Skyscraperfan

No, never below 50%. I don't understand why you want less.

Yes, you could be right in that regard. Alamy showed a Donald Trump style negotiation tactic: Threaten more than you really want and when you take back a part of that thread, the other side sees that as a success, although you exactly got what you want. However it could also be that Alamy really thought we would accept those 40%.

The thing with the just 38,5% for affiliate sales shocks me. That's even less than 40% it somehow secretly sneaked into the commission table at one point. I never got an email saying "Dear contributor, for some sales you will only get 38,5% from now on" Alamy is just not trustable. In the contract it cleary says in the beginning "We will pay you 50% of a direct sale made by Alamy" and then the table says something different that no one of us has ever actively agreed on. We take the photos and Alamy sells them. That is the deal. I do not see why we should pay any money to "affiliates" from our share of the money.

That almost is a Royalty Free license, although you chose your photo to be Rights Managed.

Rights Managed does not mean exclusive. It just means that the rights are defined like "1/4 page, circulation up to 50,000, worldwide, 5 years ....."

I wanted to point out that the Brexit argument came from James West. He used Brexit as one reason for the commission cut. We will not reach an agreement, if Brexit will happen, and maybe that is another topic, but I really wonder what negative effect it would have on sales. Are their customs in place for digital goods? I though that Alamy has offices in different countries to avoid that.

With the highest prices I would lose more - at least per image. Of course that is only hypothetical now, as all my images are exclusive at Alamy at the moment. However, if I find a better deal elsewhere (like 60%), I would upload the image there, untick the exclusivity box at Alamy and restrict my image at Alamy to personal use. Before the changes I would just have continued with an unrestricted, but unexclusive image here.

Yes, and they still do not have a deal. So they will probably do another referendum and stay in the EU. Then Brexit is no longer an excuse for a commission cut.

Don't worry, Britain will never leave the EU. They are not that dumb.

By the was, what is with the DACS payment? Will it also go down to 40%? Some of you said that we can earn more, if we get in contact with DACS directly. Does that really work, if we do not know what happens with our images?

I will pursue this strategy: I will leave my exclusive images on Alamy as long as receive 50% for them. If ever have an image anywhere else, I will not just untick the "exclusive" checkmark for that images, but also restrict it to personal use only as I already did in the time between those two videos. I am not willing to accept 40%. Imagine you have two friends who hate each other. One of them tells you, that you have to cancel one friendship: "Either me or him!". Then you should always cancel the friendship with the guy who said that you can't be friends with both. I follow this rule in all parts of life. For example if a country says "You can either visit this country or the other, not both", you should always visit the other country and not the one who forced you to make that decision. So I do not see exclusivity as "If your photo is at Alamy, it can't be at another agency" but as "If your photo is at any other agency, it can't be at Alamy".

PS: And of course exclusivity should not have any negative effect on the ranking, because if Alamy wants our photos exclusive, it has to deliver a benefit for exclusivity.

What should remain clear: If the commission will drop below 50% again (even with exclusivity), we should all quit Alamy. 50% should still be a red line for all of us. The photographer should always get at least half of the sale price. So everyone of use should at least have an emergency plan for the next price drop. Nobody should be in the situation to just stay here because it would be too much work to move to another agency.

Changes made in the image manager seem to come into effect much quicker than the mentioned 48 hours. Yesterday evening after the video In unrestricted all may images and afterwards had a sale on the same day - so within less than four hours. It's nice that we can have sales again without selling our soul by accepting an unfair commission.

If "exclusive" just restricts the use on other stock agency websites, I could mark all of my images as exclusive. I hope we get further clarification. I have over 1200 photos on this website, which is a website for skyscraper fans, where you can also buy images: https://www.emporis.com