Shutterstock shock treatment
I’m breaking the habit of a lifetime by posting some thoughts on the announcement that Shutterstock made today about their new earnings approach to be adopted in just 5 days time. I normally like to see how these changes are explained and then re-explained before commenting, but it is such a train crash of an announcement that I thought I should comment a little more quickly.
First, let me say that in 40 years of senior positions in various companies I have rarely seen such a badly organized announcement of such a major change in the way a company is compensating its suppliers (and the owners of all the copyrights that the company is selling). From the mistake in the initial email about video levels through to the almost nonsensical comments in the Shutterstock forum, I can’t think of a worse way to implement a new pricing strategy. Shutterstock holds all the cards that are necessary to understand this change. They know the mix of customers on each of their subscription levels, they know how many of those subscriptions are being used on a monthly basis for downloads and hence they will have modeled, to a detailed level, how their margins will be impacted by the change. With all that information available to them, they have chosen to simply give their contributors an outline of the percentages of an unknown number they will be rewarded with from June 1 onwards. Every attempt by contributors to understand what this average figure of the price of a download is going to be is rebuffed by their admins in the forum and no further emails have been forthcoming to explain what this will mean to contributors. I’m speechless at how badly this has been explained and the massive fury they are creating when they must know the actual answer to the questions being posed.
Then we can add that new information that the assumed price of a subscription download is the price of the package divided by the maximum number of images that the customer could potentially download. In most subscription industries it is well known that customers do not normally download all available assets and so right from the start, Shutterstock are weighting the game in their favor. Canva appears to be taking 2 weeks after the end of the month to more accurately assess how many real assets their customers used in the month with a subscription plan. Shutterstock is just assuming that they download the maximum.
Finally, and the real kicker, they are resetting this new earnings plan at the start of every year. So a long term contributor like me with $93,000 in earnings to date starts at the same commission level as someone with 20 uploads. It is absolutely clear that this is solely to increase their margin in the first months of the year – I cannot see any possible incentive to upload new topical content that would come from this decision.
But what to do about it? I’m not sure – I always like to wait until the dust settles before taking a major step, although I know full well that if other people are temporarily disabling or even closing their portfolios that I am riding on their backs if a change is made as a result of the protests. It is a tough call, but I would like to give Shutterstock a few days to come up with some clear answers to all the very valid questions that have been asked in their forum today.
I’ve rarely deleted a portfolio as that is just shooting yourself in the foot. But I did delete all my pending images and will not upload anything else at least until this gets resolved.
I have been thinking for some time about simplifying my process. After 15 years, I’m getting bored with the grind. So, short term, I am going to upload to Alamy and Adobe, and possibly one Art site.
Like you, getting treated like this after $72K in sales is unbelievably poor management.
Good luck and keep us posted.
Yes, a full deletion is a massive step to take. Stopping uploading can always be recovered from if it turns out to be all a big misunderstanding! I don’t think I will upload new ones for some time and I really need to understand more about my position with them with my video assets.
Maybe I’m reading it wrong but for higher sellers like us it’s better? We undersell for one months then get more for remainder of year. It’s easy to get to the 500 downloads. Not for new people of course
Possibly, although the reset in January is a clear cash grab from Shutterstock. What we don’t know is the mix of their customers across the different subscription options. If they tend to buy the larger subscriptions, then it isn’t good, if they tend to buy small packages then it could be good. That is what Shutterstock clearly know but are unwilling to explain to us. I can understand why they would keep their customer profile somewhat confidential, but they have no trust left for contributors to just take them at their word that this is “good news”
It all seems like an arbitrary attempt to fleece people upon the reset and to discourage newer contributors from even bothering. I have very few images on their server, and NONE of them have been purchased. And while I have plenty of good ideas on how to improve that, the fact that the images have been sitting there dormant for nearly a year does not inspire me to do more. Seems like they could not care less about that either.
Shutterstock have all the information and analysis on how this change will potentially affect their bottom line. If I worked with Shutterstock one thing I would do would be to encourage customers to buy early in the year. ( 1st 3 months ) where most of the lower commission sales would be made. I won’t be adding anything to my port and concentrate on Adobe and Alamy. Sales show now sign of growing on SS and Adobe has outperformed them over the past 4 months.
P.S Your picture to this article on the front page says it all !! 🙂
I guess I could have used this one:
That photo truly says it all — and made me laugh out loud!
Thanks – that would have been a good image to lead with. Shutterstock contributors check out the latest earnings announcement…
The reset every year is ridiculous… they should at least instead simply take the last 12 months into account, no need to reset, just adjust the level based on the last 12 month performance…
Agreed!
I agree 100% with what you said. A percentage-based earning structure is not necessarily a bad thing. But heck, resetting to level 1 on each January? That’s just plain money grabbing madness! #BoycottShutterstock
Yes – it is hard to think of any logic that makes sense from a contributor viewpoint – even a 3 month rolling average would compensate contributors who were selling well.
I find the new policy shocking. I agree with Shitterstock’s comment — they should at least take the last 12 months into account.
Yes, I agree. I can’t see the logic in that (apart from the impact on their earnings!) and they have made no attempt to explain why it is a good idea. Their communications on this have been everything that a management consultant would tell them to avoid. Leaving enormous gaps that contributors around the world have been happy to fill with their own ideas.
Every once a company will make a major mistake. Reading the tea leaves from an Accountant’s perspective, I think the pandemic has hit them harder financially than they are letting on and they also have a major competition with Adobe. My sales tanked in mid March and I suspect most people experienced the same. I’m new to this gig and only have 500 assets on SS & AS. I’m at a point where I’m considering how I want to move forward. Alexandre Rotenberg’ s article on WireStock is intriguing at this point and SS newest strategy gives them another advantage. I’m still working on key wording images from last May, never mind the decade of images I haven’t touched! I have at least a decade before I retire, so maybe the 15% is worth it?
Good point about companies like Wirestock – it would be disappointing if they allowed aggregators to rise quickly in the percentages just because they are aggregators. I don’t think that represents quality work – just volumes. But it would be worth watching. Using companies like that for keywording might still be worthwhile, but I’m not sure how accurate their keywording would be, especially for more specialized travel photography, for instance.
I never considered entering the stock photography market until the pandemic came to town. Post virus, it seemed a way to stay busy and provide a bit of income from the tens of thousands of images gathering dust on my hard drives. I signed up with several stock houses and uploaded a few test images to see the response I’d get from their QC people…SS among them. All went well…then the SS email showed up yesterday. My first question: why would I waste my time selecting, processing, key wording and uploading for the embarrassing low percentage they are offering new contributors? The answer is, I wouldn’t. I’m not dependent on whatever income I may derive from stock. I feel terrible for those of you that are. From my perspective, your biggest pushback should be this yearly reset nonsense. That is a pure money grab and is abhorrent. You don’t treat your best suppliers that way.
Having spent years in senior management in the advertising and marketing world, I get the corporate realities….and understand the bean counter mentality that can set in when things get dicey. This is that….to the maximum. I will continue with other stock & art houses for now but am left wondering the long term impact moves like this will impact the entire industry?
Hi Cole – welcome to my blog. I had a look at your portfolio – an interesting approach to showing your work and some great people images there! I envy your skill at capturing real emotions! I am still on the fence about the changes – I can see why Shutterstock would want to tie its cost of goods sold to the revenue by moving to a percentage model. But their whole approach to explaining this has been so bad as to be laughable. They have left an enormous communications gap regarding their expectations regarding income levels and that has been filled by hundreds of posts on their forum attempting to fill that gap. They must know what the impact of this change on their costs and will know if the total payments to contributors will go down and by how much. They could explain that this will shift money to more successful contributors as measured by their current activity, not their historic level and I don’t see anything wrong with that. I often wondered if they modified their search results to prioritize lower payment contributors so this scheme might be better. But they have said nothing – amazing!
Hi Steve – Thanks for the kudos BTW 😉
The market sets the price and terms. That is as it should be…mostly. However, I fall off the wagon when SS engages in practices like this yearly re-set. To my way of thinking, this is akin to forcing your best suppliers, (the ones who have risen through the ranks over time and contributed the most), to start at ground zero every year! Companies can’t do that with employees, why should they think it’s OK with independent contractors?
Putting the economic justification aside, how much does this business model lower the incentive for star performers to continue working to provide fresh, innovative images? I wonder…..
It has certainly stopped this star performer from uploading new items!
Hey Steve, a good article as always. As another longtime micro contributor, I am looking at this as a convenient time to finally exit the game. For me, I don’t see how my (mostly passive) income will increase under this scheme which is the measure I am using. Time to hang it up and look for other things to do. It’s been fun! My portfolio is coming down before June 1, unless they kick me out for comments. 🙂
Hi Terry – it doesn’t seem very bright, does it! I’m still coming up with ideas, but this enormous uncertainty over Shutterstock has put a damper on many things
Hi Steve:
Too bad about SS. I was doing OK as a beginner, but now I am quite discouraged. I really feel bad for photographers like you with an extensive portfolio and all those years invested. BTW – Andrew Balcombe in his latest video refers to you as his “hero.” [ https://youtu.be/XiCLqL9Wr7s ]
I am sure he speaks for a lot of photographers you have helped and inspired!
Thanks Jeff! I’ll have to look at that. I still don’t know the impact of this on me (although the annual reset is pretty clear!), and I’m amazed that Shutterstock is just letting this run out of control. It is as though they threw this over the wall to us ravenous lions and then went back to their banquet. That sounds a bit Game of Thrones’ish!
I am with you Steve, it is going to take months to get enough data to understand how this will play out. I have a feeling this is more to do with improving profitability at certain times of the year and their stock price than anything. This all seems to be aimed at keeping the people with small ports at the bottom and stopping them progressing through the pay bands.
Yes, I think you are right. We have no idea of the mix of subscription plans and how much an average subscription image “costs”. What is so annoying is that Shutterstock know that number. In terms of the reset in January, we don’t know how that will work either – is it 15% on the first 100 downloads, then 20% on the next 150 and so on, or do they wait until the end of the month and see where you are. Last month I had over 1000 downloads in the month, so I should get to 30% quickly, but it will take almost 3 months to get to 35%. Just thinking about how SS creates their earning report, I can hazard a guess that they will do the incremental pricing I just explained above. 15% on first 100 and so on. The bastards….
From memory when hitting the old pay bands it was as soon as one crossed over that downloads hit the new rate. Though it was years ago I got on the top tier so hard to remember. If they wait until the end of a month then this is even more corrupt.
I totally agree with you that they clearly know already exactly how each contributor will be affected by this so I fear it will be bad for all otherwise I think each contributor would likely have got a more personalised email.
I have only recently been trying to get back into stock after a few years of inactivity due to having kids and this had been another knock back after the total mess that was the Alamy royalty cut. I thought it would be impossible for an agency to handle this kind of news worse than Alamy did but shutterstock have blown them out of the water with their ineptitude.
It is probably the most unprofessional royalty change announcement ever. They weren‘t even able to check the email before sending it out and had to correct themselves with a second email and the corrected royalties. Everything about this screams that it was made by people who only crunch numbers but have zero people skills or longterm vision. And if you cannot handle the contributor community in a respectful way…how will you handle customers? The backlash is of course also visible all over social media and of course all communities for business and stock information. Apparently they are trying to censor comments on instagram and have hired people to hastily uprate their apps in app stores to distract from the lowprotest ratings. That alone tells you somebody does not understand how the internet works. You cannot censor online communities. We are all networked, we all have very loud and clear voices. And we shift upload streams pretty quickly. I posted the following in their forums, but doubt management bothers to read this. Because such a drastic, company altering move should have been announced by the CEO himself on the Shutterstock forums.
„ I humbly suggest the CEO and the entire management team take their own medicine and every January first have their salaries reset to an absolute minimum monthly value.
Then, as the revenue starts to grow over time, their salaries can slowly claw themselves back into the regular contract pay value.
And of course just a few months later, they happily start again at the bottom with every new year.
How „motivating and fair“ will this compensation system be for themselves and any employees??
The reset to zero value for all portfolios at New Year is exactly this…completely hypocritical and destructive and in the times of corona just cruel.
For many artists the regular income from SS is an essential part of their income, that pays the running costs for studio rent, software and all production.
Our rent, our insurance costs etc do not vanish in January. They are the same as they are in December.
I hope the new CEO does not make the mistake many new people make, believing that 1.2 million contributors makes individual contributors insignificant.
„Crowd sourced“ does not mean equal production value evenly distributed across the entire community. We are not upload robots.
It means an open plattforms where individuals can easily rise to the top.
And all contributors are deeply networked and will not simply accept to have their income crashed every January for accounting tricks of new management.
Maybe read up on what happened with Hyperstock and DPC from Fotolia.
The Upload streams of relevant content are pretty frickle, SS is not alone in this world.
So I hope they understand that contributors are equal and essential business partners in a crazy world and not upload bots with no soul or a calculator.“
All good comments! Thanks!
First of all, I’m pretty new to all this, but I was an advertising photographer in Toronto with a decent studio and client base for 25 years. Before that I worked in pre-press doing scanning, and then electronic compositing on Crossfield and Scitex systems.
Now that I’m retired and living on investment income, with low overhead, things look a little different.
Another factor colouring my perspective is my wife, who is also retired, was a Media Relations director for a government tourism department.
The media landscape has changed dramatically over the last 10 years, and media, specifically print related, which includes digital, on-line whatever… has been eviscerated. Everyone is having a hard time making money.
On top of that you have these sites giving the stuff away.
My guess these guys are setting SS up so someone will buy it.
I really don’t think they actually care, on a genuine, substantial level about their creators, just as long as they have stuff to sell and the financial ratios look attractive for an acquisition.
The pandemic situation has just made things appear more desperate.
I’m sure the founders and major shareholders are itching to move on to the next new new thing, so they’re just waiting to cash in the chips.
And they’re always be a huge volume of content from the next crop that they can pick and choose from.
Unfortunately that is the business model of the gig economy.
The pro photography business went through a number of cycles of this as technology made photography easier and less skilled.
It’s almost a repeat, just the sets and backgrounds have changed.
There was always that group who wanted in so they thought the way in was working for free (now we’re all stalking the .25 download)
Software has eaten photography, just put it on auto and click away.
Shoot enough and your bound to get a good one.
And there’s tons of content created every second.
Sorry to have to say this, but I think it will get a lot rougher before it gets better.
Yes, the industry has changed enormously over the years and it won’t stop changing. You either decide to do your best for whatever personal motivation drives you, or you go and do something else I guess! Perhaps Shutterstock is trying to get a buyout from someone else at the top of what they think the market might be, but they are creating so many waves with contributors that it might not be easy to do that. But who knows!
Putting my financial hat on and thinking about investing in tech, the SMEs in that space are having real problems finding capital, and if you look at SS’s financials, the ratios are not good. There’s a lot of consolidation going on, and unfortunately with all things in the UGC space, the content creators are as much of a product as is the product.
Sure you’ll get churn, but you’ll still get a certain amount of creation retention.
I’ve thought for years, and have heard this said since at least the early 2000s, making a living as a photographer is becoming unviable, partially because there is very little barrier to entry to anyone who has a bit of cash.
I tend to find people like Jim Pickerell’s take on the direction of the imaging business is probably the most realistic, especially when one looks at recent surveys.
I think SS is being badly encumbered by the current financial climate. Are the handling it poorly?
From the contributor point of view, yes.
But given the age and psychographic of the management they fit into what Andy Grove warned about what’s coming in tech when he retired as CEO of Intel:
Somewhat amoral, with poor social grounding. Andy thought it’d be tough times ahead for the peons.
Very good point, Stephen. There is nothing actually wrong with paying based on how successful you are now (rather than whether you joined in the good old days) but they have been totally tone deaf about the implementation of that change. Your last point is spot on – they are letting this go on via the forum, they probably didn’t expect the attacks on the reviews of their Apps, but they have done nothing to try to explain things better. I hope I would have done this much better if this had been my company!
From the earnings call transcript of April 28, 2020:
This is how the guys running the joint see the world:
In terms of capital allocation, we will pay our next quarterly dividend of $0.17 per share on June 18, 2020. The quarterly dividend equates to an annual 1.7% yield on our current stock price. Should the lower revenues we’ve been experiencing in the past month continue, even without a rebound, our cash flows are such that our dividend is comfortably supportable. As previously stated, we plan to grow the dividend in line with earnings growth. And we’ll periodically reevaluate the payout based on our cash flow profile and alternative uses of capital.
While we did not execute any share repurchases against our $100 million total authorization in Q1, we may be in the market over the next several quarters and look to capitalize on weakness in our stock, particularly with the volatility that the broader market has been experiencing.
With respect to our M&A strategy, we’re actively looking at assets and we were in a great position to capitalize on the current distress in the market environment. As private market valuations come down in line with public market valuations and capital becomes more scarce, we have the ability to provide willing sellers certainty to close without financing contingencies. We’ll continue to be disciplined as we evaluate M&A opportunities and ensure that we have the ability to integrate the acquisitions, and that they present compelling industrial logic and strategic fit for Shutterstock.
I don’t see a mention of “contributor” so I assume they assume they’ll always have enough worker bees to pay for their empire building
They have 1.2 million uploading contributors. These are mostly graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, videographers who upload stock inbetween their „day jobs“ in paid media projects.
They announce the most radical license shake up in the entire industry in the middle of a global pandemic because they cruelly assume that desperate creatives cannot afford to deactivate content in this horrible situation.
While this may be true…if they plan to crash our income every January first..a reset to zero or the 15% level, even if in December somebody reached 40%….these 1.2 million media professionals have zero incentive to recommend a company that abuses them in this way.
Adobe and the other agencies should send the new Shutterstock management 1000s of crates of the best champagne. SS just came up with a fantastic plan to encourage over a million people to clamour their clients and customers to switch to Adobe, istock, depositphotos.
The creative uploader community is also the buyer community.
A management who is unaware of the most basic foundation of their own company and comes up with an insane plan that helps all their competitors should be changed for rationally thinking people immediatly.
Having checked out Wirestock, after seeing Ken Desloover’s mention of it in his comment, I reckon they could possibly be one way for many contributors to mitigate the ever-lower payment rates from individual agencies. When it comes to Shutterstock, I presume the sheer volume of downloads of images submitted via Wirestock is going to put them in a very high, or even the top tier, right at the start of the year, when SS resets its payment rates to contributors. So, for many contributors who don’t have a very large portfolio it’ll possibly be advantageous to start the year earning, let’s say by way of example, double their previous commission from SS and then paying 15% of that to WS. Plus the huge amount of time saved by having to do no keywording on commercial images and writing only one set of details for each editorial image, while having it submitted by Wirestock to multiple agencies. In my opinion, that time-saving alone is worth the 15% payment to Wirestock.
This could be a good idea – I’m not sure. It seems such an easy way to bypass the worst of the Shutterstock compensation plan that you would think that they would have something in place (if they plan ahead like this) to counter that. Plus, I’m not sure Wirestock does a great job in keywording.
Steven, you’re right to say it *could* be a good idea. I’m going to proceed with caution and try out Wirestock with just a few photos at first, to see how they keyword them. I think, though, that Wirestock will probably work better for contributors whose portfolios are measured in three figures, or below. And if WS are generating a large volume of sales, as well as doing an initial inspection to weed out poor quality submissions, I reckon SS will be quids in (as we Brits say) and happy with what WS are doing, so would they do anything to counter WS? After all, WS must have set up this business model after consulting with the agencies they supply to, which are therefore presumably aware of how WS operate. I don’t know enough about the technical side to know fore sure, but I find it hard to see how WS could offer all the various aspects of their service without some degree of co-operation from the agencies. I suppose SS could alter their search engine’s algorithms, so WS images are placed low down in the search results. But, in so doing, would they simply be cutting off their noses to spite their faces? Only time will tell!
Good points Peter. Especially the one about Wirestock providing quality checks and commercial viability checks before uploading. I can see how that would be in Shutterstock’s interest to support that type of initiative. It is a bit like EyeEM does for Getty Images – choose the best ones to supply and do the Getty style keywording for them.
Steve
It seems to me that the management sees things in a different light. I was a professional photographer for almost 30 years before retiring. Ironically, it was the rise of stock photography that decimated that industry
The end user simply wants inexpensive, or better still free content. From about 1990, the photography has been in decline
The problem is the ubiquity of images and the relative ease of generating them. Even a monkey can take a picture, and not a bad one at that
The two white millennial men running SS have been in the game as buyers of content they’re whole career.
Their focus is to provide this to their peers. The content creators are urged on through a very clever social media campaign
I think everyone should just see the situation for what it is, a further devaluation of what an image is worth
Those are the new rules. What they are saying is take it or leave it. There are plenty who will still keep feeding the machine
Yes it’s unfair, but maybe one has to rethink their relationship to the practice of photography. Maybe you have to ask yourself why am I doing this
But I’m the end, this is the same movie I’ve been watching for a long time
Absolutely sobering picture of the situation!
The same thing has happened to “pro” taxi-drivers after Uber-like companies came to the market.
Let us be honest to ourself, this is a low qualified job.
We (the guys with at least one hand and a camera in the pocket) are way too many for this business.
Welcome to the real world!
Yes, think of the London cabbies who had to learn, by heart, every street in London and be able to be tested on how to drive from one place to another with no map or GPS. That knowledge, as it was called, was invaluable and made London Cabs the envy of the world. Now an app on a phone and a driving license is the only skill you need.
Couldn’t have thought of a better analogy
The world is full of these kinds of situations.
Way too many people chasing a smaller piece of the ever shrinking pie!
I was going to write another comment to pick up these great points, but decided to write a new post instead. Hope it is helpful
Steve
Shutterstock leadership is not honest with the authors in such a difficult period in the world
You’re probably correct on that, from your point of view. That doesn’t change the problem all “authors” or “contributors” have, which is they are all providing content to an industry that is significantly less profitable than it was. So to put it simply, the pie is shrinking at a time when more want a piece
I think what is disingenuous is the typifying of stock and Microstock content-making as a way to make a viable income through very cleverly targeted digital campaigns, like the one SS does on LinkedIn and other social media platforms
To me, after watching media by being involved in it in various capacities, It always seems to gravitate to the cheapest source of content to create the framework for marketing
For the most part, we are servicing the marketing department. That’s what the vast majority of images are used for-illustrating a product
I’ve watched this happen on regular cycles throughout my career
Now we have tons of people shooting on spec and making it easier to find all in the hopes of making money
Sure there is the outliers, the occasional success story that keeps hope alive, but the market is only so large. I suspect we maybe at the point of “peak stock”. I ran into a site today that claimed it had 14 million free images
I had a look an they’re pretty good and a decent size. It’s gets real tough to compete with free if your motivation is monetary
And then we have firms focussed on scouring the web for UGC that they can licence to advertisers
If you are in it for only the money, well it may be a little tougher to stay motivated
Yes, each paid site is fighting the other paid ones for buyers and they are all fighting the free sites. I am sure you are right that we have hit the peak (or did so a few years back!). I upload now to keep my earnings static
From my perspective, which includes my wife’s experience as a Media Relations director, the bump in stock usage was primarily because of the rise of magazines in North America and to a certain extent. The vast majority of these magazines, and blogs today are lifestyle and travel related. I just looked through a few magazine that she gets regularly. All of the images were sourced from stock. Those magazines are supported by advertising. That’s why people get into it, to make money selling ads. The advertising spend, the ad budget has shrunk as a way to boost profit, hence stock price.
As business fold during this situation that we have, ad spending will further decline. Along with stock photographers, all types of editorial photographers and journalists are facing the same thing, declining venues for their work. They are even resorting to pitching ideas to get jobs, and interestingly enough I’ve seen a number of articles on stock agency and photo blogs about how to pitch companies to sell them images.
We’re all facing the same thing, the only difference in the Microstock community is that most have only been doing it for 10 or 12 years. That, to my mind, is around the time cycles in imaging last, so expect a new new thing that everyone will jump into as a money maker.
Here is the site I mentioned in the previous post:
http://184.105.177.48/
I’d would be interested in opinions on sites like this and things like Unsplash.
How do you make money in a world where a “Like” is more important that renumeration in silver?
Yes, I thought that magazines plus magazine type webpages were big users of my sort of images. And they do depend on advertising and that is in shorter supply these days. So we will probably see a drop in sales because of that.
With the site you mentioned, I see that they scrape images from Flickr and Pixabay as well as Wikipedia images under the creative commons license. They seem to make money by having premium images that take you through to iStock on an affiliate link I think. So there is a business mind behind it! I think people just like to get their images admired and hence they upload them where that happens. This company then takes them and makes them more widely available without the extra likes. I think stock photography is genuinely hard work (keywords, descriptions, rejections, lack of feedback etc.) and so not many of the people submitting to the free sites really want to do that sort of work.
As a follow up to this, I’ve decided to give WireStock a try. Will have them submit to 5 of the 6 agencies they work with, and I will do Getty/IStock and several others myself. Given that I’m just now getting into stock and don’t want it to be a full-time gig, this seems a good way to go. Certainly better than starting at 15% with SS and having to build a huge library with them, to have any hope of getting to a higher tier. Will see how they do.
Certainly worth trying. Let me know how it works out