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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
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1326
« on: May 03, 2019, 20:06 »
They didn't actually send you something with $0.00 for the amount, did they? I received mail with the wrong date (I hope), a way-too-small dollar amount (April really stank at SS and Adobe Stock easily beat them) and a 5+ week wait for payout - 06-15 They did get my contributor ID right  This really shouldn't be hard - I know it doesn't really matter, but it's so pathetically inept to fail to check these things before you do a mass mailing. Someone was spending too much time staring out the windows from their luxury offices...
1327
« on: May 02, 2019, 18:39 »
Getty's estimated revenue for the year ending Sept 2018 was about $867 million according to Moody's investor services. Shutterstock 2018 revenue was $623.3 million. Adobe has made a dent, but unlike the other two companies, licensing media is not their primary business, so it isn't getting 100% of their attention.
I'd like to see Adobe really take on Shutterstock, but I think they're happy to have stock licensing as a way to bind their subscribers more tightly to them and will do just enough to make that happen; probably not more.
Getty has messed up in a million ways, but while they're saddled with massive debt and don't appear to have much in the way of innovation going on, they're still used all over the place. I think dying is overstating things, in that they're still huge.
Shutterstock has lost the plot, but momentum counts for a lot and they'll fight harder as it's their only business, so they may yet find it again.
Follow the money...
1329
« on: April 29, 2019, 08:14 »
In addition to all the caveats above, you have to decide if you think this will work in the medium to longer term, even if you make something decent in the short term.
They are pitching that it's a limited group who will participate - because they know if they take in too many videos it'll dilute earnings. But if this package is appealing, buyers will want more choice of videos which will encourage Envato to include more content, which will dilute your earnings.
Where are these new buyers coming from? Where could they be coming from? There is a market for video, but how is that going to suddenly enlarge because of their marketing and promotion? I doubt that it will, which means that they're either cannibalizing their own sales or stealing from another agency. There's no magic here.
I'm sure those quotes are genuine from the early participants, but would you bet you'll see the same type of enthusiasm?
Bottom line is that your interests and the agency's interests will not be aligned - they will want more buyers and don't care about how many videos are in the pool. You will want to sustain your earnings by keeping the pool of videos limited. It won't end well for contributors, IMO.
1330
« on: April 25, 2019, 18:05 »
And the call with analysts to explain themselves... https://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Shutterstock+%28SSTK%29+Misses+Q1+EPS+by+7c%2C+Revenues+Miss%3B+FY19+Revenue+Mid-Point+Guidance+Above+Consensus/15405121.htmlhttps://finance.yahoo.com/news/shutterstock-inc-sstk-q1-2019-162538554.htmlThe SS PDF of their slides http://investor.shutterstock.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=251362&p=irol-presentationsOnly three analysts joined the call and Q&A was brief - as usual they seemed to accept the corporate-speak non-answers they were given. Perhaps I'm just crabby today but I thought sentences like this were a new high/low for stringing together buzzwords to try and sound as if you're actually saying something: "On the enterprise side, I would say that what we're doing is we're working on our go-to-market strategy. We're improving our product, which is the premier product and also includes the SMB team subscription. We continue to optimize certain marketing efforts, like lead flow optimization, scrutinizing the pipeline, understanding exactly which leads go to the right reps et cetera. "This was in reply to a question about why they were confident in their full year predictions even though they missed on Q1 There was mention of a new platform - something I haven't heard about, and apparently the analysts hadn't either. One of the questions asked: "Maybe just digging in on -- starting with maybe just e-commerce, new studio platform, I don't -- maybe some more color there. I don't know if we've heard about that before"The answer didn't tell me much: "...what the platform allows us to do is really move toward that single service for all of our product platforms. So when you look at kind of how our media service, for instance, as one of the big key services in our underlying infrastructure and product environment has evolved, we're going to place where we can really optimize and store certain advanced types of metadata for search optimization and also really understanding what our customers need. So as we start to index that metadata in more creative ways, we can start to show the way that our similar images or our asset details page are displayed in different ways based on different customers and different regions. That kind of leads to the way our search algorithm is going to continue to evolve using that metadata. And when we're on this platform, which we continue to make progress on all of our different products and services and asset types, we will be able to be cross-sell and discover in more interesting way"The growth of enterprise side of the business has slowed a bit but they have plans to fix that; they said the e-commerce side had done well - wherever that is, I'm not seeing it, so possibly it's just the massive size of the collection that means individual contributors don't necessarily see growth when the company does.. The collection grew almost 40% They were asked a question about the custom content business and Jon gave a somewhat vague answer about productizing that, saying he wanted to see a: "...kind of B2B to C kind of flow, and get the kind of intelligence into that brief in an automated, mechanized type of way, so that we can match the right photographer with that and client will all be happier at the end of the day"I don't think technology can help with the problem of trying to get a quality custom shoot on the cheap. Their stock was down 8% today
1331
« on: April 23, 2019, 09:43 »
...It seems like Adobe can't implement such an easy tool...
There is no reason Adobe can't do this. They choose not to. They have not done much to improve contributor features - and some of the features they have added (like recent top sellers) have been window dressing they decided was helpful versus the bread and butter features important to (and requested by) contributors. Their actions (or lack thereof) speak very clearly, regardless of any PR spin about how important contributors are to them...
1332
« on: April 22, 2019, 18:42 »
At 4:32pm Pacific Time, I received email about the new terms - still no blog post or marked up copy showing changes. According to the email they updated the TOS to "...make it easier for you to earn money doing what you love at Shutterstock." I have no idea how that goal could possibly be accomplished by their new TOS Towards the end, they repeat the intro sentence but follow it with "We cant wait to see what content you upload next." Perhaps they have some new (buggy) AI software they're working on and it wrote this rather sad excuse for a note to contributors. By the way, via the mobile app you can check your earnings without having to decide on whether or not to accept these terms
1333
« on: April 22, 2019, 17:03 »
No class action lawsuits, arbitration to resolve disputes, infringement (we have to submit a DMCA takedown notice, meaning we have to locate the copyright holder and can't tell them about infringements if it isn't our work - not sure that's a good thing but it saves them the trouble of sending us that canned email), plus a change to the Compensation section(9i.):
"Royalty payments based on a percentage of sales price will be based on the sales price actually received by Shutterstock and calculated after making any necessary deductions for any refunds, cancellations, previous overpayments, and any taxes, levies, imposts, duties, currency exchange costs, or other similar charges that are imposed on the payments received by Shutterstock. If any law, government ruling or any other restriction affects the amount of the payments which Shutterstock's licensee can remit to Shutterstock, Shutterstock may deduct from Contributor's royalties an amount proportionate to the reduction in such licensee's remittances to Shutterstock."
I think that is new and suggests we may get all sorts of variance in our payment based on their accounting of various charges and deductions.
I don't see any mention of a process to appeal what we believe to be incorrect allegations by others that our content is infringing - section 13e says they can terminate an account for a violation. There's nothing in the DMCA policy that talks about how a wrongfully accused contributor can straighten things out.
I never had a wrongful accusation at SS, but while at iStock someone said a picture of mine was an unreleased shot of him (which it wasn't - the picture was released and it was of an iStock employee, so it wasn't hard to straighten out). Given SS's current approach to contributor relations, it's not reassuring to me to see all sorts of new rules with no corresponding process for how problems can get straightened out.
There's a new section 18 about electronic communications delivery, but it seems harmless
Section 19f has a new part giving them wiggle room to notify us of changes in a number of ways, not specifically listed - it used to be "...by an announcement on your login page". Now, it is:
"Shutterstock will notify you of any such change by an announcement on this page, your login page, and/or by other means to provide you the opportunity to review the modifications before they become effective."
Not sure why that's a good idea - seems to give them leeway to be less transparent.
1334
« on: April 22, 2019, 16:10 »
I did, and I'm reading it now trying to figure out what changed. They did link to the prior terms (which is good) but didn't provide a change document - at least I haven't found one yet (bad).
1336
« on: April 10, 2019, 22:47 »
Viewed from the Adobe contributor interface, a Fotolia credit sale will say Standard; Subscriptions are at various prices - $3.30, 99 cents, 66 cents and 38 cents mostly if it's an AS sale. FT subs sales are rare these days but they're rank based.
The sales marked as Custom are from the large corporate accounts and those numbers don't follow any pattern. Today I had one for $8.40; yesterday one for $5.86. There are a lot at 38 cents marked custom too.
1337
« on: April 03, 2019, 09:27 »
...As a result, also all existing contributors had to accept the terms of use dated June 2018 upon login to the portal.
Kirsten, Thank you for explaining the background of this login surprise for contributors. However benign the intentions were here, I think this highlights an area which would really benefit from improvement in contributor communications. At least two other agencies - Shutterstock and Alamy - provide clear explanations of what changed whenever the upload agreement/contributor terms of use are updated. As these documents are long and dense, it is hard otherwise to figure out what the changes are. They also send contributors email, as well as information on the contributor web site prior to requiring acceptance of the new terms. It really helps to build trust with contributors when the agencies communicate with us over pricing, licensing and upload/contract changes. Examples, FYI Shutterstock terms - note the helpful summaries of each section on the right
https://submit.shutterstock.com/legal/termsSS summary of changes the last time they happened in 2015
https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/2015-contributor-terms-of-service-updatesAlamy's terms and their contract change record
https://www.alamy.com/terms/contributor.asphttps://www.alamy.com/terms/contributor-contract-changes.asp
1338
« on: April 02, 2019, 16:15 »
I can almost guarantee this is a reaction to Pond5. This is actually a positive step if they are noticing Pond5! Now everyone needs to pay 60%!
Not likely as the 90 day notice has been in place since at least 2016 There is one sentence added to the 2018 version that wasn't in that Managing your Work paragraph in 2016: "We may remove Work or terminate your account at our sole discretion without prior notice"
1339
« on: April 02, 2019, 15:42 »
I just came here to see if I was seeing something odd - as you noted, it's bizarre that terms supposedly 10 months old are suddenly presented in a tiny box requesting our agreement. I intend to read it first - as an example I was not aware that there was a Dreamstime-like requirement to keep a portion of the work online until a 90-day notice had elapsed (edited to add that this isn't new - see below). It doesn't look as if anyone really took care when writing these terms as paragraph 62 is probably intended to be 6.2 as a sub paragraph of section 6. I will see if the internet archive can get us prior versions for comparison to see what might have changed. Here is a July 2016 version of the terms and the 90 day restriction is there, so it's not new. Still looking to see what other versions I can locate https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/legal/servicetou/Adobe_Stock_Contributor_Agreement-en_US-20160721_1200.pdfAnd here's a PDF of the new terms (easier to read than in that minuscule box presented when we try to access our account information) https://wwwimages2.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/legal/servicetou/Adobe_Stock_Contributor_Agreement_Addl_Terms_en_US_20180605.pdfI really think Mat needs to explain to us what the changes were from the prior version and why we're now being asked to acknowledge our agreement.
1341
« on: March 28, 2019, 20:19 »
Look. It's been done. It didn't work out.
http://aspp.com/stock-artists-alliance-closing/
...That does not mean, however, that contributors cannot organize in a different way. Even a simple website with a blog can attract a following if it's relevant, and in turn help spread the word about agency practices and host calls to action.
There have been lots of contributor actions over the years microstock agencies have been around (or at least that I'm aware of since starting in the fall of 2004). Many in the early days had good results, largely because there were more agencies and none of them had much market power at that time. They all needed content and so the balance of power between contributors and agencies was less unequal than it is now. If you want to effect change you need leverage. Calls to action aren't leverage and in an age of widespread gig economy abuse (such as Uber's treatment of drivers), the problems faced by microstock suppliers don't really stand out from the many simlar situations. So it's not clear to me how you get negative social media buzz of a sort and size that publicly shames any of the agencies for their actions and grabs buyers' attention. One piece of leverage that often worked in the early days was withholding uploads - sites need a constant stream of new content to keep buyers coming back. That's great for contributors because it's leverage that doesn't hurt our income so badly. I don't think it works any more because the collections are so huge that I doubt anyone would notice. OnePixel was trying to get off the ground without the one advantage that initially buoyed up the awful Dollar Photo Club - OnePixel had no content whereas DPC had the entire Fotolia library (contributors were not initially allowed an opt out). Refusing to supply OnePixel shut them down, thankfully. But with DPC, a lot of people deleted a lot of content from Fotolia to force FT to offer an opt out - I believe there was a 6 million image drop at one point. For a while, video contributors had some leverage because agencies were trying to build their video collections and needed content, but that fades as the collections grow, and with it the option to withhold new content as a way to get the agencies to behave more fairly. If you don't understand who holds power and has leverage, you can't force changes. It is true that for the most part, all the agencies would have completely empty web sites if contributors pulled their content - there's very little wholly owned content. Without some union-like organization to wield that club, it's effectively absent from the business landscape and so can't constrain the profit grabs of the agencies. Figure out how to create leverage from the large, global and unorganized pool of contributors and you can do what the Stock Artists Alliance could not.
1342
« on: March 25, 2019, 10:01 »
Interesting idea - I know why everyone would love to automate keyword generation - but it really isn't up to the job. At least my experiments with several of my own stock images showed that in terms of keywording as well is the "stock photo score" the tool doesn't really know enough about what it's looking at to be useful.
I ran through a couple of kitchen remodel images and a couple of external shots of places where the important information was where it was in the world, not just what was in it. As these images have all been sold - in one case just shy of one thousand times across several agencies - I have an idea of what the important keywords actually are, primarily using SS's sales info that tells me the keywords often used for purchases.
In no case did the tool identify the place on the exterior shots and in the kitchen remodel cases, it missed all the key what-is-going-on elements and just picked up the filler - Residential Building, Home Interior, Architecture, Wood - Material...
In the case of one image, that was of an island ferry dock, it concluded that there was a Pipeline, a Factory, Construction Industry and Fuel and Power Generation - all totally incorrect. Plus it put the scene in Europe (it was off the west coast of the USA. Adding keywords like Nautical Vessel for boat may work with Getty's CV, but it's worse than useless elsewhere. No user types in these awkward terms and other sites don't translate them into the type of English real people speak.
Oh, and one of my really solid long-term sellers rated a stock photo score of 11.6%.
I think I tried enough different images to give the tool a fair evaluation, but I wouldn't use it.
1343
« on: March 23, 2019, 14:17 »
I can't see much value for categories when you have such huge collections (SS especially, but also AS).
The sites must have some stats on whether anyone ever clicks on them as a way to browse. And if they did, I'd have to imagine that a quick translation into a few important keywords would allow on the fly category searches without any need for the contributor to do anything.
1344
« on: March 21, 2019, 19:15 »
...Being forced to raise prices or become exclusive, if that's not a total lack of respect towards your contributors, I don't know what is.
The way you know it's disrespectful is that it's exactly what Getty did to PumpAudio contributors when they acquired that formerly good stock music agency in 2009. In that case a 50/50 split went to 35/65 except for those they chose to become exclusive who could keep the 50/50
1345
« on: March 20, 2019, 14:56 »
I think the problem is that you can't really predict the future with any useful degree of accuracy. Given that, spreading the risk around makes a lot of sense.
I was an exclusive at IS (mostly for photos, but some illustrations) but too far ago to be relevant to your choice. When they were the #1 microstock agency and progress (2004 to 2008) was strong, it looked like the risk was worth taking. Between mid-2008 and mid-2011 a lot of things changed and I saw what I interpreted to be the writing on the wall and decided that the risks were too great and I'd do better to return to diversification before things hit bottom.
The overall financial health of an agency is relevant to you, in addition to the money you're making. If you later decide to leave, you aren't able to pick up where you left off - there's always a step back before things pick up.
I have a hard time imagining why it would make sense for anyone with an existing portfolio that has demonstrated its sales ability to go exclusive with iStock. YMMV
1346
« on: March 19, 2019, 08:48 »
It's popular to make successful companies look like they are in debt, because it can then be used as a tax writeoff.
If indeed this is true (haven't read the article or investigated it) - then I'd say there is some creative accounting going on. Legitimate - but creative - to make it look like a liability when in fact it is profitable.
The debt is real and is the legacy of the mangling Getty suffered at the hands of two private equity companies, Hellman & Friedman and then Carlyle. Both of those companies couldn't sell Getty at a profit so they paid themselves via adding debt - dividend recapitalization. The reason both of these private equity firms were very bad news for contributors is that it reduced/eliminated most of the money for growing the business or paying suppliers a fair royalty. Private equity firms don't care about the long term health of a business, only getting their return and getting out. You can read more about both of these acquisitions in old posts here. It takes big companies a long time to fail unless they're hemorrhaging cash; the problem is, with lots of debt to service, you have very little flexibility. In February they sought to raise $400m new debt to pay off some old and Moody's rated it lower than Getty's overall rating because of the risks: https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-assigns-Caa2-rating-to-Getty-Images-new-senior-unsecured--PR_394938"...reflects its high pro forma leverage ...following the planned debt refinancing and recapitalization, low-single digit free cash flow to adjusted debt ratio and still early transformation from legacy products to high volume enterprise subscription and high margin Royalty-Free products. It also considers clients' changing demand for stock imagery, which has shifted to non-exclusive lower-priced products and fostered aggressive competition. There is financial risk associated with the proposed issuance of a rapidly accreting payment-in-kind (PIK) preferred equity instrument that expands to roughly $700 million principal balance three years after closing from $500 million initially, which we believe could lead to volatile leverage metrics if refinanced with debt in the future." The above followed a rating for $1.55 billion new debt in January. https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-upgrades-Getty-Images-CFR-to-B3-from-Caa1-assigns--PR_391551There is apparently some optimism - they've removed Getty from a credit watch status - among some of the finance folks based on the recent debt juggling https://www.ademcetinkaya.com/2019/02/getty-images-inc-upgraded-to-b-from-ccc.htmlYou'll note in that last article a comment that risks include "...inability to realize expected cost savings, greater price-based competition, or insufficient demand for its subscription offerings" I don't know if those subscriptions are something other than iStock - Thinkstock is still supposedly retiring in "mid 2019" according to its web site.
1348
« on: March 18, 2019, 18:53 »
Dreamstime tried it and I don't think it worked well for them. It's always hard to tell which of many changes might have turned the former #3 agency into a footnote, but complex and confusing pricing certainly played a part, IMO
Fotolia had a worse model in that it allowed top selling artists to increase prices on their entire portfolio, including stuff that didn't sell. After a while they introduced a new rule that if it didn't sell over a certain period its price was set back to the basic level.
The problem with all of this is buyer confusion or alienation - for example, lightboxing images which then aren't the same price when they later come back to buy it. As a seller, if your high price image stops selling as buyers find alternatives, then you're not any better off either.
Microstock is a volume business. If you have something really unusual, it probably should be on microstock sites in the first place.
1349
« on: March 16, 2019, 17:31 »
I know nothing about Megapixl but my images appear not to be there. I did searches for some of mine (comparing with a Dreamstime search in another tab, you can see that only a fraction of the DT collection is at Megapixl) Apparently three years ago I found out about them from a post here and contacted DT to ask what was up. If you read their reply, I guess what I wrote just now means my view of things hasn't changed in three years My rant about Megapixl written before I did a search to see how long they'd been around, etc.: "I had opted out of third party partnerships - because I don't want to share buyer money with multiple agencies - which I have to assume is why my work isn't there. However Megapixl isn't a third party - it's Dreamstime itself. DT's sales are so pitiful it probably doesn't matter either way, but wholly-owned sites are not the same as third party partnerships and shouldn't be governed by opt-out choices made for third parties. Does anyone else remember when 123rf tried to claim that Inmagine was a third party and that entitled them to an extra share of the buyer payment? They backed down after everyone fussed, but does anyone know if DT is taking a partnership cut from the buyer's price when there's a sale on Megapixl? You have to hope that this scammery wouldn't happen twice, but if there's no marking " A mind is a terrible thing to waste
1350
« on: March 14, 2019, 15:38 »
*, you'll get your money, alway did and alway will. Just wait.
Edited to add that the quote above is not what was originally written. It's interesting that updating the post updates the quote now - it used not to. I think I may stop using the quote feature when rude messages are the topic - it makes a complete nonsense of my comment that editing the rudeness edits the quoting as well.
That's rude and inaccurate - great combination. I've not had this happen to me, but other people have had payment mistakes from Shutterstock in the past and IMO the OP did exactly the right thing. Checked his settings; asked if others using the same payment method had already received their payments and contacted SS directly. There is no reason to even comment here if you have nothing constructive to contribute
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