New earnings structure for Contributors

[Mike Brake]

i think the whole microstock thing is turning into a major bust. Sad - I enjoyed it in the beginning, but those days are slipping away. Will find something else to do with my photography !!

 

[My Graphic Stock]

Other websites giving us a good earning even after such a low sale,
And here even after such a huge Sale, the earning is low.

I think SS should think about it's decision once again
and the earring system should be returned as before.

[YesVideo]

This is all the royalties for selling a video for yesterday from a group of authors. June 25th. Everyone had sales until the level of authors rose. Place of purchase with a dash, unknown. What kind of license is this? How can I buy all these videos in stock for such money?)
 

[Mikhaylovskiy]

As a result of the month, I can say this: my RPI has grown, the number of sales has remained plus / minus at the same level, an inexpensive subscription is offset by good demands. In general, there is even a slight shift in plus. According to the video, there are very few cheap sales, but they are, but there are also sales of the video over $ 100. In general, everything is not so bad and even good in some places))

[ribeiroantonio]

I'm totally lost with this "new earnings structure". I really can not understand it. It smells awful!

 

Since June 1, I had a great variety of sales, even if in Shutterstock website there is not as many buying options.

 

In “Subscription” I have: 0.10, 0.11, 0.12, 0.13, 0.14, 0.17, 0.19, 0.22, 0.30, 0.37, 0.41, 0.50, 0.52, 0.56, 0.59, 0.66, 0.68 and 1.18 ($) value sales

 

In “On Demand” I have: 1.80, 2.10, 2.29 and 2.38 ($) value sales (none of them Enhanced)

 

I am on level 4 at 30% royalty. However, I can not sort out the relationship between the values shown above and the official SS pricing published in the website.

 

Can someone at SS Admin explain what is going on? 

 

[Andreas Prott]

Last 15 DLs totaled 1.86 instead of 4.95 on level 4. The only consequence to make subs sustainable is scraping the 350 and 750 DL plans. But SS earns more on those because the higher the plan the higher the number of unused slots which bring 100% for SS.

 

[ribeiroantonio]

15 hours ago, GregDPhotos said:

Divide the amount you received by .3 (your royalty rate) and look for a package where the listed price per image is equal. Works for subs, most SODs, and possibly some ODDs.

Ok. However in the listed price per images for subs there is only 12 options (4 monthly no contract, 4 billed monthly and 4 billed upfront). So far this month of June I already have sales for 18 (eighteen) different values (from $0.10 to $1.18). For ODs I have right now 4 (four) sales on single $ digit (from $1.80 to $2.38) and the listed price per image only states 2 (two) options on Standard Licence. The other ODs are Enhanced License and on double digit value.

It is difficult to understand.

[Polozov arts]

16 hours ago, Gray Photo Online said:

With the better part of June over, I've done a quick check of my profit margins for images sold here. For June of 2019, my average sale of an image generated $1.11 per downloaded image. For June 2020, my average sale of an image is generating $0.56 per image. Shutterstock has effectively cut my sales returns in half with the new price structure. Historically, I've earned about $0.76 per download. Still way below what I've been seeing over the years.

Skimming our profits is not a good way to continue doing business. I don't like investing time and effort on failure.

 I'll give SS another two months and then reevaluate my business relationship with them then.

they won't care about it in 2 months. End of June is the end of their financial period, and the results go straight to the investors. 

If you want to hurt SS or make them think, you might want to deactivate your portfolio TILL the end of June

[alexeyart1]

Good day to everyone who loads on photochain.io?

[sima]

Yesterday I also had 3 footage sales for 0.34 ....... And I deactivated my footage portfolio.

[Wilm Ihlenfeld]

15 hours ago, s4svisuals said:

I am sorry, but I don't really understand your question...

Hi s4svisuals,

that wasn't meant as a question. I only wanted to show DrObjektiff where to find his stats and figures.

[Wilm Ihlenfeld]

16 hours ago, DrObjektiff said:

Thank you very much, I was blind, I did not open the bookmark  .-)

You're welcome! 🙂

[Giancarlo Liguori]

Yesterday I had 9 image sales to get around 1$. And 2 clips sold by 0.34$! It was what I needed to deactivate my files. Zero respect to the contributors 😟

[mpessaris]

so my profile picture with the 0.10 crossed and my tagline saying to find my elsewhere just got deleted....exploitation, censorship...what else?

[Charlotte Erpenbeck]

The new uploads on shutterstock contain a lot of crap.  Pictures which I have in my lightboxes dissappear, so the better artists go away.
And I will follow them. Don't like to wade through tons of crap before finding good pictures- if any.
Have about ten already payed downloads left. After using them up, I'm done here als a seller (pictures already deactivated) and as a buyer.
Shutterstock isn't just hurting the sellers, it's annoying the buyers as well. No good business decision.

[Fredrik Bourdette]

How can some of my portfolio still be available for sale when I opt out pretty much the same day I got the e-mail about the new earning structure?

[Niall Julian]

My first ever post on this forum and its all about this sorry saga. I never really earned much from my portfolio but what I did get was ok and it was starting to grow. Getting those notifications of a sale were always exciting, even though the amounts the images sold for weren't huge. It was just nice that someone out there liked my images enough to want to buy them.

So as of today I have disabled sales.

It was a tough decision as I put a lot of time and effort to upload those images, having to fight through multiple resubmissions due to inept reviewers rejecting them. The real frustration for me is that SS did actually accept my images, which are all automotive based and few other stock platforms will take these, due to trademark/copyright/bla bla bla etc. I've already tried Adobe Stock and they've rejected a bunch that have happily been accepted on SS and sold ok on there for well over a year. It is so frustrating that this situation had to arise. While SS was by no means perfect, it was humming along for a lot of us. Now we have this situation.

It is very clear that SS have calculated that they can afford to lose contributors and carry on. They must have figured enough newbies will sign on and not know what has happened. I guess their end of year returns will determine whether it's been a success or not. One things for sure... the top brass are not losing sleep over it at this moment in time!

[Gray Photo Online]

5 hours ago, Polozov arts said:

they won't care about it in 2 months. End of June is the end of their financial period, and the results go straight to the investors. 

If you want to hurt SS or make them think, you might want to deactivate your portfolio TILL the end of June

I don't really base my business decisions on emotional responses aimed at "getting even" with the people I do business with. I'll draw some data, analyze the results and then act in my own best interest. I think SS has decided to take more of my earnings. I know why they are doing it. That's their decision. My decision is based on what I'm getting out of doing business with them, not what others are thinking. I consider time to be money, so if I'm spending X amount of time uploading to Shutterstock and I'm only getting Y amount of return for my effort, that Y value best be in the black or I don't do business here or anywhere else for that matter. Truthfully, as microstock websites are concerned, SS is still earning more money for me than some of the others. Some are so cumbersome to use that I've invested far more time using them than I'll ever recover in profit. Shutterstock is heading in that direction.

[Daniel Wiedemann]

How come I received $0.34 and $1.65 for a video sale? How is that ANYWHERE NEAR 25% (I believe I'm level 3)?

[Daniel Wiedemann]

[GCapture]

despite my port disabled, received sub sale for whopping 19$, what was that=|

[Pure Sight lab]

40 minutes ago, Daniel Wiedemann said:

But the answers were provided a couple of pages ago: "You're losers, feel free to withdraw your portfolios, we don't need you we need WINNERS - people who never complain and agree to be robbed" and some pure lie about thinking about amount of money on high levels while in fact people with maximum level reported huge losses in profits already. So the official answer was "we don't need you we have 300 mil and will go away with it, by the way you're stupid as kids and will believe our primitive obvious proven lie"

[alexeyart1]

I bought a video yesterday $ 3.91.

And in a month already 12.62

 

[GregDPhotos]

10 hours ago, ribeiroantonio said:

Ok. However in the listed price per images for subs there is only 12 options (4 monthly no contract, 4 billed monthly and 4 billed upfront). So far this month of June I already have sales for 18 (eighteen) different values (from $0.10 to $1.18). For ODs I have right now 4 (four) sales on single $ digit (from $1.80 to $2.38) and the listed price per image only states 2 (two) options on Standard Licence. The other ODs are Enhanced License and on double digit value.

It is difficult to understand.

I'm not sure what to say... Based on publicly available information, there are only 9 unique royalty amounts for subs at 30% (.1, .12, .14, .17, .49, .59, .75, .87, 1.47) and 3 for ODs (2.75, 2.94, 4.35). I don't see where the OD payments came from - the lowest payout you get should be $2.75! Help, @Kate Shutterstock ?

Of course, video payouts are totally different...

[GregDPhotos]

2 hours ago, Daniel Wiedemann said:

How come I received $0.34 and $1.65 for a video sale? How is that ANYWHERE NEAR 25% (I believe I'm level 3)?

Perhaps the 34 cents was from a free trial? Don't know about the $1.65... some customers must be getting some super good deals! I mean, what could be better than paying $6.60 for a video on a site as excellent as SS? I wonder how they can sell videos for $6.60 and still pay their suppliers well...