Shutterstock’s website traffic dropped 57% from March 2023 to August 2023 signaling the decline of stock photography websites. I believe this is due to the rise of generative AI reaching a level of quality that is matching stock photography.
Why are is their traffic going down? Their pricing is now too high - For a subscription of 10 images per month you have to pay $29 or $2.9/image. Instead of that you could pay Midjourney $24/month and get 15 fast hours which would generate you a lot more images at much lower cost per image. As low as $0.033/credit and each credit gets you 4 images.
In E-commerce we use Shutterstock to get stock photography for use with our products but we had to pay a graphic designer to place the product into the scene which cost money. Now with generative AI simply having a really good editor to place the product where you want it in the shot would enhance the value of generative AI tremendously as you would have no need for shutterstock anymore.
Consumers are voting with their time and attention and it’s shifting from stock photography websites.
Shutterstock’s traffic - from semrush.com
iStockphoto.com
100M per month in March 2023 down to 54M in August.
Getty Images
These guys will lose as well - charging $30 for icons that you can create yourself in midjourney
I created my own using midjourney below - the value comes from prompts but people should be able to share these images somewhere and earn a certain amount based off how often they are downloaded. Downloads available for subscribers who don’t want to do the prompt engineering but want cheaper icons and logos etc.
