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Messages - Shelma1

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51
So its better to get much less over a period of years than to sacrifice two weeks of royalties once? If you disabled your port for the second half of June, at worst youd lose 4% of your Shutterstock income for 2020 (actually less, since you made higher royalties the first half of the year and June is usually a slow month). Instead most people stayed and are reporting 30-50% royalty decreases, which will only get worse in January.

Instead of losing two weeks pay, youre losing 13 weeks pay if you had a 50% royalty decrease for the second half of 2020. And in 2021 it will be much worse, because the vast majority of people wont get back to their old royalty rate, which is still 50% lower than it used to be, for months, if ever.

It doesnt work like that.  For some people once june hit, suddenly, their June dayjob income became 0.  Nothing. Zilch.
Suddenly SS became their only source of income.  So the choice of getting a few hundred or more dollars a month where you can actually pay the rent, electricity and food vs guaranteed 0 where you can do none of that isnt a hard choice - you'll take some income and survival over zero income.
We're not talking of income averaged annually here, its real world income for this particular month.
There's also the fact that SS had planned all this and there is no way in hell they'll go back on it regardless of people disabling profiles.  There are always uploaders, always new recruits and the bigger, important studios they'd have done private deals with anyway.  All planned, wargamed and accepted before they introduced it.

The op had their payout set to $100. So disabling their port for 2 weeks would have cost them around 50 bucks. We all know the vast majority of SS contributors make very little there.

Yes, there are other uploaders, but even with the relatively small number of people disabling their ports it took weeks for SS to scrounge up some new people to upload a bunch of almost identical vectors or a load of bad snapshots to try to make up the loss. You cant instantaneously replace all those files. It would have taken time, and their 2nd quarter announcement would have happened too quickly.

Yes, this was all planned in advance...but even so, SS failed to forsee all the tweeting that casued them to close social media accounts. Theyre not infallible.

52
Reality.  With so many people or their spouses out of work due to pandemic, some people simply cannot afford to close of any avenue of income-- it can mean the difference between being able to eat or not.

You can bet SS knew that and used the timing to their advantage.

That being said, earnings on SS are pathetic.  Sales with low earner agencies now overtaking SS. I just had 1 sale on new to me agency---that sale alreadhy more than made on SS this month.

I am not uploading new work to SS.  As soon as sales with new agencies add some income, wil lbe ditching SS.

Reality sucks for me too. I was a very successful vector artist on Shutterstock. Disabling my port will cost me tens of thousands of dollars this year. Im currently unemployed. My guess is that the vast majority of contributors dont count on Shutterstock royalties to eat, though Im sure a few do.

Im not talking about a permanent disabling of accounts, though thats what Ive chosen to do. Im talking about a large number of people making a temporary sacrifice for two weeks.

The fact is that if most people had disabled their ports on June 15 things would have turned out very differently. Their library would have shrunk tremendously. Buyers would have been completely frustrated. Investors would have been asking what the heck happened. They would have had a massive loss of sales and would not have met or exceeded profit expectations. SSTK would have dropped instead of rising. They would have been forced to roll back the royalty cuts, and everyone might very well have regained their temporary loss when buyers either came back or switched to other sites for the assets they needed.

53

If you and everyone else had disabled your ports on 6/15, how different things would be today.

Because in June when a large number of people suddenly had no day job and no income at all they couldnt afford (nor would it be sensible) to deliberately stop the few hundred/thousand dollars they'd get from SS just to make a point...

You need money to pay rent and buy food, not likes.

SS timing for them was either very lucky or very deliberate and i cant decide which.

So its better to get much less over a period of years than to sacrifice two weeks of royalties once? If you disabled your port for the second half of June, at worst youd lose 4% of your Shutterstock income for 2020 (actually less, since you made higher royalties the first half of the year and June is usually a slow month). Instead most people stayed and are reporting 30-50% royalty decreases, which will only get worse in January.

Instead of losing two weeks pay, youre losing 13 weeks pay if you had a 50% royalty decrease for the second half of 2020. And in 2021 it will be much worse, because the vast majority of people wont get back to their old royalty rate, which is still 50% lower than it used to be, for months, if ever.


54
For me, the sheer anger that any of my sales at Shutterstock just help make Oringer a billionaire keeps me from selling there. Of course, the reason hes successful is that most people would not make a temporary financial sacrifice in June in order to reverse the direction things were going. Instead people stayed, the library size remained 300 million, and the stock price shot up.

If you and everyone else had disabled your ports on 6/15, how different things would be today.

55
Shutterstock.com / Re: Timing of the royalty cut
« on: August 12, 2020, 10:36 »
Oh, totally pushing up the stock price so they can get out. Grabbing as much as they can from contributors over the next year so they can make hundreds of millions and be set for life. Then Shutterstock collapses and they just walk away from the wreckage.

56
Shutterstock.com / Re: Timing of the royalty cut
« on: August 12, 2020, 06:41 »
Oringer's selling 2 million shares and SS is selling 2.5 million at $48.50 per share. While he slides a couple of dimes across the table to us. https://investor.shutterstock.com/news-releases/news-release-details/shutterstock-announces-pricing-public-offering-common-stock

57
Shutterstock.com / Re: Timing of the royalty cut
« on: August 06, 2020, 12:49 »
I feel really stupid for not buying SSTK in June.

58
Shutterstock.com / Re: Timing of the royalty cut
« on: August 06, 2020, 07:43 »
He took the money from our pockets and placed it directly into his bank account. This is capitalism at its finest.

59
Shutterstock.com / Timing of the royalty cut
« on: August 06, 2020, 06:24 »
"On May 1, 2020, Mr. Oringer adopted a written sales plan with Charles Schwab in accordance Rule 10b5-1 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and Issuer's policies regarding stock transactions (the "2020 10b5-1 Plan"). Under the 2020 10b5-1 Plan, Mr. Oringer intends to sell up to 1,020,000 shares of Common Stock, subject to certain market conditions. Sales may commence on June 1, 2020 and would be completed by May 31, 2021, subject to earlier termination in accordance with the terms of the 2020 10b5-1 Plan and applicable law and regulation. The 2020 10b5-1 Plan is intended to permit the orderly disposition of a portion of Mr. Oringers holdings as part of his personal long-term financial plan for asset diversification and liquidity. All sales under the 2020 10b5-1 Plan are to be made in the discretion of Charles Schwab and in accordance with the terms, conditions, and restrictions of such plan. Mr. Oringer does not have any control, influence, or authority over sales made pursuant to the 2020 10b5-1 Plan."

https://investor.shutterstock.com/node/10841/html

Royalty cuts announced three weeks after he planned to sell more than a million shares of SSTK; deeper royalty cut to come January 1.

60
Interesting but "about us" needs a lot more details ? Is this a type of Photo Union ? What are we signing up for ? Are you starting a new stock site ? How do you gain fair value for coalition members ?

The Stock Coalition is an industry body representing talented global photographers, illustrators, videographers, animators and other artists who contribute their work to agencies for distribution. Collectively, our work has been licensed millions of times by companies and individuals around the world.
Our goal is to ensure fair value and compensation for our collective creative works and to support agencies with strategies that align with these goals.
Our organization has had to form rapidly in response to one agency unilaterally changing their compensation agreement with contributors without any warning or consultation with catastrophic implications on the earnings for these contributors.
We have built a competent core management team to steer our organization and a constitution and full list of goals will be prepared in due course.

Have you been on the Facebook page?

61

Yea, no.  If you have followed her in previous threads you'd clearly see what a troll she/he/it is.

perhaps, but i haven't seen that here - the original statement was a legitimate one and she got slammed based on hypothetical subtext and judgment

Then you need to read more threads.
why bother - you've obviously already condemned - maybe you should react to what's here rather than prejudging based on alleged past performance - another instance of majority suppression of non-conformists to the party line

either ignore or address the current topic

The topic was addressed by several people. Again, look at her posts in their totality to see what shes really about. Just because you also see no point in protesting doesnt mean shes not a troll.

62
its very cool that Im in the Times, but what will I get? 0.000001 cents or something?

Congratulations! At least you get good bragging rights for that.  ;)

Yes, but bragging rights dont pay the mortgage! All this time I was so happy I wasnt getting these cr@ppy fraction-of-a-penny royalties. Are they still doing that thing where they let people embed your images for free? Is it possible I get nothing from the vaunted NY Times? Boy, is the joke on me.
Embed is only for non-commercial users, so no, you won't get nothing from the NYT. If an image has been legally embedded, it can only be a very small size and is surrounded by a Getty frame, so obvious in use:
https://www.bjp-online.com/2014/03/10-facts-you-need-to-know-about-getty-images-embed-feature
(I haven't heard anything about it for years, so not surprised that's such old info)

The teensy fraction of an image sales are the pay-per-view scheme, which I don't fully understand, but a prime user is Pinterest.

I guess it's not embedded, because it just says "Getty" underneath and doesn't credit me at all. I really can't even be bothered figuring out how to log in and see sales there. I'm sure it will be negligible.

63
its very cool that Im in the Times, but what will I get? 0.000001 cents or something?

Congratulations! At least you get good bragging rights for that.  ;)

Yes, but bragging rights dont pay the mortgage! All this time I was so happy I wasnt getting these cr@ppy fraction-of-a-penny royalties. Are they still doing that thing where they let people embed your images for free? Is it possible I get nothing from the vaunted NY Times? Boy, is the joke on me.

64
And today I found out iStock never closed my account. Jo Ann Snover let me know one of my illustrations was in the NY Times a couple of weeks ago. I thought it must have been one of these random Shutterstock sales and was shocked to see Getty underneath it. My first thought was that someone must have stolen it and uploaded it to Getty, but I checked and it wasnt there. So then I thought someone must have stolen it and uploaded it to iStock, and there it was, with my name under it. Back when the whole brouhaha happened with iStock I deleted thousands of my vectors, but it was too time consuming, so I emailed them twice and asked them to close my account. By then I had stopped using my old hotmail address so had no idea they were still sending me notifications there. I dont even remember how to log in to the contributor site or what my login info was, or how to see sales....hasnt that become more difficult somehow? I checked my bank account and saw theyd been sending small amounts all this time and I didnt even realize it. I dont even know who to email at this point to ask them to close it for the third time. Can someone tell me? I mean, its very cool that Im in the Times, but what will I get? 0.000001 cents or something?

65
I got one sale a couple of weeks ago for 64 cents or something. I only checked because other people were reporting sales. Jeez, if theyre gonna keep licensing my stuff at least give me a couple of bucks!

66

Yea, no.  If you have followed her in previous threads you'd clearly see what a troll she/he/it is.

perhaps, but i haven't seen that here - the original statement was a legitimate one and she got slammed based on hypothetical subtext and judgment

All you have to do is click on her name and look at her previous posts.

67
Selling illustrations is perfect for people who depend on a wheelchair, who have no voice, who cannot hear, who have mental problems and so on, its a big big chance for them and part of their daily therapy to be accepted by the society.
By the way, the term "underdeveloped country" is politically not correct.

I agree. Please explain why you're upset with people who are fighting for a higher wage that YOU will also benefit from? I really don't get it. If nobody fights, the agencies will just keep dropping royalty rates, and eventually they'll be unsustainable for YOU, too. 10 is OK right now. How about a year from now, when they drop it to 1? Still OK? 0.1? OK then? When you're starving with 0.1 on each sale and Oringer and Pavlovsky are scooping up your money to pay for their extravagant lifestyles, still OK?

At what point does it become not OK for millionaires and billionaires to take your money to buy their pool tables, caviar, champagne and mansions? When does it become not OK for rich white men in The United States to take money from disabled women (I'm assuming you're a woman) in Africa?
Maybe other people telling her whats good for her and being called a Troll for having a different opinion?

She's not called a troll for having a different opinion. She's called a troll for consistently coming to this forum to call people names, tell them they're old and have no ideas, and to support Shutterstock no matter how badly they treat her and her fellow contributors.

68
Selling illustrations is perfect for people who depend on a wheelchair, who have no voice, who cannot hear, who have mental problems and so on, its a big big chance for them and part of their daily therapy to be accepted by the society.
By the way, the term "underdeveloped country" is politically not correct.

I agree. Please explain why you're upset with people who are fighting for a higher wage that YOU will also benefit from? I really don't get it. If nobody fights, the agencies will just keep dropping royalty rates, and eventually they'll be unsustainable for YOU, too. 10 is OK right now. How about a year from now, when they drop it to 1? Still OK? 0.1? OK then? When you're starving with 0.1 on each sale and Oringer and Pavlovsky are scooping up your money to pay for their extravagant lifestyles, still OK?

At what point does it become not OK for millionaires and billionaires to take your money to buy their pool tables, caviar, champagne and mansions? When does it become not OK for rich white men in The United States to take money from disabled women (I'm assuming you're a woman) in Africa?

69
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock contributor blog themes
« on: July 31, 2020, 08:48 »
Looking on the Shutterstock contributor blog, they heightened the activity a lot. So on one side they are stealing money from all contributors - mostly from poorer parts of developed world, but in same time there are at least 2 posts a week about supporting of minorities of any kind. It's really very nice from them and social...self-censorship mode activated.
But I guess it costs them almost nothing and its good smoke screen.


From the business side of the thing - do you see increased demand for such topic? I'm not photographer, but in thousands of images I have few pieces that are more or less about this theme. I saw few sells over years, really nothing significant. But my style is not trendy, so it's possibly problem on my side.

Let me to be clear: I stopped to upload on SS since the announcement. I deactivated my portfolio for several weeks to support the action, but microstock is the only income of my family, so my portfolio is online for now (but it can change) without new content.

All you have to do is look at their C-suite executives to see their real feelings about women and minorities. Seven men, no women, all white. (Yes, there's a woman on the page, but you'll notice she doesn't have a C-level title...but they had to stick a woman in so it wouldn't look quite as bad, and then again she's also white.)

https://www.shutterstock.com/discover/exec-team-page

70
Shutterstock.com / Re: So they do use AI to review then...
« on: July 31, 2020, 08:39 »
They used AI, plus they got hit with a class action lawsuit from their human reviewers for allegedly not following U.S. employment law. So the solution for that was to get rid of the pesky humans altogether.

71
Negative comments because if everyone had sacrificed a few weeks of income SS would have been forced to roll back their draconian royalty cuts and we'd ALL be back to higher royalties. Instead, the vast majority stayed, accepting a big loss this year and an even bigger loss come January, rather than a temporary, much smaller loss for a few weeks in June. We own the content. The agencies are nothing without us. But whatevs.

72
If youd all disabled your portfolios on June 15 Shutterstock would have had to raise royalties again because they would have had no content. Enjoy your soon to be 10-cent video sales.

73
"...because we are accessing our customer's customer, we expect these relationships to effectively open up new market segments for us" and that these customers are more likely to stay (customer retention & "stickiness")

I don't see how they'll access their customer's customer. They'll be giving designers and art directors a quick tool to create ads for their clients...I don't think clients will create ads themselves. And if by some chance clients DO create ads themselves they won't need the designers and art directors any more, which means those people will no longer be licensing as many images because they'll lose business from their customers, which would be a wash.

74
No more reviewers, no more customer service for contributors.

75
OP has a long history of promoting Freepik for referral fees, see:
https://xpiksapp.com/blog/freepik-review/

Mr. Critique, again you. I don't have any referral link to Freepik, please check facts before posting. And I never had and also they are not paying me in any way. And I don't promote or endorse Freepik, this is just a blogpost among many others.

I wrote a blogpost with a cool research I did and I shared it. Why wouldn't you create a blogpost where you will tell the world about the unjustice and shame Freepik has brought to your life to balance things in the universe?

Just search freepik here and you can read all about the unjustice and shame Freepik has brought to my life.

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