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Hey guys. I hope there isn't another thread like this, at least I haven't found it. I've been around for a year or so and I've made a just a little bit of money from selling wildlife. Since I hope one day I can make a living from this type of photography and i'm trying to became good at this, I'd like to know how other wildlife photographers are doing, so I have a few questions: If you mostly shoot wild animals (including macro, of course), would you mind sharing your experience? What agencies work best for you? How much money do you usually earn per month or year? What kind of pictures sell more often (exotic mammals like tigers and leopards, cute pictures of squirrels, colorful birds, scary spiders...)? Does macro stock work any better? Have you made money from your pictures outside of the stock world and how (selling them directly to newspapers or magazines, printing them yourself...)? Does video of wildlife sell? If you don't mind i'll mention a couple of users from the forum that are familiar to me (I'll remove your nickname if you want me to): @Claude Huot @Sari ONeal @Michal Ninger @Phil Lowe Thanks in advance!

Hi there, Is there anyone who's been in the same situation like myself? I get at least 5 ODDs every month. Since the first day of June 2020 I suddenly stopped getting ODDs. July is no exception. When I contacted support they said there was no mistake but then within an hour I contacted one ODD appeared in my stats (so there's only one ODD since the very beginning of June). A coincidence? I'm not paranoid but it looks very suspicious to me. What do you think?

My humble question is, I've some really professionally worthfull content on my part and want to sell it on stock sites but it is making me uneasy to think about how much I could get through such photo and videos sell though I heard this site (Shutterstock) pays lot than others stock sites, but is it really great decision to sell it for pennies? My Photo Examples I really want you go check my suggested images and give your unbiased review. Below is the link for some of my example images...

With the new earning structure even if you reach 40% with the highest level on subscription plans you wont make more than 20 cents, this is ridiculous they made a pay cut of 60%. They sell a picture on subscription plans for 50 cents on average if the buyer use all his subscription. Dont just stay there and take it, all together we can do something, Opt out of sales https://www.shutterstock.com/contributorsupport/articles/kbat02/How-do-I-deactivatedelete-my-contributor-account?l=en_US&fs=RelatedArticle I just did it myself.

Dear Shutterstock, How can you do this to us? The photographers who supply you with photos and videos. Reducing earnings with 75%! Without a clear notice. Yes, you told us that something would change but in a sneaky manner. Tell the truth that you are cutting your providers to the bone. Instead of $0,38 now just to $0,10. On a level 4. I wonder what the earnings will be on January 1st with level 1: $0,02? It's a disgrace! It's looting! It's theft. I always used to promote Shutterstock in all ways. To buy photos from or to contribute. Now I have told already to 3 people that Shutterstock is a bunch of crooks. And I will continue to do so. 21,560 downloads so far with almost 1,800 photos. I won't put new photos on your site anymore. I will look for different ways. When I have I will dismantle my portfolio on Shutterstock. Shame on you! Do you even care? Do you even read the messages? Richard de Bruijn Netherlands

hi, Though I have been uploading images for the past several months, I consider myself a fairly new contributor to SS, because I am still struggling with various aspects of the overall process. Here I'd like to highlight one particular issue, which is about the earning per image that I am getting. I have sold several dozens of images in these months, and the earning per image that I am receiving is by default USD 00.25. Is this the default and only price that everyone earns for sale per image? A total of 88 images sold and the only earning is @ USD 0.25 per image. Maybe I am doing something wrong, it'd be great if someone can provide guidance on this. Note: All my images fall under the 'Editorial' category. I sell these same images on other similar type stock sites and easily earn more than 100 times per image, than here.

Hello, my unpaid earnings have exceeded the minimum for payout and have been like for a few months. My PayPal address is correct. Could you help me receive the payment? Thanks, Nena

Hello, I'm selling photographs and see that on history but the system doesnt update unpaid earnings section since almost for a month? I understand there is a co-vid situation, shutterstock has some issues but this is really weird. Also my photographs rejected because high iso, out of focus so much lately. I dont really get it, I sent 100 iso pictures with low edit, still rejected. So weird 😕 Thank you.

Hi there, In addition to my pics and video portfolio here I decided to give a try to upload some of my original vector artwork. I am a big fan of the american sports mascot style and I have done a lot of concept mascots. I uploaded a few of them a couple of days ago and today I sold one for 33 cents. Okay, I know that is the regular price, but do the buyers get a small res .jpg file for that price or do they get the .eps file?? If the can download the .eps file for so cheap, what will stop them for making whatever they want with it - merch, prints, so on? And those of you, who sell vectors mostly - how are the earnings? Does it worth it?

Looking for advice, I've tried contacting Shutterstock twice now over an issue of $200 of earnings that have gone missing from my account. The issue was that it was paid out to a PayPal address on my Shutterstock account that wasn't mine and that I had not authorised. I have since been told over a week ago by an email from Shutterstock that the issue was being sent to their compliance team and in the meantime to change my account password. Since then I have heard absolutely nothing back. I am looking for clarification on whether this was an oversight on Shutterstocks part or that my account has actually been compromised?

I have previously posted about SS being my lead earner again after having fallen well behind FT long ago (a few years?) Not sure how long FT was my top earner. Anyhow several months back SS took the lead once again (until FT had pulled ahead of them SS was always my top earner) and again last month SS was in the lead. Thanks SS! Don't know what happened for me at FT. They are close to SS but not where they once were for me. Beside the drop at FT SS has been slowly creeping up again in earnings too. Ill take it.

Hi everyone! wanted to share with you. first a Big thank you to Shutterstock ! soon I will be passing a huge milestone on my all time earnings! Its been hard work, make no mistake but what a journey !

This past weekend, my best selling vector smoothly closed in on a total of $20,000. That's quite an amount for one single file - and although Shutterstock's official list of their 100 top performing images doesn't exist anymore, I'm almost sure it would (still) be on it. Therefore I think it's just about time for a big "thank you": To Shutterstock as a company, but also to all the nice and generous people I had the pleasure to meet along my way (both here in Germany and in NY). In order to name just a few of them: Jon, of course, but also Scott Braut, Anthony Correia, Meagan Kirkpatrick and - last but definitely not least - Joshua Black, who will always be a dear friend. Thanks to all my fellow colleagues as well - for your friendship, support, honesty and a lot of great conversations. You guys really rock! Anja

This is a serious and potentially controversial question and calls for considered responses ( hopefully without the name-calling and petty squabbling that have been a feature of several threads lately ). Here goes ….. For a few years now there have been numerous observations on this forum by established contributors that, despite their portfolios growing, their sales have fallen significantly - decreases which cannot be fully explained by competition resulting from expansion of the database overall. It seems likely that any business such as SS wishing to increase returns would look among other things to the potential of their existing system of differential payments to contributors, based on historic earnings, for enhancing the bottom line ( i.e. why pay Contributor A $0.38 for a sale when Contributor B will only get $0.25 ? Why not therefore favour Contributor B more often than not over Contributor A in presenting images to buyers ?). There is an obvious imperative in this, especially in the past few years since SS was launched on the stock exchange. Whether or not any presumption of some degree of discrimination within searches is correct – and I acknowledge that it is only speculation and stands to be contradicted by SS – I’d be interested in others’ views regarding the scrapping of the tiered earnings system in favour of paying a flat rate of remuneration to all contributors regardless of their history with the agency. SS pays one rate to all contributors for Footage, so why should Images be treated differently ? ( and to my knowledge, no other major stock agency employs a tiered system of remuneration based upon a Contributors’ Lifetime Earnings ). The obvious question then is What Rate ? Purely for the sake of argument, I would suggest something around the middle of the existing range ( e.g $0.32 for a Sub sale and $2.40 for an OD, with SOD’s and EL’s around 25% of the purchase price ). Presupposing some form of current bias, then depending on their current position in the earnings hierarchy an individual could get a higher RPD with potentially fewer sales, or a lower RPD and potentially more sales as a result ( doubtless SS could compute the gross figures so as to ensure universal rates that would result in no loss to themselves nor to contributors’ returns overall ). However, my focus here is on the principle involved rather than specific earnings and payments. A Buyer should be able to decide which image to purchase on the basis of his/her perception of relevance and quality, without the possibility of sometimes being steered towards images supplied by a category of contributor based on historic earnings. If this is a factor, then it should not be one. If it isn’t a factor currently, then neither should there be a tiered system that could enable it to become a factor in future. Universal rates would preclude this. IMHO images should be sold on merit, regardless of the contributor supplying them. I would welcome any assurance of a consistently level playing field for contributors’ images on SS. If my images don’t sell as much as I hope for then I would prefer to know that its because they don’t warrant sales on merit when placed in direct competition with the alternatives available, and not possibly because of the differential profit margin their potential sale may sometimes afford SS.

There seems something broken either on the accounting side or on the customer side; on average I have 12-15 downloads on Saturdays and Sundays, but the last download shown in my account is from Saturday morning and nothing since then – that is most unlikely to be correct, as it hasn't been happening for about 10 years now. Anybody else with a massive portfolio (I have 10k files) noticing zero downloads since yesterday morning?

I started selling on Shutterstock 12 years ago. And finally I have reached my milestone of 5000 images! Way back in 2011 I thought I was on my way to making "good money" here at SS. But the collection of images grew from about 5 million back then to over 247 million as per today. Incredible!!! And of course my sales dropped and still are. 😥 Never the less I have thoroughly enjoyed the journey. And I learned a lot about photography along the way! Here is a comparison of earnings. This was with approximately 1000 images in my portfolio This was with approximately 5000 images in my portfolio And here is my 5000th image:-

I haven't sold any images since last night... it never happened to me in the last 7 years that I don't sell an single image for hours and hours.... I suppose it's a bug, is there any one experiencing the same problem?

I used to get a payout to my skrill account after I earn 75$. I have more earnings sitting on my balance for a couple of months now and there hasn't been a payout. Have the rules changed now and we need to specifically request for a payout or has the limit gone higher or something? I'm sorry but I haven't been very active for a while. Any help will be appreciated.

On the 16th of August at 6:28 am I received an e-mail that my payment email has been changed, although I did not make any changes, I was flying from Hanoi to London at that time. When I checked my account everything seemed back to normal, but when I checked my moneybookers account my July payment was missing. I sent an email to shutterstock on the morning of 17th of August, they replied three days later, confirmed that the payment was redirected to a fake e-mail address, blocked my account, changed my password and said they would give me an answer on Monday regarding my payment. No email since then. I have been a contributor for ten years, and shutterstock is my main source of income, never had any issues with payment before. Just wandering what's next. I read about many similar cases in forums about hacked accounts and missing payments and shutterstock seems to do nothing about it. It is just too easy to change the payment email. Maybe some security measures, like adding an ID or your passport photo when we change payment details would help.

Hi guys, this month i reached my minimum payout setup but the amount it's still in unpaid earnings, Usually on the first day of the month my unpaid earnings return to 0, but in november that hasnt happened yet. Has this happened to you?

Hello, I was robbed and my credit card was stolen by , July 19. I canceled the card and ordered a new one, but the money did not arrive, not from last month, nor from this, I'm trying to link my account to a new card, but I can't , i redirected on page to order a new one, but the card is already there How can connect my account with a new card from Payoneer I think now, it was successful. I tried before few minutes and was written account was changed and now i see the message: "Account pending" If you need a number of my card, new one, i can send Thanks a lot With Best Regards, Voliansky Sergey P.S. For the last 2 months, I have not received any money. I attached the files.

Is there better information about my portfolio? Is there a way I can see how many people visit my profile/portfolio? Or which picture is the most visited in my porftolio?

its been more than a week but yet no downloads ?

About a year ago I was celebrating here for reaching my 100th download which took over a year to reach. Things have been developing rapidly since and my monthly earnings have multiplied. I'm not sure what I have done right but I happily accept this development and nowadays I'm almost getting 100 downloads in a month. It's a big change from the times when I got 1 or 2 downloads in a month 2 years ago. Couple of weeks ago my total earnings reached $500 which means I leveled up as a contributor and got about 30% raise for my royalties. I'm very happy and want to thank Shutterstock and I hope this development continues in the future too. Thanks

My earnings stopped updating sometimes during the night (EU time). I can see my dl-s on the map and on the details page when I click on the date but not on earnings summary. Earnings are not added to the total. I already posted this on technical issues, I apologize for posting it here too but I would like to know if this is still happening to others too or just to me . Half the day is gone and no change.