Not sure if there are lots of Redbubble sellers on this forum, but I occasionally sell a print there. I received an email this morning:

Hello ***,

Redbubble is introducing a new tier structure for artist accounts, and an account fee for some accounts. We understand that this is a big change for the artist community, so we want to be transparent and clear about what's happening.

The new account tiers are intended to encourage actions that are positive for the marketplace and recognise and reward artists who invest time creating and promoting unique products. From today, your account will be classified as either Redbubble Standard, Redbubble Premium, or Redbubble Pro. You can find your account classification on a new Account tiers and fees page on the Artist Dashboard.

View Your Account Tier

Redbubble Standard accounts will be subject to an account fee. The fee is a flat fee based on your monthly earnings and only applies if you make a sale. If you make no sales during the payment period you will not be charged a fee, so artists are never out of pocket. The monthly earnings period will begin with orders shipped from the 1st of May, 2023 and end on the last day of each month. As recognition for positive engagement and investment in the Redbubble marketplace, Premium and Pro accounts are exempt from the fee.

Some articles explaining the changes in-depth:
https://blog.redbubble.com/2023/04/new-artist-account-tiers/
https://blog.redbubble.com/2023/04/how-accounts-are-reviewed-and-classified/
https://blog.redbubble.com/2023/04/how-account-fees-may-apply-to-you/

The fee table can be found in the last link.
Insanely high fees as you can see. Redbubble always was always a low-tier agency for me so it's an easy decision for me.

Does anyone else have trouble signing in? It says:

Verification email resent.
If you don't see it in your Inbox, please check your Spam/Junk folder.
If you still can't locate the email, please contact customer support.
Didn't get your verification email? Resend email


Nothing appears in my inbox, but when I try the Resend Email option twice more, it says maximum number of requests reached.
Contacting Customer support seems pointless, been waiting for a few days now...

 

Why is Earnings Available lower than my lifetime earnings? I have not received a payout yet. Is it a bug or is something fishy going on?

Lifetime Earnings    $ 56.02
Last 30 days    $ 0.00
Earnings Available    $ 8.00

Dear 123RF member,

I am writing to you that an alleged data breach involving some of our members� account information may have recently occurred on 123RF.com.

We learned about the suspected data breach on November 10, 2020 and upon extensive internal inquiries we believe that your username, email, password (in encrypted form) and other account related details may have been compromised at this point of time.

Please be rest assured, we can confirm that the alleged data breach does not include any credit card, Paypal, Skrill, Ideal or any other bank details as we do not store such information.

However, in line with good security practices and to ensure the highest level of protection to your account, we advise you to change your password. You can set a new password by clicking here or when you next try to log into your account at 123RF an email will be sent to you to start the process.

Please be assured that 123RF is now secure as we have incorporated additional security measures such as stronger password requirements and last logged in location detection to secure your account better. We also undertake to work with the relevant authorities and organization and will fully cooperate with their investigations as we continue to safeguard your data.

We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and concern this may have caused you. At 123RF, we are committed to build a creative platform that promotes creativity and entrepreneurship. Over the years, we have been making upgrades and improvements, including the recent added creative tools that allows users to have a seamless creative journey within the site. We will continue to champion this idea and thank you for your support all this time.


Stephanie Sitt
CEO

Received this email:

After 10 years of operation Stockfresh is closing its doors on October 17, 2020.

Why are we closing?

As you probably know, the stock photography market has changed a lot in the last few years, and we don't feel we can make a meaningful contribution any more in the current business climate. The disconnect between what customers need in 2020 and their expectations regarding prices in a market that's been oversaturated for years makes it really difficult to build and grow a sustainable stock photography business. Therefore, for the time being we decided to focus our efforts on other projects.

How does this affect customers?

During the next 30 days, customers will still be able to buy your images using the instant download feature and use up all their remaining prepaid and subscription credits. They will also be able to re-download images they previously purchased for backup purposes, just like before, if the images are still available for sale on the website. After October 17, customer access to all images will be disabled.

How does this affect contributors?

As a contributor, your work will still be available for sale for the next 30 days by default, however you can request us to close your account early and claim your earnings at any time during that period, if you have reached the $50 threshold. During this time we'll not be able to accept any new submissions. On October 17 all remaining images will be removed from our servers automatically, and you will be able to request your earnings no later than November 1. To make this process smooth, please make sure your payment details are up to date.

Thank you very much for your continued support. It's been great working with you and we wish you the best of luck for the future!

Stockfresh
Best regards,
The Stockfresh Team

And another small agency bites the dust. It was one of my lowest earners, so it doesn't affect me. But they were a fair agency, and with the major agencies letting us down, there's now hardly a decent agency left.

I know this has been asked before multiple times, on this forum and in the Adobe Support Community...It's an issue that's been around for YEARS, but Adobe refuses to budge.
So I'm going to try one more time: I urge Adobe to allow contributors to select a custom thumbnail for uploaded videos. It's basic functionality and a good thumbnail is like a storefront; first impressions are everything!

When I uploaded a video, AdobeStock randomly creates a thumbnail. When I have a black and white luma matte sequence attached to my video, Adobe will sometimes select this part for the thumbnail, resulting in a bad representation of my otherwise colorful video.

Customers often quickly scan the search results, and they'll more often than not skip any unappealing thumbnails without checking them properly. Customers might get frustrated when they can't instantly find what they're looking for. This is not only bad for Adobe, but also reduces my chances of getting views and sales.

@Mat Hayward: if you're reading this, please take this up with the tech department or whoever is responsible for this, if you can. Addressing this issue would be beneficial for everyone. Thanks!

I noticed that I sold a video for $27.06, meaning the client paid $54.12, even though the video was priced $69. That's almost 22% less. What is going on, is this a discount?
If so, does Pond5 expect us contributors to share the burden? If I had known this, I would have priced my videos higher to counter the lower royalties.

Recently I'm getting lots of emails from Bigstock promoting some new 'limited time' offer with 30% or 50% discount.

Tuesday it was a "One day only: 50% off a subscription. Today, Thursday, it's a 72-hour offer: 30% off image credit packs.

They certainly don't mind giving away discounted images! I'm wondering, is there any other agency that offers so many discounts? Seems to me they are desperate to attach new customers, but why this race to the bottom?

I've been uploading my animation videos encoded with PhotoJPEG (95%) but in some cases it produces horrible banding on gradients that cannot even be fixed with some noise.

So now I'm looking into using another high quality codec that is accepted at all agencies. I'd like to use QT Animation or PNG but I reckon I can only use that if I have an alpha channel/transparency. ProRes also isn't an option unless someone knows how to convert to ProRes on a Windows machine (I've tried ProResConverter script for AE but it didn't work properly).

That leaves me with MJPEG but Pond5 doesn't accept that. H.264 isn't an option. So I need some advice here.

When I want to convert my credits, I can't withdraw the full amount specified on the contributor page. Say the amount of earned credits is �50.01, the Convert Credits page says I can convert a maximum of �50.00 Euro. It may be only 1 cent, but why is that?

I'd like to download the watermarked previews of my own videos, but it says I need to login (with a buyer account) to download a preview. Isn't there a way to download them with my contributor account?

I received the following e-mail:

Changes to the Author License Agreement

Hello *****,

In the past 12 years PantherMedia has managed to develop successfully within a very dynamic business environment. In recent years many owner managed agencies vanished in the consolidation wave that swept the industry or became increasingly irrelevant. We are glad that we have been able to maintain and even extend our position in the market during this time of major change.

A major challenge we are facing today, however, is that the ever increasing complexity of the products we offer and as well as our platform itself beginning to delay important technological developments. It is for this reason we have decided to reduce this complexity. New strategies and investments are required in order to ensure a positive long term development.

Having Tomas Speight join PantherMedia as a new CEO was the first step in the new direction we are taking at PantherMedia with the intention of raising the agency to a new level internationally. Nevertheless, this and keeping up with the competition from the industry giants requires new investments on our part in order to provide you with growth into the future.

That said, the introduction of new products and highly innovative services is imminent. The launch of these initiatives, however, require streamlining and simplifying the Author and Customer License Agreement and bringing it in line with international contractual standards and royalties.

Overview of key changes:

Changes to the Author License Agreement

A frequently discussed and clearly confusing concept is our �price exclusivity�. This will be discontinued with our new contracts. All images uploaded to PantherMedia will be non-exclusive from when the contract comes into force. That means that images you have previously uploaded as �price-exclusive� will now be offered as non-exclusive.

The royalty system will be updated at the same time. The current version with price exclusivity and an upload volume bonus will be replaced by a unified royalty rate which increases based on your success at PantherMedia (sales). This change also opens up to you the option of licensing your previously exclusive images through additional channels. The royalty rate will continue to be in the range of 30% to 40% for non-exclusive images. The bonus related to the number of uploaded images will be replaced with a bonus related to sales success. Your level of success will be calculated based on all your sales from your original registration onwards. Please click here (http://contributor.panthermedia.net/cms/commission-structure) for more details on the new royalty system.

The differing rights granted and licence fees charged for different pictures has been particularly confusing for customers and partners alike. This, too, we intend to simplify and harmonize with international standards by clarifying that now all uploaded images shall be available for extended licenses, special licenses, subscriptions and our distributor network. Our extended licenses have also been simplified and make for a more transparent offer. Social Media uses have become part of the standard license while Press and Corporate License have been combined into one, as have the Template and Merchandising License. Please note that the social media license usage rights are limited in such a way that the license automatically terminates, if a social media network is in breach of our license terms (e.g. sub licensing and selling continue to be excluded). The number of available file sizes will be reduced to 5 resolutions (Blog, Web, Print Small, Medium and XXL) and two pricing categories: standard and budget. Please click here (http://stockagency.panthermedia.net/cms/productpreview) to see the overview of future licenses, resolutions and prices.

Changes to the End User License Agreement

The above listed changes will also be implemented in the Customer License Agreement.

New to the customer license agreement are Rights Managed Licenses. These will initially be offered for editorial images. Additional content will follow.

Next Steps

You can already review the new A uthor License Agreement and the End User License Agreement here.

All changes will automatically become effective in 14 days, i.e. on the 15th of April 2016. No further action on your part is necessary. In the event that you do not agree with these new terms you have, in accordance with the author license agreement, a special termination right for your Contents or you Membership for the next 14 days.

In the next few months, beside the aforementioned product changes, we will be communicating a broad range of new services and partnerships which we are confident will contribute significantly to the growth of PantherMedia. In the near future we will also be launching an innovation which is unique in the global photo industry and which we believe will influence it significantly.

We are also starting a new exclusive collection in the premium segment based on truly creative and inspiring images and this will have a royalty rate of 50%.

Bear with us while we build the future. We look forward to continuing our good partnership.

Faithfully,

Tomas Speight & Robert Walters
The Executive Team

The presumed copycat image, uploaded Feb 23, 2012:
http://cutcaster.com/vector/901556430-Office-Hours/#S1511006

My image, uploaded Oct 26, 2011:
http://cutcaster.com/vector/901344813-Man-behind-a-computer-working-9-to-5/

I see a close resemblance, including some very specific details (hands, clock, paper stack). It's the only image in his portfolio that seems derived from one of my images, but he might be copying others as well.

His portfolio: http://cutcaster.com/search/?seller=25292#searchID=1511017&sortby=relevance&seller=25292