How Oringer Could Improve Creator Compensation

Posted on 12/16/2020 by Jim Pickerell | Printable Version | Comments (3)

If Jon Oringer of Shutterstock donated his annual salary of $4,598,580 to image creators who produce the products Shutterstock licenses, and divided it among creators based on the number of images licensed, how would that benefit image creators?

In the last 4 quarters Shutterstock has licensed 181,900,000 image uses at an average price of $3.55 each. If we divide 181,900,000 into the $4,598,580 that would give us $0.0252 (about two-and-one-half cents) per image licensed. Not very much, but pennies count. The average image creators only gets a royalty of about 26% of the $3.55 or $0.923 (less than $1.00) for each image licensed. An additional $0.0252 raises the royalty to $0.9482 (almost $0.95), almost a 27% royalty rather than 26%.

But, of course, Oringer is entitled to compensation to support himself and his family and for the work he has done over the years to build Shutterstock.



On the other hand, instead of receiving a salary couldn’t he sell some stock.

As of 1 December 2020 he owned at least 13,602,824 units of Shutterstock Inc stock. Today’s price for that stock is about $68.40 per share so the value of his stock is $930,433,162 -- almost $1 billion.  



Oringer became the first photography billionaire in 2013, but over the last few year the share price has faltered from time to time. At one point the share value was down to pautry $600,000,000. How could anyone survive on so little money?

Nevertheless, thanks to the 2020 economic crisis, as of 1 December 2020, his Net Worth was estimated to be in the range $1.2 Billion dollars. Over the last 7 years he sold SSTK stock worth over $271,824,319. Does he really need an additional $4,598,580 compensation? Maybe he could even give up twice or 3 times as much!

Currently there are about 370,000,000 million images in the Shutterstock collection, Thus, with 181,900,000 images licensed annually the average image creator has about one image licensed for every two images in the collection. There are about 650,000 contributors, Thus, the average contributor has about 569 images in the collection, licenses right to about 278 images annually and earns about $256.59.



Of course, there are a few contributors who have many more images-in-the-collection, a much higher ration of images-licensed to images-in-the-collection and they earn a lot more annually.
For them an additional $0.0252 per image licensed might be significant.

It is also worth noting that during the last year Shutterstock has grown its collection by 18%, saw a decline of 5.5% in the number of images licensed and about an 8% decline in revenue paid image creators.

In fairness to Oringer, this is how capitalism in the United States works. It is not unique to the photography industry. The person who comes up with a marketable product, or marketing idea, can benefit hugely compared to what those who put in time, energy and money receive. This is particularly true if the product costs the seller nothing to produce, and they can simply compensate the producer with a small percentage of revenue generated whenever the product sells.


Copyright © 2020 Jim Pickerell. The above article may not be copied, reproduced, excerpted or distributed in any manner without written permission from the author. All requests should be submitted to Selling Stock at 10319 Westlake Drive, Suite 162, Bethesda, MD 20817, phone 301-461-7627, e-mail: wvz@fpcubgbf.pbz

Comments

  • Richard Gardette Posted Dec 16, 2020
    Ah Jim, it's reassuring to see you taking a firm stand on the man who single-handedly managed to dramatically devastate an entire business... except for him and a handful of insiders.
    A new president, new opinions in the US ?
    If yes, this would be good news !

  • Bob Prior Posted Dec 17, 2020
    Very interesting points you have raised Jim. I especially liked the point about him selling stock to the tune of £271.000.000 which he was only able to do by benefiting from the creativity of the photographers on his site. I often note personal pr coverage but I wonder if he will respond to your points by commenting here? I guess we must wait to see what he says - if anything.

  • Tim McGuire Posted Dec 18, 2020
    CEO salaries and other compensation are often offensive and a disgraceful sign of the times. Creators need to stop giving them your creative work until they return to some sort of fair deal. It's disgusting what we let them get away with.

Post Comment

Please log in or create an account to post comments.

Stay Connected

Sign up to receive email notification when new stories are posted.

Follow Us

Free Stuff

Stock Photo Pricing: The Future
In the last two years I have written a lot about stock photo pricing and its downward slide. If you have time over the holidays you may want to review some of these stories as you plan your strategy ...
Read More
Future Of Stock Photography
If you’re a photographer that counts on the licensing of stock images to provide a portion of your annual income the following are a few stories you should read. In the past decade stock photography ...
Read More
Blockchain Stories
The opening session at this year’s CEPIC Congress in Berlin on May 30, 2018 is entitled “Can Blockchain be applied to the Photo Industry?” For those who would like to know more about the existing blo...
Read More
2017 Stories Worth Reviewing
The following are links to some 2017 and early 2018 stories that might be worth reviewing as we move into the new year.
Read More
Stories Related To Stock Photo Pricing
The following are links to stories that deal with stock photo pricing trends. Probably the biggest problem the industry has faced in recent years has been the steady decline in prices for the use of ...
Read More
Stock Photo Prices: The Future
This story is FREE. Feel free to pass it along to anyone interested in licensing their work as stock photography. On October 23rd at the DMLA 2017 Conference in New York there will be a panel discuss...
Read More
Important Stock Photo Industry Issues
Here are links to recent stories that deal with three major issues for the stock photo industry – Revenue Growth Potential, Setting Bottom Line On Pricing and Future Production Sources.
Read More
Recent Stories – Summer 2016
If you’ve been shooting all summer and haven’t had time to keep up with your reading here are links to a few stories you might want to check out as we move into the fall. To begin, be sure to complet...
Read More
Corbis Acquisition by VCG/Getty Images
This story provides links to several stories that relate to the Visual China Group (VCG) acquisition of Corbis and the role Getty Images has been assigned in the transfer of Corbis assets to the Gett...
Read More
Finding The Right Image
Many think search will be solved with better Metadata. While metadata is important, there are limits to how far it can take the customer toward finding the right piece of content. This story provides...
Read More

More from Free Stuff