...Something like that (you can win a bonus if you have a good year, but you can lose it again if the next year isn't as good) - without cutting into the existing royalties - would be a good move.

Motivating to produce more and saleable content, but no everlasting committment to the company.

I think it's the only realistic way we see anything that is even close to a "raise". An across-the-board pay raise isn't going to happen, I think we all know that. A bonus system could be interesting, though. It could have multiple milestones to affect the bonus too. Increase earnings by XX%, increase portfolio size, have a top-selling image, etc. The more milestones you hit, the better the bonus.

Would be nice to have a top-tier raise like $0.40/subs for over $50.000 earnings or something. That would give a nice bonus for people that really have been the pioneers of microstock.

When I played internet poker, there was these FPP's (player points) and when you got enough them you could buy some nice accessories like Porsche Carrera or a trip to Hawaii  Why not do something like that, but in microstock scene. I could get a retina iMac or 5d3 with my FPP's and make better microstock images. Or then a free vacation away from my computer...

This is actually kind of along the lines of what I've ben thinking. Not a raise, but more of a bonus for people over a certain earnings level. Or it could be assessed annually, if your annual earnings are over some amount, you qualify. There's some incentive to keep up good work if bonus qualifications are regularly re-assessed.

Another thought: I don't want a raise if it has to come at the cost of higher prices for buyers. If there is some way to pay for a raise without raising prices, that's fine. But with stuff like DPC around, and seemingly knocking on Shutterstock's door as they take up ad space in design magazines right next to SS, a poorly-timed rate increase to pay for a raise for us could do far more harm than good.

And I'm not saying no price increases, either. Just not for the sole purpose of paying contributors more. It has to be more strategic than that.

...this tax problem is a threat to my business.

I think it's a threat that goes beyond just Envato, too. This is another one of the numerous examples in stock where a company comes up with some new and creative way to save a little money and pass the burden on to contributors. When companies try to pull this junk on us, it's important that people let them know it's not ok to do this kind of thing, and that if they insist on moving forward with it, there are consequences.

I get that Envato didn't get into this business as a stock photo company. They started out differently and brought graphics and photos into the mix later on. They're used to doing things a little different than we're accustomed to, as evidenced by their unique upload system, treating everything as a "product" with buyer comments and feedback, etc. I think they've done a lot of cool things as well. They were (as far as I know) the first company to require vector artists to include a file with editable text still intact (if text was used) and not only provide outlined lettering. Which I think is great and I wish more companies did that. But Envato's uniqueness seems to also have drawbacks. We all know the upload system is painful. And now it seems they're extending this notion of playing by their own unique rules to how they handle payments and tax issues.

Although they didn't start out as a typical stock agency, they are one to some extent whether they like it or not. And there are certain ways that things are done across the board in stock content licensing that should be adhered to always. One of them certainly is that the company is the agency, agencies receive payment from buyers, and agencies pays contributors. No creative accounting should change that and if a company wants to try an pass that kind of complex burden on to contributors they should expect that there will be some concern, criticism, and sometimes loss of contributing artists.

I don't report whatever is on a 1099. I report actual earnings, because I can prove what I earned. I've occasionally gotten 1099s from different companies with wrong numbers. I go with what I know I earned, not what these companies say they paid me.

Of the smaller newer agencies they make me the most money.  Usually between $200-300 per month.  Enough that I will miss it if I have to drop them, but if they are gonna break my balls with this new  system I might have to quit them anyways.

That's about where I'm at. Wasn't making quite that much per month lately, but close to it. The loss of income will sting a bit, but I don't see any other way. I can't keep working with a company that runs things like this.

Really I was a bit on the fence before this "who is the seller" issue, to be fair. I had stopped uploading already, but I would have been content to just let things stay up there in the current system. I'd even have uploaded more if they had been more willing to work on pricing things better. But this whole mess is just a complete turn in the wrong direction. So like a Shark Tank shark, I'm out.

Been trying to get my head around this and I just can't seem to figure out how this can work. They're issuing invoices with my name on them, as if me and the buyer had some direct transaction. But then they're going to eventually issue 1099s saying that they paid me the full value of each sale, and then I paid them an author's fee for using their marketplace. It makes no sense. They want to claim the expense of paying me, but not claim that they're the actual seller of the product.

I can't even imagine how the IRS would make any sense of what they're trying to do.

IRS: "So you sell the products on behalf of contributors."
ENVATO: "No, we just set up the marketplace for people to sell their stuff."
IRS: "So you don't pay the contributors, the buyers do."
ENVATO: "No, we pay the contributors and issue 1099s for what we pay them."
IRS: "Then what's with the invoices from contributors to buyers?"
ENVATO: "That's so the buyers can pay the contributors."
IRS: "So the buyers do pay the contributors."
ENVATO: "No, we pay them."
IRS: "Uh...huh..."

On top of that they don't want to be an agency, but they do want to set prices, decide what content is up in the marketplace, and take an agency-size percentage of each sale.

In other words they want everything configured to work best for them and give them every advantage, and the contributor is out of luck when tax time comes around and needs to sort through this mess.

Having a really hard time finding any reason to stick with Envato at this point.

Seems very odd for a company to be sending out invoices in my name. Need to dig in to this more some time, but from what I'm reading, it sounds like I need to seriously re-evalate my relationship with Envato. If this works the way I'm imagining it will, Envato will report that I earned the full value of each sale and then I paid them some sort of fee  for using their "platform". Which, give the various discounts and other variables involved, will amount to a major headache every year around tax time.

It's been bad enough dealing with their reluctance to set more reasonable prices and royalty rates, and the added hassle of this bizarre invoicing system doesn't help keep me interested in remaining on board.

Mike, as your images have been used, have you taken any illegal use up with the agencies? I know that iStock is reluctant to do anything unless the actual artist contacts them, rather than anyone who happens to find a mis-used image, and from what was written above, SS seems to be about as bad.

The only use I know for certain is the graphic they use in the T-Shirt category header image, which as far as I know might be a completely legal use. Nothing I can do about it.

Fiverr does take the stance that the copyright holder needs to be the person reporting the infringement. So even though anyone can click on a gig and see that someone is reselling Shutterstock images, unless one of your images appears in the gig preview there's nothing that anyone else can do about it.

Which surely is intentional, taking advantage of the legal loophole in the DMCA that allows them to keep illegal gigs online despite them being reported, if they're not reported by the actual copyright holder or a legal representative of the copyright holder.

As insane as it sounds, I think it would take a revision to DMCA laws to force Fiverr to do anything about this. Until they can be held responsible for leaving infringing content and gigs online after a 3rd party report of infringement, they really have the law on their side. They know about the gig I mentioned in an earlier post, but it's still up right now, because legally they have no obligation to respond to a report from me when my content isn't explicitly used in the gig.

Worse yet, my content could be resold in the gig, but I'd never know it. Because the gig offers buyers the choice of whatever images they want from Shutterstock, and no specific images are mentioned as being offered, Fiverr allows it to go on.

I did contact the owner of the image shown in the gig, as they might be the only person who can do anything about it. But who knows if they will actually report it.

Glad to hear!
Have they been sold too? If so, did you get any compensation from SS?

I've never been compensated, and I neither expect to be nor would I say that any agency can or should compensate people for sales of stolen images. It's too complicated to do. Especially with vectors. In the latest case, there were images that used some of my designs as well as those by other artists, all in the same file. There's no way to really dish out compensation to artists when it's so hard to even determine what percentage of a sale of a single image would go to which artists whose work was copied in that image. 

I'd love to be compensated but it's not realistic to expect agencies to do this. I'm just happy to see the infringing images removed.

Quote from: EmberMike on February 12, 2015, 18:32

If you have copied or overly-inspired images in your portfolio, delete them now while you still can. Otherwise you will get caught, and the penalty from companies like SS is severe.

Agreed...but curious to know what is the penalty?

It varies from company to company, but at Shutterstock, it's permanent account closure. You can never again be a contributor. At least as far as I understand the policy. From what I've been told, if you're caught copying even a single image, your account is shut down and there is pretty much zero chance you will get it reinstated.

I don't know if that's "official" policy, but from what I've been told, Shutterstock has dramatically ratcheted up their response to infringements since becoming a publicly-traded company. They don't want contributors on board who aren't doing 100% original work.

I know to some it sounds kind of silly that a "severe penalty" is getting your account shut down. But for someone what was making decent money at this, and especially at a place like Shutterstock which is now pretty much a must-have agency in any contributor's portfolio of companies they work with, getting that permanent ban is brutal. You're done at that point, no coming back.

And it doesn't matter if someone only copied 1 image and had 9,999 legitimately original ones. Just for that one shortcut they took, that 1 instance where someone decided to just trace another contributor's icon or graphic or whatever, all of that original work is now basically worthless if you can never find a good place to sell it again.

This is rich... I guess Fiverr doesn't have enough decent designs done by their "designers" that they now just use stock designs to sell their terrible services. Including one of mine.



I can't find a gig actually showing this t-shirt design, so I have to assume it's very likely that they actually bought the graphic to use as stock. Especially since it wasn't modified. Usually if someone uses a stock graphic in a Fiverr gig they modify the text to suit the customer's needs.

Unfortunately, if they bought the graphic as stock, they have every right to use it even though I really wish they wouldn't. Wherever they got it, this is one sale I kind of wish I could give back.

And in case anyone is wondering, yes they still allow the resale of stock images: https://www.fiverr.com/portaldigital/edit-create-give-stock-vectors-and-or-images

I guess because the seller says "send me the ID NUMBER of shutter and I will send you the EPS, JPEG, PDF, AI" instead of saying the full name "shutterstock", they let it go.

If anyone reading this happens to be in the business of copying other peoples' work, or even being just a bit too inspired by other artists' work, consider this:

Shutterstock, the top company that everyone wants to be in business with, has an absolute zero-tolerance policy regarding infringement. If your account gets shut down, it's over, there is no coming back, no account reinstatement, nothing. You're done there, forever. I've been told that when SS became a publicly-traded company, they really ramped up their infringement enforcement and adopted this "no 2nd chances" policy. Previously, I know of at least one case where someone who had their account shut down got it reinstated, which I personally thought was odd since it was a really clear-cut case of copying. But in any case, back then SS was a little more forgiving. Today, it's a different story. 

Knowing that this is how they operate, I'll at least try to contact a copycat directly first and discuss the matter. But if you don't respond, I don't have much other choice than to report it. And like the case today I had to deal with, SS will shut down your account in a matter of hours, and that's it. It's over. Sorry. Those 900+ images you uploaded? Waste of time, I guess. But that's how it goes when you don't do original work.

If you have copied or overly-inspired images in your portfolio, delete them now while you still can. Otherwise you will get caught, and the penalty from companies like SS is severe.