New earnings structure for Contributors

[Soare Cecilia Corina]

1 hour ago, Mirko Rosenau said:

 

 

    On 6/2/2020 at 10:26 AM, Bennian said:

How can we do that? I wold like to stop my sales also because of the now payment attitude.

If anyone know please tell me. Thanks.

 

We all should done this!

Here the info you ask for. 

How do I deactivate/delete my contributor account?

We provide the options below to deactivate/delete your contributor account:   Opting out of sales (recommended option) Opting out of sales will remove your content from online display, but keeps your account active and ensures that your earnings payment will be made when you reach the minimum payout level. Your referral earnings will also continue to accumulate. Opting in or out of sales allows you to quickly reinstate your previously approved content if you decide to return to Shutterstock in the future.   To opt out of sales, log into your account and navigate to the Account Settings page from the drop-down menu under your name in the top right corner of the page. Scroll down to the section How can we license your work? and select No for the sales options.

 

 

Question --> Can one OPT OUT OF SALES - per specific photos? One by one? Or this is an option for all photos at once...?

 

For me it would be good to make this gradually because stock photos are my only source of income and my health is very fragile. I still need some money all these months till I gradually start to do something else, or move my photos elsewhere. 

I am planning starting to opt out of sales of my biggest sellers first, letting on Shutterstock the normal photos. In the future I need to decide what to do - put here only the normal photos, snapped photos, without a lot of work, totally detached of anything or close the account entirely. 

Please help me with some advice - what to do? Can I opt out gradually?

 

 

[Murasaki Izumi]

1 hour ago, Mirko Rosenau said:

...

Here the info you ask for. 

How do I deactivate/delete my contributor account?

...   Opting out of sales (recommended option)  ... Deactivating your account ... Deleting your account ...

Yes, that is exactly what I've done. So, I think they just ignored me. I'll try again. Thank you)

[Tony Dunn]

On 6/19/2020 at 11:14 PM, Wilm Ihlenfeld said:

What shutterstock is doing is illegal from my point of view. If a seller doesn't want to sell an image, then it is. Then shutterstock can't just sell it against your will.

Let's say you decided three days ago to sell exclusively to another agency. To be able to offer exclusively there, you have to make sure for legal reasons that your images can't be bought anywhere else, because otherwise you'd be acting illegally - you wouldn't keep your contract as an exclusive provider.

So you deactivate your portfolio with all other agencies. Everything done right.

Now the agency where you exclusively offer your image will see that it has just been sold on shutterstock. Then they will claim that you have breached your contract.

That simply can't happen. A "sales permission" is a crystal-clear statement! Shutterstock selling it anyway is illegal!!!

 

& they know people won't take SS to court for just a dime per download

[Mirko Rosenau]

9 hours ago, Soare Cecilia Corina said:

 

 

Question --> Can one OPT OUT OF SALES - per specific photos? One by one? Or this is an option for all photos at once...?

 

For me it would be good to make this gradually because stock photos are my only source of income and my health is very fragile. I still need some money all these months till I gradually start to do something else, or move my photos elsewhere. 

I am planning starting to opt out of sales of my biggest sellers first, letting on Shutterstock the normal photos. In the future I need to decide what to do - put here only the normal photos, snapped photos, without a lot of work, totally detached of anything or close the account entirely. 

Please help me with some advice - what to do? Can I opt out gradually?

 

 

I don't thin k you can. It would be a "All or None" thing. You could delete individual images. Maybe this is an avenue you would like to go. 

[whitejellybeans]

II am a contributor and a buyer. Our business signed up for the monthly plan over eight months ago as we were setting up a couple of websites. Most months go by now where we are lucky to purchase one or two images a month but are still paying $49 per month for the subscription as it was an annual commitment. The months that our business does not purchase any images means that SS does not need to pay any of their contributors a cent. 
I suspect that the overheads for storing images are huge, but I would have thought good business sense would be to offload images that have not sold for say three years or so and allow contributors to resubmit. It is appalling what SS has done to their contributors who are the backbone of their company. It is also a lazy business to take the easiest option out by cutting the bonus to their contributors rather than looking at other ways to cut a profit. 
For our business, once the subscription runs out, our company will never buy images off Shutterstock again. As a contributor, my portfolio is small and was just a side income.  I am in the process of deleting all my decent images and leaving all my crapy ones on SS that I submitted when I first started out. 

[Weston]

1 hour ago, whitejellybeans said:

II am a contributor and a buyer. Our business signed up for the monthly plan over eight months ago as we were setting up a couple of websites. Most months go by now where we are lucky to purchase one or two images a month but are still paying $49 per month for the subscription as it was an annual commitment. The months that our business does not purchase any images means that SS does not need to pay any of their contributors a cent. 
I suspect that the overheads for storing images are huge, but I would have thought good business sense would be to offload images that have not sold for say three years or so and allow contributors to resubmit. It is appalling what SS has done to their contributors who are the backbone of their company. It is also a lazy business to take the easiest option out by cutting the bonus to their contributors rather than looking at other ways to cut a profit. 
For our business, once the subscription runs out, our company will never buy images off Shutterstock again. As a contributor, my portfolio is small and was just a side income.  I am in the process of deleting all my decent images and leaving all my crapy ones on SS that I submitted when I first started out. 

So mathematically true, you just found few millions earned thanks to us, but we don't see even 0.10 cents out of it.

[Saurav022]

1 hour ago, whitejellybeans said:

I would have thought good business sense would be to offload images that have not sold for say three years or so and allow contributors to resubmit. 

There are lot of good images that haven't sold for years because they are buried deep under the spam and poor quality images that is cluttering the site. The trick would be get rid of all the poor quality content and give the good quality images a chance to shine. Several years ago, SS had an undiscovered tab that used to comprise all the unsold pictures, but then they got rid of it. Now it is just popular and new.

[SreeSince91]

This is shameful.

[David Bostock]

On 6/21/2020 at 4:41 PM, Marco.Warm said:

Images of deacitvated Portfolios are still available to find via Google Image search. That is how many customers search for stock images nowadays. Just Google "David Bostock Stock Images"

I notice if you also google image search the word shutterstock with any keyword contents your images have, it also shows the image on the search result. But when you click the link to go to see it, it shows your empty library

[Imagine Earth Photography]

Well my June is looking like half the commission of a usual month, with the around the same quantity of images sold. Said I would give it the month but that’s it for me, bye bye shutterstock.

[Amir Bajric]

I don't make money, but neither does Shutterstock

[Amir Bajric]

many sign a petition, protest but don’t want to freeze the portfolio, and still upload photos so how do you plan to change the situation?

[Amir Bajric]

4 minutes ago, Creatus said:

My utmost respect to all those who are not afraid to take a stand and deactivate/delete their portfolio's!

That goes for those who can afford it (side income) and especially for those who cannot (main income)

 

I live on 500 euros a month, I need money, but think in the long run, if they continue like this, photography will cost 0.001 usd in the future

[Amir Bajric]

remember colleagues we have something to trade with !!!

[A__N]

Portfolio (about 2000 vectors) deactivated. ✊

[Philip Armitage]

5 hours ago, whitejellybeans said:

II am a contributor and a buyer. Our business signed up for the monthly plan over eight months ago as we were setting up a couple of websites. Most months go by now where we are lucky to purchase one or two images a month but are still paying $49 per month for the subscription as it was an annual commitment. The months that our business does not purchase any images means that SS does not need to pay any of their contributors a cent. 
I suspect that the overheads for storing images are huge, but I would have thought good business sense would be to offload images that have not sold for say three years or so and allow contributors to resubmit. It is appalling what SS has done to their contributors who are the backbone of their company. It is also a lazy business to take the easiest option out by cutting the bonus to their contributors rather than looking at other ways to cut a profit. 
For our business, once the subscription runs out, our company will never buy images off Shutterstock again. As a contributor, my portfolio is small and was just a side income.  I am in the process of deleting all my decent images and leaving all my crapy ones on SS that I submitted when I first started out. 

 Please start using your full entitlement as a buyer, then photographers / artists will get paid. Bleating that SS gets all the money is not their problem. Just use your entitlement - doesn't matter if you never need those images. Nice photo of Oriental bay btw

[jjmillan]

Alguien conoce el mito de Sisifo ?

[Munimara]

Alguien sabe cómo desactivar las fotos en BIG STOCK, filial de SS?

Les he escrito y no me dicen nada

[Kevin Shine]

Now I get 0.40c per image sometimes and 0.10c for other images. Its 100% unclear to me now what kind of payment structure to expect on my images and why I am getting paid what. I see the new structure changes but have no idea how to apply the structure and understand my potential earnings on my images. 

[Andrew Shapor]

SS answer to all questions https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/make-money-on-instagram

Collecting my minimum payout and will close my 250 images. Pity that large accounts continue to sell their images and make money for SS.

[Source of yours]

My computer eats much more energy when creating an image than the price of several sellings now :D

Ridiculous.

[Przemek Iciak]

2 hours ago, Kevin Shine said:

Now I get 0.40c per image sometimes and 0.10c for other images. Its 100% unclear to me now what kind of payment structure to expect on my images and why I am getting paid what. I see the new structure changes but have no idea how to apply the structure and understand my potential earnings on my images. 

It depends what subscription plan buyer is using, you always get percent (different on different contributor levels) of that sale.

[eskystudio]

John Orringer finally decided to weigh in

https://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/topic/100543-reply-from-shutterstock-jon-orringer-on-twitter/

[Bob Deering]

On 6/21/2020 at 2:06 PM, Guillermo Barda said:

Hello Shutterstock,

I'm a small contributor with a few pictures, after some years I had my first payment and now I have 24,85$ pending to be paid, but as the last sell was priced at 0,10$, my sales are 1 per month and the minimum payment is 35$. It will take me about 8 years and half to be paid again. Therefore, better than wait 8 years, I'll delete all my pictures now.

0,10$ isn't worth the effort of labeling any new photos, it isn't worth the internet usage to load ithe picture, it isn't worth the electricity spent by the battery of the camera, it isn't worth having a camera.

Enjoy my 24,85$ that you'll keep probably for ever.

If you contact them to close your account they will pay you. Why should you lose the money.

[Picture Store]

Hello. I am writing to you as an active contributor to Shutterstock. In June, I see extremely depressing royalty rates under the new profit accrual rules. I am very disappointed with these figures, as Shutterstock is the main source of income for me. Shutterstock's earnings structure update puts me 2 years back in terms of profit, which is critical for me in the context of the global crisis.
I understand that you represent a huge company with your interests and you need to make a profit from your business. But content creators are an important part of this community. Now we are in absolute ignorance and cannot predict how much we will be able to earn in the future.
I certainly hope to review the terms of payments to creators to reduce this monstrous gap that awaits us in the coming months.