Quote from: H2O on January 01, 2022, 15:14

Quote from: Firn on January 01, 2022, 13:09

Quote from: KuriousKat on January 01, 2022, 12:45

I care very much about RPD, as I would rather that those 10000 downloads earned me $10,000 rather than $5000.

And I care very much about my earnings, because I  would rather have 1000 hours of my work earn me $10,000 than $5000.  That's my priority.


 I want to work and get paid for my work and pay my rent and food and as long as the agencies are paying me the same, or as it has been so far, even more for my work each year, that's good enough for me.

And I didn't post my stats to impress anyone. I just wanted to show that not everything is gloom and doom and going downhills in microstock bussiness. Everyone is so negative these days. It's not all only bad, even agencies like SS or iSTock. But you have to put some work into it, not stop submitting content to Shutterstock and then complain that your earnings are declining. I see that quite often and maybe that has something to do with people's obsession with RPD - The expection that "images uploaded in the past" should earn your money for you past work, not your continouse work.

I don't think continuing this discussion will lead anywhere, we obviously have different priorities. As long as you are happy with your business model and I am happy with mine, everything is fine. 

This is just insane, how much are you proposing that Oringer and Pavlovsk sell your work for, would you be happy with 1c a download.

I am repeating myself here: I don't care how much I am being paid for a download, as long as I am paid adequately for my work. I have an expectation of how much money I want to be paid per hour of my work and Shutterstock is one of the agencies that pays me the most. An agency like Alamy might pay me 20x more per download, but what good is it to me if they sell so few images that the money they pay me per hour of my work is not even  1/10th of minimum wage?

Agree with Firn.

It is (often said) a matter of faster growing supply than demand. Prices than drop in the real world.

We used to have the butter mountain in Europe. At that time, the price was kept somewhat high with subsidies for the farmer if I remember correctly.

We have a growing photo mountain, which keeps getting higher. So the prices will drop (also at more social stock sites, probably due to a smaller sale).
Only when you upload more, you can earn more every year with the same effort, because the work for the old photos / videos is done. Only the photo mountain gets even bigger. 
If you do nothing, your earnings will drop, but then you won't spend any more time on Stock and still earn some money.

For someone just starting out, I think it's much more difficult now than it used to be because you have to have a stock of photos/videos first.
Your port does grow in terms of number of photos/videos. May be smaller in percentage because the total is growing faster.

This has got to go wrong at some point, so if you're young, I wouldn't only focus my earnings on Stock.

However anyone looks at the arrangement that Shutterstock has implemented, IT IS A COLD HEARTED SCAM perpetrated by Jon Oringer and his side kick Stan Pavlovsk, to steal money from the talent.

These two are nothing more than low life criminals pertaining to be running a business.

Anyone who is still uploading to help these two is insane.

The way forward in the Western World is a change in the law for companies like this, there should be a 'Stakeholders Law' which basically gives all the contributors a equal vote on what happens to the money.

if that's your definition of Scam, most for profit business are a Scam, as they take away from someone to pay bosses and shareholders

...

We used to have the butter mountain in Europe. At that time, the price was kept somewhat high with subsidies for the farmer if I remember correctly.

We have a growing photo mountain, which keeps getting higher. So the prices will drop (also at more social stock sites, probably due to a smaller sale)....

in the US we have massive subsidies for agriculture aka socialism for giant conglomerates such as sugar and ethanol - gasoline mandates support corn production - and end up giving corn-based, white, rural Iowa an outsized role in presidential politics as they control the first (otherwise irrelevant) caucus

but again, the decline in ms prices is a natural progression in an economy that prioritizes profits for the already rich over the needs of society in general (but that would be socialism for all). eg, in the US we still don't have basic health care for everyone

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)

Anyone who is still uploading to help these two is insane.

I completely agree, anyone who is still uploading to help these two might very well be insane. But you'll find that the majority of people are still uploading to help themselves (rather than those two)... which is considerably less insane. Them getting rich is only a side effect of something I do that benefits me, it's not why I do it.

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. 

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.

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.

I don't feel I'm missing your point and I don't really disagree with what you are saying. However, I think the demise will be slow, and good content will be uploaded whilst money is being made - even if it is at a lower rate.

Most people who have invested a lot of time and money over the years, simply aren't in a position to pull it down and take the financial loss. Some might stop uploading or slow down their efforts whilst building elsewhere, but Shutterstock still have enough pull to keep many of us there for now - even if we like to moan about the way they have treated us.

Quote from: Annie on January 02, 2022, 15:44

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)

Sorry, I'm not sure what information here you are referring too? I agreed with you that RPI is an important statistic, and discussed the value of other factors that I find useful, such as RPD, and also recommended the software I use to obtain them, just in case anyone is interested

How does this contradict my first post to Firn?

Its ok, KKat, you can relax. It was just a little bit of a joke on my part that obviously went horribly wrong.

I'll try and explain>

You started off by saying "with 2020 and 2021 seeing more significant drops", and prior to that " I am seeing a very real drop in earnings" ... but then ended with a whole lot of stats info from Stock Performer! saying 'It's an invaluable tool if you are running this as a business".  (Confusing part: you are promoting a very expensive analysis tool even though its not helping your income )

There was lots of discussion re RPDs in between. You kept talking RPDs. Firm doesn't see the fuss with RPDs.

My silly Aussie humour kicked in and my thoughts were, if Firn's income is going up without stats, and yours is going down (with lots of stats) then maybe Firn should be the one giving us all advice.

But its just a joke. Being an accountant, I am a stats person myself but I can see the funny side of it all. The joke is on me as well. I also know Firn's port and she has put a lot of hard work into her shoots, has created some very good stock imagery, and has done extremely well in a relatively short period of time in a very difficult market.

Anyway, the bottom line is: To each his own. You like stats, I like stats, Firn doesn't. No one is right or wrong, its what works for us individually. And of course, the absolute bottom line: CONTENT is KING.


(In case you're wondering, my photo sales are doing fine, but it's video income where I have lost money. I have the wrong content that can withstand the income drop with SS's video subs and the fall in the Aussie Tourism market. I need different video content.)

Quote from: KuriousKat on January 02, 2022, 18:41

Quote from: Annie on January 02, 2022, 15:44

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)

Sorry, I'm not sure what information here you are referring too? I agreed with you that RPI is an important statistic, and discussed the value of other factors that I find useful, such as RPD, and also recommended the software I use to obtain them, just in case anyone is interested

How does this contradict my first post to Firn?

Its ok, KKat, you can relax. It was just a little bit of a joke on my part that obviously went horribly wrong.

I'll try and explain>

You started off by saying "with 2020 and 2021 seeing more significant drops", and prior to that " I am seeing a very real drop in earnings" ... but then ended with a whole lot of stats info from Stock Performer! saying 'It's an invaluable tool if you are running this as a business".  (Confusing part: you are promoting a very expensive analysis tool even though its not helping your income )

There was lots of discussion re RPDs in between. You kept talking RPDs. Firm doesn't see the fuss with RPDs.

My silly Aussie humour kicked in and my thoughts were, if Firn's income is going up without stats, and yours is going down (with lots of stats) then maybe Firn should be the one giving us all advice.

But its just a joke. Being an accountant, I am a stats person myself but I can see the funny side of it all. The joke is on me as well. I also know Firn's port and she has put a lot of hard work into her shoots, has created some very good stock imagery, and has done extremely well in a relatively short period of time in a very difficult market.

Anyway, the bottom line is: To each his own. You like stats, I like stats, Firn doesn't. No one is right or wrong, its what works for us individually. And of course, the absolute bottom line: CONTENT is KING.


(In case you're wondering, my photo sales are doing fine, but it's video income where I have lost money. I have the wrong content that can withstand the income drop with SS's video subs and the fall in the Aussie Tourism market. I need different video content.)

Thanks for coming back to clarify, and no harm done.

My comments about income drop were related specifically to Shutterstock, (as the thread was about Shutterstock Levels). At one point many years back, Shutterstock sales accounted for around 70% of my income but the ratio has changed over the years, as I've simultaneously added to other sites. Other sites are now more than picking up the slack from Shutterstock and, although I wouldn't want to lose my Shutterstock earnings, I have spread things out to reduce the dependancy.

I too come from an accounts background, (from many years back), and value statistical information to help me ascertain where to concentrate my efforts. Shutterstock were my number one site for monthly earnings until 2021, but for at least a few of the months, other sites knocked them into 2nd or even third place. During lockdown, when I've been unable to travel, I've been concentrating on uploading the balance of my portfolio to other sites and, so far, the efforts are paying off. 2021 is marginally up overall on 2020, despite an 18% drop in annual income on Shutterstock.

My portfolio is approx 75% travel and wildlife, so it's difficult to tell how much of that Shutterstock loss is due to market conditions, increased competition or buyers changing suppliers. Hopefully 2022 will quickly see the back of the Covid pandemic and will be able to get back to something a bit more normal.

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'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 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?

I used to be very active on the Shutterstock forums, but stopped posting many years back after several of my ideas got copied. However, I still read them and it's why I'm familiar with Firn and Annie's work.

Here I will remain anonymous for a number of personal reasons.

I made $190 last month on shutterstock and  My income has not reset to zero yet. anyone having this issue ?