Image users on the
MicrostockGroup website report that Shutterstock has “dropped the price of single On Demand sales from 2 for $29 to $9.99 for each image.”
Shutterstock says that this $9.99 price is simply one of the many “tests” they regularly run with small segments of their customer base. Such tests are designed to determine if certain strategy modifications have customer appeal and are likely to result in increased downloads and revenue. Many of these tests are never implemented across their entire customer base.
Nevertheless, this certainly indicates that given Adobe/Fotolia’s lower price offering, Shutterstock is considering the possibility of needing to lower prices somewhat. So far we have no indication that the Adobe offering has impacted Shutterstock sales. If there is an impact, we may get some indication of how much when Shutterstock’s third quarter sales are reported in November.