It's loading fine now, but over the last two days, both on my laptop and on my phone (in Chrome) it's behaved strangely and shown an error string, then something about logging in (with a Continue button) and then the dashboard loads.

I received that email this morning too. I think I posted there once, years ago...

There are tons of variables, but in general, I sell a lot more at Adobe Stock than I do at Dreamstime (and when I still had a Shutterstock account, it sold more than or more recently about the same as Adobe Stock).

If you were uploading to Dreamstime because they accepted everything, figure out what the issues are and fix them.

Even though the Poll results at right aren't really precise, they give you the general idea of the relative sales strength of the agencies: 41.6 / 3.2 = You could make about 10 times the money at Adobe Stock as you do at Dreamstime (ignoring zeroes, obviously).

I check in once or twice a day, but don't post unless there's something of note going on.

Stock agencies are in a pretty sad state at the moment. The archive of posts here is very useful when I come across an agency I've not heard of and can search here to see if it's been discussed before.

Many smaller agencies appear to be barely hanging on (and they would once have reps participating in discussions here) and have gone quiet.

We are now in-between "car crash" posts - some awful action by an agency - so things are not very active

So I received a reply to me email (sent yesterday) with a copy of the Non Disclosure Agreement they want signed attached.

Even though they, the auctioneers & the company putting together the auction, are registered at the same address in Brussels, they want England, and or the UK, to be where any NDA disputes are resolved?

"This Agreement shall remain in effect for a three-year term.  The validity, construction and performance of this Agreement shall be governed and construed in accordance with Common Law governing the UK of applicable to contracts made and to be wholly performed within such state, without giving effect to any conflict of laws provisions thereof.  The courts located in England shall have sole and exclusive jurisdiction over any disputes arising under the terms of this Agreement. "

Even if you leave aside all the issues about confirming that they really do own what they're selling, and all the issues about whether this work did in the past earn what they claim, and what the impact of royalty cuts at Shutterstock have had/will have on it, I can't see any good reason why all this secrecy about the sale?

People who license the work don't care who owns the vectors - i.e. it won't hurt current sales or cause the agencies to take any action. Agencies don't care. Other contributors can't benefit from knowing a portfolio is for sale

Too much shady stuff for my tasts.

The odds are that this is a complete scam - that even if this portfolio exists, the person offering it for sale isn't actually the creator of the work or current copyright holder.

And as mentioned above, if the work is done and it is making a good income, why on earth would anyone sell?

The person posting just joined here (Nov 21; this is their 2nd post) to promote this wonderful deal . No real name, no country, no business address...

I sent email to the given address (from a spare email account I keep for things like this) and it didn't bounce.

It did get me thinking though: If a transaction of this sort was to happen, how could you safely negotiate this? With photographs, if the purported seller could offer a selection of RAW files for the images they claimed to be the owner of, that'd be a good start. With vectors it's a lot harder.

It is categorically not contributors fault that Shutterstock's behavior over the last several years, culminating with the June 1 royalty cut, has been short-sighted, greedy and unethical.

Shutterstock - particularly Jon Oringer and Stan Pavlovsky - has to shoulder the blame for this debacle.

It is naive at best to suggest that contributors had a "choice" in this matter, any more than Getty photographers had a choice when Getty decided to move RM files to RF over their objections, or Pump Audio contributors (Getty acquired them) had a choice when Getty cut their royalties.

People need to eat. When all the options stink, taking the least stinky isn't something I'd blame people for.

I am tempted to blame anyone who took a special deal to continue to support the sleazes, but even they probably have salaries and rents to pay.

If someone who went back to Shutterstock acted surprised at the January royalty cuts back to level 1, I'd suggest they should refer to the lovely Maya Angelou quote "When someone shows you who they are, believe them, the first time."

I understood that speaking out about Shutterstock's bad behavior might cost me my account, which it did, but I had the freedom to lose that income (and I'm aware I'm very lucky in that regard). Not everyone is in that situation.

Save all our ire for the scuzzbuckets running agencies.

Hi Jo Ann Snover, even I remove the comma from the website link, I can access the website but the photos are just keep loading, didnt appear. Are you facing the same problem?

The site is a bit slow (so after a search, loading the page of images takes more time than I'd expect) but I can see images in a search, or if I look at recent or popular or click on the name of a photographer. I'm using Chrome on a Mac (10.15.6) and am in the US (west coast). Not sure if problems might be regional or browser specific

Apple's cut is mostly PR and not real income loss for them.

Apparently (NY Times) 98% of App Store developers fit into that under $1 million in revenues group that now pays 15%, but they account for only 5% of Apple's App Store revenues.

Put another way, 95% of Apple's app-store revenues just keep on * as before.

So it's more like stock agencies offering newbies a 50/50 split but switching back to taking 80% (or more) once you get to $500 in earnings.

Apple wants to keep congress out of its business; The Epic lawsuit has also played a part. I hope Apple's thin veneer of reasonableness (the new cut) doesn't dissuade regulators.

However that dust-up plays out, our mess is more akin to Uber or Lyft or another setup where there are no big companies in the contributor/driver community.

As it so easy to use one of your own sky images with the sky replacement feature, why spend any time (for stock uploads anyway) worrying about whether you can use the provided ones?

I was pleasantly surprised to see how well this tool works - I tried with an image that had lots of trees with bare branches to give it something to show how intricate details are handled.

It's particularly helpful that it provides results as a grouped set of masked adjustment layers, so you can refine further if you want to. Even if what you wanted was just to adjust colors and tones in the sky as shot (i.e. not replace the sky), this is an effective mask-creation tool to speed that up.

https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/royalty-details.html

Scroll down to the section labeled Minimum subscription royalty amounts

https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/1321165661276565506