New earnings structure for Contributors

[PanicAttack]

This is only industry I know where people keep getting less and less for their commitment and hard work.

Shutterstock will probably still getting many phone snapshots, without models or with few family members but big productions, studio shots with professional models and on location shots with many professional models involved will not be profitable anymore.

Many of these lifestyle photos today will become obsolete in 2-5 years, mostly because of technology and accessories. Look how stock photos looked like 10 years ago.

How can anyone expect for contributor to evolve, offer better photos, lighting, equipment, resolution (8k monitors will be standard soon, so anything less then 30ish megapixel will not look good if it will be over entire page).

We are also business man/woman here and without evolve and progress we are getting nowhere like any other business. Stagnation is demoralizing. 

 

[LongJon]

the fact that nobody from ss come here with an excel table to show us that we are wrong and most sub pack are exactly 50 and 10 image speaks volume about this...i have a mislay hope i'm wrong but it's very small...i think 1 june we will get up with tons of 10 cent sale some bigger than 0,38 but the loss will be consistent.

[Abir Bhattacharya]

Just now, Philip Rozenski said:

As I said "these number perfect... certainly not"   not being optimist so much as balancing the people who are jumping off cliffs.

This is modeling that shows that the weight of the sales are very low probability to the $0.10 range.  What is more likely is there will be annual parity or slight parity to improve for moderate to volume sales contributors.  Their model suggests the tier penalty hits the high volume submission low value submitters... their real problem IMO appears to be the cost of reviewing.  They need to reward high value contributors and penalize the low because we all loose money when they have to pay to review turds.  That is where the ability to create $ and share with contributors lies... but you still have to allow for entry for new potential valuable suppliers.  Yep a 20K per year sales person would loose revenue early in year but they will make it up later as the tier percentages should pay more than in the past.  

Oddest thing is it will make revenue unstable.

The one thing everyone can agree to is it was a PR Shi*Show as they should be clarifying the goal of the model as the broad range of people assume the worst.

 

They wont clarify since it is not going to happen. Assume only the worst since its correct to assume 

[Polozov arts]

Just now, Philip Rozenski said:

I am not saying that... please don't misquote.  I am saying the data an tiers in model suggest it wont go down. 

listen, stop spamming here. everyone but you already got the idea of these changes. keep your baseless optimism to yourself

[LongJon]

Just now, Philip Rozenski said:

I am not saying that... please don't misquote.  I am saying the data an tiers in model suggest it wont go down. 

 analyse the sale in adobe in the last 2 weeks

 

65% were from big pack

30 per cent from pack of 10 images 

5 per cent single od with on enhanced...

 

so let's say i sells 100 images in ss and they are divided like before...so now i have 95*0,38, plus 2,85 *5...it makes something like 48 dollar or something like this. sub are 36 dollar

with the new scheme considering this %...we have 65 sale per 0,1 cent...6,5 dollar plus 30 sale for 1,72 dollar according to my level in ss,...it makes 57 dollar...if this is scenario considering as small what happens in adobe....i will earn 22 dollar more....

[sedir]

big  DISAPPOINTMENT😔

[Lost Mountain Studio]

I am so disappointed in you Shutterstock.  I’ll give it one month on this new pay rate and then will most likely decide to delete my account.  I see no logical sense in having images available here and undercutting their sales somewhere else where I am already making much more per sale.  While my account won’t put much of a dent in your coffers, collectively I can see how disgruntled contributors may.

[Krzysztof Bargiel]

It's crazy what they have done to people! Greedy and disgusting!
I have signed a petition already.
Friend of mine (Richard) who asked Kate many important questions yesterday, got banned after her private message telling him to stop! So it looks not only pay is going down but your freedom too!
I will wait to see what happens after 1st of June. I'm not going to upload anything new for sure, I have a few thousands of images, videos and other things ready to go online but with that devastating news, I don't think so! If that is what is look like going to be (slavery) my portfolio will be removed very soon from this disgusting site.

I value my Portfolio much more than your insulting 0.10$ shame on you!

Petapixel (a large online photography news site) has written several articles on SS this year and before so it might be worth contacting them to submit they write an article about this. If many of us will contact them they should make this thing very loud.

https://petapixel.com/contact/

[Polozov arts]

3 minutes ago, MJD Graphics said:

Wow , 66 pages of posts within 24 hrs, must be a new world record 🙂

if here are at least 40 pages (x25 comments per page) of unique users willing to stop selling on SS, then 1000 users. if an average user's portfolio is 1000 images, it makes a million images minus from SS

[LongJon]

i made a fast simulation....i use 2000 images sold per month, who is out of reach for many but what counts is the results....if level of sub pack 750 350 are lower than 80% or between 85% and 80 % we earn same or slightly more...if it's bigger than 85 we lose

[RozenskiP]

15 minutes ago, LongJon said:

 analyse the sale in adobe in the last 2 weeks

 

65% were from big pack

30 per cent from pack of 10 images 

5 per cent single od with on enhanced...

 

so let's say i sells 100 images in ss and they are divided like before...so now i have 95*0,38, plus 2,85 *5...it makes something like 48 dollar or something like this. sub are 36 dollar

with the new scheme considering this %...we have 65 sale per 0,1 cent...6,5 dollar plus 30 sale for 1,72 dollar according to my level in ss,...it makes 57 dollar...if this is scenario considering as small what happens in adobe....i will earn 22 dollar more....

This is a better approach... not sure I track though... are you saying if adobe model applied to your SS subs you make more?

[Polozov arts]

2 minutes ago, LongJon said:

i made a fast simulation....i use 2000 images sold per month, who is out of reach for many but what counts is the results....if level of sub pack 750 350 are lower than 80% or between 85% and 80 % we earn same or slightly more...if it's bigger than 85 we lose

what sense in these calculations? you get 15% from your sales and somebody takes the rest 85%. that's all you need to know

[RozenskiP]

3 minutes ago, LongJon said:

i made a fast simulation....i use 2000 images sold per month, who is out of reach for many but what counts is the results....if level of sub pack 750 350 are lower than 80% or between 85% and 80 % we earn same or slightly more...if it's bigger than 85 we lose

Its along what I see... too early to guarantee high or low 

[Polozov arts]

2 minutes ago, MJD Graphics said:

Won't make a lot of difference to SS as they would then still have 290 million images in the database.

not really. first, I'm pretty sure there's more than 1000 per folio. second, it's about quality. given that here're those who care..

[LongJon]

this is the same simulation considering leven one royalty...the loss will be strong, so in january we will have strong lost but if the % is the same a recovering the next month...the BIG problem for me is that demand for images is collapsing....not the level of royalty...

[Amlan Mathur]

Actually considering that this is at 2k images PER MONTH, it tells you of just how big a seller you need to be to MAINTAIN your earnings. So for most of us that can't cross to 30% in Jan this will be a massive kick in the wallet

Philip, would you mind sharing that excel file? would want to run a simulation to check at what threshold (sales/month) how much do we lose 

[LongJon]

4 minutes ago, MJD Graphics said:

Won't make a lot of difference to SS as they would then still have 290 million images in the database.

it didn't make in istock...where people earn one cent per image...or with connect sell 4000 images per 3 dollar...it will make here? dreamer.....accept and focus on the present situation or change job because with any agency you could make a living out there without ss. 

[Gulsen Ozcan]

4 minutes ago, Polozov arts said:

what sense in these calculations? you get 15% from your sales and somebody takes the rest 85%. that's all you need to know

You have nice,great splash compositions on your port,i like them.of course i agree with result.Really bad !

[Polozov arts]

1 minute ago, LongJon said:

it didn't make in istock...where people earn one cent per image...or with connect sell 4000 images per 3 dollar...it will make here? dreamer.....accept and focus on the present situation or change job because with any agency you could make a living out there without ss. 

it didn't? ))) look at where IS now

[LongJon]

7 minutes ago, Polozov arts said:

what sense in these calculations? you get 15% from your sales and somebody takes the rest 85%. that's all you need to know

sorry but right now i earn 30% like before...not 15....considering this year i will reach 30 in less than 2 months...so royalty level is minimum problem, if the % to pack are those i will earn more than now with my level of royalty....losing in january and february and earning more rest of year...the big problem is that we are seeing a drop massive of sales in any agency out there...the world is buying less and less images.

[Polozov arts]

Just now, LongJon said:

sorry but right now i earn 30% like before...not 15....considering this year i will reach 30 in less than 2 months...so royalty level is minimum problem, if the % to pack are those i will earn more than now with my level of royalty....losing in january and february and earning more rest of year...the big problem is that we are seeing a drop massive of sales in any agency out there...the world is buying less and less images.

This is for you, not for many of us. As for me, I'll reach current 30% level to 4th month maybe. and I will not go to level 5 till the end of the year

[Andreas Prott]

There is an interesting side effect of this new scheme which additionally shows, how the contribs are scr..ed.

Assume the client signs up for a yearly contract for 350 images/mo. with monthly billing. Then each image costs 0,37$. If the client decides to pay upfront each image costs 0,32$ (Pricing details on https://www.shutterstock.com/pricing).

So guess who gets 100% of the benefit of the upfront onetime payment? And who pays 60-85% of the 0,05$ difference?

[LongJon]

3 minutes ago, Amlan Mathur said:

Actually considering that this is at 2k images PER MONTH, it tells you of just how big a seller you need to be to MAINTAIN your earnings. So for most of us that can't cross to 30% in Jan this will be a massive kick in the wallet

Philip, would you mind sharing that excel file? would want to run a simulation to check at what threshold (sales/month) how much do we lose 

2000 was just a number....you can put 300 images per month and when you reach level 4 you will have more earning than now...sure first  months you earn less in january much less but then you can recover....but the biggest point are

 

1- Demand will improve ? right now we are at minimum, is clear they are selling 50% if not less files every month...and next month will be even less

2- what is the % of pack per number sold...

 

i thought the lost would have been more than 70% but right now i'm more inclined to think we can have 20 % 30 not more..

[Polozov arts]

2 minutes ago, LongJon said:

sorry but right now i earn 30% like before...not 15....considering this year i will reach 30 in less than 2 months...so royalty level is minimum problem, if the % to pack are those i will earn more than now with my level of royalty....losing in january and february and earning more rest of year...the big problem is that we are seeing a drop massive of sales in any agency out there...the world is buying less and less images.

and it's not the world buys less images. it's more and more images in database, so your share of sold images is less and less.

[Marmolejos]

Why Shutterstock, why?? I am Very disappointed about the new earnings structure. I dont think this is going to be good for us.. Bad move Shutterstock, You could do better.