploading to them at the time) was that content selling briskly on Shutterstock and others did nothing much on 123rf. When the inevitable happened and I dropped down a level in royalties I closed my account. It was clear (from my portfolio's performance at other agencies at the same time) that that problem was with them, not my content. But they get rewarded and my royalties would have been reduced. We want a system where both the agency and we have a way to thrive together. The biggest motivator to upload is sales. The reason that SS has become less and less interesting (from a contributor point of view) is that with over 320 million images, adding over a million a week, there's no way to keep up as a producer and they can't grow the business fast enough to do that either. They want to discount subscriptions more to try and grow the business but can't afford to, even given that they keep the "extra" for undownloaded allotments. The last quarterly report, the e-commerce business was growing and the enterprise segment shrinking. I expect they'll dig their heels in on flat rate subscription royalties and try to fiddle with the formula for levels or making it rolling. If I really thought they could fix the enterprise business - where all those lovely SOD royalties came from, I think - I'd be concerned about the percentages more. But I think the nuts and bolts of this is keeping the flat subs royalties. Perhaps we should ask for a new subs tier above 38 cents? 
1162
« on: May 27, 2020, 14:24 »
1163
« on: May 27, 2020, 14:07 »
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
1164
« on: May 27, 2020, 11:04 »
I will disable my portfolio June 1st. I haven't uploaded much lately for other reasons, but I won't upload anything to SS. In addition to tweets about the change, I thought I'd also try highlighting images that would be #GoneJune1 as part of #boycottShutterstock. I haven't put links to Adobe Stock in tweets yet, but might mix tweets about #Shutterstock slashing royalties with "go here instead" messages. https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/1265672584315547649I think the messaging should be simple - to try and get the general point across. Especially on twitter, you don't want lengthy explanations of the details. https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/1265693477007851521
1165
« on: May 27, 2020, 10:59 »
Are you sure this actually disables your account? The png seems to imply that you're just not letting people use your images for anything defamatory, deceptive, pornographic, etc...
There used to be another option - to opt out of "Sensitive Use". When they removed that choice (earlier this year, I think), they put in some language to make us feel better that we no longer had an option about type of usage. You can disable your portfolio, without deleting it, with these options. At least until Shutterstock changes the interface...
1166
« on: May 27, 2020, 10:34 »
And the magic word "lawsuit"? ... massive lawsuit? and the much feared word "discrimination" so feared by companies in times of political correctness. Could it be possible to use any of that?
I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think, given the terms of our contributor agreement can be altered at any time to anything and without notice, there's any legal issue to bring up. The slashing of earnings for every contributor isn't discrimination against any group, so I don't see how that applies
1167
« on: May 27, 2020, 10:30 »
did anyone experience sale increase after yesterday announcement?
Nope. Nada. Zip. No SS sales yesterday.
Ironically it was a great (by current standards) day, including a $54 SOD royalty
1169
« on: May 26, 2020, 19:46 »
Lets get a hashtag started on social media, has to start with shutterstock so it auto suggests the rest... maybe #shutterstockboycott ?
Lots of existing tweets with #boycottShutterstock, so that's what I'm going with
1171
« on: May 26, 2020, 19:44 »
Regarding to subscription sales, that always was main sale; we never was paid based on the subscription package that buyer buy. There are 4 subscrption packetes:
10 images for 49usd (Packet 1 or P1)
50 images for 125usd (Packet 2 or P2)
350 images for 199usd (Packet 3 or P3)
750 images for 249usd (Packet 4 or P4)
Based on this and the % presented for SS the earnings per sale under new criteria is:
Level 1 0,74 usd(P1) ---- 0,38 usd(P2) ---- 0,09 usd(P3) ---- 0,05 usd(P4)
Level 2 0,98 usd(P1) ---- 0,50 usd(P2) ---- 0,11 usd(P3) ---- 0,07 usd(P4)
Level 3 1,23 usd(P1) ---- 0,63 usd(P2) ---- 0,14 usd(P3) ---- 0,08 usd(P4)
Level 4 1,47 usd(P1) ---- 0,75 usd(P2) ---- 0,17 usd(P3) ---- 0,10 usd(P4)
Level 5 1,72 usd(P1) ---- 0,88 usd(P2) ---- 0,20 usd(P3) ---- 0,12 usd(P4)
Level 6 1,96 usd(P1) ---- 1,00 usd(P2) ---- 0,23 usd(P3) ---- 0,13 usd(P4)
You forgot the annual payment plan for subscription. That takes 750 images per month down to $199 per month. Plus there is a newly-announced pay-up-front for an annual subscription which results in $166.58 a month or 22 cents an image. Even at 40%, that's only 8.8 cents (i.e. you'd get 10 cents at all levels)
1172
« on: May 26, 2020, 11:33 »
1173
« on: May 26, 2020, 11:33 »
1174
« on: May 26, 2020, 11:04 »
This is worse than both iStock and 123rf. 1. They reset to the lowest rate Jan 1 each year 2. It's unit sales not $$, so videos, subscriptions and the SOD high value licenses count the same. Imagine getting one of the high value SODs in January, and instead of $102 you get $51 (because you're at 15% versus 30%) 3. Video is really hosed as their units are the same as image units, but typically (at least in the past) videos sold fewer but at a high royalty. Contributors who do both have to earn royalty rates separately. 4. Not clear what happens to subscription payments - are Subscriptions are a percentage now with a 10 cent minimum. As their enterprise business is shrinking (last two earnings calls) but the "e-commerce" business - subscriptions - is growing, they'd gain quite a lot by cutting our royalties there. This is the really bad news. For now, we can turn off our portfolios without removing content, although that may not survive this slash and burn maneuver. As I'm already at my 30% rate (what I've been earning so far), I'd have nothing to lose in the long term by turning off content - if I were to choose to try and protest this despicable cash grab by the new CEO I'm not surprised, but I am angry. I'll wait a bit for the formal announcement before deciding what to do. Tossers. Edited to add that they've posted updated tables for video numbers - the email was apparently in error and had the same numbers for both. I have asked them to clarify subscription payouts so we know how bad that will become.Subscription payouts will be percentages of unit cost as if the entire download allotment was used with a minimum of 10 cents (they added another clarification to their forum announcement)
Shutterstock keeps any money from unused download allotments and does not share with contributorsFor example, at the beginning of the new year, a subscription from the annual 750-a-month plan will net an image contributor as little as 3.98 cents Even with the minimum, for large chunks of subs sales, that means 10 cents instead of 38 cents (in my case). That is less than 1/3 of what I used to get! To add some numbers to this, I looked at my earnings in Dec 2019 and April 2020 to see what the difference would be with the new payments. December earnings were higher and had a larger proportion of non-subscription downloads. April had a higher proportion of subscription downloads. For December 2019 my subscription earnings dropped 74% which led my overall earnings to drop 24%. For April 2020, the same earnings percentage decrease for subs led to a 35% drop in the monthly total.Bottom line is that it would be really really hard to do anything with uploads that would make up for such a huge drop in income (and I'm images only, no video). Even at a 40% royalty rate, the best subscription royalty you get on the 350 or 750 subscription products is 23 cents - 15 cents less than we used to makeIf all the above weren't enough, there is a new subscription plan even cheaper than the annual commitment/monthly billing version - you pay for the year up front and get a bigger discount. For 750 a month, cost per image is 22 cents (6.6 cents royalty at 30%, i.e. 10 cents) and for 350 a month it costs 39 cents per image - a princely 11.7 cents royalty!And to think that just last year they were celebrating $1 billion in contributor payouts - they are world class jerks
1175
« on: May 25, 2020, 16:24 »
I can easily shot 15 images a day. At 60 bucks per shot that would be 900 per day....Not a bay day rate...Sign me up...
That isn't the deal though, is it. They want to pick only the ones they want. Can't compare apples & oranges.
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