Shutterstock announced their end of year financials this morning and although there were some good numbers, for investors, the stock closed at $85.68, down $7.66. The market overall was only a little off, so the sentiment appeared to be that Shutterstock's growth wasn't what investors had hoped

https://investor.shutterstock.com/news-releases/news-release-details/shutterstock-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2021-financial

Their investor "microsite" has been updated with some slides and videos (I watched a couple but there's no new information and they are so stilted and awkward, I don't recommend them)

https://content.shutterstock.com/investor-report/index.html

You can read the transcript of the earnings call at Seeking Alpha - again, lots of buzzy nonsense for the most part. A taste (from Stan Pavlovsky):

"As discussed last quarter, e-commerce organic growth was low-single digits in the quarter, and the slowdown partially reflected the lapping of new e-commerce subscription products launched in 2020. Further, as we increasingly transition to a subscription led model, we have seen softness within our transaction customer segment, which uses our products on an ad-hoc project by project basis."

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4485857-shutterstock-inc-s-sstk-ceo-stan-pavlovsky-on-q4-2021-results-earnings-call-transcript

The enterprise segment appears to be showing signs of life; more new products in the e-commerce section that should lead to "organic growth"; the FLEX subscriptions appear to be doing well. Metaverse, AI and computer vision got a mention and Shutterstock plans "deeply embedding ourselves in our customers' workflow". They bought back $27 million in stock during 2021 and plan to buy $100 million per year!

"All submitted content is reviewed by AI technology and human experts to ensure the highest quality, integrity and licensability" That is apparently a "Global Marketplace Network Effect". As I mentioned, buzzwords galore.

Their earnings per share for 2021 were $3.48 and their guidance for 2022 is $3.65 to $3.80. That made me wonder if more squeezing of contributor revenues might be coming, but then I thought about something Stan Pavlovsky said:

 "...we believe that our new creative power tools powered by PicMonkey will drive an increase in high-margin recurring subscription revenue, adding further stability and visibility into our revenue base"

In the investor site there's a chart of various markets they think they can play in - increasing their TAM (total addressable market) gets mentioned a lot. Of their existing business - stock images, music and video - imagery is the biggest at $4.2 billion with 5.2% growth (not sure if that's the market growing or Shutterstock's share of it - or just some random number). But "Creative Software Tools" is nearly twice the size at $8.2 billion, with 8% growthl

I think Shutterstock wants to grow subscription products that don't have any royalty costs associated with them: "Shutterstock's global creative platform, Creative Flow, includes the scale and embedded relationships with leading social media platforms enables our customers to generate high quality creative work, allowing us to capitalize on this emerging opportunity." That's a cut and paste - I can't explain exactly what they might have meant!

This is right underneath a bullet point: "Shareholder Returns Driven by Revenue Growth, Margin Expansion, Capital Return and M&A". Remember that margin expansion means primarily cutting royalty expense for the existing stock business. More on that in my chart, posted below.

There was more happy talk about using AI and data to sell services to customers and the value of all the data Shutterstock gathers from metadata on the content and searches customers do. Even assuming they can get some good software tools out of the three AI companies they acquired in 2021, the fact that huge amounts of their metadata is spammy rubbish will really hamper any efforts in that area (IMO).They have never really addressed keyword spam/stuffing/errors although they know it's there.

I found it interesting their their subscriber revenue in Q4 2021 was slightly lower than Q3 2021 - historically Q4 has always been the big quarter (there's a chart on the investor microsite). They say there was growth of 14% but that's over Q4 2020 (and 2020 followed a typical pattern, although everything was lower -pandemic and all).

The chart below is similar to one I posted earlier in 2021, but covers entire fiscal years from 2013 to 2021. It only include things that affect contributors - how many downloads, how much royalty expense, how many contributors, etc.

Bottom line is not a surprise - Shutterstock's business is growing revenue & profits, but the contributor's share of that is lower - 35.9% of revenue in 2021 was paid out in royalties. That's lower than in any other year from 2013 on. At the end, I tacked on another way to look at this. Contributors have grown from 55,000 in 2013 to over 2 million in 2021 (according to Shutterstock's financial reports). I know that lots of those contributors don't do much but when you look at the royalty payout on a per contributor basis, it highlights just how much thinner the reduced royalty payouts are being spread.

Tighten your belts

The PDF and JPG have the same data; I didn't realize the forum couldn't display the PDF

Edited Feb 15 to add a link to this investor news which talked about Shutterstock's competitive position strengthening and illustrated the article with an Unsplash photo! You can't make this stuff up...

https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/bernzott-capital-shutterstock-sstks-competitive-position-is-strengthening-1027404/

I learned a new term from this article about NFTs and rampant plagiarism and theft on OpenSea - lazy minting. It's easy to create listings because you don't actually put anything into the blockchain unless you sell.

The bulk of the article is about how difficult it is for people whose work has been ripped off, especially if it was a large volume of work, scraped by bots, when you have to file individual DMCA take-down notices. There was a suggestion that worked for some to use Google (OpenSea's host) for the takedown notices as they responded faster

https://www.theverge.com/22905295/counterfeit-nft-artist-ripoffs-opensea-deviantart

https://twitter.com/Hapiel/status/1474039458366373890?s=20

I believe their terms say 45 days.   I just want to know if it will actually take some follow-up from me, or if just sending that email request to close the account will get the job done.

I put an alert in my calendar for February 21st - when my 45 day clock is (probably) up. There were two emails sent & I don't know when the clock started.

I have looked a few times since I started the clock to see if my portfolio is still visible (it is) and I had a sale show up at the end of January (for all of 93 cents!! That will net me 37 cents) but the download could have occurred a long time before the sale posted. In other words, I don't know if my work is still for sale during the 45 day clock, but I think it is.

Given the time it takes sales to clear, I don't know if there will be another month or two to wait after closure before I get paid. I've taken CSV files of everything for my own records.

I'll post here when the process is complete (or if it has any twists & turns I didn't expect)

...I haven't received a code, even though I've sold over 10,000 licenses in the past year...

Did you upload files last year? In addition to the sales rule, there's an "active contributor" rule:

https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/royalty-details.html

"An active contributor is an Adobe Stock contributor with at least two (2) submitted and approved qualifying assets in 2021."

FYI for anyone redeeming a code who has some time left on their existing plan. It does end up tacking 12 months on to the existing expiration date, but for a few nerve-wracking screens it looks as if it didn't work.

I checked my current expiration date (in May 2022) and then went to redeem my code for another 12 months. The redemption was successful but said my service would end on February 2, 2023. I opened up a new tab and went to my Adobe account page and it still showed May 2022. I only have one Adobe account, so there's no possibility to mistakenly redeem in the wrong account.

A few refreshes later (about 2-3 minutes I think) and the Adobe account page updated to show May 2023 as expected.

After all the warnings about making sure you do it correctly because you can't change anything, it would be great if the confirmation page when you redeem could show you - even if it asks you to wait while it updates your account - that you've completed the task as expected.

...The good news is that keywords you add in Lightroom (both versions) now retain the order you added them when the images are uploaded to the portal (remember to list the most important keywords first!). They are still displayed in alphabetical order in Lightroom to maintain the organization there...

That's good information to have - thanks.

Feedback about showing keywords in Lightroom differently from how they were added by the photographer is that editing will be impossible. If you realize that what you entered - in priority order because you knew you were uploading as stock - needs to be changed, how can you do that? You can't see the priority you first used and so can't change priorities or add a new "top 5" keyword in the right place, bumping the others down.

The only way to serve both uses, IMO, is to have an option to alphabetize or preserve entered order.

Or enter keywords in Photoshop

https://investor.shutterstock.com/news-releases/news-release-details/shutterstock-increases-quarterly-dividend-14-024-share

Shutterstock has raised the dividend per share from 21 cents to 24 cents for the next payout - March 17th for shareholders as of March 3rd.

And all contributors know where the extra cash is coming from

I'm not well versed in the whys and wherefores of a company changing its dividend amount, but I had a read of this explanation:

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/091015/how-dividends-affect-stock-prices.asp

SSTK (Shutterstock's stock) has been dropping of late - not just in the big selloff in the US stock market in the last week or so. It closed today at $93.71, down quite a bit from its high of $128.36 in November, although up a lot from $70 at the beginning of Feb 2021. (Edited to add SSTK was $89.05 at close on Jan 27 2022). It's possible that management is hoping to nudge the stock price back up with the dividend announcement.

February 10 we get to find out their Q4 earnings.

In addition to the good points above, I'd offer a couple of very general comments, both related to thinking about the buyer of your images.

The big one is keywords. I think both Shutterstock and Adobe Stock are showing me your actual keywords (but it's possible they're suggesting topics, in which case ignore my comments!!). Be specific about places and details of your image, but do not put multiple locations, multiple seasons, all possible food ingredients for all meals. This type of keyword stuffing means the images will show up in searches where they're not relevant - it won't help your sales and may even hurt them as they get passed over a lot.

Some of your images are rather dull and flat and others have super-saturated colors (not in a good way). Buyers need to be able to use your images in designs & on web sites and most won't want to spend ages processing the images they license - especially if there are many other images of that subject to choose from. Try to get the look of your images more ready-to-use, if that makes sense. Here is an example of an image that is very flat and a second that is over-saturated, which might help explain my point a bit:

https://stock.adobe.com/images/beautiful-wooden-balcony-of-old-house-in-the-woods/341663571
https://stock.adobe.com/images/fresh-coconut-cocktail-on-the-table-holiday-mood-costa-rica/334190965

And you'll need to grow your portfolio a lot to see consistent sales. Try to find scenes or places you have access to - or some hobby or other interest of yours - that perhaps isn't already covered to death in the (very large) existing agency collections.

Good luck!

Has anybody been able to get this to work using Python? Nothing I try works and I'm wondering if anybody else has had success. I use Python to automate all my uploads rather than using the GUI of an FTP client.

I didn't try with Python, but I gave up trying to get SFTP to work and just use the drag & drop interface on the web site instead.

...I'll be back in touch next week to share more detail of what has happened ...

It's nearly the end of "next week" now - Thursday evening on the US West Coast and very early Friday morning in the UK. I looked in the Alamy forums and don't see any update (other than the previously locked threads have been mostly unlocked).

Even if the update is to give a new date for an update, something from Alamy would be appreciated.

On Alamy's forums, a user posts two sales to UK national papers for 17 cents apiece (gross)

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/15213-selling-for-pennies/?do=findComment&comment=308550


The statement Alamy made that 7 to 8 sales annually would top the $250 threshold to keep the 40% royalty rate seems like a joke paired with the above sale. To save anyone else doing the math, you would need 1,471 sales at that price to top $250 gross...

... but big picture is that we are making more sales and our average price is very stable and has been for a number of years. It means that anyone making 7-8 sales per year on average will stay in the standard 60/40 split, and for any that don�t, you still get promoted to the 60/40 as soon as you hit $250 gross if you are on 80/20

I had many more sales than your 7-8 annual average in just the second half of 2021, but the average (gross) sale was just $4.48. Compare that to the first half of 2021 (again multiple times your supposed annual average) where my average gross sale was $50.29. Or compare that to 2018 where my average gross sale was $49.66.

I obviously can't explain why your stable average price over time doesn't in any way match up with my own experience, but I think if Alamy were confident in the stability of sales it wouldn't be penalizing contributors by reducing their royalty split.

Edited to add that my numbers were just for sales (gross), not including the DACS and ASCRL payments (another post mentioned that their numbers included DACS, etc. thus boosting the average sale numbers

Edited Jan 31 to add that a sale showed up Jan 28th (not sure when during that 45-day-clock for termination sales actually stop) and that was for a whopping 93 cents gross/37 cents for me.  Slightly less pathetic, but still light years away from 7-8 sales will get you over the $250 gross mark.

...     What I find surprising in this post is that some contributors
appear to have no problem allowing the SS to manipulate and
change the original agreement you had with the agency when
you first signed up with them. ...

The agreement with Shutterstock - and with all the agencies - has always included terms that permit them to modify the agreement at their sole discretion and your continued use of their site indicates agreement. It's not an ideal situation, but it's what all contributors agreed to.

The current section is 18f which says, in part: "Please note that Shutterstock reserves the right to modify these terms at any time in its sole discretion...Shutterstock will notify you of any such change by an announcement on this page, your login page, and/or by other means ...By continuing to make Content available through Shutterstock, you agree to be bound by all such changes...."

Edited to add that I went to the Wayback Machine to look at the old terms of service back to 2004 and the agreement allowed Shutterstock to modify terms unilaterally. For example (when it was just bullet points, not even a numbered list!) "Shutterstock reserves the right to modify these terms at any time and to notify you by email of the modifications." from Nov 26 2004.