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.

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!

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!

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+.

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

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.

  It's Grossinger again. 

Quote from: blvdone on July 19, 2022, 08:23

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???!! 

Quote from: Mantis on May 04, 2022, 18:58

Quote from: Unamas on May 04, 2022, 11:12

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, 05:00

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, 03:34

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! 

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.

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.

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.

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!