Shutterstock Payout Changes – likely impact
I know this is quite early in the implementation of the changes, but after 3 full days of the new pricing when the reporting was being properly displayed, there is enough consistency in my subscription earnings to at least estimate its impact on me, as a Level 5 image contributor. I’ve focused on image earnings partly because I don’t really understand how I will see the changes on video payouts and also my video sales are pretty variable from month to month. So this is an image only calculation and it obviously applies to my portfolio and level 5 commission percentage. If my results change significantly as the month goes by, I’ll revisit the numbers and update this. The conclusion may surprise you so please let me know where my calculations are flawed.
So far, I have seen an average subscription payout of $0.24. June 3 was $0.25, June 4 was $0.24 and June 5 was $0.23. This was on a total of 73 subscription sales. It could be that this is going to be a continuing decline, but for now, I’ve assumed that the average is going to be $0.24 compared to the $0.38 that I used to receive. Luckily, I kept a record in my spreadsheet of the income from each image category – subs, ODs, ELs and SoDs and so I could calculate what the reduction is going to be on the earnings. I don’t see that any change to our royalties will (in the short term) impact the overall number of sales although I guess it could allow Shutterstock to come up with some different pricing schemes in future knowing that their costs (ie us) are just going to be a percentage of what they earn in the new scheme.
My On Demand images were always paid out at $2.85. I’m now getting a variable price for these as well although that has been better than before on two of the days. So far, my average on a total of 8 sales has been $3.19. That is quite a small sample and so that might introduce errors.
I believe the percentage paid (before the changes) for someone at the top tier of earnings for Enhanced license and Single on demand images was 30% – in both cases the percentage increased as you earned more over time from 20%, 25%, 28% and then 30% according to this old article on Quora about Shutterstock contributor earnings. Now, under the new scheme for Level 5 contributors it is now 35% which is an interesting increase.
So all these moving parts are going to impact my earnings on image sales. I can see I am going to get a hit on video because I am only Level 2 on video sales and getting 20% of the sale price instead of the previous 30%, but as I said, I’ll ignore that for now.
To calculate this all out, I took my earnings since January 2018 and reduced the subscription earnings by 36%. I increased my On Demand earnings by 12% and my Enhanced and Single sales by 17%. In each of these cases, I worked out the percentage change to my old earnings, so 17% in the last example is (35-30)/30 expressed as a percentage. After all these calculations, I ended up with reduction in earnings each month on image sales of $45 which represents about a 6% reduction overall. This graph shows the original image earnings, the reduced earnings with the new commission plan and the difference between the two.
It is hard to square this with the promised “reward performance with greater earnings potential”! It is hard to see how that will happen for me. Having said that, the reduction of 6% is nothing like as bad as I was expecting.
So I guess my conclusion is that the top tier contributors who will get 40% royalties will get an increase in earnings, especially as they are not getting a drop in anything apart from subscription sales. Low tier contributors will be hit by the significant drop in subscription revenue and will also see no counterbalancing increase in the other categories. And, of course, everyone will be badly hit every January with the reduction to the lowest levels! I really cannot see any argument for why that makes any sense.
I did try to calculate the impact on someone at the base level of earnings. At that level, subscriptions are likely to be reduced by 60%. ODs, if the pricing follows my experience to date, would reduce by 27% and Enhanced and Single sales will reduce by 25%. A massive cut to the expectations of contributors in Tier 1. Tier 2 (although this is difficult to match to the earnings driven commissions from the past) would also see subscriptions income drop by 60%, but ODs by 3% and EDs and Singles drop by 20%. That is, of course, if my calculations are right!
Food for thought! And I welcome any critiques of my analysis and details of any similar analyses that you might be able to work up.
I’m currently in level 4 and have received mainly 10 cent sales. I thought a 10 cent sale came from the bottom level tier. Your thoughts?
The table in my previous post on the Shutterstock changes shows when you would see a 10c download. The higher you are, the less chance there would be of a 10c download, but even at the top level it is still there. The frequency is probably random – we all hope it will level out somewhere in the coming days and weeks.
I’m in the same boat as Jason at level 4 and also have mostly 10 cent sales.
I also get a surprising number of 10c sales but in my case they are balanced out by higher value ones such that my average at the moment from 81 downloads is $0.24
To Answer the above, ten cents sales come from the largest packages and from my understanding no matter what level you are on you are going to see them even the top level contributors will only get a couple of cents more if anything.
Great analysis Steve yesterday was an interesting one for me with subs coming out at an average of 0.385 so basically back to the old level and that was despite a load of 0.10 an 0.11 sales, this was thanks to a run of 0.86 and 0.52 sales.
OD sales are a real concern though as I have had a couple of tiny OD sales which has dragged the average price back to 1.46 from 2.85 if it was not for those sales ODs would be up on the old levels as well. This has been the case on most days.
If it was not down to the slump from COVID I have seen then I would normally have ticked over to level 5 by this point in the year. The real concern is if they do not backtrack on the insane idea of resetting every contributor in January.
Maybe the best tactic for us all to adopt is never to open the daily sales reports and only to look at the daily total, I think this will help avoid the inevitable negative feelings about the super low prices.
I do worry that I am too early with these calculations, especially on those ODs. That could make a big difference to the overall results.
Had really strong run of sub sales for a Saturday, unfortunately all but one was for 0.10. massively disappointing. Maybe I should have stuck to not opening the report
I had some of those – my subs average price is down to 20c today, but I had 3 ODs for an average $3.39 each. So overall not too bad!
This tiered system of compensation is garbage no matter how you slice it. I have access to a relatively unique slice of the nation that has not been saturated with submissions, so I can offer some very unique views – but I am NOT a production photographer. This is not my job, and so far, it isn’t even a side hustle with no payouts. Bottom line is that I have stopped thinking that this is even worth my time to work on, not because I have had no sales, but because when sales do finally start happening, it has been made to feel like scrounging for scraps out of the dumpster.
As a beginner at this, I have better things to do than to produce quality work for slave wages.
Maybe they just wanted to get rid of people like me. Level two. Fair enough. Shutterstock is dead for me.
I wonder what shutterstock will do with their algorithm: For shutterstock it would be better to favor images from lower tier contributors because then they get a higher percentage of the price paid. As long as the customer still finds an image that fulfills his needs… No way to know what is happening behind the curtain, but since they can be rude to our faces by changing the tier system, they are probably also optimizing their gains behind our backs.
I’m less sure that they will do that. In the past, I could see the logic – a higher paid contributor might not have submitted anything new for a long time, but still got the 38c so why not try to benefit newer contributors. In the new scheme, the bigger sellers are the ones that Shutterstock want to keep so they might be more in favor of a level playing field.
It would be interesting if they really wanted to ruin their business this way. A certain number of higher tier contributors in the forums are already disabling their accounts because they don’t want to sell their images for next to nothing. When everybody gets downgraded to level one next January, more accounts will be disabled, I bet on that. Whatever their plan is, it certainly does not entail ruining their business.
I think I have enough data now to say that my earnings have been reduced by 1/3. If getting .10c downloads at level two means anything is that I will get less per download next January. Thank you. I wish all stopped contributing now so SS would rethink their strategy. But I doubt it will happen. Think about it. I am one of those few people who did not quit iStock and I have enough earnings there to stay. Shutterstock managed to do something worse. Sets a bad example.
They are certainly causing a lot of anxiety among the contributors. My guess is that they don’t want as many small contributors as they perhaps did when they were on a race to build the biggest library of images. But, as you say, they have annoyed pretty much everyone. Getting people to act is a very different thing though – some are still finding out about it, and some are on the fence.
In this first week of June (Level4 30%) I’ve had a whole range of subs 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 59 & 74 cents. In ODDs I’ve had $2.04, $2.06 and $3.00. I thought my ODDs should have been $2.14 but apparently not. Average for the week per dl =$0.41 compared to $0.64 for May (month total). Was intending to delete account immediately but will wait until month end. May retain account until year end but no way after December 2020. They can find another sucker.
On demand images are now paid as a percentage of the buyer price – they used to be a flat rate in the past. So you will see a variable amount in the same way as subscriptions are varying. This approach by SS is going to create a real split in the community between big sellers and smaller sellers, I’m afraid
I had a total of 92 subs from 4.6. till now.
My average from these sales is 0.2078$.
I am Level 5 image contributor and was getting 0.38$ in the old scheme.
Hi Nick – as of right now, I’m at an average of 23c for 138 subscriptions, but at 3.28 for 15 on demand images. Today has been my worst subs day with an average of $0.18. It is important to compare the changes across all categories of image though. My calculations show that over the past 30 months I would be down about 7% on average.
Steven, what is your opinion about the D-day ? (A number of contributors disabling their accounts on june 15th for a week) i would love to hear your opinion – I am still undecided !