At the same time, their image collection expanded 27% to approximately 330 million images, and their video collection expanded 29% to approximately 18 million clips. Maybe there is no cure for microstock photography What Will Happen Next?Īccording to Shutterstock’s first quarter 2020 financial report, their revenue decreased by 1% to $161.3 million. With this new model, there will be roughly a 50-60% drop in income compared to the previous system, and the first quarter of each year will be a disaster for many contributors. The cost of creating content is not cheap, especially the ones that require models, props, and traveling. Each year, for the first few months - most probably for the first half of the year, people will try to reach a decent level, and their total earnings will be less than the average they made for the past years. Rather than rewarding, this new plan seems enervating for the contributors. Even if they do, all contributors will have to start from scratch on the 1st of January each year. To be honest, for an average contributor, it is impossible to reach level 5 or level 6 in a year, especially considering the slow months and global crises like the pandemic even reaching level 4 will be impossible for most contributors. According to Shutterstock, they made this change to create fair opportunities for all contributors and to reflect the changes in the market. This new model will remove the flat $0.25 flat-rate commission, replacing it with the percentage system, and the payout for subscription plans will not be less than $0.10. Here is the shocking and disappointing part: Shutterstock will reset all contributors to level 1 for both images and videos every year on January 1st. A level 1 contributor (who has less than 100 image sales) will earn 15% per image, while a level 6 contributor (who has more than 25,000 image sales) will be able to earn 40% per image, depending on the image pack sold by Shutterstock. Based on the sale numbers, the contributors will be divided into six levels. ![]() ![]() With the new system, the pay rate will be calculated based on the total sales so, if you make more sales, you will get paid more. On May 26, Shutterstock gave its contributors notice the new earnings structure will be effective by June 1. After earning $10,000 as a contributor, the maximum amount that could be earned per image from monthly subscriber plans was $0.38, and any on-demand image sale was leaving $2.85 per image to the contributors. After you passed the $500 limit, your earnings were increased to $0.33 per monthly subscriber image sales and up to $2.48 per any on-demand image sales, until you reached $3,000 in total earnings. To put it all in simple terms, if you were starting as a new contributor, you were supposed to earn $0.25 per image from monthly subscriber plans and $1.88 from any on-demand images. All in all, the number of full-time microstock contributors started decreasing over time.īefore the announcement of the new earning structure, Shutterstock contributors were able to earn more based on their lifetime earnings. To balance their income, some contributors started uploading to multiple microstock websites, while some preferred to opt in for exclusive contributor plans to earn higher royalties. Back in the early 2000s, the content creators were (almost) able to make a living on microstock, but this has quickly changed since the market started growing and companies started lowering the royalty payouts while continuously updating their earning structures. However, the grass wasn’t always green on the contributors’ side. They also kept pace with technology by implementing AI into their keywording tool, and they kept growing their content library. They also started their own premium brand Offset, where you can buy authentic and exclusive content that is rarely found on any other microstock websites. Since its founding in 2003, they grew steadily, and they even acquired other companies like BigStock, PremiumBeat, and Flashstock. Shutterstock has been one of those big players in the microstock market. Even though demand for fresh content - photos, videos, illustration, and even audio - has been increasing since the digital marketing revolution, some microstock companies went bankrupt as some others were acquired by the bigger players that have been growing on a regular basis. It has been a long time since microstock became side income rather than the main income for content creators.
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