I only claimed Alamy sales - too much trouble to sort out any others, although I suppose if you have a lot and can find them easily it would be worth it.

Last year I think I just printed out a copy of my Alamy sales report and sent that to DACS and they did the rest - I didn't need to find specific instances.  They were really helpful about answering questions by e-mail if I recall correctly and I eventually did get some money back so no complaints.  If you are in the US it is very expensive to get the forms proving you are a US taxpayer so DACS kept 30% for Britain but that is better than the 50% Alamy will keep if you go through them.  Good luck!

I think it's down because stock for contributors is dying.  Over the past six years, I have never had a WMY in June or July and last year July was my BMY.  Often those months are a little slower but the slump this year is much more severe and seems to be across all agencies.  Oversupply and the notion among buyers that images should be free have caught up to us - we either need to accept it or stop.  Sorry to be so pessimistic but I think that is the current reality.

Did wave 2 of the Google purchases hit today?  Woke up to a large number of $2 subscription credits this morning.  Anyone else?

I don't think so.  For me DT has been dead since June 26th - must have rotated to the bottom of the search.

Wow, that's incredible!  Thanks for sharing.

1. If the lowered payout is indicating that some big change in earnings (i.e. the BigStock royalty schedule) is coming soon. I think that's unlikely and that it's more likely that new contributors are discouraged and walk away and they're clearly looking to boost their contributor base. I suspect that's an insurance policy for them if they p*ss off existing contributors.

I sure hope you're right about that!  Taking it to $35 is a big drop but it makes me a little nervous.  If SS goes to an RC system then it is game over for most microstock contributors (certainly for me at least).

One way is to go to your sales and click on the identifier for an image.  When it comes up click on the link for your brand next to the smiley face icon.  Looks like my portfolio has now had another mystery deletion.  Drat.  If they let us know which they are deleting we could know what they don't want which would save us all some trouble in the future.

Maybe I need to hold off for a minute before I go down on my knees to ask for my return to FT   

I think you can hold off on that for a while - so far I haven't seen any uptick in sales.  What about everyone else?  Have sales increased significantly since this change?

I've only had three so far this weekend on SS too, although at least one was an OD.  Very slow month overall.

Started putting my editorial to Alamy. what all needs to go there? Same as what I'm sending to SS and the rest? Or exclusive pics owing to the higher prices? Proper microstock ot travel and editorial?

You can't send the same images that are editorial elsewhere to Alamy.  At Alamy you have to sell anything with people that doesn't have a model release as RM and RM images cannot also be sold RF editorial.  It is the same for property.  If someone licenses your image as RM on Alamy expecting it to have limited distribution and then sees that it is used elsewhere as RF editorial they could sue you and win - it is not worth taking that chance.  If you have put your microstock editorial images also for sale at Alamy as RM then I would delete them.

I have separate images for Alamy that are different from the ones that are editorial on microstock.  They are exclusive just because there isn't another good place to send them.  Anything that is RF on microstock can also go to Alamy except for editorial.

I usually put images without property or model releases that I think would have wide interest (e.g., iconic images of travel destinations) as RF editorial on microstock agencies and those that are more specialized with less interest (such as images of minor monuments or obscure destinations) on Alamy.  Or shoot the same destination on different days or different times of day (morning versus evening) with one set for microstock and the other for Alamy.  Maybe others have better suggestions.

I just checked my iS numbers and had a big jump, too - it was not a recent EL but was a green bar from May as tickstock speculated.  If that is a Getty Plus sale then I'll take it!  It ended up making my RPDL at iS higher than SS last month for the first time in a while.

I just noticed a sale that had an odd description as to which image was sold.  Has anyone else seen this and know what it means?

"MAA5D2HoD_g → via MAA_APIvGEA"

The first I.D. is the original image I submitted and the second "via" image appears to be a completed composition that incorporates my original image.  If I were to guess (and it's only a guess) it looks like the finished composition has been posted on CANVA for sale and when sold, I get a credit as my image is a part of the composition.  As I said I don't really know what this means, so that's why the question.  Anyone?

I had one of those that was part of a wedding invitation and had three sales on it.  Hopefully you will get more for yours.