For photos there's also istockphoto (the classic who started micropayments, now owned by Getty Images), and for vectors there's Adobe Stock (where I used to buy when they were still NL-based Fotolia/before they went all-subscription and raised prices). There are also indie type foundries left who haven't bought out to Monotype and who don't insist on draconian analytics to gauge prices but on trust.
the problem with trying to find platforms that give more money to contributors is that the big platforms which take more money have more money for marketing. Historically big sites with low payouts have out preformed smaller sites with higher payouts. you need to find a way to both give out more money to contributors but also out advertise the big names to win in this space.
Elements.envato.com has moved to unlimited subscriptions. I expect shutterstock is responding.
Sucks for creators but the downward pressure on pricing will give customers more amazing content to use in marketing material.
Is there a business opportunity here? Would it make sense to open up a competitor to Shutterstock? How well is Getty doing?
Or has that ship sailed and the service (as it is, anyway) can't grow any more due to having satisfied the market demand?
Isn’t this inevitable? The number of new things to take photos of is not going to increase that much year over year and digital photos last forever.
The squeeze is going to come simply because at some point there is far more content than buyers.
There is a producer platform cooperative, Stocksy United (https://stocksy.com), that is competitive in this space. I think the photographer payout is at least 50%; critically, profits are distributed to the producers based upon the revenue they are responsible for. They don't have equity owners.