For some reason my Shutterstock account was disabled at end of January. I contacted contributor relations (only e-mail option) asking for the reason(s). I gotten only a response that i�ve Violated their TOS (terms of service) ... I responded several times over the past few weeks asking for details of said violation as well as status of my January payment (few hundred dollars), as well as Tax documents (Jan 31 is the deadline for providing these). Still to this day not one solid answer.

Few days ago I came across my video asset, still for sale at Shutterstock, despite my ban... they just removed my Contributor Information!!! (See pic)

The only recent action I can think of leading up to my ban was my response to their generic �we haven�t seen new content in a while� email... to which I honestly replied that at .10 cent royalties I was not so motivated to submit fresh content 🤷🏼‍♂️.

Seriously I don�t care about their platform since the royalty re-structure, however as a �professional� corporation they should be forward with describing violation occurrence, settling payments and providing tax docs.

If anyone has any suggestions how I can reach someone internally to get to the bottom of this, I�d appreciate it!

And for old times sake: #shutterstockboycott, #sstk, #boycottshutterstock, #nolongeratshutterstock

This has been my argument for a while now. While the popular #BoycottShutterstock hashtag is quite dominant among the contributors, the alternative #ShutterstockBoycott is much less used, but we should change that because it will Auto-Suggest search results to buyers, contributors and investors that are not aware of the boycott. This is a screen grab from Instagram, we can clearly see the suggested hashtag that can be easily accessed by anyone whom types in "Shutterstock"... let's keep up with the boycott and spread the word across all social media!

As a Content Creator and Ad Agency content buyer....
This is what I will be sharing with my followers on FB, IG, TWITTER and LinkedIn ... feel free to do the same!


______


Hello Friends, clients and followers!

As many of you know, I�ve been a photographer for most of my adult life. I had the pleasure of sharing many of my images (and videos) with you. Quite a few times, I had a chance to work with you on #Photography, #GraphicDesign, and other #CreativeProjects.

Over the years, to subsidize my income, I�ve been working with various #StockPhoto agencies selling my work.

A few days ago, one of these #StockPhotography agencies pulled the rug from under me and over a million #creative fellows such as myself. 
On May 26th, #Shutterstock Inc (NYSE: SSTK) notified its contributors of drastic changes to the payout structure, which took effect today (June 1st).
With this new structure #Shutterstock has cut prices and lowered the #royalties it pays to the people who drive their business.
They believe it�s ok to keep up to 85% of the revenue for our work, our many hours of planning, creating, key-wording and uploading artwork, while continually investing in new gear.

If you agree that pay rates as low as 10� for an image, that we sometimes spend hours creating, are not fair...
I respectfully ask you to follow the thousands of creatives and stock content buyers in showing support for  #ShutterstockBoycott.

��� Please refrain purchasing from #Shutterstock Inc.
��� Please share this letter with anyone that is a #Photographer, #Videographer, #GraphicDesigner and/or works in #Advertising or #Marketing industries.

There are many great #StockAgencies out there that offer their content creators a fair and sustainable royalty structure!

You can support me (and many other creatives) by purchasing from Pond5.com and Adobe:
https://www.pond5.com
https://stock.adobe.com

Thank you kindly,

Bart

So I saw today a video clip sale at Adobe for 1.56. I know SS has a deal which pays contributor $1.50 (which caused me to remove some clips there), but I didn�t expect Adobe to join in on the rape.

I pulled the plug on Getty while back for dollar vid sales, just limited And removed video clips at SS, stopped working with VB, so Adobe is next to get my left overs?

Anyone else seeing $1.xx sales at Adobe?

��-update��
Mat was kind enough to look it up and, this is my error, I did upload a still 4K frame as jpg and did not change the title.

Put down the pitch forks, Adobe is quick to look into problems on here. Thanks!!

I was going over my monthly sales report from Getty Images. Having run a business for several years, I am familiar with Profit/Loss column in accounting applications. Now, looking at this screen grab from Getty, when something is in RED that usually means a negative (or LOSS), The only conclusion I can come to, is that now I am paying Getty buyers to use my image, in this case .33 cents?!?! 

So Getty/iStock Feb reports are out. As confusing and difficult it is now a days to make sense of their reporting, I was able to download a pdf breakdown of my sales for Feb. When I opened the pdf I quickly understood why would Getty/iStock would be having "technical difficulties" with reporting, with not providing us live (daily) stats. Today i learned that majority of the sales are a joke, .28 cents, .15 cents, and .02 cent commissions for files that once were paying $5 and more. For a corporation as big as Getty, to me, it seems all the technical difficulties, troubles with coding are a mere deception to keep the contributor passive. From my perspective the delayed earning report and lack of live stats can be compared to a slaughter house, if we were to enter it and see the gore and agony we would be more likely to protest, leave and perhaps change our ways. However by providing us delayed and monthly (processed and packaged) stats,  we don't see what normally would make our blood boil. Our content is being slaughtered, and it's not pretty!

my .02 cents

Bart