Rather than worry about all that is happening, I'm concerned about what is NOT happening -- sales at iStock.  It was going along just fine then .... NOTHING.  I seem to get plenty of views but NO sales.  Haven't had a download since July 10.  Is this normal?  Are sales statistics posted as they happen ... or delayed?  For ten days?

Just wondering if I have missed the boat?   

It depends on what you consider to be fine ?
One guy stated recently said he use to get 150 sales a day with a portfolio half the size it is now.He might struggle to get 20 sales today.That thread was LOCKED with....  more contributors/more content/it's summer-No mention of shutterstock   .
Just keep uploading what you consider to be useful stock and you might start to see a steady stream of sales come into your account.The sales show  pretty instantly in your balance.

I was reporting this in my thread (summer slump seems to be agency dependent), but since picture tells more than 1000 words, here you go:


3 days of no DLs and than a day with large sized DLs, all M+, one of them was a XXXL. Not a strong month on IS, even though I'm having great days like the 18th was. And yes the graph is lacking yesterday's and today's sales, which are modest and small sized, only XS and S.

Funny, my chart looks a lot like yours, except I have some DLs on Friday. Must be a site-wide thing.

Haven't had a single DL today.

I was reporting this in my thread (summer slump seems to be agency dependent), but since picture tells more than 1000 words, here you go:


3 days of no DLs and than a day with large sized DLs, all M+, one of them was a XXXL. Not a strong month on IS, even though I'm having great days like the 18th was. And yes the graph is lacking yesterday's and today's sales, which are modest and small sized, only XS and S.

Ebb and flo, people.  What the spike amount to ( in dls )?

Yes, dls in my case.

Ebb and flo, people.  What the spike amount to ( in dls )?

I too have a big spike on the 18th. In fact the graph looks quite similar except for an EL. I wonder if they turned off the independent suppression filter either by accident or to see what the results would be.

It sure means something. If it's what ur guessing, than I can now see how much money I'm missing out. But OTOH DL wise it's equal to the 12th, I had most DLs on those 2 days, just earnings are over 5x higher on the 18th, due to unusual amount of large file DLs. But what's interesting is to see, that out graphs are matching. I'd like to see some exclusives screenshots or at least comments wether their graphs match ours.

Haven't got the article to hand, but I'm pretty sure I read recently that the Stock Artists Alliance, which is sadly closing down, did a survey a while ago where they purchased a variety of their members' images from different (macro) agencies, and noted how the sales were reported.

The results were not good - many sales took an extremely long time to get through to artist payment, and - much worse of course - many sales were never reported and artists were not paid.  I believe they then confronted the agencies with their findings.

Suppose people pooling together to do something like that - taking care not to break any of iStock's strict rules - would be the only definite way to know how quickly sales are reported, and to check that royalty payments are correct, without payments to artists being missed out.

Yes, dls in my case.

Quote from: sjlocke on July 20, 2011, 15:43

Ebb and flo, people.  What the spike amount to ( in dls )?

No, I meant how many dls.  Like a relative spike of 4? Or 5?

Dls for me are steady and show no spikes or delays.

Haven't got the article to hand, but I'm pretty sure I read recently that the Stock Artists Alliance, which is sadly closing down, did a survey a while ago where they purchased a variety of their members' images from different (macro) agencies, and noted how the sales were reported.

The results were not good - many sales took an extremely long time to get through to artist payment, and - much worse of course - many sales were never reported and artists were not paid.  I believe they then confronted the agencies with their findings.

Suppose people pooling together to do something like that - taking care not to break any of iStock's strict rules - would be the only definite way to know how quickly sales are reported, and to check that royalty payments are correct, without payments to artists being missed out.

Wow, even up to 85% is not enough for some, they really want the whole 100%. Such greed really makes me sick

Yeah, let's do that, I'm willing to volunteer my ports for the experiment. Everything for a good cause!

Does anyone see a spike of sales today? It is my best day for this month in DLs.

Looks like mondays are the new Dl heavy days. I got a few DLs early in the morning already. And it is a first day like this since the 18th (Monday as well).

The real genius of the microstock system was the introduction of pre-paid credits which (ignoring card fraud) ensure every sale is paid for and provides the agency with an interest-free loan from every customer.

True, and some businesses won't allow this type of purchasing, in case the company goes bust and they don't get what they paid for, so they lose some potential customers (probably not that many).
But without it, they'd have to raise prices to earn the same, so robbing Peter to pay Paul.