For me to use BB i'd want to use it for SS only as i'd earn probably 5% or so more than direct.

However on all other sites i'd lose 15% if i used it to submit to them as well.

So no opt-out then its likely not worth it for me.


This is assuming BB hasn't go a bespoke agreement with SS and gets the full royalty payment and not a bulk, reduced amount.

Is this a one-off hit of all being reviewed or is it in bursts ?  (I seem to recall the first one came over multiple periods of review)

At the expense of AI content, which one of the authors does not mark as AI content, well, here on the forum I have already discussed this issue, programs that create AI add this information to the file metadata.

You do realise it takes seconds to batch change any Metadata you want to remove things?

For the portfolios that don't have any tagged images it suggests either that they don't understand what they need to do, or that they hope to get the widest exposure for their work and don't want the tag for that reason. There are a lot of new contributors who only have AI submissions; perhaps some extra scrutiny for the first 100-200 images (like with stolen work detection) would help fix this problem.

Realistically most are fully aware of what they SHOULD be doing but also aware the system doesn't enforce and won't catch them so they're knowingly generating vast numbers of AI images, submitting them as non-AI to pad their portfolio.

Places like Pakistan on the FB groups have a *lot* of people openly admitting to doing this.
On SS for example, get approved with a handful of mobile phone photos of stuff in your garden, next day 200 AI coffee cups appear.

AI has allowed people who previously couldn't generate much content to suddenly massively bulk up.


How to fix it?  Its hard and as AI gets better it gets harder.  More pattern recognition on upload profiles maybe.

I do like the idea of a "report" button which with the right usage limits and constraints could trigger a search for similars and if suspicious, flag up for a human to check.

So, the highest tier is 40% commission.  After BlackBoxGuild or WireStock takes 15% of the 40% royalty, you are still at 34% commission that's nearly level 5 that's almost impossible for most video contributors and is difficult to many photo contributors.  Or is it 40% -15% at 25% commission?

One thing is large companies have bespoke royalty levels from Shutterstock (this was admitted when levels came in) so we have no idea if BB/WS have negotiated their own or are on the same tier as normal people

And its 15% NET which i take to mean they take 15% of whatever commission they got paid and give you the rest.

For video on SS its likely worth it now given the fairly brutal tiering system and fact you lose money on every sale until reaching that level. (2 years running now i annoyingly reached level 4 video on new years eve although photo L5 happens pretty early on).

Ultimately though, for any other agency that isnt tiered then the maths work out in your favour to do it yourself.

One thing i can't work out is if whether being a large selling contributor they get preference in the search algorithms which increases the likelihood of a clip being seen or not.  Not seen anything concrete either way.

Mine is down about 80% on 2017, same on RPD so its not just a case of uploading more and more.

The various cuts of going from minimum $0.38 for photos down to effectively $0.10 etc.

Video used to pay well and ive got about 1400 videos.  But you used to get $40 per clip, thats now down to $1 to $8.

The level system then further trashed earnings as you get paid a LOT less earlier in the year and even when you've levelled up you're miles off what you used to have.

Moving to a percentage based earning as well means whenever SS sell things more cheaply (always....) you now get a percentage of that new low figure so make even less from the sale.

It all adds up.

SS now pretty much sells ALL of its products massively cheaper than before *and* gives contributors a far lower percentage of that cheaper deal price.

Without going into earnings and incurring the wrath of SS, im significantly north of $1000 per month in reduced earnings since 2018 although the amount of downloads has actually increased.

AS is slowly, steadily improving.  Its got fewer images and videos (no editorial) and as of last year overtook SS in average income and continues to pull away.

AI doesn't get bicycle spokes or machinery right either.

I tried it on marine life and underwater (because thats mostly what i do myself).

Even entering pretty specific fish and species names most of the outputs are wrong to the extent you either think "what is that" or have invented new species previously unknown to science.

I did get a 10 arm octopus spat out once.  And one with a claw (only 1 though).

Just uploaded some Shibuya of my own. I hope i don't end up on your sh*t list 

If you trawl the FB groups for example there's one recent guy who (on SS admittedly) submitted some woeful mobile snapshots of his garden to get "approved".
Badly composed, awfully exposed garden growth.  7 of them.

Next day post is "Please visit and buy my portfolio" and the link now contains some 30+ images of clearly AI generated cups of coffee in addition to those weeds.

And yep, he's listed as AS contributor too and far from alone.

Whether they like it or not, they've already got a *lot* of AI images sold as stock and unlabelled.

Had this a few times now and FB groups suggest its happening to quite a few.

Fully English titles, even without local place names are getting it (one of mine was along the lines of "a row of palm trees behind a tropical sandy beach" for example).

Resubmission with zero changes, as per usual for SS, resulted in approval.

I suspect an AI has gone made and attempting to autotranslate English into English, fails and rejects.

Im very glad that i didnt go to Storyblocks.  I did consider it as a test at one point.