Title: <i>&#x2F;&#x2F; sorry if I&#x27;m wrong but I believe that a significant number of tech companies buy Shutterstock&#x27;s packages or subscriptions</i><p><i>&#x2F;&#x2F; throwaway because I&#x27;m involved with stock image production</i><p>Today Shutterstock announced[1] their new payout levels where they now start to reset authors&#x27; commission rates every year. Level 1 starts at 15% per sale, then it goes to 20%, 25%, 30%, 35%, and finally 40% per sale after 25,000 sales which most photographers and illustrators will never achieve in a single year.<p>They are also switching from the $0.25 flat-rate commissions per image bought via subscription packages to a percentage fee that will result in payouts as low as <i>$0.10 per image</i>. And with the aforementioned yearly commission reset, even popular authors are going to receive these miserable royalties during the first months of each year.<p>In other words, total payouts are going to drop for <i>50% or more</i> for the absolute majority of authors (who are usually from low-income countries like Ukraine and Thailand). There is no good reason for this except for Shutterstock being a stagnating rent-seeking company in need of higher quarter earnings. Of course there&#x27;s no way to influence them because the contributors can&#x27;t simply delete their portfolios from the largest stock platform out there, even if it pays peanuts per sale.<p>Most authors upload their content to multiple stocks at once, so please switch to any alternative out there to help them earn more (except for Bigstock because they&#x27;re owned by Shutterstock).<p>[1]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.shutterstock.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;contributor-earnings-update
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