More often then not, whenever some agency presents the "exciting news" it's actually bad for contributors, but they still tend to label it "exciting" like we are all a bunch of morons. What are the worst "exciting news" ever on any agency?

And were there ever some "exciting news" which are actually good for contributors?

Not true....its not "More often then not" its always.......

The famous "Money isn't going to be what makes us happy" incident.  If it wasn't the worst, it was certainly the most quoted/memorable (in a PTSD sorta way).

Alamy allowing RF editorials was, in my opinion, a rare occasion when "exciting news" was good for the contributors.

I see where you are coming from, but I see it as bad for contributors. With RM, I often get repeat sales, so even under the low-value UKNS, the little payments can add up - up to 40+ sales. Also e. g.  a cover and an inside use, or a pupil book and teacher's manual.I see no evidence that 'real' prices for RF are making up for the loss of repeat sales.

I couldn't possibly pick winners, but some polished turds in the collection...

iStock being sold to Getty Images

Getty Images being taken private by Hellman & Friedman

Jupiter Images buying StockXpert

iStock changing the royalty scheme (of which the money isn't what makes you happy clunker was part)

Putting Getty content onto iStock

Getty buying Jupiter Images (effectively dooming StockXpert)

123rf adopting the variable royalty rate structure

Creating ThinkStockPhotos

SnapVillage (Corbis) - although its nickname of CrapHamlet (don't know who coined that, but kudos) is almost worth it

Steaming pile of poop agency Albumo

Dollar Photo Club (thankfully deceased)

Deposit Photos partnership deals, particularly with ShotShop

Getty giving away blog size images (as embedded links)

Dreamstime's various "subscription" price programs that effectively replaced decent royalty credit sales with peanuts subscription royalties (all 35 cents as opposed to the original 70 cents for higher level images)

Getty-Google Drive fiasco

Cut rate royalties on BigStock after Shutterstock acquired them (the only good news was they didn't migrate this garbage scheme to the mother ship)

Veer secretly partnering with Alamy taking no account of contributors' existing Alamy portfolios - then refusing an opt out and a list of partners

123rf treating sales through other Inmagine (its parent company) sites as "partner" deals where they get two bites of the apple leaving smaller royalties for contributors. Justifying this larceny iniitially...


I'm sure I've forgotten masses of misbehavior - there's so much to choose from

Pretty sure the best "exciting news" is yet to come!
 

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on June 04, 2018, 11:59

SnapVillage (Corbis) - although its nickname of CrapHamlet (don't know who coined that, but kudos) is almost worth it

Was it Corbis that paid per upload to contribute for a few months? I remember enjoying that little chunk of change.

I think that was the Veer "Dash for cash" or something like that.

I got over a grand from the Veer "dash for cash", so that was sort of exciting. I'm not sure they said it was exciting when they closed up shop or whatever they did.

I think Fotolia moved the levels goalposts a lot, I'm not sure they said that was exciting.

I think Alamy said they were excited to open an office in the USA and would drop our percentage from 60 to 50% to pay for it (my earnings there have gone up quite a bit, so maybe that actually was exciting news).

Unlike the exciting drop at 123RF - or as the sales suggest 321RF  - weren't they supposed to drop some more exciting news on us about now?

I think the whole IS-Getty fiasco probably takes the cake though.

I do miss getting raises at SS every few years - or maybe it was every year, plus actually moving up a level and getting more was nice. Getting a boost in sales for each batch of new uploaded images was nice too. I must be getting to be an old curmudgeon. sigh.

Quote from: pancaketom on June 04, 2018, 19:45

I think Alamy said they were excited to open an office in the USA and would drop our percentage from 60 to 50% to pay for it (my earnings there have gone up quite a bit, so maybe that actually was exciting news).

My sales are up on Alamy also, but not my US sales, which isn't surprising given my extreme paucity of US content there.
So another example of how an Alamy 'exciting news' benefitted some at the expense of others. I have no more sales via the US office, but I lost money to fund the US office setup; and although they say results from opening the US office were better than anticipated, they show no signs of restoring the 60%.

From the reports on the Alamy forum, which is only a tip of the iceberg of sales, it seems that US content in general sell for a lot more $$ than 'the rest', but I still don't see why I should have had to help pay for that, and keep paying.
Robbing Sue to pay Tom (nothing personal!)

No problem. I was more trying to give them the benefit of the doubt in that the "exciting news" might have actually benefitted me. Lots of changes and decisions hurt some contributors and help others, you win some and you lose some. Sadly it seems most of the "exciting news" is of schemes to help the agency and hurt almost all contributors. I agree it would be more exciting if Alamy now that the US office was up and running and performing better than expected boosted our take back to 60%. That would be exciting.