I know many people who have complained that at the same time they have unlimited downloads from their portfolio on Freepik. The answer is yes. As a collective there is no unity.

No, that's victim blaming. I don't think anyone could have stopped this.

Even if the majority of contributors would stick together and value their work accordingly, sooner or later some soulless agency management will come up with some crazy plan to increase profits, as demanded by insatiable shareholders. A status quo in the industry would theoretically possible, unfortunately greed always rears its ugly head and some company will set things in (downturn) motion, making the rest of the industry follow.

Then no one's to blame.

They don't care about your well being, they care about making money and they will take as much as you let them. If they take a little and nothing happens that just means they haven't hit the magic threshold of what you're willing to take so they take more. You let them do it and they take more. You still let them. Expecting a corporation to be altruistic and put you first and their profit second is naive.

Shutterstock was my #1 earner and I disabled my account. I didn't do it to stand up to them or send a message, I did it because I reached my threshold of what I'm willing to take and I'd rather earn nothing from them than to scramble for the scraps they toss to me. It's called self respect and if more contributors had it we'd all make more. On second thought, not true. Self respect is my reason to dump them but in crowd sourcing there's always going to be noobs willing to take it so they still wouldn't care and the earnings would still drop.

It's a combination of things that have created the perfect storm over the years. Technology, easy entry point, corporate greed and evolution of the industry as a whole from the buyers side to the content creator's side.

When I started stock photography as a viable career there was only RM and you got paid for usage and/or space rate. Each agency was owned by individuals and/or real people with accessible editors that you could talk to on the phone and they even had names. It was tougher to get in because you had editors. There were many local agencies that mainly dealt with the local market of ad agencies and magazines etc. Then there were the big boys Stone, Masterfile, Stone etc. They all marketed our images by producing catalogues, and if you had an image in a catalogue you more or less struck gold. These catalogues showcased the best images in any given category or subject. Royalties were an industry standard of 50-50. Back then they were actually an agent.

Then came RF and there was a bit of a sh!tstorm but it was contained because there was no way to have a b!tch session like there is today, forums such as this, Twitter, FarceBook et al. It was the end of the world for us as they prices were cheap for usage and/or space rate.

Now enter Getty Images, they realised there was a lot of money to be made in selling images. They came along and started buying the small agencies worldwide and even the big agencies world wide. That is how I got into Getty Images, they bought 4 agencies I was in. Two small agencies one in Hong Kong and the other in Toronto. The two big agencies they bought were Tony Stone in England and The Image Bank in New York. Enter the 60-40 and 70-30 split. Lots of protest by email but still no real social media to speak of. At that point it morphed from being our agents to being our image distributors... F***ing huge difference as it was the first step of seperation.

Photographers amazingly banded together and formed SAA or Stock Artists Alliance which basically went nowhere.

Now enter microstock, an idea that was basically to share work with each other but turned ugly very fast because the original goody two shoes saw there was money to be made and realized there was a cult following... which later turned out to be a sale to Getty Images - yep they strike again and so much for "the community" cause there is a cash grab to be made. Before that in the microstock world was Shutterstock that was founded by not a photographer at all but a guy who figured out the capabilities of the internet... enter subscriptions. Then there was the onslaught of way too many agencies trying to get into the "sudden and new" industry of selling images for uber cheap as RF and allow anyone with a "dream" and a camera to be a "professional" photographer. Enter the era of our images now becoming our assets... the final separation from image supplier and image distributor. Now there is no personal human interaction it's all done by forum and by outsourced people. You think you were chatting with Lobo, but were you?

I think there are so many moving pieces in this industry that have created the decline, it's like an evolution of sorts and sadly it is now so many sites, corporations, and suppliers trying to pull bones from the egg.