Nobody gets an EL as part of a subscription.

... I don't see any agency owing us anything. ...

I don't think anyone claimed contributors were "owed" or entitled, but partnerships - especially those that last over time - are built on mutual interests, equity, honesty and transparency.

The notion of what the market will bear is rather empty unless you talk about over what period of time. You can temporarily hose your buyers, your workers or your suppliers, and that will often work for a while, especially when economic conditions aren't good for those putting up with the poor treatment.

Many successful businesses are the equivalent of the music industry's one hit wonder. A few last over the long haul and even fewer make profits, treat their employees well and are reasonable with their suppliers. I do not subscribe to the "if it's not illegal, it's just fine to do" or the "it's just business" schools of thought. We can do better than that.

There's no law that prevents Shutterstock from spending lavishly on their headquarters and spending the money they earned from selling licenses to our content as freely as the law allows. But over time, they may run into problems if the stories of contributors doing really well - which has driven contributors who hated subscriptions to send their work to Shutterstock anyway - start to dry up.

In the "it's only business world" there is no loyalty, and that works both ways.

If you'd asked me 6 months ago, I'd have given you a very different answer about 123rf. I had seen very solid sales from them. Last year I uploaded a catch-up batch of images (several hundred; don't remember exactly) thinking that might boost sales numbers a bit.

I've seen the exact opposite (and I'm not suggesting that uploading new files caused the drop in sales). As they do a rolling 12 month credit total I watch the number tick down a bit at the start of each month, which isn't what I want to see.

I have no clue what's up or why. It's possible that they are leaning more on partner sales - and I opted out of their partner sales ages ago.

Have you checked to make sure your images show up in a search? A while back they had some bug where if you searched and ordered by Newest first, the new files ended up on the last page (which clearly didn't help sales!). Support is generally pretty responsive if you have to report a problem.

I pay $30 a year for FAA (started in Jan 2013) and make enough to make it worth my time. I did set up licensing via pixels.com for everything except my editorial images and have had one sale. I didn't expect there to be much licensing there - why would that appeal to more than a handful of image licensors? - but wanted to see how things played out.

If you have things you think might sell as prints, I'd give FAA a try, but don't do it for pixels.com

I'd like to see the Istock office in comparison.

I did see the iStock Calgary office - in 2009 - no idea about Getty's Seattle offices though.

The owner of the LocalMotive building (iStock rented space there) had all sorts of rules about not taking pictures, so I didn't, but here's one from the glass company that worked on it:



It was a funky-chic open plan space. Nothing luxurious.

http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/18/pinterest-is-trying-to-raise-another-500m-valuing-the-company-at-11b/

I've never been a real user of Pinterest (I made an account so I could browse the agency boards) but I'd sort of made my peace with the agencies (like DT) helping users pin watermarked thumbnails.

However, if you look at the article above, Pinterest is now offering promoted pins - just like the noxious ads-in-all-but-name in Facebook news feeds and advertorials in print publications. I'm guessing that there is no restriction on a promoted pin containing an image that no one paid to license.

https://business.pinterest.com/en/blog/big-year-ahead-promoted-pins

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/29/business/media/pinterest-opening-its-boards-to-ads-.html

I could easily get angry all over again if a promoted pin - one that made Pinterest money and one which the promoter paid to build their business - included unlicensed images. Perhaps it won't happen. Perhaps the brands doing the advertising will shoot their own images or license them.

Given the massive infringements on Pinterest (and I found some images of mine from Pocketstock, a defunct agency I left before they were defunct, still on Pinterest - this stuff lives forever) I figure it's only a matter of time before unlicensed images show up in promoted pins. Do we have any better chance to either get paid for a license or to issue a DMCA request for a promoted pin?

Pinterest has some rules for advertisers:

https://about.pinterest.com/en/advertising-rules

They also have some creative how-tos that include an admonition to "Use high-resolution, professional-quality photographs and illustrations. Don�t use images that are poorly lit, out of focus or otherwise appear amateurish." but nothing about licensing images for commercial use if it's not one they own copyright to.

https://business.pinterest.com/sites/business/files/how-to-make-great-pins-guide-en-01.pdf

The front page that I see says "Over 40 Million Stock Photos, Vectors, Videos, and Music Tracks" - meaning they are counting everything in the total.

I'm sure images are the biggest chunk numerically, followed by illustrations, I would guess. Given their collection size, I don't know that the counts matter much any more though.

Quality of what you offer, coverage of styles and subjects, amount of new content on a regular basis and quality of search results would seem to be the big areas where bragging rights matter.

Why are you leaving so fast? The way I see it it's legally impossible for them to claim that the contributors are the sellers. So things will probably change?

This has been going on for many months. There's a massively long thread in their forums (and although I didn't read all of the posts, everything I saw said this was just wrong). I wrote in the forum, I wrote to support; they escalated and the response there was "have you asked our tax center for help" - I don't want help in figuring out how to deal with it and I told them that I was only interested in a change of policy.

They've changed their site to reflect these fictional "invoices" and I just don't want to go further into the 2015 tax year with some vague hope they'll end up saying "oops" and not issue a US 1099. If they were a huge earner for me (someone else said they earned $250 a month there; clearly the more you earn the more you might hope things will change) possibly that might alter my views?

In addition to all of the above, PhotoDune appears to be very much an afterthought at Envato. The business model doesn't really fit (they're an agency, albeit not a very good one, saying they're a marketplace). Sales haven't grown in the 3 years I've been there - they're more like CanStock - nice guys, bumping along at the bottom. But the nice guys became a nuisance with this ridiculous invoicing scheme and they appear to have dug in. Given that they really don't appear to view PhotoDune as important, I can't see any realistic likelihood they're going to change anything even though their new polcies are unlike those of any agency out there.

I didn't hit $50 before month's end, so I will be gone, but not before I make the additional $10

http://pando.com/2015/02/26/twenty20-raises-8m-removes-the-velvet-rope-on-its-crowdsourced-stock-photo-platform/

Interesting to see Shutterstock lumped in with the old guard in the above article, and also the notion that crowdsourced content is somehow new - perhaps the author was unaware that this is how the microstock agencies have typically been characterized.

There's much more press about their funding - whoever's doing their PR is certainly getting the word out

http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/26/twenty20/

http://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2015/02/26/twenty20-s-vision-for-crowdsourced-stock-photos.html?page=all

"Twenty20 is here to harness the power of a mobile photo and provide a bigger stage to showcase everyday talent," said founder and CEO Matt Munson. "Creative brands and agencies are looking for original image content from real people, creating a more impactful and sincere relationship with their customers."

http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/twenty20-funding-round-leaves-beta

https://www.pehub.com/2015/02/twenty20-rakes-in-8-mln-in-canaan-partners-led-round/

And these guys got the numbers wrong (saying it's $20m)
http://www.socaltech.com/twenty__gets___m_for_crowdsourced_stock_photography/s-0059134.html

The idea that 45 million images is 50% more than Shutterstock is curious (as SS is over 40 million I think)

The images themselves are, to put it kindly, a mixed bag. I found a lot that were editorial use only - and one of a beach (no one in sight) that had editorial use OK'd and commercial use "pending review"

The prices seemed very high for the very average images they sell $10, $20, $50 for small-med-large.

The keywording seemed awful - even if you want authentic, you want to know where things were taken (basic place information was missing from many landscapes and city shots; one that had place was still pretty minimal - boston, harbor, fun)

Other than a founder to talk it up as a "movement" (on the bottom of the home page it invites me to Join the Movement...), I don't really see anything about this site that would make it more than a small player.

I'd be interested in knowing when your iStock incident happened. I had the same experience recently and it took me a long time to get an answer about why they sold one of my deactivated images. ...

I received a royalty adjustment Oct 10, 2014. The files had been deactivated in February 2013. The e-mail about the adjustment just said the files "..were recently licensed..."

I got notes in October and November thanking me for my patience and saying they were working with other teams to get answers. Then a long gap to February 9, 2015 when they acknowledged that they'd bungled the check to ensure the images were active. They never told me the date of the transaction, only that these were extended licenses.