Have your earnings increased, decreased, or about stayed the same since the payment cut?

[Neo Geometric]

[Ron Zmiri]

9 images today - for 1.05 US Dollars - wasting time and efforts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Svarun]

I had some lucky sales in past few days so this month won't be too bad for me, but overall, my earnings on SS decreased dramatically.

[stevemart]

The trouble is that just when you're absolutely sick and tired of seeing all those ten&teen-centers float by and your finger is hovering over the 'end-my-torture' button....this happens:

and you're in for another month. Had a smaller SOD earlier this month just when things were looking desperate and now my total for the month is already nearly 2X last month's total!

[Reimar]

On 8/12/2020 at 10:58 AM, Photography by Adri said:

 Have you seen a general increase, or decrease, (or neither) in your earnings?

Hard to say with much confidence.  Pro-rating August and comparing the first five months (pre change) to the last three months (pre/post):

average monthly income: 142/134 (possibly due to a disastrous July of 96 bringing down the average)

average monthly downloads: 225/197 (hard to blame us getting ripped off for slightly lower downloads)

average monthly net/download: 0.64/0.71 (so RPD is actually up)

So time will tell, but my experience with stock in general is a steady downward slope.

 

[Steve Collender]

So far between 1/3rd and 1/6th of what I made last June, July and August, making less than when I started 13 years ago, I gave up on thinking I will make much more at ShutterStock on my photos.

[Adam Gladstone]

My earnings have gone down. I think I’ve had a bit of a bump in sales, not much though (I’ve never had huge amounts of downloads though). Last month I did have a couple of 0.30 downloads, not enough though to make up the drop in ‘regular’ sales, though.

[Nick Beer]

My earnings are down over 60%, getting these $0.10 sales is completely demotivating. Maybe its because August is a bad month when people are on vacation. I will give it until end of September and may considering deactivating my portfolio.

[Alexandre Rotenberg]

Don't need to compile stats to know it's a disaster (aprox 50% drop year-on-year). 

January will be even more fun  

[Mike Kuhlman]

As of August 2020, about the same, which is to say $20-$25 a month on average (I rarely made more money than that, even before the commission change).

Downloads generally increase around the holidays, so by January 2021, we'll have a 6-month overview to compare with the latter 6 months of 2019 to determine whether this commission change has been beneficial to contributors.

[EbersonImages]

I have been a member of a couple different agencies for years and have done decent enough for me.  Since I retired, I have more time to include other agencies and although my photos are not many yet, I find that the $.10 cent sales are hardly worth the time spent submitting them. Yet , I will continue to persevere for a little while longer and see it it improves.

[Steve Barze]

August 2020.
Right now, on the same date, 50% fewer downloads and 80% fewer earnings.
It doesn't seem like a good trend to me.
Not worth the effort it had two months ago.
It is a game that is running out.

[Helen Hotson]

Decreased, it's total pants now.

[Photography by Adri]

I'd love to see updates on this now that we're well into January!

[Wilm Ihlenfeld]

47 minutes ago, Photography by Adri said:

I'd love to see updates on this now that we're well into January!

Compared to the period up to and including January 19, 2020, my loss this January is 64.1%. And this despite the fact that Janaur 2020 was also bad.

[stevemart]

Shockingly poor so far this month. Subs are not really the problem...even at level 4 there were many 10 centers (now even more)...but for whatever reason there is a client in NYC or thereabouts that keeps downloading one of my images as a SOD. Until December 31st I got 60 cents for that dl now from 1 Jan I get 30 cents...now in Tier 2, I still only get 30 cents and any of the few ODD's I do get are less than half what I used to get in level 4.

Best thing you can probably do is buy some SSTK stock because all the millions in contributor losses in Q1 feed directly into the SS profit for this quarter and consequently into the management bonuses and options plans! They'll be laughing all the way to the bank in Q1 (which will also be the first full year for new CEO!). Kaching, kaching!

[Former_Poster]

Down 80% in total on last January and roughly the same as a 2020 average.

So its far far worse than thought.

I'm back up through enough levels that the difference is NOT the percentage decrease from those - its just all sales are for lower values.

Video is where its really hurting.

Until this month my average RPD for video was $21.  This month its $5.30.

This isn''t the levels cutting in - its whatever SS is doing, its selling video to buyers at a far far cheaper price than it was previously.  Number of downloads is consistent with last January and yearly average.

Im wondering if they've announced new year special offers or packages im unaware of.  There's a lot more going on here to royalty cuts than the level reset.

 

[HodagMedia]

5 hours ago, Photography by Adri said:

I'd love to see updates on this now that we're well into January!

Without all the drama? Decreased around 75% compared to Jan. 2020.

[blvdone]

It'll be 80% down from January 2020.  This is ridiculous.  I may have to consider to disable my portfolio on Shutterstock again.  It's not worth it.  Adobe Stock and Pond5 are up from January 2020.  I think the buyers aren't buying from Shutterstock.  Shutterstock dug their own grave by being mean to us creators who supply their products.  All the management should get fired or get severe pay cut.  If Shutterstock doesn't get fresh new contents from individual contributors, their business is done.  They'll be bankrupt.  They should reverse the course and respect us contributors.  The new CEO should be fired just like Pond5 fired their ineffective CEO last year.

[Former_Poster]

I've got to that stage now, for video at least.

I'm now seeing my top sellers for for $5 or even $1 a clip instead of the $20+ before this month.  For the tiny amount of money sales will now bring in, it might not be worth it at the risk of undercutting myself and sales elsewhere.

 

 

[blvdone]

Just now, Former_Poster said:

I've got to that stage now, for video at least.

I'm now seeing my top sellers for for $5 or even $1 a clip instead of the $20+ before this month.  For the tiny amount of money sales will now bring in, it might not be worth it at the risk of undercutting myself and sales elsewhere.

 

 

Yes, it's ridiculous seeing very low sales and when I have video sales the price is like 1/10 of what I get on Pond5 or Adobe stock.  If I sell 20 of those low price video clips here, the loss is $1,000.

[blvdone]

When many contributors already left Shutterstock and many have turned on and off their portfolio on Shutterstock, buyers see Shutterstock as unreliable stock site.  When I turned off my video portfolio for 3 months, a major TV station people contacted me via Pond5 to buy my clip because he couldn't buy it on Shutterstock.  I wonder many buyers left Shutterstock because Shutterstock don't have clips and photos other sites have due to their disrespect against contributors.

[Former_Poster]

16 minutes ago, blvdone said:

Yes, it's ridiculous seeing very low sales and when I have video sales the price is like 1/10 of what I get on Pond5 or Adobe stock.  If I sell 20 of those low price video clips here, the loss is $1,000.

I've just had a clip where i got $40 commission on P5.

It sold today on SS for $1.27 commission and $2.39 last week.  Previously that clip was averaging $21+ on here.

My highest earning video sale this month was $11.85

If this is the way things are, theres little point leaving a video portfolio here, you'll earn pennies and maybe lose out elsewhere.

Its a shame as video WAS 65% of my income and amounted to hundreds, occasionally thousands a month here on average.

[blvdone]

57 minutes ago, Former_Poster said:

I've just had a clip where i got $40 commission on P5.

It sold today on SS for $1.27 commission and $2.39 last week.  Previously that clip was averaging $21+ on here.

My highest earning video sale this month was $11.85

If this is the way things are, theres little point leaving a video portfolio here, you'll earn pennies and maybe lose out elsewhere.

Its a shame as video WAS 65% of my income and amounted to hundreds, occasionally thousands a month here on average.

I agree.  If all buyers stop buying videos on Shutterstock and buy the same videos on Pond5 and Adobe Stock instead, we'll make more money.  Having video portfolio here may be hurting our overall income.  We should definitely consider un-licensing videos on Shutterstock till they get it right.  If they don't get new timely videos Adobe Stock and Pond5 will get, their stock video business will go down.  I hope to see that.

[Creatus]

Trick question right?

Anyway here's my graph for January on SS from start to finish because as you can imagine I am very close to pulling the plug here. I can tell you that my best January on SS was just over $1k so you do the math!

I would love to tell you that it's better elsewhere (AS, P5,...) and while the RPD is a lot better the sales volume just isn't there or even non existent. This market is drying up rapidly for the average contributor. Unfortunately there is still a lot of manipulation going on as well with reviews, exposure (favouring certain countries/contributors) and what not so it's a lose-lose situation for many of us. Because of this sales on new images have been non existent for the past few years for many of us.

It is what it is right, we can only continue to complain about it or adapt to the situation and halt uploads or pull the plug completely like many have already done and I probably will too in the near future.

Good luck and take care peeps!

(almost) Over and Out