I imagine Stan and his crew did quite well out of their time at SS, with all their vested stock options when they got out after a couple of years.

So....the rumours were true!

After SS cut the contributor rates, I never submitted again. I started at SS in 2012 and with less than 1,000 photos and no video I was making a consistent $200-$300/month from 2014 until 2019. After the executive bandits arrived (2020 and left 2022?) sales dropped below $100/month and now I don't even reach payout (<$25) some months. Hasn't cost me any effort at all since I stopped submitting, so anything my now 'vintage' archive brings is free money.

I forget the name of the CEO (or whatever title he had) who ushered in the crushing of contributor earnings but he must have made out like a bandit with all his stock options.....and within a couple of years he was gone...greener pastures on the horizon and thanks for all the folding greenery in my pocket!

Spent the first six months of lock-down doing that with Topaz DeNoise AI. Together with the latest version of Tamron 90mm macro, all those old slides that wouldn't previously pass muster came out pretty well. Such a pity that I spent sooooo much money on film before digital came around!

Quote from: Wilm on February 22, 2023, 08:43
Maybe you are right.

In my view, however, the wording should have read as follows:

If you wish to request a last payout in your current currency...

Absolutely, Wilm. When I first read the announcement I thought, as you did, that I could continue in GBP as long as I indicated that before 28th February. When I re-read it I realised that what was meant was, "Your last and final payment in your current currency (GBP in my case) must be requested before 28th February. After that date payment will always be in USD." So, as you correctly said, it would have been clearer had they used 'last' payout.

As the conversion rate to USD from GBP at the time was marginally favourable, I left my GBP balance on 28th Feb to be converted into USD. I have to convert both (Paypal) USD and GBP to Euro anyway as I live in NL. Since my last expensive experience with buying an Elinchrom battery in UK (sold out in NL), I know that I shall never buy anything costing more than a couple of pounds from the UK again. I paid £300 incl VAT on the item + £10 postage...seemed reasonable at the time but then UPS also sends a bill for handling and import duties with BTW which add more than a third of the original price! Not doing that again...forgotten about Brexit!

Quote from: Wilm on January 20, 2023, 21:38

Quote from: cascoly on January 20, 2023, 20:26

Quote from: tätarätä on January 19, 2023, 22:13

What i wanted to say is that that there is an exponential declining trend.
If you start microstock photography you will see an increase in DL. On average for about the first 40 +/- months.
The next 40 +/- months you probably will see your DL stagnate. Even if you still uploading the same amount of images every month. After another 40 +/- months you will see a decrease of DL with a much larger portfolio.
So there is an exponential function against you.
Your uploads are linear, your DL per image / month are declining exponential.
After your first 40 months at microstock your DL per image / Month  are X, after 80 months your DL per image/month are X/2, after 120 months your DL per image/month are X/4 - on average.
You can't win against an exponential declining trend.

first, $/image is useless - what's important is $ earned.

What is important is the earnings in relation to the time invested. That is something quite different from the dollars earned!

As I no longer invest any time at all in SS...everything I now earn is a 'bonus'! However, today I did think what when I got an 'On Demand' for $0.15 but I had forgotten that this is January and is the season of the annual reversion to 'biggest profits in Q1 for SS' and eff the contributors! My disdain for SS knows few bounds especially after the management team that perpetrated the scam is now long gone but left its legacy of the contributor heist intact.

I use a T/S Nikkor 45mm for product photography. Food close-ups on a background. great for getting everything sharp in the plane of focus...great investment but then I get paid per commission and it's paid for itself 10X+.

To flare or not to flare.....that is the question! This one is quite funny....I sell/sold lots of this one at SS without flare but very few at AS:

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/green-apples-composition-water-droplets-103878812

At a later date I added flare and submitted to both SS and Fotolia/AS at around the same time. The flare sells well at AS whereas it sells hardly at all at SS (despite the fact that SS says it has 'high usage'). I think that luck has a lot to do with it....a client uses it when it's new and you're off to a good start!

Added grad sky and placed sunburst in hand of Buddha...sells consistently on AS and SS. Would it have sold less without? Dunno but it was produced from an original 35mm slide and I considered that I had to make the shot 'more attractive' to get through inspection.

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/buddha-statue-po-lin-monastery-lantau-288024989

Quote from: Annie2022 on November 25, 2022, 23:42

Quote from: Uncle Pete on November 25, 2022, 19:03
I liked this part:

- 3.00% unnecessary keywords, number of keywords greater than necessary.
- 5.00% Title and keywords do not match.
- 1.00% keywords contradict each other e.g.: "background" and "isolated".
- 5.00% keywords contradict each other very strongly e.g.: photo of a woman but keyword "men".

Yes.

Bad news for bad keywording.

Also bad news for editorials:

- 20.00% Image was marked as "editorial only" and older than current month.
- 10.00% Image was marked as "editorial only" and older than current and last year.
- 10.00% Image was marked as "editorial only" and older than current year.

bad news for lots of views but no sales:

- 100.00% compensation, with massive increase in views but no download, in proportion, without Google.


Good news for topical subjects:

+ 3.00% Keywords contain current topics, e.g.: climate change, Ukraine, Christmas, new year, ...
+ 2.00% keywords contain current topics, multiple match.
+ 2.00% Title contains current topics.
+ 2.00% Title contains current topics, multiple match.
+ 2.00% Keywords contain current topics, multiple matches in combination e.g.: "price" + "gas".
+ 1.00% Keywords contain important long-term topics e.g.: Technology.

and good news for artists with quality work:

+ 3.00% Artist bonus in general as well as keywords and titles of images predominantly without "spam" keywording, also title.
+ 2.00% Artist bonus in general as well as portfolio mostly popular.
+ 2.00% Artist bonus in general as well as portfolio mostly "outstanding".

Well (re)found Annie. Very interesting information. Thanks.

"+- 2.00% Marked as "outstanding" during selection"

Question: Who is doing this selection and marking as outstanding?

Quote from: Her Ugliness on September 24, 2022, 12:59
It's normal and happens all the time unfortunately. Since they redesigned the earning page that link does not work, but you can still see your adjustments when you click on "Detailed earnings summary". In the second line you have the sorting options "by month", "by product" and "adjustments". There you can see which images have been refunded.

Thanks (to Artist too). I'm lucky...someone scammed SS for 10 cents, so that's my downward adjustment. Great that rates are so low that when I lose out to scammers I have so little deducted.

Discovered a one-line text below my earnings for the month with the text: 'There have been recent adjustments to your earnings' with 'recent adjustments' as link. Needless to say that with SS these days the 'link' is a 404 error. Anyone else? What does it all mean?

  It's Grossinger again. 

I have no issues with SS...haven't submitted for 2 years and nor will I in future for 10 cents. If I get some decent SODs in a month, sales are OK but without some SODs, sales are pretty pathetic.......still....for no effort everything is a bonus!

Quote from: cascoly on July 19, 2022, 19:31

Quote from: blvdone on July 19, 2022, 14:23
Just un-published my photos.  I'll re-publish a month later for a few weeks at least to see if I get high price sales.  Otherwise, Shutterstock is the new Storyblocks imo.

i've found my AS sales are most affected by the phase of the moon

LOL! Are you implying that Adobe customers are lunatics???!! 

When SS was paying me to provide good content (2012-2016), I was providing with pleasure. After 2018, I noticed that my content was getting swamped under a deluge of other content and I reduced my 'providing'. By 2020 the effort of providing content was no longer worth the effort and I stopped providing completely. Maybe they can provide the content that today's buyers want by whatever means and without cost...good luck with that.. but I'm no longer a participant in 'feed the machine'. I'm sure their quarterly figures (massaged by financial trickery and smartass accountants) can keep the Wall Street punters buying stock but I'm out....corporate kleptocracy never did appeal to this little guy.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on May 10, 2022, 02:19

Quote from: Mantis on May 05, 2022, 00:58

Quote from: Unamas on May 04, 2022, 17:12
Imagine you are CEO of SS starting tomorrow. How would you improve it?

Since their job is to increase shareholder value, whatever they do won't be good for contributors. If anyone thinks a new superhero CEO will swoop in and save contributor bacon, welcome to fantasy land.

I think that's a major point and where anyone who thinks they care about us has missed the situation. "Over the past six months SSTK shares declined 45% while insiders sold $74.5M worth of stock. With the company clearly at a crossroads, we think insider trading activities reflect poorly and would like to see evidence of some alignment here. "

What the people on top want is more investor confidence, a higher share price and more profit for Jon and the board and officers who get paid in stock shares and bonuses. Now that the stock is down 45%, SSTK can buy back stock, bump it up again, and make more money.

None of that includes artists or increasing our income. We are an expense!

Quote from: cobalt on May 07, 2022, 11:00
Stan should get an honorary compensation from Adobe for making them stronger and picking up all the customers and artists Shutterstock no longer wanted.

True and Adobe should publicly thank him. 

Quote from: OM on May 07, 2022, 09:34
Presumably Stan and senior management team +Jon are smart and all made out like bandits. Lots of insider selling in the past year and no insider buying. When Stan arrived in April 2020, SSTK was $32 (after years of 'meandering' between $50 and $30) and a year later it was at $90 another 6 months on and it was at $120. Stan did exactly what Jon wanted him to do...get the stock price up and fast. With all the stock options packages a CEO can get rich pretty quickly with a 3 or 4-fold increase in stock price. Time to move on to pastures greener (for him).

I think that's a good conclusion. Pretty rich might be understated... filthy rich?

When is the Getty SPAC going to start selling the stock? Will this make it happen?

Filthy rich? = Seriously effluent! 

Well, I think that SS has figured it out...when you pay peanuts, you get monkey material and the only way forward is to acquire decent material from others (Pond 5)....until it's suppliers are no longer prepared to provide new/professional material for the lack of reward being given....and then you have to acquire again until you run out of targets.
SS offers me no incentive to upload new material and I haven't for 2 years now. If enough others think the same way, then SS is a dying bizz which is (unfortunately) deserved.

At Vroom he seems to have been adept at spending money which the company didn't have! Hence the huge loss in stock price. Difficult to see how his appointment would benefit SS as a company......unless he were to suggest spending money on contributors to entice quality producers back into SS! ..........Nah....never going to happen. This is the world of the corporate kleptocrats.........stash the cash as fast as you can and when it all goes pear-shaped, move on.

Unfortunately with AS rejection reasons, they're usually too general and are not really helpful. I've only recently started again with submitting and the rejections are minimal. When rejections occur, I tend to regard them as simply bad luck and move on.

Quote from: Annie on May 07, 2022, 08:07
I just closed my Etsy account but not because of fees or lack of sales. In fact, kind of the opposite.

The fees are fine. Less than eBay, and less than agencies (up to 85%!) and then set their own prices. Even less than designer resource agencies who take about 30% but at least let you set your own price.

But the problem is, when your sales start to take off, you are faced with a new kind of problem: buyers. Some of them are wonderful, kind, understanding people, but about 10% are absolute nutcases. They don't read your listings, they mistakenly buy the wrong thing, they expect you to answer their messages immediately (even within an hour is too long for them), they don't take responsibility for their own mistakes, everything is your fault, and they are so full of anger. You do all the right things, you explain everywhere throughout the listing, in both pictures and words what this listing is actually for. But they don't read the listings!

Normally with enough time and patience, you can work through these problems, but I just had 2 in a row, and I feel like I've been hit by a sledgehammer.

The point is, you have to 'man your messaging' 24/7. The more sales you make, the more of this stuff you have to deal with.

Anyway, the reason why I've closed my shop is that I have to go away for a few months to work for my husband's business and I can't have all this drama going on in the background. I think I could have put the shop on holiday mode or something, but for now, it was just nice to close the whole thing for a while, and have some peace and quiet.

So this is what you pay the agencies for. Managing buyers.  Food for thought, everybody!



PS. I loved being on Etsy and loved 80% of the whole 'selling direct/running your own little business' thing, but it can get you down if you have a bad week.

That 'nutcase' buyer problem on Etsy with terrible reviews as a consequence was something my wife had noticed with some jewellery sellers she's been researching. Some buyers are just too lazy to read the description or are simply illiterate.

Presumably Stan and senior management team +Jon are smart and all made out like bandits. Lots of insider selling in the past year and no insider buying. When Stan arrived in April 2020, SSTK was $32 (after years of 'meandering' between $50 and $30) and a year later it was at $90 another 6 months on and it was at $120. Stan did exactly what Jon wanted him to do...get the stock price up and fast. With all the stock options packages a CEO can get rich pretty quickly with a 3 or 4-fold increase in stock price. Time to move on to pastures greener (for him).

I had sort of given up on SS in Q1 this year but on April 1st I got a SOD for $25 and another for $15 later in the month. This month started slowly but today I got a $37.50 SOD which definitely helps compensate the raised BP from all the 10 centers! Still undecided about whether I'll start supplying them with anything new as account has been 'dormant' now for 2 years.

My wife has been studying jewellery vendors on Etsy and has come across others who sell photo prints there. Some also sell digital downloads for around $2-$3 which can be used for printing photo backgrounds for food photography. I suppose that $2-$3 is better than 10 cents.

Had it not been for a $25 SOD on April 1st, I think I would be struggling to make minimum payout this month. Since April 1st, all other sales have only amounted to $13 at SS. Sales at AS amount to $20 so far and I don't have to swear at the screen as I do when seeing all the 10 cents at SS!