The word "unlimited" makes me uneasy.  Has there been an announcement about this?  (I mean - an email or contributor's notification?)

How the heck do they define "popular"?  This is my default popular on SS.  I clicked through from the contributor site and was quite surprized, and then checked again after doing a "Hockey Kid" search and it's the same.  (But the "see all hockey kid photos from" my port is a nice touch.

A common theme seems to be that they are mostly lower leg shots with no faces.  Why would photos that might have sold a half dozen times (and not even recently) be ranked as popular?   I have other photos that have sold hundreds or thousands of times.  Wouldn't that be a more accurate definition of popular?

I had a zero sales on a WEEKDAY last week.  That has to be a first.

It also seems that anything selling is older.  Just checked some of my keywords "Dancer kid" and I get hits on the first 2 pages of popular, but the photos are not good sellers at all and were uploaded in 2011-ish.  I have much better selling photos that are newer in this category.

The geniuses at Istock will be flattered to see that SS has followed their example:

1.  Make detrimental-to-suppliers announcement on a Friday afternoon. 
2.  Supply NO notice period.  As I recall, SS always gave at least 30 days notice and this comes into effect Monday.

I'm from Central Canada.  I swear I was the only weird kid on the prairies that was obsessed with David Bowie.   Yes, I've gone to halloween parties as Ziggy Startdust.  The man was so freakin eccentric.  And oh my goodness, the talent!  I was addicted to the way he layered his vocals and his androgynous costumes.  And his songs!  Figuring out the lyrics - Spiders from Mars?  Uncle Tom?  The worlds he created - weather they were figuratively in space or the Berlin era with Brian Eno.  Kids these days are so cheated of this kind of genius.  All the songs are about "Making her headboard rock" or similar gratification - where have the mystery and the longing and the chase gone?   Where is the beginning, middle and end of a great ballad?

I saw a post on facebook yesterday that said
We paid for music  (insert photo of Bowie and some other ugly mug I didn't entirely recognize , but you didn't have to be beautiful in the 70's, you had to have the raw talent)
So you don't have to  (insert photos of Bieber, Kanye and Minaj

We drifted apart about the "Let's Dance" era.  I missed so much.  Just last week I rediscovered Bowie on Spotify and had his tunes looping through my edits, and this week he is everywhere.  Last night I had a shoot in a community centre and even the Zumba class in the gym next door cooled down to Bowie. 

So long space man.

Oh, there's more of Yakovlev's than just those 2 in that portfolio.  Considering the tone of the collection, I would err on the side that they ALL are violations, not just those 2.

  Buyers will go elsewhere if we avoid sites that make things difficult for us.  If we carry on using them, other sites might try becoming a marketplace and then we have even more paperwork to deal with.

I buy from themeforest and graphicriver from time to time and was thinking I should probably shop elsewhere too.  Not that they'll miss me I'm only a 2 or 3 times a year customer!

Case in point: Ana, who, since the inception of this thread decided to go independent, successfully launched her Symbiostock site and joined Symzio:

http://www.symzio.com/contributor-16320.html

And now her beautiful illustrations are already being promoted by every other Symzio member:

http://picturebreeze.com/stock/photos/image/young-woman-riding-boat/



The system has been designed to use every member's site as an extension of every other member's media. This way, we, in essence, all share in the cumulative traffic and media that the entire system is connected to. As soon as you join Symzio, your stuff is immediately seen by any customer that is looking for it on any other member's site.

Multiply this effect by a thousand, and you see what I mean when I say "cumulatively, our organic footprint would effectively dwarf the agencies".

Is this Ana that you mention also known as Alexander Yakovlev, because some of her illustrations look exactly like his photographs.  (There's more than this)

Don't worry PB, as a registered business owner in another country most of what he states rings true.  Without reading the OP again to see if it's there, the missing item would be sales taxes (presumably if you live in the same state as the purchaser).  Because Envato wants to make it look like the Country of origin of the sale is where YOU are physically located you would also be responsible for collecting and remitting the sales taxes.  I am a registered business and would be required to collect GST for any Canadian sales and PST for any Provincial sales.    It would be especially terrible for the Californians because different areas had different taxes when I last sold there.

I am not with them, but I'd think long and hard before sticking it out.  They don't let you set your prices.  They don't let you collect the funds in real time.  They vet your products.  They do everything an agency does EXCEPT the fundamentals that you pay them 60% or whatever it is for.

On this page http://photodune.net/become_an_author

They on a $100 item there is a buyer fee of $20 which puts it at $80.  Indie sellers get $36 (or 45%) of that $80 portion of the $100 selling price. 

Envato collects $20 buyer fee and 55% of $80 which is $44 - or it looks like they collect 64% to me, leaving sellers with what is actually 36% and they can't even act like an agent for that cut!

Unbelievable.

The best advice I have heard is to be a second shooter to a wedding photographer for a year.

If you are on Facebook, there is a group - I think it's called Shoot & Share that has a ton of wedding photographers. Just remember that most of what you read is venting (people don't usually "explode" with the beautiful stuff - and it's a closed group so the right place to do it:)  A lot of good talk about contracts and situations on the group.

Sounds like Zazzle or Caf� Press amounts.    They aren't reported in real time.

Found on sale at Sears.  Try to find one better than this!  (At least it isn't a self portrait!)

Looks like they have dropped the (Subscription) off the notifications - the total subs sold number has gone up.  So it's likely not 29 cents for an XXL credit sale!   

But what is with the huge decimal point?
- Commission: 0.941599999999