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Messages - Firn
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276
« on: January 12, 2022, 10:11 »
I don't understand why people care about levels. Even on the highest level I still earn 10 cents per photo.
I care about levels, because it makes a big difference to me whether I get 47$ for a SOD sale on level 1 or 160$ for the same sale on level 5.  And since non-subscription sales are pretty much the only ones where you can make decent money on SS that makes leveling up even more important.
277
« on: January 12, 2022, 06:50 »
Tier 2 benefits in reality = 1 extra cent
Tier 3 benefits in reality = 0 extra cents (But these would probably have been 10 cents at every level. I am more worried about higher amount sales right now as that's where I am missing out more significant amounts of money.)
278
« on: January 06, 2022, 06:31 »
I am failing to understand how the new bonus/free PS etc will work. I see I do qualify.
Will I be sent a code and, if so, when?
Or is there another system.
My current 'bonus subscription' runs out early Feb but I'd be reluctant to pay up and then find my free code (?) arriving and have to cancel. I went down that rabbit hole some time back....
Anybody know please?
You'll see the code on your Adobe stock dashboard and you will get an e-mail. You'll get the code in February 2022
279
« on: January 06, 2022, 03:12 »
Hi Wilm :-)
Those numbers are too low for average revenue. There are some high earners on here.
Unless they have changed it in recent years, I am fairly sure its a percentage of $500.
Hopefully, Pete, Leaf or a Diamond member can confirm or explain.
Hello Annie, 
I'm not so sure about that.
In 2019, shutterstock paid $US 164,000,000 to contributors. With the introduction of the new revenue structure, I expect it may have been just as much or even less in 2020.
(Unfortunately, shutterstock did not publish this figure in 2020. Then you could see how much the new revenue structure has cost us contributors).
In 2020, there were 1,600,000 contributors.
The numbers are in the 2019 and 2020 annual reports.
On average, each contributor earned US$100 per year from shutterstock. That's $8 a month.
I am not sure the number of 1,600,000 contributors is really something we can work with. How many of these 1,600,000 contributors are people with like 3 smartphone snapshots in their port that haven't even logged into their accounts for years? Just go to SS, serach for a random keyword and then go to the last page, so the "least popular" images. If you click on some random ports there, half of these contributors don't even have one full page of photos in their port. I bet at least 25% of these 1,600,000 contributors are people who thought they'd upload some snapshots and make some quick money, but abandoned their ports and haven't even logged in for years when they saw it didn't work like this. We would need to know how many active contributors shutterstock has to get an idea of the real average. edit: Exactly what Pacesetter said.
280
« on: January 05, 2022, 02:46 »
Thought you were joking but it's true https://www.politico.eu/article/tattoo-parlors-brace-new-eu-ink-bans/ This might be a good editorial stock video and photo idea, shots of the bottles of coloured ink that are now banned and if any model has a coloured tattoo even better.
If only Shutterstock hadn't that rule that you need a property release from the atttoo artist for models with tattoos, which makes things quite complicated.  Apparently once you get tattooed you lose the right to decide over your own body.
281
« on: January 04, 2022, 07:16 »
I made $190 last month on shutterstock and My income has not reset to zero yet. anyone having this issue ?
Yes, my earnings also haven't reset. Usually I would not worry about it, because sometimes it can take a bit longer, because I had to update my tax form and wasn't sure the update had gone through (as I kept getting notifications that it needed to be updated, even though I already had) so I was not sure I would get my payment this month and contacted support and was told that there was nothing to worry about, the payment process was delayed because of the holiday weekend. Since this was not an answer from real support, but just an "expert contributor", I don't know how much validity it has.
282
« on: January 02, 2022, 01:09 »
I care very much about RPD, as I would rather that those 10000 downloads earned me $10,000 rather than $5000.
And I care very much about my earnings, because I would rather have 1000 hours of my work earn me $10,000 than $5000.  That's my priority.
I want to work and get paid for my work and pay my rent and food and as long as the agencies are paying me the same, or as it has been so far, even more for my work each year, that's good enough for me.
And I didn't post my stats to impress anyone. I just wanted to show that not everything is gloom and doom and going downhills in microstock bussiness. Everyone is so negative these days. It's not all only bad, even agencies like SS or iSTock. But you have to put some work into it, not stop submitting content to Shutterstock and then complain that your earnings are declining. I see that quite often and maybe that has something to do with people's obsession with RPD - The expection that "images uploaded in the past" should earn your money for you past work, not your continouse work.
I don't think continuing this discussion will lead anywhere, we obviously have different priorities. As long as you are happy with your business model and I am happy with mine, everything is fine.
This is just insane, how much are you proposing that Oringer and Pavlovsk sell your work for, would you be happy with 1c a download.
I am repeating myself here: I don't care how much I am being paid for a download, as long as I am paid adequately for my work. I have an expectation of how much money I want to be paid per hour of my work and Shutterstock is one of the agencies that pays me the most. An agency like Alamy might pay me 20x more per download, but what good is it to me if they sell so few images that the money they pay me per hour of my work is not even 1/10th of minimum wage?
283
« on: January 01, 2022, 13:09 »
I care very much about RPD, as I would rather that those 10000 downloads earned me $10,000 rather than $5000.
And I care very much about my earnings, because I would rather have 1000 hours of my work earn me $10,000 than $5000. That's my priority. I want to work and get paid for my work and pay my rent and food and as long as the agencies are paying me the same, or as it has been so far, even more for my work each year, that's good enough for me. And I didn't post my stats to impress anyone. I just wanted to show that not everything is gloom and doom and going downhills in microstock bussiness. Everyone is so negative these days. It's not all only bad, even agencies like SS or iSTock. But you have to put some work into it, not stop submitting content to Shutterstock and then complain that your earnings are declining. I see that quite often and maybe that has something to do with people's obsession with RPD - The expection that "images uploaded in the past" should earn your money for you past work, not your continouse work. I don't think continuing this discussion will lead anywhere, we obviously have different priorities. As long as you are happy with your business model and I am happy with mine, everything is fine.
284
« on: January 01, 2022, 12:27 »
Alread posted this in another thread, but here is my revenue comparison for the past year:
January 20->21: +131%
February 20->21: +214%
March 20->21: +151%
April 20->21: +74%
May 20->21: +132%
June 20->21: +140%
July 20->21: +148%
August 20->21: +123%
September 20->21: +45%
October 20->21: +98%
November 20->21: +23%
December 20->21: +11%
That's an impressive increase and congratulations to you. It's nice to see that some people are still on an upward trajectory. Your Shutterstock figures are very close to my Adobe returns over the period.
Do you mind if I ask whether you significantly increased your portfolio and what your RPD comparison was?
Also, out of curiosity, can I ask when you started submitting? My income grew year on year from 2008-2015, but has declined a little each year since 2016, with 2020 and 2021 seeing more significant drops.
I didn't join Adobe until 2015, and I'm still seeing year on year growth there, although I am expecting it to plateau at some point.
Thank you. Actually Adobe is the agency with the smalles increase for me, on some months I even had a decrease compared to last year 
I increased my SS portfolio by about 2500 images, same as every year as I have a somewhat regular upload shedule. I don't know my RPD, but I increased my port by around 28%, but my earnings increased by 107%, so my RPD should also have increased.
I started submitting at the beginning of 2019, but my first year where I mostly tried to submit illustrations wasn't very sucessfull.
Interesting, and thanks.
My income steadily increased for 7 years on Shutterstock before it reached a plateau and then started dropping. I'm watching Adobe with interest, as I'm 6 years in and still climbing. There definitely does appear to be a point at which you hit critical mass.
My uploads are fairly consistent each year, and my RPD rose steadily on Shutterstock year on year, largely due to the incremental increases as each level was achieved. From 2015 the RPD remained consistent until the commission change in 2019, and has been dropping since then.
However, you mention your portfolio growth against income growth and assume that your RPD must have increased, but that's not necessarily the case, as RPD is a calculation based purely on income over downloads.
For example, 10000 downloads per annum earning $10,000 = RPD $1, but 15000 downloads earning $12,000 the following year is a 20% increase in earnings but an RPD of only 75c.
On the surface of things, 20% income growth looks great, but the reality here is that you are only earning 75% of the rate you had the year before.
I submit about the same amount of photos each year, have the same work, but earned more than double as much for the same work than the year before. That's good enough for me because I only care about the money I earn and not how much I sell my images for on an average or how many downloads I have. I don't understand people's fixation with RPD. Someone can have an RPD of 10$ and still make no profit or basically work for free, because he has to pay rent for locations, props and models. Someoen else might have an RPD of 0.50$, but has no costs and spends almost no time on his photos because he only shoots his backyard flowers. The first person could make a financial loss with his photos or barely cover his costs without being paid for his time, the second a profit. RPD is a strange factor to care about so much as it says nothing about how much money you actually get for your work, just for a photo, which is a very random factor as creataing a photo can be a matter of seconds and cost you not more than the usage of your gear, or cost thousands of dollars and take hours of time. Also, I don't care whether I have 10000, 20000 or 200000 downloads per year. I can't pay my rent with downloads. I pay it with the money I get at the end of the month. To me it always seems like some opeople have such strange priorities in this microstock bussiness.
285
« on: January 01, 2022, 08:17 »
Alread posted this in another thread, but here is my revenue comparison for the past year:
January 20->21: +131%
February 20->21: +214%
March 20->21: +151%
April 20->21: +74%
May 20->21: +132%
June 20->21: +140%
July 20->21: +148%
August 20->21: +123%
September 20->21: +45%
October 20->21: +98%
November 20->21: +23%
December 20->21: +11%
That's an impressive increase and congratulations to you. It's nice to see that some people are still on an upward trajectory. Your Shutterstock figures are very close to my Adobe returns over the period.
Do you mind if I ask whether you significantly increased your portfolio and what your RPD comparison was?
Also, out of curiosity, can I ask when you started submitting? My income grew year on year from 2008-2015, but has declined a little each year since 2016, with 2020 and 2021 seeing more significant drops.
I didn't join Adobe until 2015, and I'm still seeing year on year growth there, although I am expecting it to plateau at some point.
Thank you. Actually Adobe is the agency with the smalles increase for me, on some months I even had a decrease compared to last year I increased my SS portfolio by about 2500 images, same as every year as I have a somewhat regular upload shedule. I don't know my RPD, but I increased my port by around 28%, but my earnings increased by 107%, so my RPD should also have increased. I started submitting at the beginning of 2019, but my first year where I mostly tried to submit illustrations wasn't very sucessfull.
286
« on: January 01, 2022, 07:05 »
Alread posted this in another thread, but here is my revenue comparison for the past year:
January 20->21: +131%
February 20->21: +214%
March 20->21: +151%
April 20->21: +74%
May 20->21: +132%
June 20->21: +140%
July 20->21: +148%
August 20->21: +123%
September 20->21: +45%
October 20->21: +98%
November 20->21: +23%
December 20->21: +11%
287
« on: December 31, 2021, 17:26 »
Around 2500 images, I think. I don't know the exact number, I don't think there is a way to ckeck on Shutterstock?
But so far I pretty much submitted a very similar amount of photos each month. I like sticking to fixed schedules.
i had about 1500 accepted this year (i dont track total submitted as it's not useful info for me)
"Submitted" pretty much means "accepted" to me. I rarely get images rejected on SS.
288
« on: December 31, 2021, 12:13 »
But here's a question: How many images have you uploaded to shutterstock this year?
I think I see where you are going with that Wilm, and if I'm right it highlights what to me is probably the most profound change in microstock over the years. A trend which I'm afraid will continue well past 2022.
Earnings growth at one time much was more in line with portfolio growth. It was never a direct correlation obviously, but it was as I say, more predictable. I remember when feeding the beast used to be the mantra, and for a while it seemed to work. Now not so much.
If I take my numbers it's like this: I have 8900 images in my port right now. I added around 2500 in 2021. That's an 28%increase. But my earnings increased by 107% on Shutterstock from 2020 to 2021.
289
« on: December 31, 2021, 12:06 »
How do you justify and find the motivation to even try going forward even without hiring models but just filming or photographing anything in your city?, for 10 cents and now 1 to 7 cents at Alamy it's barely a hobby or small side income for those who are retired.
Even though the qustion wasn't directed at me, I'd still like to throw in my answer. 10 cents or 1-7 cents aren't motivating me to go forward. But the four-digit number I earn with microstock each month is. If you want to keep being motivated, it's better to pay less attention to earnings of single sales or RPD and look at the money you earn within a month. Because these 0.10$ sales are very dicouraging for sure. I have images that I put lots of work in or had costs for props that so far haven't managed to earn me back the time and money spent. Maybe they never will. That's frustrating, but I try not to dwell on that too much, because I also had images that cost me literally nothing, didn't take much more than 5 minutes to shoot/edit/keyword and earned me like 100$ within a year and 100$ for 5 minutes of work doesn't seem so bad? And in the end, at least for me, the images that underperform and the images that perform better than expected (and the imags that perform as expected) all even out each other. Before Alamy introduced the very low sales and before Shutterstock had the commission cut iStock was the only agency that had these very frustrating sales of 0.2$ and quite a lot oif it. At the beginning I would look at my monthly report and it would really frustrate me, because I thought "I'd rather not sell my images at all than sell them for 2cents!". But somehow, no matter how frustrating the single numbers looked, it all added up to a nice sum in the end. Of course even the overall earnings each month probably aren't much of a motivation if they are very low. But it is still possible to make decent money with microstock and still possible to increase your earnings.
290
« on: December 31, 2021, 11:39 »
Only a couple of hours left here in Germany. It's the time I dread the most all year, because one of my dogs freaks out because of the fireworks. I hope this year won't be as bad as the sale of fireworks was forbidden in Germany again, just like last year, but people still manage to obtain them from somewhere or mybe have them stocked up. But so far it has been relatively calm, with only a few fireworks here and there. Before the sale was forbidden because of Covid it used to be like a warzone out there all day. 
291
« on: December 31, 2021, 11:12 »
But here's a question: How many images have you uploaded to shutterstock this year?
Around 2500 images, I think. I don't know the exact number, I don't think there is a way to ckeck on Shutterstock? But so far I pretty much submitted a very similar amount of photos each month. I like sticking to fixed schedules.
292
« on: December 31, 2021, 08:05 »
The biggest negative part of my personal development has shutterstock. Compared to my best year, I have 5,250 fewer downloads there in 2021. Since the RPD there was $0.88 in my best year and now it's 0.61, the financial losses are much higher in percentage terms.
See Wilm, I have always had a bit different approach to this than most people here seem to have. I don't care much about download numbers or RPD. It's a number you use to determine the worth an agency attaches to your photos, but it doesn't really translate well for me in regards of the time/costs - earnings relation and it doesn't pay my bills. You could have a RPD of 10$, but if your shoots are very expensive, because you rent locations and hire models, you could still end up getting less money for your time and costs than someone who just takes photos of his backyard flowers and has an RPD of 0.30$. What I care about is how much money I get for my work at the end of the month. How much time did I spend to take, keyword and edit the photos? Did I spend time creating props, driving to locations or did I spend money on props for the photos? And these factors are alwys the same on all agencies. I don't spend more time or money on photos I submit to Shutterstock than on Adobe, Alamy or iStock. So why should I care for the RPD? I have a much better RPD on Alamy for example than on Shutterstock. What use is the high RPD on Alamy to me? The money I earn from them is pocket money at best. The money I get from Shutterstock pays my rent and has more than doubled within the past year. And, if I remmeber correctly, you were one of the people who said you hardly submit new content to Shutterstock anymore? Because that's something I see a lot - people who say they rarely submit new images or don't submit new images at all, but then are frustrated that their income declines. Maybe submitting some images and then just watching them make you money without submiting new content is something that used to work on Shutterstock years ago. I don't know. This is only my 4th year doing microstock. But nowadays, at least from my experinece, you have to keep putting effort into it if you want to see a reward. For me that seems to work.
293
« on: December 31, 2021, 04:28 »
Since everyone's predictions for 22 seem so gloomy, I thought I would share some numbers to give some people hope that maybe not all is lost in microstock. I am sure it's not the "good old days" anymore and rerquired more work these days, but it's not just all going downhills.
I am not one of the "big players" in microstock, I don't make tons of money from it, but it's till a nice amount each month that contributes greatly to covering my living costs, so definitely more than just pocket change.
Shutterstock earnings
January 20->21: +131%
February 20->21: +214%
March 20->21: +151%
April 20->21: +74%
May 20->21: +132%
June 20->21: +140%
July 20->21: +148%
August 20->21: +123%
September 20->21: +45%
October 20->21: +98%
November 20->21: +23%
December 20->21: +11%
iStock earnings
January 20->21: +76%
February 20->21: +117%
March 20->21: +130%
April 20->21: +62%
May 20->21: +158%
June 20->21: +50%
July 20->21: +79%
August 20->21: +131%
September 20->21: +33%
October 20->21: +79%
November 20->21: +170%
Adobe earnings
January 20->21: +41%
February 20->21: +50%
March 20->21: +56%
April 20->21: -11%
May 20->21: -12%
June 20->21: -45%
July 20->21: +99%
August 20->21: +131%
September 20->21: +35%
October 20->21: +53%
November 20->21: +37%
December 20->21: +50%
My conclusions for 2021 and prediction for 22: Not everything is on the decline. If you keep putting effort into microstock, there is still a reward in in, income can still increase. I don't have any plans (mostly for the lack of ideas) to find a different way to sell my photos, but only plan to expand my portfolio and hopefully further increase my earnings.
Also, some conclusions at least from my portfolio:
The level earning structure on SS doesn't seem to be so bad, at least if you rise in level fast.
iSTock and SS, the agencies most people seem to hate are not only the ones that earn me the most money, but also the ones where my income improved the most in 21 compared to 20.
- Adobe, which averyone praises so much, is the agenciy with the smalles increade in earnings, even with a decline in earnings compared to 2020 during some months. Me and Adobe will probably never become good friends.
I didn't add the numbers for the small agencies, because it's so much work and also because I only joined most of them this year, so I don't have numbers to compare. On Alamy my earnings seem to be a bit better than in 20. At least they are more frequent, but with the many very low sales and me still waiting for sales from 9 months ago to clear, it's not so easy to get proper numbers. Last year Dreamstime was my best-selling agency of the "small ones", but both sale numbers and earnings are now on the decline, so not much hope for my future there.
294
« on: December 27, 2021, 11:01 »
There was nothing in that agreement that stated the SS could
lower commissions or do whatever they * well pleased. It may be
in your agreement if you signed up more recently but in my
original agreement there is nothing stating that the SS would lower
my commission or drop me back to Level 1 whenever they * well
pleased.
And after 13 year you remember the exact content of the full agreement? Because it says "Please note that Shutterstock reserves the right to modify these terms at any time in its sole discretion." and not just in the current version. I couldn't find any version older than 7 years, but the sentence was already in there back then and it would surprise me if it wasn't there from the start. That's something you basically put in every ToS agreement online.
295
« on: December 25, 2021, 02:15 »
I can't join in on the Adobe praise.
It's doing okay for me, but not great. December for example I only maid 50% on Adobe of what I made on SS and only 35% of what I made on iStock. I still blame it on their search algorithm that just doesn't seem to work in my favor, because when I look at my bestsellers - the same images that sell frequently on all agencies - Adobe is always the "odd one out" where these images don't really manage to generate any sales worth mentioning. For me it seems to be much more difficult to establish any frequent sellers on Adobe. I have a handful of these, but they are all images I uploaded like 3 years ago and none of my seasonal images ever made it to the top on Adobe, which is the reason why Adobe earnings are so much lower than they are on the other big agencies for me, where seasonal images made up a big part of my earnings.
296
« on: December 23, 2021, 04:06 »
....
I got in contact with a few and they have so many downloads that they do earn money. They do get donations and since it is a donation, a gift they don't even pay tax on that income. ..... What really frustrates me is that she doesn't have to pay tax while we get nothing compared to what she makes and from that nothing we pay tax. I can't understand how that whole business model is legal. Someone should take that to court and get it shut down.
the IRS may have a different opinion about such 'donations'
https://www.thebalance.com/do-you-have-to-pay-taxes-on-crowdfunded-money-4773839
Not just the IRS. It will probably be different from country to country, but in most countries you will have to pay taxes for non charitable "donations". It's only really a donation per definition if it is given as gift to a nonprofit organization to help it accomplish its goals. What free images sites might call donations are really per definition voluntary payments for a service/product, more comparable to a tip to a waitress, so you have to pay taxes on it. That some people simply don't do it doesn't mean they don't have to.
297
« on: December 22, 2021, 06:18 »
I am not sure I understand the question correctly. If I upload a photo and there is a demand for it, it can sell as fast as within the first minute after being appoved.
There is no "avarage" sale time for a photo. It depends on when someone needs it, wheter there is competition for it, how good it is copared to other similar image, how the agencie's algorithm places it. An image can sell 1 minute after being approved, one week or a year later or never at all.
298
« on: December 18, 2021, 04:36 »
I am really 100% certain you will not find a single person here who just moves after he has photographed everything around him just to have new places to take photos of. That would be kind of insane. You don't need to move for that, if places is all you take photos of, just travel around? Do day trips to cities within your reach. Also, you will pretty much find that of every location somewhat known someone has already taken photos of for stock and you will most often find that someone took way better quality photos than you. But this doesn't mean that yours can't sell. They just might serve a different purpose. His might end up being printed as a postcard, yours might end up in an article about the constant bad weather at your place.
299
« on: December 17, 2021, 11:01 »
I keep having this new layout on and off for several weeks now.
Sometimes it's this one, sometimes the "old" one and sometimes the old one with the (random and incorrect) pupularity/usage display. Has been going on for quite a while for me.
I actually like the look of the new one just from a visual point of view, but the images look horrbly blurry on it and the same collection/more from this artist sections seem to have moved even further down the page.
300
« on: December 17, 2021, 10:59 »
Go to your payments page and you can see your gross total and tax withheld for each pay period.
Unfortunately all it says there is: "You haven't received any payments yet". Even though I clearly got a payment through Paypal from Canva today. 
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