I do think it's unfortunate that the contracts, in general, allow the agency to close an account at any time for any - or no - reason. It does mean that from a legal standpoint, you probably don't have any recourse to get the details on why the account was closed.

I find it hard to imagine why having content they found objectionable would result in account closure - why not just remove the offending content? Agencies have done that many times when they've decided that certain kinds of subjects are too risky (legally). Cruise ships, cars, certain types of furniture, etc. have all be deactivated from collections when a policy change occurred.

The sorts of things that result in closed accounts and bans are stolen content, plagiarized content or buying rings that attempt to improve search position for content. So if you shot green screen video that you composited with someone else's background scenes, that might trigger an account closure.

Appealing a decision that you think is mistaken is hard when you don't know why the closure happened. The fact that they said "activities" versus content hints that it was something you did versus something you uploaded. Have you ever had any warnings or other issues in the time your Pond5 account has been open that give you any clues? Have you been directing clients not to buy at Pond5 but some other agency and Pond5 got wind of this? All just guesses, but that sort of thing seems at least as likely as some content they didn't care for.

For completeness' sake, here's a link to the earning's call transcript:

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4150291-shutterstocks-sstk-ceo-jonathan-oringer-q4-2017-results-earnings-call-transcript

Regarding Webdam, Jon effectively says that they thought it would help them get the enterprise customer, but it turned out it was a separate business, so they sold it. They disclosed that they paid $14.4m for Webdam in 2014

Enterprise (as a portion of total SS business) grew 26% over 2016 and now represents 34% of SS's total business. Ecommerce revenue (the subs and web-site-available packages part of the business) grew 10% - i.e. less quickly than the Enterprise business.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/16/bynder-acquires-digital-asset-management-service-webdam-from-shutterstock-for-49-1m/

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bynder-announces-strategic-acquisition-webdam-120101196.html

http://digitalassetmanagementnews.org/vendors/bynders-webdam-acquisition-stronger-together-or-proof-that-the-current-dam-software-market-does-not-scale/

I guess that means this platform thing is either (a) not working out or (b) doesn't need asset management? From one of the articles above:

"As such, this is a �divorce of convenience� for Shutterstock and WebDAM, which Bynder are subsidising.  I suspect Shutterstock have had a case of buyer�s remorse after getting involved in a human resource-intensive, low value, professional services + product business (which still defines the current DAM software market).  Shutterstock realised that Bynder�s North American sales operations were not hitting targets, so they could strike a deal that was far more favourable for them than spinning it off independently again or trying to find some other larger tech vendor to take it on (and having to write-off the expenditure incurred for less than the cash invested back in 2014).  It�s a great piece of business (for Shutterstock)."


I took a look at Glassdoor to see if there was any hint of what might be up, and although there isn't, there are some pretty scathing comments about Oringer, high turnover rates in the C-suite and a lack of direction (along with the happy news from current employees that earlier posters had alleged were HR-directed plants).

I think we get SS Q4 and full year 2017 results tomorrow...

Take a look at these (old) threads on DT's forums that define the two exposure stats. And I'd agree that they are largely meaningless as what will matter more is searches that are frequent and how your images rank for those searches.

It's not clear how much of the time buyers browse a portfolio versus search to find images, and even if they did, how having a portfolio that's large in relationship to the largest portfolio on the site would help.

The main thing to take away about DT is that they were once a solid #3 on the earnings list and they're now fading into the void, dropping lower down the rankings as the months go by.
,
https://www.dreamstime.com/thread_7169

https://www.dreamstime.com/thread_22087

I'm up to 8 now. I'll stop updating as it's boring

Another contributor in the DT forums said they were still getting emails today too, so it's more widespread than just my account.

Where can I see what these EL options really mean - - in the real world - please? Do they involve exclusivity of any kind?

https://www.dreamstime.com/terms.php#extended

You can read there about each extended license - two involve types of exclusivity and the rest do not

I turned all my ELs off ages ago when they started offering ELs as part of some subscription deal and I received one for a few dollars royalty.

I guess I'll need to check and make sure ELs stay off whenever this problem gets fixed (i.e. I hope they don't just turn everyone's on to address the problem some are having where their ELs were previously on and are now magically off).

I typically turn on an EL request as long as it says its for credits. Most of the time there's a purchase, but  not always. As I have had more EL requests during the day today (and the total number of requests for all of us is now beyond anything that makes sense) I have turned back off the few I turned on first thing this morning.

...if this keeps up I might drop a level and then will have to think about whether it is worth continuing with them.

That was the trigger for me to quit - when I dropped a level because of their declining sales ability. Seemed to be rewarding them for effing things up That was a while back (last year sometime?) and by all accounts they're not staging any sort of comeback.

There had been various stories floating around about Andy Sitt (he and his wife started this and Inmagine) selling the business or taking it public. Don't see any recent updates from last year's news that the IPO was deferred to the end of 2017...

They acquired PIXLR from Autodesk last year and there was grand talk of creating a holistic creative ecosystem that makes great design accessible to all. The product was Flash-based and the thought was that 123rf would update that. I found an article from this month that says they're still working on a transition to HTML5

So if I had to guess, I'd say the founders are looking to get out and can't find a way to do that. In the meantime they're acquiring things and trying to create an appealing narrative to promote how great the business is, effectively ignoring operational details like actually licensing images.

Peter at StockFresh responded to my message.  He was surprised at the cost of a Certificate from the IRS and said a scan of my ID would suffice.  So all's well at least for now.

That's great - I didn't send a message, just uploaded my ID and figured he would tell me if that wouldn't do.

Assuming payment comes next week (assuming this will will be late or a skip given the holiday on Monday), I'll send a note suggesting they update the contributor FAQ to provide more details on what is and isn't OK to submit.

Please explain what this means: "plus many more contributors are moving up than will move down."

At a guess, I would think that lots of people at the very lowest level move up one step, and a much smaller group at the highest levels move down one. In terms of money, Getty pays out a small amount to the lower level contributors and saves a bundle by paying less to the small number of high earners who form the bulk of their business.

Without having any way to check this out (there used to be some when more information was publicly shared), some flavor of the 80/20 rule covers microstock - 80 percent of the sales come from 20 percent of the contributors. So it is highly misleading to focus on the number of people moving up and down versus the $ value of sales carrying a higher or lower royalty rate.

For a long time, the assumption many of us made was that Getty wanted to average a 20% payout in royalties and would fiddle with the various groups and levels to get there.

I would think as big an issue facing those who are exclusive is declining sales, both volume and price (with lots more premium access at low prices) - the royalty rate is only part of the equation.

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on December 20, 2017, 18:16

How do I know when my tax form was created? It says no expiration date and I have no idea whether this is old from FT days or newer.

If you go to the Tax Center, there's a link on the right labeled See my tax forms.  The forms are listed by creation and validation dates, which are the same for my forms.

Ah - that's on Fotolia and I was looking at Adobe Stock. Thanks. I can see I'm all set for a couple more years

Which one would be the best? One of the Big 4 mentioned here? What are the pros and cons of each of those 4 (upload process, treatment of contributors, earnings of recently uploaded images, ...)?

Your portfolio is an unknown, so it's hard to give more than general suggestions based on overall earnings, but if your time is limited, I'd start with SS and AS/FT. For both of these agencies you earn more royalties as your lifetime earnings build (at least until FT goes away) so you might as well get going.

For me, SS is a bit more than double AS/FT but both are solid earners

I wouldn't touch Deposit Photos under any circumstances (search for some of the threads here about their many shenanigans) but I know others put up with them. All agencies in the micro realm treat their contributors badly, so there's only the issues of scams, not paying or too many secret partner deals to look out for.

Once upon a time I'd have strongly recommended 123rf but I left them when sales dropped - unlike other agencies, when 123rf sales drop your royalty (eventually) drops as they do a 12-month average to figure your earnings tier. So their failure to sell (when you have a portfolio with good sales at other agencies and falling sales at 123rf after many years of decent sales, it's pretty obvious to me where the problem is) ends up costing the contributor in royalty rate. That was enough for me to leave them.

Alamy is a pain to upload to and sales are good when they happen but much less frequent (at least for me) than elsewhere. I'd save them for later once you've established portfolios elsewhere.

Some people have noted here that illustrations do well at CanStock - I wouldn't recommend them for photos as their sales were rubbish (I left as sales dropped in volume and were mostly 25 cent subs). Perhaps someone who currently sells illustrations there can comment?

Good luck - and don't wait to drop exclusivity at DT. I don't think they're going to magically bounce back