Quote from: michaeldb on November 05, 2015, 17:33

"Image collection expanded 49%". In one quarter!!?? That was a shock to me.

yeah. but it was all marijuana shots.

is the "cute kitten with piles of marijuana and matches" niche already covered? we could do couple of thousands of that during xmas holidays

Quote from: Shelma1 on November 06, 2015, 07:38

Quote from: michaeldb on November 05, 2015, 17:33

"Image collection expanded 49%". In one quarter!!?? That was a shock to me.

yeah. but it was all marijuana shots.

+10 
and he is still proliferating ...
he is ss own  energizer rabbit and the reason why "we have xxxxxxxx new images every day"

by this time next year, all the reviewers will be seeing everything out of focus
and wrong wb and poor condition of lighting
due to 2nd hand smoke

Or, some 20 Year old will call it a new trend...LOL

49% is really hard to believe.  They can of course claim any number they want, because there's no practical way to verify or disprove it, without deep access to their database - and even then, you'd be relying on date stamps which can easily be changed and don't have to be correct to begin with.   It's not like a company's financials, which can - in principal - be audited by an outsider. 

The huge growth in the archive no doubt sounds good to shareholders.   They won't realize that half of it is bogus icons, and shots of marijuana.

the growth of their archive is really wild.  Shutterstock can't keep up this pace of growth for long imo.  Not unless they branch out in a lot of new areas.  It's going to start getting tougher and I think that is reflected in the the stock price which is well below its all time high.

I pray we get a new site that is fresh and has a system of 50/50 split. across the board. That site will win the hearts and minds in 30 Days. Jon Walks away with a Billion and swears thats the best commission he could have paid.  Are we really that stupid? I guess so.

We've had many new 50/50 sites and some that pay us more.  The problem is us, not the sites.  The only way for us to get a better deal would be if we all only uploaded to sites that pay 50/50 or better but that's not going to happen.  So it will make absolutely no difference if we get a fresh new 50/50 site because the vast majority of people will carry on uploading to the established sites and the vast majority of buyers will carry on using them.

I would be quite happy only uploading to alamy and Pond5 if everyone else did the same but unfortunately that's never going to happen.  It would be even better if contributors owned a majority share in a site with a 50/50 split but it seems like that's another impossibility.

Quote from: Rinderart on November 08, 2015, 00:56

I pray we get a new site that is fresh and has a system of 50/50 split. across the board. That site will win the hearts and minds in 30 Days. Jon Walks away with a Billion and swears thats the best commission he could have paid.  Are we really that stupid? I guess so.

We've had many new 50/50 sites and some that pay us more.  The problem is us, not the sites.  The only way for us to get a better deal would be if we all only uploaded to sites that pay 50/50 or better but that's not going to happen.  So it will make absolutely no difference if we get a fresh new 50/50 site because the vast majority of people will carry on uploading to the established sites and the vast majority of buyers will carry on using them.

I would be quite happy only uploading to alamy and Pond5 if everyone else did the same but unfortunately that's never going to happen.  It would be even better if contributors owned a majority share in a site with a 50/50 split but it seems like that's another impossibility.

I am only uploading to three sites, one pays 50%, 100%, and 30% right now, it's an insult and not worth it to go to the sites that pay pennies on the download BUT lets say you are on every site that will accept your footage or photos, at the end of the month those pennies add up, it all adds to the final total and I think that's why people are uploading to those sites.

The prices charged to the customer need to go up and then the sites can afford to pay better commissions,  the sites/agencies can play a huge roll here in changing the industry from a race to the bottom to a profitable business for them as well not just us.     The costs to run servers or cloud storage are going up, 4K is coming, massive pricing change has to happen or they will all go out of business, you can't cover those kind of costs with what little money video and photos sell for today, the prices have to go up and be passed on to the customer just like in any other business in the world.

The cost of building materials goes up? the contractor builds that into his/her quote, the cost of oil goes up? the refineries build that into the wholesale gas price. "our wholesale costs went up" is the common refrain when asked why the prices went up.

Yet in this industry people are working for pennies.....and losing money. (the contributors).

What everyone needs to do is get some basic business plan software, run it, fill in all the blanks and you will see what you really need to charge for your work. 

I take my blizzard and snowstorm clips for example, if the stock prices are set at $500 per clip the customer is still getting a good deal because to hire me for a day to spend that much in time, fuel, and expenses plus gear to chase and get that footage it would cost the customer $2500/day to hire me yet instead of paying $500 they can get my work for $60-$79 via the agencies.  So at $500 a clip they customer is still getting a good deal.

I had two $125 days and now I am on my 5th in a row $10 day.  Control control control.

Quote from: Rinderart on November 08, 2015, 00:56

I pray we get a new site that is fresh and has a system of 50/50 split. across the board. That site will win the hearts and minds in 30 Days. Jon Walks away with a Billion and swears thats the best commission he could have paid.  Are we really that stupid? I guess so.

We've had many new 50/50 sites and some that pay us more.  The problem is us, not the sites.  The only way for us to get a better deal would be if we all only uploaded to sites that pay 50/50 or better but that's not going to happen.  So it will make absolutely no difference if we get a fresh new 50/50 site because the vast majority of people will carry on uploading to the established sites and the vast majority of buyers will carry on using them.

I would be quite happy only uploading to alamy and Pond5 if everyone else did the same but unfortunately that's never going to happen.  It would be even better if contributors owned a majority share in a site with a 50/50 split but it seems like that's another impossibility.

well said both.
sharpshot, i cannot speak for the others here, and don't intend to 
but the problem is not just us. ask anyone who's been here long time,
they will tell you we all started joining almost all the sites to the right of this page
giving leaf our affliate credit.

but after giving all the work we have, and supporting them,
some with excellent CR eg who? elena, john griffith, douglas, linda ...
 i think .. but cannot remember
the agencies, only the names of the good ppl.
but they did not produce any sales.
in fact, i still have some i fotgot to delete my port from them.

and i still have zero to 10 dls since their inception here on msg.

so it is not our unwillingness to support them. it's not getting the results.
and some, like dt , thinkstock, BigStock,  just go belly up after a great start.
i can tell you we all want a new site, ...but not canva or offset or whatever artsy site...
just the old ss , old is, ... once-reputable sites.

SS is completely flat this month for me...so far anyways.  Have to keep in mind that it all depends on the day and which way the wind is blowing, SS could be smokin next week for all I now and the others in a slump.

It seems to me that since 750 images a month has replaced 25 images a day the first half of the month is always difficult for me, and the last week very very good. We'll see if it works this month.

"During the third quarter we added more content than ever before, growing our library by nearly 6.6 million images, that's 67% more than we added in Q3 of 2014."

http://seekingalpha.com/article/3651626-shutterstock-sstk-jonathan-oringer-on-q3-2015-results-earnings-call-transcript?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-widget

"The backbone of that user experience is ensuring we have both the highest quality and the most diverse selection of content to meet the creative needs of our clients. Product matters."

When does the marijuana leaf spam stop? If they are making false reasons for rejections for common subjects, somebody needs to end this bad bud storm.

I had two sales of 0,08 (!) each yesterday! It's starting to look like Istock at SS. Sorry. This should have been posted in another thread.