Doug Jensen

32 downloads for $947.66. That is an average of $29.61 per sale, which is 20% lower than my $36.38 average so far this year. But I am ahead of my $100/day goal for the month. My average is $101.15 per day since January 1st so I am still on track to meet my goal of $100 per day for the entire year.

Mr. Carrot, I don't care what your day job is or about your success outside of stock. Don't try to change the subject to something that has nothing to do with stock. Many of us have successful day jobs and stock is just for fun and pocket money. Please don't try to pretend that money is not important to you, go back and read your own posts. If money is not important then the commission changes shouldn't matter to you. Stop giving me crap and go out and shoot.

Mr Carrot, you are entitled to believe this is true if it makes you feel better. I completely disagree. I see that you have 11 videos in your portfolio. is that due to living in an area that has nothing to shoot? Do you live in a box that has white walls and no way to go outside and see the world? Don't try to tell me it isn't about hard work and being smart. If anyone who is not making the income they would like wants to know who is responsible, they just have to look in the mirror to see the person that is holding them back from success.

No, I have already addressed this elsewhere. Rockets are a very small part of my sales and they take a hell of a lot of time to go shoot. My best sellers are things anyone could shoot if they wanted to invest the time. However, I would say that people who don't live in North America and/or cannot write fluently in English are at a disadvantage.

The reality is that most people have not done what it takes to earn an income that they would be satisfied with. I HAVE EARNED EVERY CENT OF MY INCOME. If it makes you feel bad that others are more successful, try working harder and smarter and maybe you can be successful too.

One of the biggest problems with Shutterstock is a lack of data reporting, so it is difficult to quickly crunch numbers to discover trends, problems, etc. For the most part, June was an ordinary month. I earned $3385 from 106 downloads making my average $31.93. June 2019 was $2967 from 82 downloads, making my average $36.18. So the average commission was down 13%, but my overall earnings were up +16%. However, I have more clips in my portfolio now than I did a year ago, so it is tempting to call it a decrease in sales. it all depends on how you want to look at it. But ultimately, I've got $3385 more in my pocket on June 30 than I had on June 1. In fact, I earned almost $400 in June just from clips that I uploaded in June. I've never seen clips sell that fast before. There was some strange stuff once or twice during the month. I normally average 2-4 sales per day. One day I had 24. I've never had more than 10 in my entire time at SS. Fortunately there were a couple of $170 ones mixed in so it added up to $400, but most of them were in the $1.50 - $3.00 range with no location shown. It was as if someone came in with a subscription plan and was grabbing some of my best clips. The subject matter was all over the place, so clearly it was a single buyer just grabbing a bunch of my best clips. Another day there was a flurry of sales between $3 - $4. That kind of stuff bothers me, but whatcha gonna do? As long as the average commission stays high, I'll take the good with the bad. As I have said before, I can't predict what will happen in the future and I won't make any changes based on other people's predictions of disaster. I have planted my seeds, now I just have to see what the harvest brings. Here's the way I crunch the numbers: I have $158,000 in lifetime earnings. I have 8900 clips in my portfolio. That means each clip has earned an average of $17.50, including the thousands of clips that have never sold even once. I can edit, grade, render, and create all the keywords and descriptions for 12 clips per hour. 12 clips x $17.50 = $210 per hour. And those 8900 clips will continue to earn for many years to come, even if I stopped uploading today, so my hourly income from those clips will keep right on rising. This is a great racket. Maybe not as good as it once was, but it still pays pretty well.

The reality is . . .

I don't have a special deal with Shutterstock, but If it makes you feel better to think the playing field isn't level, go right ahead.

I agree. This is not a thread for bitching or predicting what might happen, let's stay focused on actual numbers or projected numbers based on what might happen if recent changes were applied to sales figures from previous years or months.

I don't believe luck has anything to do with it. Everyone's success, or lack thereof, is due to the work we put into planting our seeds long ago. And yes, I will be reset to Level 1 in January. I've crunched the numbers and that will cost me about $3000 in the first quarter of 2021 and then I'll be back to normal for the rest of the year. Big deal. You won't find me running around crying and threatening to close my account. This is just the normal ups and downs of business. It is a fact of life that any self-employed person deals with every day. A lot of people around here just need to grow up and show some professionalism.

I don't have an explanation. I shoot, grade, add good metadata, and upload the best clips I can of subject matter that I think will be in demand by customers. After that, it is totally out of my hands. But those steps are very important.

If it makes you feel better to think that I'm succeeding by having access to something you don't, go ahead and believe it. In reality, there isn't much demand for rocket launches. Out of the last 20 clips I've sold, only one was a rocket launch and that was clear back on June 16th. I shoot rockets because it is fun. My sales are well-rounded and cover all kinds of subject matter.

Well, having a growing portfolio does put an unknown factor into the equation for overall income, which then makes it harder to compare year over year performance for the enitre portfolio. I would agree with that. But the size of a portfolio shouldn't have any direct effect on average income per download. Whatever my average commission is per sale, it doesn't matter if I have 100 clips or 10,000. If that number is going up, which it is, that is good. And it flies in the face of everyone who was saying a couple months ago that the new subscription plans were going to slash our commissions to a fraction of what they had been. Why am I seeing an increase? The sky is not falling.

I fart in your general direction.

Do I have to put together a PowerPoint presentation on this? I get paid 30% now and would have gotten paid 30% if the system had not changed. That is how the new system has effected me. It has not made one dime of difference. That is the answer to the question posed by this thread. What do you not understand about that? Not everyone has a sob story to share. However, my revenue per download has increased, not because of the new system, but because customers are paying more for my clips than they have in the past. Two separate things. If that is obtuse, so be it.