Friendly reminder. Today's the day that Alamy punishes it's contributors, because they have become even more terrible at what they do, and are failing to make sufficient sales to meet their own self-imposed quotas. So remember to check your account status, and if they pooped the bed on your content like they did mine, it might be time to say goodbye. I just requested that my content be removed and my remaining balance paid out to me, ASAP. A 20% artist royalty is not something anyone should accept. Now to see if they try to keep my money due to it not being at the payout level or drag their feet on deleting my images. A bit sad, since they used to be a decent third tier earner back a few years ago, aside from their asinine review process. They really took a big fat dump though. Bye Alamy.

I have been contributing to Alamy for 5 years. Sales increasing year after year. A couple rejections early on while getting used to what they want, but ever since I've had dozens of batches of accepted images, without any further rejections. I was "stuck" at 2 out of 3 threes stars with their "QC" rating, but never thought much of it, other than it seems to take absolute lifetime of perfection to get to maximum 3 stars.

I had put Alamy on the backburner and hadn't uploaded for a bit, but I had some extra time and decided to submit a batch. To the 75 or so images in the batch, I added an image I took of a photo of opportunity taken on an iPhone. This image is available on SS, AB, P5, etc. and sells surprisingly well. Unfortunately, I seem to have forgotten that Alamy does not accept images from iPhones (even though they've accepted images from far worse cameras, but I digress). So that batch, all 75+ images, all of them from DSLR's (besides the one), was blanket rejected. This I can understand, they have a policy, I violated it (even an understandable mistake) and while rejecting the whole batch over one image seems harsh, it's their company, their policy. But that's not where it ends.

They put a 10 day upload freeze on my account. They dropped my QC ranking dropped from 2 to 1 stars. Dozens of perfect batches of uploads, no rank increase. One failed image, dropped to the bottom of their QC rating and an upload freeze. 3 punishments for one little overlooked image. I don't even understand exactly what that means or how it affects my account specifically, but I realized it can't be good and it seemed like some harsh treatment to a good contributor over a simple honest mistake. So I reached out to their support for clarification.

A robotic and defensive sounding response informing me of their blanket policy of acceptable cameras and that my rank will stay at 1. That it's "not possible" to check every image (tell that to SS, AB, P5, etc.). They offered a "goodwill gesture" of unfreezing my uploads, but I again asked why such a harsh punishment for one image. No further response. I self-imposed an upload "freeze" of my own.

Since then, I've been in the longest sales gap in two years. As has been suggested, likely a coincidence. But as a general caution, watch what you say, fellow contributors.