great salary raise !!!!

we are all complaining  BUT

DOES ANY ONE NOTICE THAT

THE BIG GUYS DOES NOT COMPLAIN ?

THE 10.000 IS LOW

BUT THE GUYS  WHO HAVE

A LOT MORE THAN 10.000 USD

ARE

OK!!!!!

seems to be a special deal for them???

Yuri (logos) is the best selling microstock photographer and he said in the SS forum that he is not satisfied with the raise.

Quote from: Trebuchet on May 13, 2008, 12:43

This has been a film with a bad end.

Suspense built like in a Hitchcock movie, but a Mickey-mouse ending.

 

C'mon, people, stop complaining so much. It's embarrassing. As elnur said in related thread, if you've been seriously working at this for any time longer than one year you really have no excuse for not getting a 27% boost in SS income.

As far as the casual people are concerned, this isn't a free ride; like anything else, what you'll get out of it is proportional the effort you put into it. If I was a part-timer/amateur/hobbiest it would be a no-brainer to go exclusive with IS - if you're that upset with SS, and stock money is used to supplement income from your day job, you should very seriously consider this route.

I don't think that just because someone is starting to contribute to SS that they are necessarily beginners or casual. It has little to do with a free ride. It has to do with being adequately compensated for their efforts. SS has chosen to increase prices without sharing these increases with individuals in the first tier. You can say that that is part of their long term strategy and that is fine. However I get the feeling that there are several people not all that happy with that strategy, and regardless of whether you like the increase or not this strategy hurts everyone. I'm sure there are many people leaping over to exclusive at IS. This gives the edge to IS; they will gather material that the other Micors will not. This will influence where buyers go and that will likely decrease the overall earnings for everyone else at SS et al. regardless of what percentage increase you received. It's my feeling that this decision is very short sighted. Gathering the best images is what matters. 

... Gathering the best images is what matters. 

Yes, and if you 'gather the best images', you will be in the top SS commission tier in short order. As I said before, nobody who's serious about shooting stock has an excuse for earning less than 36c per DL for more than a few months.

So you're unhappy getting 25c/33c/36c. What are you going to do about it? Complaining and whining won't help, uploading marketable images will. The ball is in your court.

In case you didn't see it, shutterstock wrote a nice message in response to all the comments they receive on their price increase.  Their message is here

http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37831&start=465

and since it appears that their forum is public i thought i may just as well quote their message here

We'd like to make a few points in response to this thread before ending the discussion.

On the raise:

The goal of the new payout structure is to reward submitters who, according to the download stats, have contributed the images that our customers go on to license. Our customers appreciate the large total number of images in our library, but they vote every day on which of those images are most valuable to them. It's fair to say that this raise was structured as much by our customers' download histories as it was by Shutterstock management.

Prior to this raise, a new submitter could look forward to only a single 20% payout increase, whereas now they will enjoy a 32% initial increase, followed by the chance for two additional increases down the road. The new payout structure aims to continuously encourage all submitters to improve and enlarge their galleries. We want everyone to work their way up...

There are many ways to contribute to your lifetime earnings total. You can refer buyers or other submitters, you can sell Enhanced License downloads, and you can contribute footage to our growing footage library. The stock footage industry in particular has plenty of growth ahead, as mobile devices and digital advertising become more sophisticated and bandwidth becomes less expensive.

As has been pointed out, your own current earnings rate is not locked until next year. Our hope is that the larger initial raise and the two new subsequent raises will motivate every submitter to improve their quality and increase their gallery size throughout the year. You can earn more money by contributing more high quality content, and when you reach these thresholds, you will benefit from your content working harder for you. It's true that our library is massive and growing. But it's also true that quality content is quickly found and licensed by our growing list of customers. Our four search result sort orders -- Most Popular, Newest, Oldest, and Random -- are simple, have not changed in years, and are in combination very fair and effective. If your image is not being downloaded, it is because the image is not in demand right now, and not because the demand cannot find your image.

On the price increase:

While a few specific products in a few countries did go up quite a bit, we did not increase our overall prices by 50%, or even close to that. Our blended US and Euro price increases were about 26%, and our UK increase was about 36%. Above our core price of 249 USD or the equivalent, we charge higher amounts in some non-USD currencies to reflect the much higher costs of advertising in those markets. The UK is one example.

As some have pointed out, it's true that when a customer pays a higher price they will work harder to capture the value of their purchase. In our industry this means that, having paid a higher price for their subscription, they will go on to download more images.

We have a group of customers who lock in the lower rates with our rebilling program, so the price increase has no effect on the revenue we bring in from those customers. However, we still pay submitters the new higher payout rates when rebilled customers download.

The weak US dollar makes Shutterstock a low cost exporter to countries that have a stronger currency. While it's true that submitters in those strong currency countries are paid in USD, it's also true that a weak USD means our products are a tremendous value when compared to the locally available alternatives. The resulting increased demand for our products in those countries leads to increased downloads for all our submitters.

On the forums:

All submitters start off enjoying the benefits of forum participation, but this is a privilege, not a right. If you cannot act in a constructive and polite manner then we will remove your forum privileges.

Conclusion:

We look forward to seeing your new content and we appreciate your input. We're working very hard to continue the growth we have enjoyed over the last few years -- that is our primary objective. We hope you will all continue to let us represent your content as we move forward in this exciting industry.

Best Regards,

Shutterstock