robin, do you think its better to be an unnamed image seller on google than on shutterstock?

Yep the "I've had a couple of bad sales days Microstock is dead" school of thought is common on here

Q1 + Q2 2015

Earnings: 198.000.000 $
Download: 69.300.000
Items (June 2015): 57.200.000

Q1 + Q2 2016

Earnings: 240.000.000 $ (+21%)
Download: 84.200.000 (+21%)
Items (June 2015): 92.000.000 (+61%)

Actually, if it was my company, I wouldn't be that happy with only a 21% sales increase from a 61% asset increase over the period. Translate those figures to contributors, and it won't be long before many of them chose to bail out.

Yes ... and often new items are low low quality images and vectors ...

Quote from: KuriousKat on October 10, 2016, 05:14

Actually, if it was my company, I wouldn't be that happy with only a 21% sales increase from a 61% asset increase over the period. Translate those figures to contributors, and it won't be long before many of them chose to bail out.

Yes ... and often new items are low low quality images and vectors ...

That does raise the question of where these contributors who 'bail out' would go. Are there other microstock agencies which will be more rewarding for those who might abandon SS?

Quote from: Bauman on October 10, 2016, 05:25

Quote from: KuriousKat on October 10, 2016, 05:14

Actually, if it was my company, I wouldn't be that happy with only a 21% sales increase from a 61% asset increase over the period. Translate those figures to contributors, and it won't be long before many of them chose to bail out.

Yes ... and often new items are low low quality images and vectors ...

It's not a sustainable business model as it currently stands. The 'biggest' library is no longer the best, and buyers, (and contributors), are shifting focus to other smaller, but well curated libraries.

Shutterstock need to put the breaks on how much they approve and refocus on quality. If they continue as they are, by next year they will need to double the library to see 20% profit, then triple it. Contributors won't continue to upload anything of quality if they are not seeing a return, so they will end up only getting submissions of sub par images.

It's not yet 'free fall' but it's a slippery slope.

I do think you have a point but is there actually any evidence that there is a shift to smaller well curated libraries?

Quote from: Bauman on October 10, 2016, 05:25

Quote from: KuriousKat on October 10, 2016, 05:14

Actually, if it was my company, I wouldn't be that happy with only a 21% sales increase from a 61% asset increase over the period. Translate those figures to contributors, and it won't be long before many of them chose to bail out.

Yes ... and often new items are low low quality images and vectors ...

That does raise the question of where these contributors who 'bail out' would go. Are there other microstock agencies which will be more rewarding for those who might abandon SS?

There are certainly other sites that are showing significant growth, and are closing in on Shutterstock. It is only a matter of time before the balance of power changes at the top, unless the current pattern is broken.

Shutterstock used to represent 70%+ of my monthly sales - it is now down to less than 50%. My second site used to represent 10% of my monthly sales - it is now up to 30%. That change has been gradual over that last 12-18 months, but if it continues at the same rate, then concentrating efforts on site number 2 makes better business sense than continuing to throw good work at Shutterstock for little or no return.

If I concentrate on uploading to site number 2, and other disillusioned contributors do the same, then the decline at Shutterstock will be faster and the increase at their competitors will be quicker. Shutterstock will continue to ingest almost everything submitted, which will further reduce in quality and variety, and the competitors will grow a library or well curated, quality images. It will very effectively accelerate the shift.

Like I said, 'slippery slope'.

So I was working exclusively for the microstock industry. Shutterstock alone was sending me more then enough monthly to pay my bills. Now I see the earnings are like 30, 40 % down comparing to last year, and the new images I uploaded lately, they don't sell at all, and I mean 00000! and their quality is really good, similar or even better to older ones that already sold more than 2000 times.
So I had to get another occupation, I just leave the portfolio there and will see it go to insignificant earnings in record time.  it is pointless now to upload there.

So sad...

Quite a strange things. I uploaded only several photos (they are actually screenshots from 4K clips) recently and most of them had downloads soon. Hardly imagine absolute zero new downloads of a big account with stills only. I can understand your sadness but nothing lasts for ever and maybe it's the right time now to look for some completely different occupation. Maybe it would be way more successful for you.

My SS has tanked so far this month. It's a little alarming.

I can't see the amount of uploads having much effect on earnings. Not these days anyway. It wouldn't surprise me if they still got the 21% sales increase if nobody had uploaded anything new at all.

I mean, if your looking for a video of a cat eating a horse, then you're not going to buy 68% more cat eating horse videos just because there are 68% more cat eating horse videos than when you visited last year. Your just going to buy the one. And ifntherevare only 100 such videos rather than 168, then you'll probabky be more than hapoy to just go for one ofnthe 100. I'd say the sales increase is mainly just from new customers discovering the site as more people inevitably need more content. Or existing customers just buying new stuff.

Sure, I appreciate that they need to have new stuff uploaded to survive and compete... higher resulutions, reflect new trends, new fashions, not have images full of cars that are ten years old etc etc. But is it likely that there would be nothing suitable at all when people are searching for stuff, if nobody uploaded for six months or a year? And they'd go elsewhere?

I know an increase of content that is more in line with the increase in earnings would be a lot better for contributers, but I just think that more people are uploading more content at a rate that's faster than buyers need.

I think it's pretty clear that stock sites will carry on making more sales every quarter, if only slightly, and contributors will gradually make less and less. Theyll be able to offset the loses for a time by finding a niche, uploading more stuff, better stuff etc... but it will probably come to a point where somethings gotta give. What, I'm not sure... but people will have to leave as it's just not going to be viable. Who knows... places might start increasing their commission. I think if sales were dropping and customer research indicated that lack of content was a major dissatisfaction... then they'd have to. Not now, we're talking in the future when people either remove their portfolios or stop uploading and there's a massive lack of fresh content coming through. Now I think of it, that list to the right is probably going to be about a quarter of the length it is now in about ten years. I'd say 50% of them will just fade a away and the other 25% will get bought out by the others.

I have forseen it. So it will come to pass.

Mmm ... I don't know, but these are my earnings stats 2015 to 2016 today after 9 months and 9 days:

1st 123rf +1,80% (of my total earnings)
2nd Fotolia +0,70%

Last SS -3,28% (down from 62,64% to 59,36%).