Just run through my yearly SS figures so the first 12 months of the level system.

Firstly, January as expected was a huge drop.  Over 80% decrease in revenue.

One thing that did surprise me for video in particular is just how random the RPD for video was regardless of level.  The graphs are all over the place throughout the year.  So many special offers/giveaways and so on the thing varies by a factor of 3 from month to month despite actual volume remaining fairly constant.
Both do show a shallow increase throughout the year which makes the reset even hard to stomach.  Somewhat surprising of an increasing average despite constant levels though.

Data set is likely large enough to not have huge fluctuations from individual freak sales.

Overall average for year RPD for video $12.40 and images $0.72
(Contrast with roughly $19 video and $0.98 before the new system).

Surprised at how low dec was for me. Seems like shutterstock buyers went on a break almost mid Dec. Will try doing this analysis today

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%

Quote from: Firn on January 01, 2022, 07:05

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%

That's an impressive increase and congratulations to you. It's nice to see that some people are still on an upward trajectory. Your Shutterstock figures are very close to my Adobe returns over the period.

Do you mind if I ask whether you significantly increased your portfolio and what your RPD comparison was?

Also, out of curiosity, can I ask when you started submitting? My income grew year on year from 2008-2015, but has declined a little each year since 2016, with 2020 and 2021 seeing more significant drops.

I didn't join Adobe until 2015, and I'm still seeing year on year growth there, although I am expecting it to plateau at some point.

Thank you. Actually Adobe is the agency with the smalles increase for me, on some months I even had a decrease compared to last year 

I increased my SS portfolio by about 2500 images, same as every year as I have a somewhat regular upload shedule. I don't know my RPD, but I increased my port by around 28%, but my earnings increased by 107%, so my RPD should also have increased.
I started submitting at the beginning of 2019, but my first year where I mostly tried to submit illustrations wasn't very sucessfull.

Quote from: KuriousKat on January 01, 2022, 07:34

Quote from: Firn on January 01, 2022, 07:05

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%

That's an impressive increase and congratulations to you. It's nice to see that some people are still on an upward trajectory. Your Shutterstock figures are very close to my Adobe returns over the period.

Do you mind if I ask whether you significantly increased your portfolio and what your RPD comparison was?

Also, out of curiosity, can I ask when you started submitting? My income grew year on year from 2008-2015, but has declined a little each year since 2016, with 2020 and 2021 seeing more significant drops.

I didn't join Adobe until 2015, and I'm still seeing year on year growth there, although I am expecting it to plateau at some point.

Thank you. Actually Adobe is the agency with the smalles increase for me, on some months I even had a decrease compared to last year 

I increased my SS portfolio by about 2500 images, same as every year as I have a somewhat regular upload shedule. I don't know my RPD, but I increased my port by around 28%, but my earnings increased by 107%, so my RPD should also have increased.
I started submitting at the beginning of 2019, but my first year where I mostly tried to submit illustrations wasn't very sucessfull.

Interesting, and thanks.

My income steadily increased for 7 years on Shutterstock before it reached a plateau and then started dropping. I'm watching Adobe with interest, as I'm 6 years in and still climbing. There definitely does appear to be a point at which you hit critical mass.

My uploads are fairly consistent each year, and my RPD rose steadily on Shutterstock year on year, largely due to the incremental increases as each level was achieved. From 2015 the RPD remained consistent until the commission change in 2019, and has been dropping since then.

However, you mention your portfolio growth against income growth and assume that your RPD must have increased, but that's not necessarily the case, as RPD is a calculation based purely on income over downloads.

For example, 10000 downloads per annum earning $10,000 = RPD $1, but 15000 downloads earning $12,000 the following year is a 20% increase in earnings but an RPD of only 75c.

On the surface of things, 20% income growth looks great, but the reality here is that you are only earning 75% of the rate you had the year before.

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.

I agree 100% - it's all relative, and you can only work with what is relevant to you and your business.

I think the fixation with RPD is simply that it is the only true comparison that we can make that shows real increase or loss regarding what the actual companies are paying us.

If you tell me you are up 100% in December 2021 compared to December 2020, then that's impressive on the surface of things. However, if that increase is from $100 to $200, maybe it's not so impressive if I am reporting a 20% drop, but that's from $1000 a month to $800.

Also, RPD is a big factor in business planning and projections, as a drop in RPD on Shutterstock means I have to either upload more to compensate, or earn that loss back from another site.

I care very much about RPD, as I would prefer 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 think we are both agreeing from a different direction! I'm certainly not looking to argue, as I'm sure we are all agreed that bottom line profit is always the priority.

I am just using RPD as a fairly accurate way to extrapolate that forward to predict my earnings and create a meaningful budget for the year.

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 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.

Back to the topic: I calculated my RPIs for the past year and it was very encouraging. For my top 5 areas, I found 3 photoshoot subjects that have performed really well, that I can keep shooting. The other 2 were real surprises. Subjects that I had forgotten about but show a lot of potential. And then I compared it all to what I have been earning via direct sales. And that topped the lot!  So more of the latter for me as well. 

Of course, as Cascoly said on another thread, all ratios are based on past performance, but I find that positive recent movements are a great guide to what to keep doing. You keep monitoring it, and if the RPIs fall, then you stop. Plus, the analysis exercise itself, even though I thought I knew my numbers really well, always brings up a couple of surprises.

This may sound like a lot of hard work to some people, but its not really. Its actually a short exercise on a regular basis, once you have it all set up.

Bottom Line: Ratios only show potential, but then you have to decide what you can create that would increase sales in this area and not compete with your existing images.

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.

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.

Maybe the way forward is to find a way around these evil startups if and when there is away and often there isn't, the taxi industry lost worldwide to Uber....

I'm wondering though if at least in Canada and the US the jig will soon be up for the gig economy, it's not fun anymore and it's a ticket to bankruptcy.   The few that are still making living at this?, good for them but so many are not anymore and same is happening with those food deliver startups as their commissions are cut, it's the standard startup playbook they all follow, their businesses are not sustainable, that's why they raise VC funding, the banks won't lend them a penny.

I was reading that Oringer is now in Miami working with some other startup people but Stan is the guy in charge and it's take it or leave it with him even for his own employees, if they don't think it's ethical to screw contributors the door is open for them to leave too.

Sad to see people like Jon go they way they did because he he started Shutterstock from scratch, his own programming, photography, then paying a few models and finally launching the company with his own money so he knows what it's like to start with nothing, he's been there but I guess once they take VC investment or do an IPO it's all about the shareholders and maximum disrespect for employees, contributors and customers.

If I was Jon Oringer, I would have had to cut costs as well to keep shareholders happy and I'd start with the office space, what do they need an entire floor of the Empire state building for?.

Stan...he's just another ignorant, clueless ruthless MBA they hired.

I guess the only semi-ethical stock agency left is Pond5, far from perfect these days as they have investors to answer to and they did that awful deal with Reuters and Newsflare which sunk all the editorial contributors in 2019 but right now I'd still say Pond5 and Adobe are the only two semi-ethical websites left.

Surprised at how low dec was for me. Seems like shutterstock buyers went on a break almost mid Dec. Will try doing this analysis today

Same here.

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?