Just got e-mail

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk5okHRFTgw&feature=youtu.be

Just got the email too. Won't bother watching the video though because by now I think II can guess what it says. Alamy is not a big earner for me but stil the news is yet another disappointment in a long list of disappointments in this industry. A 20% royalty cut with a low earner like them though translates into a 100% cut in my motivation to upload there anymore.

I don't understand why this isn't being discussed here. The post in the general section, that I only looked at the other day so maybe it says more now, only had posts from people who seemed pleased about the commission drop. This is very much a topic for THIS section and for Alamy contributors.

I won't write out lots about it for now because, like with other threads here, only very few people comment. I wish the Alamy section here was used more as we have more freedom here to speak our minds than in Alamy's own forum (plus hopefully the disruptive "I know best" Alamy forum regulars aren't here). There are a few other places to write with fellow Alamy contributors but only tiny groups where new members aren't welcome. So it's either here on Alamy's own forums.

Deleted. Giving up.

First off, as in the title of this thread, we as contributors should really stop the continued misuse of the word "commission". A commission is a fee paid to a salesperson. We are the creators and owners of Alamy's content, the stock companies sell our content on our behalf and THEY make a commission on those sales. I would bet a months income that iStock came up with that little switch in definition. Giving a measly 15% "commission" to a contributor somehow sounds "better" than calling it what it is, an 85% commission for the sales people. The most accurate way of describing the Alamy move is that they gave themselves a 20% raise in their own commission.

"most of the expenses are the salaries and then the maintenance of 155M images" - I'm not buying that maintenance excuse for the cash grab. Tell that to Pond5 and their 22M images, along with their 13M videos, not to mention SFX, music, AE templates, PSD, illustrations, 3D. The nearly 5 million 4K video collection maintenance alone surely dwarfs any hosting costs Alamy has. Yet, Pond5 can still muster up a 50% split and survive. And somehow Pond5 is also able to review each submission, file by file, whereas Alamy barely glances at one image in each batch. Throwing out good content in one batch and blindly accepting garbage in the next.

Salaries, that may be an issue. But it's not our problem if they want to pay themselves such high salaries that 50% earnings off content that cost them zero to create can't cover, just as our equipment and production costs are not their concern with how we spend our half. If you can't run a microstock company splitting the sales 50/50, you can't run a company. And that was the only real positive thing Alamy had going for them. Pond5 is clearly hustling way harder than Alamy, evident in my experience at least, so they seem to know how to use their 50% effectively. Alamy, it's employees and contributors, would be better served to replace their poor management. They are the ones failing everyone involved. Then maybe "salaries" may not be as much of an issue.

No, this doesn't make Alamy anywhere near as bad as iStock, or even Shutterstock or Adobe when it comes to money splitting. But with all their other flaws, it surely takes them from barely relevant to pretty much irrelevant. We should always resist these kinds of negative changes and make them as uncomfortable for these companies as we can.