The way it works is simple:
You make photograph/video-graph believe they can make a fortune selling their work online through this website.
Thousands of amateurs, pro, semi-pro or anybody who believes in it send its pictures for review. Selection is made based on the mood of the day and the dubious competence of the reviewers.
Then the image/footage are online and shutterstock can claim it has millions of pictures online!
Comes the 1st sell: you get between 10 cents up to 10 $ for a picture you have worked on for hours (shooting, processing, photoshop, keywords, submission). Amateurs are happy to sell a bad holiday picture at this ridiculous price. Shutterstock won't give you any money until you reach a certain amount (hundreds of $).
Smarter people understand the scam: 90 to 99% of "artist" are there to furnish the gallery. Only a tiny minority (always the same) will make money in this pyramidal scheme.
Most of the contributors will sell few pictures, not enough to get a check, not enough to pay for all the cost incurred by their job/hobby anyway.
And you still have some people commenting happily on how they made 300 $ last year on shutterstock allowing others to become millionaires with their work.
Even the client who buy cheap pictures for low aren't happy since they realise after a while that they can find even cheaper in another pyramidal scheme like i-stock and others.
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