Hello!

We�re introducing updated submission limits for Adobe Stock Contributors to help maintain the strength and quality of our growing collection. These updates support the continued success of both our Contributor community and customers alike.

When you reach your weekly submission limit or the maximum amount of allowed content pending moderation, you will experience a temporary pause before you can submit additional content.

From what I read in the email it contradicts what Adobe has said in the past, it said that your rejections did not affect you as a contributor. Now I have a collection of around 4100 images and videos. More than half of what I submit is rejected for image quality reasons and such. I always felt that if there was a little more info I would know what I can do better next time but its a very aleatory rejection process. I have had apologies from Adobe about that saying they are only human and I accept that and just went along with the process.

But now if rejections are going to affect what I can submit, then this becomes a form of punishment but for what? No one says what I can do to do it better or tries to help. I don�t go on forums showing my work because it�s non of other people�s business. This is Adobe criteria I try to adhere to. So wish for a little more partnership and less blame sort of thing.

Thanks.

Wow didnt know this was even possible, allowed and that the onces that knew are going to keeo ripping benefits from this. This explains how others with portfolios my size make a lot more than I did. They just had multiple stores.

Maintaining a single Adobe Stock Contributor account not only strengthens the visibility of your portfolio but also enhances discoverability and customer engagement, leading to greater earning opportunities. A single Contributor account provides more insightful performance metrics, optimizes search, and offers a seamless experience for customers engaging with your work.

Beginning March 25th, 2025, Contributors will no longer be able to create additional Adobe Stock Contributor accounts unless written approval is granted. We understand that certain Contributor businesses may have specific operational needs, and in those cases, exceptions may be considered. For information on how to request an exception, please refer to our Account and Submission Guidelines.

If you currently have more than one contributor account active, no action is required.

Great work! amazing research. I stopped uploading to SS in 2020 when 10 cts happned. I  had in 2019 invested in video heavy and wanted to go all in on SS. I never made any money at the time on Adobe although I uploaded regularly. Never would I have imagined SS to go so bad and I knew it was over for them. During the pandemic my Adobe account started to pick up and has steadily continued to grow. I will never forget SS, the 10 cts and how the y deleted the old forum that we had. There people there that dissapeared shortly before the SS forum was deleted that I now undestand were SS employees fake accounts like that of a Larry from beverly hills that cheered and got people to keep submitting no matter how aweful it was.

I haven't posted about SSTK performance or Shutterstock's financials in a while, but I do monitor what they're up to.

https://investor.shutterstock.com/news-releases/news-release-details/shutterstock-reports-third-quarter-2024-financial-results

Earnings call from earlier today:

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4730421-shutterstock-inc-sstk-q3-2024-earnings-call-transcript

You can find other investor-focused materials via their web site:

https://investor.shutterstock.com/

Lots of hand-waving, buzzwords and happy talk in the earnings call transcript, but from a contributor's perspective, it's hard to ignore the declines in paid downloads, subscribers and how stagnant the business seems to be if you look at the details versus the CEO's chit-chat.

They celebrated that the decline in "content" revenue was slowing - it only declined 7% this quarter versus 9% in Q2 and 10% in Q1

Paid downloads - that's how contributors make money - in Q3 2024 were 32.9 million, down from 33.4m in Q2, down from 36.4m in Q3 last year (2023). In Q3 2022 there were 42.8 million paid downloads.

They've changed now they report revenue - now it's Content and Data, Distribution & Services; they used to break out E-commerce (the web site) from Enterprise (corporate deals). And with various acquisitions - Pond5 last year and Envato this year - more revenue gets added to the totals, but it isn't doing much for growth. It's barely slowing the decline.

For Q3 2024 Content revenue included Envato for the first time. Take out Envato and they reported $166 million for the quarter, versus $233 million in 2023. Even in Q3 2022 and 2021 revenue was higher - $204 million and $194 million!!

Data revenue was supposed to be a huge growth area, although still small compared to content revenue. For Q3 2024 it was $47 million versus $54.5m in 2023.

During the earnings call and analyst asked about revenue from Giphy. More talk about huge increased views of GIFs (not about $$) and the note that revenue from Giphy was folded into the overall Data number and won't be broken out

The number of subscribers is down as well - 470k versus 551k for Q3 2023 (or 607k in Q3 2022)

An analyst asked if Envato's unlimited subscriptions were taking away from regular SS subscriptions and Hennessey said "...we�re seeing the work that they did on the customer experience, the work that they�ve done with the rebrand is driving new subs into the franchise. And so we�re more bullish today on the growth and the product market fit of Envato than we were when we acquired the company..."

An analyst asked for more detail on the content business beyond that the decline in that was slowing; when would it get back to growth? Hennessey said:

"On the Content business, look, I don�t know what day we cross over, but we�re making really good progress. The changes that we�ve made, everything from coming off the free trial to reintroducing our smaller packs, as I mentioned, and our core subscription product is getting traction. We�re seeing growth in the business and you start to see the level of the decline is shrinking. You mentioned a minus 10 to minus 9, minus 7, and we�re predicting that Q4 is better than that.

So we�re really like what we�re seeing. Then if you add in some of my commentary on the combination of AI in our Content business, we�re now seeing not only existing customers using the AI sub and maintaining their level of stock use, and in many instances, growing that. We�re also starting to see new customers come into the franchise for the AI product and start to use stock content.

So we really like this ecosystem that�s starting to happen of growth in both stock and AI for customer sets. So again, I can�t tell you exactly when we cross over, but I really like the hand that we�ve got, and the core business, ex-Envato, is improving."

I'd translate that to "Darned if I know!"

The only reason they can report "growth" is that they added revenue from acquisitions to their totals."Content" is 81% of their business. The other portion, Data is 19% but was also down 14% compared to a year ago.

SSTK was up today - upbeat guidance for the remainder of the year seems to have cheered investors, but they tend to be an emotionally volatile lot

Separately from the bad news for contributors to SS, it looks to me as if they're running out of road.

September was good for me, this year is way better than last year but have been more consistent in uploading. This week I have sold more than I usually do in a month so looking up for me!

When Adobe announced Adobe Firefly in March 2023, we shared that we are developing generative AI responsibly, with creators at the center.
 
In addition to your regular stock licensing revenue which covers Firefly training, we want to recognize your contributions through our second-ever Adobe Stock contributor bonus.

The 2024 bonus is based on photos, vectors, or illustrations approved between June 3, 2023, and June 2, 2024, as well as, for the first time, the all-time number of videos approved through June 2, 2024, and the number of licenses that all those assets generated in the same 12-month period. 

A banner on the Insights>My Statistics tab in the Contributor portal provides the specific amount that was added to your account. 

We plan to base potential subsequent bonuses on new approved assets and licenses they generate annually.

We have put together an FAQ here:
https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/firefly-faq-for-adobe-stock-contributors.html

Thank you so much! Never had a bonus from anyone before in the microstock business. I got about 100 and am pleasantly surprised and thankful!

Quote from: stockman11 on June 23, 2023, 16:26

My SS earnings used to be 15x higher than now, and they just keep nosediving from month to month. Once a good earner, now abomination. Seems like it will join mid-tier agencies soon. Inexcusable.

During this same time, my Adobe Stock earnings has been growing, and Istock has been consistent.

I'm considering to start treating SS like the other mid-tier agencies and completely stop uploading there.

I stopped uploading to shutterstock in 2020. Was all in but 10 cents is not worth the trouble. Im not very succesful at all in these stock companies but adobe stock is doing better for me than shutter ever did. Shutter was great with video sales.

I feel your pain! when shutter used to pay 40 bucks a video I whent out and got a gymbal, professional studio lighting and started leveling up my skills and quality on videos. Was all n and really motivated in 2019 but then in 2020 the great news came and I still feel like what?

Im making more in adobe stock, less everywhere else. I never made too much money though and since last year started to become more a habitual uploader.

No one else got this yesterday? Got a mail with the title "Updated content policies on Adobe Stock"

And it says "As of June 27, 2024, Adobe Stock will be updating its content policies. You are receiving this email because you have 1 assets that will be removed from the site. For additional information about the updated policies, please see our Account and Submission eGuidelines."

There is a link to the  Account and Submission Guidelines, but I don't see anything new and I don't see anything any of my images would not comply with, so I have no idea what that one asset that will be removed is and why.

I got same email with 2 assets supposedly removed but I dont see anything missing. I wish when things got rejected they would show proof of what is wrong, close up screen shot or anything that would help me understand what needs to be done to meet the standards. Am alwats left guessing and when as a customer I downloaded images for work its amazing how bad the quality is sometimes and am baffled by how I get a 60% rejection rate.

Hello everyone!

A question for all those who create 3D renders. Have you ever had your renders rejected because they were deemed to be generated by artificial intelligence? I've experienced this rejection on almost all platforms and had to email support to prove that I made them in Blender and not with AI. Do you have any methods to avoid such rejections? Honestly, it's tiring to constantly prove that something can be done without AI.

Best regards,
Michal

Yes I too have had this happen to me even in video animations with blender. I have resorted to include 3d cgi in description. Now they just get rejected by adobe because of quality issues go figure! haha

Quote from: Camillo on April 19, 2024, 20:10

Quote from: kuriouskat on April 18, 2024, 16:26

I've read a lot recently about people getting their accounts suspended for 'irregular sales activity', so it's actually made me worry that a great sales day could end badly.

I've had a large series of images downloaded and, although this has happened before on other sites, it's the first time it's happened to this extent on Adobe.

I'm assuming the sales are legitimate, and I'm not looking to suddenly cash out the earnings, but should I be reporting this to someone just in case? Maybe @MatHayward could advise if there is anything I need to do?

.

Great to hear some are doing well. Adobe is where most my sales are made however this week was terrible. Only made 1.78 😢 oh well

a poor week means nothing, in March 2024 did you earn more than March 2023? in 2023 did you earn more than in 2022? then above all are you working?do you produce content every day or almost every day at least?microstock is no longer a passive income,it was years ago.

Thank you this changed my perspective, yes I actually sold more this week compared to last year and am actively uploading at least 3 times a week and creating new content.

Thank you!

The error is uploading to shutterstock in the first place. 10 cts sales are ridiculous.

I am in the same boat and think I should stop uploading anything to shutterstock. All I get are 10 cts sales and that takes me no where.

https://lawow.org/wareka-v-shutterstock-inc-et-al/.

https://lawow.org/wp-content/lawoo-pdf/Wareka-v.-Shutterstock,-Inc.et-al.pdf

Glad it is finally happening. Too much content that should not be there. SS is not doing enough because it is profiting big for doing nothing most of the time. I hope this time it hits them hard.

Wareka v. Shutterstock, Inc.et al

This is a civil action seeking damages and injunctive relief for copyright infringement and the falsification of copyright management information under the Copyright Act of the United States, 17 U.S.C. � 101, et seq. and 17 U.S.C. � 1202.

On or about July 23, 2021, Williams discovered Shutterstock had used the Kiana Photograph on the Website. True and correct screenshots of the Kiana Photograph, as used on the Website, with and without the time-stamp are attached hereto as Exhibit A.
Williams did not consent to or authorize Shutterstock to use the Kiana Photograph on the Website.
FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS

Tamara Williams is a highly successful freelance photographer specializing in beauty and fashion photography. Williams is most well-known for her natural and clean model portraiture featured on her highly popular Instagram account @tamarawilliams1, which has amassed over 400,000 followers.

Good I hope they win big and shutter learns a lesson.