Posted July 10 As an amateur who has portfolios in 7 other agencies, I apply the following actions : Everytime an image is sold for 0.10 cents in Shutterstock, I delete it from Shutterstock. This way I maximize potential income since my average in Istockphoto is 0.35 cents, 0.42 in Dreamstime and 2.50 in Pond5. (Although I sell rarely with this ecclectical portfolio mixed with entry level pro DSLR, amateur DSLR, smartphone and illustration images, which is definitely not surprising). Since a long time I was thinking that probably Shutterstock makes you addicted because it gives you so small but so often. It is like bad eating habit. I'd rather have a full meal at proper times, and stay mentally healthy. Everytime an image is sold in another agency, I delete it from Shutterstock. So again, I know that the image can be sold elsewhere, and protect the value which is above RPD in Shutterstock. Before the new payment structure, my RPD in shutterstock was about 0.36, like Istockphoto. Now it is 0.15. As an example Pond5 sold only 1 image, which is equivalent to 27 sales in Shutterstock. 200 sales in shutterstock equals to only 3 sales in Alamy. Of course if I was a professional with thousands of images here, I would think differently. So, everybody has to find his/her own solution (or in other words, ways to escape from this sinking ship). Good luck to all those hardworking artists! I have worked in a place where I was "devalued" and ignored, and the only solution was to quit and go somewhere else which is capable of employing you among your talent. 14 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 10 1 hour ago, baypinar said: As an amateur who has portfolios in 7 other agencies, I apply the following actions : Everytime an image is sold for 0.10 cents in Shutterstock, I delete it from Shutterstock. This way I maximize potential income since my average in Istockphoto is 0.35 cents, 0.42 in Dreamstime and 2.50 in Pond5. (Although I sell rarely with this ecclectical portfolio mixed with entry level pro DSLR, amateur DSLR, smartphone and illustration images, which is definitely not surprising). Since a long time I was thinking that probably Shutterstock makes you addicted because it gives you so small but so often. It is like bad eating habit. I'd rather have a full meal at proper times, and stay mentally healthy. Everytime an image is sold in another agency, I delete it from Shutterstock. So again, I know that the image can be sold elsewhere, and protect the value which is above RPD in Shutterstock. Before the new payment structure, my RPD in shutterstock was about 0.36, like Istockphoto. Now it is 0.15. As an example Pond5 sold only 1 image, which is equivalent to 27 sales in Shutterstock. 200 sales in shutterstock equals to only 3 sales in Alamy. Of course if I was a professional with thousands of images here, I would think differently. So, everybody has to find his/her own solution (or in other words, ways to escape from this sinking ship). Good luck to all those hardworking artists! I have worked in a place where I was "devalued" and ignored, and the only solution was to quit and go somewhere else which is capable of employing you among your talent. Thats a very interesting way of putting things into perspective - Thanks for your view of this disaster - very interesting! 7 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 10 Wow. Last 7 days 29 DLs with a total of 5.94$. This is ridiculous. January can come... bye bye. 5 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 10 3 hours ago, paula french said: Thats a very interesting way of putting things into perspective - Thanks for your view of this disaster - very interesting! Sometimes being an outlier makes you see another perspective Best regards. 0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 10 6 hours ago, baypinar said: As an amateur who has portfolios in 7 other agencies, I apply the following actions : Everytime an image is sold for 0.10 cents in Shutterstock, I delete it from Shutterstock. This way I maximize potential income since my average in Istockphoto is 0.35 cents, 0.42 in Dreamstime and 2.50 in Pond5. (Although I sell rarely with this ecclectical portfolio mixed with entry level pro DSLR, amateur DSLR, smartphone and illustration images, which is definitely not surprising). Since a long time I was thinking that probably Shutterstock makes you addicted because it gives you so small but so often. It is like bad eating habit. I'd rather have a full meal at proper times, and stay mentally healthy. Everytime an image is sold in another agency, I delete it from Shutterstock. So again, I know that the image can be sold elsewhere, and protect the value which is above RPD in Shutterstock. Before the new payment structure, my RPD in shutterstock was about 0.36, like Istockphoto. Now it is 0.15. As an example Pond5 sold only 1 image, which is equivalent to 27 sales in Shutterstock. 200 sales in shutterstock equals to only 3 sales in Alamy. Of course if I was a professional with thousands of images here, I would think differently. So, everybody has to find his/her own solution (or in other words, ways to escape from this sinking ship). Good luck to all those hardworking artists! I have worked in a place where I was "devalued" and ignored, and the only solution was to quit and go somewhere else which is capable of employing you among your talent. Interesting, however, I'd like to know how you delete a single image from Shutterstock. I've yet to find a mechanism for deleting a single image once its been approved. Therefore, I've disabled all images from being sold. That's the only thing I find that works. 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 10 If every time one sold an image in 10cents, one clicked a SS add in Google, they would lose money. I guess this comment would be deleted . hahaha 7 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 10 5 minutes ago, BobNoah said: If every time one sold an image in 10cents, one clicked a SS add in Google, they would lose money. I guess this comment would be deleted . hahaha Love it! 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 10 1 hour ago, Gray Photo Online said: Interesting, however, I'd like to know how you delete a single image from Shutterstock. I've yet to find a mechanism for deleting a single image once its been approved. Therefore, I've disabled all images from being sold. That's the only thing I find that works. You should normally be able to delete images either standalone or in a bulk using the catalogue manager. When you click on your image you can either choose to edit or delete, however, I have all my images organized in sets and none in the "general" catalogue so all my changes can only be applied to sets but nonetheless, this way you should be able to delete single pictures. Have a nice weekend y'all! 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 10 Portfolio disabled. Waiting for positive changes (I still hope). Good luck to you all. 24 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 10 10 hours ago, baypinar said: As an amateur who has portfolios in 7 other agencies, I apply the following actions : Everytime an image is sold for 0.10 cents in Shutterstock, I delete it from Shutterstock. This way I maximize potential income since my average in Istockphoto is 0.35 cents, 0.42 in Dreamstime and 2.50 in Pond5. (Although I sell rarely with this ecclectical portfolio mixed with entry level pro DSLR, amateur DSLR, smartphone and illustration images, which is definitely not surprising). Since a long time I was thinking that probably Shutterstock makes you addicted because it gives you so small but so often. It is like bad eating habit. I'd rather have a full meal at proper times, and stay mentally healthy. Everytime an image is sold in another agency, I delete it from Shutterstock. So again, I know that the image can be sold elsewhere, and protect the value which is above RPD in Shutterstock. Before the new payment structure, my RPD in shutterstock was about 0.36, like Istockphoto. Now it is 0.15. As an example Pond5 sold only 1 image, which is equivalent to 27 sales in Shutterstock. 200 sales in shutterstock equals to only 3 sales in Alamy. Of course if I was a professional with thousands of images here, I would think differently. So, everybody has to find his/her own solution (or in other words, ways to escape from this sinking ship). Good luck to all those hardworking artists! I have worked in a place where I was "devalued" and ignored, and the only solution was to quit and go somewhere else which is capable of employing you among your talent. an interesting idea. If you have images on istock you will probably be selling images for a lot less than $0.10. The best way to check that I have found is through deepmeta 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 11 Some good news for a change - just sold a SOD for $28.50 - thats made my day! 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 11 12 hours ago, Philip Armitage said: an interesting idea. If you have images on istock you will probably be selling images for a lot less than $0.10. The best way to check that I have found is through deepmeta Yes it is true they also sell images sometimes for 0.003 cents, still the average is 0.32-0.36 cents considering 2.80 dollar, 1.25 dollar or other sales. So, it was equal to average of Shutterstock before the new payment structure. 0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 11 I go to the catalogue view, type a keyword, find my image, and open it to edit. And then just delete it. If I walk through the category, it deletes it only in the category. 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 11 Does anyone know the precise procedure, step by step, to request the last payment even if the minimum payment is not reached and therefore the deactivation of the account? Frequently asked questions and customer service are unclear, I would not leave them my 34 dollars if I could ... Since they don't even allow me to submit crappy material for fun, I have no reason to stay on shutterstock. 0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 11 8 hours ago, paula french said: Some good news for a change - just sold a SOD for $28.50 - thats made my day! I don't think that this is making up for all the 10 cent sales. 10 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 11 5 hours ago, BlindSpider said: Does anyone know the precise procedure, step by step, to request the last payment even if the minimum payment is not reached and therefore the deactivation of the account? Frequently asked questions and customer service are unclear, I would not leave them my 34 dollars if I could ... Since they don't even allow me to submit crappy material for fun, I have no reason to stay on shutterstock. I had the same trouble that Shutterstock avoided giving me the answer. I had to ask 4-5 times. I finally got that you want to sent an email requesting to deactivate your account. I have been told that this will trigger the payout without reaching the $35. After the payout you can request to delete your account. If you request to delete your account before this you will not get the money. I think this is illegal, but this is the answer I eventually got from Shutterstock. Hope that helps. 6 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 11 On 7/7/2020 at 12:56 AM, Mark A. Williams said: I notified SS by email (Privacy@shutterstock.com) on May 29th to close my account and pay me my remaining earnings. I have yet to see any action on their part. Has anyone had any success doing this? I've notified them three times already. Have got no answer. I think I'll miss SS, I liked it really. My portfolio is not so big, just over 3000 images, and my sales went on rather slowly and it was not my main income all the same. I'm fond of photography and I think I can do without stocks, taking photos for the sake of photos, as I did and do as usual. I just thought once: why not sell it if I can? Someone told me about selling at a photostock and so here I am. And I had a good time. Still, I'm not going to let them get money for my work while I'm getting this. I'm trying with Adobe now. Let's see where it will lead. And welcome to my twitter. 6 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 12 I wouldn't expect much of a response nor forum presence from SS on this matter. At this point everything is probably just noise to them. Prune SS from your workflow. You have to cut the dead flowers from the garden to get new ones to grow. Bitch mail, carping about it in the forums, petitions, it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is how much their stockholders raise hell. The pandemic will affect all stock agencies. Some will figure out how to make it, others will make mistakes, some will bite the dust most likely. Photographers need to realize that this is a supply and demand business, so when supply exceeds demand, your images lose value. As long as photographers believe 10 cents per download is a good idea, the supply of 10 cent photos will stay high. I learned in business school many years ago, there is generally room in a market for two major players. Everyone else just kinda competes for scraps. Right now, from my view of the road, Adobe and Getty are doing a better job for contributors than SS. SS can have the scraps. I've seen people bitching about Getty too, but I sell about 3 times the number of photos on Getty than I ever did on Shutterstock and my average earnings per day is twice what I was making on SS before the profit skimming started. SS could be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Their bean counters may figure it out sooner or later. 15 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 12 The way you words things is a shame. Ten cents per photo!!! I find more than that on the streets. 0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 13 Murasaki, You need to have the minimum payout available before closing out your account. you can change it to the lowest of $35. I had over the minimum and closed out my portfolio and got my payment the next pay cycle. I did a video on this, check it out: 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 13 On 7/11/2020 at 4:29 PM, Mirko Rosenau said: I don't think that this is making up for all the 10 cent sales. No you're right - but it was good to see a decent sale for a change 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 13 7 hours ago, John S. Reid said: Murasaki, You need to have the minimum payout available before closing out your account. you can change it to the lowest of $35. I had over the minimum and closed out my portfolio and got my payment the next pay cycle. Actually a little bit of research shows that this is not actually the official policy. According to the following, they will pay out any earnings above $1 if requested, and then disable the account. If I read it correctly it even sounds you can actually reactive at some point in the future, if Shutterstock should come back to their senses. Have a look at the second option in this article: https://www.shutterstock.com/contributorsupport/articles/en_US/kbat02/How-do-I-deactivatedelete-my-contributor-account That's from the official support docs. Whether or not it will actually happen is a different question. I have just requested it though, so I guess I'll find out. 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 13 On 7/10/2020 at 1:21 PM, baypinar said: As an amateur who has portfolios in 7 other agencies, I apply the following actions : Everytime an image is sold for 0.10 cents in Shutterstock, I delete it from Shutterstock. Ha! I'm doing the same thing))) 6 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 13 On 5/29/2020 at 9:54 PM, Kiev.Victor said: I wish more buyers would go there after realising what SS are doing cos I've uploaded 139 images to DT but no sales. 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted July 13 59 minutes ago, Tony Dunn said: I wish more buyers would go there after realising what SS are doing cos I've uploaded 139 images to DT but no sales. I have been with them since 2008. I have 3000 there... compared to 5700+ here. Sales have only been 20% of SS on average... but some months are good, some months have almost no sales. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
