Gaurav Aryal

I reached the first ever payout limit of $35 this month. I had total sales of $4.55 including 1 OD, 1 S&O and 1 sub of $.65 in August and reached a total of $ 38.86. Augustwas comparatively better than June and July. I have a small portfolio. With some recent sales, I was increasing my portfolio of 200 photos. Then, the June happened that did not give any further motivation to upload anything for 10 cents I am from a developing country and any foreign currency earning is good. However, .10 sales is not worth anything. I think SS has started payout process as the current earning is just 0.10 for one sale I made in September. I am not sure how much will I receive after taxes and processing costs of transfer. I am pretty sure it does not even cover the cost of air blower to clean dust from my lens and sensor.

As far as I understand, Google will only display a badge that says the image is licenseable. A potential buyer who finds a particular photo interesting will know that the image can be licensed, then clicks on the image which opens the actual licensing page eg Shutterstock or any other stock photography sites. I don't think there will be different pricing or the royalty we receive as contributors for that. Only way we benefit would be that a potential buyer can reach to our photographs more easily from search engine and make a purchase decision. If the potential buyer decides to purchase that image as single license or on demand sales instead of subscription, our earning will be higher than the regular 10 cents. No guarantee the buyer will not purchase bulk subscription plan. It is a Shutterstock initiative to expand reach to potential buyers. We will be benefited if they can bring in more subscribers with larger number of sales, but more than us SS will earn more with the current licensing scheme. More knowledgeable contributors may correct me or add their understanding.

After reading this thread, I gave it a shot and I am accepted by Arcangel. However, most of my potential photos are already uploaded to SS or to AS after the royalty drop here. Need to dig deeper into archives first and shoot purposely for the site. I will allocate different photographs for exclusive uploads and some generic upload to microstock ones. I will test the waters over there and see how it goes.

I was thinking in the same way. I am no expert but these are the thoughts that crossed my mind. 1. Return the old prices for now. May be increase it down the road. 2. Make stricter QC rules and set higher standards. This will limit oversupply and help increase the the overall quality of content. Then increase the price for buyers for higher quality content, this will further lead to better pay for contributors, and higher income ratio for SS. 3. Make the contributors all exclusive. If they are paid well, they dont have to upload elsewhere. When they are incentivised, they will stay. 4. Restrict smartphone pictures. All we want is higher quality content. 5. Restrict the genre of content one contributor can upload. This will create space for specialised contributors and diverse groups of creators. 6. Call contributors to upload highly demanded content, bridge the demand and supply.

It seems like a sad and bitter truth. We contributors are at stake yet very few seem to be troubled. It seems some contributors stopping contributing wont easily make a dent on SS. May be 1k, 10k or 100k contributors will stop uploading or disable their portfolio. There will still be around 1 million of others who wont probably care. If 100k buyers leave, then that will make a difference to SS, that is less likely to happen with so many contributors globally giving away photos for almost free. This is what SS sees and therefore wont care either. There will always be contributors who will continue no matter what. Everybody is a photographer these days with smartphones and the oversupply of photos give companies like SS a chance to devalue the photographs because they have started seeing us as liability than assets. Thats why they decided to reduce revenue of photographers rather than increasing price for buyers, to increase profits. This seems to be a new painful normal. Many companies have been doing so and will continue to do so. The sad truth is microstock income is no longer viable income source for photographers. I am a hobbyist and just recently learned some tricks. I was starting to upload images encouraged with some sales. I have not reached my first payout milestone. Now, I am disheartened. I am no more motivated to upload anything. All I had dreamt was if my photos I gathered through my hobby can cover some of my gear costs. It seems it wont happen now. 0.10 is an insult for anyone. I can feel the pain of all contributors. There are so many of us and many wont care. Comapnies like SS will continue just like this. You are right, it is only for our self respect we delete or opt out. It wont change SS.

I am on 31.11. Today I got 0.10 sale It will take forever to reach my first payout. Encouraged with some recent slaes, i was thinking of growing my portfolio. This is a shuttershock

Shutterstock makes a living out of the blood, sweat and tears of all the content creators. For all the hard work, investments and efforts made by photographers and creative artists, SS was paying them a lot less than what we deserve. Now, all of our works are further devalued so that they can earn more from what we upload. Shutterstock must have forgotten that its our work for which they make their profit from. If we can make them rich we can bring them down to the streets. I stand with all of the contributors and ready to disable my contents, although I have a tiny portfolio which I have just recently working to increase, encouraged by some sales. This is a biggest blow as I start out. If they cant value contributors and keep feeding their greed with this form of modern slavery, it's time to show them who we all are collectively. If a company dies because they cannot give value to its contributors, let them be closed. Lets SS learn a hard way and other stock sites learn that contributors are not worthless. We are way more worthy than the 0.10$. I would rather have my photos stored in hard drive than handing them out for free and someone is making money from my works. It would have been acceptable if the rules of joining and contributing were stricter. If quantity was discouraged for quality, it would have been acceptable. Instead SS devalued contributors to feed shareholders, which is totally unacceptable. Let the SS remember that they are for content creators and we are not creating content for them. Lets give this message loud and clear to them. Lets unite. I am with all of us.