Adobe has also lost about 1/3 since its all time high.   It is hard to see how any publicly traded microstock company would be good investment.  Only reason Adobe is still relatively ok is because they are doing many other things.

is it just me or has ss been miserable lately?  i mean besides the summer slowdown that most ports experience?  it's been way less than half of AS for me lately and even istock seems to be doing better this year.

Quote from: yuriy on July 15, 2025, 18:21
is it just me or has ss been miserable lately?  i mean besides the summer slowdown that most ports experience?  it's been way less than half of AS for me lately and even istock seems to be doing better this year.

For me, "miserable" is still a highly positive formulation. It's almost dead!

For me SS still performs the best, usually double than AS, this month is no exception, almost 4 digit income from SS alone until now.

Yes, that's true. And for me, SS sales have become almost completely absent. Few and of very low value (0.10 - 0.15$)

Quote from: DaLiu on July 16, 2025, 08:24
For me SS still performs the best, usually double than AS, this month is no exception, almost 4 digit income from SS alone until now.

This is amazing but I doubt as for me things are entirely opposite. I am seeing from low to lowest.

First two weeks of July were very slow for me both on AS and SS. Europe's on vacation and the US was on 4th July break. This week has been much better and especially on SS. Interestingly, revenue numbers have been much better than previous months.

Quote from: Jaggy on July 16, 2025, 12:36
First two weeks of July were very slow for me both on AS and SS. Europe's on vacation and the US was on 4th July break. This week has been much better and especially on SS. Interestingly, revenue numbers have been much better than previous months.

I hear you Jaggy. SS is still performing, it's Adobe which is completely dead and unfortunately also Istock, after a good run of several months. Everybody his or hers own luck I guess.

I think a major reason why buyers might be shunning ss in favor of adobe or istock is because ss has so much undeclared ai the customer cannot filter out.

Here is someone on Medium boasting about his 5000 ai image experiment where his bestselling site was shutterstock. He made 190 dollars there and 430 overall.

Article is behind paywall, but perhaps some people are on medium.

https://medium.com/@Anthony-Lam/i-uploading-5-000-ai-images-across-multiple-stock-sites-heres-what-happened-f541138ea96e

I took some screenshots, in case the article disappears.

Shutterstock does not seem interested at all in filtering out ai, so for customers this is a problem.

Will be interesting to see what happens with the merger, istock seems to like clean collections.

Overall SS does not seem interested in the needs of the graphic designer customer anymore.

Shutterstock performing very worst for me, Previous years it was in first position in terms of sales and earnings...
With decrease in sales and earnings every month, it dropped to third place... Performing much worst than Getty Images...

With around 25-35$ daily average earnings in previous years..it dropped to 6-10$ daily average at present...

Where as Adobe Stock performing Stable from last 2-3 years

Quote from: cobalt on July 26, 2025, 11:50
I think a major reason why buyers might be shunning ss in favor of adobe or istock is because ss has so much undeclared ai the customer cannot filter out.

Here is someone on Medium boasting about his 5000 ai image experiment where his bestselling site was shutterstock. He made 190 dollars there and 430 overall.

Article is behind paywall, but perhaps some people are on medium.

https://medium.com/@Anthony-Lam/i-uploading-5-000-ai-images-across-multiple-stock-sites-heres-what-happened-f541138ea96e

I took some screenshots, in case the article disappears.

Shutterstock does not seem interested at all in filtering out ai, so for customers this is a problem.

Will be interesting to see what happens with the merger, istock seems to like clean collections.

Overall SS does not seem interested in the needs of the graphic designer customer anymore.

You can go to 'print' and then save it as a PDF then post the article. Easy workaround for paywalls. like the link below.

Shutter5h1t continuing to hold a steady course while on it's journey to being the worst stock agency, as it simultaneously shafts all it's contributors.

Full steam ahead.

Quote from: stocker2011 on August 21, 2025, 00:40
Shutter5h1t continuing to hold a steady course while on it's journey to being the worst stock agency, as it simultaneously shafts all it's contributors.

I used to make $6K/mo on Shutterstock. Now, I struggle to get $600.

Quote from: Stockhome Syndrome on August 21, 2025, 12:00

Quote from: stocker2011 on August 21, 2025, 00:40
Shutter5h1t continuing to hold a steady course while on it's journey to being the worst stock agency, as it simultaneously shafts all it's contributors.

I used to make $6K/mo on Shutterstock. Now, I struggle to get $600.

Sorry to hear that, I used to make between $600-$800 per month, now I make around $100 if I'm lucky.

Quote from: f8 on August 20, 2025, 21:57
...


You can go to 'print' and then save it as a PDF then post the article. Easy workaround for paywalls. like the link below.

that's a copyright violation - or are folks here only concerned when it's their work that's threatened?  where's the response from all those who constantly complain their work is being 'stolen' for ai training?

Quote from: cascoly on August 21, 2025, 18:59

Quote from: f8 on August 20, 2025, 21:57
...


You can go to 'print' and then save it as a PDF then post the article. Easy workaround for paywalls. like the link below.

that's a copyright violation - or are folks here only concerned when it's their work that's threatened?  where's the response from all those who constantly complain their work is being 'stolen' for ai training?

@Cascoly... Thanks for that, I did not know it was a copyright violation. It is okay to do that for "personal use" but to share it is a no no. There is a grey area of sharing for educational purposes as "fair use" but it is a grey area.

Thanks for the insight. You learned me and I hope others too.

Cheers.

Bit rich from the guy who's taken copyrighted works to make money then puts his work behind a paywall.  Shouldn't he be all for his work to be scraped for free by the AI bots. And no I'm not advocating workaround for paywalls. 

Quote from: f8 on August 21, 2025, 19:17

Quote from: cascoly on August 21, 2025, 18:59

Quote from: f8 on August 20, 2025, 21:57
...


You can go to 'print' and then save it as a PDF then post the article. Easy workaround for paywalls. like the link below.

that's a copyright violation - or are folks here only concerned when it's their work that's threatened?  where's the response from all those who constantly complain their work is being 'stolen' for ai training?

@Cascoly... Thanks for that, I did not know it was a copyright violation. It is okay to do that for "personal use" but to share it is a no no. There is a grey area of sharing for educational purposes as "fair use" but it is a grey area.

Thanks for the insight. You learned me and I hope others too.

Cheers.

also, NYTimes currently has a suit charging copyright violations of its content for AI training - that will likely have a larger effect than any of the image related suits.

and fair use also, allows copying small portions of an article or quotes from a book within a larger article.  another factor is whether such use affects the marketing of the original.

1/3 of the month gone and I'm only at $15 for the month. Wow.

Having a horrible month here too, on Shutterstock especially and even Adobe is slow.

I had videos submitted on Shutterstock waiting for review with some since 21 August, and just seen now those have disappeared from the review cue so Shutterstock is not even bothering to review videos now it looks like. 

Quote from: Pacesetter on September 12, 2025, 02:27
Having a horrible month here too, on Shutterstock especially and even Adobe is slow.

I had videos submitted on Shutterstock waiting for review with some since 21 August, and just seen now those have disappeared from the review cue so Shutterstock is not even bothering to review videos now it looks like.

Worst performance from Shutterstock... But Adobe is performing well for me..

But for me, videos in Shutterstock getting reviewed within 24 hours, and 1-2 days delay on weekends..

I had to rant...

https://brutallyhonestmicrostock.com/2025/09/14/switched-off-my-september-stock-sales-have-collapsed-at-shutterstock-pond5/

I don't even make a $1 per day now what! Oh, well off to apply to McDonald's for a job now that actually pays the bills!

Quote from: Pacesetter on September 12, 2025, 02:27

I had videos submitted on Shutterstock waiting for review with some since 21 August, and just seen now those have disappeared from the review cue so Shutterstock is not even bothering to review videos now it looks like.

+1

I think you mean "Alamy also not faring so well, completely devoid of any large sales, it's more of a waiting game there." not "devout".

Alamy has always been low enough volume for me that one or 2 sales can make or break a month there, but the long term trend is still the wrong direction, plus new contributor contract is probably not good.

Sadly I think microstock has been a losing proposition since the sites decided it was easier to squeeze the contributors than be better. It has been a long slide with big drops when Getty worked their magic on iStock and after SS went public and switched to .10 minimum. I left SS at that point. It probably cost me a bit of income, but saved me a bit of dignity and if we had all done that things might have gone differently.