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General Stock Discussion / Re: Why Shutterstock and other big microstock agencies will thrive
« on: June 14, 2020, 21:12 »
THANK YOU so much for pointing out the danger of free sites.
There is one enemy that NO ONE is pointing out. Google.
I saw someone posted this on another site and I had to try it out. Try Googling "stock photo of nature".
You see a bunch of paid ads, but the "organic" search listings (the part that everyone pays attention to) has Pexels.com at #1, Unsplash.com at #2.
Try it. Search for ANYTHING and Pexels seems to be #1. Shutterstock and Adobe and Getty are almost nowhere to be seen.
Google is single handedly destroying our whole industry. It's telling people who search for "stock photos" that they shouldn't visit Adobe, Getty, or Shutterstock where they can pay for downloading our images. It's telling them that it's normal to expect stock photos to be free.
It's try that if you take the time to search Unsplash you get garbage after the first few pages. But do a reverse image search of the photos on the first three pages and you'll see THOUSANDS of sites using them--a lot of them really big ones.
Google has destroyed many other industries this way. We're the next one. And it seems like there's not a damned thing we can do about it AS LONG AS OUR FELLOW PHOTOGRAPHERS AND ARTISTS KEEP FEEDING THE BEAST and making Pexels, Unsplash, FreePik, Pixabay, and other sites like that successful by dumping their high quality photos in exchange for "views" but NO money.
This guy's video should be REQUIRED VIEWING from everyone in our industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M_OZWtpokc
Long story short, there are a bunch of photographers out there who produce decent stuff but are hypnotized by Pexel's promise to "make the Web a more beautiful place" or whatever nonsense they're spewing. These photographers dump great stuff onto these sites for NO money, just nonstop dopamine hits when the site says "your photo was featured in such-and-such a site!" or "your photo got so many millions of views!" In the meantime, these sites are laughing all the way to the bank. Pexels and Pixabay just sold themselves to Canva for what was likely hundreds of millions of dollars. How much did contributors get? NOTHING. Not even 10 cents.
Worse, these photographers are all amateurs who don't know anything about known restrictions, model releases, etc. So there's a double joke on them--Pexels runs away with money from their photos, but if they're ever sued they just pass the legal risk on to the photographer.
Think about it--why iStock, Shutterstock slashing their prices and passing it on to us? It's because whatever traffic they used to get from Google is no longer there. In fact, you can see that Shutterstock, Adobe are paying for clicks with paid ads. One click might be $5-10 while Unsplash and Pexels get clicks for free.
Unfortunately there's nothing we can do in terms of complaining to Google. But what we can do is spread the word to photographers NOT to be idiots by contributing to free sites. We're spending so much energy over a 25c drop in payment (and as someone who is going to see losses I'm all for that). But we're also ignoring that these free contributors are being fooled into doing away with our industry altogether.
There is one enemy that NO ONE is pointing out. Google.
I saw someone posted this on another site and I had to try it out. Try Googling "stock photo of nature".
You see a bunch of paid ads, but the "organic" search listings (the part that everyone pays attention to) has Pexels.com at #1, Unsplash.com at #2.
Try it. Search for ANYTHING and Pexels seems to be #1. Shutterstock and Adobe and Getty are almost nowhere to be seen.
Google is single handedly destroying our whole industry. It's telling people who search for "stock photos" that they shouldn't visit Adobe, Getty, or Shutterstock where they can pay for downloading our images. It's telling them that it's normal to expect stock photos to be free.
It's try that if you take the time to search Unsplash you get garbage after the first few pages. But do a reverse image search of the photos on the first three pages and you'll see THOUSANDS of sites using them--a lot of them really big ones.
Google has destroyed many other industries this way. We're the next one. And it seems like there's not a damned thing we can do about it AS LONG AS OUR FELLOW PHOTOGRAPHERS AND ARTISTS KEEP FEEDING THE BEAST and making Pexels, Unsplash, FreePik, Pixabay, and other sites like that successful by dumping their high quality photos in exchange for "views" but NO money.
This guy's video should be REQUIRED VIEWING from everyone in our industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M_OZWtpokc
Long story short, there are a bunch of photographers out there who produce decent stuff but are hypnotized by Pexel's promise to "make the Web a more beautiful place" or whatever nonsense they're spewing. These photographers dump great stuff onto these sites for NO money, just nonstop dopamine hits when the site says "your photo was featured in such-and-such a site!" or "your photo got so many millions of views!" In the meantime, these sites are laughing all the way to the bank. Pexels and Pixabay just sold themselves to Canva for what was likely hundreds of millions of dollars. How much did contributors get? NOTHING. Not even 10 cents.
Worse, these photographers are all amateurs who don't know anything about known restrictions, model releases, etc. So there's a double joke on them--Pexels runs away with money from their photos, but if they're ever sued they just pass the legal risk on to the photographer.
Think about it--why iStock, Shutterstock slashing their prices and passing it on to us? It's because whatever traffic they used to get from Google is no longer there. In fact, you can see that Shutterstock, Adobe are paying for clicks with paid ads. One click might be $5-10 while Unsplash and Pexels get clicks for free.
Unfortunately there's nothing we can do in terms of complaining to Google. But what we can do is spread the word to photographers NOT to be idiots by contributing to free sites. We're spending so much energy over a 25c drop in payment (and as someone who is going to see losses I'm all for that). But we're also ignoring that these free contributors are being fooled into doing away with our industry altogether.
