It's hard to judge any sites this year with Covid, but I've seen an uptick at Alamy this month, with 6 sales all $xx, the highest $85, so not "big" but decent.

It's been about a year since my last $xxx sale there; they used to come more regularly. So, no big sales on Alamy this year, but it's a been a tough year all over.

I added some of my own skies and used them to rescue some images taken on a very gray dull trip a few years ago. The new tool does a great job.

I make back the $30 fee shortly after I pay it each year. With COVID sales have slowed there (although the stimulus checks in April here in the US seemed to set off a buying spree - but down to one or two sales a month since then). I'm hopeful it will get back to normal whenever the world does.

I'm in the US and sell mostly US scenics as well as some more experimental fine art and digital art there.

I'm also on Photo4Me, a UK site and have only sold European scenics there.

Quote from: wordplanet on September 12, 2020, 13:24

Being on the wrong side of 60 I'll join the CC&CC!
...
Cranky old ladies and birdwatchers unite! 

Yep. We cranky old ladies and birdwatchers must stick together. (And BTW, I'm on the wrong side of 70, so� leading the pack around these parts, I suspect.)

Welcome to the CC&CC Club!

Thanks! 

Thanks for your hard work. Joined.

Has anyone noticed A LOT of random people spamming the shutterstock hashtag on twitter posting their portfolio (most of the portfolios are empty) and many (very badly written) paid articles talking about how awesome SS is

Examples for your enjoyment

https://www.techotn.com/shutterstock-price-india/amp/?__twitter_impression=true



Sent from my HD1901 using Tapatalk

LOL a monkey typing randomly, with spellcheck, could have written that. Thanks for the chuckle.

Joann glad you posted that. I copied about 10-15 pages of earnings and meant to go back and copy another 10-15 pages every day before they disappear.

PS your old sales are far less embarrassing than mine LOL.

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on June 04, 2020, 13:50

Quote from: gnirtS on June 04, 2020, 13:28

People tried giving feedback - they ended up banned or accounts ceased!
Or blocked on twitter. Or blocked on facebook.
Or posted in that 170 page thread they keep deleting posts from.  Or the other threads elsewhere in the forum they're ignoring.

They know *exactly* how bad this would be way way ahead of time.

They did, but equally their underhandedness has actually worked out pretty well for them.

Even the people really outraged are complaining about SS taking 85% of royalties (nope, minimum 85% in that tier, probably much more) or people in higher tiers complaining that their income has dropped 50% (nope SS has cleverly bought this in half way through the year, your income will be dropping a lot more over the whole calendar year thanks to that January reset).

All this is far too in the weeds to explain to customers and that's the beauty of it.

Most infuriating thing about this is the dishonesty with regards to the percentage and the (unspeakably cruel) January reset. There's no logical reason for the reset other than masking how much you are actually loosing. There is no reason not to have a rolling 12 month tier other than that.

Now I've actually got some data I think the immediate change to sub and other prices are going to affect peoples income more than the January reset. We focused on the wrong thing.
Even before that most people are down to 0.1 to 0.17 or so for a sub.
In January, that'll just mean a few more .1 instead of .12s etc.
So although the reset makes things worse, the most damaging policy is already with us.

33 sales today. All subs.  Average RPD $0.13 from level 5. 

Most people's income for images is made up majority through subs.

Yep, as I suspected the level wouldn't make much difference when most sales are a percentage of $0.22 (750 dl subs). When they dropped the guaranteed $28 for ELs and moved the bar to 500,000 from 250,000 copies, even with my then small portfolio (about 300 files at the time) I saw my income drop markedly and I wasn't getting a ton of ELs but with a portfolio of mostly travel images, I was getting ELs for books and magazines, I got fewer and they dropped to $14-20 and other book and magazine uses became $0.36 subs - so with this latest move I knew it would just be the kiss of death. All ss had going for them was volume, but without the old ELs it was harder to see a decent return - and with most dls projected to earn $0.10 volume will never be great enough. 

Oh look, on day 8 of their shitstorm they are trying to play �divide and rule�.

Nope, will not work, will totally,totally backfire.

They really have absolutely no clue how internet communities work, do they? And they have had a huge producer community for 15 years.

This strategy might work in authoritarian places, but not with free artists.

https://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/topic/100133-new-earnings-structure-for-contributors/page/140/

Everything they do about this shitstorm is COMPLETLY wrong.

But it does tell you what management really thinks about the lowly masses...

� Everyone stop and read this. Its very important. Continue to quote it so that it doesn't get buried in the forum and others will see it. Many members of the Stock Submitters Coalition (the new coalition created to fight changes like these and you can join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/261369748434285/ ) have reported to us that they received a communication from Shutterstock wanting them to sign a separate deal that will allow them to stay at what they said was the current percentage (Im assuming that means the previous structure) until the end of January and then they would be taken down to level 1 like everyone else. They are hoping to quell the rebellion by throwing a carrot in front of a select group of contributors and making them feel special. Just when you thought they couldn't get worse they go and do something like this. They are now offering different deals to select people in hopes of this all going away. Not to mention the deal they are offering still sucks. If you get one of these letters/emails I implore you to not sign it. In fact, I beg you to post it here and show the rest of the contributors what Shutterstock is trying to do behind everyones backs.

Again, keep quoting and reposting this for others to see. Join the Stock Submitters Coalition and help fight this. We are over 600 members strong now and represent a portfolio of over 7.65 million. Our members have pushed articles out to many websites: https://fstoppers.com/originals/what-wrong-shutterstock-489338 , https://www.dpreview.com/news/7607355790/shutterstock-announces-new-earnings-structure-contributors-are-anything-but-happy , https://petapixel.com/2020/05/27/shutterstock-unveiled-a-new-royalty-structure-and-photographers-are-furious/ . Join in and help make a difference. https://www.facebook.com/groups/261369748434285/�

Joined - my membership is pending. Thanks for the info. - Marianne Campolongo

They are also deleting posts on the forum.

This is what, in our marvelous liberal democrat society, we call freedom of speech�

Given their kowtowing to China's censorship, we shouldn't be surprised at their attitude toward freedom of speech. Really disgusted.

Big contrast with Alamy when they dropped commissions from 50% to 40%, they let people vent and came on the forums and interacted with people as well as responding to contributor emails. They are far from perfect but at least they don't ban people, instead they try to engage with their contributors.

I'm glad that most people are willing to take a stand. If we don't and other sites feel they can follow shutterstock's lead, then the loss of income will be even greater. I just disabled my images now in case they make it impossible to do so on June 1.

While buyers may want the best price, finding the right image is more important to most of them, and if they can't find what they want on shutterstock they'll look elsewhere. How often do you see articles or books with images purchased for $$$ from a macro or mid-stock agency side by side with images from shutterstock or other micros? Frequently, I'm sure. I've had photos in the same book or article licensed from two different agencies for wildly different prices, because most buyers are willing to pay for the images they want, and most volume buyers source their images from a few different agencies. Since no one is exclusive to shutterstock, hopefully buyers will find the same images on other sites and this will help offset loses on shutterstock.

Any loss from my shutterstock portfolio is a lot smaller than the hit from selling my shutterstock shares at a loss, and I feel for those who are losing a big part of their income here, but hopefully that pain will also be felt by shutterstock and it will make other sites think twice before following their lead.

We really are in this together. So, let's call their bluff and show them they've miscalculated.

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on May 28, 2020, 19:39

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.

And the other question has always been, who's copying whom, and who's really driving the prices down. I don't know, but SS historically hasn't been the leader in slicing prices, at their own expense. This looks more like catch up to me? All the small agencies have been screwing us the best they can, and so have some big ones. Yet some people keep uploading to those places.

I've been pounding the desk shouting don't support the parasites, and what happens. "I'd rather make a little than make nothing." OK folks, not you have less because the race to the bottom is being won by the crooks and creepy little places that were fed images for years. SS is being forced down into the cesspool because artists have chosen to sell for less and less.

I see this as following, not leading.

I think it was shutterstock who led the way. Shutterstock kept their prices low for over a decade in an effort to become the biggest stock supplier but the joke was on them not realizing others would follow with similarly low prices, creating expectations on the part of nearly all stock photo customers that prices would always be low. They can't put the genie back in the bottle and raise prices at this point, the market is saturated, so they need to cut somewhere and they think that if they could get people to accept 25 cents when they first started, why can't they accept 10 cents? For the corporate executives who dreamed this up, I'm sure they figure 10 cents isn't even much less than the 38 cents those in the soon to be old top tier make. They don't realize that there was a time when the volume of downloads even at that paltry 25 cents added up to decent money, but with the ever increasing size of shutterstock's portfolio it's harder and harder to make any money and this will make it impossible.

They planted the seeds of thier own demise. You can't blame the little guys who were just following suit, and probably won't be around much longer.

I don't think Adobe will follow suit. If stock photography becomes untenable, there will be a lot fewer people who will bother with Photoshop, since there are many stock shooters who don't shoot assignment work and fine art. As someone mentioned, they have many other sources of revenue, and hopefully this will keep them from following ss.

Mat, I second what Martha said. In light of shutterstock's move today shafting all contributors, many of us would love to see Adobe go image exclusive.

My licensing on ss has been better than on Adobe I think primarily due to a few Coronavirus-specific news images I took from a safe distance before things really got bad here in NY. One of them was licensed to places as different as China and Israel again this morning and just a handful of virus inspired news photos have been selling regularly, images that I can't license on Adobe. So, I think that is why ss is suddenly doing better at least for someone like me who has a mix of editorial and commercial stock. My portfolio on Adobe is more limited.