One of my clients in the telecoms space fronted up to a major industry exhibition. They spent a huge amount of money on their stand and one of their key competitors was right next door to them.

You guess where this is going, right? By chance, the designers for both companies had used the exact same cheap stock image to market their companies at the same show that year. It was hugely embarrassing for everyone concerned.

The result is that they contacted me and I was literally flown around the world to shoot a portfolio of custom stock images for them. Dubai, Kenya, Mozambique, Hong Kong, Washinton DC, London and Belgium.

Your insights are so very valuable and interesting. Clearly there is a market - it just may be a lot smaller and better served at a far higher price with niche content that is very difficult for others to get.

Thanks for all of those who have contributed. We now have some excellent images to use on the front page and a small gallery of work that shows off the creative talents of the community.

We are progressing swiftly on the core website build.

My team is just building a website to represent us. I can't really build a website representing stock artists without showing what we do. I could buy them, or I could ask those who we are representing to donate some.

I went first and donated my own.

It's always good to have lots of images available so that we can freshen up the look and feel from time to time. Again, note how frequently Adobe's images change.

Will a website change the world by itself? Hell no.

It's just one part of a broader strategy. There are more people involved in this. It's just getting started and already I think the pressure management at some agencies will be under is considerable.

Now, this is a fun game. We just sold this file on Pond5 and received $76-80. It's no longer available on Shutterstock. Don't be your cheap competitor.
https://www.pond5.com/stock-footage/item/75180206-african-stock-video-rural-young-children-washing-hands

Yes of course. Always declare income. Just remember that every camera, every trip you take with your models, every hotel you stay in while travelling with your models, every prop you buy for stock, including food if you shoot food as stock is then a legitimate expense. Also, times are tough and sometimes we don't make a profit with our work. Sometimes it's more expensive to go to all of these locations with our models than we make. Especially when we get paid $0.10 for a download. Such is life.

Quote from: Noedelhap on June 11, 2020, 18:09
But anyway, what is the idea, will it just be a collection of images to represent the talented artists who joined the coalition? What is the coalition planning to do then? Displaying them somewhere will not do anything on its own.

Okay, I see your point. What you are waiting for is the community to build its own stock agency and pull everyone onboard as exclusive, right?

Firstly, that's not what we are building in terms of this thread. Right now we are building an online home for stock contributors. That's what my team and I have volunteered to do, anyway. So you are quite right, we are not, at this point anyway, building an agency. We are building the site for an organisation that represents us as a first stage.

Is this the start of a fully contributor-owned agency where 80% or more of commissions are kept by contributors? I have no idea. It's certainly a possibility.

But I know where it starts.

It starts with us as a community pulling together right now as a group to send a message loud and clear not just to Shutterstock, but to every agency in the industry. That message is this:

As of this month, the global contributors are no longer yours to abuse with tinpot pricing and peanut royalties. For too long we have been pushed around like herd cattle milked daily for you to take all the cream.

We are not going to continue doing business like this. We are organising. We are working towards a unified front that represents our interests as contributors. And we will win, too, because really at $0.10 a download, what exactly do any of us stand to lose?

Quote from: Bad Robot on June 11, 2020, 17:09
... not big enough to steal ...

Quite right. That was my thinking.

Sorry, I should have added that I'm limiting it to 1500px as the maximum we need so those who want to participate know they are basically only committing to web resolution images and nothing larger. Of course, supplying larger images if you want is not a problem.

The maximum we may need for the site slider front page is 1500px. Take a look at what Adobe does on their front page https://stock.adobe.com/. We will probably have names and attribution - but I want to upfront that we are not going to add watermarks. I have 3 downloads at SS left and I could just buy slider pics anyway. Or just send me a bill for $0.10? You know that people who steal images just find them using reverse image search and Google anyway, right?

All of our videos now also turned off at Shutterstock. Awaiting some answers from Pond5 but we will probably go exclusive for video there shortly.

Of course! Thanks for your excellent vector. All vectors, 3d illustrations and photos are welcome. Video and animation may be a bit tough at this point. Of course, we may be able to include showreels at a later date.

As many of you will already be aware, moves are afoot to create an organisation to effectively represent us and to safeguard the value of our creative assets. In less than 24-hours, a domain has been purchased and a team are already working the creation of a website at www.stockcoalition.org.

A call has already gone out for stock photo contributions for the site on the Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/261369748434285

That said, not everyone monitors their Facebook, so here are the details of the request:

Good news - we have that website build underway. However, we are calling on our community of talented artists to contribute one picture each that best represents your work and your country. The goal will be to have between three and five images for a front-page slider and then a gallery of smaller images that are representative of the broad global talent we have as a community.

Those who want to assist, please supply images no larger than 1500px on the long side. We will reference the photographer, but will not have watermarks - so treat it as if it were an agency purchase and supply images accordingly.

To contribute, please email your images directly to [email protected]. Please also include your First Name, Last Name, optional nickname or stock handle and your website or agency portfolio that you wish to promote online.

Thanks - we just picked up quite a few sales, including one for $76 in commission.

SS share price down 3% today. I'd be nervous af if I had shares with these fools. I'm pretty sure it's going to tank fast as they start to realise that without contributors they don't have a business.

Genius.

Quote from: Tenebroso on June 09, 2020, 19:02
A price increase for contributors will not return. It would be like letting taxpayers send and organize your business and this is not in your brain. They know the images of contributors that are not currently in their portfolio. Those portfolios with 60, 200 and 500 images of collaborators who leave or die. And they think they will get 1,200,000 new images a week.

They know that many clients will leave. but they also know that most buy in 3 minutes in the featured section. They think that clients buy what the Agency decides they buy. Their new discount, promotion and google advertising campaigns know they can get many new customers. I think Adobe will soon be a very competitive agency for contributors and the number one star agency in quality and quantity.

Thanks for your insights. Just out of interest, how do you know so much about the inner workings of an agency. Were you a reviewer for SS?

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on June 09, 2020, 15:12
Thanks, I knew it was someone.

It really is a great way of doing things. There's so much variety in terms of image quality, rarity and so on. Ensures a decent turnover or images as buyers likely to consider newer images with lower price points vs proven best sellers with higher prices.

So many different directions and models agencies could explore rather than just trying to strangle us to increase profits.

Yes, exactly the point. There are so many ways of packaging the content for buyers - especially if there is some level of exclusivity. Almost all of the value is sitting in the space between how much buyers are currently paying vs how much they would be willing to pay if they knew they could not get it somewhere else for peanuts.

What I know for sure is that there is very little margin sitting is the contributor's commission. Utter buffoons.

We all have some crap in our portfolios, but honestly, that's some of the worst "stock photography" I've seen in a very long time. I can't even tell the difference between what could be most popular or most recent. It's just all total crap.

It's obvious that SS needs quality contributors. My guess is that they seriously misjudged the community's reaction and now the genie is out of the bottle they have no idea how to put it back. They have poked the wrong hive of bees.

Despite having access to millions of images and videos and the ability to easily create value with an exclusive content plan, they have just given up by looking for margins where no margins exist. I suspect that they are regretting all of this already.

I doubt it. Our sales are up at P5 and they are about to get a good few video exclusives. They have a plan to sell stock videos, which is more than one can say for SS.

Stock images deactivated. Stock videos will be deactivated later this week. Both heading for full deletion and account deactivation.

They get all butthurt about failing at premium stock . . . when they never enabled their competent supplier base to push that strategy forwards! Spent how much money on trying to get "premium" contributors to work with them . . . who were never stock production specialists!

The more I look at it, the more I think that their blind spot is that they know nothing about the production of shooting quality stock images and videos. It's a bit like the owner of a farmer's market who thinks he knows a lot about farming because he sells cabbages every day. Selling cabbages is not the same as growing the * things.

Quote from: cobalt on June 08, 2020, 02:36
They explain in great detail, that instead of really looking into problems and cutting operational costs, the company took the lazy way of instant profit by cutting the producer share.

For me, this nails it on the head. Shutterstock is fundamentally saying that they don't have a plan for how to generate more value for the large numbers of assets under their control. Their "plan" is to squeeze the supplier where there is no longer any value to extract instead of at the buyer's end where there really is tremendous value to be gained.

Like just about everyone else, I've been thinking long and hard over the weekend about what to do about this situation. I think to a large degree, Shutterstock has made it for us.

They simply don't have a plan for the stock assets under their control.

Instead of making a plan like a McDonalds "supersize" or "upsize" strategy, or taking the top 20% of assets in their database and calling for them to go exclusive and producing value through increased pricing that way, they are trying to squeeze suppliers where there is nothing left to squeeze.

Shutterstock's move shouts one thing loud and clear - they do not have a plan for marketing our stock assets effectively. Their smart "plan" is to keep cutting price and royalties to contributors.

As a result, they are pretty much admitting that their business model is unsustainable. IMO, there is no longer any future at Shutterstock. Not for suppliers, not for buyers and not for investors.

Pond5 does have a plan. For videos, they want us to go exclusive at their agency with the following benefits:

- 60% commissions
- They will sub-license through Adobe and Vimeo Stock anyway
- We can choose the pricing
- We will probably go just under $100 for HD and $199 for 4k
- We can continue marketing our work through our own personal online platform

I've had a tough call with our team this morning. We are going to take the short term pain for a longer strategy that creates sustainable value by going exclusive at Pond5 for video.

If anyone has any better ideas, I'm all ears. If not, I suggest that anyone with a stock video portfolio does something similar. We cannot continue to generate value for our work at cheap agencies.

I don't personally see the point in arguing with Shutterstock or begging them to change their minds or backtrack on their recent actions. That's not going to change the fact that they simply don't have a sustainable plan. For us, the only option is to walk away and work with partners who do.

That's our plan for video going forwards, but I'm really not too sure about the images yet. What is clear though is that we will be deactivating our portfolio of images at Shutterstock this week too. As to where they go from here largely depends on the result of our application at Stocksy.

Whatever the case, Stan just lost Shutterstock an awful lot of money. I suspect this is going to go down as one of those "Kodak" moments in business courses.

It's going to include commentary about why taking things away from people is always far more painful than receiving anything of the same value. It's going to be about the necessity to create a competitive advantage based on something other than price. But mostly it's going to try and teach the business leaders of tomorrow why buffoons with their spreadsheets and crafty numbers will never hold a candle to real and honest leaders with integrity.

Actually, the whole stock industry with the rise and fall of Getty with iStock and now Shutterstock's skulduggery makes for some excellent business case studies.

Fundamentally, Shutterstock owns nothing. They are just a marketplace that brings buyers and sellers together.

How long does it take for shareholders to realise that without any images or videos these fools have nothing to sell? I don't care how clever they think they are to cut the pie ever smaller for contributors, they have just destroyed one of the fundamentals to their business model.

Surely "investors" will notice that too? And the sh!t storms only getting started.

Quote from: Lizard on June 06, 2020, 12:27

So I am wondering if they will eventually vanish in a while, are they being counted as active images in SS database, can they still be downloaded?

For example:

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/computer-designed-highly-detailed-grunge-frame-88245046

If the count of my images i already 0 this link shouldn't be working.

What is the situation for you that disabled your portfolio before, are your image links still working ?

Your image shows up in my buyer's account. So yes, I believe that I'm able to license your image right now if I wanted to.

Which is another thing - has Shutterstock any idea how many of us are buyers of stock images too? Clearly we won't be sourcing images from Shutterstock going forwards. Did the same thing to iStock when they played stupid games too.