 All right, I wasn't going to talk about this in my monthly contributors earning report, but I decided that I'm going to do like a full video on this because I've got some semi good news that I want to talk about in my revenue report for the past month, and this isn't really a feel good video. What I want to talk about in this video is the changes that Shutterstock just announced for how they pay contributors. Now if you're not familiar with this, last week, every contributor to Shutterstock got an email that essentially said in a more complicated way than this, but you're going to get paid less, right? They changed the way that the earning structure is going to work. For the most part, contributors are all going to make less money over the year, and it's set up in like a really weird way so that Shutterstock will pay less money at the start of the year and maybe pay more later in the year, and it's got a lot of people up in arms. A lot of people are really upset about this, and what I want to talk about in this video is my reaction to it, as well as, you know, other people's reactions. I'm not going to go through all the step-by-step details of how they changed. F-stoppers has a really good article on that, and I'll just put a link to the F-stoppers blog article down in the comments, so if you're interested in about exactly what the changes are, look at that blog article, but I'm going to talk about how they affect me and how they might affect others as well. Now for my reaction to this, I'm actually going to buck the trend and say that I'm not outraged about this. Now I'm obviously not happy about it, you know, Shutterstock is going to pay me less every month going forward for the same photos that I sold previously. So it's not great, but I don't, you know, have the anger towards Shutterstock that you might see elsewhere on YouTube and definitely see on all the forums. And the reason is that I kind of almost expect Shutterstock and companies like Shutterstock to do this type of thing, and this isn't the first time that this has happened to me. Like, a lot of other stock sites over the past 10 years have been going through and doing this same thing. So it's not that surprising to me either. It's almost expected. So I'm not going to be going into saving my portfolio on Shutterstock. I'm not going to be going and, you know, down-rating their app or anything else like that. You know, when I signed up for Shutterstock, you know, there's the terms of service and I read the terms of service. And basically the terms were that, you know, Shutterstock at that time would pay me that amount, but they were allowed to unilaterally decide how much they paid me and they're allowed to change that. It literally sends it in when you agree to be a contributor, right? As part of that, though, I as a contributor, I'm allowed to take my photos off Shutterstock whenever I want. There's a certain amount of time that, you know, they have to take them off and the licenses are still good, but like that was the agreement that Shutterstock and I went into when I uploaded my photos there, right? They have not, in my mind, changed the agreement, right? When I read that, I kind of knew that they could change the rates. And I also kind of knew that there's only one way they were going to change. They were going to go down, right? And like one of the things you need to know is that this isn't the first time this has happened, right? Like in 500px, when they first started selling stock, like in 2014, 15, I was making like $1,000 on 500px selling my photos. And like for one photo download, I could get $175, right? And then if you change that to like last year, you know, 2019, I may be making like 30 cents or a dollar for 500px, right? They changed the way that they did pricing and my revenue went down. You know, the same thing happened back in like 2011. iStock got bought by Getty, and they also put down the rates that they pay contributors, right? So this is something that has happened at other companies. It's kind of, I see it as part of the business of selling your photos at stock, to be honest. So before you go and you hit that, you know, dislike button down in the YouTube video. I want to kind of hear me out for a minute, right? You know, I've been reading through the forums and, you know, a lot of people that they keep saying, Shutterstock's being greedy. Shutterstock's being greedy. They're a bad company. Well, you know, I don't think you can say people are being greedy for doing this, right? You know, obviously COVID-19 is happening. Shutterstock sales have been down. Almost everybody that I've talked to or any website she read, most people are seeing their Shutterstock sales go down because of COVID-19. Obviously, if the contributors are seeing their sales going down, Shutterstock is seeing their sales going down as well too, right? Shutterstock has a lot of employees. They obviously had, probably had to make some changes. That contributed to this, okay? Now, I'm not saying that Shutterstock isn't gonna make more money next year because of this, you know? Luckily, the good thing about Shutterstock is, is that they are a public company. So we will see how much they earned, okay? We will actually know whether they made more money or not in this because you can actually look at the filing as you can see this. But we don't know they're specifically doing this because they're greedy. Also, they were totally within their right, right? As I'm within my right to have a Smugmug website and I have a Smugmug website where I sell my photos to stock, the exact same photos that I have up on Shutterstock and I take 90% of the cut, right? And I don't consider myself being greedy for that, right? Like if you take your Shutterstock photos and upload them to Pickfair and make more money off them, is that being greedy? I don't see that as being greedy. To be honest, I see that as more good business sense, okay? Obviously a lot of people are gonna disagree with me, especially those who have their photos only up on Shutterstock. But I kind of feel like if you thought that Shutterstock was gonna put your interests in front of theirs, then I think you were just mistaken. I think that was where the problem is, that people thought that they were part of their Shutterstock family. Well, Shutterstock is a business, there is no Shutterstock family. Their Shutterstock family is their employees and they're probably trying to take care of them. They're not trying to take care of us, the contributors. Unfortunately, us the contributors, we gotta take care of ourselves. Now, obviously a lot of the people, if you've been reading the Shutterstock forums or the Microstock forums, don't have the opinion that I have. A lot of people are pissed, right? And they're going out and you know, they're gonna use different kinds of activism to get Shutterstock to change their mind. And in my mind, I think that's a waste of effort. I think if you want to sell your photos as stock or sell your art as stock, there's some key things that you need to understand about the stock industry. And these are probably unpopular chews, but their chews none the less. And the first thing is you gotta realize is that the success of a stock company like Shutterstock is not in their ability to recruit and retain contributors. It's in their ability to recruit and retain buyers, right? And of course people are gonna now say, well, yeah, but if we all left Shutterstock, they'd have nothing to sell and they wouldn't make any money. Yes, but that is true, but that's never gonna happen. It's not realistic to get every single contributor to sell things, especially when there's money to be made, right? You know, what I've seen in the stock industry is there's been lots of stock companies that have come and gone over the years, right? And the ones that are successful, all they really need to do is to get a minimum set of photos up there, so they can then start bringing buyers in. And the sites that are successful and marketing to buyers and bringing buyers in, you know, then the photographers and the contributors will then flock to that site because there's money to be made, right? It doesn't work the other way around, right? There's other, you know, stock photography companies out there that are kind of just floating along, right? Companies like maybe Dreamstime or Canstock Photo. If half of the contributors from Shutterstock left Shutterstock and went to Canstock Photo, the buyers would not flock there, okay? Buyers don't follow there. Unfortunately, they are just looking for good enough when they go to Shutterstock. Now, there's other places where they can go to buy stock and there's other ways to make money as stock where the buyers are looking for a bit more than that, but you can't, you know, leave Shutterstock and make them change their mind. Because even if you all did leave Shutterstock, you know, all this is gonna happen is that my earnings are then gonna go up and everybody else's earnings are gonna go up and then more photographers are gonna put them up there, right? So whether we like it or not, stock companies are gonna be successful if they are successful at getting the buyers even if they don't have all the best contributors. All right, and now for a second unpopular truth. Your success as a stock photographer is gonna depend more on your ability to get your photos in front of buyers than it is for you to create quality photos. Meaning that obviously you can't create horrible photos in some of the stock, that's not gonna work. But it's much better to have one photo that's average and get that in front of 10,000 buyers than it is to have an amazing photo and get that in front of 10 buyers. That's the unfortunate reality. No buyer, you're never gonna create a photo that is perfect for every buyer and every buyer that sees it is gonna wanna buy it. That's just not the way art works, right? It's about numbers. You need to get it in front of a lot of people. And stock photography is one way to do it. These websites are one way to do it. Shutterstock has a ton of buyers. You get it in front of them, you're gonna make sales, right? Obviously you can create your own website, but to be able to compete with the sites like Shutterstock and all the other people are trying to market their photos out there, it is very difficult to have your own website and get it in front of 10,000 buyers, okay? It's just difficult and that's not impossible. And there are photographers that are successful at it. There are photographers that have niche websites, they do really well on social media, they use social media to push those buyers back to their website and they do very well, okay? But that is a different skill than actually going out and shooting the photos, okay? So that's one thing you need to understand. And if so, if you have been only uploading your photos to Shutterstock, like I've seen, you know, a lot of these people in these shreds is like, oh, I'm not gonna solely upload my photos to Shutterstock anymore. Now I'm gonna also upload them to Adobe stock. Well, why weren't you doing that before? Okay, like, you know what I mean? You didn't sign an exclusive agreement with Shutterstock and I have tried exclusive agreements in the past with Getty and none of them ever worked out for me, okay? And Shutterstock doesn't do exclusive agreements. That's one of the reasons that I like them over using Getty images, right? So you should have had your photos up on Adobe stock along. Not only should you have them on Adobe stock, you should have them on Dreamstime, you should have them on deposit photos, right? You know, each one of these Microsoft sites is, you know, a chance to get your photo in front of one of these buyers, okay? Not only should that, you should also have your own stock site and you should also be active on social media, right? And then you should be trying to push people back to your stock site, right? You know, all of these things are things in addition to the creation of the photos that you need to do if you're going to make some sales. And that's one of the things that I think, you know, is allows me to not really care about this as much, you know, obviously one of the things is I don't make a living just from the stock photography, it's a side income for me, right? But also, Shutterstock isn't 100% of my earnings, right? Shutterstock over the years actually has been a smaller and smaller percentage of my earnings because I've got all those photos up on like 10 or 15 different sites, right? I was actually just looking at my stats for May and I made more money on some of the free sites like Pexels than I did on Shutterstock. So although this is gonna hurt me and obviously Shutterstock was previously one of my top burners, and since I have my photos on so many other sites, now another site is gonna be my stock burners. So it's not going from something to nothing, right? So for all those people, like if you're one of those people that just had your things on, your photos up on Shutterstock, I think that's where you need to move forward with this, right? There's no point in taking them down. There's no point in giving that revenue to another Shutterstock contributor because as many as people are gonna complain about this, not everybody is gonna shut down their Shutterstock portfolio, okay? So you're just giving that another Shutterstock contributor. So you might as well keep making that money on Shutterstock but get back at them by making more money elsewhere, okay? Make up that money that they're taking away from you now, right? By changing these terms up on all these other sites and get your photos up there as well. Now, obviously what people are gonna say, oh, it's not worth it, right? It's not worth it to upload to big stock photo because I'm only gonna make $30 a month or $20 a month or however much you think you're gonna make depending on the size of your portfolio, right? And there's so many sites and it's so difficult, right? I don't wanna turn this into like a commercial for Fortaleu. So I'm actually gonna explain to you how you can make it really easy to get all your photos up to all these sites and not have to pay any extra money, okay? How you can go from being a Shutterstock contributor where you're losing money from Shutterstock without paying any extra money in the whole and get it on and start making more money and have your photos on all these sites, okay? So we have a website, Fortaleu, that allows you to upload your photo once, you can upload it everywhere to Shutterstock and a bunch of other sites. Now on the website, we have a free version. The free version gives you five uploads a week, all right? And you can upload to four different sites. So here's what you could do. You could take your Shutterstock photos, right? Sign up for a free version of Fortaleu. The paid version, don't get it, just get the free version. The first week, link it to four different stock sites. So sign up for an Adobe stock account. Sign up for a Dreamstime account. You know, maybe a big stock photo account and a deposit photos accounts. So those are four non-Shutterstock accounts. You're still within the free version. Take your best five photos from Shutterstock, upload them to all those four accounts. It won't take you more than like five minutes with Fortaleu. You upload it, it'll help you key word and we'll put it in there. You just have to go in and submit it. It's pretty quick, all right? Start doing it like every Monday, okay? So every week you get five more uploads with Fortaleu. Every Monday upload five photos, all right? I think if you were making decent money on Shutterstock, it won't be more than a couple of months before you're making 30 or 40 or $50 a month on just those four other sites, all right? Now, take $60 of that. This is where it does turn into a commercial. Say $60 of that, money that you made, right? Again, this is just new money from these sites. When you get your payout, if you get a full version of Fortaleu, then you can upload it to all 11 sites, okay? So then you can start, you know, all your new photos, upload them to Twitter, Facebook, you know, all your social sites, start building a following on those sites, upload them to the stock sites as well, all right? I think what you're gonna find is, is that if you have good photos, people are gonna see them, okay? Eventually, just with these new sites, not on Shutterstock sites, you'll start making a couple hundred dollars. Now, don't stop there. What you can do is go and sign up for a Smugmug account. Now, Smugmug makes it really easy to sign up for a website where you can basically go ahead and sell your photos at stock. Now, you can link all those social sites you have, push them back to stock. Link all those social sites, so you can start actually making some of your own sales from your own video, right? Now, obviously it's a bit of work, but this wouldn't be that much work. You know, if you're, it's probably a lot less work than all the complaining and boycotting and things that are trying to go on. If every contributor went ahead and did that, that would actually hurt Shutterstock because you're helping all of Shutterstock's competitors and you're helping yourself by becoming a Shutterstock competitor, okay? And if you just use the extra revenue from that to, you know, build up all these sites, then you're not actually paying any extra money, all right? Of course, you're gonna have a yearly fee of $200, but I think most contributors are gonna find that if they just did these things, they would be making thousands more a month for those extra $200 that you're paying for like a Smugmug and a Forlew subscription. And then, if you do this, you're gonna have all of your photo collection up on, you know, 11 different sites, 12 different sites, and Shutterstock will still be making you money, but all these other sites can be making you a little bit of money as well. And, you know, probably your best site is gonna end up being Adobe Stock. Adobe Stock seems to be a lot of people's number two and with Shutterstock cutting the earnings, Adobe Stock is probably gonna be most contributors' number one site. But when they do the same thing in two years or three years or four years, it's not gonna bother you as much because you'll be in the situation that I am now where you've got your photos up on a ton of other sites and you'll realize that, okay, well now, maybe Dreamstime is gonna be the next one. So you'll just see your Adobe Stock go down and your Dreamstime go up, right? So I think, you know, that's a much better approach, you know, getting your photos out there, you know, working on your own stock business, not just creating the stock photos, but getting them out in front of as many buyers as possible is gonna help you a lot more than complaining on the forums or trying to join these boycotts or even just disabling your Shutterstock portfolio because the reality is probably only half the people that say they'll disable it will actually end up disabling it, right? So you're only hurting yourself by doing that. You're not actually hurting Shutterstock. Now, if this is your first time watching a video from me, you know, typically on this channel I talk about making money from your photography and typically the videos are a lot more positive. They're also a lot more scripted, normally I actually write down points of what I'm gonna say and I take a bit longer doing them, but this one I kinda didn't wanna script it because I just wanted to say what I was thinking. So even if you don't like what I'm saying, you know, you still may be interested in the channel, go ahead and subscribe, you know, if you don't just maybe think about it, right? I'm just saying this to try to help you, you know, make more money from your stock business because it is kinda sad just to see all these people talk about, you know, how they're losing, you know, losing money and how this is hurting them and, you know, I kinda feel like I know a better way, right? I don't wanna sound conceited there, but like having your photos up on a lot of sites I think would solve a lot of the problems and a lot of the grief that some of the people are having over this with Shutterstock. So if even some of those people go there and decide whether to use PhotoLU or not, just get your photos out there, get them across a lot of different sites, do you know what I mean? Keep trying to make a living or make some money at stock photography, whatever your goals are, do you know what I mean? We try to support them and, you know, best of luck selling your photos online.