Yes and I'm a boring minority: White, Christian, male, heterosexual, over 70, college degree, Military Vet, not a drooling blind follower of any divisive political party.

That probably makes you unique!

So I completed the survey knowing that I was of zero help to them as I'm white, old, not disabled and in most other respects boringly mainstream

I did it thinking the same thing.  Not sure what they were looking for but pretty sure it wasn't me.

I just had my first real mini-microstock sale at Alamy - sale of an exclusive, RM image for 21 cents, netting me 8 cents.  Pathetic!  The two before that were both RF for a gross of $245 each, netting me $98 for one and $83 for the other (through a distributor), but that last one really brings down the average.  Hope it doesn't start a new trend.  After those other sales, I was almost thinking of starting uploading again, but the last one shows it probably isn't worth it.

I got mine direct from DACS on Sept. 30th.  Wonder if Alamy might have found more and got me more?

Quote from: sgoodwin4813 on November 01, 2021, 22:59

GL closed?  When did that happen?  I stopped uploading there probably ten years ago due to low sales but still had an unpaid balance that I guess is going to remain that way.  So now they just slink off into the night without even a goodbye?

The owner took our money and ran back in April 

https://www.microstockgroup.com/graphic-leftovers/glstock-is-not-paying!/

Thanks, somehow I missed that.  I only contributed there for about a year before I realized it wasn't going to be worth the effort and took them off the upload list more than 8 years ago.  Looks like I had almost $21 there so not a big loss but still annoying.  Which one is next?

Your piece reads like PR from Alamy, not a review from a contributor's point of view.

Agree 100%  It looks like it was written by a shill rather than any kind of independent review.  A true review would cover the negatives as well.  Plus I'm not sure it's correct.  Doesn't Canva pay 35%?  That might work out to be higher than at Alamy.  A more balanced treatment would give your review more credibility.

My last sale there was for $245, netting me $83, but those are few and far between.  Still worth submitting there at least occasionally but that would change if I dropped below Gold.  I haven't experienced the really low-value sales so far.  After the SS debacle, I was planning to go all in on Alamy with exclusive content RM - at least then could be happy with higher returns for rare sales (which I can do since my income doesn't depend on stock).  However, they then took away any incentive to be exclusive so dropped that idea.

If you want more history of Alamy, I believe commissions there started at 60% for us, then went to 50% and now 40% - you should mention that in your history section.  The main problem at Alamy has always been a low volume of sales.  Of course they promised volume would increase with each commission cut but that panned out as well as it has at every other agency.  Most contributors I suspect are neutral on Alamy - happy with the higher rates (even though significantly decreased from in the recent past) but hard to get excited with the low sales volumes.

To the OP, I believe the outage was implemented by Facebook to scrub their content before the whistleblower told her story.  I'm basing this on one data point so could be wrong, but here it is.  A couple of weeks ago I wrote to Facebook about a fraudulent fundraiser on their site - a person I know posted that one of her relatives was in the hospital and she was trying to raise money for her care.  I know for a fact that relative was not in the hospital and the request was a fraud.  Someone else wanted to report it but couldn't because she had posted on the fraudulent Facebook page and was banned by the owner, so we used my account (which is what you are supposed to do according to Facebook).  They only allow you to select radio buttons for the abuse, none of which corresponds to fraud, and there was no option to provide details.  We heard back a day or so later that they had looked into it, but decided there was not a problem so buzz off.  I was so annoyed that I immediately wrote to both of my senators and my representative and told them Facebook needs to be regulated since they have no mechanism to remove actual fraud that is reported by others.

The fraudulent post stayed up and I checked every few days to see what was happening, especially after someone actually donated to the fraudulent request.   Of course I couldn't see it during the outage, but as soon as Facebook came back I could no longer access the fraudulent account - either it was deleted or the person banned me (which is unlikely since they did not know I had objected).  It is possible that the owner of the account finally deleted it and it just happened to correspond to when Facebook went down, but I suspect Facebook took down their own system and used the time to scrub it of fraudulent accounts - would make sense when you know someone is about to blow the lid on what you are doing.

As to censorship and regulation, you can't falsely cry fire in a crowded theater because someone could get killed in the ensuing panic or it could lead to people not taking fire alarms seriously and get caught in a real fire.  It is lies and misinformation.  Banning such things should apply to all lies and misinformation.  For example, antiVaxxers are causing many people to die who wouldn't if they hadn't listened to the misinformation.  Those should be banned.  The problem is how to enforce it and who should make the decision.  The easiest solution would be to make Facebook and other providers responsible for the content on their sites - let those who are harmed by misinformation sue Facebook and the content creators for damages.  Let the courts sort it out, which is not possible now because Facebook is unreasonably protected (the same as the gun industry).  Facebook would clean up their site quickly (and possibly go out of business) if that were the case.  Their algorithm is designed to cause maximum unrest and this really needs to change.

One of the most surprising things to me was about how many people get most of their news from Facebook.  My first thought when I heard this was, "There's news on Facebook?".  I had no idea - I never see news on Facebook and still don't, although I've never looked and don't go on there very often.  I can't imagine getting news from such a source.

Quote from: gnirtS on May 17, 2021, 17:44

Total revenue minus refunds makes no sense.
Otherwise if someone is on 40% and gets downgraded to 20% it becomes much harder to ever get back up to that 40% level as you've halved each sales income.

The total revenue on the dashboard is made of your share, Alamy's share, and distro share, all together, minus refunds.
That's what I believe is being used, so it doesn't matter if your share is 20% or 40%, the revenue is the same. That makes sense. Unless I'm wrong.

That's how I read it too.

What's particularly difficult is working out what sells ... it seems totally random

Yes, for sure.  For me almost anything can sell there but the low numbers make it seem very random.  I have the same RF as the micros plus RM exclusive there.  My only sale there so far this month was RM exclusive for 99 cents, leaving me a whopping 50 cents.  Pathetic but equal to 5 DLs on SS.  My last RM sale before that was for $119 with my half $59.50 so it is all over the place.  Regular RF and RF editorial also both sell there.  My lifetime RPDL there is over $19 net to me, much higher than any microstock site.  Since 2009 they are my #7 site in total and last year were #3, behind only Canva and SS but ahead of Adobe and all the others.  So far this year they are #4 - will probably continue to send them RM at least if I can ever be bothered to do processing and keywording again.

Good - maybe they can use it to pay down the deficit (although I suppose it would only be a small drop in a very large bucket).

Maybe Affinity Photo?  I haven't used it but it sounds good and it's $50 or something like that with no subscription.

My impression is that most agencies (except for Fotolia/Adobe) only report the money to the IRS when they pay you, so if you didn't get a payout from DT then you have no taxable income and they aren't required to send you a 1099.

In the case of DT I think they only provide the 1099 if they paid you more than $600 in a year, when it becomes required by the IRS, so you wouldn't have received one from them even if they did pay you (I never do).

I always report all the money I was paid regardless of whether the agency sends the correct tax form.  This excludes money that was earned but not paid out.  The exception is Fotolia/Adobe who will send you the tax form on what you earned even if you haven't received it in a payout, so that needs to be included.