I don't understand how anybody can still rationalize image and video uploading to SS.

Let's say you made a reasonably good image and hope to sell it 100 times over the life of the image. Very optimistically, you can assume an average price of 15c per download. Under these assumptions, you'll make in total measly $15 from that one image. Of course, there will be other images which will sell only once or never. 

Quote from: Les on July 13, 2020, 13:24

It's not surprising that SS wants to show a record number of images to their shareholders. That's about the only metric they can show.

The contributors need not worry whether it is 321 or 324 millions.
Out of that volume, 40% are similars, 20% are technically inferior images, and 25% are low-quality, low sale potential images.
Subtract these numbers and it leaves something like 100 million decent images.

I once heard that generally about 5% of an agencies portfolio sold well. That's not specificly Ss. Just an average.
Not sure if that still stands generally. But if it does, whats 5% of 320M? 16M

Very likely, half of those 16M images were removed or disabled last month. Or soon they will be.

They are working blindly and have messed up a lot of things.
I have lost nearly 50% of my earning and SS don't want to care and do anything about it.

What really hurts is, there is no decrease in subscription package or any rebate in customer side, they have increased their own commission which makes me cry with a question why, why and why?

I have seen those 10 free images message earlier and it clearly says "The 10 free images are yours to keep regardless of whether you continue or cancel your annual plan."
What more to expect?

This industry is a sinking boat and SS will die at first.

They are taking money from you and giving it to anybody who applies for the 10 free images.

Yes, the industry is a sinking boat. SS started to sink it and they will go down one day, but it may take some time. Just enough time for Oringer to sell the company before inflicting more damage to the agency and image creators.

Quote from: noodle on July 05, 2020, 16:00

Collecting refundable bottles would be one idea
Go around the neighbourhood on garbage day and take bottles that people would rather throw out than return for 10 cents.

You don�t need to invest in any fancy equipment
Use your bike or walk around the neighborhood
You�ll also be doing yourself a favour by excersizing

just silly --
== in many places, it's illegal to take from garbage or recycle bins
==  there are only about 20 states w bottle bills (mostly 5c-10c) and 10 in europe

but seriously? people complain about 10c royalties - but you're telling them to collect 100-200 bottles/hr to make $10/hr? (not counting time spent gathering, transporting, etc; not to mention pawing thru smelly, or worse, garbage) how are going to carry that many bottles on your bike?

In my local wine store, they pay 20 cents for clean bottles (with no artifacts), and after the inspection and rinsing, they sell them at 80 cents to their winemaking customers. So, you are getting 25% commission, and they pay for the storage. Maybe when you get to the next level, you would get a higher commission.  AFAIK, similars are allowed and they don't reset your commission level every January.

I've been talking to many photographers lately and none of them stopped uploading. I honestly expected the contrary. What I want to say is that this forum is not reflection of reality at all. It is occupied by contributors who promorte boycott and agressive measures and the majority that still uploads is silent. The more realistic reflection of reality would make this forum much more useful for all of us. I blame promoters lf boycott for this, they (we) are too hursh on the ones who have different opinion. Let them talk and let not be even worse than SS itself by not listening or caring about others opinion.

If some dummies are still uploading, they can't be helped. Maybe their mothers can explain it to them.

Keeping my images and videos deactivated.

Best way to make money would be the sell short a few thousands SSTK shares.

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on June 17, 2020, 19:14

But we are not workers for Shutterstock, Inc. so this story just doesn't cover our situation

True, but the difference between worker and contributor is each day smaller and smaller, in few decades work as we know will change a lot...

In the other hand, it is a good chance to let NYT people know about this... maybe they put a mention about SS new rates in the article

Correct. The differences between the conventional employment and contract work are blurring. More and more people will work without being employees, for example, freelance programmers and graphic designers, Uber and Lyft drivers, musicians, and all kinds of consultants. Stock agency contributors would fit the gig-economy employment classification.

I wouldn't be so fixated on the total count of images. If anything, accepting large lots of inferior and similar images will be more detrimental to an agency. 

Quote from: PokemonMaster on June 15, 2020, 02:40

Quote from: Chichikov on June 15, 2020, 00:50

We need to contact and raise awareness, especially among the players in the sector, creative people, advertising agencies, journalists in the photographic, video and graphics sector. Some are already doing this. More needs to be done. Spreading the word is important, we can't just discuss it among ourselves, it doesn't lead to much, let's not get too many illusions.
What worries me a lot is that at the end of the day, few people in the Microstock world are really aware of the situation.  Every day I see, on the Shutterstock forum, people still asking "what's going on?", people who are completely ignorant of the situation. There are a lot of them.

So there's still a lot to do, but we have to act as quickly as possible, we have to strike while the iron is hot!

Also show SSTK as unethical company on the investment forums, such as finance.yahoo.com, ...
Sold all my SSTK holdings and won't buy it again. Bought ADBE instead.

Congratulations to all those who finally deactivated their portfolio!!

I don't understand why so many of you waited until today to close your portfolios.
Mine (7000+) has been deactivated for 10 days, and will certainly not be reactivated in a week!

Waiting 14 days was useful in seeing how the new earning levels affect the commissions. Not in a good way.

Disabled my port with all images and videos.

The Shutterstock's audacity of devaluating our images while maintaining their decadent Empire Building headquarters is a poor business practice and simply abominable. For selling online image subscriptions you don't need to have showcase digs, this type of business could be operated from any warehouse in suburbs or another town in NY, or even from Siberia.

 
1. I agree fully with the deactivation of ports on June 15. Even if SS has 320 million images, deleting your A-class images or entire portfolios will have a measurable effect, since most of the remaining images are either similars or garbage. I haven't deactivated my port yet, but will do it on June 15. Watching the sales for the first ten days in June, not only the average selling prices went down, but also the number of downloads was reduced. Way down!

2. The other way to hit them is to spread the word to the buyers and shareholders. What SS is doing, is not only a poor long-term business decision, it is also highly unethical. Many investors are now looking at their investments from this type of angle, and switching to more ethical companies.  Most creative professionals who buy images and videos have a sense of fairness and once they realize what SS is doing, they will change their purchasing practices and switch to more responsible agencies.

3. Lastly, when you have such unethical company, even the employees will realize that their salaries are made on back of exploited contributors and their moral will go down. Next step for them is to wait how long before they will be shafted. No decent person would want to work for such a company.