@Cathy,
you're right Cathy, of course.
My argument is flawed. I only used it because I was trying to offer exclusives a way out.
These things shouldn't be happening, but they certainly do.
And I think I understand why.

KB,
oh, but of course it is.
True, I mean.
There's no need to panic though.
It is only fair to treat exclusive images in a more lenient way.
Nobody's complaining about it. It's perfectly fine.
I'm sure DT's inspectors follow the same rules regarding exclusive images. And Fotolia's.
It's how it should be.

Warren,
congrats on your first IStock sale! That's great
I love your port and I'm sure there'll be many, many more to come
Good job and good luck

I have already posted on BigStock forum, (five minutes ago), but this deserves a thumbs up.
YES!
MKtang is right!
It's working, it's working !

Illustrator artists, great news - you can now upload your vectors to BigStock and keep all your metadata in place. It's working!

And one more thing - BigStock sales are way up.
Photographers and illustrators,  well worth the time to check it out.
BigStock seems to be going the right way.

FD,
Hahaha!
Yes, I believe it's a Mark Twain quote. The one about smoking
And I love Woody Allen's as well.
My favourite (top of my head)  Woody Allen.
'I can't listen to that much Wagner. I get the urge to go conquer Poland!'
Hahahahaha!
This is a nice one as well. 'Eternity is a very long time. Especially at the end'
Relating this to the Universe life time, he's not only funny, but actually right.

Pheby,
I've been smoking for over 20 years. I can't even imagine my life without cigarettes. And speaking about smoking and expensive countries, have a look at Irish prices : 

1 pack 20 'Silk Cut' (the brand I smoke) = 8.50 euro in Dublin, Ireland.
A FORTUNE!
How many 0.25 cent downloads would that be?
No point in counting, I can't give them up anyways

Lol, they must be thinking we have all gone mad, with all that checking

Go on Veer!
Call your reviewers back from holidays, (summer almost over anyway), train a few more, get everyone working on the queue, bring vector prices in line with everyone else (JPEG versions included) and let fresh, beautiful new images do their job.
To make money for all of us.
We're keeping our fingers crossed

Sorry Donding and Maui
My sale was a small one anyway. A few cents, not a big deal
Chin up, hopefully we will all be getting lots more soon.

Women versus men?
Hahaha!

I'm out of here. No more comments.
Good luck,

Padanova, Warren Price

I'm going to try to make my point as clear as I possibly can.
And this is my last post on the matter. Promise

I'm not talking about contributor commissions (higher, by the way, on all sites except Getty's family).

The subject here, right now, is about special offers.
Special offers are temporary promotions offered by agencies, to the buyers. These promotions happen from time to time. The costs of such promotions are normally covered by the agencies. Except Getty.
Is that clear enough?

Let's try a bit harder.

A few weeks ago Veer launched their new web site.
At the same time they offered a promotion to their buyers. (sounds familiar?)
The promotion was entirely covered by Veer.
Contributors didn't have to pay a cent.

About a month ago Graphic Leftovers launched a marketing campaing. It included a buyer promotion.
The promotion was entirely covered by Graphic Leftovers.
Contributors didn't have to pay a cent.

A few months ago Shutterstock made some changes to their search engine.
At the same time, they offered a promotion to their buyers.
The promotion was entirely covered by Shutterstock.
Contributors didn't have to pay a cent.

Some time last winter Dreamstime launched a marketing campaign. It included a buyer promotion.
The promotion was entirely covered by Dreamstime.
Contributors didn't have to pay a cent.

Deposit Photos - their promotion is still going on. For months.
Costs are entirely covered by Deposit Photos.
Contributors don't have to pay a cent.

The list goes on.

Are you trying to tell me that Deposit Photos can do it, but Getty can't afford to pay for a single week, 25% price reduction, without asking IStock contributors to pay for it themselves?
Getty's commission from non-exclusives is a whooping 80%.
And they still can't do it?
If that's the case, then Getty is in real trouble.
A 25% promotion paid for by contributors, won't do them much good.

Padanova, you still haven't answered my question.
Any other site, except IStock, that offers a buyer promotion and asks the contributors to pay for it themselves?
Forget about my poor sales, my portfolio or other sites' commissions for a second. Stay on topic.
Do you know of any?
I don't.

Ladies, Lisa, Cathy, Artemis and the others, top notch as usual
Thank you for standing up and trying your best to help improve things.
For the good of all of us.  
That's including Padanova

DJPadanova,

Yeah, seriously.

No other site I know of has ever offered a buyer promotion paid for by contributors.
End of story.

Don't confuse comissions with short term buyer promotions.
And talking about commissions, they're higher on the other sites.
And in my case, so are my sales.

But if you're happy paying for it, great!
Not my problem.

I can't believe I'm reading this.

No other site, as far as I know, has ever done such a thing.
No matter how big, well known the site, or up-coming and small.

It is incredible that mighty Getty can't afford a few days promotion without asking the contributors to pay for it.
I'm going to stop here, before I get into some serious trouble.

Hi JW,
Now for some real facts and numbers.
From a kind of newbie, like yourself.
I've been doing this for a year and I still can't make 100 dollars a month. About 70 dollars a month is the most I can get.

This is what you need to do :
Join the following sites -  Dreamstime, Fotolia, IStock and Shutterstock.
In that precise order.
Start with Dreamstime, leave Shutterstock at the end. It's your best earner but getting accepted can be difficult. Give yourself some time before you knock at their doors.

You need to learn how to correctly analyze and enhance your images.
You need to learn all about noise, colour cast, white balance and chromatic aberrations.
You need Photoshop (or at the very least an image editing software like Adobe Elements or Corel PaintShop) and you need to know how to use it.
You need a solid tripod.
Set your camera to ISO 100 at all times.
Shoot in RAW format for best image editing.

You also need to be creative and original. Forget about flowers, your garden, your dog, trees and nature. Unless they're extraordinary they won't get accepted.

It's not easy but if you love it and keep at it, you can do it!
Welcome to the world of micro and good luck

Click on any of the small icons at the end of my post. They are links to my portfolio.
Around 400 images - about 70 dollars a month (that's if I'm lucky!)
 

Design wise I would say it's OK.
Nothing special though.
It lacks a certain designer feel to it, an exclusive, careful touch to separate it from the hundreds of similars out there. No personality and it looks more like a ready made template, but it's OK, we can live with it, as long as it is easier to use.
(Out of all the micro sites, only Veer Maketplace home page used to be different. Designer talent at work. No sales though).

My question is - has anyone tried to upload an image via the new web site yet?
Do we still have to go through all those preliminary steps, clicks and pages?
The scrolling windows in categories, are they still there?
And what about vector illustrations?
Can we finally retrieve metadata/keywords/ descriptions for vector files? 
No blank pages anymore?
Bugs? Errors? Killed once and for all?
That would be lo-ve-ly!
I guess I'll have to give it a try and hope for the best.

Sharpshot,
ah, OK then.
I'm happy!
I might even try to upload a few