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Author Topic: Missed minimum payout for the first time in 8 years  (Read 26530 times)

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« on: August 18, 2020, 09:30 »
+7
missed minimum payout for the first time in 8 years (bar first few months), have my minimum set at $100, first time in 8 years no pay out, $93 for july, awesomeness

my best month on ss was $800, oh how the mighty have fallen


« Reply #1 on: August 18, 2020, 10:00 »
+9
So sorry for you. I've pulled all my work from them and went exclusive for video at Pond5 as a way to try and stave off canibalising cheap video sales at SS rather than full priced sales at other agencies.

Does it not bother you that all those sales at SS now needed to make just $90 may be wasted and that you may actually earn far more in the long run by just dropping them completely and working with a few select agencies?

We had a single sale yesterday on P5 where we earned $48. I can't help thinking that if we stuck it out at SS we would still be annoyed at them instead of just moving on and making plans elsewhere.

Your experience of going from $800 to less than $100 would indicate to me that it makes no sense to sell at SS at all. At worst you are probably looking at parity by ditching them completely. All this before your New Year's gift in January.

Shelma1

  • stockcoalition.org
« Reply #2 on: August 18, 2020, 11:13 »
+20
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.

« Reply #3 on: August 18, 2020, 11:56 »
+17

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.

Shelma1

  • stockcoalition.org
« Reply #4 on: August 18, 2020, 12:17 »
+3

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.


« Reply #5 on: August 18, 2020, 12:36 »
+18
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.




« Reply #6 on: August 18, 2020, 12:45 »
+4
Quote
If you and everyone else had disabled your ports on 6/15, how different things would be today.

dry your salty tears, i've stopped submitting,

« Reply #7 on: August 18, 2020, 14:38 »
+5
The harsh truth is, SS and iS might be the worst, most exploitative agencies around but they are also the only agencies that bring in consistent money for contributors like myself. Adobe has been a big zero the last couple of months. On Alamy, you're lucky if you make a sale every couple of months. So if contributors like myself shut off our SS ports, we won't see any money. And we need the money.

So the protests are great but judging by responses from SS, they don't really seem to care. They're okay even if 80 percent of their contributors migrate elsewhere and if their trustpilot score drops to zero because most probably, they're headed to dump the company to some rich buyer and make billions. But people who aren't millionaires like myself need the money and will take whatever we get as long as there's a little bit of money to be made. Those are the times we live in.

The Stock Coalition made a deal with Pond5 and that's great. Great for video contributors. But people who sell images just can't afford to shut off their SS ports and move to Pond5 because pond5 hasn't sold a single image for some of us in years. They care as much for image ports as SS does for contributors.

Shelma1

  • stockcoalition.org
« Reply #8 on: August 18, 2020, 14:46 »
+7
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.

« Reply #9 on: August 18, 2020, 15:41 »
+4


If you and everyone else had disabled your ports on 6/15, how different things would be today.
 
...
So its better to get much less over a period of years than to sacrifice two weeks of royalties once?...


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.

sorry, that's not a fair comparison though - whether you boycott or not, you're still getting paid less, so any boycott loss is additional, not instead of, other losses

and you're still working on the assumption that the boycott would attract enough participants to make SS take notice - and as this was only a token gesture, SS knew it wouldnt last

deciding whether to keep a portfolio on SS is a personal/business decision - thinking it would change SS is wishful thinking

« Reply #10 on: August 18, 2020, 16:23 »
+2
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. 

« Reply #11 on: August 18, 2020, 16:26 »
+3
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.

There is absolutely no evidence to suggest any of that is true.  None.  Its not happened with IS or any other agency who did similar.  SS arent stupid and know this.  There are plenty of uploaders, plenty of new recruits.  Most uploaders arent on this group or aware of any "boycott" - its a tiny self-selecting sample.  Lots of them probably dont even realise theres a paycut judging by FB group and their forum posts from confused individuals.
SS planned this, modelled for things like this and ultimately calculated its going to win short term and bigger long term.
What SS did is nothing new.  The boycott threats are nothing new. Its all happened before and the outcomes are known.

« Reply #12 on: August 18, 2020, 17:25 »
+1
I wonder If they could pull out paying 5 or even 1 cent per download in the future. Actually I even hope they will try. To charge hosting to contributors is also an idea worth considering. There is space for huge discounts plans for those who sell a lot.

Shelma1

  • stockcoalition.org
« Reply #13 on: August 18, 2020, 17:47 »
+1
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.

« Reply #14 on: August 25, 2020, 22:21 »
+3
From the "your mileage may vary" file:

Somehow despite the SS changes (because of?) I have been making more -- compared to 2018 and 2019 -- each month since May. Yes I'm getting a lot of .10 subs but I'm also seeing many more than 1.00 each. Have they also messed with search around the time of the royalty shift?

I had taken a wait and see approach and so far I'm glad I did. Of course, come January if I see a huge drop like we are all expecting i may still stop uploading or even yank the port.

(FWIW I've been at this 10+ years, have a five figure port and a four figure monthly income at SS.)
« Last Edit: August 26, 2020, 07:45 by stockmarketer »

« Reply #15 on: August 26, 2020, 07:04 »
+3
missed minimum payout for the first time in 8 years (bar first few months), have my minimum set at $100, first time in 8 years no pay out, $93 for july, awesomeness

my best month on ss was $800, oh how the mighty have fallen

I never liked the almost cult like worshipping of shutterstock. So many contributors were exclusive with ss even without them having an exclusive program. I'm not saying this is you. I'm just saying we are where we are because of contributors. The one and only solution there is, is for all contributors to spread all their work as far and wide as possible. Competition is the only thing that companies like ss understand. And so many contributors gave them a free ride by not helping their competition or potential competition. There are way too many gaps in the collections of smaller agencies and buyers will buy from agencies with the best collections. Makes no difference how much marketing an agency does if a buyer gets on a site and can't find what they want. We can keep blaming the agencies, but the fact is too many contributors adored the high selling agencies and that is what created this situation.

Horizon

    This user is banned.
« Reply #16 on: August 29, 2020, 06:31 »
+8
Well I haven't missed payout since the start in 2005 but lets face it its game over with SS. Really game over! there are some members there who used to earn 8 or 9 grand a month and they are down to well under 1000 bucks and thats within the last 3 years.
Myself is down about 70% and fair enough I havent uploaded anything for the past year and a half but its still absolutely terrible. Not even worth the effort!


marthamarks

« Reply #17 on: August 31, 2020, 00:19 »
+3
Not even worth the effort!

I'd have to correct you there and say it's not even close to worth the effort!

Horizon

    This user is banned.
« Reply #18 on: August 31, 2020, 01:35 »
+2
Not even worth the effort!

I'd have to correct you there and say it's not even close to worth the effort!

Youre right! not even close. Never experienced a stock-agency thats gone down the drain so fast. Just by a flip of a switch. OFF!

Tenebroso

« Reply #19 on: August 31, 2020, 04:37 »
+1
A long time ago, many users have commented that the SS is something serious that we will soon see reality, they are dead.

It was evident that the problems of the SS were serious, but very serious.






" ....... Tenebroso
Reply #127 on: March 06, 2020, 15:29
QuoteModify#link0
The new collaborators I suppose ...... that in SS ....



I suppose the new collaborators will leave. It is not about tanned skin or lack of professionalism or weak mind. I believe that if someone comes to SS now, they leave before 30 days. Since they now use all the variety of excuses to reject.

There is a comment on the official forum of many fewer images, some millions of images less, will they be cleaning old files? They are no longer interested in being the Agency with the most files? I think that seeing the behavior, there is no doubt that they are doing very badly economically. It seems that we will soon know the extent of the real situation of a huge failure.


I think the situation is more serious than we can imagine......"


https://www.microstockgroup.com/shutterstock-com/ss-continues-to-deteriorate/msg546533/#msg546533

Uncle Pete

  • Great Place by a Great Lake - My Home Port
« Reply #20 on: August 31, 2020, 11:45 »
+3
From the "your mileage may vary" file:

Somehow despite the SS changes (because of?) I have been making more -- compared to 2018 and 2019 -- each month since May. Yes I'm getting a lot of .10 subs but I'm also seeing many more than 1.00 each. Have they also messed with search around the time of the royalty shift?

I had taken a wait and see approach and so far I'm glad I did. Of course, come January if I see a huge drop like we are all expecting i may still stop uploading or even yank the port.

(FWIW I've been at this 10+ years, have a five figure port and a four figure monthly income at SS.)

Some people, like you, are doing better. Some are doing worse, like me. But the people I've heard from, that I trust, like you, and who had high quality collections, and made money, are all doing the same or better. This is during a terrible business downturn.

So the impression and conclusion, shouting and protests, that "everyone" is making less, is not supported. Plus, while I'm not a SS agent, employee or secret paid forum disinformation specialist (as sometimes is claimed if anyone says anything reasonable), and I'm NOT defending the 10c minimum download promise. Just that the facts and flow of angry posts, are not supported by actual data of what's going on.

I'm pretty much getting, in round numbers, 30% of what I used to on SS. I don't have a premium collection or top material for Microstock. I'm getting what I deserve. No I'm not uploading and yes I'm disappointed and find no motivation to add anything new.


H2O

    This user is banned.
« Reply #21 on: August 31, 2020, 12:53 »
+3
I would say that just about every contributor must be really angry with the way Shutterstock has treated them, myself included having spent years uploading and key wording, I have put a great deal of time and money into their success.

I have stopped uploading and will never upload again, this is probably the position of many contributors, I take my hat off to those who have deleted or disabled their portfolio's, at the moment I can't do this, but as soon as I can I will.

The reality is the talent has walked and it will never go back, so the site will just slide down the rankings.

Part of this will be caused by all the negative comments about what they have done, they have miscalculated in as much as they seem to have forgotten that the people who sell on the site are also buyers and major influencers in Adervetising, Design Agencies and Corporate design and advertising departments.

Shutterstock is finished as a Company only they don't know it yet, nobody likes to be treated like a slave.

« Reply #22 on: August 31, 2020, 13:40 »
+5
My portfolio of 6,800 has been gone since June.  I have made payout in July and will again make payout in August with ZERO assets online.  Another few weeks and that will stop completely.  Well, it should.

« Reply #23 on: September 01, 2020, 04:20 »
+4
  ;D You are absolutely right. In any case you would still hear people on this forum and on the official one whining about how they cannot afford to loose the income that 1c images gives them to buy a new camera strap. A few would gladly pay for hosting too.

I wonder If they could pull out paying 5 or even 1 cent per download in the future. Actually I even hope they will try. To charge hosting to contributors is also an idea worth considering. There is space for huge discounts plans for those who sell a lot.

« Reply #24 on: September 01, 2020, 10:38 »
0
I had the fewest downloads in August than I have had in any month since I started in 2009 - pathetic!  And also missed the $100 payout.  Very depressing.


 

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