In the last post about “Shutterstock number of sales rise but income is lower” we mentioned that number of sales are rising, but our income not that much. We blamed our newly uploaded photo media which are most likely stealing our income from video footage sales. Our initial idea was, that with bigger portfolio we would gain more views for other files. We only uploaded about hundred of images, which sold constantly for $ 0.38 per file. This is nothing compared to video with about $ 23 per sold file. But we were wrong. Sales didn’t improve not even an inch for video media. It even backfired long term. We blame the internal Shutterstock system that regulates how much exposure the contributor actually has to the buyers no matter the media he is selling. And because images are not linked together with related videos, we get none of exposure for other files.
Stock footage of Low Angle View Of Brown Leaves Tree In Fall Time Under Blue Sky 4K
Not just that, there is a source that has tried something else. They split the existing portfolio in to another user and upload ONLY best media files… what happened was, that contributor with only best files sold much more than person with bigger portfolio including these files (before removing). Which could only mean that system regulates your sales via your number of files and exposure of other files. Because we upload many variety of same theme, we don’t get that much of exposure of all other files. And if we would wanna compete with that, we would have to upload more than thousands of images. And because they are (were) only hundred online, video files didn’t get that much exposure and number of sales for video files dropped. Or better said, it stayed on identical number of sales than last year.
That is why we took action and deleted all images from Shutterstock stock agency. We cannot afford to get lower revenues because of some photos. If our theory is right, video sales should drastically improve in next few months.
