It looks like my portfolio stopped transferring photos on April 20th.

Quote from: wds on May 04, 2022, 21:21

Quote from: PigsInSpace on May 04, 2022, 19:57

The only way SS would increase commissions is if it�s in their business interest to do so. Very few folks left when they cut commissions. As far as they�re concerned, lower commissions doesn�t hurt their business.

Agreed. I would like to see them do something to stop their download numbers from slipping....and maybe get them to increase??

The only way they are going to get DL numbers to go up is to charge less - and pay you less and no - you won't make up the difference in volume. If they can't treat artists right I hope they crash and burn.

Quote from: KuriousKat on April 27, 2022, 09:08

Quote from: Mimi the Cat on April 27, 2022, 05:56

Quote from: KuriousKat on April 27, 2022, 05:48

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on April 26, 2022, 18:04

Still going after Canva's business, but Canva has a completely free tier which I don't think SS has. Stan talks about SS being able to broaden its presence beyond the content selection phase of projects.

But Shutterstock bought out a lot of content from contributors last year, with lump sum payments up front, but no further right to any royalties going forward. Presumably, this was why.

I don't recall seeing anything about lump sum payments where was that announced?

There were a few threads on different forums where it was mentioned, but those approached didn't say much, as they had to agree to a Non-Disclosure agreement to get more information.

Which is true but how does that become "Shutterstock bought out a lot of content" vs Shutterstock bought out some content from some contributors? Even with NDAs superficial or generalized information can be leaked.

Good point if they own content, we don't know how much?

Still going after Canva's business, but Canva has a completely free tier which I don't think SS has. Stan talks about SS being able to broaden its presence beyond the content selection phase of projects.

Quote from: KuriousKat on January 04, 2022, 05:36

I'm familiar with both Firn's and your portfolio, and appreciate the work put into these. For myself, when I signed up here many years ago, I did so anonymously, as I wanted to be able to voice opinions of the various sites without fear of any retribution. I'm not sitting here in a tinfoil hat, but we all have seen people banned from sites over the years for speaking out.

I do regret that. I also know Firns and Annie's work through the Shutterstock forum.
I think people on this forum are more careful. More often a pseudonym, more often without showing their work.
At Shutterstock we did have discussions about that with people who did that because they were afraid of stealing their work.
(I tried to create a shutterstock link with icon, but that went wrong. So I mentioned my website, which also contains a link to my stock sites)
But the reason is the fear of reactions from the Stocksites?

Quote from: KuriousKat on January 03, 2022, 12:14

Quote from: Jaggy on January 03, 2022, 11:45

Quote from: SpaceStockFootage on January 03, 2022, 08:16

I may be the anomaly, but the reality for 99% of contributors to SS is that they earn money from being on SS... and 100% of those that aren't on SS, don't earn money from SS.

If you think that there's been some kind of, or will be some kind of, mass exodus of buyers from SS due to a relatively small percentage of contributors leaving (or that lost earnings from SS will automatically be made up elsewhere), then you might be the one who is being naive. Sure, my earnings might dwindle over time... they might at any agency, and that can be reviewed on an ongoing basis, but in the meantime I'm earning money from the time I'm spending uploading, so nothing will come back to bite me. And they're not dwindling now... I made a decent amount more last year then I did the year before.

And if you think my post was 'talking up' SS then... well, that's just strange.

I don't think you are an anomaly and I agree with your post.

I don't particularly care about SS, Adobe or any of the others. I use SS because it serves my purpose and when it stops serving that purpose I will move on.

The reality is that I still sell more on SS than any other site. I also made more in 2021 than I did in 2020. Not much more - 3.38% - but still more. Adobe did well for me last year too although still not as well as SS.

In addition, the absolute number of downloads I got at SS increased last year and at a greater rate than I added to my portfolio. So that suggests that the buyers haven't gone away.

I also agree. I am less than happy with the Shutterstock levels, but I still sell a lot there, and certainly can't afford to walk away and lose a good chunk of my income.

My Shutterstock downloads were slightly reduced in 2021, but I expected that with a portfolio of mainly travel and wildlife. Income there was down by a higher margin, but the loss was more than covered by a good increase in income at Adobe an Istock, plus a couple of others. However, I think that was mostly to do with organic growth, rather than buyers jumping ship.

That said, I certainly know of a couple of companies that have not renewed subscriptions in recent months, but they also deal with travel subjects, (travel agents/websites), so that may be more to do with market conditions than anything else. It will be interesting to see what happens to the market post-pandemic.

Somehow the above reply�s are missing the point, I believe that Shutterstocks business model of scamming the contributors will lead to their downfall.

As I keep saying, it�s not about now and how much your portfolio is making at the moment, which I bet is far less than three years ago.

It�s about the talent not uploading, sure your going to get the odd person who will continue too, but overall the bigger picture is, the majority of creative people are not going to be uploading and this will in time have an impact, I predict (and it is the Season for predicting) that five years from now Shutterstock will be a mere shadow of what it was five years ago.

Maybe it will even go bust, Agencies and Designers are not going to be buying from a company that shafts their contributors.

Cutting the commission rates is a double whammy for Shutterstock, designers, art directors and image buyers, the people who buy from them will get to know that the commission rate has been cut and simply not renew their contracts, this along with the talent not uploading new work, is really the death nail for them, and it will be a slow death, any independent shareholder should seriously think about getting out as soon as they can.

Quote from: KuriousKat on January 02, 2022, 05:22

Quote from: Annie on January 01, 2022, 14:54

I find RPDs (average return per download) to be a fairly static ratio. They are good for comparing average commissions between agencies, but they don't actually tell you if you made more income.

I use RPIs - return per image. (Sales divided by number of images). This tells you what income has gone up or down compared to the last time you calculated it. I use it to tell me what subjects to keep shooting (if it has risen) or alternatively what to stop shooting.

Because I shoot/create a lot of different types of images - photos, videos, stop motion animation, graphic design layouts, it helps me enormously to show where I should direct my resources in the next 3 or 6 months.

I agree, the RPI is a very important indicator, although it's more of a personal statistic than RPD which, as you say, is good for comparing average commissions between agencies, and is a good indicator of whether the Shutterstock Levels have had a positive or negative impact on earnings.

I use Stock Performer to access  all of this information at a glance, as I can view total earnings for a particular shoot, plus number of files/downloads, total revenue, RPD, RPI per month and RPI overall. I also have the cost shown, and can see at a glance whether a shoot has run at a loss, broken even or is in profit. Drilling down further, I can check the earnings per site, first upload date, average file age and STR, (sell through rate).

It's an invaluable tool if you are running this as a business and find statistical information to be beneficial, and maybe one to consider if you don't already use it?

This, alongside my monthly management accounts, gives me a very clear picture of where my business is going.

I trialed Stock Performer! back in 2015 or maybe it was 2016, on the advice of a friend but decided not to go ahead with it.

But I am a bit confused, your information here is a bit different to what you first said to Firn above. Plus, if your income is declining as you said in your first response, and Firn's is increasing, then maybe Firn is the one who should be giving us all advice      (just kidding - to each his own)

Quote from: gnirtS on January 01, 2022, 13:50

Interesting results.  The levels do seem to make a huge hit initially at least....

based on what?  reported RPD don't show a big drop - if levels were a big influence, we'd expect RPD in the .2-.3 range. and some reports show better RPD in 1st 6 months than last - opposite of what you'd expect if levels made an impact - decreased income is much more likely due to market conditions

I submit about the same amount of photos each year, have the same work, but earned more than double as much for the same work than the year before. That's good enough for me because I only care about the money I earn and not how much I sell my images for on an average.
 I don't care about RPD and don't understand people's fixation with it.  Someoen can have an RPD of 10$ and still make poor money, because he has to pay rent for locations, props and models. Someoen else might have an RPD of 0.50$, but has no costs and spends almost no time on his photos because he only shoots his backyard flowers. The first person could make a financial loss with his photos or barely cover his costs without being paid for his time, the second a profit. RPD is a strange factor to care about so much as it says nothing about how much money you actually get for your work, just for a photo, which is a very random factor as creataing a photo can be a matter of seconds and cost you not more than the gear you have, or cost thousands of dollars and take hours of time.

Alread posted this in another thread, but here is my revenue comparison for the past year:
January 20->21: +131%
February 20->21: +214%
March 20->21: +151%
April 20->21: +74%
May 20->21: +132%
June 20->21: +140%
July 20->21: +148%
August 20->21: +123%
September 20->21: +45%
October 20->21: +98%
November 20->21: +23%
December 20->21: +11%