Its not only about portfolio size.
I also depends on average monthly uploads.
In early days of microstock it was possible to compete at a level of 1:1000.
For every 1000 Uploads at shutterstock, contributors were able to upload 1 Image.
Nowadays competition is getting harder and harder. A portfolio with 14000 images was great years ago. Nowadays there are about 2800 Competitors with more than 14.000 files at shutterstock.
Even if your images are better than 90% of the rest at shutterstock, nobody finds your images in this mass volume game.

 

Didnt watch the whole video but his #1 site is earning $600 from 14,000 photos and 1,600 videos??? I realize cost of living varies all over the world but seems to be an incredible amount of work, time and expense for very little return. Not criticizing his work which clearly is very good but more of the ongoing decline of stock.

I've always kept track of return per image per month. At one time, my return from one micro was $2 PIPM. 14,000 images would have been $28,000US per month. A good RPIPM used to be over $1 for good content. Decent content was .25 to .50. Average was .10 to .25.  His is at .04 for good images which is also about what mine is.

At what point do people as a whole consider this a waste of time where the effort isn't worth the return?

At what point do people as a whole consider this a waste of time where the effort isn't worth the return?

Obviously, for the last 3, 4 years, content massively increased as thousands of new contributors came in uploading to stock sites.  I'm hoping now that it's not worth uploading new contents for so many people anymore, thousands will quit and we'll go back to somewhere near the way it used to be.

Quote from: t�tar�t� on March 04, 2021, 05:28

Nowadays there are about 2800 Competitors with more than 14.000 files at shutterstock.

How do you know?  That's an amazing number.

There is a Website providing these numbers of Shutterstock artist.
https://microstockrank.com
Guess Shutterstock is aiming to get it closed
Lolostock  - https://microstockrank.com/shutterstock/contributor/2366-Lolostock

It doesn't tell you anything about sales. It's uploads I think

Quote from: blvdone on March 04, 2021, 07:27

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on March 04, 2021, 07:19

At what point do people as a whole consider this a waste of time where the effort isn't worth the return?

Obviously, for the last 3, 4 years, content massively increased as thousands of new contributors came in uploading to stock sites.  I'm hoping now that it's not worth uploading new contents for so many people anymore, thousands will quit and we'll go back to somewhere near the way it used to be.

Exactly. Which is why I'm asking, how far will these sites continue to drop royalties before people as a whole just stop submitting. The sites clearly have learned we're nowhere near the bottom. They can continue dropping royalties and angering contributors because the line of new contributors who are willing to accept anything is longer than the angered contributors who leave.

I think Shutterstock tried to discourage low earners to upload photos with the new commission tier system.  To be honest, I'm all for that concept.  But the problem is low sales this year with mostly $0.10 subs, unfair video commission tier system and disgustingly low price video subscription.  So, I hope more contributors will un-license portfolio there especially those who had been big sellers there.

Quote from: blvdone on March 04, 2021, 11:13

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on March 04, 2021, 10:52

Quote from: blvdone on March 04, 2021, 07:27

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on March 04, 2021, 07:19

At what point do people as a whole consider this a waste of time where the effort isn't worth the return?

Obviously, for the last 3, 4 years, content massively increased as thousands of new contributors came in uploading to stock sites.  I'm hoping now that it's not worth uploading new contents for so many people anymore, thousands will quit and we'll go back to somewhere near the way it used to be.

Exactly. Which is why I'm asking, how far will these sites continue to drop royalties before people as a whole just stop submitting. The sites clearly have learned we're nowhere near the bottom. They can continue dropping royalties and angering contributors because the line of new contributors who are willing to accept anything is longer than the angered contributors who leave.

I think Shutterstock tried to discourage low earners to upload photos with the new commission tier system.  To be honest, I'm all for that concept.  But the problem is low sales this year with mostly $0.10 subs, unfair video commission tier system and disgustingly low price video subscription.  So, I hope more contributors will un-license portfolio there especially those who had been big sellers there.

But they may also be discouraging a lot of people who produce good sellable content.

They sure do.  I hope that'll be their miscalculation that'll bring them down and roll back what they did last year. 

Part of the problem is every newcomer doesn't realize it's in decline and many don't care. So if they only earn $100 from 10,000 images they wouldn't know any better.

It's:

• Better than nothing
• Better than collecting dust on computer
• Good enough for them
• A hobby so financials like profits matter
• Amazing someone wants to pay anything for their photos
• Helps pay the bills during tough times
• And on and on

I'm sure a lot of people are selling at a loss and don't even know it. Spend time and money on equipment, props, models, gas, and never hit break even.

Portfolio size isnt the important thing at all. There used to be some sort of an Industrial guy with just 4000 images and he was earning well over 5K a month. The last I hear he was shooting assignments only but he said he was 70% down and that was over a year back!  he deactivated his port needless to say!

If its who I think it is I woudn't take those claims too seriously  .

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on March 04, 2021, 14:01

Part of the problem is every newcomer doesn't realize it's in decline and many don't care. So if they only earn $100 from 10,000 images they wouldn't know any better.

It's:

• Better than nothing
• Better than collecting dust on computer
• Good enough for them
• A hobby so financials like profits matter
• Amazing someone wants to pay anything for their photos
• Helps pay the bills during tough times
• And on and on

I'm sure a lot of people are selling at a loss and don't even know it. Spend time and money on equipment, props, models, gas, and never hit break even.

If you have the equipment and travel to those places anyway the cost is in effect zero. I gave up with models as it lost money. Now I just do stuff that is extremely easy to produce....it doesn't sell much but it only costs me time that I would probably be wasting anyway. To invest money in production costs  seems very risky to me at this point.

Over the years, how many people used the equipment they already had vs buying new/better equipment because of stock? Better computer, camera, lenses, bag, tripod, etc. I'd bet a large percentage of people bought better gear once they figured out they could earn money. I started with a Nikon D50 and by the time I stopped investing time in stock I was using a Canon 5DMII.

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on March 04, 2021, 14:01

Part of the problem is every newcomer doesn't realize it's in decline and many don't care. So if they only earn $100 from 10,000 images they wouldn't know any better.

It's:

• Better than nothing
• Better than collecting dust on computer
• Good enough for them
• A hobby so financials like profits matter
• Amazing someone wants to pay anything for their photos
• Helps pay the bills during tough times
• And on and on

I'm sure a lot of people are selling at a loss and don't even know it. Spend time and money on equipment, props, models, gas, and never hit break even.

This exact same post could be written 5, 10 or 15 years ago. There was someone somewhere saying the exact same thing about us when we were starting. There is a great quote from Nobel priced writer Ivo Andric who said - Every generation thinks that they are living through crucial events in history, but the truth is history is just repeating itself over and over again.

Yes that's what I'm getting at. Many newcomers, including me 15 years ago, thought at that time that earning anything was great. The old time stockers weren't happy at all. Now a lot of us are the old timers. Every year the income bar gets set lower and the newcomers don't know or care. That's how its always been.