Is there any way how to know if part of buyers migrated from SS to Adobe or other websites? Maybe someone can see it in his stats (with portfolio big enough to get stable and not so random results).

Unfortunately my own stats are not clear, because I don't upload new images on SS since Juny. I'm down 50% on SS in earnings and 20% down in downloads. Other websites do better now for me (Adobe is 50% up), but I uploaded a lot of new images there (but not so many to get 50% up) so I can't say clearly if they do better because of my new images or because they keep bigger part of the market.

I think it still depends a lot on luck and randomness and on an individual port and the content. My February earnings on SS are for example 400% of my Adobe earnings right now. Adobe has been doing really great for me sometime around June last year where it was doing better than Shutterstock. Then my earnings declined and have pretty much been stagnant there for months now even though I constantly add new content. I think actually Adobe is the only one of the agencies I submit to, where adding new content does not have any positive effect on my sales.
 
I think more than any other agency they seem to have a problem in promoting new content over best-selling established content. I had such great results with my new Halloween and Christmas dog photos on all agencies (Hundreds of sales on some individual images, adds to various agencies' curated collections), expect Adobe, where they basically didn't sell at all - instead the same old images of much poorer quality from 2 years ago would still sell. As long as that's not changing, I don't think my future with Adobe is looking too bright.

 i was referring only to images that were marked as returned by an agency - not ironclad but at least a start for those who really care - not aimed at you, but better than just whining here

Why would this make any difference?  That only works if the image that was returned was only sold on one agency and only sold once. If the image sold 100+ times, but was returned once, that poses the exact same problem people described.

Hmmm, I see the case a bit different:
A manufacturer produces shoes,  the shoes get stolen in a store. Does the store demand a refund from the manufacturer?

Also, does the thief stop wearing the shoes?


The images that we ended up not getting money for because Shutterstock let someone scam them will still be used, or, more likely, resold. Wouldn't even surprise me if the images ended right back for sale on Shutterstock. 

Quote from: Firn on February 03, 2021, 01:30

Quote from: Bad Robot on February 03, 2021, 00:33

Quote from: gnirtS on February 02, 2021, 15:53

Looking on the SS forum a lot of people had "adjustments" and they appear on an adjustment tab in the earnings summary page.
There's a thread about it where a lot of people had the issue.

And shittercrapstock haven't said anything at all 

That's because this is not a new thing. The adjustment tab has always been there for everyone who had an adjustment and it happens to contributors each month for at least as long as I have been reading the forums, which is 2,5 years.
Do you expect SS to make an announcement each month saying "As always, some contributors had adjustments made to their earnings"? Other agencies also don't do this. As far as I know, Dreamstime is the only one who sends out e-mail notifications when a customer demands a refund, but the e-mail doesn't tell you more than that a refund was issued, no explanation as to why. The other agencies let you find out about it on your own, just like Shutterstock.

I know it sucks and all, but that's certainly not a Shutterstock problem. As far as I know, each agency is allowing refunds to customers and the problem is much worse on other agencies, like iStock for example or Alamy. On Alamy I seem to have more refunds than sales sometimes and even had a negative earning balance because of that in the past. (And the customer who got a refund was still using my image online....)

Well I've been with shittystock since 2009 and never saw anyone mentioning adjustments.  I just did a search on the fourm for "adjustments" and the only mentions are in January/February

But I defer to you, it must be true

Yes, you are right, I just checked and the forum search doesn't seem to give results before January. I don't know why that is, but I know the adjustment tab is not new and has been mentioned before. I know that not only because I have seen such posts in the past, but also because I had asked in the forum where the tab was, because I don't have it (It only shows up if you actually had adjustments).
Here is my post from last year:
https://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/topic/100974-september-sales/?do=findComment&comment=1863479

I don't know why the forum search doesn't show it.

Quote from: gnirtS on February 02, 2021, 15:53

Looking on the SS forum a lot of people had "adjustments" and they appear on an adjustment tab in the earnings summary page.
There's a thread about it where a lot of people had the issue.

And shittercrapstock haven't said anything at all 

That's because this is not a new thing. The adjustment tab has always been there for everyone who had an adjustment and it happens to contributors each month for at least as long as I have been reading the forums, which is 2,5 years.
Do you expect SS to make an announcement each month saying "As always, some contributors had adjustments made to their earnings"? Other agencies also don't do this. As far as I know, Dreamstime is the only one who sends out e-mail notifications when a customer demands a refund, but the e-mail doesn't tell you more than that a refund was issued, no explanation as to why. The other agencies let you find out about it on your own, just like Shutterstock.

I know it sucks and all, but that's certainly not a Shutterstock problem. As far as I know, each agency is allowing refunds to customers and the problem is much worse on other agencies, like iStock for example or Alamy. On Alamy I seem to have more refunds than sales sometimes and even had a negative earning balance because of that in the past. (And the customer who got a refund was still using my image online....)

Got the answer from iStock support: I need to submit a new US Tax form (W-8BEN). I never got the info from iStock the previous one has expired.

I am glad it's just that and you'll get your payment eventually.

Quote from: Firn on January 28, 2021, 03:52

Quote from: Groucho on January 28, 2021, 03:48

for IS you can see the number of sales for the current year in the profile tab

I don't seem to have such a tab. (I think I asked about where that can be found here before, because someone mentioned it, but got no reply.)
I only have Overview, ESP User Info and Performance as tabs. Peformance has more tabs, Recent Activity, which shows views, and Download, which only shows me downloads up to Decmeber 21.
 

Here is the direct link to the Profile tab : https://accountmanagement.gettyimages.com/Account/Profile
To access it, you can also click on "account management" on the high top right  of iStock page (between ESP and Contributor Community links)

Ah, you mean the year to date number and then I have to substract all the numbers from the previous months? (Unnless it's january)
If these are my sales for January, then I am down by over 200 sales compared to last month there as well, as I suspected by the lower view number.

I hope you'll be able to sort things out and that your account wasn't hacked, though I would assume, if someone changed your payment info, you should have gotten an E-Mail about it?

I think people just want to share their misery. Makes them feel better. Nothing wrong with that. There is a saying in Germany, "Shared suffering is halved suffering",




My January earnings are down by 50% on SS compared to last month - compared to January 20 they are actually better, but I am doing really poorly on all stock sites this month, so I can't blame it on SS alone.

 January just isn't a good month for microstock anywhere for me, especially the first half of the month. But it's starting to pick up and I am optimistic for February.

They have fallen victim to the Level reset.

While in December (Level 5) most of my On demand sales were over $3, now (Level 3) most of them are around 1-1,70$. I still had a few above 2 and also some Single & Other and Enhanced for more than that, but because of the lower percentage I get from each sale, obviously they are rarer.
I think this was to be expected.

Quote from: ShadySue on January 18, 2021, 18:07

So, yes indeed, it seems all new buyers can get ten free images.
(Do suppliers get compensated?)

If you look on the buyer FB groups or even Trustpilot its full of people complaining they only signed up to get the 10 free images they wanted, had no intention of continuing a subscription and were upset when SS screw ups resulting in them getting billed.
In other words, large numbers of people sign up purely to get the 10 free images they're after and never plan on actually spending money.

Of course. Shouldn't that be obvious? If you advertise with "get something for free", you will in 99% cases attrackt people who, well, want something for free and nothing else. And I think the remaining 1% might be people who planned to get a subscription anyways and just take the extra 10 free images along. Like, sometimes when I want to purchase something in an online shop, after I have filled my shopping card, I serach the internet for possible discount codes. But I would have bought the stuff anyways.

Come on, what's really the point in trying out a image subsription plan? It's not like with a free trial product where there is actually a point in trying it out, like, let's say a bakery is offering free samples of cake. And you try out the cake and think "Whoa, that's so delicious!", so next time you come to the bakery you might end up buying some. But someone trying out "free images"? What's that person gonna think? "Whoa 10 photos! Who would have thought that photos could look like this?!" You know exactly what you are getting, there is nothing to "try out".

For me Dreamstime is doing as always, almost exclusivedly 0.38$ sales and overall poor sale numbers.

Sorry guys, but which way around is it now?

Usually, when a port is found to have stolen content, everyone gets upset that only the stolen images/videos get taken down, but the thief's account with the rest of the (usually also most likely stolen) content stays online.

And now Shutterstock took the whole account down because it containt stolen content and you are also upset about it?

You have one account, you post stolen content, your account gets taken down - that's how it should be.

And if you have a joined account, because you want to profit from it by higher ranks, you also have the risk and the possible consequences that comes along with it. You expect SS to always know when someone submits stolen content and take actions, but you don't make the same expectations of someone who creates a joined account and accepts content from other people - basically exactly what SS is doing, just on a lower scale. Whoever uploads these images is responsible for the content and has to make sure it's not stolen. And if you fail at that, you also have to deal with the consequences.
 I am rather surprised that they took down the whole account, because unfortunately that's exactly what they don't do with ports with stolen content.