I took a look at my stats history today. Starting in April last year subs were a very small part of my monthly sales but they increased each month and for the last three months they are now around 60% of total sales. Subs are increasing but they only represent around 10% of my income. I'm being swallowed by the new subs system.

In April 2014 subs were 1.4% of sales and 0.11% of income. The graph climbs from there up to over 60%. For March subs are 64% of total sales and they are only 10.29% of income.

same here...around 10% of total income

Update. best month so far now, but only just. Still not seeing the growth or the numbers that are really needed to make subs a success for me there.

I guess my point is that subs are overtaking the regular image sales and so there is no need for iStock to change royalty rates as our income is turning into cents per image rather than dollars.

If they choose to call their RC system into action, they'll be cutting a lot of royalty rates, as subs, GI, G+, PP, Fotomore etc don't earn RCs.
I know they haven't demoted people after the first year, but I wonder why they insist on keeping the functionality there, since it's bound to be a fairly sizeable overhead, and they've cut other features to reduce overhead.

Quote from: goober on April 14, 2015, 18:31

I guess my point is that subs are overtaking the regular image sales and so there is no need for iStock to change royalty rates as our income is turning into cents per image rather than dollars.

If they choose to call their RC system into action, they'll be cutting a lot of royalty rates, as subs, GI, G+, PP, Fotomore etc don't earn RCs.
I know they haven't demoted people after the first year, but I wonder why they insist on keeping the functionality there, since it's bound to be a fairly sizeable overhead, and they've cut other features to reduce overhead.

Certainly from our point of view as contributors, there would need to be a serious shake up of the numbers for there to be any chance of us getting to a better rate. If the rates go down then there would be an outcry, but that didn't stop them when RCs started. 
If this year continues as it is, then personally I'll have a job to keep my present level, and that's always been easily achievable in the past.
I'm all real, achievable, incentives to do better, but not for RCs. Time to get rid of them!