Quote from: Noedelhap on February 05, 2024, 21:59
Shutterstock levels be like:

Wasn't he brilliant - M.C. Escher?!

Quote from: Big Toe on February 05, 2024, 15:56

Quote from: Wilm on February 05, 2024, 15:27
This is modern slavery without any transparency. I

As unfair as our relationship with the agencies may be, it should not be compared to slavery. If we do not like the arrangements, we can just walk away and take our images with us. Slaves do not have this option.

In principle, of course, I agree with you. It was meant to be symbolic.

However, after thinking about it for a while, I came to the conclusion that many people who make microstock have to make a living from it - that doesn't apply to me and I'm grateful for that. The agencies are also aware of the dependency of these contributors. And in my view, they exploit this shamelessly.

If someone e.g. in Bangladesh, Vietnam or other countries where there may not be so many job alternatives that pay even halfway well, some people may not have so many options. Perhaps they suffer from a physical limitation that prevents them from taking a job involving hard physical labor.

And at a time when the gap between rich and poor is widening all over the world, the example of Depositphotos is, in my view, quite exemplary - so ultimately not so far removed from "slavery".

Quote from: HalfFull on February 05, 2024, 14:36

Quote from: Me on February 05, 2024, 14:13
But they do not specify what the changes are, you have to go through the whole thing and compare it to the old one to try and find the changes and hope that is right.

I've emailed to ask for a summary detailing the changes as even with the old document it would be very easy to miss any changes made. I'm not entirely sure how legal those changes would be... certainly setup in such a way as to bury them and make it hard for the user to see what they're up to. Not very transparent.

Would you please let us know the answer? Thanks in advance! (Even though I've got the feeling that they won't answer anyway)

Quote from: Me on February 05, 2024, 15:05
All pointing to using our images for AI training, paying us nothing and not allowing us to take any action. Seems like may be time to leave another site then, shame really, always do quite well with them.

Yes, you are right!

Summary: Depositphotos can basically do whatever they want. The providers have no rights whatsoever. Depositphotos is responsible for the remuneration. If our works appear somewhere without us receiving money for them, we have to accept this because Depositphotos is not obliged to tell us what contracts this is based on.

This is modern slavery without any transparency. I'm thinking about deleting the portfolio there! It's only brought in a few thousand euros so far anyway.

I don't remember what was in the old contract, but the following passages, among others, are striking:

Depositphotos distributes the Files directly and indirectly to third parties under various types of paid and unpaid agreements as authorized by Depositphotos. Such agreements may cover various areas of permitted use, including but not limited to the right to create and re-use derivative works based on the Files, the right to incorporate the Files into any media or embodiments now known or hereafter devised, and the right to use, integrate and otherwise incorporate the Files for the development and training of algorithms, networks, technologies and solutions.

Depositphotos may obtain special permission to distribute certain files under the Attributed Free License or another free license. By granting permission, the contributor waives the right to receive compensation for such distribution, which, with few exceptions, will not be credited to the contributor's level.

Depositphotos is not obliged (i) to inform the contributor of the details of any transactions made by Depositphotos or third parties; (ii) to pay compensation for repeated downloads or repeated use of files by the same third party under the same contract; and (iii) to pay compensation for licenses that have been cancelled, refunded or returned.

CLASS ACTION WAIVER. TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, CONTRIBUTOR AND DEPOSITPHOTOS AGREE THAT EACH MAY BRING CLAIMS AGAINST THE OTHER ONLY IN HIS OR HER INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY AND NOT AS A PLAINTIFF OR CLASS MEMBER. Unless Depositphotos and Contributor agree, no judge may consolidate the claims of more than one person or otherwise preside over any form of a representative or class proceeding.

There is no filter there to find images with transparent backgrounds.

Do you habe a screenshot concerning png files there?

Downloads went down 50% of what it used to be in 2018 to 2020. Nevertheless, I believe that DT and 123 will go down the drain before them.

Quote from: waitingonthestuff on February 01, 2024, 11:13
Is it different to keywording for other sites? I have over 400 images but am getting little to no interest.

I also decided to pay for the description/keywording through Dreamstime and, quite frankly, my dog could have done better. Nothing inventive was written by the "keywording experts" and as basic as you could get.

That horse is dead - no matter how you handle your keywording.

Last month was more than lousy. And today they sent me an e-mail because of a "customer refund"...

Quote from: blvdone on February 01, 2024, 13:11
My SS photo sales was 1/14 of Adobe Stock's photo sales in January.  Wow.

1/6 here - and it was not a good AS month!

Worst month ever at shutterstock!

My first January with shutterstock was January 2011, when I had about 300 images in my portfolio and five times the income of January 2024 with 1,350 images in my portfolio.
I don't remember what the pay levels were like, except that you reached the highest level after $10,000. So I guess I was still at the lowest compensation level in my third month with shutterstock back then. That's how miserable it got.

Quote from: bpawesome on January 30, 2024, 11:54
So this is new to me, countering the $1.47?

Did you have some für $1,47 today?

The last time I got them for $1.47 was on January 19.
On January 20 it was $1.48, then 1.44 and 1.43, then 1.30, then 1.25 and yesterday and today they are all for $1.13.

Quote from: DiscreetDuck on January 28, 2024, 08:22

Quote from: Her Ugliness on January 28, 2024, 07:33
I am from Europe. My sales numbers are steady, but revenue has dropped significantly. I think the most noticable change is that while most of my sales used to be subscriptions in the past, now I have way more "Single & Other" sales. And these used to be  good sales, but now they are usually mostly 0.10-0.17$, so they just don't bring any significant amount of money anymore.
I think SS has added some new plans for customers that aren't subscription plans, but earn us even less than subscriptions.


Also - I have not seen anyone mention this, so am I the only one? Shutterstock has been extremely laggy and slow for me for months now. It takes very long to load my dashboard and my catalogue manager is the worst, sometimes it takes up to 5 minutes for it to load, but most of the time it will not load at all and I have to refresh and wait another 5 minutes. It is super annoying. We have 2024, how is it still acceptable to wait for 5 minutes for a website to load? I do not know whether the problems also occur on the customers' end, but if it does I know it would be something to drive me away from a website if I was a customer.

If not happy be mature, stop complainning and quit the place. You will soon be able to go prompting the machines for cooking hamburgers at McD 

Of course, everyone noticed and discussed the SODs - this had been discussed already. No idea what shutterstock has done there again. Completely non-transparent.

For me, the peak was a day with a sub:SOD ratio of 1:12. And, yes, if the ratio between subs and SODs is roughly the same, the SODs often make less money than the subs.

But at the end of the day, we're talking about very small amounts anyways, since shutterstock hardly gets anything in anyway.

Quote from: yuriy on January 26, 2024, 22:54

Quote from: Wilm on January 26, 2024, 11:49
Images only - no videos - all time income - SS set to 100

SS = 100 (1349 images, RPD 0.68)
AS = 92.7 (1554 images, RPD 1.19)
iS = 38.2 (956 images, RPD 0.71)
123 = 16 (1540 images, RPD 0.86)
DT = 8 (1393 images, RPD 1.25)
DP = 6 (1185 images, RPD 0.44)

closed accounts
CS = 4
BS = 2

Its interesting that there are a handful people in the forum reporting SS as their #1.  I'm sure it has something to do with what subjects they photograph and I'm guessing it's due to small numbers of large sales.  For what its worth here's my estimate of my own agencies (multiply everything by 3.3333 if you'd like SS as 100  ):

AS: 100
Istock: 60
SS: 30
Alamy: 0
P5: 0

Did just sign up to DT so I'll report back if I feel like it was worth it.  Will prob slowly shove like 30% of my better images in there and see how it does.  Is Canva invite only or closed to new contributors?  Not sure that one's worth it but I can try a small batch and see.

As I wrote, the data is based on my all-time income. The picture has changed in recent years. But there were indeed good times for me at shutterstock. At the very beginning, 3 downloads per file per month on average was no problem at shutterstock.

In the past.

Quote from: cascoly on January 26, 2024, 21:30

Quote from: cobalt on January 26, 2024, 16:52
I asked in German groups and there are still producers with around the same sales as the years before.

Perhaps this is mostly a problem in the US markets?

How are the Europeans here doing?

and only few/some folk in the US - many of us have seen little decrease - and there's still copious anti-SS venom polluting the waters of discussion

I still read that some contributors at Schutterstock are quite successful. And for me personally, that was the best agency for many years.

But at the moment - as far as I know - it looks like there's nowhere to feed the beast more than shutterstock.

If you do that and are diligent, it still seems to generate income. But personally, I don't want to get to the point where I have to create, tag and upload images that generate an average of $5 over the years.  That's not my path.

Quote from: Mimi the Cat on January 26, 2024, 16:21

Quote from: Wilm on January 26, 2024, 14:14

Quote from: Mimi the Cat on January 21, 2024, 11:16
Well for the first time since 2011 looks like I'll not reach the minimum $35 payout for January.  Even subscription sales have died to zero for days just the occasional "single and other" sale.

In Jan 2018 I made over $318 and in 2019 $212 this Jan maybe $20.

Glad I don't rely on them anymore 

That's how it looks for me too. I have my minimum payout at $100, and it's quite possible that I won't reach that.

In January 2015 it was $793, with around 1,000 images. Today it's 1,350.

I reduced my payout to the $25 minimum you'd probably be best to do that too.

Yes, I could do that. I've got it all over the place at $100, and it won't make me a dime more if I lower it. Then I won't get a January payout from shutterstock - if it continues like this. I have to accept that.

I have to admit, though, that I'm pretty shocked at the download volume at shutterstock. January is also bad at AS, but shutterstock is really historically bad.

Quote from: Mimi the Cat on January 21, 2024, 11:16
Well for the first time since 2011 looks like I'll not reach the minimum $35 payout for January.  Even subscription sales have died to zero for days just the occasional "single and other" sale.

In Jan 2018 I made over $318 and in 2019 $212 this Jan maybe $20.

Glad I don't rely on them anymore 

That's how it looks for me too. I have my minimum payout at $100, and it's quite possible that I won't reach that.

In January 2015 it was $793, with around 1,000 images. Today it's 1,350.

Images only - no videos - all time income - SS set to 100

SS = 100 (1349 images, RPD 0.68)
AS = 92.7 (1554 images, RPD 1.19)
iS = 38.2 (956 images, RPD 0.71)
123 = 16 (1540 images, RPD 0.86)
DT = 8 (1393 images, RPD 1.25)
DP = 6 (1185 images, RPD 0.44)

closed accounts
CS = 4
BS = 2

Quote from: Uncle Pete on January 23, 2024, 17:20

Quote from: Wilm on January 23, 2024, 15:43
Ah, another e-mail arrived.
Pictoright Collective Licensing Payback 2023 H2
What is that?

Oh just can't wait, maybe I got 55¢ for AI licensing? Or a partner site? Tell me if you find out.

https://pictoright.nl/en/

Completely intransparent once more!

Ah, another e-mail arrived.
Pictoright Collective Licensing Payback 2023 H2
What is that?

Does anyone have any idea why Getty sent me $0.55 today? What is that for?

Quote from: pancaketom on January 22, 2024, 17:07
I haven't looked at the fine print, but basically all images start at level 1, if there are no sales after a certain time (6 mo?) they drop to level 0.

That sounds like a plausible explanation. Thank you!

Checking your statement, I just realized that almost 50% of my images at DT have no download. That's by far the worst rate of all the agencies!

But not much happens there anyway. I'll just let it continue...

Sorry, missing screenshot...

I can't contribute to statistical statements because my portfolio – like everywhere else – is relatively small, and because I don't have that many level 5 files.

But a few things stand out:

1. I have images that haven't had a single download, but are already at level 1. I don't know why that is. I also haven't checked how many there are.

2. Level 5 pictures: On average, I find that a high level is much more noticeable for vector files in the RPD than for photos, renderings and other CGI images. There is one exception: one vector file only earned $34 from 35 downloads, i.e. an RPD of less than $1 - the rest are significantly higher. For normal images, the best ones are in the $2 RPD range, but there aren't that many.

For me, December was the worst month I've ever had at istock - both in terms of downloads and revenue.

Lousy - especially shutterstock. But at least a Minimum better than last week.

Adobe has almost quadrupled its revenue this week compared to shutterstock's revenue since the beginning of the year. Nevertheless, I also find it sluggish there. Even though there was a pleasing $49.50 download today.

I don't know the numbers at istock yet.