... AFAIK there's no counter of the sales for the individual images.

Not on the site; that's where excel's COUNTIF() function helped me in seeing how many images had sold in what quantities, but I used data from my sales pages

If reviewers are unable to see if an image is sold, I think the point made above that this will greatly inconvenience designers when they can't use their design elements again because Canva removed an image they used should prompt Canva to review this deletion policy.

Lee?

...IMHO, they need stability and build up good-will. If they continue to act recklessly, a strong brand cannot save its demise. I don't wish to see this, because it's not in my interest.

I wouldn't have left exclusivity but for the start of the cascade of bad things brought about by Hellman & Friedman turning the screws on Getty who in turn started down the long road that's led them to here.

My best guess as to what they will end up doing is the various pieces of the company will be split up and sold for whatever they can get. Sadly, I think the part of the Getty business that's been hurt the worst by all of this is iStock, and I can't imagine who'd want to buy it given its damaged state.

Site performance generally stinks, the CV is a boat anchor around the collection's neck, the collection has been polluted by masses of dreck at high prices, many long time buyers are P.O.'d at the recent (Sept '14) changes. I can't imagine the software running the site is much of an asset (given how things regularly break every time a change is introduced).

The site's name is worth something, and if a reputable outfit purchased it, dumped the Getty hand-me-downs, fixed up the site and came up with sane pricing and decent royalties for independents, I think they could turn things around. I'd contribute again as long as Getty had nothing whatever to do with the management of the site and it wasn't a private equity firm that bought it. The buyer would have to really want to make a go of the project long term - it wouldn't be a quick fixer upper and another sale.

"...For just one day you can purchase a full year ingimage subscription for only $199, instead of the standard price of $999. The only difference is you're limited to 50 downloads each month instead of the usual weekly limit...."

$199 / 600 downloads = 33 cents each x 20% = 6 cents for the contributor with their current payout.

The more we hear, the less interesting this agency becomes

Getty has done as much or more damage to the stock industry as any of the other candidates for bringing about ruinous conditions for contributors.

Ask any of the people who contributed to the many agencies they acquired - photos and music - whose royalty rates they cut and whose terms they made less favorable for anyone but Getty.

In addition, subscriptions were around long before Shutterstock started - they were on CDs and DVDs before things moved online.

Further, things were doing really well, for both iStock and Shutterstock for a while. IMO things could have continued that way long term - if Shutterstock were the culprit, the really big gains at iStock up to Sept. 2010 wouldn't have happened.

In terms of ruining the industry, want to talk about the deal Google did with Getty? Or Fotolia's toxic Dollar Photo Club? Or 123rf making its parent company, Inmagine, a distribution partner so they get two bites at the apple from the buyer's price? Or iStock cutting contributor royalties to 15% from an already low 20%? Or Deposit Photos paying a subscription royalty while the partner site sells at 99 euros?

Can't imagine all of that can be laid at Shutterstock's door.

I have only token files left at iStock, so I have nothing personal to share, but I hear chat from a number of current exclusives - and some graphs with trends over time although not specific numbers - and they'd see 15% lower as an improvement for them

Some are still getting some decent money from the files submitted via iStock and sold at Getty, apparently. Words like "sales have fallen off a cliff" keep coming up...

Raises, most of the time, don't go to the deserving. The way Shutterstock can help us, and themselves, earn more money from our content is to continue trying to eat Getty's lunch and lure away the higher value sales - corporate clients and such.

When I returned from exclusivity at iStock (summer 2011) my return per download was in the 60 cent to 75 cent range. At the end of last year it was hovering around the $1 mark (high 90s; only once, last April, did it go over $1)

If they can get my return per download up to (let's say) around $1.25, I'll consider that a raise even if the rates haven't changed. More high value sales and fewer basic subscriptions should be easily possible for them and won't give the shareholders or finance geniuses heart failure that their costs of goods is going up.

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on February 24, 2015, 11:38

The big difference here is that Google is redistributing the image to its clients, like a distributor or partner agency - Google sells ads and is offering images as part of the package (a discount, effectively, so the ad buyer doesn't have to buy their own license).

A designer is hired to produce a brochure for a client and the client licenses the image. The designer produces a web site for another client and the client licenses the image. Each of those clients may use the image multiple times in multiple projects, but client A cannot share the license with client B because that's redistributing the image, something their license prohibits.

The Google/DT deal is different, and not in a good way

So what your saying is that when Google lets one of the 10,000 clients use the image those clients can now also use it 10,000 times, thus 10,000 X 10,000 = 100,000,000 ?...

No. Google can't transfer the right to redistribute to anyone else. The issue is that Google sells it multiple times - each time to a different client - when the contributor only gets paid for one sale to Google.

I downloaded your terms document to take a look - I don't feel "premium" whatever that is, but was curious.

You apparently pay 20% of subscription revenues and if I understand the calculation in the document, the payout is based on the number of actual downloads. So if a buyer of a monthly subscription, which costs $199 and for which the buyer gets up to 1,000 images (250/week) downloads only 750 images, the revenue to the agency is 26.5 cents a download and the contributor gets 5.3 cents for each of their sales?

If the buyer only downloaded 500 images, the revenue to the agency is 39.8 cents a download and the contributor gets 7.9 cents?

I hope I have something wrong because those numbers are insane. Even the terrible agency payments are 25 cents a download for subscriptions, and there's no way your volume could match the big dog in the subscription business, so you're not going to make it up on volume...

Modified to note this term which seems like an uncomfortably long image lock (3 years from the date the image is included in "a Product" - whatever that means):

"Regardless of Termination of this Agreement, COMPANY will be entitled to continue to license any Image if it is featured in a Product, with the exception of the COMPANY website, for a period of three years from the date of first inclusion in its Product "

This type of lock would be a major problem for many, especially if they have no control over which images get treated this way.

... the important question is whether ANY of them would have found the image otherwise, much less PAID for it

I disagree that this is a good reason to accept an unreasonably low extended license payment - $2, effectively - just because (a) they'd have stolen one otherwise or (b) it's a small size.

A bad deal can't be made better via the above reasoning, or the "it hadn't sold on DT anyway" reasoning. Every time you accept a crappier deal with the notion that "it's better than zero", you're just setting things up for an even worse deal down the road. Not to mention that many of the items that haven't sold much at DT have sold well elsewhere - unless you're exclusive there, think about the fact that you're undercutting future sales at other agencies.

I've opted out - I don't sell cheapie extended licenses anywhere (I opt out at PhotoDune for example) - but I think the folks who opt in are taking too little up front cash for a a broad license with some vague hope that the deal will bring in something better down the road.

I'm so excited - 20 or so of my backlogged images are now online! It appears they are being handled in date order (these were from October 4th and newer ones are still in review).

There were a couple that had a (S) rejection - does that mean soft, and is there any way to know what Canva didn't like? If not, it doesn't matter much - I wouldn't resubmit anyway, but if there is a subject matter you don't want more of, or processing you didn't want, it helps to know. Saves both of us time in the long run.

Ok understood, but for us in the US I will just report their cut as an expense, keeping my total income from Envanto what I actually net.  I am not a tax attorney but it seems pretty simple to write off their cut as a cost of doing business.  So if I make $1000 in a year and they report $3300 income, I am going to write off $2300 as an expense. Maybe I'm oversimplifying it.

You're not oversimplifying it, but in my case, it makes a whole lot of things complex.

I do stock part time. Given that all the gear and my home office are used for other things as well, I don't write any of it off (keeping track of the proportions, days and hours is just not something I want to do). All the travel we do is family travel, and again, not specifically for stock, and I don't deduct any of it. I don't pay models or rent venues; I have a bucket load of computers for other purposes too.

I probably pay a bit more tax than I owe, but I report what the agencies pay me, as a sole proprietor. I don't want to have to start keeping track of all the expenses to do the books the way  you would with a "real" business, but if Envato starts reporting more than they actually pay me, I'm not up for overpaying even more by paying tax on that, and I don't want to deal with the recordkeeping to start a full set of books.

Avoiding the hassle of an audit (I'm not worried about owing money, but the time spent digging up all the paperwork and organizing it) is a priority; I don't see how I can handle claiming expenses from just this one agency without risking raising some audit red flag. For a few hundred a year it's just not worth it to me.

YMMV

I got a reply back to my request to close my account and was told that my message had been forwarded "to the necessary staff for consideration." And maybe I'm reading too much into it but to me, "for consideration" might suggest that they could be reconsidering the implications of this new policy, particularly if contributors are requesting to close their accounts because of it.

So anyone considering closing their account, I'd suggest contacting Envato to let them know that you're even thinking about it. Maybe if enough people express an interest in parting ways with them, they might fix this mess.

I got back something similar that they were "escalating" and would be in touch shortly.

I'm not fussed either way about the outcome, but I do think it's worthwhile to take the opportunities we can (like with DPC) to make it clear to the agencies that poor treatment of contributors will have consequences.

I can't imagine they can back away from the whole scheme, but I can perhaps imagine that they'll treat PhotoDune differently - because they're acting just like an agency, setting prices and reviewing contributions for inclusion or not.

I don't know about the EU contributors, but I'd be happy if they just issued the 1099 to me for the money they actually paid me, regardless of the convoluted invoice scheme they've cooked up. So I guess that's another possible way out of the conundrum for a subset of contributors.