<p>
 Via The Shutterstock Blog.</p>

what scale did they use on the total $ paid out graph? it looks like 10M per horizontal line near the top, but what is it at the bottom?

I'd love to see that graph have a linear or other reasonable axis and include SS take plus total number of sales plus total number of images for sale. Also a breakout of video would be interesting.

I guess whoever was saying it is all going to Europe wasn't so far off.

Even better would be payout per image

ETA looks like they have 125 million images according to the landing page so about 92c per image per year last year I guess. There was a thread on here somewhere cataloguing collection size a while ago, anyone got a link? Should be easy to come up with a graph using that thread and the figures in the SS post.

Not sure who they're targeting with this graphic. If they're recruiting new contributors, that might explain it - certainly for those of us who are contributors, we focus on our own situation and the increase (or decrease) in payouts. I wish they'd just get the basics right - fixing bugs and generating new sources of revenue - versus spending time on window dressing.

I did find a couple of things interesting. One is that it if you add up the payouts from 2010 to 2016 and compare that to the revenue for those years (from the 2016 annual report), payouts were 24.8% of revenue. They have claimed several times that they pay out about 30% of revenue in royalties (28% from the 2016 earnings call transcript).

The other is the relationship of payouts in the US versus revenue earned there. In the 2016 annual report, SS stated that 2/3 of their revenue came from outside the US - so 1/3 is from the US. Looking at the 2016 payout information, "The Americas", which is more than just the US, received 10.9% of the payout total. In other words, those of us based in the US are not pulling our weight with respect to addressing our own market's needs well.

So much for local content

"Looking at the 2016 payout information, "The Americas", which is more than just the US, received 10.9% of the payout total." I assumed  they had a rather "idiosyncratic" definition of the Americas i.e excluding the US  . As a piece of management information its close to useless....well actually helping me as a contributor it is useless.

Quote from: Pauws99 on May 24, 2017, 16:59

"Looking at the 2016 payout information, "The Americas", which is more than just the US, received 10.9% of the payout total." I assumed  they had a rather "idiosyncratic" definition of the Americas i.e excluding the US  . As a piece of management information its close to useless....well actually helping me as a contributor it is useless.

I thought about that, but if you add up all the numbers they do report it's $114.7680 million so I think "The Americas" has to include the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, etc.

Yes you are right....seems very odd those that say Microstock is no longer viable in countries having a high cost of living may have a point. If it were broken down by country it would be more testable as standards of living in europe vary widely.

Here is a quick chart using number of images as reported on SS's front page plus the payouts report. Eta deleted as SS may not like it and close my account.

Basically percentage increase in collection size has been outpacing percentage increase in payout since 2012/2013 so drop in RPI since then. 2016 collection grew something like 75% (71M to 125M) while payouts only 16% ($99.1M to 115M) for example.

Thanks for the chart, Justanotherphotographer.

Goes to show that SS's infographic is pretty meaningless, and not that positive if you look at the RPI over the years.

Thanks no problem. It gets even worse if you plot % change in collection size against % change in payout size and watch the lines diverge by an ever widening margin over the last few years. This business model is, to borrow a phrase, "unsustainable". For contributors at least.

Shows the contrast between istock or the old fotolia and shutterstock. You would/ did catch a ban from those for looking into or criticising their figures while ss has engaged in conversation instead. Good to see that some of the old community relations is still going on. Maybe they are learning from fotolia's apparent recent change in the way they deal with contributors?

Me too!I added more images but income down

Looks like I got about 1/30th of the total payout in 2004. I wish I'd been able to hang on to that percentage 

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on May 26, 2017, 00:00

Shows the contrast between istock or the old fotolia and shutterstock. You would/ did catch a ban from those for looking into or criticising their figures while ss has engaged in conversation instead. Good to see that some of the old community relations is still going on. Maybe they are learning from fotolia's apparent recent change in the way they deal with contributors?

My understanding is that we are still under caution not to reveal any data concerning SS that might be useful to a rival company, on pain of having our accounts closed.

Didn't realise that. I will delete my posts. Though I haven't revealed any data that isn't already publicly available, it is just the stuff from their post and the figures on their front page. Better safe than sorry.