Huh.

Interesting article - quickly reviewed the accounts - I'd be inclined to agree.

a) They don't appear to actually share/talk about any actual photos, just make bold claims. (Incidentally, one girl is rather ugly - but - if she's taking advantage of people - could be why. The 2nd one while a little 'better' looking, also looks a bit ugly in a way - probably for the same reason).

b) They do seem to have similar scripts, including have a small # of videos, and even being so lazy as to not even change the tiktok tagline (i.e., "captured by jade" vs "captured by charlotte").

c) I've personally witnessed people making bold claims to sell stuff - only to reveal in private groups/forums/etc that they were making a fraction of the sales and instead were just hawking e-books. I've also (in the past) purchased stuff which turned out just to be pure recycled garbage.

(d) Lol - I also agree with your comment that their bold claims of making $400, or $10k from "just one photo!" - unless they somehow built a time machine and went back to 2005 to upload to shutterstock - are greatly exagerrated, if not even non existant.

(e) It is interesting reading the comments - people do seem to be a little wiser nowadays basically saying 'okay, show me the proof', or 'sounds like you are full of dogpoo'.

How did you come across these accounts?

a) I think their looks have a lot to do with what they're trying to portray. They want to come across as just "average" young women to appeal to a broad audience. Even the name Jade (doubt it's her real name) and Charlotte are quite average names. Candid camera angles with natural lighting, also little use of make up.

b) Def

c) Nothing wrong with bold claims but people need to back it up with actual proof and legitimate screenshots.

d) I went through quite a few of the videos and one made me laugh, went something like "I uploaded this image on Friday and on Sunday I earned $1k), it's too outrageous and how do people fall for this crap.

e) Jade deletes negative comments. Charlotte is newer to the game and has left some up. There was someone who asked Charlotte for a link to her portfolio (completely legitimate request) and she replied that she got hacked and won't give it away lol.

Was scrolling through some stock photography TikToks and came across Jade a while back and Charlotte only this week.

Interesting, wow...

Well... if you are interested in ANOTHER article, lol... could send you some links to these...

One thing that has been "big" the last 5 years is for:

a) (Primarily) east indians to take images from free photo sites (i.e., pixabay and I forget the other at the moment). (Some massively download them, like 10,000+).
b) Pass the photographs off as their own (violating the license terms because they don't give attribution which some require, and then also simply slap them together without any modification, which also violates the license terms) of landscape "books" and sell them on amazon
c) And they do it in the cheapest, crappiest, fastest manner possible to just churn out crappy garbage. (I.e., "minimum page count" is 40 pages, so they do the bare minimum, then slap the photos they've essentially stolen because it violates the terms of the licenses, and sometimes put images in sideways, "stretch" the images to fill the page, and just a general mismash).
d) Have "author names" like "Akbar habdul" or "Sanjitt Sakadabar", etc...
e) Some have 500+ "books".

They spam the crap out of it... Amazon at the moment doesn't seem to care because they mainly care about $$$, and seem to be making lots of $$$ from it.

Came across this kind of garbage when I was looking to put together my own photo book. (Which, incidentally if you want to put together a QUALITY book, is a fair amount of time/work).

Upon further exploration, realized they is a crapload of other spam being churned out, from "coloring books" (with artifacts, missing limbs, extra limbs, etc, etc), to "travel guides" (which are 100+ chatgpt generated guides many times with inaccurate or misleading information), etc, etc... And then again (usually east indian/arabic) - writing "books" as "authoritative experts" on various subjects such as pyschotherapy, health/nutrition, personal finances, etc - pretty much all with chatgpt churned out garbage/junk... Sometimes quite funny reading the comments on these "books" - basically ppl that purchased it will be like "what is this pile of sh*t"... And then in some of the FB forums - it is rather (in a way) funny for them to come complaining/whining that one of their "books" wasn't published - but that seems to be mainly people who really have utter garbage... (like, I think one of the titles of one guys "expert books" was "how to deal with overmast___tion" and had a step by step guide I think it was from chatgpt... haha).

Thank you for the article. I am teaching a class tomorrow will add that to the link list.

I anyway warn people about the scammers and that earning money from stock is a slow and steady process.

Quote from: cobalt on March 29, 2025, 03:37

Thank you for the article. I am teaching a class tomorrow will add that to the link list.

I anyway warn people about the scammers and that earning money from stock is a slow and steady process.

"earning money from stock is a slow and steady process" for me more like slow and not a steady process lol!

For me it's a get less poor slowly scheme!

reminds me of the old joke, "how do you make a million in stock photography? .... First you start with 2 million."

It is funny how they follow almost the exact script. I can only imagine how much worse this sort of scamming will become once it is all "AI" automated.

Agreed.  But it's not only pertinent to stock photography; it's everywhere.  Internet/Technology has brought a lot of good, but it's people that are abusing it.  From various phishing scams, fake businesses and list goes on with these TikTok Influencers.  Even here you have this 11 year old Stoker kid constantly spamming the Forum (and nobody does anything about it)

Look this youtuber, influencer talking about make snapshots with smartphones in order to sell photos in Shutterstock, she is very funny, " it is too easy and make a lot of money!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxpGzdMzjFk
 

Mm funny. Seems there is much more money in TELLING people "how to make billions of dollars from fotos!" than actually doing it

May someone please confirm whether Charlotte's account was shut down? Can't find her from my account as she probably blocked me.

looks like charlotte has disappeared

of course...