Stepping Away From Shutterstock:

Lech Walesa #nolongeronshutterstock

Back in June 2009 I was delighted and proud to be accepted as a contributor to Shutterstock. Then you had to submit a batch of ten sample images of which seven had to pass their stringent quality tests before you were cleared to start submitting. My first attempt failed (mainly on poor lighting issues if I recall correctly). For my second attempt I took a different approach. Nothing in the application rules said you couldn't include editorial images and as my archive B/W scans were getting some sales on the (now defunct) British agency Picture Nation I decided to make those the bulk of my second attempt. A day or two later I received a personal email from Anthony Correia (Head of Editorial Content or something along those lines). Obviously he wanted to say do not bother sending these old grainy B/W images again. Well, not exactly - he actually complimented me on my submission, described them as historically relevant and asked me to please keep them coming! What I had got wrong was the format of the Editorial caption. Not only did he edit my submitted images into the correct format but took the time to write out the captions I had sent along with the version they wanted. I was in!

The one thing nobody can say about Shutterstock is that they don't get sales. Even today in my

Phil Lynott #nolongeronshutterstock

regular monthly updates they come out top of my sales rankings time and time again -for both dollar value earned and quantity of downloads and usually by a big margin at that. As time went by it was great to see my tally of downloads building up through each month, sometimes with the added excitement of an Enhanced Download or a high paying Single sale. And as my lifetime earnings grew I passed the levels barriers eventually reaching the second highest 36c point and pushing towards the top 38c mark. Each of these points served to not only increase the value of subscription downloads but also boosted the higher paying On Demand sales.

Another thing I always liked about Shutterstock was their prompt and friendly communications from that initial email from Anthony through to when I had a problem with airshow images. I suddenly started getting rejections for these saying they needed (press) credentials to submit. I emailed pointing out that my local annual airshow at Eastbourne and many others in the UK were not closed ticketed events but public shows held on the seafront that anybody could attend and, therefore, no credentials were required (or even issued). Within a day I had a reply saying they would change their policy and make it on an event by event basis and that Eastbourne images were fine for the reasons I had explained.

This helpful approach took a downturn in recent years when much of the initial support queries were outsourced to fellow contributors who, by all accounts, had no inside knowledge or the ability to actually do anything. My one experience was regarding an uploading issue I was having when all the respondent could do was ask for a screenshot even though I had already explained clearly what the error message was telling me. I suppose that this diminishing of support should have been a clue to the way things were changing between Shutterstock and its contributors -the people supplying the product they sell.

And so to May 2020 when everything changed with the arrival of that email. With just six days notice (can you even call that notice?) the lifetime earnings levels which I had worked hard to achieve were being scrapped to be replaced by % of sale price system. I started from level 3 paying 25% though would have climbed to level 4 (30%) fairly soon. But 25% of what? The price per image that the customer actually pays right? That is how Istock calculate it by waiting to see how many images in a subscription pack the customer uses and paying a percentage based on that (which is why Istock no longer have real time reporting of earnings as they wait for the subscription to end).

Poll tax riots #nolongeronshutterstock

Shutterstock have a much better (for them) money grabbing scheme. They simply assume that a customer will download the full amount of images in the pack and pay a percentage to contributors based on that. Put simply for clarity if a customer pays $100 for a pack allowing them 100 downloads then any image downloaded is valued at $1.00 and the contributor gets their percentage of that. In reality we all know that most customers only download a proportion of what is available (that's how the subscription model works). In an extreme example if the customer only downloads a single image from that pack they have paid $100 for that image and under a fair system the contributor would get their percentage of that amount. Shutterstocks scheme still has the contributor getting a share of $1.00 while they pocket the other $99 odd.

And, of course, let us not forget the second sting in the tail that Shutterstock have in store for us. When you have worked hard all year rising through the percentage levels based on the number of your images downloaded it's Happy Christmas because every January every contributor gets trashed back down to the lowest 15% level and has to start all over again.

How did an agency that I was proud to work with descend to this? God only knows but I want no part of these new terms. Yesterday I disabled all my 2610 images on Shutterstock (the opt out is in Account Settings) and within a day or two my images will no longer be available to license there. Worth noting that this does not delete your images and you can re-enable sales in the future should terms change for the better. Don't hold your breath waiting though.

Good luck to you all. Stay safe. Regards, David.